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12,400 | The Su-33 is the Russian Navy version of the Soviet "Su-27K" which was re-designated by the Sukhoi Design Bureau after 1991. Both have the NATO designation 'Flanker-D'. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,401 | The Su-34 is the Russian derivative of the Soviet-era "Su-27IB", which evolved from the Soviet Navy "Su-27KUB" operational conversion trainer. It was previously referred to as the "Su-32MF". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,402 | The newest and most advanced version of the Su-27 is the Su-35S ("Serial"). The Su-35 was previously referred to as the "Su-27M", "Su-27SM2", and "Su-35BM". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,403 | The Su-37 is an advanced technology demonstrator derived from Su-35 prototypes, featuring thrust vectoring nozzles made of titanium rather than steel and an updated airframe containing a high proportion of carbon-fibre and Al-Li alloy. Only two examples were built and in 2002 one crashed, effectively ending the program. The Su-37 improvements did however make it into new Flanker variants such as the "Su-35S" and the "Su-30MKI". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,404 | The Su-27's basic design is aerodynamically similar to the MiG-29, but it is substantially larger. The wing blends into the fuselage at the leading edge extensions and is essentially a cross between a swept wing and a cropped delta (the delta wing with tips cropped for missile rails or ECM pods). The fighter is also an example of a tailed delta wing configuration, retaining conventional horizontal tailplanes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,405 | The Su-27 had the Soviet Union's first operational fly-by-wire control system, based on the Sukhoi OKB's experience with the T-4 bomber project. Combined with relatively low wing loading and powerful basic flight controls, it makes for an exceptionally agile aircraft, controllable even at very low speeds and high angle of attack. In airshows the aircraft has demonstrated its maneuverability with a "Cobra" (Pugachev’s Cobra) or dynamic deceleration – briefly sustained level flight at a 120° angle of attack. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,406 | The naval version of the 'Flanker', the "Su-27K" (or Su-33), incorporates canards for additional lift, reducing takeoff distances. These canards have also been incorporated in some Su-30s, the Su-35, and the Su-37. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,407 | The Su-27 is equipped with a Phazotron N001 Myech coherent Pulse-Doppler radar with track while scan and look-down/shoot-down capability. The fighter also has an OLS-27 infrared search and track (IRST) system in the nose just forward of the cockpit with an range. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,408 | The Su-27 is armed with a single Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-30-1 cannon in the starboard wingroot, and has up to 10 hardpoints for missiles and other weapons. Its standard missile armament for air-to-air combat is a mixture of R-73 (AA-11 Archer) and R-27 (AA-10 'Alamo') missiles, the latter including extended range and infrared homing models. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,409 | The Soviet Air Force began receiving Su-27s in June 1985. It officially entered service in August 1990. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,410 | On 13 September 1987, a fully armed Soviet Su-27, Red 36, intercepted a Norwegian Lockheed P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft flying over the Barents Sea. The Soviet fighter performed different close passes, colliding with the reconnaissance aircraft on the third pass. The Su-27 disengaged and both aircraft landed safely at their bases. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,411 | These aircraft were used by the Russian Air Force during the 1992–1993 war in Abkhazia against Georgian forces. One fighter, piloted by Major Vatslav Aleksandrovich Shipko (Вацлав Александрович Шипко) was reported shot down in friendly fire by an S-75M Dvina on 19 March 1993 while intercepting Georgian Su-25s performing close air support. The pilot was killed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,412 | In the 2008 South Ossetia War, Russia used Su-27s to gain airspace control over Tskhinvali, the capital city of South Ossetia. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,413 | On 7 February 2013, two Su-27s briefly entered Japanese airspace off Rishiri Island near Hokkaido, flying south over the Sea of Japan before turning back to the north. Four Mitsubishi F-2 fighters were scrambled to visually confirm the Russian planes, warning them by radio to leave their airspace. A photo taken by a JASDF pilot of one of the two Su-27s was released by the Japan Ministry of Defense. Russia denied the incursion, saying the jets were making routine flights near the disputed Kuril Islands. In another encounter, on 23 April 2014 an Su-27 nearly collided with a United States Air Force Boeing RC-135U over the Sea of Okhotsk. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,414 | Russia plans to replace the Su-27 and the Mikoyan MiG-29 eventually with the Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fifth-generation multi-role twin-engine fighter. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,415 | A squadron of Su-27SM3s was deployed to Syria in November 2015 as part of the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,416 | A Russian Su-27 crashed over the Black Sea on 25 March 2020, in mysterious circumstances. The pilot was not found, after a large-scale rescue effort hampered by inclement weather involving four helicopters, 11 civilian and military vessels, and several drones. The plane's last location was some 50 kilometers from the city of Feodosia. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,417 | China was the first foreign operator of Su-27 and the only country to acquire the fighter before the fall of the Soviet Union. The deal, known as the '906 Project' in China, marked a leap in Chinese aviation capability in the 1990s. Discussion of the aircraft purchase began in 1988 when the Soviet Union offered China fourth-generation fighters like MiG-29. However, the Chinese negotiator insisted on purchasing the Su-27, the most sophisticated fighter Soviets had at the time. The sales were approved in December 1990, with three fighters delivered to China before the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia completed the contract and allowed China to manufacture the Su-27 domestically, where the aircraft is designated as J-11. