title: Demon core

text: 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.


title: Demon core

text: 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.


title: Demon core

text: 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.


title: Demon core

text: 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:


title: Demon core

text: 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.


title: Demon core

text: 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.


title: Demon core

text: 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.


title: Demon core

text: 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.


title: Demon core

text: 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".


title: Demon core

text: 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.


title: Demon core

text: 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).


title: Demon core

text: 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."


title: Demon core

text: 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:


title: Demon core

text: Two machinists, Paul Long and another, unidentified, in another part of the building, away, were not treated.


title: Demon core

text: 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.


title: Demon core

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: According to UNESCO's "Index Translationum database", Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: 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".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Books and the magazines "Galaxy" and "Fantasy & Science Fiction" ended Asimov's dependence on "Astounding". He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In 1972, his novel "The Gods Themselves" (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic, but did not use McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with "Fantasy & Science Fiction"; "I have no complaints about "Astounding", "Galaxy", or any of the rest, heaven knows, but "F&SF" has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine" (now "Asimov's Science Fiction") and wrote an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived "Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine" and a companion "Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology" reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine"s and "Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine"s "anthologies").


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his "Foundation" series, he did so with "Foundation's Edge" (1982) and "Foundation and Earth" (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with "Prelude to Foundation" (1988) and "Forward the Foundation" (1992), his last novel.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's "The Naked Sun" and 1982's "Foundation's Edge", two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in "The Rest of the Robots" that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: "Fantasy and Science Fiction" invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine "Venture Science Fiction Magazine". The first of 399 monthly "F&SF" columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, "The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science" (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for "F&SF". The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these "F & SF" articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's "nothing"".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read "un"-"ionized" (electrically neutral), while non-chemists will read "union-ized" (belonging to a trade union).


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in "Gold" ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, "Astounding Science Fiction", March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his "Foundation" stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel "Foundation". Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including "The Greeks: A Great Adventure" (1965), "The Roman Republic" (1966), "The Roman Empire" (1967), "The Egyptians" (1967) "The Near East: 10,000 Years of History" (1968), and "Asimov's Chronology of the World" (1991).


title: Isaac Asimov

text: He published "Asimov's Guide to the Bible" in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including "Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare" (1970), "Asimov's Annotated Don Juan" (1972), "Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost" (1974), and "The Annotated Gulliver's Travels" (1980).


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine". He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with "Lecherous Limericks", which appeared in 1975. "Limericks: Too Gross", whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in "Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon". The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's "Treasury of Humor" is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as "The Sensuous Woman" (by "J") and "The Sensuous Man" (by "M"), Asimov published "The Sensuous Dirty Old Man" under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. "In Memory Yet Green" (1979) and "In Joy Still Felt" (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, "I. Asimov: A Memoir" (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited "It's Been a Good Life" (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, "Opus 100" (1969), "Opus 200" (1979), and "Opus 300" (1984).


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote "How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort". In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov and "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during "Star Trek"s initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on "Star Trek"s scientific accuracy for "TV Guide" magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to "TV Guide" claiming that despite its inaccuracies, "Star Trek" was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of "Star Trek" projects.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov used an outline only once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov's fiction style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of "I, Robot":


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in "Second Foundation", Elijah Baley in "The Caves of Steel", and Hari Seldon in the "Foundation" prequels.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, there is relatively little literary criticism on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's "Dictionary of Literary Biography" (1981) gives a possible reason:


