"Il 1948 comincio con un fatto di sangue: l'assassinio del leader indiano Mahatma Gandhi. Intanto la tensione fra Stati Uniti e Unione Sovietica continuava a crescere fino a sfociare in quella che fu definita la guerra fredda; David Ben Gurion proclamava la fondazione dello stato d'Israele e il giorno dopo era invaso da cinque paesi arabi; e Harry Truman vinceva le elezioni presidenziali. Ma il 1948 vide anche Feynman e Schwinger sviluppare una nuova teoria quantistica dell'elettrodinamica, Ferdinand Porsche e Soichiro Honda lanciare un'automobile e una motocicletta destinate a divenire famose, le case dotate di televisione raggiungere il milione e i Bell Telephone Laboratories inventare il transistor che avrebbe rivoluzionato l'elettronica e la guerra. Per la fantascienza fu un altro anno eccezionale. "
Desde los primeros útiles de piedra a las naves que exploran la galaxia, este libro nos propone un completísimo panorama de lo que la ciencia ha aportado a la humanidad en los más diversos campos: la aventura de los grandes exploradores, la astronomia, la quimica, la fisica, la medicina, la psicologia, la ecologia, la informatica...Esta es la historia cronologica de mas de cuatro millones de años de conocimiento humano, la historia de los grandes descubrimientos y la gesta de los cientificos que los llevaron a cabo y la aplicacion practica de cada nuevo hallazgo. Se trata de una cronica de la inagotable vocacion del ser humano por saber mas, de su lucha por mejorar el mundo en el que vive, dominar la naturaleza, vencer las enfermedades, crear nuevas formas de comunicacion, explorar territorios ignotos, dar con la solucion a los grandes enigmas
Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels are one of the great masterworks of science fiction. As unsurpassed blend of nonstop action, daring ideas, and extensive world-building, they chronicle the struggle of a courageous group of men and women dedicated to preserving humanity's light in a galaxy plunged into a nightmare of ignorance and violence thirty thousand years long. After years of struggle, the Foundation lies in ruinsdestroyed by the mutant mind power of the Mule. But it is rumored that there is a Second Foundation hidden somewhere at the end of the Galaxy, established to preserve the knowledge of mankind through the long centuries of barbarism. The Mule failed to find it the first timebut now he is certain he knows where it lies. The fate of the Foundation rests on young Arcadia Darell, only fourteen years old and burdened with a terrible secret. As its scientists gird for a final showdown with the Mule, the survivors of the First Foundation begin their desperate search. They too want the Second Foundation destroyedbefore it destroys them.
The Foundation has managed to preserve humanculture and shorten the period of chaotic barbarism after the Galactic Empire began to decay. But the Foundation still faces great challenges in its strugg
It is the year 12,020 G.E. and Emperor Cleon I sits uneasily on the Imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multidomed capital of the Galactic Empire, forty billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable technological and cultural complexity. Yet Cleon knows there are those who would see him fall - those whom he would destroy if only he could read the future. Hari Seldon has come to Trantor to deliver his paper on psychohistory, his remarkable theory of prediction. Little does the young Outworld mathematician know that he has already sealed his fate and the fate of humanity. For Hari possesses the prophetic power that makes him the most wanted man in the Empire... the man who holds the key to the future - an apocalyptic power to be know forever after as the Foundation.
The second volume in an extraordinary collection published shortly after the author's death. In these twenty-three stories, Asimov's vivid awareness of the potential of technology is translated into human dilemmas. The definitive collection of short fiction by Isaac Asimov, supreme master of the science fiction genre continues with Volume Two of the Complete Stories. The Good Doctor was always ahead of his time and his work stands today as the clearest expression of our collective hopes and fears for the future. But the ever-expanding popularity of his stories with young and old readers alike is explained by their wit, zest and human interest. Within this volume are stories often voted among the best science fiction stories of all time. In these stories Asimov's vivid awareness of the potential of technology is translated into human dilemmas that are more relevant today than ever before.
It is 498 years since the two Foundations came into existence - half-way through the Interregnum planned by Hari Seldon. The Second Foundation has once more successfully concealed its existence so that the laws of psychohistory can operate to usher in a new Empire ruled by the mental sciences.
