Robot

¿Es posible revertir el inevitable final del Universo, o el mundo debe acabar de todas formas? es la pregunta que desde un día del siglo XXI, hasta generaciones y generaciones posteriores en el tiempo, hacen los humanos a los ordenadores.

En un relato aparentemente sencillo sobre un asunto sobrecogedor, el fin de los días, Asimov demuestra, una vez más, una mente preclara y una mano maestra para sobrecoger al lector y dejarlo en vilo, incluso después de la lectura.

Andrew was one of Earth's first house robot domestic servants—smoothly designed and functional. But when Andrew started to develop special talents which exceeded the confines of his allotted positronic pathways, he abandoned his domestic duties in favour of more intellectual pursuits. As time passed, Andrew acquired knowledge, feelings and ambitions way beyond anything ever experienced by any other mechanical men. And he found himself launched on to a career which would bring him fame fortune — and danger. For a robot who wants to be human must also be prepared to die...

In the Bicentennial Man, Isaac Asimov returns to his first and most enduring love — robotics. The result is a brilliant book of first-class entertainment and mind-spinning ideas which confirm Asimov's supreme status as Grand Master of science fiction.

Content

"Feminine Intuition" (1969)
"Waterclap" (1970)
"That Thou Art Mindful of Him" (1974)
"Stranger in Paradise" (1974)
"The Life and Times of Multivac" (1975)
"The Winnowing" (1976)
"The Bicentennial Man" (1976)
"Marching In" (1976)
"Old-Fashioned" (1976)
"The Tercentenary Incident" (1976)
"Birth of a Notion" (1976)

Cover Illustration: Don Dixon

High above the planet Florinia, the Squires of Sark live in unimaginable wealth and comfort. Down in the eternal spring of the planet, however, the native Florinians labor ceaselessly to produce the precious kyrt that brings prosperity to their Sarkite masters. Rebellion is unthinkable and impossible. Not only do the Florinians no longer have a concept of freedom, any disruption of the vital kyrt trade would cause other planets to rise in protest, ultimately destabilizing trade and resulting in a galactic war. So the Trantorian Empire, whose grand plan is to unite all humanity in peace, prosperity, and freedom, has stood aside and allowed the oppression to continue. Living among the workers of Florinia, Rik is a man without a memory or a past. He has been abducted and brainwashed. Barely able to speak or care for himself when he was found, Rik is widely regarded as a simpleton by the worker community where he lives. But as his memories begin to return, Rik finds himself driven by a cryptic message he is determined to deliver: Everyone on Florinia is doomed . . . the Currents of Space are bringing destruction. But if the planet is evacuated, the power of Sark will end--so some would finish the job and would kill the messenger. The fate of the Galaxy hangs in the balance.

Four men and a woman are reduced to a microscopic fraction of their original size, sent in a miniaturized atomic sub through a dying man's carotid artery to destroy a blood clot in his brain. If they fail, the entire world will be doomed.

One moment Joseph Schwartz is a happily retired tailor in 1949 Chicago. The next he's a helpless stranger on Earth during the heyday of the first Galactic Empire. Earth, he soon learns, is a backwater, just a pebble in the sky, despised by all the other 200 million planets of the Empire because its people dare to claim it's the original home of man. And Earth is poor, with great areas of radioactivity ruining much of its soil--so poor that everyone is sentenced to death at the age of sixty.

Joseph Schwartz is sixty-two.

This is young Isaac Asimov's first novel, full of wonders and ideas, the book that launched the novels of the Galactic Empire, culminating in the Foundation books and novels. It is also one of that select group of SF adventures that since the early 1950s has hooked generations of teenagers on reading science fiction. This is Golden Age SF at its finest.

A collection of science fiction stories which examine various reactions to altered environmental conditions or bizarre psychological situations

Biron Farrell was young and naïve, but he was growing up fast. A radiation bomb planted in his dorm room changed him from an innocent student at the University of Earth to a marked man, fleeing desperately from an unknown assassin.

