The uzbekistan state world languages university english faculty II

1.2. Biography and creative path of the writer

The founder of American science fiction and the famous scientist Isaac Asimov was born in Russia, in the town of Petrovichi, 90 kilometers from Smolensk. At birth, he was named Isaac. In 1923, the Asimov family emigrated to the United States, where Isaac's father bought a confectionery shop in New York, and five years later received American citizenship.
Asimov began to engage in literary work at the age of eighteen. His stories were of interest to the well-known science fiction magazine "Amazing Stories", where in 1939 Asimov's first story, "Abandoned on Vesta", appeared. The publishers were supportive of the novice writer: he regularly sent his stories to various magazines, and almost all of them were accepted. True, in those years Asimov was still inferior to other science fiction writers, but he was not particularly upset by this. He felt more like a scientist than a writer, and indeed, Asimov reached a very high level in science, becoming the owner of 14 honorary degrees.
However, since 1940, his name has firmly become one of the classics of world fiction. It was in those years that he published his first story from the cycle of stories about robots "The Strange Buddy" (another name is "Roby"), Asimov devoted fifty years to the continuation of this cycle and completed it with such famous works as "All About Robots" (1982) , Dreams of Robots (1986) and Visions of Robots (1990).
In all his stories about robots, he carried the idea that a robot should not raise a hand against its creator. At the same time, the writer thought about whether technological progress is useful for humanity and whether it will lead to the fact that a person will turn into a too dependent and weak-willed creature, as happened with some of the heroes of his works.
In his works, Asimov was one of the first to try to model those legal relations that would determine the behavior of people of the future. He focused mainly on the psychological and moral aspects of being. At the same time, the writer predicted a number of discoveries: the appearance of pocket computers, man's spacewalk, the work of robots on the production line. He even raised the problem of the psychological compatibility of people during long-term space flights.
Asimov knew history very well and successfully used historical motifs in his work. So, as the basis for his trilogy on the evolution of the Galactic Federation: "Foundation", "Foundation and Empire", "Second Foundation" - he used the work of the English historian E. Gibson "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Asimov wrote his work for almost ten years. The fifties in the work of Asimov are considered the most fruitful. He writes about time travel, an elitist technocratic state, planetary engineering, new forms of energy, problems of communication between different forms of intelligence. The writer also creates a cycle of stories for children about the adventures of the astronaut Lucky.
Already almost at the end of his life, together with his wife Janet, he writes a series of books about the Norby robot.
Since the late fifties, Asimov has been actively involved in the popularization of science. He creates a multi-volume "Encyclopedia of an intelligent person", which covers the widest material - from cosmology, cybernetics, chemistry to history, philosophy and comments on Shakespeare.
In 1965, Asimov was awarded a special Hugo-65 Award for the best science fiction of all time. He became known as the "King of Science Fiction".
There were legends about Asimov's amazing performance. At the beginning of January 1990, when he was 70 years old, he was the author or editor of 445 books, another two dozen books were being prepared for publication. It is difficult to name at least one field of knowledge in which he would not prove himself. Asimov wrote not only fiction, he has many works of a scientific nature: Life and Energy (1962), Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), a book on evolutionary theory The Sources of Life (I960), The Human Body "(1963)," Universe "(1966) and others.
In addition to research in the field of exact sciences - physics, cybernetics, astronomy, mathematics - he wrote articles no less enthusiastically in the field of humanitarian knowledge - biology, geography, philosophy.
Among Asimov's numerous awards, it is worth noting the title of "Grand Master", which was awarded to him by the Association of Science Fiction Writers of America.
He was one of those great ones who stood in the way of the evil that was furiously attacking our world. He protected knowledge from being defiled by superstition, the desire for mutual understanding - from stupid fanaticism, mercy - from cruelty, - finally, peace from war.
In 1957, Asimov won the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Prize for the book "Bricks of the Universe", dedicated to the chemical elements. In 1960, the American Heart Association honored him with the Howard Blaxley Award for his book on blood chemistry, The Promised River.
