Search Results for: Isaac Asimov

Vintage Treasures: Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy 10: Ghosts edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

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Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy 10: Ghosts (Signet/New American Library, 1988). Cover by J. K. Potter Isaac Asimov had a lot of gifts. He was a world famous polymath, a marvelous science explainer and popularizer, and a pretty darned skilled writer of science fiction. But he doesn’t get a lot of credit for one of his greatest talents, a skill in short supply even today: The man knew how to sell anthologies. After some of his early SF anthologies…

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Vintage Treasures: Where Do We Go From Here? edited by Isaac Asimov

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There are prolific anthologists, and there are very prolific anthologists, and there’s Isaac Asimov. The Internet Science Fiction database lists nearly 200 anthologies with his name on them, averaging around seven per year between 1963 and his death in 1992. (If you’re thinking, Geez that seems like a lot, let me clarify for you. Yes. It’s a lot.) Of course, the vast majority of those were produced later in his career and in partnership with a team of editors, especially…

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Isaac Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage from Film to Novel

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Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov First Edition: Houghton Mifflin, March 1966, Cover art Dale Hennesy (Book Club edition shown) Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov Houghton Mifflin (239 pages, $3.95, Hardcover, March 1966) Cover art Dale Hennesy Isaac Asimov’s early novels were published over a period of just eight years, from Pebble In the Sky in 1950 to The Naked Sun in 1957, with linked collections like I, Robot and the Foundation “novels” along the way. Some of his early short…

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Eternity vs. Infinity: Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity

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The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov; First Edition: Doubleday, 1955. Cover art Mel Hunter. The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov Doubleday (191 pages, $1.95, Hardcover, August 1955) Cover art Mel Hunter Just as Arthur C. Clarke’s The Deep Range, which I reviewed here last time, was one of the latter novels of Clarke’s early period (which I defined as everything from his first novel Prelude to Space in 1951 to 2001 in 1968), so is The End of…

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A Fine Addition to any SF Library: Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

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Tin Stars (Signet, 1986), volume 5 of Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction. Cover by JAV Isaac Asimov published more than 500 books in his lifetime. Now Asimov was amazingly productive — averaging around 1,700 words published per day over the last two decades of his life — but no one is that prolific. In later years he became a proficient book packager, working with editors like Charles G. Waugh and especially Martin H. Greenberg to churn out dozens…

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Isaac Asimov’s First Actual Novel: 1950’s Pebble in the Sky

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Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov; First Edition: Doubleday 1950. Cover by Richard Powers (click to enlarge) Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov Doubleday (223 pages, $2.50 in hardcover, 1950) Isaac Asimov’s most famous works are likely the Foundation Trilogy and I, Robot, but these are story cycles, not novels. Concurrently with the publication of those books, Asimov published his first three actual novels: Pebble in the Sky; The Stars, Like Dust; and The Currents of Space, from…

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Vintage Treasures: Nightfall and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov

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Nightfall and Other Stories (Fawcett Crest, 1970). Cover artist unknown. I’ve been buying small collections recently, and writing about some of the more interesting items here. Two months back I was unpacking a box of 70s paperbacks, and I made a genuinely interesting find: a copy of Nightfall and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov. Asimov was one of my heroes. There was a time in the 70s and 80s when he was science fiction, the embodiment not just of what was…

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All the Leftovers: The Early Asimov by Isaac Asimov

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The Early Asimov (Doubleday, 547 pages, $10 in hardcover, September 1972) By Isaac Asimov Cover by Barry Kiperman This is a book I’d never read before, and debated recently about whether to ever read it. On the one hand, life is too short to read every book one might have accumulated, and this book consists, frankly, of all the stories from Asimov’s early career that had not already been included in 10 earlier collections — all the leftovers. (Those 10…

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel: The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

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Galaxy and IF magazines serializing Asimov’s The Gods Themselves in 1972. Covers by Jack Gaughan In 1973 the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for Best Novel were each won by The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov. The Gods Themselves also won Australia’s Ditmar Award for Best International Novel. Isaac Asimov had won two previous Hugos, but neither was a “Regular” Hugo – he won a Special Award for his F&SF Science articles in 1963, and in 1966 the Foundation Series…

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Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction, November 1979: A Retro-Review

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Asimov’s Science Fiction, November 1979 Edited by George H. Scithers Published by Davis Publications. 196 pages, $1.25 I heard you missed me! I’m back! Technically, this is Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (now known as Asimov’s Science Fiction). It was a refreshing change of pace after Galileo’s ‘story behind the story,’ and Analog’s massive book review. Asimov’s was pretty much fiction and nothing but fiction. 192 pages of it, as the cover advertises! Also advertised, Dungeons and Dragons — and not…

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