Physics and Star Wars

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_and_Star_Wars 

The interstellar space opera epic Star Wars uses science and technology in its settings and storylines. The series has showcased many technological concepts, both in the movies and in the expanded universe of novels, comics and other forms of media. The Star Wars movies' primary objective is to build upon drama, philosophy, political science and less on scientific knowledge. Many of the on-screen technologies created or borrowed for the Star Wars universe were used mainly as plot devices.

The iconic status that Star Wars has gained in popular culture and science fiction allows it to be used as an accessible introduction to real scientific concepts. Many of the features or technologies used in the Star Wars universe are not yet considered possible. Despite this, their concepts are still probable.

Tatooine's twin stars

A NASA depiction of a theoretical viewpoint from Kepler-16b's orbit of its two stars

In the past, scientists thought that planets would be unlikely to form around binary stars. However, recent simulations indicate that planets are just as likely to form around binary star systems as single-star systems. Of the 3457 exoplanets currently known, 146 actually orbit binary star systems (and 39 orbit multiple star systems with three or more stars). Specifically, they orbit what are known as "wide" binary star systems where the two stars are fairly far apart (several AU). Tatooine appears to be of the other type — a "close" binary, where the stars are very close, and the planets orbit their common center of mass.

The first observationally confirmed binary — Kepler-16b — is a close binary. Exoplanet researchers' simulations indicate that planets form frequently around close binaries, though gravitational effects from the dual star system tend to make them very difficult to find with current Doppler and transit methods of planetary searches. In studies looking for dusty disks—where planet formation is likely—around binary stars, such disks were found in wide or narrow binaries, or those whose stars are more than 50 or less than 3 AU apart, respectively. Intermediate binaries, or those with between 3 and 50 AU between them, had no dusty disks. In 2011 it was reported by The Guardian that NASA space telescope Kepler had discovered a planet, named Kepler-16b, with twin suns as seen in the Star Wars films.

Certified astrophysicist and Star Wars fan Jeanne Cavelos explains that scientists have been skeptical about the likelihood of binary star systems such as Tatooine since the gravity of one star may prevent planets from developing around the other. Two stars of different masses orbiting one another would cause gravity fields to shift, causing potential instabilities in the orbits of any planets in their system.

According to her, even planets in more stable orbits of a binary star system would suffer other kinds of problems such as climatic problems. As an example, a planet in a binary star system orbiting the larger star would be drawn closer to its gravitational field, causing the planet to endure heat of great temperatures during this period. As the planet passes its larger star and reaches the orbit of its smaller star, the gravitational field of that star would give the planet more distance from it. The distance (perhaps along with the smaller solar projection of the star) would send the planet into extreme frigid temperatures.

According to Cavelos, astronomers hypothesize at least two possible solutions to these problems exist and that even life supporting binary star systems could exist. One scenario could be two stars billions of kilometres apart. A planet or planets would be able to orbit one star while at minimum influence of the other. A star known as Proxima Centauri, or Alpha Centauri C, is about one trillion kilometres away from its sister stars, Alpha Centauri A and B. Also according to Cavelos, astronomers believe that Proxima Centauri could have planets of its own. If so, they would be minimally influenced by Proxima Centauri's sister stars due to the vast distance between them and these sister stars. Assuming the existence of planets around Proxima Centauri, from these planets the sister suns would appear as bright stars in the sky.

Another scenario would be two stars that would be closer to one another at a distance of only a few million kilometres. A planet orbiting far enough away would be affected by their gravitational fields almost as if there were one. If the distance between the two stars was a small fraction of the distance between them and the planet, it would be stable for the planet. Dawn and dusk would occur on such a planet as they would on Tatooine.

Blaster bolts

Star Wars makes heavy use of blaster and ion weaponry, attributed to laser, plasma, or particle based bolts of light. Characters can be seen escaping, or even dodging those bolts, and the blaster bolts themselves can be seen flying at a moderate-fast speed. Dodging a laser bolt would be nearly impossible, as it would travel at the speed of light. Due to that, it is reasonable the blaster fire would pass like a sparkle, and hit its target. Sometimes, characters will call the bolts "laser bolts" that, while they do not travel at light speed, are made of intense light energy.

However, many official canonical Star Wars sources state that blaster technology is different from real lasers. According to official canon, they are a form of particle beam. This is supported by how "magnetically sealed" walls deflect them.

