![]() In 1970, Asimov and his wife separated in 1973, he married Janet Jeppson. ![]() By 1958, Asimov's side career as a science fiction writer was providing a sufficient income that he was able to leave teaching and devote himself to full-time writing. In 1949, Asimov moved his family to Boston, where he accepted a position as an instructor of biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine. Indeed, after 1940, Asimov sold every story that he ever wrote nearly all of them have remained in print in the years since his death.Īsimov returned to Columbia University and completed his Ph.D. Retitled as "Robbie," the story became the first chapter of I, Robot when it was published in 1950 by Gnome Press. Meanwhile, Asimov had begun working on his robot stories, publishing the first, "Strange Playfellow," in 1940. Heinlein at the Naval Aircraft Laboratory in Philadelphia. During the war years he worked alongside fellow science fiction writer Robert A. World War II interrupted his work on his Ph.D. Kornbluth.īy 1939 Asimov had completed his bachelor's degree in chemistry and by 1941 a master's degree in the same field. In the same year, he became active in the Futurian Literary Society, a group that included such well-known writers as Frederick Pohl, Donald Wollheim, and Cyril M. Campbell became an important mentor and friend to Asimov, and the two worked closely together for the rest of their lives.Īsimov sold his first story, "Marooned Off Vesta," to Amazing Stories in 1938. Campbell, Jr., who had just begun his long tenure as editor of Astounding Science Fiction. During this period, he began writing science fiction stories, and in 1938, with his first completed science fiction story in hand, he met the legendary John W. In 1935, he entered Seth Low Junior College, a division of Columbia University, where he pursued his love of chemistry. He was soon writing letters to the editors of several publications. ![]() Asimov was a voracious reader, and became acquainted with science fiction by reading the pulp magazines stocked in the candy store. An intelligent and quiet boy, Asimov entered Boys High School in Brooklyn in 1932, and graduated just three years later at the age of fifteen. Young Asimov and the other members of his family devoted many hours to working in the stores. The family purchased a candy store in 1926, and soon expanded the business to include additional stores. The family left Russia and moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1923. ![]() Because the Asimov family was Jewish, and few official records exist in Russia about Jews during this period, the date is nothing more than an approximation made by Asimov. Isaac Asimov was born on or around January 2, 1920, in Petrovichi, Russia, to Juda and Anna Rachel Berman Asimov. Well into the twenty-first century, science fiction writers, movie directors, and artificial intelligence engineers continue to take into account Asimov's prescient consideration of what it means to be human and what it means to be machine. Most notably in a 2008 edition by Bantam Dell publishers. He wrote in the introduction to Robot Visions, "If all that I have written is someday to be forgotten, the Three Laws of Robotics will surely be the last to go." More than fifty years after its first publication, I, Robot is still easily available in several editions, Even Asimov recognized that this might be his most lasting work. In 1950, Asimov selected what he considered to be his best stories, wrote a framing device to link the stories together into a novel, and published the work as I, Robot. Each of Asimov's subsequent robot stories explored some aspect of the Three Laws, pushing the boundaries of human/machine interaction. Over the next ten years, he wrote and published at least twelve more robot stories.Īsimov's robots were equipped with positronic brains and governed by the Three Laws of Robotics, as articulated in "Runaround," first published in 1942 and later included as the second chapter of I, Robot. He published it in Super Science Stories magazine. A precocious and prolific writer, Asimov addressed his boredom by writing his first robot story, "Robbie," in 1940, when he was just nineteen years old. During the 1930s, young Isaac Asimov found himself bored with the common science fiction plot that included robots destroying their creators, akin to the destruction of Dr. I, Robot is one of the most influential works of science fiction ever written.
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