66 Essays On the Past, Present & Future

A collection of short essays by the famed Isaac Asimov providing opinion and insight on the past, present, and future.

Part I Past

1 Unity 7
2 The Scientist as Unbeliever 19
3 The Choking Grip 25
4 Human Mutations 29
5 The Hollow Earth 31
6 Poison! 35
7 Competition 39
8 Benjamin Franklin Changes the World 43
9 Fifty Years of Astronomy 47
10 The Myth of the Machine 53

Part II Present

11 The Perennial Fringe 65
12 The Case Against 'Star Wars' 69
13 Short Term; Long Term 75
14 The Useful Ivory Tower 79
15 Do It First! 85
16 Popularizing Science 89
17 The Pace of Research 93
18 The Brain 97
19 Darwin and Natural Selection 101
20 Cool Light 107
21 Halley's Comet-Destination Space 113
22 Ice in Orbit 129
23 Looking for Our Neighbors 135
24 Life Is Wherever It Lands 139
25 Einstein's Theory of Relativity 145
26 What Is the Universe Made of? 151
27 Science and Science Fiction 157
…

Part III Future

40 The Elevator Effect 221
41 2084 227
42 Society in the Future 233
43 Feminism for Survival 237
44 TV and the Race with Doom 241
45 The Next Seventy Years in the Courts 247
46 The Future of Costume 253
47 The Immortal Word 257
48 Liberty in the Next Century 263
49 The Villain in the Atmosphere 267
50 The New Learning 271
51 Technology, You, Your Family, and the Future 277
52 Should We Fear the Future? 281
53 Should We Fear the Computer? 287
54 Work Changes Its Meaning 293
55 Nuclear Dreams and Nightmares 299
56 The New Tools in Space 303
57 Living on the Moon, Part I 311
58 Living on the Moon, Part II 317
59 The Skies of Luna 323
60 The Solar System for Humanity 333
61 The Clinical Lab of the Future 339
62 The Hospital of the Future 343
63 Medicine from Space 347
64 Revising the Pattern 353
65 Putting Bacteria to Work 359
66 Fiddling with Genes 365