Sci-Fi | Cyborg Ink

Who was Isaac Asimov? | Author Biography

Posted on November 3, 2022 by Cyborg Ink

Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. A prolific worker, Asimov wrote and edited more than 500 books over the course of his career and was considered one of the “Big Three” writers of science fiction, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. His most famous work is the Foundation series, which won Asimov a prestigious Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series” in 1966. Click on the video above to find out more…

And to see more flash fiction stories from the pen of Isaac Asimov, take a look at our YouTube playlist below.

The Fun They Had | Isaac Asimov (1951)

Posted on November 3, 2022 by Cyborg Ink

Margie even wrote about it that night in her diary. On the page headed May 17, 2155, she wrote, “Today, Tommy found a real book!”

It was a very old book. Margie’s grandfather once said that when he was a little boy his grandfather told him that there was a time when all stories were printed on paper.

They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly, and it was awfully funny to read words that stood still instead of moving the way they were supposed to – on a screen, you know. And then, when they turned back to the page before, it had the same words on it that it had had when they read it the first time.

Pattern | Fredric Brown (1954)

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Cyborg Ink

Miss Macy sniffed. “Why is everyone worrying so? They’re not doing anything to us, are they?”

In the cities, elsewhere, there was blind panic. But not in Miss Macy’s garden. She looked up calmly at the monstrous mile-high figures of the invaders.

A week ago, they’d landed, in a spaceship a hundred miles long that had settled down gently in the Arizona desert. Almost a thousand of them had come out of that spaceship and were now walking around.

True Love | Isaac Asimov (1977)

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Cyborg Ink

My name is Joe. That is what my colleague, Milton Davidson, calls me. He is a programmer and I am a computer program. I am part of the Multivac-complex and am connected with other parts all over the world. I know everything. Almost everything.

I am Milton’s private program. His Joe. He understands more about programming than anyone in the world, and I am his experimental model. He has made me speak better than any other computer can.

“It is just a matter of matching sounds to symbols, Joe,” he told me. “That’s the way it works in the human brain even though we still don’t know what symbols there are in the brain. I know the symbols in yours, and I can match them to words, one-to-one.” So I talk. I don’t think I talk as well as I think, but Milton says I talk very well. Milton has never married, though he is nearly forty years old. He has never found the right woman, he told me. One day he said, “I’ll find her yet, Joe. I’m going to find the best. I’m going to have true love and you’re going to help me. I’m tired of improving you in order to solve the problems of the world. Solve my problem. Find me true love.”

I said, “What is true love?”

Key Item | Isaac Asimov (1968)

Posted on November 1, 2022 by Cyborg Ink

Jack Weaver came out of the vitals of Multivac looking utterly worn and disgusted.

From the stool, where the other maintained his own stolid watch, Todd Nemerson said, “Nothing?”

“Nothing,” said Weaver. “Nothing, nothing, nothing. No one can find anything wrong with it.”

“Except that it won’t work, you mean.”

“You’re no help sitting there!”

“I’m thinking.”

“Thinking!” Weaver showed a canine at one side of his mouth.

Exile to Hell | Isaac Asimov (1968)

Posted on November 1, 2022 by Cyborg Ink

“The Russians,” said Dowling, in his precise voice, “used to send prisoners to Siberia in the days before space travel had become common. The French used Devil’s Island for the purpose. The British sailed them off to Australia.”

He considered the chessboard carefully and his hand hesitated briefly over the bishop.

Parkinson, at the other side of the chessboard, watched the pattern of the pieces absently. Chess was, of course, the professional game of computer-programmers but, under the circumstances, he lacked enthusiasm. By rights, he felt with some annoyance, Dowling should have been even worse off; he was programming the prosecution’s case.

The Other Tiger | Arthur C. Clarke (1953)

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Cyborg Ink

“It’s an interesting theory,” said Arnold, “but I don’t see how you could ever prove it.” They had come to the steepest part of the hill and for a moment Webb was too breathless to reply.

“I’m not trying to,” he said when he had gained his second wind. “I’m only exploring its consequences.”

“Such as?”

“Well, let’s be perfectly logical and see where it gets us. Our only assumption, remember, is that the universe is infinite.”

“Right. Personally I don’t see what else it can be.”

“Very well. That means there must be an infinite number of stars and planets. Therefore, by the laws of chance, every possible event must occur not merely once but an infinite number of times. Correct?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then there must be an infinite number of worlds exactly like Earth, each with an Arnold and Webb on it, walking up this hill exactly as we are doing now, saying these same words.”

Who was Arthur C. Clarke? | Author Biography

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Cyborg Ink

Arthur C. Clarke was a science fiction writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer and television presenter. For much of the twentieth century, he was considered one of the “Big Three” writers of science fiction, alongside Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. Watch the video above to find out more…

To see and read more flash fiction stories from the pen of Arthur C. Clarke, take a look at our Arthur C. Clarke YouTube playlist below.

The Haunted Space Suit | Arthur C. Clarke (1958)

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Cyborg Ink

The space suits we use on the station are completely different from the flexible affairs men wear when they want to walk around on the moon. Ours are really baby space ships, just big enough to hold one man. They are stubby cylinders, about seven feet long, fitted with low-powered propulsion jets, and have a pair of accordion-like sleeves at the upper end for the operator’s arms.

As soon as I’d settled down inside my very exclusive space craft, I switched on power and checked the gauges on the tiny instrument panel. All my needles were well in the safety zone, so I lowered the transparent hemisphere over my head and sealed myself in. For a short trip like this, I did not bother to check the suit’s internal lockers, which were used to carry food
and special equipment for extended missions.

It was at that moment, as I launched myself out into the abyss, that I knew that something was horribly wrong.

Reunion | Arthur C. Clarke (1971)

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Cyborg Ink

People of Earth, do not be afraid. We come in peace–and why not? For we are your cousins; we have been here before.

You will recognise us when we meet, a few hours from now. We are approaching the solar system almost as swiftly as this radio message. Already, your sun dominates the sky ahead of us. It is the sun our ancestors and yours shared ten million years ago. We are men, as you are; but you have forgotten your history, while we have remembered ours

We colonised Earth, in the reign of the great reptiles, who were dying when we came and whom we could not save. Your world was a tropical planet then, and we felt that it would make a fair home for our people. We were wrong. Though we were masters of space, we knew so little about climate, about evolution, about genetics…