“One might suppose that reality must be held to at all costs. However, though that may be the moral thing to do, it is not necessarily the most useful thing to do. The Greeks themselves chose the ideal over the real in their geometry and demonstrated very well that far more could be achieved by consideration of abstract line and form than by a study of the real lines and forms of the world; the greater understanding achieved through abstraction could be applied most usefully to the very reality that was ignored in the process of gaining knowledge.”

American writer and professor of biochemistry

Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He became widely known as one of the “Big Three” science fiction writers of his era, alongside Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. He wrote or edited more than 500 books and also produced an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He is especially associated with hard science fiction, but he also wrote mysteries, fantasy, popular science, and other non-fiction. His work ranges across nine of the ten categories of the Dewey decimal system.