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Lessons for us all in the brief article below, but especially for authors.
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Isaac Asimov, A Star In The Science-Fiction Universe

In 1941, Isaac Asimov was busier than most students receiving a master's degree that year.

He published "Nightfall," which would be voted the best-science fiction short story ever written.

He also began working on his "Foundation" novels, which critics now regard as the best sci-fi series of all time.

Just starting at age 21, he would publish 500 books over the next half-century in all but one category of the library classification system.

"'Nightfall' projected Asimov into the limelight," wrote Michael White in "Isaac Asimov: A Life of the Grand Master of Science Fiction." "He was seen as the brightest young star in the science-fiction firmament."

Asimov (1920-92) was born in Russia to a Jewish family that emigrated to America when he was 3. His parents soon opened a Brooklyn candy store where all their children worked.

Isaac, who had taught himself to read at 5, was fascinated by the science-fiction magazines sold at the candy store. At only 11, he began writing his own stories. After nine rejections, he sold his first at 19.

An overachieving high school student with an IQ score over 200 (140 is considered genius), Asimov graduated at 15 and eventually was elected vice president of Mensa, the group for the ultrabrainy.

On The Go

College turned out to be a challenge, since he was still working at the store and trying to launch his writing career. He isolated himself socially and studied on the subway to get his homework done, according White.

Asimov managed to land a degree in chemistry from Columbia University in 1939. Then, after earning a master's, he worked three years as a civilian developing materiel at the Philadelphia Naval Experimental Station during World War II.

It was during the thick of that job that the first of his stories that would comprise the "Foundation" series was published in a magazine in 1942. The final one would come out in 1949, the year after Asimov earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry.

Asimov's Keys
• Wrote hundreds of best-selling science and science-fiction books.
• Overcame: Limited market for his early work.
• Lesson: Attention to detail builds credibility.
• "A subtle thought that is in error may give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value."

For the next decade he taught full time before down-shifting to part-time teaching to focus on writing — all the while completing the 747-page "Foundation Trilogy."

"Having twice read Edward Gibbon's 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' Asimov decided to use that as the model for a story projected far into our distant future and across the galaxy," John Sutherland, author of "Lives of the Novelists," told IBD. "Nothing small for him."

The tale traces the fall of a galactic empire, then four centuries during which two secretive foundations preserve science and keep trade healthy, paving the way for a new empire. The characters are vividly original; take the Mule, a mutant whose mind can manipulate the emotions of planetary populations. The mix of lively dialogue, easily imagined technology, and dramatic plot twists make it the ultimate futuristic page-turner.

Asimov's lesson is to do your homework, then apply imagination to get out of the box of conventional thinking about the future.

"The first volume probably sold 20 million, but Asimov wrote and edited so many books that were published in so many editions and languages that no one has been able to keep track of his sales beyond that," said Ed Seiler, editor of AsimovOnline.com. "I doubt he cared much about the numbers, as long as they showed the publishers were making some profit and he was getting paid his fair share."

Wrote White: "Asimov was the first pulp writer to create a hero who was not a ray-gun-toting superhero, but a middle-aged politician. He succeeded with this by giving his political heroes other facets to their characters. Asimov's stamp can be found on such blockbusters as the 'Dune' series by Frank Herbert and paved the way for 'Star Trek' on TV and the science-fiction boom in cinema exemplified by 'Star Wars.'"

"The Gods Themselves," his personal favorite among his book-length fiction, won science-fiction novel of the year from the World Science Fiction Society in 1973 (the title refers to a German play's phrase: "against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain").

His story involves a scientist who discovers a free, seemingly endless source of energy, pumped in from a parallel universe, while refusing to recognize that the energy exchange would result in an imbalance causing the sun to overheat.

Of Asimov's nearly 500 short stories, his most famous collection is "I, Robot," published in 1950. The 2004 movie of the same name borrowed only some of his ideas. In these "I, Robot" stories, Asimov coined the term "robotics" and laid down the ethical laws for robot behavior:
• No robot may injure or fail to protect a human.
• A robot must obey humans unless the order violates the first law.
• A robot must protect its own existence unless this conflicts with the first two laws.

Dark Reading

"Nightfall," that work of 72 years ago, remains the critical favorite of his stories. It's a pioneering example of what fans prefer to call speculative fiction, which puts the human condition — rather than technology or space wars — at the center. It tells the tale of a planet with six suns that simultaneously set every 2,049 years. At the end of the cycle, the resulting darkness for half a day drives everyone mad.

"It's the sudden realization that there are possibly other civilizations out there, that the universe is not the size of their own little stellar system, but is infinite, which is absolutely horrible to any creatures sheltered from the concept," wrote White.

While promoting interstellar space travel, Asimov had a phobia about flying. This prevented him from getting to Hollywood very often from his homes in Boston and New York, though he weighed in with advice for science movies.

One that did well at the box office was 1999's "Bicentennial Man," based on his 1976 award-winning novelette. Otherwise, some of his short stories appeared on TV and in video games. Asimov had his first science textbook published in 1952. His first nonfiction book for the general public, "The Chemicals of Life," appeared two years later. In 1958 he was so riveted with nonfiction that he stopped turning out novels for the next 14 years.

His nonfiction covered a staggering variety: "Asimov's Guide to the Bible," "Understanding Physics," "Asimov's Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan," "The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation," "Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare."

Stacking Up

Seiler notes that the only major category of the Dewey Decimal System in which Asimov didn't write a book is philosophy.

It took Asimov three years to turn out the half-million words for "Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology," 1,000 short profiles of history's most important pioneers. The 1982 tome is still used as a major reference book in libraries around the world.

In addition to the 370 books he wrote by himself, Asimov edited 130 anthologies that he counted as authoring because he put in a comparable amount of time, says Seiler.
Then there were the 1,600 essays and 90,000 personal letters. How'd he do it?

"By his own count, Asimov was the most prolific writer in history and he tried to write eight hours a day, seven days a week," said Eric Rabkin, author of the Teaching Co. audio course "Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind." "He was always learning, with the possibility of turning material into something he could sell. He analyzed what he read for its value to that goal and, keeping his audience in mind, he constructed his own original work."

Asimov's lesson is to remember that it doesn't do much good to be brilliant in a field if you don't learn how to communicate with your target audience.

By the mid-1960s, Asimov had $250,000 in the bank and was earning $100,000 a year, according to White: "The work in the last 10 years of his life sold in phenomenal numbers, but because his first 11 major works have been selling consistently for decades, it is upon these that his reputation rests and it is these that turned him into a household name."

Asimov died at 72, productive to the end. He was working on his third autobiography, "I. Asimov: A Memoir," which was published two years later, in 1994.

He would be pleased to know he has a vigorous afterlife online, with more than 7 million references.