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Aside from the 1980s best-sellers and the posthumous Forward the Foundation, Asimov's other science-fiction novels do not fall into any series but do fit into the same future history. With the exception of The Gods Themselves and the novelization of the screenplay for Fantastic Voyage, they began at the start of the fifties and were all published before that decade was over. |
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Asimov became a science-fiction writer by design, but he became a novelist by accident. It was one of those accidents that seemed like ill fortune at the time but turned out to be great good luck in the long run. At least that is how Asimov perceived it in his autobiography, where as may be natural in a work intended to make sense out of the miscellaneous occurrences of a life that started in obscurity and ended in national treasurehood everything happened for the best. |
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No doubt Asimov eventually would have written novels. The time was right, and Asimov himself had worked up to longer lengths. "The Mule," completed May 5, 1945, was fifty thousand words long, just ten thousand short of the standard genre novel. But had it not been for a series of accidents, he might not have begun so soon nor succeeded so far beyond his expectations. |
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Asimov's novels began with a request from Sam Merwin, Jr., editor of Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories. Merwin, or possibly his superior at the magazine publishing house, Leo Margulies, had decided that the magazines should begin to publish Astounding-type stories. By this time Asimov was recognized as perhaps not the greatest but the most typical Astounding author, and when he dropped in at the magazine office on May 26, 1947, Merwin suggested that Asimov write a lead novel for Startling Stories. |
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Lead novels for science-fiction adventure magazines such as Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, Planet Stories, and Merwin's two magazines ran about forty thousand words, and suitable stories of this length were |
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