"Obituary" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the August 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and reprinted in Asimov's 1968 collection Asimov's Mysteries .
The story originated when Asimov read the obituary of his friend Cyril Kornbluth in The New York Times , and found himself feeling envy at the size and prominence of Kornbluth's obituary and frustration at the knowledge that he would never know whether his own obituary would be equally prominent. Nine months after Kornbluth's death, Asimov decided to exorcise his feelings by writing this story. Discussing "Obituary" in his autobiography, Asimov notes that it is the only story he wrote with a female narrator.
The story is narrated by the unnamed wife of an independently wealthy theoretical physicist named Lancelot Stebbins. Stebbins is a bitter man who feels frustration at his lack of fame in his chosen field, and after twenty-five years of marriage, his wife is increasingly unhappy with the state of affairs. At one point when she had remarked that he could at least expect some fame when his obituary appeared, Stebbins responded by screaming that he would never get to read it, and then spitting at her.
One morning, Stebbins announces that he has made a discovery that will ensure his lasting fame as a physicist. He gives his lab assistants a month's vacation to ensure that he will not have to share the credit with them, then enlists his wife's help. In the laboratory, Stebbins shows his wife an iron crucible with a white mouse in it. Stebbins then creates a second crucible and mouse by creating a duplicate of them five minutes into the future and then transporting the duplicates back into the present. The mouse in the duplicate crucible, however, is dead. After five minutes, the duplicate crucible and mouse disappear, leaving only the original.
Stebbins plans to create a duplicate of himself by the same process. The duplicate will be dead, of course, and Stebbins plans to have his wife announce his death. After his funeral, he will announce to the world that he is still alive and that his apparent death was the result of his discovery. The surrounding publicity will ensure that Stebbins will always be remembered for his discovery. He warns his wife that if anything goes wrong with his plan, he will kill her.
Stebbins carries out his plan. He creates a duplicate of himself three days in the future, then brings it back to the present, where it falls dead to the floor. Stebbins and his wife move the body to a room in the laboratory that has been arranged to look as though a reaction involving potassium cyanide got out of control. Stebbins then hides in another room with a three-day supply of food and water while his wife calls a doctor. The doctor calls the police, who rule the death an accident and leave. Mrs. Stebbins then notifies the media, and several reporters come to the laboratory, where she gives them information about how wonderful and brilliant Stebbins was.
Stebbins reads his obituaries with relish, and begins planning a career as the Great Man of temporal studies, to his wife's dismay. Per his instructions, she has the dead duplicate brought to the laboratory and displayed in an open casket. On the third day, the body in the casket disappears on schedule, and Stebbins has his wife make him a cup of coffee to celebrate. Mrs. Stebbins puts cyanide in the coffee instead of sugar, killing Stebbins, and she puts his body in the casket in place of the duplicate and proceeds with his funeral. She feels no remorse about his murder; after all, he did have the satisfaction of reading his own obituary.
Cyril M. Kornbluth was an American science fiction author and a member of the Futurians. He used a variety of pen-names, including Cecil Corwin, S. D. Gottesman, Edward J. Bellin, Kenneth Falconer, Walter C. Davies, Simon Eisner, Jordan Park, Arthur Cooke, Paul Dennis Lavond, and Scott Mariner.
Frederik George Pohl Jr. was an American science-fiction writer, editor, and fan, with a career spanning nearly 75 years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", to the 2011 novel All the Lives He Led.
Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as popular science and other non-fiction.
John Wood Campbell Jr. was an American science fiction writer and editor. He was editor of Astounding Science Fiction from late 1937 until his death and was part of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Campbell wrote super-science space opera under his own name and stories under his primary pseudonym, Don A. Stuart. Campbell also used the pen names Karl Van Kampen and Arthur McCann. His novella Who Goes There? was adapted as the films The Thing from Another World (1951), The Thing (1982), and The Thing (2011).
The Foundation series is a science fiction book series written by American author Isaac Asimov. First published as a series of short stories and novellas in 1942–50, and subsequently in three collections in 1951–53, for nearly thirty years the series was a trilogy: Foundation; Foundation and Empire; and Second Foundation. It won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. Asimov later added new volumes, with two sequels: Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth, and two prequels: Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation.
