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Is Anyone There?
This book has the subtitle "Speculative Essays on Time Travel, The Future, Flying Saucers, L.S.D., Life on Other Worlds and Lots More" And if anyone at that time (the late 50s and the early 60s) knew much or anything about those topics it was Asimov.
320 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
15 people are currently reading
495 people want to read
About the author
Isaac Asimov
4,341 books27.7k followersWorks of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles,
The Foundation Trilogy
(1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.
Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.
Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).
People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.
Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.
Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...
Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.
Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).
People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.
Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.
Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
June 10, 2013
My copy is so old it is browning and the most of the pages are held together by static. I reread it from time to time to remind myself what was anticipated so many years ago. It is refreshing to see how close his thoughts came to so much of what has actually transpired. While there are several areas where the book is off base, some areas are still valid for the future. This book was one of those that shaped my way of thinking growing up. It is like an old friend and every time I pick it up it reminds me of times and conversations that I treasure to this day.
July 24, 2019
Una obra de divulgación en la que su autor, célebre por sus obras en el campo de la ciencia-ficción, da un repaso divulgador de la historia de la vida, al tiempo que atisba un posible futuro, vinculado al estado de las cosas en el momento de la elaboración de este libro. Algunos capítulos son ensayos en torno a dilemas vistos en sus trabajos de ficción. Por su parte, todo el conjunto es un ameno repaso por un ejercicio de futurología (desprovista de su carga magufa) en el que hay aciertos, desaciertos y temas aún y siempre vigentes.
December 30, 2007
This collection of short essays—fully 37 articles averaging merely eight pages each—is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in general science but fearful of long-winded, dry or overly technical writing. Asimov writes clearly and simply, engaging the reader with his expertise on practically any subject. Unlike most of his essay compilations, Is Anyone There? is not distilled from Asimov's column in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but rather from various periodicals (including Mademoiselle!), lectures and papers.
Also atypical is the large proportion of speculation: in the second section "Concerning the More or Less Unknown," seven essays are devoted entirely to predicting some aspect of the future, and five more concern extraterrestrial life. Regrettably, Asimov's vision of the future, as sampled in these works, seems far too optimistic. Intriguingly, he hits much closer to the mark extrapolating from current knowledge in the beginning section, "Concerning the More or Less Known."
Several essays stand out as highly memorable (ironically, I include this list to help me remember them). "A Pinch of Life" is at its core a simple catalog of the essential elements of the human body, arranged in decreasing order of proportion of the total atoms. How Asimov manages to make this interesting eludes me, but somehow he does. "The Ocean Mine" does the same for the contents of the ocean (did you know that our oceans contain six million tons of gold?). In "The Cult of Ignorance," the Good Doctor decries American anti-intellectualism—one year before the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I. Finally, "Constructing a Man" magnificently summarizes the mechanics of modern DNA technology, fifteen years before the Human Genome Project was even conceived.
Also atypical is the large proportion of speculation: in the second section "Concerning the More or Less Unknown," seven essays are devoted entirely to predicting some aspect of the future, and five more concern extraterrestrial life. Regrettably, Asimov's vision of the future, as sampled in these works, seems far too optimistic. Intriguingly, he hits much closer to the mark extrapolating from current knowledge in the beginning section, "Concerning the More or Less Known."
Several essays stand out as highly memorable (ironically, I include this list to help me remember them). "A Pinch of Life" is at its core a simple catalog of the essential elements of the human body, arranged in decreasing order of proportion of the total atoms. How Asimov manages to make this interesting eludes me, but somehow he does. "The Ocean Mine" does the same for the contents of the ocean (did you know that our oceans contain six million tons of gold?). In "The Cult of Ignorance," the Good Doctor decries American anti-intellectualism—one year before the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I. Finally, "Constructing a Man" magnificently summarizes the mechanics of modern DNA technology, fifteen years before the Human Genome Project was even conceived.
October 10, 2013
I always enjoy reading Asimov´s essays on various topics, so this was really intresting for me. The chapters I enjoyed the most were "The Cult of Ignorance" and "The Sword of Aquilles", which surprised me because of the topics involved.
