"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

Isaac Asimov’s Living Space and Other Stories

By the life of me, I will never understand how these are collected.
The book contains some delightful short stories plus a slightly longer one (Profession), mostly all of them revolving around the rise of Multivac, the first supercomputer built by humanity which in turn takes charge of humanity for humanity’s own sake. And there are glorious pieces of fiction connected to that: “Franchise” is the story of the single man called to vote in the Presidential Election, from whose vote Multivac will calculate the probable vote of everybody else without them needing to bother voting; “All the troubles of the World” takes place in a scenario where Multivac predics the probability of crime and the government acts to try and prevent criminal activities; “Jokester” features a man who’s trying to use Multivac to figure out where jokes come from.
And then you have… poetry? Two satirical pieces on what it means to be an author. Fantasy? A story on a fantasy writer being visited by an elf (“Kid Stuff”) and a story about angels and the devil and the end of the world (“The Last Trump”). Then you have stories with robots, one of which already features in another collection (“Satisfaction Guaranteed”).
The titular tale “Living Space” is a marvel, and I liked the attempt at a mystery in “The Dying Night,” though we’re far from the splendid stories of Daneel and Baley.

technology

Hey, teacher, leave the bumblebee alone

Every few months it comes back. A pencil drawing of a bee, a quote in a serif font, and different authorities invoked as the source: aerodynamically speaking, the bee cannot fly, but it doesn’t know that, so it flies anyway. It gets shared and liked,

Read More »
Spooktober

Spooktober 28 – The Black Monk (3)

Chapter 5 Glad that he had been so successful in the part of peacemaker, Kovrin went into the park. Sitting on a garden seat, thinking, he heard the rattle of a carriage and a feminine laugh — visitors were arriving. When the shades of evening

Read More »
Spooktober

Spooktober 27 – The Black Monk (2)

Chapter 3 After supper, when the visitors had gone, he went to his room and lay down on the sofa: he wanted to think about the monk. But a minute later Tanya came in. “Here, Andryusha; read father’s articles,” she said, giving him a bundle

Read More »
Share on LinkedIn
Throw on Reddit
Roll on Tumblr
Mail it
No Comments

Post A Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

RELATED POSTS

Hey, teacher, leave the bumblebee alone

Every few months it comes back. A pencil drawing of a bee, a quote in a serif font, and different authorities invoked as the source: aerodynamically speaking, the bee cannot fly, but it doesn’t know that, so it flies anyway. It gets shared and liked,

Read More

Spooktober 28 – The Black Monk (3)

Chapter 5 Glad that he had been so successful in the part of peacemaker, Kovrin went into the park. Sitting on a garden seat, thinking, he heard the rattle of a carriage and a feminine laugh — visitors were arriving. When the shades of evening

Read More

Spooktober 27 – The Black Monk (2)

Chapter 3 After supper, when the visitors had gone, he went to his room and lay down on the sofa: he wanted to think about the monk. But a minute later Tanya came in. “Here, Andryusha; read father’s articles,” she said, giving him a bundle

Read More