Isaac Asimov was almost unbelievably prolific in both the number of books he produced and the variety of genres he tackled. He churned out mysteries, young-adult and adult science fiction, young-adult and adult nonfiction, histories, and books of limericks. He also edited a number of anthologies. However, he is best remembered as a master of science fiction, and he more than any other writer popularized science for a vast market. With unshakable faith in science and technology, Asimov, with objectivity and humanity, made comprehensible the cosmological questions that newspaper accounts never seemed to clarify. With the addition of his irrepressible earthy wit, he could make science wondrous and never tedious.
His most famous and certainly most influential book was I, Robot (1950), which laid down his Three Laws of Robotics and changed the nature of robot stories forever. This book introduced Susan Calvin, a robot psychologist, who appeared in many of the robot stories and...