Isaac Asimov Essay Research Paper Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov Essay, Research Paper

Isaac Asimov You don t have to like me, although I would prefer it. However, you do have to respect me for all that I have done and for all that I have accomplished in my lifetime. I have written countless books and consider myself well studied in most major fields. I am a well written, prolific, and excellent writer who has done a great deal to improve the quality of science fiction writing. Nobody can live during the Great Depression and not be affected by it. Although my writings have never directly talked about issues of economic struggle, mainly because I hate economics, the depression still affected my life. The main influence of the great depression on me was that my parents were forced into the candy business for lack of better work. We survived fairly well considering that we were immigrants, and that my dad could neither read nor speak English. The major downside was that the candy store was open seven days a week, and eight hours a day. This meant I rarely got to see my parents for very long, and it also meant that I also had to work in the candy store. All and all, we were very lucky and we succeeded very well. (Asimov s Galaxy) I began writing in a time that was the dawn of science fiction. There was some science fiction before my time, but not much of it, and it had little credibility. I began when pulp sci-fi was just becoming popular. Pulp sci-fi were cheap magazines that came out normally once or twice a month and published sci-fi articles and stories. These magazines were probably my favorite reading material, although there was not enough of them to keep up with my appetite for them. My first writings were for these magazines, and it took me a long time before I grew out of my pulp sci-fi writing style. It was very lucky for me to be born in the time period that I was, or I may not have become the man I am today. (Asimov: Memoir) Because science fiction had not become popular yet, many sci-fi writers struggled to make a living. I could never have earned enough writing full-time to keep myself alive. I had always planned on having another career, medical if my dad had anything to say about it, to support myself. Science fiction was a hobby for me, a hobby that brought in a nice little sum of cash. It never really became a job possibility until I lost my job in 1958, then I began writing full-time. Science fiction was growing, but not fast enough to support me at the time. (Patrouch) Science fiction finally began to gain respect after World War II. After the A-bomb was dropped and people saw what vast devastation it could do, many more people started taking science fiction more seriously. They realized that these guys were not necessarily a bunch of weirdoes who were writing about make-believe; some of these things might actually be true. This really helped the science fiction industry in general, and probably could account for at least some of my later sales, although the war never really affected me too deeply. I did write a few pieces involving the A-bomb or other things like it; however, it never really became a major theme in my works, and never took up much of my thoughts. I did serve in the army for six years, but the only thing this changed was my time to write books. I never really considered the period I lived in to have changed me personally, though I think it did influence my writing topics and the times certainly influenced the audiences demand for science fiction. (Bailey) I am still not positive of the day I was born because my parents never kept track of it. I was probably born on January 1, 1920, give or take two weeks. My family moved to Brooklyn, New York when I was three years old. I taught myself to read before I entered 1st grade. I was considered a child prodigy from very early on, and I skipped a total of 2 years of school. I was always the youngest and the smallest in my classes, and almost always the brightest, so I was picked on a great deal. I entered an all boy high school at 12 +, 2 + years younger than everybody else. That is where I learned something I had never been taught before. I was not the smartest. This shock hurt more than anything else the kids who picked on me could do. It was the first time in my life that I was not the smartest kid in the class. Learning I was not the smartest was one of the best things that could have ever happened to me, and I am glad I learned it when I did. (Asimov: Memoir) One of the biggest factors in my childhood was the candy store my parents owned. If it was not for that candy store we would never have survived the Great Depression. However, it also took most of the time my parents had to run the store. I, too, had to help run the store when I became old enough. I picked up many habits that I keep to this day from that candy store. My habit of reading magazines without bending the pages came from reading the magazines we sold and having to put them back on the shelf like new. I learned how to work long hard days at the candy shop, although my dad was constantly calling me lazy whenever he found me reading a magazine or doing anything that was not work-related. Maybe that is why I have written as much as I have-to convince my dad that all of that reading had a purpose. It is amazing that all of this influence could have come from one decision made by my parents to buy a candy store. (Gunn) My main goal in life was to become a doctor. This was mainly due to the influ