October 7, 2009
Starts off strong, then flags (progressively) after about the halfway mark.
Some of my impression may be due to personal bias in favor of Asimov essays wherein he explains scientific, mathematical, or historical fact; essays of this type comprise the first part of this collection ("Concerning the More or Less Known", about half of the book's total length).
All of the essays in this part are solid; they are divided into two sections, "Life", consisting of nine essays on mostly biochemical subjects, and "Nonlife", ten on inorganic chemistry, physics, and astronomy. The opening two entries provide an intriguing look at what must have been close to the state of the art in neuropsychology and genetics at the time. These essays pretty closely resemble Asimov's essays for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction at the time, and as I enjoy those tremendously, I found them comfortable and illuminating.
[Aside: I should note in particular Chapter 13, "Our Evolving Atmosphere" (am I the only person for whom such titles resurrect horrific memories of primary school textbook pabulum?), published in 1966 for the science annual of the World Book Encyclopedia spoke frankly about the greenhouse-gas consequences of massive carbon dioxide releases into the atmosphere as a result of human activities. I mention this because Asimov is popularly derided in the online global warming "debate" as having been a "global cooling" doomsayer in the 1970s.]
By contrast, the second part ("Concerning the More or Less Unknown") is a collection of more speculative fare. Its first section is "Other Life", which is tolerable, but the title essay of the book, and best entry in the section, "Is Anyone There?", treats techniques of communicating with extraterrestrial civilizations and suffers by comparison to Carl Sagan's later work on the same subject. (For the curious, the two radio sources, CTA-21 and CTA-102, for which Asimov held out hopes--"highly unlikely" ones, as he put it--as beacons constructed by extraterrestrial intelligences appear to have faded almost completely in notoriety, but continue to be studied as examples of "Gigahertz Peaked Spectrum" radio sources.)
The second half of part two, "Future Life", is, I'm sad to say, mostly a fairly dull effort at prognostication. Some of that may be inevitable, though, as the first two essays, "The World of 1990" and "The World's Fair of 2014", are inescapably going to read dramatically differently to a person in 2009 than to Asimov's original audience (or even the one that picked up "This Ace Printing: August 1980", per the copyright page). The last essay in the section, the prosaically titled "The Universe and the Future", is one of the longest essays in the book and is an extended consideration of what it will mean to undertake human--and post-human--exploration of the cosmos given currently-known limitations. The worst thing about the essay is the author's coinage of the ugly term "spome" (whose etymology he deliberately withholds until near the end), and while this is a superficial gripe, the ubiquity of its use makes it grate. As a significantly positive counterbalancing factor, Asimov does not even mention superluminal travel, wormholes, or hyperspace, and his omission of these currently-thought-impossible technologies consequences on interstellar exploration are sobering but strangely fresh, given that science fiction--at least the proletarian varieties within my limited horizons--tend to stipulate one or more of these (or, like Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, are set near enough to us in time and space that they need not be confabulated).
The final six essays (of thirty-seven total) compose the final part, "Concerning Science Fiction", and are the weakest of all, with the penultimate and antipenultimate entries being tongue-in-cheek reviews of then-contemporary television science fiction programming. That said, the last essay "The Lovely Lost Landscapes of Luna" is more thoughtful and somewhat redemptive--as Asimov grew from youth to middle age, from avid reader of Burroughs's John Carter of Mars books to scientifically-educated follower of the Mariner program, he watched the remote plausibility of early SF evaporate altogether, and the essay serves as a kind of eulogy for an age of lost innocence and (blissful?) ignorance. Asimov's enthusiasm for actual science fact, so effectively communicated in the first part of the book, contextualizes his wistfulness and makes it palatable to readers who (like Asimov) are easily irritated by know-nothingism (also see Chapter 33, "The Cult of Ignorance").
Bottom line: If you're a big, big fan of Asimov's nonfiction, read the first half and possibly chapters 31 and 37. Non-Asimovophiles will probably want to skip this entirely.
