Isaac Asimov Science Fiction Books

My favourite authors include science, science fiction, historic and political writers. Star Trek is not one of my favourite programmes from a Scientific prospective, I call it Science Fiction with out the Science. Try your local bookshop, library or amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and ebay.co.uk. Remember you can order new books at the library which they will either get from another library or buy them new, by writing a little card they provide and paying a small administration fee.

Isaac Asimov Books

I, Robot; The Rest of the Robots Book (1964); Galactic Empire books including The Currents of Space and The Stars like Dust; Foundation Trilogy (1951); and Nightfall One and Two (1969).

Ick was a Jewish Immigrate from Smolensk just West of Moscow. His Books and Scotty out of Star trek encouraged me to take up Engineering. His family settled in New York City which is still home to 1 Million Jews and the Jewish Lobby which like the Tobacco Lobby (well we sell it enough in Microprose's Colonization Game) and Gun Lobby has a strangle hold on the US Government supporting Israel to the hilt without thinking of offering any help to the Palestinians living in the Refugee camps and disposed of their homes, most still hold their keys. It is left to the European Union to help to a degree having built a new hospital, trained police... Arab money is used to finance parties like Hamas which pay money to suicide bomber's families as well as building schools and hospitals.

Isaac Asimov wrote a page in Pencil first. Before typing it on a mechanical typewriter, as the Wordprocessor hadn't been invented, to save mistakes. He bought the Amstrad (Alan M. Sugar Trading) Wordprocessor was most satisfied with it.

The Origins of the Word Robot

  • Robot comes from the Czech word robota, meaning "compulsory labour." It was first used in the 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by the Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. Isaac Asimov wrote I, Robot a short series of stories on how Robots behaved when they had to follow his famous fictional 'Three Laws of Robotics'. Robot's today only follow the second law 'a Robot must obey orders' (programming). Presumably when the frontal cortex of the Brain is finally mapped we will be able to create Robots using neural networks. This might raise the moral dilemma of whether the Robot is alive and can feel emotions and pain if it is an exact copy of the Brain, and whether it should be a 'Slave'. Neural networks can already read text and number plates. As an aside I think they should have a table tennis playing robot completion like the IEE (Institute of Electrical Engineers) Micromouse Maze running Robot completion. The ball might have to be painted Orange to make it easier for the camera to recognise it.

    Robots were built by United States Robotic and Mechanical Men Corporation; and designed by the Introverted Positronic Brain Designer Dr. Susan Kelvin. She had two agents in the field: Spooner, and another to solve any breakdowns in the Robot.

    The Fictional Three Laws of Robotics

    He also coined the Three Laws of Robotics and wrote the book I, Robot. He was very imaginative for a man with only a Typewriter, Encyclopedia, the Editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later called Analog Science Fiction and Fact) - John W. Cambell (Editor: 1937-71), and some friends he talked things over with.

    The three Laws of Robotics:

    1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
    2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
    3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

    Isaac Asimov also postulated a Zeroth Law by Robot R. Daniel to Protect Humanity. And a 4th Law has been postulated for a Robot to re-produce.

    Isaac Asimov's 'I, Robot' Book (1950)

    Contents

    1. Robbie
    2. Runaround
    3. Reason
    4. Catch That Rabbit
    5. Liar!
    6. Little Lost robot
    7. Escape!
    8. Evidence
    9. The Evitable Conflict
    Download: http://nullfile.com/ebooks/(ebook)%20Asimov,%20Isaac%20-%20I,%20Robot.pdf

    Isaac Asimov's 'The Rest of the Robots' Book (1964)

    Contents

    1. The Coming of the Robots
      1. Robot AL-76 Goes Astray
      2. Victory Unintentional
    2. The Laws of Robotics
      1. First Law
      2. Let's Get Together
    3. Susan Calvin
      1. Satisfaction Guaranteed
      2. Risk
      3. Lenny
      4. Galley Slave

    Robots and Empire (1986)

    DANEEL HAS THE FINEST MIND IN HISTORY.
    GISKARD CAN ADJUST HUMAN EMOTIONS.

    CAN TWO CONSCIENCE - STRICKEN ROBOTS SAVE THE GALAXY?

