“In these pages, you’ll find some marvelously curious things, and meet some fascinating people. For Asimov has chosen to write about scientists—real ones of history and imaginary ones from the realms of science fiction.”—BEN BOVA

When high-energy physics meets quiet revenge, is the result murder?

Can three mathematicians disagree on a basic principle of science—and all be right?

The foremost scientific writer of our age takes us on a marvelous tour—from the wondrous nature of our home world to the very edge of the universe, from Archimedes to the distant future.

Here are fascinating true tales of the search for new worlds and invisible stars, of the mystery of the planet that should have been there—but wasn’t. And here too is mind-widening science fiction, examining the startling, and sometimes tragic, consequences of new ideas. An experiment in time travel becomes a test of morality—and love; a college professor finds a loophole in the law of gravity, and soon wishes he hadn’t; and apparently trivial inventions produce shock waves that could shatter the very foundations of human society.

THE EDGE OF TOMORROW combines fact and fiction to provide a wide-angle view of science as an inspiring, frustrating, astonishing—and always intensely human—enterprise.

This is a collection of essays and stories by Asimov centered on the common theme of scientists and how they work, edited (it would seem) by Ben Bova. Bova, a good friend of Asimov’s, is a well-known science fiction writer and John Campbell’s successor as editor of Analog.

It’s a fairly solid collection and includes some of Asimov’s best fiction (“Nightfall,” ”The Ugly Little Boy,” ”The Last Question,” ”The Billiard Ball,” ”Pâté de Foie Gras”) and best essays (“Euclid’s Fifth,” “The Man Who Massed the Earth”). There are a few weak items in here (“The Winds of Change,” and ”Found!”), but not many. This is definitely worth having.

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