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Gunn's and Patrouch's studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in "The Caves of Steel" "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of "The Gods Themselves" begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early "Robot" stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of "The Currents of Space" did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel "Nemesis" one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time of the first group.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when "Astounding"s editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote "The Gods Themselves", which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of "The Gods Themselves", the part that deals with those themes.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, based on himself, who has one of his books ("The Gods Themselves") adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to "Astounding", where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". To his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote "The Gods Themselves" to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work, but some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In his autobiographical writings, such as "Gold" ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The "Washington Post"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s "Book World" section reports of "Robots and Empire" opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism less stringently than they had in Petrovichi; they did not force their beliefs upon young Isaac, and he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the "Torah" represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the "Iliad" recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books "Treasury of Humor" and "Asimov Laughs Again" record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of "Asimov's Guide to the Bible", an analysis of the historic foundations for the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov continued to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, "Wandering Stars": "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."


title: Isaac Asimov

text: The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, "In Joy Still Felt", Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."


title: Isaac Asimov

text: After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov believed that ""science" fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by 2019.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In a 1971 satirical piece, "The Sensuous Dirty Old Man", Asimov wrote: "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."


title: Isaac Asimov

text: According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Additional specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction", who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her "left breast"".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power, even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident, damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in "Yours, Isaac Asimov", he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, "Our Angry Earth" (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and used "The Lord of the Rings" as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled "Nothing like Murder". In the essay "All or Nothing" (for "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction," Jan 1981), Asimov said that he admired Tolkien and that he had read "The Lord of the Rings" five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien saying that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)


title: Isaac Asimov

text: He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".


title: Isaac Asimov

text: The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke–Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book "Report on Planet Three" (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke–Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."


title: Isaac Asimov

text: In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory inspired him to become an economist.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes , "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."


title: Isaac Asimov

text: Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published "Opus 100" (1969), "Opus 200" (1979), and "Opus 300" (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: The "Robot" series was originally separate from the "Foundation" series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as "Foundation". Later in life, Asimov synthesized the "Robot" series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the "Foundation" series.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.


title: Isaac Asimov

text: The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" and collected by Doubleday & Co


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capital is Hartford and its most populous city is Bridgeport. Historically the state is part of New England as well as the tri-state area with New York and New Jersey. The state is named for the Connecticut River which approximately bisects the state. The word "Connecticut" is derived from various anglicized spellings of "Quinnetuket”, a Mohegan-Pequot word for "long tidal river".


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut's first European settlers were Dutchmen who established a small, short-lived settlement called House of Hope in Hartford at the confluence of the Park and Connecticut Rivers. Half of Connecticut was initially claimed by the Dutch colony New Netherland, which included much of the land between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, although the first major settlements were established in the 1630s by the English. Thomas Hooker led a band of followers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded the Connecticut Colony; other settlers from Massachusetts founded the Saybrook Colony and the New Haven Colony. The Connecticut and New Haven colonies established documents of Fundamental Orders, considered the first constitutions in America. In 1662, the three colonies were merged under a royal charter, making Connecticut a crown colony. Connecticut was one of the Thirteen Colonies which rejected British rule in the American Revolution. It was influential in the development of the federal government of the United States.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut is the third smallest state by area, the 29th most populous, and the fourth most densely populated of the fifty states. It is known as the "Constitution State", the "Nutmeg State", the "Provisions State", and the "Land of Steady Habits". The Connecticut River, Thames River, and ports along Long Island Sound have given Connecticut a strong maritime tradition which continues today. The state also has a long history of hosting the financial services industry, including insurance companies in Hartford County and hedge funds in Fairfield County. As of the 2010 census, it has the highest per-capita income, second-highest level of human development behind Massachusetts, and highest median household income in the United States.


title: Connecticut

text: The name Connecticut is derived from the Mohegan-Pequot word that has been translated as "long tidal river" and "upon the long river", both referring to the Connecticut River. Evidence of human presence in the Connecticut region dates to as much as 10,000 years ago. Stone tools were used for hunting, fishing, and woodworking. Semi-nomadic in lifestyle, these peoples moved seasonally to take advantage of various resources in the area. They shared languages based on Algonquian. The Connecticut region was inhabited by multiple Native American tribes which can be grouped into the Nipmuc, the Sequin or "River Indians" (which included the Tunxis, Schaghticoke, Podunk, Wangunk, Hammonasset, and Quinnipiac), the Mattabesec or "Wappinger Confederacy" and the Pequot-Mohegan. Some of these groups still reside in Connecticut, including the Mohegans, the Pequots, and the Paugusetts.


