Fact and Fancy

by Isaac Asimov

Fact and Fancy is a collection of seventeen scientific essays by American writer and scientist Isaac Asimov. It was the first in a series of books collecting his essays from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov's second book of science essays altogether (after Only a Trillion).

Part I:
The Earth and Away
"Life's Bottleneck" (April 1959)
"No More Ice Ages?" (January 1959)
"Thin Air" (December 1959)
"Catching Up with Newton" (December 1958)
"Of Capture and Escape" (May 1959)

Part II:
The Solar System
"Catskills in the Sky" (August 1960)
"Beyond Pluto" (July 1960)
"Steppingstones to the Stars" (October 1960)
"The Planet of the Double Sun" (June 1959)

Part III:
The Universe
"Heaven on Earth" (May 1961)
"Our Lonely Planet" (November 1958)
"The Flickering Yardstick" (March 1960)
"The Sight of Home" (February 1960)
"Here It Comes; There It Goes" (January 1961)

Part IV:
The Human Mind
"Those Crazy Ideas" (January 1960)
"My Built-in Doubter" (April 1961)
"Battle of the Eggheads" (July 1959)

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Essays, Science Fiction Fantasy

208 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Works 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...

Reviews

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me think of a lot of things in a cool way

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Early essays without the personal anecdote at the beginning, or only mildly so. Catching up with Newton, I liked. Best: Battle of the Eggheads.

[Maged Agpo · Rating 4 out of 5]

إلى أي ميدان يمكن أن أوجه حديثي ، سوي ميدان العلم ؛ فالعلم هو رسول الحقيقة كما نراها الآن لكنه مبعوث جامد و بارد . و هو ينادي : الحقائق أيها السادة ، و لا شيء غير الحقائق ؛ فالعيون المدققة تراقبنا عن كثب و عناية

أزيموف .. ببراعة شديدة يقف علي خيط دقيق بين العلم و الأدب .. بنظرة القصاص يحكي عن العلم و نشأته و ينتقل بين أعظم ميادين العلم ، بين الفلك و الرياضيات و علم النفس .. كتاب عن الشغف بسيرة العلوم و نشأتها .

قبس من نور الأفكار :
١- الفسفور من أهم مصادر الطاقة و يجب الحفاظ عليه و عدم القاؤه في المحيط عن طريق تنقية المصارف
٢ - الأرض تشع ليلا بالأشعة تحت الحمراء فتتخلص من حرارتها ( نظرية البيت الأخضر )
٣- لماذا لا تذيب المحيطاتco2 ؟ بالغاز قابل للذوبان بصورة كافية . و هناك ما يكفي من الماء في المحيطات فما الذي يحول دون ذلك ؟
٤- أطلق أرسطو علي العنصر السماوي الخامس اسم كوينتسنس و يعني أنقي و أهم شيء من كل شيء
٥- تجربة العمدة فون جيريك و إثبات وزن الهواء الجوي
٦- الفرق بين درجة الحرارة و كمية الحرارة ، فالجزيءات لها طاقة عالية كجزيءات منفردة ، أي أن درجة حرارة الجزيئات مرتفعة ، و لكن لا يوجد من هذه الجزيئات إلا العدد القليل بحيث تصير الطاقة الكلية ( كمية الحرارة ) مهملة
٧- شحنة كهربية من عدد كبير من الأيونات تسبب وهج ( الأورورا ) أو الفجر القطبي
٨- نيوتن لم يكتشف أن التفاح يسقط إلى الأرض بمجرد انفصاله عن الشجرة ، فقد كان ذلك من المعلومات العامة المعروفة ، الذي برهن عليه و أوضحه أن مسار القمر حول الأرض يمكن تفسيره بفرض أن القمر يقع تحت تأثير أو قبضة نفس القوة التي تشد التفاحة
٩- لا يمكن أن تكون قوي التجاذب بين أي جسمين تساوي صفر مهما بلغا من الصغر ، ما دامت كتلتهما أكبر من الصفر
١٠- يزداد معدل السقوط بانتظام بمضي الزمن
١١- سرعة الإفلات ما هي إلا مقياس للطاقة التي يجب استخدامها من أجل كسر و تحطيم سلاسل الجاذبية بأية طريقة
١٢- رجل قنطورس ( فاسنتاوري ) المجرة المجاورة متعددة الشموس ، مجرة المرأة المسلسلة
١٣- النجم الأكثر لمعانا في السماء هو الشعري اليمانية ثم سهيل ثم رجل قنطورس ( اكتشفه توماس هندرسون ) ثم النسر الواقع ( اكتشفه فيريدرك ولهلم ستروف )
١٤- يوجد بالمجرة حوالي ١٠٠ مليار نجم لا يظهر معظمهم لأنهم في نواة المجرة يحجبهم عنا سحب الغبار الكوني و فقط ملياران قبل الغبار يمكن أن نري منهم ٦٠٠٠، ٣٠٠٠ في كل نصف من السماء و ٣٠٪ يضيعوا بسبب الغلاف الجوي يمكن فقط أن نري ٢٥٠٠ نجم
١٥- ميرياد لفظ الإغريق للعدد ١٠٠٠٠
١٦- ألمع النجوم التي علي الحواف المائلة للزرقة بلغت من البريق ماءة مرة قدر ألمع النجوم المائلة للإحمرار التي في الداخل

[Ahmed Alsabbagh · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, Asimov don't believe in saucers. Yet, he would delightfully write science fiction about them.
Nothing wrong so far but!, he said in the first half of the book that he thinks that there might be life in outer space that didnt reach us yet because, "maybe" humans are very primitive compared to aliens.

