Contains 55 essays on science fiction.

A collection of essays by a master of science fiction is devoted to a discussion of the nature, characteristics, and function of science-fiction writing, including information on authors, works, and themes

Gold is the final and crowning achievement of the fifty-year career of science fiction's transcendent genius, the world-famous author who defined the field of science fiction for its practitioners, its millions of readers, and the world at large. The first section contains stories that range from the humorous to the profound, at the heart of which is the title story, "Gold," a moving and revealing drama about a writer who gambles everything on a chance at immortality: a gamble Asimov himself made -- and won. The second section contains the grand master's ruminations on the SF genre itself. And the final section is comprised of Asimov's thoughts on the craft and writing of science fiction.

Compares what writers over the centuries have written about an imaginary future with the reality revealed by time.

Galaxy book.

When he was twenty-one years old, Isaac Asimov published Nightfall, a story that set the standard for science fiction at that time and established its author as a major science fiction writer. Over the next fifty years, Asimov went on to push the frontiers of science fiction and redefine the genre. Much of the science fiction found today in movies or on television can be traced to Asimov's ideas of futuristic societies featuring robots, space travel, and galaxy-wide civilizations. Asimov, a scientist, has also published hundreds of popular nonfiction books about science. Author Karen Judson interviewed Asimov's widow, Dr. Janet Asimov, and others, to put together an insider's view of the life and legacy of Isaac Asimov and to place the man and his work into the continuum of science fiction literature.