Asimov Isaac. Asimov on Science. A 30-year Retrospective

Doubleday, 1989. — 393 p. — ISBN 978-0385263450, 0385263457.Isaac Asimov is a one-man American institution, the best-known, bestloved creator of science fiction adventures in the world. However incredible they seem when he imagines them, many of Asimov's fictions have become the facts of space exploration. Many...but not all.
Thirty years ago, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction asked Asimov to write a monthly science column. In his first essay, published in 1958, he predicted that if a space ship landed on the moon, it would sink into fifty feet of dust.
That original (if erroneous) column and thirty others that Asimov has personally chosen (one from each year between 1959 and 1988) are included in this anniversary retrospective. And, as a bonus to his readers, there is also a new essay that elucidates what he believes is the ineluctable «secret of the Universe.» What is remarkable about this collection is the scope of Asimov's curiosity. The essays are about science, of course, but they're also about history, literature, philosophy, geography — and the interrelationships of all these disciplines.
When Asimov began his column for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1958, he never imagined that he would be writing it for the next thirty years—and never miss an issue. «I have not run out of ideas,» the science fiction master writes, «and I don't think I am likely to. It is my intention to continue writing the articles until either the magazine or I, myself, come to an end.» «Asimov on Science» is a celebration of an extraordinary life.Introduction
The Ultimate Split of the Second
A Piece of Pi
Heaven on Earth
The Egg and Wee
You, Too, Can Speak Gaelic
The Slowly Moving Finger
Exclamation Point!
I’m Looking over a Four-Leaf Clover
Twelve Point Three Six Nine 1
Knock Plastic!
Uncertain, Coy, and Hard to Please
The Luxon Wall
Pompey and Circumstance
Lost in Non-Translation
The Ancient and the Ultimate
Look Long upon a Monkey
Thinking About Thinking
Best Foot Backward
The Subtlest Difference
The Floating Crystal Palace
Alas, All Human
Milton! Thou Shouldst Be Living at This Hour
And After Many a Summer Dies the Proton
The Circle of the Earth
What Truck?
More Thinking About Thinking
Far as Human Eye Could See
The Relativity of Wrong
A Sacred Poet
The Longest River
The Secret of the Universe