Summary: he thinks maybe there are aliens and they might visit earth one day and he's denying any chance of existance of space saucers "disbelief firmly".

My point is, this guy do not make sense. How is he suggesting aliens might visit? With uber?

I think Asimov did not experess his thoughts in a proper way which is a big fault for an author in my opinion.

I think he should have said that he dont believe the stories about saucers yet. but they might exist and they didnt visit earth yet. And they might not exist! Who knows!?

[helli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Asimov’s science writing style. I only knew of his science fiction work, but in Fact and Fancy his creativity as a writer and passion for science shine through “the dullness of fact”. While some of those facts may be slightly outdated at this point, many concern the history of science for which, as far as I can tell, his (brief) accounts are about as good as any and much more enjoyable to read than most. If you have any interest in science writing, I believe Fact and Fancy is worth your time, at least as an example of clever, engaging writing that imparts knowledge in an effortless sort of way.
It’s hard to pick a favorite story from this, but one I particularly enjoyed was “The Sight of Home”.

[Doug Piero · Rating 4 out of 5]

I last read Fact and Fancy some time in the late 1960s. Isaac Asimov's science essays taught me a lot in ways I could absorb and truly learn how to think. It included one of the first things I read to warn me about climate change caused by industrialization. That essay was written the year I was born I think.

Some things are out of date. I guess that is why this is a library discard. I wonder if this whole series of books from Asimov would be worth a sprucing up and a re-issue. The essay about the 10th planet is mostly sound, but needs to reflect the modern nomenclature, e.g. re: Pluto.

I have most of this series and I am re-reading them with an eye to discarding them. We'll see.

[James]

For grade 7.

[Robu-sensei · Rating 3 out of 5]

Please see my review of X Stands for Unknown for general comments on Isaac Asimov's science essays.

Fact and Fancy is a collection of sixteen essays written by Issac Asimov for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between December 1958 and October 1960, plus one article ("Our Lonely Planet") that appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in November 1958. The collection is loosely organized into four sections: The Earth and Away, The Solar System, The Universe and The Human Mind. (The Wikipedia article gives the full list of the articles.) As the titles suggest, this collection is heavily weighted toward astronomy. Intriguingly, while Asimov's own area of expertise was chemistry, he wrote far more science articles about astronomy—perhaps a consequence of his ardent love of science fiction.

The Good Doctor seems to be at home—and therefore at his best—writing about the universe, as well. Nonetheless, Fact and Fancy contains only one exceptional essay, "The Planet of the Double Sun," a speculation on the consequences of replacing Neptune with a red-dwarf star. Surprisingly, though the night sky would become far more interesting, life on Earth would not likely be vastly different.

[Krzysztof · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad bunch of essays. Given the huge leaps in scientific progress since these were written, you might think a lot of what he writes is dated, but as far as I can tell, a lot of it still holds.

I do have to wonder, though, why he bothered with some of it. When I began this book, I was under the impression that he was going to take scientific principles and apply them to speculative concepts, possibly in the form of fiction. What we get instead (mostly toward the beginning of the book) are fairly mundane observations about the nature of gravity and the effect a double sun would have on our solar system. Unless I was missing something, there didn't seem to be much consequence in his musings. It kind of felt like he was rehashing well-established science for his own amusement, but as I am always in need of a refresher course, I was happy to go along.

The better essays, I thought, were those in which he discussed man's effect on nature (global warming), the advantage of habitually doubting new scientific concepts, and the raging anti-intellectualism (still going strong)in the U.S.A. There are also a few nice speculative bits in here about the future space-tourism industry and how we might employ the passing of comets and satellites to make it farther out into space.

It would have been nice to have his insight on things like dark matter and dark energy. I'm sure he would have had a lot to say about those. I wonder if he did get a word or two in on them before he died. As it is (in this book), he sort of latches onto a "something out of nothing" view of creation. I think it's only a matter of time (and not much more time, at that) before that is completely disproven. Not sure where his built-in-doubter was for that particular theory, but he was working with what he had and he can't be blamed for that.

[Anthony Faber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reprints of Asimov's science fact F&SF columns from 1958 to 61 (plus one other from elsewhere), including what was probably one of the first columns saying that global warming might happen geared for the layman.

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've gotten caught up in Asimov's enthusiasm about space and space exploration from the late fifties. Asimov projects the excitement over the endless possibilities of scientific discovery of his time, when the rush of innovation that we take for granted today was just getting started, and when the popular focus was on outward vs. inward looking exploration.

In addition to providing a lot of interesting information about the solar system, he goes into planetary ecology, including the prescient speculation that human activity will warm climate. I imagine some of the science is obsolete (Is phosphorous still considered life's bottleneck? The Earth does not appear blurry from space.) but Asimov has motivated me to find out how much of what he writes is still current.

[Don Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first few essays are just tough, tough reads. The man's smart, there's no doubt about that. Maybe a little too smart. Golly, he's smart. He says words that are big. And smart.
However, as the essays progress (and they do build on one another), they get more humanistic and easier to digest. The second section of essays are rather interesting - wondering about the outer planets, what we would see in a dual-star system, etc. The most interesting essay is 15: Those Crazy Ideas. He explores where ideas come from and how people come up with ideas.