title: Connecticut

text: The first European explorer in Connecticut was Dutchman Adriaen Block, who explored the region in 1614. Dutch fur traders then sailed up the Connecticut River, which they called Versche Rivier ("Fresh River"), and built a fort at Dutch Point in Hartford that they named "House of Hope" ().


title: Connecticut

text: The Connecticut Colony was originally a number of separate, smaller settlements at Windsor, Wethersfield, Saybrook, Hartford, and New Haven. The first English settlers came in 1633 and settled at Windsor, and then at Wethersfield the following year. John Winthrop the Younger of Massachusetts received a commission to create Saybrook Colony at the mouth of the Connecticut River in 1635.


title: Connecticut

text: The main body of settlers came in one large group in 1636. They were Puritans from Massachusetts Bay Colony led by Thomas Hooker, who established the Connecticut Colony at Hartford. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were adopted in January 1639, and have been described as the first constitutional document in America.


title: Connecticut

text: The Quinnipiack Colony was established by John Davenport, Theophilus Eaton, and others at New Haven in March 1638. The New Haven Colony had its own constitution called "The Fundamental Agreement of the New Haven Colony", signed on June 4, 1639.


title: Connecticut

text: The settlements were established without official sanction of the English Crown, and each was an independent political entity. In 1662, Winthrop traveled to England and obtained a charter from CharlesII which united the settlements of Connecticut. Historically important colonial settlements included Windsor (1633), Wethersfield (1634), Saybrook (1635), Hartford (1636), New Haven (1638), Fairfield (1639), Guilford (1639), Milford (1639), Stratford (1639), Farmington (1640), Stamford (1641), and New London (1646).


title: Connecticut

text: The Pequot War marked the first major clash between colonists and Native Americans in New England. The Pequots reacted with increasing aggression to Colonial settlements in their territory—while simultaneously taking lands from the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes. Settlers responded to a murder in 1636 with a raid on a Pequot village on Block Island; the Pequots laid siege to Saybrook Colony's garrison that autumn, then raided Wethersfield in the spring of 1637. Colonists declared war on the Pequots, organized a band of militia and allies from the Mohegan and Narragansett tribes, and attacked a Pequot village on the Mystic River, with death toll estimates ranging between 300 and 700 Pequots. After suffering another major loss at a battle in Fairfield, the Pequots asked for a truce and peace terms.


title: Connecticut

text: The western boundaries of Connecticut have been subject to change over time. The Hartford Treaty with the Dutch was signed on September 19, 1650, but it was never ratified by the British. According to it, the western boundary of Connecticut ran north from Greenwich Bay for a distance of , "provided the said line come not within 10 miles of Hudson River". This agreement was observed by both sides until war erupted between England and The Netherlands in 1652. Conflict continued concerning colonial limits until the Duke of York captured New Netherland in 1664.


title: Connecticut

text: On the other hand, Connecticut's original Charter in 1662 granted it all the land to the "South Sea"—that is, to the Pacific Ocean. Most Colonial royal grants were for long east–west strips. Connecticut took its grant seriously and established a ninth county between the Susquehanna River and Delaware River named Westmoreland County. This resulted in the brief Pennamite Wars with Pennsylvania.


title: Connecticut

text: Yale College was established in 1701, providing Connecticut with an important institution to educate clergy and civil leaders. The Congregational church dominated religious life in the colony and, by extension, town affairs in many parts.


title: Connecticut

text: With more than 600 miles of coastline including along its navigable rivers, Connecticut developed during its colonial years the antecedents of a maritime tradition that would later produce booms in shipbuilding, marine transport, naval support, seafood production, and leisure boating.


