Isaac Asimov is one of the most prolific writers in the history of mankind; he has published so much that some reviewers thought his name must be a pseudonym under which a whole group of writers combined their ideas. In reality, this man existed only once. He worked without help, typed his manuscripts alone from the first draft to the last, answered his mail personally, and was available by phone. He had a well-organized library of reference books, a cheap calculator, and a remarkable memory. And, of course, his real name was Isaac Asimov. He lived in an expensive but characterless New York skyscraper, one of those well-oriented towers with little fountains in front of the entrances and plastic corridor lights. The spacious penthouse he shared with his wife, Janet, was on the 33rd floor and overlooked Central Park. The room where he wrote was furnished almost simply. There was a grey metal desk in the centre with a blank white wall behind it. The drawers of his desk were lined with neatly marked labels. Everything looked neat, but also bare. The blinds were drawn, obscuring the view of the Manhattan skyline. "I prefer to work in artificial light," Asimov said.

In truth, this guide to distant galaxies and visionary of the space age was afraid of heights. In fact, he refused to board an airplane and generally stayed as close to planet Earth as possible. But this was no hardship for Isaac Asimov, who had no interest in traveling anyway. "In my mind, I've been everywhere in the universe, so I can spare myself all these little trips. I've been to England once, by boat, in 1974. I really liked Stonehenge. The place looked exactly as I imagined it. His first story went to John W. Campbell Jr, editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. "I was completely under his spell. He filled me with enthusiasm. He made science fiction the most compelling thing in the world. Writing mostly for Campbell, he quickly built a reputation among science fiction readers. Many of his early stories were about robots, but Asimov admitted that, paradoxically, he didn't know the first thing about engineering. When his typewriter broke down, he didn't know what to do. He was never much of a light in the lab, either. "I am the ivory tower personified. I can explain how things work, but I can't do anything with my own hands.

Isaac Asimov's robot stories can be found in the short story collections "I, the Robot" and "The Rest of the Robots", and in the novels "The Man from Over There" and "The Naked Sun". However, you can also find one or two robot stories in the author's other short story collections. Asimov's story "And Darkness Will Come" was voted one of the best SF stories of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America and has been reprinted in numerous anthologies. Asimov became best known for a trilogy of novels entitled The Thousand Year Plan, The Galactic General, and All Roads Lead to Trantor, an epic series retelling the fall of the Roman Empire against a galactic backdrop. The so-called Foundation trilogy first appeared in book form in the 1950s. It had previously been published in "Astounding" in the 1940s. Since 1958, Asimov has concentrated on writing popular science books, putting science fiction on the back burner. However, his novel "Lunatico," which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and his short story collection "The Bicentennial" (published in 1973 and 1978, respectively) prove that he was by no means retreating from the genre.  His last novels, "Nightfall" and "Child of Time," which he co-wrote with Robert Silverberg, were published in 1990 and 1991.