The Robot series is a series of thirty-seven science fiction short stories and six novels created by American writer Isaac Asimov, published from 1940 to 1995. The series is set in a world where sentient positronic robots serve a number of purposes in society. To ensure their loyalty, the Three Laws of Robotics are programmed into these robots, with the intent of preventing them from ever becoming a danger to humanity. Later, Asimov would merge the Robot series with his Foundation series.
Charles Sheffield, an English-born mathematician, physicist and science-fiction writer, served as a President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the American Astronautical Society.
Janet Opal Asimov, usually written as J. O. Jeppson, was an American science fiction writer, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst.
Foundation is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov. It is the first published in his Foundation Trilogy. Foundation is a cycle of five interrelated short stories, first published as a single book by Gnome Press in 1951. Collectively they tell the early story of the Foundation, an institute founded by psychohistorian Hari Seldon to preserve the best of galactic civilization after the collapse of the Galactic Empire.
The Naked Sun is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, the second in his Robot series. Like its predecessor, The Caves of Steel, this is a whodunit story. It was first published in book form in 1957 after being serialized in Astounding Science Fiction between October and December 1956.
"The Ugly Little Boy" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the September 1958 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction under the title "Lastborn", and was reprinted under its current title in the 1959 collection Nine Tomorrows. The story deals with a Homo neanderthalensis child which is brought to the future by means of time travel. Robert Silverberg later expanded it into a novel with the same title published in 1992.
"Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death" is a short story by James Tiptree, Jr., a pen name used by American writer Alice Sheldon. The novella won a Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1974. It first appeared in the anthology The Alien Condition, edited by Stephen Goldin, published by Ballantine Books in April 1973.
"The Dead Past" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov, first published in the April 1956 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It was later collected in Earth Is Room Enough (1957) and The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), and adapted into an episode of the science-fiction television series Out of the Unknown. Its pattern is that of dystopian fiction, but of a subtly nuanced flavor.
The Death Dealers is a 1958 mystery novel by American writer Isaac Asimov. It is about a university professor whose research student dies while conducting an experiment. The professor attempts to determine if the death was accident, suicide or murder.
Martin Harry Greenberg was an American academic and anthologist in many genres, including mysteries and horror, but especially in speculative fiction. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. He was also a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel. Greenberg was also an expert in terrorism and the Middle East. He was a longtime friend, colleague and business partner of Isaac Asimov.
Sparkling Cyanide is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1945 under the title of Remembered Death and in UK by the Collins Crime Club in the December of the same year under Christie's original title. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at eight shillings and sixpence (8/6).
The Prestige is a 1995 science fiction novel by British writer Christopher Priest. It tells the story of a prolonged feud between two stage magicians in late 1800s England. Its structure is that of a collection of diaries that were kept by the protagonists and later collated. The title derives from the novel's fictional practice of stage illusions having three parts: the setup, the performance, and the prestige (effect).
A Tale of Time City was first published in 1987 by British author Diana Wynne Jones. It tells the story of a girl, Vivian Smith, who is kidnapped while being evacuated from London during World War II and caught up in a struggle to preserve history. In this novel, Jones explains time travel with more reference to our current understanding of science than she does in many of her other works.
"What's in a Name?" is a mystery short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the June 1956 issue of The Saint Detective Magazine under the title Death of a Honey-Blonde and was reprinted in the 1968 collection Asimov's Mysteries under its original title.
Cosmic Stories and Stirring Science Stories were two American pulp science fiction magazines that published a total of seven issues in 1941 and 1942. Both Cosmic and Stirring were edited by Donald A. Wollheim and launched by the same publisher, appearing in alternate months. Wollheim had no budget at all for fiction, so he solicited stories from his friends among the Futurians, a group of young science fiction fans including James Blish and C. M. Kornbluth. Isaac Asimov contributed a story, but later insisted on payment after hearing that F. Orlin Tremaine, the editor of the competing science fiction magazine Comet, was irate at the idea of a magazine that might "siphon readership from magazines that paid", and thought that authors who contributed should be blacklisted. Kornbluth was the most prolific contributor, under several pseudonyms; one of his stories, "Thirteen O'Clock", published under the pseudonym "Cecil Corwin", was very successful, and helped to make his reputation in the field. The magazines ceased publication in late 1941, but Wollheim was able to find a publisher for one further issue of Stirring Science Stories in March 1942 before war restrictions forced it to close again.