Introduction
Isaac Asimov, the prolific writer
With over five hundred published books, Isaac Asimov was one of the world’s most prolific writers. In addition to his books, he also wrote many individual short stories, essays, and criticism. An interesting fact about Asimov is that his works span nine out of the ten major categories in the Dewey Decimal System — the only category that does not include any of his works is Philosophy and psychology. This makes Asimov unique in the sense that he is the only writer to have so many good books in so many librarial classifications. (Seiler, Edward, “A Catalogue of Isaac Asimov's Books”) The large part of his works belong to the hard science fiction2 genre, in which Asimov was regarded as one of …show more content…
of New York. Given that Lester del Rey was the editor of this particular magazine, one may speculate that this was one of the reasons Asimov chose to ignore John Campbell’s advice to his writers: “Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man.” Or perhaps he was merely experimenting with something different. The story was intended to be read by a younger audience, and thus has a seemingly simple plot: two youngsters, Red and Slim, find a crashed alien spaceship with two survivors, and decide to use the aliens in order to join a circus. Instead of harming the children, the aliens allow themselves to be captured. Eventually, the children’s parents become aware of mischief and, after finding the aliens locked inside a cage, are impressed by the alien race’s maturity in dealing with the youngsters. There is also a surprise twist at the end. The states of the societies depicted here by Asimov are two possible outcomes of acquired atomic capabilities: it either triggers a nuclear war, followed by an irreversible decline, or war is averted and progress continues until that society eventually reaches for the …show more content…
Youth is the only story by Asimov in the public domain, and that will continue to be the case for many years to come. After some reading of the U.S. Copyright Office’s circulars and after becoming acquainted with the Berne Convention, I can safely conclude that the English text is in the public domain in America, as well as in Romania (in short, The United States signed the Berne Convention eight years after the text entered the public domain, and the Berne Convention is not retroactive). However, the Romanian translation of this story included in “Calea Marțiană” (Teora, 1998) still remains under
Isaac Asimov, the prolific writer
With over five hundred published books, Isaac Asimov was one of the world’s most prolific writers. In addition to his books, he also wrote many individual short stories, essays, and criticism. An interesting fact about Asimov is that his works span nine out of the ten major categories in the Dewey Decimal System — the only category that does not include any of his works is Philosophy and psychology. This makes Asimov unique in the sense that he is the only writer to have so many good books in so many librarial classifications. (Seiler, Edward, “A Catalogue of Isaac Asimov's Books”) The large part of his works belong to the hard science fiction2 genre, in which Asimov was regarded as one of …show more content…
of New York. Given that Lester del Rey was the editor of this particular magazine, one may speculate that this was one of the reasons Asimov chose to ignore John Campbell’s advice to his writers: “Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man.” Or perhaps he was merely experimenting with something different. The story was intended to be read by a younger audience, and thus has a seemingly simple plot: two youngsters, Red and Slim, find a crashed alien spaceship with two survivors, and decide to use the aliens in order to join a circus. Instead of harming the children, the aliens allow themselves to be captured. Eventually, the children’s parents become aware of mischief and, after finding the aliens locked inside a cage, are impressed by the alien race’s maturity in dealing with the youngsters. There is also a surprise twist at the end. The states of the societies depicted here by Asimov are two possible outcomes of acquired atomic capabilities: it either triggers a nuclear war, followed by an irreversible decline, or war is averted and progress continues until that society eventually reaches for the …show more content…
Youth is the only story by Asimov in the public domain, and that will continue to be the case for many years to come. After some reading of the U.S. Copyright Office’s circulars and after becoming acquainted with the Berne Convention, I can safely conclude that the English text is in the public domain in America, as well as in Romania (in short, The United States signed the Berne Convention eight years after the text entered the public domain, and the Berne Convention is not retroactive). However, the Romanian translation of this story included in “Calea Marțiană” (Teora, 1998) still remains under