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,418 | The earliest batch of Su-27s was stationed at the Wuhu air base in the early 1990s. In the next two decades, 78 Flankers were delivered under three separate contracts by the Russian KnAAPO and IAPO plants. Delivery of the aircraft began in February 1991 and finished by September 2009. The first contract was for 20 Su-27SK and 4 Su-27UBK aircraft. In February 1991, a Su-27 performed a flight demonstration at Beijing's Nanyuan Airport. Chinese Su-27 pilots described its performance as "outstanding" in all aspects and flight envelopes. The official induction to service with the PLAAF occurred shortly thereafter. China found some of the aircraft delivered were Su-27UBs that had been built in 1989 for the Soviet Union but never delivered. Russia delivered 2 more Su-27UBKs to China as a compensation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,419 | Differences in the payment method delayed the signing of the second, identical contract. For the first batch, 70% of the payment had been made in barter transactions with light industrial goods and food. The Russian Federation argued that future transactions should be made in US dollars. In May 1995, Chinese Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Liu Huaqing visited Russia and agreed to the demand, on the condition that the production line of the Su-27 be imported. The contract was signed the same year. Delivery of the final aircraft from the second batch, which consisted of 16 Su-27SKs and 8 Su-27UBKs, occurred in July 1996. In preparation for the expanding Su-27 fleet, the PLAAF sought to augment its trainer fleet. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,420 | On 3 December 1999, a third contract was signed, this time for 28 Su-27UBKs. All 76 of the aircraft featured strengthened airframe and landing gear – the result of the PLAAF demands air-ground capability. As a result, the aircraft is capable of employing most of the conventional air-to-ground ordnance produced by Russia. Maximum take-off weight (MTOW) increased to . As is common for Russian export fighters, the active jamming device was downgraded; Su-27's L005 ECM pod was replaced with the L203/L204 pod. Furthermore, there were slight avionics differences between the batches. The first batch had N001E radar, while the later aircraft had N001P radar, capable of engaging two targets at the same time. Additionally, ground radar and navigational systems were upgraded. The aircraft are not capable of deploying the R-77 "Adder" missile due to a downgraded fire control system, except for the last batch of 28 Su-27UBKs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,421 | At the 2009 Farnborough Airshow, Alexander Fomin- Deputy Director of Russia's Federal Service for Military-Technical Co-operation confirmed the existence of an all-encompassing contract and ongoing licensed production of Su-27 variants by China. The aircraft was being produced as the Shenyang J-11. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,422 | Ethiopian Su-27s shot down two Eritrean MiG-29s and damaged another one during the Eritrean-Ethiopian War in February 1999 and destroyed another two in May 2000. The Su-27s were also used in combat air patrol (CAP) missions, suppression of air defense, and providing escort for fighters on bombing and reconnaissance missions. The Ethiopian Air Force (EtAF) used their Su-27s to deadly effect in Somalia during late 2000s and 2010s, bombing Islamist garrisons and patrolling the airspace. The Su-27 has replaced the aging Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21, which was the main air superiority fighter of the EtAF between 1977 and 1999. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,423 | Ethiopian government used its Su-27s for bombing targets during the Tigray War. Ethiopian Su-27s were depicted armed with OFAB-250 unguided bombs and over the skies of Mekelle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,424 | On 25 August 2022, Ethiopian authorities claimed an An-26 was intercepted and then shot down by an EtAF Su-27, scrambled to investigate the airspace violation incoming from Sudan. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,425 | The Su-27 entered Angolan service in mid-2000 during the Angolan Civil War. It is reported that one Su-27 in the process of landing, was shot down by 9K34 Strela-3 MANPADs fired by UNITA forces on 19 November 2000. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,426 | Four Indonesian Flanker-type fighters including Su-27s participated for the first time in the biennial Exercise Pitch Black exercise in Australia on 27 July 2012. Arriving at Darwin, Australia, the two Su-27s and two Sukhoi Su-30s were escorted by two Australian F/A-18 Hornets of No. 77 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. Exercise Pitch Black 12 was conducted from 27 July through 17 August 2012, and involved 2,200 personnel and up to 94 aircraft from Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, New Zealand and the United States. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,427 | The Ukrainian Air Force inherited about 66-70 Su-27 aircraft after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lack of funds in addition to the Su-27's high maintenance requirements led to a shortage of spare parts and inadequate servicing with approximately 34 in service as of 2019. Years of underfunding meant that the air force has not received a new Su-27 since 1991. Between 2007 and 2017, as many as 65 combat jets were sold abroad, including nine Su-27s. In 2009, amid declining relations with Russia, the Ukrainian Air Force began to have difficulty obtaining spare parts from Sukhoi. Only 19 Su-27s were serviceable at the time of the Russian annexation of Crimea and subsequent War in Donbas in 2014. Following the Russian invasion, Ukraine increased its military budget, allowing stored Su-27s to be returned to service. