Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov (/ˈaɪzᵻk ˈæzᵻmɒv/; born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov; circa January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was prolific and wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification.

Asimov wrote hard science fiction and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are explicitly set in earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, beginning with Foundation's Edge, he linked this distant future to the Robot and Spacer stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson. He wrote hundreds of short stories, including the social science fiction "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.

Asimov (disambiguation)

Asimov usually refers to Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer.

Asimov may also refer to:

See also

Asimov (surname)

Asimov is a Jewish surname of Russian origin; see "Isaac Asimov" for its genesis. Notable people with the surname include:

Asimov's Science Fiction

Asimov's Science Fiction (ISSN 1065-2698) is an American science fiction magazine which publishes science fiction and fantasy and perpetuates the name of author and biochemist Isaac Asimov. It is currently published by Penny Publications 10 times a year, with double issues in April/May and October/November.

Circulation in 2012 was 22,593, as reported in the annual Locus magazine survey.

History

Asimov's Science Fiction began life as the digest-sized Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (or IASFM for short) in 1977. Joel Davis of Davis Publications approached Asimov to lend his name to a new science fiction magazine, after the fashion of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine or Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Asimov refused to act as editor, but served instead as editorial director, writing editorials and replying to reader mail until his death in 1992. At Asimov's request George Scithers, the first editor, negotiated an acquisitions contract with the Science Fiction Writers of America providing considerably better terms for writers than had been the periodical standard up to that time.