title: Connecticut

text: Historical records list the "Tryall" as the first vessel built in Connecticut Colony, in 1649 at a site on the Connecticut River in present-day Wethersfield. In the two decades leading up to 1776 and the American Revolution, Connecticut boatyards launched about 100 sloops, schooners and brigs according to a database of U.S. customs records maintained online by the Mystic Seaport Museum, the largest being the 180-ton "Patient Mary" launched in New Haven in 1763. Connecticut's first lighthouse was constructed in 1760 at the mouth of the Thames River with the New London Harbor Lighthouse.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut designated four delegates to the Second Continental Congress who signed the Declaration of Independence: Samuel Huntington, Roger Sherman, William Williams, and Oliver Wolcott. Connecticut's legislature authorized the outfitting of six new regiments in 1775, in the wake of the clashes between British regulars and Massachusetts militia at Lexington and Concord. There were some 1,200 Connecticut troops on hand at the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775. In 1775, David Bushnell invented the "Turtle" which the following year launched the first submarine attack in history, unsuccessfully against a British warship at anchor in New York Harbor.


title: Connecticut

text: In 1777, the British got word of Continental Army supplies in Danbury, and they landed an expeditionary force of some 2,000 troops in Westport. This force then marched to Danbury and destroyed homes and much of the depot. Continental Army troops and militia led by General David Wooster and General Benedict Arnold engaged them on their return march at Ridgefield in 1777. For the winter of 1778–79, General George Washington decided to split the Continental Army into three divisions encircling New York City, where British General Sir Henry Clinton had taken up winter quarters. Major General Israel Putnam chose Redding as the winter encampment quarters for some 3,000 regulars and militia under his command. The Redding encampment allowed Putnam's soldiers to guard the replenished supply depot in Danbury and to support any operations along Long Island Sound and the Hudson River Valley. Some of the men were veterans of the winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the previous winter. Soldiers at the Redding camp endured supply shortages, cold temperatures, and significant snow, with some historians dubbing the encampment "Connecticut's Valley Forge".


title: Connecticut

text: The state was also the launching site for a number of raids against Long Island orchestrated by Samuel Holden Parsons and Benjamin Tallmadge, and provided men and material for the war effort, especially to Washington's army outside New York City. General William Tryon raided the Connecticut coast in July 1779, focusing on New Haven, Norwalk, and Fairfield. New London and Groton Heights were raided in September 1781 by Benedict Arnold, who had turned traitor to the British.


title: Connecticut

text: At the outset of the American Revolution, the Continental Congress assigned Nathaniel Shaw Jr. of New London as its naval agent in charge of recruiting privateers to seize British vessels as opportunities presented, with nearly 50 operating out of the Thames River which eventually drew the reprisal from the British force led by Arnold.


title: Connecticut

text: The state prospered during the era following the American Revolution, as mills and textile factories were built and seaports flourished from trade and fisheries. After Congress established in 1790 the predecessor to the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service that would evolve into the U.S. Coast Guard, President Washington assigned Jonathan Maltbie as one of seven masters to enforce customs regulations, with Maltbie monitoring the southern New England coast with a 48-foot cutter sloop named "Argus".


title: Connecticut

text: In 1786, Connecticut ceded territory to the U.S. government that became part of the Northwest Territory. The state retained land extending across the northern part of present-day Ohio called the Connecticut Western Reserve. The Western Reserve section was settled largely by people from Connecticut, and they brought Connecticut place names to Ohio.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut made agreements with Pennsylvania and New York which extinguished the land claims within those states' boundaries and created the Connecticut Panhandle. The state then ceded the Western Reserve in 1800 to the federal government, which brought it to its present boundaries (other than minor adjustments with Massachusetts).


