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Paul Lehr cover art to Isaac Asimov’s “The Stars, Like Dust”

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i picked up the may 1953 issue of science fiction quarterly at a thrift store for 3 bucks (it was missing both covers), gonna try and scan it into my computer & upload a pdf if anyone's interested also, i got an 86 on my research paper, which is better than i was expecting. not great, but okay. it was organizationally a bit of a mess haha, i havent worked up the courage to ask for it back yet (i got the grade back a little over a week ago).

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@alcarohtareseere thank you! that's really nice of you to say ☺️

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@alcarohtareseere thanks! i hope so, considering it's worth 25% of our fourth quarter grade haha

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finished my asimov research paper draft (it's due tomorrow so not much revision will be done but my roommate is going to proofread it), it's nine pages long when the requirement was six :P

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speaking of fanfiction, here's a shameless self-plug for something i wrote on susan calvin when i was 14 that i don’t remember if i’ve talked about on this blog before:

http://archiveofourown.org/works/4033765

it’s far from perfect, god knows i cringe a little at some of it now, but i’m pretty proud of it.

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@cryptids YES THAT EXACT ONE!!! i love it so much haha

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there's this one fanfiction that reads so much like an actual asimov story that i genuinely forget it's not canon and remember events from it as having happened in robots of dawn or the like, haha.

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Concept art made to accompany Harlan Ellison’s unmade script for “I, Robot.” Susan Calvin as a child, young woman, and old woman.

I loved the script, but having read it over, like so many other far-out scifi concepts, it simply was too ambitious to make with the limitations of special effects in 1978. See also: Oliver Stone’s original script for Conan the Barbarian (I am not kidding). 

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#oh! happy birthday Ted Sturgeon! #Read that story guys. Really. Read it.

#Also STORY TIME #Once upon a time Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek #and Asimov was a pedantic jerk about it at first. xP #He wrote an article criticizing the show for some innacurate science and Roddenberry replied #''dude we have scientists on the team giving us advice but here is why we can't be accurate on tv all the time'' #and Asimov understood it apologised and became a huge fan of the show #and they became friends #this happened during season one

#also in season one: Ted Sturgeon wrote episode 15- Shore Leave #wildly known among Spirk shippers as ''the backrub episode'' #in which Kirk pretends to be in intense back pain when Spock is standing next to his chair #a passing yeoman gives him a massage to help but he doesn't see her approaching #so he leans into her touch and literally moans ''oh yeah right there dig in there Mr. Spo...'' #and then when he realizes his mistake his pain MIRACULOUSLY DISAPPEARS

#ok. cut to the hiatus between seasons one and two. #And Gene writes Asimov like ''Isaac HELP. Kirk is the lead but Spock is more popular. Please advice.'' #Because ops guess what Asimov had previously had that problem with Elijah and Daneel xP #Asimov wrote back ''make the two characters closer. have them save each other's lives. #make it impossible for the audience to think of one without the other'' #Gene was like ''got it thanks bro'' #and so it was that the first episode of season two was Ted Sturgeon's Amok Time #in which basically Kirk and Spock have thinly-veiled metaphorical sex

#In other random facts Ted Sturgeon is also responsible for ''Sturgeon's Law'' #tired of hearing that ''lol 90% of science fiction is garbage'' #he wisely replied that 90% of everything is garbage #happy birthday dude we appreciate you (--alcarohtareseere)

oh wow thanks for that addition in the tags! i knew some of this but not all, that’s super interesting, haha. 

theodore sturgeon was a friend of asimov’s. he would have been 99 today. 

 if you haven’t read “the world well lost”, i highly recommend it–it was written in 1953, featuring a very progressive & compassionate portrayal of gay men (and aliens). made me cry the first time i read it. here’s a link.

i think it’s interesting to compare the way sturgeon portrays the way sexuality is viewed in the future here vs. how asimov portrays it in his robot series (even if asimov didn’t have explicitly gay characters, he did allude to the acceptance & normalization of being gay in robots of dawn).

of course, we can’t take this story as truly indicative of how sturgeon thought sexuality would be seen in the future; it seems to me more of an anti-homophobia message aimed at people who themselves could not see the future as being accepting of gay people. still, it’s a great read.

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theodore sturgeon was a friend of asimov's. he would have been 99 today. 

 if you haven't read "the world well lost", i highly recommend it--it was written in 1953, featuring a very progressive & compassionate portrayal of gay men (and aliens). made me cry the first time i read it. here's a link.

i think it’s interesting to compare the way sturgeon portrays the way sexuality is viewed in the future here vs. how asimov portrays it in his robot series (even if asimov didn’t have explicitly gay characters, he did allude to the acceptance & normalization of being gay in robots of dawn).

of course, we can’t take this story as truly indicative of how sturgeon thought sexuality would be seen in the future; it seems to me more of an anti-homophobia message aimed at people who themselves could not see the future as being accepting of gay people. still, it’s a great read.

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i highly recommend this to anyone who hasn’t read it, it’s asimov’s spoof of his own dissertation and on the dry nature of scientific papers. super short and pretty funny

(his dissertation itself was titled “Kinetics of the reaction inactivation of tyrosinase during its catalysis of the aerobic oxidation of catechol”)

((i’m reading through http://www.asimovreviews.net and it’s fascinating, lots of stuff i didn’t even know and i generally agree with this man’s reviews--he hates “lenny”, too!))

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2/3 of my asimov collection, the books i'm going to be using for my march research paper 😊🤖

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hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday!

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Untitled Illustration | Mark Zug

Follow Rhade-Zapan for more visual treats

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reblog if you think the daneel on the left is just as beautiful as the daneel on the right