The time has come once more to celebrate Asimov’s birthday by reading one of his books. I’m going to try something different this year, however. In the past, I’ve included in the list of candidates only the books whose book number is a multiple of Asimov’s age: books 99, 198, 297, 396, and 495 for his 99th birthday, for example. This is rather unfair to a lot of books, because they get past over as a result; so this year, I’m going to include those books which would otherwise be skipped; to wit—
Book 101: ABC’s of Space
Book 201: In Memory Yet Green [1]
Book 202: Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 1, 1939
Book 301: Science Fictional Olympics
Book 302: Fantastic Reading: Stories and Activities for Grades 5-8
Book 303: Banquets of the Black Widowers
Book 401: Ancient Astronomy
Book 402: Unidentified Flying Objects
Book 403: The Space Spotter’s Guide
Book 404: Norby Down to Earth
Book 501: The Ugly Little Boy
Book 502: Forward the Foundation
Book 503: The Positronic Man
Book 504: The Mammoth Book of Modern Science Fiction
Book 505: Frontiers II: More Recent Discoveries About Life, Earth, Space, and the Universe
(As always, the book numbers are based on my own listing, which is one of the possible extensions of Asimov’s official one.)
The advantages of the new system are instantly obvious. If I just selected among those books whose numbers are multiples of 101, I would have as my best option Banquets of the Black Widowers, with Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 1, 1939 a solid second. By including otherwise “skipped” books, we have a number of better choices.
Among those new choices, there are two that really stand out: In Memory Yet Green (the first volume of Asimov’s autobiography) and Forward the Foundation (the last Foundation book). Indeed, it is not easy to choose between the two. If one is more interested in Asimov as a person, then the former wins. If one is more interested in Asimov’s fiction, then the second comes in first (as it were).
Or, of course, if one is truly ambitious, one could attempt to read all fifteen in one day.
[1] In Memory Yet Green is actually a special case. As noted last year, there is a two-way tie for 200th place in Asimov’s listing. Asimov’s two major publishers both expected to publish his 200th book, you see, and so he compromised by proclaiming a tie. He wasn’t always consistent about the tie, however, so Opus 200 is sometimes listed as book 200 and In Memory Yet Green as book 201. Of course, even if one read In Memory Yet Green last year, there’s no harm in reading it again.