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The Edge Of Tomorrow (1985 Book)
''The Edge of Tomorrow'' is a collection of short science fiction stories and science essays by Isaac Asimov, published by Tor Books in July 1985. Contents *Foreword by Ben Bova *Introduction by Isaac Asimov *"Unique Is Where You Find It" (story) *"The Eureka Phenomenon" (essay) *"The Feeling of Power" (story) *"The Comet That Wasn't" (essay) *"Found!" (story) *"Twinkle, Twinkle, Microwaves" (essay) *"Pâté de Foie Gras" (story) *"The Bridge of the Gods" (essay) *"Belief" (story) *"Euclid's Fifth" (essay) *"The Plane Truth" (essay) *" The Billiard Ball" (story) *"The Winds of Change" (story) *"The Figure of the Fastest" (essay) *"The Dead Past" (story) *"The Fateful Lightning (essay) *" Breeds There a Man...?" (story) *"The Man Who Massed the Earth" (essay) *" Nightfall (story) *"The Planet That Wasn't" (essay) *"The Ugly Little Boy "The Ugly Little Boy" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the September 1958 issue of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WikiProject Novels
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by '' Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outside organizations relevant to the field at issue. For e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pâté De Foie Gras (short Story)
''Pâté de Foie Gras'' is a 1956 science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov, originally published by ''Astounding Science Fiction''. Like Asimov's " The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline", "Pâté de Foie Gras" is a scientific spoof article, updating one of Aesop's Fables, The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs. Plot A Department of Agriculture employee tells of the discovery on a farm in Texas of a goose that lays golden eggs, and how US government and academic researchers try to solve the mystery of the goose. While its eggs are valuable as pure gold, learning how the bird produces the metal is more important. After the scientists realize that the goose is unharmed despite the enzyme-catalyzed nuclear process that converts oxygen-18 to gold-197 producing gamma rays, they discover that it is immune to all radioactivity, converting any unstable isotope to a stable isotope. The goose is "the perfect defense against the atomic age", one researc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Last Question
"The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and was anthologized in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (1986), the retrospective Opus 100 (1969), and in Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Vol. 1 (1990). While he also considered it one of his best works, “The Last Question” was Asimov's favorite short story of his own authorship, and is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac. Through successive generations, humanity questions Multivac on the subject of entropy. The story overlaps science fiction, theology, and philosophy. History In conceiving Multivac, Asimov was extrapolating the trend towards centralization that characterized computation technology planning in the 1950s to an ultimate centrally-managed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ugly Little Boy
"The Ugly Little Boy" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the September 1958 issue of ''Galaxy Science Fiction'' under the title "Lastborn", and was reprinted under its current title in the 1959 collection ''Nine Tomorrows''. The story deals with a ''Homo neanderthalensis'' child which is brought to the future by means of time travel. Robert Silverberg later expanded it into a novel with the same title published in 1992 (also published as ''Child of Time'' in the UK). Asimov has said that this was his second or third favorite of his own stories. Plot summary A Neanderthal child is brought to the present day as a result of time travel experiments by Stasis Inc, a research organization. He cannot be removed from his immediate area because of the vast energy loss and time paradoxes that would result, and is kept in the present by way of a Stasis module. In order to care for the boy the organization hires Edith Fellowes, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nightfall (Asimov Short Story And Novel)
"Nightfall" is a 1941 science fiction short story by the American writer Isaac Asimov about the coming of darkness to the people of a planet ordinarily illuminated by sunlight at all times. It was adapted into a novel with Robert Silverberg in 1990. The short story has been included in 48 anthologies and has appeared in six collections of Asimov's stories. In 1968, the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story written prior to the 1965 establishment of the Nebula Awards and included it in ''The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929–1964''. Background Written from 17 March to 9 April 1941 and sold on 24 April, the short story was published in the September 1941 issue of ''Astounding Science Fiction'' under editor John W. Campbell. It was the 32nd story by Asimov, written while he was a graduate student in chemistry at Columbia University. Campbell asked Asimov to write the story after discussing with him a quotation fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Breeds There A Man