He soon discovers that, many light-years away, his father, the highly respected Rancher of Widemos, has been murdered. Stunned, grief-stricken, and outraged, Biron is determined to uncover the reasons behind his father’s death, and becomes entangled in an intricate saga of rebellion, political intrigue, and espionage.

The mystery takes him deep into space where he finds himself in a relentless struggle with the power-mad despots of Tyrann. Now it is not just a case of life or death for Biron, but a question of freedom for the galaxy.

Librarian's Note: Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Here, from a grand master of science fiction, is the long awaited final novel of the greatest series ever told. Completed just before his death, Forward The Foundation is the crowning achievement of a great writer's life, a stirring testament to the creative genius of Isaac Asimov.

As Hari Seldon struggles to perfect his revolutionary theory of psychohistory and ensure a place for humanity among the stars, the great Galactic Empire totters on the brink of apocalyptic collapse. Caught in the maelstrom are Seldon and all he holds dear, pawns in the struggle for dominance. Whoever can control Seldon will control psychohistory—and with it the future of the Galaxy.

Among those seeking to turn psychohistory into the greatest weapon known to man are a populist political demagogue, the weak-willed Emperor Cleon I, and a ruthless militaristic general. In his last act of service to humankind, Hari Seldon must somehow save his life's work from their grasp as he searches for his true heirs—a search the begins with his own granddaughter and the dream of a new Foundation.

In this landmark of imaginative fiction, winner of a special Hugo Award as Best All Time Science Fiction Series, Asimov has brilliantly conceived a whole new world for mankind, set far in the future and spanning a period of more than a thousand years.

Foundation, describes how one man creates a new force for civilised life as the old Galactic Empire crumbles into barbarism.

Foundation and Empire is the story of the mighty conflict for mastery of the stars between these two major powers.

Second Foundation
A new and even more terrifying threat to the future of humanity arises in the form of a dangerous mutant, capable of manipulating men's minds and destroying the universe. . .

The Stars, Like DustA masterpiece of suspense and drama: Biron Farrill sets out on a dangerous quest through the galaxies to find "Rebellion World" and its key to man's future peace.

The Naked Sun
Earth's very existence is at stake when a murder takes place on power-hungry Solaria.  One of the greatest detective stories in the science fiction canon.

I, Robot
The classic vision of a future where robots are so sophisticated that mankind is threatened with redundancy. Stories include: Robbie, Runaround, Reason, Catch That Rabbit, Liar!, Little Lost Robot, Escape!, Evidence, and The Evitable Conflict.

In the twenty-third century pioneers have escaped the crowded earth for life in self-sustaining orbital colonies. One of the colonies, Rotor, has broken away from the solar system to create its own renegade utopia around an unknown red star two light-years from a star named Nemesis.  Now a fifteen-year-old Rotorian girl has learned of the dire threat that nemesis poses to Earth’s people—but she is prevented from warning them. Soon she will realize that Nemesis endangers Rotor as well.  And so it will be up to her alone to save both Earth and Rotor as—drawn inexorably by Nemesis, the death star—they hurtle toward certain disaster.

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a man whose job it is to range through past and present Centuries, monitoring and, where necessary, altering Time's myriad cause-and-effect relationships. But when Harlan meets and falls for a non-Eternal woman, he seeks to use the awesome powers and techniques of the Eternals to twist time for his own purposes, so that he and his love can survive together.

This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780586071113

It is the year 12,020 G.E. and Emperor Cleon I sits uneasily on the Imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multidomed capital of the Galactic Empire, forty billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable technological and cultural complexity. Yet Cleon knows there are those who would see him fall—those whom he would destroy if only he could read the future.

Hari Seldon has come to Trantor to deliver his paper on psychohistory, his remarkable theory of prediction. Little does the young Outworld mathematician know that he has already sealed his fate and the fate of humanity. For Hari possesses the prophetic power that makes him the most wanted man in the Empire. . .the man who holds the key to the future—an apocalyptic power to be known forever after as the Foundation.