Works

Pages: 298
Published: 1984
Language: English

This omnibus collects two of Isaac Asimov's most influential works. Foundation follows Hari Seldon, whose mathematical science of psychohistory predicts the fall of a vast Galactic Empire and the millennia of barbarism that would follow — and the scientific colony he establishes at the galaxy's edge to shorten that dark age. I, Robot gathers Asimov's linked short stories about robopsychologist Susan Calvin, built around the Three Laws of Robotics that would shape science fiction's treatment of artificial intelligence for decades afterward.

Together the two works represent the foundation, quite literally, of much of modern science fiction's approach to both large-scale future history and thinking machines.

Prose complexity: 7/10

Intellectual Thought-Provoking

Science Fiction Short Stories Thriller Classics

Isaac Asimov

Asimov was born sometime between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi in Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR (now Russia), the son of a Jewish family of millers. Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Asimov himself celebrated it on January 2. His family emigrated to Brooklyn, New York and opened a candy store when he was three years old. He taught himself to read at the age of five. He began reading the science fiction pulp magazines that his family's store carried. Around the age of...