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Page ix
Preface
When I finished Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction in 1981, Isaac had not written a science fiction novel for ten years, and that novel, The Gods Themselves, was his first adult science fiction novel in fifteen years. But the year my study was published, Isaac published the first of his science fiction best-sellers, Foundation's Edge. It won a Hugo Award and so did my book. After that, Isaac wrote half a dozen major novels, almost all of them best-sellers, and he added another two hundred books to his list. Authors have it within their power to undermine every effort to evaluate their work.
Sadly, Isaac died, too young, in 1992. Although his work continues to be reprinted, and will be for many years to come, it is time to take another look at the unique career that was synonymous with modern science fiction itself. This new edition of Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction has been revised, updated, and expanded to account for his prolific final decade. It is a third longer, including an additional 20,000 words about his best-selling novels of the 1980s plus a complete transcript of my 1979 interview with him and a final list of his science fiction publications.
I realize that no single volume can do justice to the phenomenon and the person that was Isaac Asimov. My hope is that it can give those who did not have a chance to know him, or to experience his fiction as it was published, a better understanding of what his science fiction was like and the conditions under which he created it, and, most of all, return them to the stories and novels themselves.
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JAMES GUNN

 
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