Contents:
I. Concerning the More or Less Known
A. Life
1. Matter over Mind ("That Odd Chemical Complex, The Human Mind"; The New York Times Magazine, 1966-07-03)
2. I Remember, I Remember ("Pills to Help Us Remember?"; The New York Times Magazine, 1966-10-09)
3. The Hungry People (Mademoiselle, 1960-10)
4. Blood Will Tell (Think, 1962-02)
5. The Chemical You (Mademoiselle, 1963-01)
6. Survival of the Molecular Fittest ("The New Enzymology", Consultant, 1965-05)
7. Enzymes and Metaphor (Journal of Chemical Education, 1959-11)
8. A Pinch of Life (Science World, 1957-03-05)
9. Constructing a Man ("Conceived in the Love Bed of Science"; True, 1966-02)
B. Nonlife
10. The Flaming Element (Petroleum Today, Winter 1961/1962)
11. Let There Be a New Light (no original publication information)
12. The Ocean Mine (Science World, 1957-03-19)
13. Our Evolving Atmosphere (Science Year--The World Book Science Annual, 1966)
14. The Atmosphere of the Moon (Venture Science Fiction, 1958-03)
15. Man and the Sun (no original publication information)
16. The Unused Stars (Amazing Stories, 1959-07)
17. Measuring Rods in Space (Space World 1961-09)
18. Time-Travel: One-Way (The North American Review, Summer 1964)
19. The Birth and Death of the Universe ("Over the Edge of the Universe"; Harper's Magazine, 1967-03)
II. Concerning the More or Less Unknown
A. Other Life
20. A Science in Search of a Subject (The New York Times Magazine, 1965-05-23)
21. We, the In-Betweens (Mademoiselle, 1961-05)
22. Is Anyone There? ("Hello, CTA-21--Is Anyone There?"; The New York Times Magazine, 1964-11-29)
23. Anatomy of a Martian ("Anatomy of a Man from Mars"; Esquire Magazine, 1965-09)
24. On Flying Saucers (original to this collection)
B. Future Life
25. The World of 1990 (The Diners' Club Magazine, 1965-01)
26. The World's Fair of 2014 ("Visit to the World's Fair of 2014", The New York Times Magazine, 1964-08-16)
27. Fecundity Limited (Venture Science Fiction, 1958-01)
28. The Price of Life (Cavalier, 1967-01)
29. The Moon and the Future ("What Can We Expect of the Moon?"; The American Legion Magazine, 1965-03)
30. The Solar System and the Future ("How Far Will We Go in Space?"; The World Book Year Book, 1966)
31. The Universe and the Future ("There's No Place Like Spome"; Atmosphere in Space Cabins and Closed Environments, 1966)
III. Concerning Science Fiction
32. Escape into Reality (The Humanist, 1957-11/12)
33. The Cult of Ignorance ("The By-Product of Science Fiction"; Chemical and Engineering News, 1956-08-13)
34. The Sword of Achilles (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1963-11)
35. How Not to Build a Robot ("Why I Wouldn't Have Done It This Way"; TV Guide, 1965-01-16)
36. The Insidious Uncle Martin ("Can You Spot the Family Resemblance?"; TV Guide, 1966-03-05)
37. The Lovely Lost Landscapes of Luna (P.S., 1966-04)
Some of my impression may be due to personal bias in favor of Asimov essays wherein he explains scientific, mathematical, or historical fact; essays of this type comprise the first part of this collection ("Concerning the More or Less Known", about half of the book's total length).
All of the essays in this part are solid; they are divided into two sections, "Life", consisting of nine essays on mostly biochemical subjects, and "Nonlife", ten on inorganic chemistry, physics, and astronomy. The opening two entries provide an intriguing look at what must have been close to the state of the art in neuropsychology and genetics at the time. These essays pretty closely resemble Asimov's essays for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction at the time, and as I enjoy those tremendously, I found them comfortable and illuminating.
[Aside: I should note in particular Chapter 13, "Our Evolving Atmosphere" (am I the only person for whom such titles resurrect horrific memories of primary school textbook pabulum?), published in 1966 for the science annual of the World Book Encyclopedia spoke frankly about the greenhouse-gas consequences of massive carbon dioxide releases into the atmosphere as a result of human activities. I mention this because Asimov is popularly derided in the online global warming "debate" as having been a "global cooling" doomsayer in the 1970s.]
