3. Fifty years as a science fiction writer. But it’s not just fifty years of professional life, either. It’s this particular professional life. Just think what the last fifty years has meant to a science fiction writer. When I began writing, robots were pure fantasy. So I wrote robot stories freely out of my own imagination. The first one was written in June 1939. I have lived long enough to see robots (in very simple form) become real, and to have my Three Laws of Robotics taken seriously.
Flights to the moon were sheer fantasy in 1939, and my first story in Astounding dealt with attempted rocketry to the moon. I lived to see that become real.
Think of other science fictional standbys that have become real (even if I didn’t particularly write about them myself). There were no computers in 1939, and no television either, though both existed in science fiction. Science was also overflowing with ray-guns, and we have lived to see laser beams.
How fortunate I was to have started when I did and to have lived as long as I have.
—But it all comes full circle. More important than anything else are one’s friends. Foundation’s friends are all my friends, whether they have written for the book, or published it, or bought it or borrowed it. My friends are all those who have read my stuff over the last half-century and have enjoyed it.
I thank you all. I cannot thank you enough.
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Table of Contents
Preface by Ray Bradbury
The Nonmetallic Isaac or It’s a Wonderful Life by Ben Bova
Strip-Runner by Pamela Sargent
The Asenion Solution by Robert Silverberg
Murder in the Urth Degree by Edward Wellen
Trantor Falls by Harry Turtledove
Dilemma by Connie Willis
Maureen Birnbaum After Dark by Betsy Spiegelman Fein
Balance by Mike Resnick
The Present Eternal by Barry N. Malzberg
PAPPI by Sheila Finch
The Reunion at the Mile-High by Frederik Pohl
Plato’s Cave by Poul Anderson
Foundation’s Conscience by George Zebrowski
Carhunters of the Concrete Prairie by Robert Sheckley
The Overheard Conversation by Edward D. Hoch
Blot by Hal Clement
The Fourth Law of Robotics by Harry Harrison
The Originist by Orson Scott Card
A Word or Two from Janet by Janet Jeppson Asimov
Fifty Years by Isaac Asimov
Foundation's Friends Page 46
