Isaac Asimov is one of the most famous authors of science fiction, but he is not just a writer of science fiction. He wrote on a number of subjects, and was the author of a large number of science books, not only fiction. Asimov had an interesting life, born in the late 1919, or early 1920 in Russia and then his parents moved to the United States when he was only 3 years old. His moved to the Brooklyn area of New York, and that is where he grew up. He started writing for science fiction magazines at an early age, and was soon making a good going out of these. He also grew up in a age where there was worries about science and inventions, with the Frankenstein complex riding high on the minds of people, especially about the concept of robots (which were not a reality at that point of time). He enunciated over a period of time, the concept of the 3 Laws of robotics, which was a theory about the construction of robots such that they would always be subservient to humans, and would not act in a way that would be out of control. And then he went ahead and wrote stories where there were robots who were unusual, and in some cases, the robots had some tweak where they could be a danger.
The novels and short stories by Asimov were not only science fiction in the classical sense, but they actually talked about societies in the future, whether these be societies living in a cave scenario, people who have never seen the sun and would be frightened to go outside; or there were stories about a society which lives under 3 suns, and has never seen night, so what happens when there is a specific time when all of the suns go down and suddenly the society is faced with night that it has not seen in thousands of years (this was the premise of the book, Nightfall). Asimov also wrote a series of books set way in the future, which formed the Foundation series, another of the series of books for which Asimov is famous.
In one of his short stories "The Bicentennial Man", Asimov wrote about a robot who was different from the other robots of that time. A small modification in the robot had causes this robot to almost have an individuality, and the family that owns that robot was fairly rich and liberal, and encouraged him, almost as a member of the family. Because the robot, Andrew, had some unique artistic skills, he was able to make money out of these skills, and starts to display some properties related to emotion, something that robots were deemed incapable of, properties that seemed to differentiate humans from robots. However, this was not easy; there were many challenges from society, even members of the family could only accept part of his desires. Even the corporation that made him, U.S. Robotics, is puzzled over what gave him this creativity, but they are not comfortable with his quest for getting rights, and even change the structure of their robots to prevent his kind of occurrence.
By now, Andrew has rights, but wants the ultimate right, the right to be recognized like a human being; and for that right, in the end, he makes the ultimate sacrifice; he takes the right to die like humans do. Towards this end, over a period of time, he has replaced many of his body parts with organic parts to gain even more acceptance.
+-+Written+by+Isaac+Asimov.jpg)
The novels and short stories by Asimov were not only science fiction in the classical sense, but they actually talked about societies in the future, whether these be societies living in a cave scenario, people who have never seen the sun and would be frightened to go outside; or there were stories about a society which lives under 3 suns, and has never seen night, so what happens when there is a specific time when all of the suns go down and suddenly the society is faced with night that it has not seen in thousands of years (this was the premise of the book, Nightfall). Asimov also wrote a series of books set way in the future, which formed the Foundation series, another of the series of books for which Asimov is famous.
In one of his short stories "The Bicentennial Man", Asimov wrote about a robot who was different from the other robots of that time. A small modification in the robot had causes this robot to almost have an individuality, and the family that owns that robot was fairly rich and liberal, and encouraged him, almost as a member of the family. Because the robot, Andrew, had some unique artistic skills, he was able to make money out of these skills, and starts to display some properties related to emotion, something that robots were deemed incapable of, properties that seemed to differentiate humans from robots. However, this was not easy; there were many challenges from society, even members of the family could only accept part of his desires. Even the corporation that made him, U.S. Robotics, is puzzled over what gave him this creativity, but they are not comfortable with his quest for getting rights, and even change the structure of their robots to prevent his kind of occurrence.
By now, Andrew has rights, but wants the ultimate right, the right to be recognized like a human being; and for that right, in the end, he makes the ultimate sacrifice; he takes the right to die like humans do. Towards this end, over a period of time, he has replaced many of his body parts with organic parts to gain even more acceptance.
No comments:
Post a Comment