title: Connecticut

text: For the first time in 1800, Connecticut shipwrights launched more than 100 vessels in a single year. Over the following decade to the doorstep of renewed hostilities with Britain that sparked the War of 1812, Connecticut boatyards constructed close to 1,000 vessels, the most productive stretch of any decade in the 19th century.


title: Connecticut

text: During the war, the British launched raids in Stonington and Essex and blockaded vessels in the Thames River. Derby native Isaac Hull became Connecticut's best-known naval figure to win renown during the conflict, as captain of the .


title: Connecticut

text: The British blockade during the War of 1812 hurt exports and bolstered the influence of Federalists who opposed the war. The cessation of imports from Britain stimulated the construction of factories to manufacture textiles and machinery. Connecticut came to be recognized as a major center for manufacturing, due in part to the inventions of Eli Whitney and other early innovators of the Industrial Revolution.


title: Connecticut

text: The war led to the development of fast clippers that helped extend the reach of New England merchants to the Pacific and Indian oceans. The first half of the 19th century saw as well a rapid rise in whaling, with New London emerging as one of the New England industry's three biggest home ports after Nantucket and New Bedford.


title: Connecticut

text: The state was known for its political conservatism, typified by its Federalist party and the Yale College of Timothy Dwight. The foremost intellectuals were Dwight and Noah Webster, who compiled his great dictionary in New Haven. Religious tensions polarized the state, as the Congregational Church struggled to maintain traditional viewpoints, in alliance with the Federalists. The failure of the Hartford Convention in 1814 hurt the Federalist cause, with the Democratic-Republican Party gaining control in 1817.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut had been governed under the "Fundamental Orders" since 1639, but the state adopted a new constitution in 1818.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut manufacturers played a major role in supplying the Union forces with weapons and supplies during the Civil War. The state furnished 55,000 men, formed into thirty full regiments of infantry, including two in the U.S. Colored Troops, with several Connecticut men becoming generals. The Navy attracted 250 officers and 2,100 men, and Glastonbury native Gideon Welles was Secretary of the Navy. James H. Ward of Hartford was the first U.S. Naval Officer killed in the Civil War. Connecticut casualties included 2,088 killed in combat, 2,801 dying from disease, and 689 dying in Confederate prison camps.


title: Connecticut

text: A surge of national unity in 1861 brought thousands flocking to the colors from every town and city. However, as the war became a crusade to end slavery, many Democrats (especially Irish Catholics) pulled back. The Democrats took a pro-slavery position and included many Copperheads willing to let the South secede. The intensely fought 1863 election for governor was narrowly won by the Republicans.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut's extensive industry, dense population, flat terrain, and wealth encouraged the construction of railroads starting in 1839. By 1840, of line were in operation, growing to in 1850 and in 1860.


title: Connecticut

text: The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, called the "New Haven" or "The Consolidated", became the dominant Connecticut railroad company after 1872. J. P. Morgan began financing the major New England railroads in the 1890s, dividing territory so that they would not compete. The New Haven purchased 50 smaller companies, including steamship lines, and built a network of light rails (electrified trolleys) that provided inter-urban transportation for all of southern New England. By 1912, the New Haven operated over of track with 120,000 employees.


title: Connecticut

text: As steam-powered passenger ships proliferated after the Civil War, Noank would produce the two largest built in Connecticut during the 19th century, with the 332-foot wooden steam paddle wheeler "Rhode Island" launched in 1882, and the 345-foot paddle wheeler "Connecticut" seven years later. Connecticut shipyards would launch more than 165 steam-powered vessels in the 19th century.


title: Connecticut

text: When World War I broke out in 1914, Connecticut became a major supplier of weaponry to the U.S. military; by 1918, 80% of the state's industries were producing goods for the war effort. Remington Arms in Bridgeport produced half the small-arms cartridges used by the U.S. Army, with other major suppliers including Winchester in New Haven and Colt in Hartford.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut was also an important U.S. Navy supplier, with Electric Boat receiving orders for 85 submarines, Lake Torpedo Boat building more than 20 subs, and the Groton Iron Works building freighters. On June 21, 1916, the Navy made Groton the site for its East Coast submarine base and school.


