Gold
With a new introduction by New York Times-bestselling author Orson Scott CardHe invented science fiction. And in this final and crowning achievement of a career spanning 50 years, Isaac Asimov shares short stories ranging from the humorous to the profound, ruminations on the science fiction genre itself, and thoughts on the craft and writing of science fiction.Gold is the final and crowning achievement of the fifty-year career of science fiction's transcendent genius, the world-famous author who defined the field of science fiction for its practitioners, its millions of readers, and the world at large.The first section contains stories that range from the humorous to the profound, at the heart of which is the title story, "Gold," a moving and revealing drama about a writer who gambles everything on a chance at immortality: a gamble Asimov himself made -- and won. The second section contains the grand master's ruminations on the SF genre itself. And the final section is comprised of Asimov's thoughts on the craft and writing of science fiction.

**Short stories:**
Cal
Left to Right
Frustration
Hallucination
The Instability
Alexander the God
In the Canyon
Good-bye to Earth
Battle-Hymn
Feghoot and the Courts
Fault-Intolerant
Kid Brother
The Nations in Space
The Smile of the Chipper
Gold

**Essays:**
The Longest Voyage
Inventing a Universe
Flying Saucers and Science Fiction
Invasion
The Science Fiction Blowgun
The Robot Chronicles
Golden Age Ahead
The All-Human Galaxy
Psychohistory
Science Fiction Series
Survivors
Nowhere!
Outsiders, Insiders
Science Fiction Anthologies
The Influence of Science Fiction
Women and Science Fiction
Religion and Science Fiction
Time-Travel
Plotting
Metaphor
Ideas
Serials
The Name of Our Field
Hints
Writing for Young People
Names
Originality
Book Reviews
What Writers Go Through
Revisions
Irony
Plagiarism
Symbolism
Prediction
Best-Seller
Pseudonyms
Dialog
American Science fiction, Authorship, Fiction, History and criticism, Science fiction
Isaac Asimov
Asimov was born sometime between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi in Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR (now Russia), the son of a Jewish family of millers.  Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Asimov himself celebrated it on January 2.  His family emigrated to Brooklyn, New York and opened a candy store when he was three years old.  He taught himself to read at the age of five. He began reading the science fiction pulp magazines that his family's store carried. Around the age of eleven, he began to write his own stories, and by age nineteen, he was selling them to the science fiction magazines. He graduated from Columbia University in 1939. He married Gertrude Blugerman in 1942.  During World War II he worked as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station.  After the war, he returned to Columbia University and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1948.  He then joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine until 1958, when he became a full-time writer. His first novel, [Pebble in the Sky](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL46402W), was published in 1950. He and his wife divorced in 1973, and he married Janet O. Jeppson the same year. He was a highly prolific writer, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 9,000 letters and postcards.