Nine Tomorrows

It's been a long time since I read any of Asimov's short stories. In fact, it's been a long time since I read any Asimov. I don't remember noticing before how traditional Asimov was in assigning roles to men and women. Maybe he did and I just wasn't as tuned in as I am now. Or maybe he had his consciousness raised by the time I started reading his work. At any rate, I probably would have rated this book higher if it wasn't for the fact that women played a very subordinate role in 8 out of the 9 stories and in the one where a woman was the main character, The Ugly Little Boy, she is a nurse. I know that these stories were all written in the 1950's and therefore they are a product of their time but a person as talented as Dr. Asimov show more surely could have foreseen that women were capable of working in any field. Even in the 1950s there were women scientists and doctors and computer programmers and they weren't all freaks or man-haters. I did a Google search for "Isaac Asimov" and "women's roles" and found this list of his essays which seem to show that by the 1970s Asimov was actively supporting the women's movement and equality for women. That makes me feel better but I still felt his male-centered stories in this book marred my enjoyment.

That said, I think my favourite story was the first, "Profession", which posits a future where people are chosen for their adult jobs by their brain patterns and they are trained for those positions by having tapes downloaded to their brains. They are not able to handle new advances in their field as they never take any more training or do any further reading. George Platen did not get chosen for any profession when he turned 18 and he is stuck in a home while his friends compete in the Olympics for the best jobs. And yet Platen isn't stupid, he can read and think. What will happen to him? The answer is vintage science fiction. show less

“Nine tomorrows” is a collection of stories by Isaac Asimov originally published between 1956 and 1958. I’ve given the stories an average rating of 4.3. In my opinion the short story forms are ideal for sf, but a lot of what gets published fails the first test - they aren’t stories. Asimov always gives you a beginning, a middle and an end. Each piece has a central point. The best thing in the collection is “The ugly little boy”, which is about a Neanderthal child who is kidnapped into the 20th century by scientists, and the childcare nurse who they hire to look after him. It’s a pretty scathing critique on the subject of scientific ethics. Several stories deal with the future of AI, about which Asimov was amazingly show more prescient, given that they were written 60 years ago. The collection is a bit let down by a couple of jokey stories that were ok, but appallingly sexist(“I’m in Marsport without Hilda”) , or just too slight (“The gentle vultures”) show less

In what may be one of the best collections from Isaac Asimov that I've ever read, the master of SF brings us nine extraordinary tales ranging from the dramatic to comedic to heartbreaking. Nine Tomorrows gets five stars from me.

"Profession" — In the future, your ability to read is installed into your brain by a computer during childhood and your career is determined by a brain scan taken at puberty—but what happens when the results of the scan are inconclusive and the authorities determine that you are not suited for any career at all?

"The Feeling of Power" — In a society where mathematical computations are handled strictly by computers, a lab technician devises a method for longhand arithmetic... with disastrous results.

"The show more Dying Night" — A science conference on Earth reunites four colleagues, some of whom have been working off-planet for many years. One of them has developed a method for instant teleportation and intends to present his discovery at the conference—until he's found dead in his hotel room.

"I'm in Marsport without Hilda" — A government agent arrives on Mars after an assignment and learns that his wife is unable to travel from Earth to meet him. He steals the opportunity to arrange a date with a local lady of the night, which he tries to keep even when his supervisor tasks him with another mission right there in the spaceport.

"The Gentle Vultures" — An alien race known as the Hurrians spends 15 years observing Earth, waiting for humanity to destroy itself in a nuclear war so that the they can takeover the planet and enslave the survivors.

"All the Troubles in the World" — What happens when an entire planet is managed by a single super computer that no longer wants the responsibility?

"Spell My Name with an S" — At the insistence of his wife, a downtrodden nuclear physicist named Zebatinsky reluctantly visits a numerologist who suggests that by changing the first letter of his last name to an 'S,' the probablility is high that his life will improve—but not before placing him under surveillance by the federal government.

"The Last Question" — A super computer called Multivac spends thousands of years collecting data to answer one question that has been repeatedly put to it over the generations: Will the human race ever have the ability to restore the sun to its current state after it has died?

"The Ugly Little Boy" — Miss Fellowes, a nurse, is hired on to care for a Neanderthal child that is snatched from the past into the present by a new technology developed by Stasis, Inc. By contemporary standards, the boy is considered ugly and is dubbed by the press as the "Ape-Boy." After three years, the executives of Stasis decide to send the now educated child back to his own time where he will likely perish, but Miss Fellowes has different plans. show less

Nine Tomorrows is not a large collection, but it packs into its short length some of Asimov's best non-Robot short stories. Each of the nine short stories is excellent, the two poems somewhat less well done (Asimov apparently liked writing poetry, but wasn't really that good at it). The stories in this volume were written in the late 1950s, when Asimov was just finding his voice as a writer, and each one is thought provoking and enjoyable to read.

Almost all of these stories are now considered to be signature Asimov works: Profession, The Ugly Little Boy, Spell My Name With an S, The Feeling of Power, All the Troubles of the World, and The Last Question are top notch examples of Asimov's work. Even the weakest two (The Gentle Vultures show more and The Dying Night) are excellent stories (although The Dying Night relies upon what is now somewhat outdated information).

Anyone looking to get a good introduction to Asimov's short fiction at its best would do well to look here first. show less

I had forgotten how much I love Asimov. Never felt tired reading these short stories and while none of them are his best, they still sparked a lot of interesting questions

Consisting of nine short stories, Asimov writes in a way that was incredibly inventive for his time. Not all of the stories are equal in quality, but the ones that are great are truly great. A good use of time for fans of older science fiction, and not too hard to breeze through in a week or so.

I'd have to reread other collections by Asimov to see if they hold up, but this wasn't actually as wonderful as I'd remembered & hoped. There were no Robot stories. Many of the stories were about Multivac and other huge computers - the good doctor was def. in a certain post-WWII frame of mind.

Most notably this is the collection that contains the story that became the novel [b:The Ugly Little Boy|195450|The Ugly Little Boy|Isaac Asimov|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1266493683s/195450.jpg|1504942]. Now I've got to say, I have read them both before. And I still don't recall what the novel has that the story doesn't. The story makes its point powerfully & gracefully, thank you very much.