''Fact and Fancy'' is a collection of seventeen scientific
essay
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...
s by American writer and scientist
Isaac Asimov
yi, יצחק אזימאװ
, birth_date =
, birth_place = Petrovichi, Russian SFSR
, spouse =
, relatives =
, children = 2
, death_date =
, death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
, nationality = Russian (1920–1922)Soviet (192 ...
. It was the first in a series of books collecting his essays from ''
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' (usually referred to as ''F&SF'') is a U.S. fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House, a subsidiary of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Press. Editors Anthony Boucher ...
'', and Asimov's second book of science essays altogether (after ''
Only a Trillion'').
Doubleday & Company
Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 and was the largest in the United States by 1947. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed th ...
first published it in March 1962. It was also published in paperback by
Pyramid Books
Jove Books, formerly known as Pyramid Books, is an American paperback and eBook publishing imprint, founded as an independent paperback house in 1949 by Almat Magazine Publishers (Alfred R. Plaine and Matthew Huttner). The company was sold to ...
as part of
The Worlds of Science series.
After he had written 200 essays for ''Fantasy and Science Fiction'' (out of 399 in the end), Asimov wrote of them "To this day I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment I get."
[Asimov (1975), ''Buy Jupiter'' (VGSF 1988 edition) p. 125]
The only essay that did not appear in ''Fantasy and Science Fiction'' was "Our Lonely Planet", which first appeared in ''
Astounding Science Fiction
''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled ''Astounding Stories of Super-Science'', the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William C ...
''.
Contents
*Part I: The Earth and Away
**"Life's Bottleneck" (April 1959)
**"No More Ice Ages?" (January 1959)
**"Thin Air" (December 1959)
**"Catching Up with Newton" (December 1958)
**"Of Capture and Escape" (May 1959)
*Part II: The Solar System
**"Catskills in the Sky" (August 1960)
**"Beyond Pluto" (July 1960)
**"Steppingstones to the Stars" (October 1960)
**"The Planet of the Double Sun" (June 1959)
*Part III: The Universe
**"Heaven on Earth" (May 1961)
**"Our Lonely Planet" (November 1958)
**"The Flickering Yardstick" (March 1960)
**"The Sight of Home" (February 1960)
**"Here It Comes; There It Goes" (January 1961)
*Part IV: The Human Mind
**"Those Crazy Ideas" (January 1960)
**"My Built-in Doubter" (April 1961)
**"Battle of the Eggheads" (July 1959)
References
External links
Asimovonline.com
at The Thunder Child
Essay collections by Isaac Asimov
1962 books
Works originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Doubleday (publisher) books
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