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,428 | The in Zaporizhzhia began modernizing the Su-27 to NATO standards in 2012, which involved a minor overhaul of the radar, navigation and communication equipment. Aircraft with this modification are designated Su-27P1M and Su-27UB1M. The Ministry of Defence accepted the project on 5 August 2014, and the first two aircraft were officially handed over to the 831st Tactical Aviation Brigade in October 2015. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,429 | In 2014 during the Annexation of Crimea, a Ukrainian Air Force Su-27 was scrambled to intercept Russian fighter jets over Ukraine's airspace over the Black Sea on 3 March. With no aerial opposition and other aircraft available for ground attack duties, Ukrainian Su-27s played only a small role in the ongoing war in Donbas. Ukrainian Su-27s were recorded performing low fly passes and were reported flying top cover, combat air patrols and eventual escort or intercept of civil aviation traffic over Eastern Ukraine. Videos taken of low-flying Su-27s involved in the operation revealed they were armed with R-27 and R-73 air-to-air missiles. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,430 | There were two fatal crashes involving Ukrainian Su-27s in 2018. On 16 October, a Ukrainian Su-27UB1M flown by Colonel Ivan Petrenko crashed during the Ukraine-USAF exercise "Clear Sky 2018" based at Starokostiantyniv Air Base. The second seat was occupied by Lieutenant Colonel Seth Nehring, a pilot of the 144th Fighter Wing of the California Air National Guard. Both pilots died in the crash, that happened about 5:00 p.m. local time in the Khmelnytskyi province of western Ukraine. On 15 December, an Su-27 crashed on final approach about from Ozerne Air Base in Zhytomyr Oblast, after performing a training flight. Major Fomenko Alexander Vasilyevich was killed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,431 | On 29 May 2020, Ukrainian Su-27s took part in the Bomber Task Force in Europe with B-1B bombers for the first time in the Black Sea region. On 4 September 2020, three B-52 bombers from the 5th Bomb Wing, Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, conducted vital integration training with Ukrainian MiG-29s and Su-27s inside Ukraine’s airspace. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,432 | The Su-27 was used by both sides in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. On 24 February 2022, a Ukrainian Su-27 and a refueling vehicle were burned out by fire after a Russian attack on Ozerne Air Base in Zhytomyr District during the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The next day, another Su-27 was shot down in Kyiv by a Russian S-400 system and was recorded by residents on their cellphones and published on Twitter; its pilot, Colonel Oleksandr Oksanchenko, was killed. A third Su-27 was reported lost by Ukrainian officials over Kropyvnytskyi, in central Ukraine. Its pilot, Maj. Stepan Choban, was killed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,433 | On 7 May 2022, a pair of Ukrainian Su-27s conducted a high-speed, low-level bombing run on Russian-occupied Snake Island; the attack was captured on film by a Bayraktar TB2 drone. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,434 | On 7 June 2022, a Ukrainian Su-27, bort number "38 blue", was shot down while flying at low altitude near Orikhiv in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The aircraft was reportedly destroyed either by an enemy air-to-air missile or due to friendly fire. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,435 | On 21 August 2022, a Ukrainian Su-27 piloted by Lt. Col Pavlo Babych was reported lost in combat. The pilot died. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,436 | In September 2022, a Ukrainian Su-27 has been spotted carrying out SEAD mission with American made AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,437 | On 13 October 2022, one Ukrainian Su-27 from the piloted by Colonel Oleg Shupik was lost during a combat mission in Poltava Oblast, the pilot died. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,438 | According to the U.S. FAA there are two privately owned Su-27s in the U.S. Two Su-27s from the Ukrainian Air Force were demilitarised and sold to Pride Aircraft of Rockford, Illinois. Pride Aircraft modified some of the aircraft to their own desires by remarking all cockpit controls in English and replacing much of the Russian avionics suite with Garmin, Bendix/King, and Collins avionics. The aircraft were both sold to private owners for approximately $5 million each. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,439 | On 30 August 2010, the "Financial Times" claimed that a Western private training support company ECA Program placed a US$1.5 billion order with Belorussian state arms dealer BelTechExport for 15 unarmed Su-27s (with an option on 18 more) to organize a dissimilar air combat training school in the former NATO airbase in Keflavik, Iceland, with deliveries due by the end of 2012. A September 2010 media report by RIA Novosti questioned the existence of the agreement. No further developments on such a plan have been reported by 2014, while a plan for upgrading and putting the retired Belorussian Air Force Su-27 fleet back to service was reported in February 2014. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65580 |
12,440 | The demon core was a spherical subcritical mass of plutonium in diameter, manufactured during World War II by the United States nuclear weapon development effort, the Manhattan Project, as a fissile core for an early atomic bomb. The core was prepared for shipment as part of the third nuclear weapon to be used in Japan, but when Japan surrendered, the core was retained at Los Alamos for testing and potential later use. It was involved in two criticality accidents at the Los Alamos Laboratory on August 21, 1945, and May 21, 1946, each resulting in a fatality. Both experiments were designed to demonstrate how close the core was to criticality with a tamper, but in each case, the core was accidentally placed into a supercritical configuration. Physicists Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin suffered acute radiation syndrome (ARS) and died soon after, while others present in the lab were also exposed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,441 | The demon core (like the second core used in the bombing of Nagasaki) was, when assembled, a solid sphere measuring in diameter. It consisted of three parts: two plutonium-gallium hemispheres and a ring, designed to keep neutron flux from "jetting" out of the joined surface between the hemispheres during implosion. The core of the device used in the Trinity Test at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in July did not have such a ring. