What makes Isaac Asimov the greatest science fiction writer? Why this iconic sci-fi writer was denied the Nobel Prize in Literature? Is he not worth the Prize?
No doubt, the Nobel Committee has truly honoured the most eminent people whose contribution has ennobled the world and bettered the lives of the entire mankind. Great scientists like Roentgen, Einstein, Raman, Fleming Curie-couple, Teresa, Tutu and Tagore have all been honoured and awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize.
But it is also a fact, that history of Nobel Prizes is also a history of inexplicable sins of omission with many people left out who rightly deserved the Prize - Edison, Wright Brothers, James Joyce, Tolstoy, H G Wells, Maugham, Greene and so on and especially Sir Isaac Asimov too.
Yes, Sir Isaac Asimov truly deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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The author of more than 400 books, Isaac Asimov born in Russia in 1920, soon migrated to United States at the age of three. An exceptional student, Asimov soon proved that he was a born writer. In 1934, Asimov published his first story in his school's newspaper. Asimov received a doctorate in biochemistry from Columbia University in 1948 and since 1949 has been a professor of biochemistry at Boston University until he retired in 1958. Soon after his retirement, Asimov became a full time writer.
Asimov has produced classics such as ‘I, Robot’, ‘The Naked Sun’, and ‘The Caves of Steel’, ‘The Foundation’ trilogy have all won him the respect for science fiction. His stories too ‘Nightfall’ and ‘The Bicentennial Man’, and novels such as ‘The Gods Themselves’, and ‘Foundation's Edge’ have been recognized as the best science fiction ever written earning him numerous honors and accolades. It is believed that Sir Isaac Asimov is associated with the invention and coinage of a word Robotics, when he used the word is his Robot series. Asimov has also written popular essays on science and technology in several magazines.
Presenting the complexities of science in a simple and arresting manner is the hallmark of Asimov's genre. His simple arresting genre earned him the nickname 'The Great Explainer'. Any student or children who are found to be wary of science must be presented Asimov's books’ for they would soon discover how wonderful and interesting the science is.
Indeed Asimov was the man, who laid bare the intricacies and complexities of science, before the common man imparting him the knowledge, thereby creating and sustaining the interest in science especially in the field of astronomy or space science. His genre, so simple and arresting, tells us how fascinating the science is.
Until his death in 1992, Asimov’s zestfulness has not died. He was full of energy and on fire. Always ready to explain things to laymen. Asimov commented before his death, "I'm on fire to explain, and happiest when it's something reasonably intricate which I can make clear step by step. It's the easiest way I can clarify things in my own mind."
Sir Isaac Asimov’s entire corpus confer the greatest benefit on mankind - as stipulated in Nobel’s will– the dissemination of scientific knowledge to laymen. Asimov truly deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature. But sadly he was ignored.
Yet if Sir Isaac Asimov had been awarded the Prize in literature it still would have been too small a gesture when compared to his works in the field of literature. But unfortunately, to the dismay of his millions of fans, who understood science in his language, Sir Isaac Asimov was denied the Nobel Prize in Literature. No one knows the reason why.
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