Asimov was especially proud of awards for his work in science fiction. In 1963, he received his first Hugo Award for contributions to science fiction.
The habit of constant work remained with him for the rest of his life. In his autobiography, he wrote: "I worked ten hours, seven days a week, all this time I spent in the store. Even when circumstances forced me to leave for a couple of minutes, the question began to torment me: Lord, how is it in the store?"
While his peers played outdoors after school and made friends, Isaac was deprived of it. As a result, he remained inexperienced in everything related to communication with people - including girls - and this went on for quite some time.
Isaac learned to read when he was less than five years old. At the age of seven, he already had a form in the local library. He read everything and in huge quantities. He graduated from elementary school with the best results, having only one remark - for constant chatter in the classroom.
At school, Asimov impressed everyone with his abilities. He skipped classes and graduated from elementary school at age 11, and from the main school course with all sorts of honors at the age of 15. His excellent memory was of great help: he rarely forgot what he had read at least once. Having received a secondary education, Azimov, at the request of his parents, tried to become a doctor. This turned out to be beyond his strength: at the sight of blood, he became ill. Then Isaac made an attempt to enter Columbia University's most prestigious college - Columbia College - but did not go beyond the interview, writing in his autobiography that he was talkative, unstable and did not know how to make a good impression on people.
He was accepted to Seth Low Junior College in Brooklyn. A year later, this college closed and Asimov ended up at Columbia University - however, as a simple student, and not a student at an elite college. Asimov graduated from Columbia University in 1939 with a bachelor's degree in science.
It was 1942, the war was going on. Asimov received an official invitation with an offer of the position of a junior chemist, the salary was quite decent, and this allowed Asimov on July 25, 1945 to register his marriage to Gertrude Blugerman, whom he had met a few months before. Work at Navy Yard could not save Asimov from regular service for a long time, and on November 1, 1945, a few months after the end of the war, he was called up as a private. He served as a clerk in a unit that prepared atomic bomb tests in the Pacific Ocean, but was sent to the States before the first explosion. He was demobilized in July 1946.
Returning to Columbia University, he continued work on his doctoral dissertation in chemistry. As a graduate student, he taught seminars on his topic.
One of his first contributions to "journalism" appeared in the March 1948 issue of Astounding. The article was called "Endochronic properties of resublimated phyotimolin". To his amazement, the article became incredibly popular among chemical scientists - it was his first literary attempt, which was a success.
1949 was a turning point for Asimov in many respects. He finished "...And Now You Don't", the last story in the "Foundation" series, which was given to him with great difficulty.
The fifties became a turning point for Asimov. He was still friends with Campbell, but the admiration for the master had disappeared.
Other publishers began to show interest in Asimov's science fiction. Asimov made a collection of short stories about robots, and Fred Paul, who was then his agent, offered the manuscript to Marty Greenberg from the same firm. Greenberg published the Foundation series in three volumes, asking Asimov to complete a short introductory story for the first volume. This book became the most significant in Asimov's entire writing career. Over the past decades, it has sold out and continues to diverge in millions of copies.
By the end of 1954, Asimov was already 34. He was at the zenith of his writing career, having published I, Robot, The Foundation, A Pebble in the Sky, Stars Like Dust, Cosmic Currents, and Caves of Steel. But the true future of his career was opened by "The Chemistry of Life", a non-fiction book for teenagers. To his own amazement, he found that it was easier to write non-fiction and non-fiction books than fiction.
Continued to appear in print his stories, teenage novels "French Fields". The novel "The Naked Sun" - the continuation of "Steel Caves" - has been published. In addition, he tried to write detective stories, but Asimov devoted more and more time to popular science articles and books.
In 1958, for a caustic remark about the university authorities, Asimov was released from teaching. He fought like a lion to retain the prestigious title of Consulting Professor and won. Years later, he still occasionally lectured.