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,442 | The refined plutonium was shipped from the Hanford Site in Washington state to the Los Alamos Laboratory; an inventory document dated August 30 shows Los Alamos had expended "HS-1, 2, 3, 4; R-1" (the components of the Trinity and Nagasaki bombs) and had in its possession "HS-5, 6; R-2", finished and in the hands of quality control. Material for "HS-7, R-3" was in the Los Alamos metallurgy section, and would also be ready by September 5 (it is not certain whether this date allowed for the unmentioned "HS-8s fabrication to complete the fourth core). The metallurgists used a plutonium-gallium alloy, which stabilized the phase allotrope of plutonium so it could be hot pressed into the desired spherical shape. As plutonium was found to corrode readily, the sphere was then coated with nickel. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,443 | On August 10, Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., wrote to General of the Army George C. Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, to inform him that: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,444 | Marshall added an annotation, "It is not to be released on Japan without express authority from the President", as President Harry S. Truman was waiting to see the effects of the first two attacks. On August 13, the third bomb was scheduled. It was anticipated that it would be ready by August 16 to be dropped on August 19. This was pre-empted by Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945, while preparations were still being made for it to be couriered to Kirtland Field. The third core remained at Los Alamos. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,445 | The core, assembled, was designed to be at "−5 cents". In this state there is only a small safety margin against extraneous factors that might increase reactivity, causing the core to become supercritical, and then prompt critical, a brief state of rapid energy increase. These factors are not common in the environment; they are circumstances like the compression of the solid metallic core (which would eventually be the method used to explode the bomb), the addition of more nuclear material, or provision of an external reflector which would reflect outbound neutrons back into the core. The experiments conducted at Los Alamos leading to the two fatal accidents were designed to guarantee that the core was indeed close to the critical point by arranging such reflectors and seeing how much neutron reflection was required to approach supercriticality. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,446 | On August 21, 1945, the plutonium core produced a burst of neutron radiation that led to physicist Harry Daghlian's death. Daghlian made a mistake while performing neutron reflector experiments on the core. He was working alone; a security guard, Private Robert J. Hemmerly, was seated at a desk away. The core was placed within a stack of neutron-reflective tungsten carbide bricks and the addition of each brick moved the assembly closer to criticality. While attempting to stack another brick around the assembly, Daghlian accidentally dropped it onto the core and thereby caused the core to go well into supercriticality, a self-sustaining critical chain reaction. He quickly moved the brick off the assembly, but received a fatal dose of radiation. He died 25 days later from acute radiation poisoning. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,447 | On May 21, 1946, physicist Louis Slotin and seven other personnel were in a Los Alamos laboratory conducting another experiment to verify the closeness of the core to criticality by the positioning of neutron reflectors. Slotin, who was leaving Los Alamos, was showing the technique to Alvin C. Graves, who would use it in a final test before the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests scheduled a month later at Bikini Atoll. It required the operator to place two half-spheres of beryllium (a neutron reflector) around the core to be tested and manually lower the top reflector over the core using a thumb hole on the top. As the reflectors were manually moved closer and farther away from each other, scintillation counters measured the relative activity from the core. The experimenter needed to maintain a slight separation between the reflector halves in order to stay below criticality. The standard protocol was to use shims between the halves, as allowing them to close completely could result in the instantaneous formation of a critical mass and a lethal power excursion. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,448 | Under Slotin's own unapproved protocol, the shims were not used and the only thing preventing the closure was the blade of a standard flat-tipped screwdriver manipulated in Slotin's other hand. Slotin, who was given to bravado, became the local expert, performing the test on almost a dozen occasions, often in his trademark blue jeans and cowboy boots, in front of a roomful of observers. Enrico Fermi reportedly told Slotin and others they would be "dead within a year" if they continued performing the test in that manner. Scientists referred to this flirting with the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction as "tickling the dragon's tail", based on a remark by physicist Richard Feynman, who compared the experiments to "tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,449 | On the day of the accident, Slotin's screwdriver slipped outward a fraction of an inch while he was lowering the top reflector, allowing the reflector to fall into place around the core. Instantly, there was a flash of blue light and a wave of heat across Slotin's skin; the core had become supercritical, releasing an intense burst of neutron radiation estimated to have lasted about a half second. Slotin quickly twisted his wrist, flipping the top shell to the floor. The heating of the core and shells stopped the criticality within seconds of its initiation, while Slotin's reaction prevented a recurrence and ended the accident. The position of Slotin's body over the apparatus also shielded the others from much of the neutron radiation, but he received a lethal dose of neutron and gamma radiation in under a second and died nine days later from acute radiation poisoning. