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The Portable Star
"The Portable Star" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov, which appeared in the Winter 1955 issue of ''Thrilling Wonder Stories''. "The Portable Star" was Asimov's least favorite story. Writing and publication The story was written in March 1954, and Asimov first submitted it to Frederik Pohl, who was then an editor at Ballantine Books, for inclusion in an anthology of original stories. Pohl rejected "The Portable Star", telling Asimov in no uncertain terms how bad the story was. It was also rejected by John W. Campbell for ''Astounding Science Fiction'' and H. L. Gold for ''Galaxy Science Fiction''. Asimov finally sold it on May 25 to Sam Mines of ''Thrilling Wonder''. Asimov reread the story when it was published, and decided that Pohl, Campbell, and Gold had been right in considering it a bad story. In his autobiography ''In Joy Still Felt'', Asimov states that "The Portable Star" was his least favorite story of all time. "I wasn't aware of what ... [...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] |
In Joy Still Felt
Isaac Asimov (–1992) wrote three volumes of autobiography. ''In Memory Yet Green'' (1979) and ''In Joy Still Felt'' (1980) were a two-volume work, covering his life up to 1978. The third volume, ''I. Asimov: A Memoir'' (1994), published after his death, was not a sequel but a new work which covered his whole life. This third book won a Hugo Award. Before writing these books, Asimov also published three anthologies of science fiction stories which contained autobiographical accounts of his life in the introductions to the stories: ''The Early Asimov'' (1972), '' Before the Golden Age'' (1974), and '' Buy Jupiter and Other Stories'' (1975). Books ''The Early Asimov, or, Eleven Years of Trying'' ( Doubleday, 1972) is a collection of almost all of the published short stories Asimov wrote during the first eleven years of his career, 1938 to 1949, other than his robots and ''Foundation'' series of stories (and his first story, "Marooned off Vesta"), which had already been collected ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asteroid Belt
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called asteroids or minor planets. This asteroid belt is also called the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System such as near-Earth asteroids and trojan asteroids. The asteroid belt is the smallest and innermost known circumstellar disc in the Solar System. About 60% of its mass is contained in the four largest asteroids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. The total mass of the asteroid belt is calculated to be 3% that of the Moon. Ceres, the only object in the asteroid belt large enough to be a dwarf planet, is about 950 km in diameter, whereas Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea have mean diameters less than 600 km. The remaining bodies range down to the size of a dust particle. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marooned Off Vesta
"Marooned off Vesta" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was the third story he wrote, and the first to be published. Written in July 1938 when Asimov was 18, it was rejected by ''Astounding Science Fiction'' in August, then accepted in October by ''Amazing Stories'', appearing in the March 1939 issue. Asimov first included it in his 1968 story collection ''Asimov's Mysteries'', and subsequently in the 1973 collection ''The Best of Isaac Asimov''. Plot summary "Marooned off Vesta" tells the story of three men who survive the wreck of the spaceship ''Silver Queen'' in the asteroid belt and find themselves trapped in orbit around the asteroid of Vesta. They have at their disposal three airtight rooms, one spacesuit, three days' worth of air, a week's supply of food, and a year's supply of water. They are initially despondent about their impending suffocation until one of the men is inspired to melt a hole in the water tank. This begins to prope ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never far from the Sun, either as morning star or evening star. Aside from the Sun and Moon, Venus is the brightest natural object in Earth's sky, capable of casting visible shadows on Earth at dark conditions and being visible to the naked eye in broad daylight. Venus is the second largest terrestrial object of the Solar System. It has a surface gravity slightly lower than on Earth and has a very weak induced magnetosphere. The atmosphere of Venus, mainly consists of carbon dioxide, and is the densest and hottest of the four terrestrial planets at the surface. With an atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface of about 92 times the sea level pressure of Earth and a mean temperature of , the carbon dioxide gas at Venus's surface is in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ring Around The Sun (short Story)
"Ring Around the Sun" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the March 1940 issue of '' Future Fiction'' and reprinted in the 1972 collection '' The Early Asimov''. "Ring Around the Sun" was the fifth story Asimov wrote, and also the fifth to be published. "Ring Around the Sun" was written in the latter half of August 1938, and submitted in person to John W. Campbell, editor of ''Astounding Science Fiction'', on 30 August. When Campbell rejected it, Asimov then submitted it to ''Thrilling Wonder Stories''; after rejection by ''Thrilling Wonder'', it was accepted by Charles D. Hornig of ''Future Fiction'' on 5 February 1939. When Asimov wrote the story, he intended it to be the first of a series featuring the two protagonists, Jimmy Turner and Roy Snead. By the time the story appeared in print, however, he had lost interest in the characters. He later created another pair of characters, Powell and Donovan, who would be fe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere (less than 1% that of Earth's), and has a crust primarily composed of elements similar to Earth's crust, as well as a core made of iron and nickel. Mars has surface features such as impact craters, valleys, dunes and polar ice caps. It has two small and irregularly shaped moons, Phobos (moon), Phobos and Deimos (moon), Deimos. Some of the most notable surface features on Mars include Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and List of tallest mountains in the Solar System, highest known mountain in the Solar System and Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The North Polar Basin (Mars), Borealis basin in the Northern Hemisphere covers approximately 40% of the planet and may be a la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Martian Way