By the end of the 1960s, Asimov had published his first 100 books and had become the leading popularizer of science in the world. He was well received in all audiences, he was on excellent terms with editors of magazines and publishers of books. He carried himself completely freely and naturally, earning a reputation as a sparkling humorist and womanizer. Now he was already a literary phenomenon and an outstanding personality. He was a genius, he was an unpredictable wit, he did a lot of things and burned them all at once. He took for granted that the reader is simply obliged to be interested in the same thing that he is interested in - and he was not far from the truth. He wrote lightly and cheerfully, splitting scientific terms and conveying to the reader a fantastic view of a fantastic world. The whole country knew about him, and his name on the cover of the book was a guarantee that the circulation would not be stale. Some editors said that because of the huge number of titles of his books, he begins to compete with himself, but they were wrong. Each of Asimov's books helped sell others by expanding his audience.
He began writing fantasy novels again in 1972 with The Gods Themselves. An anthology story was much longer than expected. The Gods Themselves was considered by critics to be his best novel, especially for its realistic depiction of an alien Asimov, on the other hand, was much more fond of the novel “Murder at ABC Hey”, 1976, a classic detective story in form. Prior to its publication, he wrote several early detective stories and a series of Black Widows stories. In general, of all the books he wrote, he was most proud of Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology - "because no one else could have written it."
His personal life, alas, was not so successful. The marriage to Gertrude slowly fell apart over the decades. They separated in 1970 and were divorced on November 16, 1973. In his autobiography, he nobly took the blame, writing that he was selfish, occupied only with his writings and could hardly be considered a good husband. The Asimovs had two children - daughter Robin and son David. On November 30, 1973, Asimov marries Janet Opil Jeppson, a psychiatrist whom he met at the 1956 New York World Convention.
He worked like a convict. In 1976, he published a dozen new books. In 1977, a dozen more are planned. He is constantly invited to lecture, he is interviewed. He spends every spare minute at his typewriter. On January 2, 1977, he celebrates his 57th birthday, and on May 18 he ends up in the hospital: a blood clot in the coronary vessels. Even there he works: he writes the first volume of his autobiography. At the same time, he loses weight, so by the end of June, the ECG shows that he has recovered. After some time, Asimov takes on its former form: by the end of 1984, he releases the next hundred books. In 1982, he returned to science fiction again and wrote "Foundation Crisis", the continuation of the famous series. The book became his first bestseller - and what a bestseller! This novel lasted 25 weeks on The New York Times list!
Following were the novels "Robots of the Dawn", begun back in the 50s, "Robots and Empire", "Foundation and Earth", "Prelude to the Foundation". There were other books, most of which became bestsellers. Asimov reached a position where he could demand millions in advances - however, he rarely did this. By the end of his life, Asimov, in collaboration with Robert Silverberg, was working on novels based on three of his most famous stories: Nightfall, The Ugly Boy, and Bicentennial Man. In the spring of 1993, another book was published: "I. Azimov" - the third volume of his autobiography, which he dictated in the hospital.
Azimov underwent three kidney surgeries in 1983, and in 1989 he fell ill for many months with severe heart failure. He could not fully recover from it. At one of the editorial meetings, he said that he hoped to die, falling face down on the keyboard of a typewriter. The chance didn't come up. Medicines kept him alive, but did not allow him to work. The day came when he tore himself away from the keyboard for the last time, and the passion that had bound him to life was gone.
He lived to write, and when he couldn't do it anymore, he died.
In one interview, he was asked: what will he do if he finds out that he has six months to live? "I'll type faster," he replied.
Isaac Asimov, one of the world's most famous writers and the most famous of science fiction writers, died on April 6, 1992 from heart and kidney failure at New York University Hospital. By the will of the deceased, his body was cremated, and the ashes were scattered.
Many newspapers devoted the front pages to his death. Two weeks later, CNN aired a retrospective of his career. Until now, only heads of state and movie stars have been honored with this. Without a doubt, he was a very wealthy writer, but money was for him only the embodiment of applause, he practically did not use it. He did not have yachts, mansions, he did not need them. He already had everything he wanted: a typewriter in a quiet room with curtained windows.