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Complete Stories

By Isaac Asimov

FOUNDATION, DOUBLEDAY, and the portrayal of the letter F are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This volume contains the complete contents of the previously published collections Earth Is Room Enough, Nine Tomorrows, and Nightfall and Other Stories.

This edition copyright (c) 1990 by Nightfall, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

ISBH 0-385-41606-7

Contents

Introduction vii

The Dead Past 3

The Foundation of S. F. Success 41

Franchise 43

Gimmicks Three 57

Kid Stuff 62

The Watery Place 73

Living Space 77

The Message 89

Satisfaction Guaranteed 91

Hell-Fire 104

The Last Trump 106

The Fun They Had 120

Jokester 123

The Immortal Bard 135

Someday 138

The Author's Ordeal 146

Dreaming Is a Private Thing 149

Profession 162

The Feeling of Power 208

The Dying Night 217

I'm in Marsport Without Hilda 239

The Gentle Vultures 250

All the Troubles of the World 263

Spell My Name with an S 277

The Last Question 290

The Ugly Little Boy 301

Nightfall 334

Green Patches 363

Hostess 376

"Breeds There a Man . . . ?" 408

C-Chute 438

"In a Good Cause-" 468

What If- 489

Sally 500

Flies 515

"Nobody Here but-" 521

It's Such a Beautiful Day 531

Strikebreaker 550

Insert Knob A in Hole B 561

The Up-to-Date Sorcerer 563

Unto the Fourth Generation 575

What Is This Thing Called Love? 582

The Machine That Won the War 593

My Son, the Physicist 598

Eyes Do More than See 602

Segregationist 605

I Just Make Them Up, See! 610

Rejection Slips 613

Introduction

I have been writing short stories for fifty-one years and I haven't yet quit. In addition to the hundreds of short stories I have published, there are at least a dozen in press waiting to be published, and two stories written and not yet submitted.

There is, however, no way one can publish short stories for this length of time without understanding that the time left to him is limited. In the words of the song: "Forevermore is shorter than before. "

It is time, therefore, for Doubleday to pull the strings together and get all my fiction-short stories and novels, too-into a definitive form and in uniform bindings, both in hard and soft covers.

It may sound conceited of me to say so (I am frequently accused of being conceited), but my fiction generally has been popular from the start and has continued to be well received through the years. To locate any one story, however, that you no longer have and wish you did, or to find one you have heard about but have missed is no easy task. My stories appeared originally in any one of many magazines, the original issues of which are all but unobtainable. They then appeared in any of a multiplicity of anthologies and collections, copies of which are almost as unobtainable.

It is Doubleday's intention to make this multivolume collection definitive and uniform in the hope that the science fiction public, the mystery public (for my many mysteries will also be collected), and libraries as well will seize upon them ravenously and clear their book shelves to make room for Isaac Asimav: The Complete Stories.