title: Connecticut

text: The state enthusiastically supported the American war effort in 1917 and 1918 with large purchases of war bonds, a further expansion of industry, and an emphasis on increasing food production on the farms. Thousands of state, local, and volunteer groups mobilized for the war effort and were coordinated by the Connecticut State Council of Defense. Manufacturers wrestled with manpower shortages; Waterbury's American Brass and Manufacturing Company was running at half capacity, so the federal government agreed to furlough soldiers to work there.


title: Connecticut

text: In 1919, J. Henry Roraback started the Connecticut Light & Power Co. which became the state's dominant electric utility. In 1925, Frederick Rentschler spurred the creation of Pratt & Whitney in Hartford to develop engines for aircraft; the company became an important military supplier in World WarII and one of the three major manufacturers of jet engines in the world.


title: Connecticut

text: On September 21, 1938, the most destructive storm in New England history struck eastern Connecticut, killing hundreds of people. The eye of the "Long Island Express" passed just west of New Haven and devastated the Connecticut shoreline between Old Saybrook and Stonington from the full force of wind and waves, even though they had partial protection by Long Island. The hurricane caused extensive damage to infrastructure, homes, and businesses. In New London, a 500-foot (150 m) sailing ship was driven into a warehouse complex, causing a major fire. Heavy rainfall caused the Connecticut River to flood downtown Hartford and East Hartford. An estimated 50,000 trees fell onto roadways.


title: Connecticut

text: The advent of lend-lease in support of Britain helped lift Connecticut from the Great Depression, with the state a major production center for weaponry and supplies used in World WarII. Connecticut manufactured 4.1% of total U.S. military armaments produced during the war, ranking ninth among the 48 states, with major factories including Colt for firearms, Pratt & Whitney for aircraft engines, Chance Vought for fighter planes, Hamilton Standard for propellers, and Electric Boat for submarines and PT boats. In Bridgeport, General Electric produced a significant new weapon to combat tanks: the bazooka.


title: Connecticut

text: On May 13, 1940, Igor Sikorsky made an untethered flight of the first practical helicopter. The helicopter saw limited use in World War II, but future military production made Sikorsky Aircraft's Stratford plant Connecticut's largest single manufacturing site by the start of the 21st century.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut lost some wartime factories following the end of hostilities, but the state shared in a general post-war expansion that included the construction of highways and resulting in middle-class growth in suburban areas.


title: Connecticut

text: Prescott Bush represented Connecticut in the U.S. Senate from 1952 to 1963; his son George H. W. Bush and grandson George W. Bush both became presidents of the United States. In 1965, Connecticut ratified its current constitution, replacing the document that had served since 1818.


title: Connecticut

text: In 1968, commercial operation began for the Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Haddam; in 1970, the Millstone Nuclear Power Station began operations in Waterford. In 1974, Connecticut elected Democratic Governor Ella T. Grasso, who became the first woman in any state to be elected governor without being the wife or widow of a previous governor.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut's dependence on the defense industry posed an economic challenge at the end of the Cold War. The resulting budget crisis helped elect Lowell Weicker as governor on a third-party ticket in 1990. Weicker's remedy was a state income tax which proved effective in balancing the budget, but only for the short-term. He did not run for a second term, in part because of this politically unpopular move.


title: Connecticut

text: In 1992, initial construction was completed on Foxwoods Casino at the Mashantucket Pequots reservation in eastern Connecticut, which became the largest casino in the Western Hemisphere. Mohegan Sun followed four years later.