"Breeds There a Man...?" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the June 1951 issue of ''Astounding'' and was reprinted in science fiction anthologies such as ''Beachheads in Space'' (1952) and ''The Great SF Stories #13 (1951)'' (published in 1985), as well as in Asimov-only collections such as ''Through a Glass, Clearly'' (1967), ''Nightfall and Other Stories'' (1969). and ''Robot Dreams'' (1986). Plot summary Elwood Ralson, a brilliant but psychologically disturbed physicist, becomes convinced that humanity is a kind of genetics experiment being run by an extraterrestrial life, alien intelligence. His behaviour becomes more erratic and suicidal as his thoughts become more entrenched in this idea, and his health fails. He draws an analogy between human progress and the growth of bacteria that suggests that humanity has been bred in certain strains for various traits (e.g. artistic ability) and that such breeding is what pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Dead Past
"The Dead Past" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov, first published in the April 1956 issue of ''Astounding Science Fiction''. It was later collected in ''Earth Is Room Enough'' (1957) and ''The Best of Isaac Asimov'' (1973), and adapted into an episode of the science-fiction television series ''Out of the Unknown''. Its pattern is that of dystopian fiction, but of a subtly nuanced flavor. It is considered by some people to be one of his best short stories. Plot summary Asimov extrapolates the twin trends towards centralization of academic research and scientific specialization, to portray a world in which state control of scientific research is overseen by a vast bureaucracy, and scholars are effectively forbidden from working outside their narrow field of specialization. Working innocently under these constraints is Arnold Potterley, a professor of ancient history. Potterley, an expert on ancient Carthage, wishes to gain access to the chronoscope, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Billiard Ball
"The Billiard Ball" is a science fiction short story by American author Isaac Asimov, written in September 1966 and first published in the March 1967 issue of '' If''. It appeared in Asimov's 1968 collection ''Asimov's Mysteries'', in his 1973 collection ''The Best of Isaac Asimov'', in his 1986 collection ''Robot Dreams'' and in '' The Complete Stories, Vol. 2''. Plot summary An example of what Asimov called his "late style," the story is a journalist's recollection of the events surrounding the discovery of an anti-gravity device in the mid-21st century. Heavy with physics theory, the story describes the relationship between the creator of the device, the billionaire inventor Edward Bloom, and his former classmate James Priss, a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist who had developed most of the theory that made the device possible. The men are expert billiards players and bitter rivals. Challenged to execute a shot on a table which is equipped with the device, Priss sends a b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Feeling Of Power
"The Feeling of Power" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the February 1958 issue of '' If: Worlds of Science Fiction'', and was reprinted in the 1959 collection ''Nine Tomorrows'', the 1969 retrospective ''Opus 100'', the 1970 anthology '' The Stars Around Us'', and the 1986 collection ''Robot Dreams''. In the introduction to ''Robot Visions'', Asimov lists this story as one of the notable robot stories. The story is representative of the genre of sci-fi that started in the 1950s as a reaction to computers, around the theme of caution against human mental atrophy in the computer era. Arthur C. Clarke's 1960 story "Into the Comet" is in a similar vein. Plot summary In the distant future, humans live in a computer-aided society and have forgotten the fundamentals of mathematics, including even the rudimentary skill of counting. The Terrestrial Federation is at war with Deneb, and the war is conducted by long-range weap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WikiProject Books
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by '' Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outside organizations relevant to the field at issue. For e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ben Bova
Benjamin William Bova (November 8, 1932November 29, 2020) was an American writer and editor. During a writing career of 60 years, he was the author of more than 120 works of science fact and fiction, an editor of '' Analog Science Fiction and Fact'', for which he won a Hugo Award six times, and an editorial director of '' Omni''; he was also president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America. Personal life and education Ben Bova was born on November 8, 1932, in Philadelphia. He graduated from South Philadelphia High School in 1949. In 1953, while attending Temple University in Philadelphia, he married Rosa Cucinotta; they had a son and a daughter. The couple divorced in 1974. That year he married Barbara Berson Rose. Barbara Bova died on September 23, 2009. Bova dedicated his 2011 novel ''Power Play'' to Barbara. In March 2013, he announced on his website that he had remarried, to Rashida Loya. Bova was an atheist and was critical of what ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, sentient artificial intelligence, cybernetics, certain forms of immortality (like mind uploading), and the singularity. Science fiction predicted several existing inventions, such as the atomic bomb, robots, and borazon, whose names entirely match their fictional predecessors. In addition, science fiction might serve as an outlet to facilitate future scientific and technological innovations. Science fiction can trace its roots to ancient mythology. It is also related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Science fiction, in literature, film, television, and other media, has beco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
