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The field of Science Fiction and Fantasy is often overlooked by the 'serious' perusers of literature as something meant for juvenilles. Unfortunately for then (and fortunately for fans like me), the field is far from being a child's romping ground. The days of science fiction consisting of giant lizards, spaceships and lasers, and almost no plot, went out a long time ago, with the advenmt of some writers who decided to take science fiction for the children's fairy tales to the mainstream literature. Some of these men were the Grand Masters of science fiction- Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke- the ABC of sci-fi.

Isaac Asimov is perhaps one of the most prolific writers of the field, and is also one of the most celebrated. Asimov was a scientist in his own right, and used that knowledge to create novels which would capture the imaginations of people for generations to come.
The Good Doctor's works, though science fiction, dealt less with new technologies and more with the evolution of human mind. His stories broke awayfrom the accepted norm of the time, that sci-fi stories were all about space battles and aliens. Instead, even as he wrote of galaxy spanning civilization, and men travelling in ships faster than light, he also delved deep into the subconsciousand created magic with the human element in his stories.
His short story Nightfall, for instance,dealt with with a race of men living in a planet with six suns in the sky; a planet which has no concept of darkness and night. And from this he spins a yarn of the first fall of night in millenia, and the reaction of the people to this event. The story, for good reason, is hailed as perhaps the greatest short story ever written in this genre.
Asimov achieved his pinnacle with a series of books- The Foundation Series. It has been described as The Rise And Fall of Roman Empire on a Galactic scale. The Foundation stories introduced the concept of Psychohistory- the science of predicting the future through mathematical means.
Along with the Galactic Empire stories and the Robot series, it laid the History of the Future of human race in front of us.