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,450 | The nearest person to Slotin, Graves, who was watching over Slotin's shoulder and was thus partially shielded by him, received a high but non-lethal radiation dose. Graves was hospitalized for several weeks with severe radiation poisoning. He died 19 years later, at age 55, of a heart attack. While this may have been caused by Graves' exposure to radiation, his father also died of a heart attack (suggesting that the event may have been hereditary). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,451 | The second accident was reported by the Associated Press on May 26, 1946: "Four men injured through accidental exposure to radiation in the government's atomic laboratory here [Los Alamos] have been discharged from the hospital and 'immediate condition' of four others is satisfactory, the Army reported today. Dr. Norris E. Bradbury, project director, said the men were injured last Tuesday in what he described as an experiment with fissionable material." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,452 | Follow-up research was conducted on the health of the men. An early report was published in 1951. A later report was compiled for the U.S. government and submitted in 1979. A summary of its findings: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,453 | Two machinists, Paul Long and another, unidentified, in another part of the building, away, were not treated. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,454 | After these incidents the core, originally known as "Rufus", was referred to as the "demon core". Hands-on criticality experiments were stopped, and remote-control machines and TV cameras were designed by Schreiber, one of the survivors, to perform such experiments with all personnel at a quarter-mile distance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,455 | The demon core was intended for use in the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests, but after the criticality accident, time was needed for its radioactivity to decline and for it to be re-evaluated for the effects of the fission products it held, some of which were highly neutron poisonous to the desired level of fission. The next two cores were shipped for use in "Able" and "Baker", and the demon core was scheduled to be shipped later for the third test of the series, provisionally named "Charlie", but that test was cancelled due to the unexpected level of radioactivity resulting from the underwater "Baker" test and the inability to decontaminate the target warships. The core was later melted down and the material recycled for use in other cores. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12760938 |
12,456 | Isaac Asimov ( ; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,457 | Asimov's most famous work is the "Foundation" series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the "Galactic Empire" series and the "Robot" series. The "Galactic Empire" novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the "Foundation" series. Later, with "Foundation and Earth" (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the "Lucky Starr" series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,458 | Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include "Guide to Science", the three-volume "Understanding Physics", and "Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery". He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,459 | He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot ASIMO, and four literary awards. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,460 | Asimov's family name derives from the first part of (), meaning 'winter grain' (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending "-ov" added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,461 | Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,462 | Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,463 | Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,464 | In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the "Long Island Newsday". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,465 | Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS "Baltic", arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. His parents spoke Yiddish and English with him, and he remained fluent in those; he never learned Russian. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,466 | After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, which Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time that the genre was becoming more science-centered. Asimov was also a frequent patron of the Brooklyn Public Library during his formative years. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,467 | Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College. This was a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the academically qualified Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to the more prestigious Columbia College, but exceeded the unwritten ethnic admission quotas which were common at the time. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Columbia's Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,468 | After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,469 | In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the post-war U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,470 | After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year with Dr. Robert Elderfield, Asimov was offered the position of associate professor of biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine. This was in large part due to his years-long correspondence with Dr. William Boyd, a former associate professor of biochemistry at Boston University, who first reached out to compliment Asimov on his story "Nightfall". Upon receiving a promotion to professor of immunochemistry, Boyd reached out to Asimov, requesting him to be his replacement. Unfortunately, the initial offer of professorship was withdrawn and Asimov was offered the position of instructor of biochemistry instead, which he accepted. He began work in 1949 with a $5,000 salary (), maintaining this position for several years. