Favourite Short Story? (Isaac Asimov)

[HardScienceFan]

Satisfaction Guaranteed
Breeds there a Man
The Powell and Donovan stories
robot AL-76 goes astray
Galley Slave

[Eleniel]

Eyes Do More Than See, I loved that one, it's really touching.
Lenny, because of the interaction between Lenny and Calvin.
Actually, I love all his stories, especially the Powell and Donovan and Calvin ones, but those two are my favourites right now. By tomorrow I'll probably be posting some others I haven't remembered yet.

[JeanetteMax]

Like some others here, I don't see why Nightfall is rated the best. It's certainly very good, but . . . I like "The Ugly Little Boy" , "The Last Question" , and "Reason".

No one's mentioned "Blind Alley" yet, which I've always liked.

[Joel007]

What was the one with the Jovains and the 3 ZZ robots called? I loved that one

[j. d. worthington]

"Victory Unintentional", as I recall....

[pyan]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

I'd also have to recommend "The Ugly Little Boy",

Read so long ago, but still remembered almost verbatim - must be the test of a favourite for me!
And "The Singing Bell" from Asimov's Mysteries.

[jeff.s.p]

I agree... "Ugly little Boy",.. not his most profound.. but certainly clear in my mind after having read 20 years ago.

~Jeff

[manephelien]

Yeah, Ugly Little Boy is certainly one of my favorite stories, and as I recall it was Asimov's favorite story out of his own works.

[Eleniel]

Victory Unintentional, there's another great one

[pnerd]

Among the short stories I read so far, my favourite would be either "The Last Question" or "The Bicentennial Man". It's hard to choose one as the favourite between these two.

[Lillyanna]

As a child, I was emotionally scarred by the story Rain Rain Go Away. So much so, that today I cannot think of a single book by Asimov that I've read. I must have been very young.

!

[skeptic_heptic]

I loved 'Profession'

[Contrary Mary]

I've read many of Asimov's short stories. My two favorites are "nightfall" and "The Ugly Little Boy".

I have personally always liked Asimov's short stories better than his novels.

[Randolph]

It's been a long time since I read Asimov, but the one story of his that's stuck with me is "The Last Question." The story itself is great - almost poetic in a way - and the vast amounts of time and space it covers really fires up my imagination. The whole concept of *spolier* mankind creating a machine that becomes so powerful it reverses entropy and sets the universe back to the beginning, thereby creating mankind, is amazing.

I think it has aged very well, unlike most sci-fi from that period.

[GrantG]

I can't remember the name (I was a freshman in high school when I read it) and I've only read maybe fifteen of his short stories, but my favorite out of that batch was about a group of robots on a spaceship. The robots don't really ignore the Laws of Robotics, but they find ways around them because - get this - the robots found religion. I think their new religion influenced them to believe that they were superior to humans, which is why they no longer thought that they had to obey orders.

There were only two human characters in the story, if I remember correctly, and I think they appeared in another one of his short stories (it seems like one of their names was Donovan). Anyhow, I thought it was great.