By contrast, the second part ("Concerning the More or Less Unknown") is a collection of more speculative fare. Its first section is "Other Life", which is tolerable, but the title essay of the book, and best entry in the section, "Is Anyone There?", treats techniques of communicating with extraterrestrial civilizations and suffers by comparison to Carl Sagan's later work on the same subject. (For the curious, the two radio sources, CTA-21 and CTA-102, for which Asimov held out hopes--"highly unlikely" ones, as he put it--as beacons constructed by extraterrestrial intelligences appear to have faded almost completely in notoriety, but continue to be studied as examples of "Gigahertz Peaked Spectrum" radio sources.)
The second half of part two, "Future Life", is, I'm sad to say, mostly a fairly dull effort at prognostication. Some of that may be inevitable, though, as the first two essays, "The World of 1990" and "The World's Fair of 2014", are inescapably going to read dramatically differently to a person in 2009 than to Asimov's original audience (or even the one that picked up "This Ace Printing: August 1980", per the copyright page). The last essay in the section, the prosaically titled "The Universe and the Future", is one of the longest essays in the book and is an extended consideration of what it will mean to undertake human--and post-human--exploration of the cosmos given currently-known limitations. The worst thing about the essay is the author's coinage of the ugly term "spome" (whose etymology he deliberately withholds until near the end), and while this is a superficial gripe, the ubiquity of its use makes it grate. As a significantly positive counterbalancing factor, Asimov does not even mention superluminal travel, wormholes, or hyperspace, and his omission of these currently-thought-impossible technologies consequences on interstellar exploration are sobering but strangely fresh, given that science fiction--at least the proletarian varieties within my limited horizons--tend to stipulate one or more of these (or, like Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, are set near enough to us in time and space that they need not be confabulated).
The final six essays (of thirty-seven total) compose the final part, "Concerning Science Fiction", and are the weakest of all, with the penultimate and antipenultimate entries being tongue-in-cheek reviews of then-contemporary television science fiction programming. That said, the last essay "The Lovely Lost Landscapes of Luna" is more thoughtful and somewhat redemptive--as Asimov grew from youth to middle age, from avid reader of Burroughs's John Carter of Mars books to scientifically-educated follower of the Mariner program, he watched the remote plausibility of early SF evaporate altogether, and the essay serves as a kind of eulogy for an age of lost innocence and (blissful?) ignorance. Asimov's enthusiasm for actual science fact, so effectively communicated in the first part of the book, contextualizes his wistfulness and makes it palatable to readers who (like Asimov) are easily irritated by know-nothingism (also see Chapter 33, "The Cult of Ignorance").
Bottom line: If you're a big, big fan of Asimov's nonfiction, read the first half and possibly chapters 31 and 37. Non-Asimovophiles will probably want to skip this entirely.
Contents:
I. Concerning the More or Less Known
A. Life
1. Matter over Mind ("That Odd Chemical Complex, The Human Mind"; The New York Times Magazine, 1966-07-03)
2. I Remember, I Remember ("Pills to Help Us Remember?"; The New York Times Magazine, 1966-10-09)
3. The Hungry People (Mademoiselle, 1960-10)
4. Blood Will Tell (Think, 1962-02)
5. The Chemical You (Mademoiselle, 1963-01)
6. Survival of the Molecular Fittest ("The New Enzymology", Consultant, 1965-05)
7. Enzymes and Metaphor (Journal of Chemical Education, 1959-11)
8. A Pinch of Life (Science World, 1957-03-05)
9. Constructing a Man ("Conceived in the Love Bed of Science"; True, 1966-02)
B. Nonlife
10. The Flaming Element (Petroleum Today, Winter 1961/1962)
11. Let There Be a New Light (no original publication information)
12. The Ocean Mine (Science World, 1957-03-19)