    Madam Gladia Solaria glanced disdainfully at the barbarous settler from Baleyworld who had disturbed her long middle-age on Aurora.

    Yes something about his intrigued her. Perhaps because both he and his planet were named after Elijah Baley, the short-lived Earthman who'd been her lover two centuries before.

    Those memories plagued here. She knew more. They too remembered Elijah Baley. Now they must prevent his old enemies from plunging the galaxy into war - if the First Law of Robotics will let them ...

    Isaac Asimov's Nightfall One and Two (1969)

  • Nightfall One Contents

  • Nightfall a story set on a world which follows a complex orbit around several stars. Meaning the inhabitants never experience darkness except once every few thousand years when the orbit that's the planet away from most of the stars and an asteroid blocks out the last remaining Sun. The inhabitants have no experience of darkness so go mad ending Civilization after Civilization periodically. A group of astronomers set out to photograph what the darkness looks like so the next Civilization can be warned, and another group develop artificial light so as to survive the coming darkness. The was Ick's first book.

  • Victory Unintentional from Nightfall Two tells the tale of what happens when Humans discover intelligent live on Jupiter! First communication is by radio. What the Human's discover is that the Jovians out number them 10,000's to 1 and worse that they have developed a form of Spaceship that can contain their much heavier atmosphere, and will soon being spreading across the Solar System. U.S. Robotics is commissioned to design Robots capable of withstanding the vicious Jovian Atmosphere. Several ever better model's are made. They travel down to the Jovian 'surface' in a Spaceship without walls to allow for change in atmospheric pressure. Once there the Jovian's treat then with contempt telling them how many cities they have, and showing them their considerably advanced technology. The simplest Robot goes into a furnace and returns unharmed. Other feats are performed by the Robots. The Jovian attitude begins to change from contempt to fear. And at the end they sign a treaty dividing the Solar System between the Jovian Home World, the rest being given to the Humans. The thing they didn't know is that not all Humans are like the Robots. They assumed the Robots where Humans!

    Isaac Asimov's First Galactic Empire's Creation and Growth

    Two Books were set in the time of Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire's growth.

    The Currents of Space

    A tale of a man whose mind was blasted by the Psychic Probe which is designed to read your inner most thought's but which is also highly dangerous.

    Quote: "They Called him 'Crazy Rik' - but only he knew that the planet was doomed with all its people. The only key to the vital information that could save it was locked in the subconcious memory of this strange, child-minded man ... a memory obliterated by a psychic probe!

    Caught in a galactic web of intrigue, Rik struggled courageously with his own blasted mind and an unknown enemy in a desperate and one-sided race with time ...

    Here is a nova-bright novel of tension and adventure by the acknowledged High Master of today's science fiction, Isaac Asimov.

    The Stars like Dust

    Is set in a period when the Galactic Empire whose capital is the mighty steeled world of Trantor vies for control of the whole Galaxy. The boarders of the Galaxy have reached a World that creates a Fabric Superior to any in look, feel and life-span. Desired by ever model and Mogul's Wife. It only grows under the conditions of the Planet's special Sun. But the population of the Planet are Slaves to another near by Planet who take all the profit and make them Slave away growing the Fabric. It is impossible to grow anywhere else and makes the Rulers second only in wealth to Trantor itself.

    Quote: "A Classic Asimov Saga of Galactic Adventure"

    Overnight, young Biron Farrill changed from a casual student preparing for graduation at the University of Earth into a fugitive fleeing from an unknown assassin. Someone had tried to kill him in his dormitory. And he learned that, many light years away in the inky blackness of the Horsehead Nebula, his father had already been murdered.

    The mystery took him deep into space where he found himself in a relentless struggle with the power-mad despots of Tyrann. from now on it was a case of death - or freedom for the galaxy..."

    Spaceship and Sun insignia The Spaceship and Sun insignia of the Galactic Empire.

