How Isaac Asimov Wrote Almost 500 Books in His Lifetime

Tide1986

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Nov 22, 2008
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I thought this was an interesting column about the writing philosophy of Isaac Asimov. There's some good advice that has application beyond writing.

https://qz.com/886038/isaac-asimov-...-his-lifetime-these-are-the-6-ways-he-did-it/

If there’s one word to describe Isaac Asimov, it’s “prolific.”

To match the number of novels, letters, essays, and other scribblings Asimov produced in his lifetime, you would have to write a full-length novel every two weeks for 25 years.

Why was Asimov able to have so many good ideas when the rest of us seem to only have one or two in a lifetime? To find out, I looked into Asimov’s autobiography, It’s Been a Good Life.

Asimov wasn’t born writing eight hours a day, seven days a week. He tore up pages, he got frustrated, and he failed over and over and over again. In his autobiography, Asimov shares the tactics and strategies he developed to never run out of ideas again.
 
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IMALOYAL1

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He was my favorite SciFi author. Wish he had written more in that genre before his untimely death.

He once wrote that his "Foundation" series was roughly based off Edward Gibbon's decline and fall of the roman empire. I especially liked the way Asimov tied his robot novels in with his later foundation series. I think, starting with Prelude to Foundation.

I deplore the "Foundation Series" books written after his death by other authors, and have never been able to finish one. I think there are only three thank god. I also loved his self written humorous biography on the last page, at the end of his early books....found it...

Isaac Asimov was born in the Soviet Union to his great surprise. He moved quickly to correct the situation.When his parents emigrated to the United States, Isaac (three years old at the time) stowed away in their baggage. He has been an American citizen since the age of eight.
Brought up in Brooklyn, and educated in it's private schools, he eventually found his way to Columbia University and,over the protests of the school administration, managed to annex a series of degrees in chemistry, up to and including a Ph.D.He then infiltrated Boston University and climbed the academic ladder, ignoring all cries of outrage, until he found himself Professor of Biochemistry.
Meanwhile at the age of nine, he found the love of his life (in the inanimate sense) when he discovered his first science-fiction magazine. By the time he was eleven, he began to write stories, and at the age of eighteen, he actually worked up the nerve to submit one. It was rejected. After four long months of tribulation and suffering, he sold his first story and thereafter, he never looked back.
In 1941, when he was twenty-one years old he wrote the classic short story "Nightfall" and his future was assured. Shortly before that he had begun writing his robot stories, and shortly after that he had begun his Foundation series.
What was left except quantity? At the present time he has published over 340 books, distributed through every major division of the Dewey system of library classification, and shows no signs of slowing up.He remains as youthful ,as lively, and as lovable as ever, and grows more handsome with each year. You can be sure that this is so since he has written this essay himself and his devotion to absolute objectivity is notorious.
He is married to Janett Jeppson, psychiatrist and writer, has two children by a previous marriage, and lives in New York City.
 
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IMALOYAL1

All-American
Oct 28, 2000
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Birmingham AL
I actually started reading Isaac Assimov in grade school although I didn't know it until I was in my 20s-30s after reading he wrote the Lucky Starr series under the pen name Paul French.

"Lucky Starr" and ("Danny Dunn" - another juvenile series) got me hooked on SciFi at a very young age.
 
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kwftide

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I actually started reading Isaac Assimov in grade school although I didn't know it until I was in my 20s-30s after reading he wrote the Lucky Starr series under the pen name Paul French.

"Lucky Starr" and ("Danny Dunn" - another juvenile series) got me hooked on SciFi at a very young age.
Great post and very interesting article. I got hooked on Sci-Fi and reading in general in 8th grade with Have Spacesuit Will Travel by Robert Heinlein.
 

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