13. Our Evolving Atmosphere (Science Year--The World Book Science Annual, 1966)
14. The Atmosphere of the Moon (Venture Science Fiction, 1958-03)
15. Man and the Sun (no original publication information)
16. The Unused Stars (Amazing Stories, 1959-07)
17. Measuring Rods in Space (Space World 1961-09)
18. Time-Travel: One-Way (The North American Review, Summer 1964)
19. The Birth and Death of the Universe ("Over the Edge of the Universe"; Harper's Magazine, 1967-03)
II. Concerning the More or Less Unknown
A. Other Life
20. A Science in Search of a Subject (The New York Times Magazine, 1965-05-23)
21. We, the In-Betweens (Mademoiselle, 1961-05)
22. Is Anyone There? ("Hello, CTA-21--Is Anyone There?"; The New York Times Magazine, 1964-11-29)
23. Anatomy of a Martian ("Anatomy of a Man from Mars"; Esquire Magazine, 1965-09)
24. On Flying Saucers (original to this collection)
B. Future Life
25. The World of 1990 (The Diners' Club Magazine, 1965-01)
26. The World's Fair of 2014 ("Visit to the World's Fair of 2014", The New York Times Magazine, 1964-08-16)
27. Fecundity Limited (Venture Science Fiction, 1958-01)
28. The Price of Life (Cavalier, 1967-01)
29. The Moon and the Future ("What Can We Expect of the Moon?"; The American Legion Magazine, 1965-03)
30. The Solar System and the Future ("How Far Will We Go in Space?"; The World Book Year Book, 1966)
31. The Universe and the Future ("There's No Place Like Spome"; Atmosphere in Space Cabins and Closed Environments, 1966)
III. Concerning Science Fiction
32. Escape into Reality (The Humanist, 1957-11/12)
33. The Cult of Ignorance ("The By-Product of Science Fiction"; Chemical and Engineering News, 1956-08-13)
34. The Sword of Achilles (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1963-11)
35. How Not to Build a Robot ("Why I Wouldn't Have Done It This Way"; TV Guide, 1965-01-16)
36. The Insidious Uncle Martin ("Can You Spot the Family Resemblance?"; TV Guide, 1966-03-05)
37. The Lovely Lost Landscapes of Luna (P.S., 1966-04)
August 31, 2024
Aunque tiene muchos capítulos interesantes, el segundo me ha dejado loco: se titula «Yo recuerdo, yo recuerdo» y habla de la memoria y su relación con los péptidos como soporte físico de la memoria.
El libro es de 1967 (casi 60 años, que se dice pronto) y describe experimentos que se realizaron con ratones, donde se entrenaba a los mismos, se les mataba (otros tiempos donde la idea de la crueldad animal no era la misma de hoy, para desgracia de los no humanos), se les inyectaba su tejido cerebral a otros ratones y estos últimos aprendían mucho más rápido ese entrenamiento 😱
Pero es que incluso inyectando el puré de cerebro de ratón entrenado en cobayas, estas también recibirán esa «transfusión de memoria» 🤯
Aunque cuesta, se puede encontrar una tesis por internet de unos años después donde se resumen los avances en ese campo y bibliografía, pero es difícil encontrar esos papers de tantas décadas atrás.
El libro es de 1967 (casi 60 años, que se dice pronto) y describe experimentos que se realizaron con ratones, donde se entrenaba a los mismos, se les mataba (otros tiempos donde la idea de la crueldad animal no era la misma de hoy, para desgracia de los no humanos), se les inyectaba su tejido cerebral a otros ratones y estos últimos aprendían mucho más rápido ese entrenamiento 😱
Pero es que incluso inyectando el puré de cerebro de ratón entrenado en cobayas, estas también recibirán esa «transfusión de memoria» 🤯
Aunque cuesta, se puede encontrar una tesis por internet de unos años después donde se resumen los avances en ese campo y bibliografía, pero es difícil encontrar esos papers de tantas décadas atrás.
October 11, 2025
This is a wonderful book to pick and choose certain chapters from. I probably only read about 70% of the entire book because I only focus on chapters that were on topic that especially interested me, but it gave me a little bit of insight into how intelligent Isaac Asimov is as a writer in man, and gave me even more respect than I already have, which is saying a lot because he is one of my favourite authors to begin with.
August 21, 2017
Imagino que son los años que tiene... no me ha gustado demasiado, muy repetitivo y pedante.
