All posts tagged: Asimov

Where to Get Started Reading Isaac Asimov

Where to Get Started Reading Isaac Asimov

Published by Jenni Sidey

Blackstone Publishing Reissued after seventy-five years out of print—and in hardcover for the first time in a generation—David Starr, Space Ranger is the first book in the Lucky Starr series by the legendary Isaac Asimov, author of Foundation and I, Robot. Conway remembered the exact minute the news reached Science Tower. Patrol ships shot into space, attacking the pirates’ asteroid lairs in unprecedented fury. They also found something else: a tiny lifeboat between Venus and Earth, radiating automatic calls for help. Only a frightened four-year-old was inside, who said only, “Mother said I wasn’t to cry.” It was David Starr. Isaac Asimov is one of the most towering and influential writers in the history of science fiction. Born in 1920, he was an actual scientist: a professor of biochemistry at Boston University. Along with Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he’s considered one of the “Big Three” of science fiction. He was of a generation of sci-fi writers who put ideas at the forefront. His characters may seem a bit flat and one-note. His plots …

Isaac Asimov Reviews George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Calls It “Not Science Fiction, But a Distorted Nostalgia for a Past that Never Was”

Isaac Asimov Reviews George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Calls It “Not Science Fiction, But a Distorted Nostalgia for a Past that Never Was”

Published by José Betancourt

Here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, a young read­er first hear­ing of George Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty-Four would hard­ly imag­ine it to be a work of sci­ence fic­tion. That would­n’t have been the case in 1949, when the nov­el was first pub­lished, and when the epony­mous year would have sound­ed like the dis­tant future. Even as the actu­al nine­teen-eight­ies came around, it still evoked visions of a tech­no-total­i­tar­i­an dystopia ahead. “So thor­ough­ly has 1984-opho­bia pen­e­trat­ed the con­scious­ness of many who have not read the book and have no notion of what it con­tains, that one won­ders what will hap­pen to us after 31 Decem­ber 1984,” wrote Isaac Asi­mov in 1980. “When New Year’s Day of 1985 arrives and the Unit­ed States is still in exis­tence and fac­ing very much the prob­lems it faces today, how will we express our fears of what­ev­er aspect of life fills us with appre­hen­sion?” The occa­sion was one of a series of syn­di­cat­ed news­pa­per columns that Asi­mov seems to have pub­lished each new year. At the dawn of Nine­teen Eighty-Four’s decade, the syn­di­cate asked …