The centennial of the birth of science fiction lumimary Isaac Asimov will be celebrated on Jan. 2. In recent years, the date has become known as “Science Fiction Day” in honor of the literary luminary who coined the terms “robotics” and “positronic,” enumerated the “Three Laws of Robotics,” and inspired countless dreamers to become writers and untold numbers of readers to become scientists. In celebration of this centenary, the faculty of the Science Fiction Studies program at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts offer a reading list that explores traces of Asimov’s influences on today’s wildly diverse science fiction landscape. Their selections range from the female writer who influenced Asimov to authors who explore gender, science, and humanity through different racial and cultural lenses. Georgia Tech’s science fiction experts also look at a couple of creations that predate even Asimov. So dig in … there’s a lot to learn from these tales.
'The Human Pets of Mars'
The story that influenced Asimov to become a science fiction writer
By Leslie F. Stone
Recommended by Lisa Yaszek
This is where it all started: the story that launched Asimov on his career as a science fiction writer. Written in 1936 by one of science fiction’s female pioneers, Leslie F. Stone, it’s a thrilling interplanetary drama in which humans learn they must put aside their stereotypes assumptions about each other if they are to escape their Martian overlords and secure Earth’s future for all people. It’s a message that still resonates today, more than 80 years later.
'Frankissstein'
A contemporary story about humanity and technology
By Jeanette Winterson
Recommended by Carol Senf
Populated by a transgender protagonist, an AI-obsessed scientist, and the inventor of sexbots made to be nothing but servants, this richly complex story offers up a contemporary take on the classic Mary Shelley tale—often considered the original science fiction novel—as well as Asimovian food for thought about what it means to be fully human in a world where science offers more choices than biology ever did.
An Unkindness of Ghosts
“Prescient and chilling”
By Rivers Solomon
Recommended by Susana Morris
Following in the footsteps of Asimov and fellow science fiction writer Octavia Butler, debut author Rivers Solomon also considers what it means to be human—or not. Written from the perspective of a gender non-conforming, neuroatypical, and preternaturally brilliant protagonist, this novel tells the story of humans fleeing their trashed Earth in a generation ship that recreates many of the worst excesses of the world they’ve left behind, including racism, slavery, and creeping pollution.
The Three-Body Problem
A core work of China’s science fiction renaissance
By Liu Cixin
Translated by Ken Liu
Recommended by Amanda Weiss
A core work of China’s science fiction renaissance, The Three-Body Problem explores the question of how life might develop on a planet surrounded by three unpredictable suns while juxtaposing individual traumas against national, transnational, and intergalactic change. Inspired by a paper on classical mechanics, the novel also showcases Liu’s affinity with Asimov for hard science over literary explanation.
‘The Shapes’
An early work of science fiction
By J-H. Rosny Aîné
Recommended by Julie Huggony
“The Shapes” is an 1887 story by the father of French science fiction recounting the observations of a prehistoric man dispatched by his tribe to study a perplexing, and threatening, lifeform they have never seen before. Like Asimov, Rosny showcases Man’s reaction to this foreign and powerful Other, as well as the relationships among knowledge, recognition, and control. Like Asimov’s work, this story tells us more about ourselves than anything alien or technological.
The Annotated Gulliver’s Travels
“True science fiction, perhaps the earliest example we have of it.”
Edited by Isaac Asimov
Recommended by Aaron Santesso
Because Asimov is so famously associated with futurist thinking, we sometimes overlook his deep interest in the past, and especially the literature of the past. He was particularly fascinated by the early literary precursors to science fiction, and in the ways earlier literary authors thought through scientific problems. His enormously detailed Annotated Gulliver's Travels, for example, suggests that “Book 3” of Gulliver's Travels, featuring the mad scientists of the flying island of Laputa, is “true science fiction, perhaps the earliest example we have of it.”
BONUS PICK! ROBOT CARTOONS
Robotic mayhem, and hope, in the days before Asimov
Various creators
Recommended by Jay Telotte
To understand more about the general cultural anxiety about the power of science and technology in the years before Asimov began writing his novels, take a look at four cartoons released within a five-month period in 1933, at the height of the Depression. Bosko’s Mechanical Man, Mickey’s Mechanical Man, the Flip the Frog cartoon Techno-Cracked, and the Scrappy film Technoracket are all immensely entertaining, and all tell a very similar story—of robots going destructively out of control. Signaling Walt Disney’s well-known personal fondness for technology, only Mickey’s Mechanical Man turns into a helpful figure, offering sign of the hope that Asimov would ultimately lodge in his own robot imaginings at the end of the decade.
About Georgia Tech’s Science Fiction Studies Program
Housed in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication in Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, the Science Fiction Studies program explores how people communicate the experience of science and technology across centuries, continents, and cultures. Offerings in Science Fiction Studies include classes about science fiction, fantasy, and horror across media; an undergraduate minor; and a lab for science fiction research, writing, podcasting, and Twitch streaming.
If you're interested in Isaac Asimov, check out our feature on his legacy as a science fiction writer, including how he inspired some Georgia Tech faculty to become scientists!
Credits:
Created with images from iStock; Paweł Czerwiński - "Some acrylic paint on potato starch :)"; Craig Sybert - "Toy robots at a collectible toy store in Mt. Airy, MD"; and BlackDog1966 - "fantasy female science fiction"