Asimov Is For Everything
by Doc on Feb.02, 2007, under General News
TheThunderChild writes “In 1963, Carl Sagan was “an astronomer at Harvard,” who sent his paper speculating about life on Jupiter to Isaac Asimov to see what he thought about the idea. Asimov in turn wrote about this theory in one of his essays for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. That’s one of the joys of reading Asimov’s essay collections – they’re full of anecdotes about people we know, history we may have forgotten, and principles of various sciences that remain true to this day. The Thunder Child has just launced a project to analyze all of Asimov’s essay collections in chronological order, starting with Fact and Fancy in 1962. (All these books, while out-of-print, are available via interlibrary loan or through specialty used book stores.) By reading the essays chronologically we see the evolution of Asimov’s essay writing style, what was going on in the world while he was writing, and his attempts to speculate on what the world might be like in the future. A Is For Asimov is the link to the front page of the project that explains it all in more detail, and Fact and Fancy is the link to the first book we cover. You’ll also find links to the Asimov Quotebook and the ongoing index to Asimov’s essays.”