James Nicoll Reviews

1957’s The Naked Sun is the second of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction mystery robot novels¹.

Having successfully resolved the matter of Spacer Roj Nemennuh Sarton to everyone’s satisfaction (save perhaps Roj), New York police detective Elijah Baley discovers that the reward for accomplishing a difficult task is an even more difficult task.

Summoned to Washington, DC, Plainclothesman Baley discovers he has been assigned another Spacer murder. The last one took him to unfamiliar Spacertown. This new case will send Baley somewhere far more exotic.

But first, some background.

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Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh’s 1983 Starships is a science fiction anthology on the theme of starships.

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Isaac Asimov’s 1968 Asimov’s Mysteries is a mystery collection — mostly but not entirely science fiction — containing only stories written by Isaac Asimov himself.

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1985’s The Last Man on Earth was edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, & Charles G. Waugh. The theme uniting the anthology is straightforward and obvious from the title: each story focuses on the last man on Earth. Well, very nearly.

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Isaac Asimov’s massive 1974 Before the Golden Age is, as its cover subtitle promises, a ​“Science Fiction Anthology of the 1930s.” In one sense, the subtitle is accurate: the stories predate the supposed golden age of SF, that period between 1938 and 1950, after John W. Campbell, Jr. became editor of Astounding and before Galaxy and The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy offered a broader vision than that offered by Campbell and his idiosyncratic tastes. 

In another sense, the subtitle is quite false. 

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Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh’s 1984 Supermen is the third volume in the Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction anthology series.

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1984’s The Science Fictional Olympics is the second anthology in a ten-volume series, Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction. Editors: Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. 

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Isaac Asimov’s 1955 The End of Eternity is a standalone¹ time-travel thriller.

A secretive cabal of Eternals (recruited from the mundanes of various periods) guide human destiny. They monopolize time travel and monitor human societies over a span of 70,000 centuries. They steer societies away from extremes and disasters, towards sustainable optimums. Andrew Harlan is a loyal member of the cabal, known as Eternity. 

Or rather, he was. Now he is working to destroy Eternity.

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Asimov’s 1950 Pebble in the Sky is either the first (by publication date) or the third (by internal chronology) of three standalone novels (The Stars, Like Dust, The Currents of Space, and Pebble in the Sky) set some millennia prior to the beginning of the Foundation trilogy. The three novels form a loose trilogy that has been dubbed the Empire novels or sometimes the Galactic Empirenovels.

The Stars, Like Dustis set long before Trantor began its rise to power; The Currents of Space is set during its rise. Pebble in the Sky is set at the height of the Galactic Empire’s power. 

The book opens with an Eisenhower-era tailor, Joseph Schwartz, who finds himself transported onto a desolate alien world. He later learns that he is still on Earth, an Earth of the far future. The plant has been scoured by nuclear war. Even though this happened some time ago, Earth is still radioactive in places and is largely sterile. 

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1954’s The Caves of Steel is the first of Isaac Asimov’s novels that feature Elijah Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw. 

Elijah is a human. R. Daneel is a robot. They fight crime! 

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