title: Connecticut

text: In 2000, presidential candidate Al Gore chose Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate, marking the first time that a major party presidential ticket included someone of the Jewish faith. Gore and Lieberman fell five votes short of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the Electoral College. In the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, 65 state residents were killed, mostly Fairfield County residents who were working in the World Trade Center. In 2004, Republican Governor John G. Rowland resigned during a corruption investigation, later pleading guilty to federal charges.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut was hit by three major storms in just over 14 months in 2011 and 2012, with all three causing extensive property damage and electric outages. Hurricane Irene struck Connecticut August 28, and damage totaled $235 million. Two months later, the "Halloween nor'easter" dropped extensive snow onto trees, resulting in snapped branches and trunks that damaged power lines; some areas were without electricity for 11 days. Hurricane Sandy had tropical storm-force winds when it reached Connecticut October 29, 2012. Sandy's winds drove storm surges into streets and cut power to 98% of homes and businesses, with more than $360 million in damage.


title: Connecticut

text: On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, and then killed himself. The massacre spurred renewed efforts by activists for tighter laws on gun ownership nationally.


title: Connecticut

text: In the summer and fall of 2016, Connecticut experienced a drought in many parts of the state, causing some water-use bans. As of , 45% of the state was listed at Severe Drought by the U.S. Drought Monitor, including almost all of Hartford and Litchfield counties. All the rest of the state was in Moderate Drought or Severe Drought, including Middlesex, Fairfield, New London, New Haven, Windham, and Tolland counties. This affected the agricultural economy in the state.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut is bordered on the south by Long Island Sound, on the west by New York, on the north by Massachusetts, and on the east by Rhode Island. The state capital and fourth largest city is Hartford, and other major cities and towns (by population) include Bridgeport, New Haven, Stamford, Waterbury, Norwalk, Danbury, New Britain, Greenwich, and Bristol. There are 169 incorporated towns in Connecticut, with cities and villages included within some towns.


title: Connecticut

text: The highest peak in Connecticut is Bear Mountain in Salisbury in the northwest corner of the state. The highest point is just east of where Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York meet (42°3′ N, 73°29′ W), on the southern slope of Mount Frissell, whose peak lies nearby in Massachusetts. At the opposite extreme, many of the coastal towns have areas that are less than 20 feet (6 m) above sea level.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut has a long maritime history and a reputation based on that history—yet the state has no direct oceanfront (technically speaking). The coast of Connecticut sits on Long Island Sound, which is an estuary. The state's access to the open Atlantic Ocean is both to the west (toward New York City) and to the east (toward the "race" near Rhode Island). Due to this unique geography, Long Island Sound and the Connecticut shoreline are relatively protected from high waves from storms.


title: Connecticut

text: The Connecticut River cuts through the center of the state, flowing into Long Island Sound. The most populous metropolitan region centered within the state lies in the Connecticut River Valley. Despite Connecticut's relatively small size, it features wide regional variations in its landscape; for example, in the northwestern Litchfield Hills, it features rolling mountains and horse farms, whereas in areas to the east of New Haven along the coast, the landscape features coastal marshes, beaches, and large scale maritime activities.


title: Connecticut

text: Connecticut's rural areas and small towns in the northeast and northwest corners of the state contrast sharply with its industrial cities such as Stamford, Bridgeport, and New Haven, located along the coastal highways from the New York border to New London, then northward up the Connecticut River to Hartford. Many towns in northeastern and northwestern Connecticut center around a green. Near the green typically stand historical visual symbols of New England towns, such as a white church, a colonial meeting house, a colonial tavern or inn, several colonial houses, and so on, establishing a scenic historical appearance maintained for both historic preservation and tourism. Many of the areas in southern and coastal Connecticut have been built up and rebuilt over the years, and look less visually like traditional New England.


title: Connecticut

text: The northern boundary of the state with Massachusetts is marked by the Southwick Jog or Granby Notch, an approximately square detour into Connecticut. The origin of this anomaly is clearly established in a long line of disputes and temporary agreements which were finally concluded in 1804, when southern Southwick's residents sought to leave Massachusetts, and the town was split in half.