Isaac Asimov, Mind of a Child

Throughout history man has always had a vivid imagination. In prehistoric times, old man used to write stories, tales and such upon their cave dwelling walls. These were performed through the use of symbols. These symbols, called hieroglyphics, portrayed the thoughts and creativity of their authors. Boszhardt once said while talking about the cave pictures in Wisconsin, "When I first visited the cave, I was skeptical about the possible art that Daniel had written to me about, But once my flashlight came upon some of the drawings, there was no question that this was authentic Native American art. The birds, deer, and bow hunters are of styles that had to be prehistoric, and the charcoal had been absorbed into the rock. I was literally stunned--this was real, this was old, and there was a lot of it."

In ancient Egypt, we also find such displays of messages and stories. We’ve all heard of such writings in the pyramids and such. The most brilliant display of these messages lies in the Mexico Desert with its mile long pictures created by who are believed to be Aztecs.

These messages from the very beginning offered new, unique views and ideas upon existing scenarios. Ancient authors who had witnessed and read such symbols got their own ideas and developed their own style of writing and stories. This is has happened throughout history and is most prevalent in today’s society.

In the early 1900’s technology began to boom. Many tales of science fantasy were created. The imagination of many was stirred violently as America and the U.S.S.R. were neck and neck in the “Space Race”. Magical tales of aliens and Martians were shaped by the twisted and horrifically minds of authors such as Isaac Asimov. Many remember the comical almost, ridiculous movies of the early nineteen fifties. At that time though, many believed them to be real and were frightened beyond normal convention. Many authors in this era began to evolve, much how the earlier ancient writers evolved themselves.

I will give you a brief biography of Isaac Asimov to allow you to understand his writing better and relinquish the ideas captured within his works. Throughout his amazing and fantastical life he has written almost five hundred astonishing works. While not all were stories or novels per say, many were articles in magazines and essays written. Born into a humble family in Russia, he and his parents immigrated to the United States when he was only three years old. He was graduating from Columbia University in 1939 and taking a Ph.D. there in 1948. He then joined the faculty of Boston University, with which he remained associated thereafter. Asimov began contributing stories to science-fiction magazines in 1939 and in 1950 published his first book, Pebble in the Sky and his first science book, a biochemistry text written with two colleagues, in 1953. He turned to writing full time in 1958. He authored some 500 books for young and adult readers, extending beyond science and science fiction to include mystery stories, humor, history, and several volumes on the Bible and Shakespeare. His trilogy of novels, known as The Foundation Trilogy (1951-53) , Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation (1951-53), which recounts the collapse and rebirth of a vast interstellar empire in the universe of the future, is his most famous work of science fiction. In the short-story collection I, Robot (1950), he developed a set of ethics for robots and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers' treatment of the subject.

As you can imagine his many works have significantly affected the course of modern science fiction. In the following I will attempt to show you the many examples of his influence upon this vastly expanded genre of works. In his robot stories, Asimov coined two new words, both widely used today: robotics and positronic. In his Foundation series he invented a new science: Psychohistory, which predicts future trends in history through mathematical analysis of recurring