Isaac Asimov: Writing Machine

The Amazing Dr. Asimov

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) is considered (with good cause) one of the writers of science fiction's Golden Age, that period of ferment that spanned the fifties and sixties. He was one of the most prolific writers ever, with almost five hundred books to his credit at his death in 1992.

Born in Russia, Asimov immigrated to the US with his parents when he was two. He began writing almost immediately thereafter, and never stopped until his death. He wrote everything, science fiction short stories and novels, mysteries, and popular science articles - he had a fantastic ability to make the most difficult topics accessible - and even books on mythology and religion.

Writing Machine

Isaac Asimov sold his first short story, Marooned off Vesta, to Amazing Stories when he was eighteen. His first novel was published in 1950. A PhD in chemistry, he taught at Boston University, where he remained on the faculty for the rest of his life, although he ceased to teach or draw a salary in 1958, when his writing income surpassed his teaching income.

Most of his science fiction was written in the '50s and '60s; he is most famous for the The Foundation Trilogy and The Robot Novels and Short Stories, in which he articulated the Three Laws of Robotics. During the '70s and '80s, most of his writing was nonfiction, but he returned to his two most popular series in the '80s, with a handful of books that tied them together in the far future.

His writing was plot-driven and unadorned. Typically a problem required a technological or clever solution and his heroes (which were, in the beginning, uniformly male) figured it out with a minimum of emotional angst and saved the day. One exception is his classic Nightfall, the short story that is perhaps the most well known sci-fi story in literature. This story, published in 1941 in Astounding Stories, deals with a far away civilization that periodically collapses, like clockwork, every two thousand years. The problem, when it is revealed, has no clear solution.

The Image

The image of Isaac Asimov is of the mature eccentric with the white mutton-chop sideburns and the black-framed geek glasses. In the seventies, his 'shtick' at science-fiction conventions was to play the Dirty Old Man, signing books presented by young female fans with semi-lewd come-ons. In more politically correct times, he might have been arrested or at least made to suffer social disapprobation - at the time, it was much appreciated by the fans, who knew that he would bolt in alarm if one of the fengirls thought to take him seriously.

Isaac Asimov famously did all his own typing and answered his own fan mail. And he answered ALL his fan mail. Given his literary output, one would have expected advanced carpal tunnel syndrome, but if he was a sufferer, I am not aware of it.

Passing of a legend

In 1983 Isaac Asimov had triple bypass surgery. Since this was prior to the isolation of the HIV virus, the blood supply wasn't screened, and it was during this surgery, it is thought, that he acquired HIV. He died in 1992 of AIDS-related heart and kidney failure. The HIV-AIDS connection was concealed from the public until his second wife allowed it to be revealed in the second edition of his autobiography, It's Been A Good Life, in 2002.