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to tenured associate professor. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,471 | In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile defense project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information, but submitted a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,472 | Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,473 | Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,474 | Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the "Robot" novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the "Queen Elizabeth 2". He sailed to England in June 1974 on the for a trip mostly devoted to lectures in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,475 | Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly hired to give talks about science. He was a frequent participant at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle, but learned to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book "Asimov Laughs Again", he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,476 | Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the male-only literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in "More Tales of the Black Widowers". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,477 | In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on "" for advice he gave during production. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,478 | Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,479 | Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,480 | After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,481 | In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,482 | He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, "It's Been a Good Life". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,483 | Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of "The Naked Sun" (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called "Biochemistry and Human Metabolism". Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, he wrote more nonfiction, particularly popular science books, and less science fiction. Over the next quarter-century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, and 120 nonfiction books. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,484 | Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of "Foundation's Edge". From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,485 | Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the "Foundation" series. The "Oxford English Dictionary" credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. "" featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,486 | Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. He wrote several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books "The Humanist Way" (1988) and "In Pursuit of Truth" (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, but none of his own books were classified in that category. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,487 | According to UNESCO's "Index Translationum database", Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,488 | Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,489 | Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating "The Rover Boys" with eight chapters of "The Greenville Chums at College". His father bought him a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of "Astounding Science Fiction", Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to "Astounding" editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a detailed rejection letter. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,490 | By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to "Amazing Stories", edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May "Amazing" and "Trends" in the July "Astounding", the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in "Astounding". His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,491 | Asimov later said that unlike other Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). By 1941 Asimov was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told him that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of "Astonishing"—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,492 | Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and "Astounding" published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In "Nightfall and Other Stories" Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,493 | After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his "Foundation" stories—later collected in the "Foundation" trilogy: "Foundation" (1951), "Foundation and Empire" (1952), and "Second Foundation" (1953). The books describe the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,494 | The trilogy and "Robot" series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,495 | His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in "I, Robot" (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection "The Complete Robot" (1982) that he was largely inspired by the tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,496 | The "Robot" series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of "I, Robot" that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie "I, Robot", starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled "Hardwired", with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel "The Positronic Man" by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie "Bicentennial Man", starring Robin Williams. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,497 | Besides movies, his "Foundation" and "Robot" stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,498 | In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
12,499 | Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of "Pebble in the Sky". Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with "The Martian Way and Other Stories" in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as "I, Robot" and his "Foundation" stories and novelettes as the three books of the "Foundation trilogy". More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as "The Rest of the Robots". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573 |
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