    Imperial Trandor

    Trantor's only bit of Greenery is the Imperial Sector where the Emperor lives. It contains deep hydroponics plants to make food for it's vast population but still requires 20 agricultural worlds to feed it, a delicate jugular vain that in time will become exposed. Starship's lift off night and day bringing visitors from every province of the Empire. Billions of Bureaucrats beaver their life’s away running the Empire and find themselves all to few for the task, never even seeing daylight. Sky taxi's dart about. Trapped Thermo-vents draw power from the planet's core and Heat sinks at the poles reflect surplus energy into space. And there is off course the Imperial Library vast repository of all knowledge in the Galaxy, referenced, cross-referenced and computerised. Multiple vast underground cavines contain Miles of Bookfilms accessed by machines and sent up to reading rooms across the Planet, safe from Nuclear attack. The central computer runs each sector, and has entities called MemGrams.

    Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy (1951)

    I first bought the boxed Issac Asimov Foundation series below on a trip to London at the age of 13. The book covers sold the book for me, imagining great deeds and technology in Space. I had done very little reading for a couple of years before this, but these books brought me back to reading. When at Paddington Station (the eastern Terminus of the Great Western Railway - God's Wonderful Railway built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel a great Civil Engineer). I imagined myself on Terminus.

    His Foundation Series (Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation) largely based on a Space Opera version of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire but with the rise of a new power: the Foundation to reduce the coming dark ages from 30,000 to a single 1,000 using the new Science of Psychohistory that can predict the future using complex mathematics. Developed by the Scientist/Mathematician Hari Seldon who periodically appears in the Time Vault on Terminus the home of the Foundation when a Seldon Crisis occurs.

    Foundation Edge Book Cover

    The Foundation

    The book begins with a Quote:

    "HARI SELDON - ... born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era: died 12,069. The dates are more commonly given in terms of the current Foundational Era as -79 to the year 1 F.E. Born to middle-class parents on Helicon, Arcturus sector (where his father, in a legend of doubtful auntheniticity, was a tobacco grower in the hydroponic plants of the planet), he early showed amazing ability in mathematics. Anecdotes concerning his ability are innumerable, and some are contradictory. At the age of two, he is said to have ...

      ... Undoubtedly his greatest contributions were in the field of psychohistory. Seldom found the field little more than a set of vague axioms; he left it a profound statistical science. ...

      ... The best existing authority we have for the details of his life is the biography written by Gaal Dornick who, as a young man, met Seldon two years before the great mathematician's death. The story of the meeting ..."
    Encyclopedia Galactica, 116th Edition, Terminus [Star System]


    "His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trandor before. That is, not in real life. He had seen it many times on the hyper-video, and occasionally in termendous three-dimentional newscasts covering an Imperial Coronation or the opening of the Galactic Council. Even though he had lived all his life on the world of Synnax ..."


    "COMMISSION OF PUBLIC SAFETY - ... The aristocratic coterie rose to power after the assassination of Cleon I, last of the Entuns. In the main, they formed an element of the order during the centuries of instability and uncertainty in the Imperium. Usually under the control of the great families of the Chens and the Divarts..."
    Encyclopedia Galactica, 116th Edition, Terminus [Star System]

    Contents

    1. The Phychohistorians
    2. The Encyclopedists
    3. The Mayors
    4. The Traders
    5. The Merchant Princes

    "KORELL - ... And so after three years of a war which was certainly the most unfought war on record, the Republic of Korell surrendered unconditionally, and Hober Mallow took his place next to Hari Seldon and Salvor Hardin in the hearts of the people of the Foundation.
    Encyclopedia Galactica, 116th Edition, Terminus [Star System]

    Foundation Book Cover


    The Foundation starts out innocently enough as the Encyclopaedia Galactica Foundation founded on a new unsettled world at the edge of the Galaxy where 'The Stars are Scattered Thinly and the Cold of Space seeps in'. Soon the outer provinces of the Empire break away and Terminus finds itself isolated and able to trade only through the good will of the new Kingdoms. The Board of Trustees who run the Encyclopaedia and the planet, for they sea the two as indivisible. But the newly elected Mayor sees things differently, not only is he cut of from his favourite Vegan Cigars but he sees that the biggest of the four new Kingdoms Anacreon does not recognise the durastriction of the Empire over Terminus. An Ambassador is sent from Trantor but studies off his conversations (secretly recorded in a most underhand way) and the Treaty's between Trantor and Anacreon using advanced linguistic science provide worrying results. What will the Mayor do?