''The Martian Way'' is a science fiction novella by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the November 1952 issue of ''Galaxy Science Fiction'' and reprinted in the collections ''The Martian Way and Other Stories'' (1955), ''The Best of Isaac Asimov'' (1973), and ''Robot Dreams'' (1986). It was also included in ''The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two'' (1973) after being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965. There were originally no female characters in "The Martian Way", but ''Galaxy'' editor H. L. Gold insisted that one be included. Asimov complied by giving Richard Swenson a shrewish wife. It was not what Gold had in mind, but he accepted the story anyway. When Asimov wrote "The Martian Way" in 1952, it was thought that the fragments making up Saturn's rings might be over a mile in diameter. It is now known that none of the ring fragments is more than a few meters in diameter. The final journey back to Mars is described to be under constant ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Singing Bell
"The Singing Bell" is a science fiction mystery short story by American writer Isaac Asimov, which first appeared in the January 1955 issue of ''The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction'' and was reprinted in the 1968 collection ''Asimov's Mysteries''. "The Singing Bell" was the first of Asimov's Wendell Urth stories. Plot summary Louis Peyton is a master criminal who spent decades challenging the law, with the police having never managed to gather any direct evidence against him. One August, Albert Cornwell takes him to the Moon to retrieve a cache of extremely valuable "Singing Bells". The Bells are lunar rocks which, when struck by the correct stroker, make an incredibly beautiful sound. Not a dozen people on Earth own a flawless Bell, while the cache contains two dozen, and each can be sold for a hundred thousand dollars minimum (assuming 1955 prices, over a million each in 2022). Cornwell had obtained the map to the cache by killing their discoverer. Once the retrieval i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of Australia). The Moon is a planetary-mass object with a differentiated rocky body, making it a satellite planet under the geophysical definitions of the term and larger than all known dwarf planets of the Solar System. It lacks any significant atmosphere, hydrosphere, or magnetic field. Its surface gravity is about one-sixth of Earth's at , with Jupiter's moon Io being the only satellite in the Solar System known to have a higher surface gravity and density. The Moon orbits Earth at an average distance of , or about 30 times Earth's diameter. Its gravitational influence is the main driver of Earth's tides and very slowly lengthens Earth's day. The Moon's orbit around Earth has a sidereal period of 27.3 days. During each synodic period ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trends (Asimov)
"Trends" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the July 1939 issue of ''Astounding Science Fiction'' and was reprinted in '' Great Science Fiction Stories About the Moon'' (1967) and '' The Early Asimov'' (1972). "Trends" was the tenth story written by Asimov, the third to be published, and the first to appear in ''Astounding'', then the leading science fiction magazine.''The Early Asimov, Book One'', Isaac Asimov, 1972, p. 301. Origins The story had its genesis in research Asimov was conducting on behalf of an academic writing a book on social resistance to technological change. Asimov was particularly struck by a series of articles by Simon Newcomb from the early 20th century arguing that heavier-than-air flight was physically impossible. If there had been resistance to earlier technological change, then Asimov reasoned that there might be social resistance to spaceflight, which was a notion he had never encountered be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foundation (book Series)
The ''Foundation'' series is a science fiction book series written by American author Isaac Asimov. First published as a series of short stories and novellas in 1942–50, and subsequently in three books in 1951–53, for nearly thirty years the series was widely known as ''The Foundation Trilogy'': '' Foundation'' (1951), '' Foundation and Empire'' (1952), and ''Second Foundation'' (1953). It won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. Asimov later added new volumes, with two sequels, ''Foundation's Edge'' (1982) and '' Foundation and Earth'' (1986), and two prequels, '' Prelude to Foundation'' (1988) and ''Forward the Foundation'' (1993). The premise of the stories is that in the waning days of a future Galactic Empire, the mathematician Hari Seldon devises the theory of psychohistory, a new and effective mathematics of sociology. Using statistical laws of mass action, it can predict the future of large populations. Seldon foresees the imminent fall of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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