July 28, 2018
Enzymes and Metaphor ist ziemlich gut. Viel von dem Rest ist natürlich sehr veraltet. 7/10
January 24, 2019
An interesting read, especially around predictions of what life would be like in 50-75 years, i.e. now. Some hits, some misses. Asimov's concise writing keeps in readable.
August 8, 2025
Es un buen libro, pero la ciencia avanza muy rápido y está anticuado.
August 2, 2021
Diez años de ensayos y artículos variados de Asimov, publicados en multitud de revistas. Hay de todo, desde divulgación clásica sobre el funcionamiento del cerebro o la detección de vida extraterrestre hasta predicciones del futuro (Asimov no vio venir Internet claramente), pasando por ensayos sobre el presente y el futuro de la ciencia ficción. La parte divulgativa es, como siempre, excepcional. Daba gusto leer al viejo maestro, quien, como único fallo, no desperdiciaba ni una sola oportunidad de quererse en publico. En conjunto, un volumen para aprender un montón de cosas interesantes, aunque hoy muchos de los ensayos ya se hayan quedado antiguos (las predicciones para dentro de 50 años hechas en 1950, etc etc). Pero muy recomendable, aun así.
December 14, 2014
A collection of essays. There's some repetition and some dated science - which is part of the fun, really. I read a good handful of these when I was young and I find that:
1. Wow, Asimov was a letch. i mean, am I right? Every time he needs an example, his default joke is "for example, you could be trying to hold your best girl" "for example, a pretty girl could walk by." :P
2. I miss optimism in SF.
The science articles in the first two thirds of the book are very basic, suitable to a teen audience, dated, but clear and quick in Asimov's simple style. The last section, where he talks about Science Fiction itself, is the only part I would be likely to read again.
1. Wow, Asimov was a letch. i mean, am I right? Every time he needs an example, his default joke is "for example, you could be trying to hold your best girl" "for example, a pretty girl could walk by." :P
2. I miss optimism in SF.
The science articles in the first two thirds of the book are very basic, suitable to a teen audience, dated, but clear and quick in Asimov's simple style. The last section, where he talks about Science Fiction itself, is the only part I would be likely to read again.
April 17, 2011
Es de los poco libros de ciencia que he tenido la oportunidad de leer, se enfoca mucho en el funcionamiento del cerebro humano, la mente y el comportamiento de las personas visto desde un punto de vista científico.
Todo el libro es MUY interesante, jamás llega a ser tedioso, más bien es sorprendente.
Todo el libro es MUY interesante, jamás llega a ser tedioso, más bien es sorprendente.
November 12, 2008
Quite dated now, there are still some interesting points brought up. His writing is easy for a layman to understand.
March 25, 2010
I was impressed by this book. Asimov is fabulous and he knew so much before anyone else.
October 22, 2016
Humorous time travel back 40 years.
Read
August 3, 2018Reading parts of this again after 50 years (my copy is copyright 1967 and I bought it new), I'm wishing Asimov were still around to enjoy things like the news of liquid water found on Mars.
The feeling I get from reading Asimov's essays is optimism. He knew so much about so many things, and he could put the information together logically and confidently and, crucially, clearly for the ordinary person - the result is the comfortable feeling that even if things aren't really under control, at least it's possible to understand them and figure out what to do next. It's like having a conversation with my dad, another guy who knew a lot of stuff and loved explaining it to other people.
I came back to this after reading The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, which got me thinking about how long the dinosaurs were around without developing technology, language, etc. Asimov, predictably, had something to say about that. Let's see what he does with that idea.
The feeling I get from reading Asimov's essays is optimism. He knew so much about so many things, and he could put the information together logically and confidently and, crucially, clearly for the ordinary person - the result is the comfortable feeling that even if things aren't really under control, at least it's possible to understand them and figure out what to do next. It's like having a conversation with my dad, another guy who knew a lot of stuff and loved explaining it to other people.
I came back to this after reading The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, which got me thinking about how long the dinosaurs were around without developing technology, language, etc. Asimov, predictably, had something to say about that. Let's see what he does with that idea.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews