Editing Isaac Asimov (section)

=== Overview ===
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Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of ''[[The Naked Sun]]'' (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called ''Biochemistry and Human Metabolism''. Following the brief orbit of the first human-made satellite [[Sputnik I]] by the USSR in 1957, he wrote more nonfiction, particularly [[popular science]] books, and less science fiction. Over the next quarter-century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, and 120 nonfiction books.

Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of ''[[Foundation's Edge]]''. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories.<ref>{{cite book |last=Asimov |first=Isaac |title=[[Prelude to Foundation]] |publisher=Bantam Books |date=1988 |pages=xiii–xv}}</ref> [[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday]] and [[Houghton Mifflin]] published about 60% of his work up to 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".{{r|nichols19690803}}

Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "[[Three Laws of Robotics]]" and the [[Foundation Series|''Foundation'' series]].<ref>''Yours, Isaac Asimov'', p. 329.</ref> The ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "[[robotics]]", "[[positronic brain|positronic]]" (an entirely fictional technology), and "[[psychohistory (fictional)|psychohistory]]" (which is also used for a [[Psychohistory|different study]] on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as [[mechanics]] and [[hydraulics]], but for [[robot]]s. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' featured [[android (robot)|androids]] with "[[positronic brain]]s" and the first-season episode "[[Datalore]]" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Seiler |first1=Edward |last2=Hatcher |first2=Richard |url=http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_FAQ.html#series12 |title=Is Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation an Asimovian robot? |publisher=Isaac Asimov Home Page |date=2014 |access-date=August 3, 2016 |archive-date=October 16, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121016074817/http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_FAQ.html#series12 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the [[Dewey Decimal Classification]] except for category 100, [[philosophy]] and [[psychology]].<ref name="AsimovFAQ-DeweyDecimal"/> However, he wrote several essays about psychology,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Seiler |first1=Edward |last2=Hatcher |first2=Richard |url=http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/Essays/psychology.html |title=Asimov essays about psychology |publisher=Isaac Asimov Home Page |date=1995 |access-date=May 13, 2013 |archive-date=January 21, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130121190158/http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/Essays/psychology.html |url-status=live }}</ref> and forewords for the books ''The Humanist Way'' (1988) and ''In Pursuit of Truth'' (1982),<ref name="Popper"/> which were classified in the 100s category, but none of his own books were classified in that category.<ref name="AsimovFAQ-DeweyDecimal">{{cite web |last1=Seiler |first1=Edward |last2=Hatcher |first2=Richard |url=http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_FAQ.html#others11 |title=Did you know that Asimov is the only author to have published books in all ten categories of the Dewey Decimal System? |date=2014 |access-date=August 4, 2016 |archive-date=October 16, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121016074817/http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_FAQ.html#others11 |url-status=live }}</ref>

According to [[UNESCO]]'s ''Index Translationum database'', Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Index Translationum|url=https://www.unesco.org/xtrans/bsstatexp.aspx?crit1L=5&nTyp=min&topN=50|access-date=December 29, 2022|website=www.unesco.org|language=en}}</ref>