    The story continues with The Traders spanning out across the periphery gathering wealth to the Foundation and spreading it's influence. Eventually the growing Foundation comes into contact with the decaying Galactic Empire, and has to fight a Proxy Kingdom supported by the Galactic Empire.


    Foundation and Empire

    The book begins with a Quote:

    "BEL RIOSE ... In his relatively short career, Roise earned the title of 'The Last of the Imperials' and earned it well. A study of the campaigns reveals him to be the equal of Peurifoy in strategic ability and his superior perhaps in his ability to handle men. That he was born in the days of the delince of Empire made it allbut impossible for him to equal Peurifoy's record as a conqueror. Yet he had his chance when, the first of the Empire's generals to do so, he faced the Foundation squarely ..."
    Encyclopedia Galactica, 116th Edition, Terminus [Star System]

    First through a war with a proxy boarder state, then with the Empire itself under the last strong Emperor Cleon II and it's last great general and strategist Bel Rose. How they defeat the far greater might of the Empire is told in Foundation and Empire. Which continues with the rise of the Mule a mutant with frightening telepathic powers that can read minds, turn the most sworn enemy into an utterly loyal subject, and force scientists to work under extreme pressure to develop fantastic new weapons. First he takes over a pirate asteroid, then Kalgan a rich pleasure world, and then he turns his sights on the Foundation.

    Foundation and Empire Book Cover

    Second Foundation

    Second Foundation tells the story of the hidden Second nucleus of the planned great Second Galactic Empire. All science and technology is gathered in the First Foundation on Terminus, but a group of telepathic Psychohistorians plans the course of the First Foundation though the Prime Radiant a mathematical device listing probabilities of certain events happening and guiding the course of history according to the plan. Though the telepathic powers of the First Speaker and his council of twelve, plus numerous field workers who tip minds just enough to make events turn out the desired way. But the First Foundation scientist's develop instruments to detect telepathic minds and a small group sworn to secrecy attempt to remove the influence of the Second Foundation forever and let Terminus decide it's own future, and not be run by a telepathic elite. But first they must find the Second Foundation! Which the Mule with all the resources of his Empire couldn't find.

    Second Foundation Book Cover

    Foundation and Earth

    Quote, from Back Cover:

    "Exiled Councilman Trevize, having found Gaia, a world inhabited by telepathic beings, journeys onwards with his companions in their quest for new knowledge of the mysterious planet Earth. As they near their destination, Bliss the Gaian begins to pick up the thought waves of intelligent beings - but are they human? What new mysteries - and dangers - await the intrepid voyagers on the ancient ancestral planet?"

    Foundation's Friends

    Also Foundation's Friends includes Trantor Falls by Harry Turtledove a swashbuckling tale of the sack of the Galactic Empire's Capital by the usurper Gilmer and the flight of the last Emperor Dagobert VIII. It also details the defence of the Imperial library of which any Foundation fan knows the significance.


    About Isaac Asimov

    We had a Marvel Comic Shop in Portsmouth for a year but it shut due to poor says. The Stationer and Newsagent WHSmith sells Marvel Comic Books, also.

    Issac Asimov's Father owned a New York City Comic Book and Sweet Shop in New York City. He was a New York Jew from the Russia. Ick used to read Amazing Stories, and Fantastic Stories about Science Fiction: Hyperspace Spaceships, Robots, Utopia, Going to the Moon, Mars and the Asteroid Belt...

    He was a great Author and wrote I, Robot, The Rest of the Robots, Foundation and Empire (the Galactic Empire), Robots and Empire, Nightfalll... on his Typewriter. Writing it in pencil first on a bit of Paper, with Eraser. He was one of the Great Science Fiction Authors. And came up with the Three Laws of Robotics. Isaac Asimov was very greatful to get his Amstrad (Alan M. Sugar Trading) PCW Computer Wordprocessor. It was a lot easier to edit the stories.

    John Wood Campbell, Jr. (June 8, 1910 -- July 11, 1971) was an influential figure in American science fiction. As editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later called Analog Science Fiction and Fact), from late 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with shaping the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction. And Isaac Asimov's helper and friend. He also had 10 friends who made suggestions for his books, and an Encyclopedia, including the Roman Empire references for his Foundation Trilogy.