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"Rain, Rain, Go Away" is a short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. A fantasy/horror story, it was based on an idea by Bob Mills, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , but rejected by him. It was instead published in the September 1959 issue of Fantastic Universe and reprinted in the 1975 collection Buy Jupiter and Other Stories .
The story "Rain, Rain, Go Away" concerns a seemingly perfect family, the Sakkaros, who become neighbors of another family, the Wrights. The Wrights are puzzled at the great lengths the Sakkaros go to avoid any contact with water, such as when Mrs. Wright tells her husband that Mrs. Sakkaro's kitchen was so clean, it seemed to be never used, and when she offered Mrs. Wright a glass of water she filled the glass carefully while covered with a napkin, but Mr. Wright chalks it up to Mrs. Sakkaro being a good neighbor. The only other odd fact about the home was that the family always seems to be tanning, but at the slightest chance of rain, they all rush inside the safety of their home. Mr. & Mrs. Wright see the study of the Sakkaro residence is filled with newspapers and encyclopedias, which Mr. Sakkaro explains is part of his research. Nor does the Wright know the ethnicity of their neighbors, with Mrs. Wright thinking it could be a Spanish name while Mr. Wright thinks "Sakkaro" sounds Japanese. [note 1] To find out more about the Sakkaros the Wrights invite them out, and the Sakkaros pay for them all to go to a town carnival. The Sakkaros are extremely cautious and bring a radio with them that is tuned to the weather channel, and a barometer. At the carnival, they seem to have a good time with Mr. & Mrs. Wright and their son Tommie, but they display bizarre food choices, particularly nothing but cotton candy. Mr. Wright comments to his wife that he offered to buy Mr. Sakkaro a hamburger, who grimly refused, and Mrs. Wright also remarks that she had a similar reaction from Mrs. Sakkaro when she offered a soft drink. When their radio unexpectedly calls for rain, the Sakkaros appear to be in shock until they get to their house. When they pull up, it starts to drizzle, and the Sakkaros rush to get to the safety of their home. Mrs. Wright begins to say, "Honestly, George, you would think they were..." When the rain begins before they reach the Sakkaros' front door and they dissolve in the water. "... made of sugar and afraid they would melt." Mrs. Wright continues in horror.
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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.
"Robbie" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was the first of Asimov's positronic robot stories. In 2016, "'Robbie" won a retrospective 1941 Hugo Award for best short story. "Robbie" was the fourteenth story written by Asimov, and the ninth to be published. It was the first story in Asimov's Robot series.
This is a bibliography of the books written or edited by Isaac Asimov, arranged alphabetically. Asimov was a prolific author, and he engaged in many collaborations with other authors. This list may not yet be complete. The total number of books listed here is over 500. Asimov died in 1992 at age 72; a small number of his books were published posthumously.
"The Fun They Had" is a science fiction story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in a children's newspaper in 1951 and was reprinted in the February 1954 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Earth Is Room Enough (1957), 50 Short Science Fiction Tales (1960), and The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973). This story was also taught as a lesson in the CBSE Class 9 Textbook (Beehive) titled "The Fun They Had".
Buy Jupiter and Other Stories is a 1975 collection of short stories by American writer Isaac Asimov. Each story is introduced by a short account of how it came to be written and what was happening in Asimov's life at the time, and follows on from where The Early Asimov (1972) left off. In the introduction, Asimov explains that his objective is to tell enough of his autobiography in his short story collections so that his editors will stop asking him to write an actual autobiography.
Bruce Boston is an American speculative fiction writer and poet.
Fact and Fancy is a collection of seventeen scientific essays by American writer and scientist Isaac Asimov. It was the first in a series of books collecting his essays from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov's second book of science essays altogether. Doubleday & Company first published it in March 1962. It was also published in paperback by Pyramid Books as part of The Worlds of Science series.
"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.
"Buy Jupiter!" is a humorous science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the May 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction Magazine, and reprinted in the 1975 collection Buy Jupiter and Other Stories. The original title of the story was "It Pays," though it was never published under this name.
"Founding Father" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the October 1965 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, and reprinted in the 1975 collection Buy Jupiter and Other Stories. It was inspired by a cover painting of a space-helmeted face backed by several crosses, provided by the magazine's editor, Frederik Pohl.
"Light Verse" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the September–October 1973 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. It later appeared in the collections Buy Jupiter and Other Stories (1975), The Complete Robot (1982), and Robot Dreams (1986). The author has reported that he wrote the initial draft in one session and later had to change hardly a word in the final revision.
"Exile to Hell" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It appeared in the May 1968 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact and was included in the 1975 collection Buy Jupiter and Other Stories.
2430 A.D. is a science fiction short story by the American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the October 1970 issue of Think, the IBM house magazine, and was reprinted in Asimov's 1975 collection Buy Jupiter and Other Stories.
"Silly Asses" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was published in the February 1958 issue of Future Science Fiction, after having been twice rejected by other outlets. It was subsequently included in the collections Have You Seen These? in 1974 and Buy Jupiter and Other Stories in 1975. It runs to less than two pages in paperback.
The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens is a collection of fantasy short stories by writer Lord Dunsany. It was first published in London by G. P. Putnam's Sons in April, 1931, with the American edition following in September of the same year from the same publisher. It was the first collection of Dunsany's Jorkens tales to be published. It has also been issued in combination with the second book, Jorkens Remembers Africa, in the omnibus edition The Collected Jorkens, Volume One, published by Night Shade Books in 2004.
Linda D. Addison is an American poet and writer of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Addison is the first African-American winner of the Bram Stoker Award, which she won five times. The first two awards were for her poetry collections Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes (2001) and Being Full of Light, Insubstantial (2007). Her poetry and fiction collection How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. She received a fourth HWA Bram Stoker for the collection The Four Elements, written with Marge Simon, Rain Graves, and Charlee Jacob. Her fifth HWA Bram Stoker was for the collection The Place of Broken Things, written with Alessandro Manzetti. Addison is a founding member of the CITH writing group.
Timothy Robert Sullivan, who more commonly uses the name Tim Sullivan, is an American science fiction novelist, screenwriter, actor, film director and short story writer.
In a writing career spanning 53 years (1939–1992), science fiction and popular science author Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) wrote and published 40 novels, 383 short stories, over 280 non-fiction books, and edited about 147 others.
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Isaac Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books, Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing.
"What Good Is A Glass Dagger?" is a fantasy short story written by Larry Niven and published for the first time in 1972. It occurs in the same fictional universe as the book The Magic Goes Away, by Niven, being the second story in this universe, the sequel to the short story "Not Long Before the End". Asimov comments that in this story Niven "seeks to provide a scientific explanation for magic". The concept of mana appears in it, and from it has spread to the RPGs. However, it is not original to the book, as Niven said he learned about it by reading the book The Trumpet Shall Sound (1968). Niven also invokes the principle of mass conservation at some point in the narrative.