The Polish Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the University of Warsaw managed to film an ultra short laser pulse by using cameras that produce billions of frames per second. These laser pulses were so powerful that they almost instantly ionized the atoms they encountered, resulting in the formation of a plasma fiber filament.

The effects of a blaster on a live target were portrayed more or less the same in every part of the Star Wars series. Since blaster bolts consist of light or particle based energy, the bolts would burn through the flesh of a target, with some even exploding against their target, exerting great force. The latter effect was usually from a blaster with greater size. Blasters have even been shown to have plasma energy as ammunition, which is portrayed as blue bolts. As of The Force Awakens, these blue bolts rupture and damage flesh with little to no burning, which causes bleeding injuries, as Poe shot a Stormtrooper with a blaster that caused him to bleed until death. Another instance of a blaster causing bleeding was when Chewbacca shot Kylo Ren with his Bowcaster, the small explosion against his body causing a bleeding injury coupled with burns. In many modern showings of blaster fights, someone hit by a blaster has cinders and soot outlining the area where they were shot. Also blasters hit with great amounts of friction and kinetic energy, enough to cause sparks to fly off the target, make the target burst into flames, or kill a target on impact, even if the target is not penetrated by the bolt, as it is when some targets are armored against blasters.

Vibration in vacuum

Star Wars is famously known for its epic space dogfights. Blaster, engine, and explosion sounds can be heard in those space scenes. Space is a vacuum, however, and since sound requires matter to propagate, the audience should not hear any sound.

This has been explained in some Star Wars media as the result of a sensor system that creates three-dimensional sound inside the cockpit or bridge matching the external movement of other vessels, as a form of multimodal interface, although the audience is still able to hear sound even from a perspective that is in space. In the canon novel Lords of the Sith it is explained that the characters in a galaxy far, far away indeed do not hear any sound in space if no longer confined by their vessels:

[Vader's] interceptor streaked toward the gun bubble, aimed directly at it. Content with the trajectory, he unstrapped himself, overrode the interceptor's safeties, threw open the cockpit hatch, and ejected into space.

Immediately he was spinning in the zero-g, the ship and stars alternating positions with rapidity. Yet he kept his mental hold on the air-lock handle, and his armor, sealed and pressurized, sustained him in the vacuum. The respirator was loud in his ears.

His ship slammed into the gun bubble and the transport, the inability of the vacuum to transmit sound causing the collision to occur in eerie silence. Fire flared for a moment, but only a moment before the vacuum extinguished it.

Therefore, the ability to hear sound in a vacuum by the audience is not heard by the iconic characters, but only to the audience as an interpretation to imagine what sounds we hear in the films as out-of-universe artifacts.

Asteroid field in Episode V

In The Empire Strikes Back, after the Battle of Hoth, the Millennium Falcon is pursued by Imperial ships through a dense asteroid field. The chunks of rock in the field are moving at rapid speeds, constantly colliding, and densely packed. Ordinarily, an asteroid field or belt is unlikely to be so densely packed with large objects, because collisions reduce large objects to rubble. About the only way for an asteroid belt to maintain itself would be to "balance destructive high-speed collisions with constructive soft collisions", but it is unclear whether this is happening in the film.

In contrast to Star Wars, the ship featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Discovery One, had a course that took it directly through the asteroid belt in the novel, without real fear of collision on the part of the mission organizers. However, the Solar System's Asteroid Belt is far less dense and several real spacecraft have passed through it without harm.

On the other hand, the so-called Trojan asteroid fields, named after the asteroids found in Jupiter-Sun Lagrange points, are known to be packed much more densely. The Solar System contains two such fields, the Greek Trojans and the Trojan Trojans, and two more (Neptune's trojans) have been discovered recently, but little is known about them currently.

Also, contained within this scene is a portion in which Han and Leia emerge from the Millennium Falcon, and are seen wearing only a facemask for air. The lack of pressure would have likely caused rapid decompression of their bodies, as the asteroid likely did not have an atmosphere. (See Effect of spaceflight on the human body.)

Flight dynamics

Unlike the true flight dynamics of space, those seen in Star Wars closely mirror the familiar dynamics of flying in Earth's atmosphere. For example, fixed-wing aircraft must make banked turns because they use air pressure to operate. Yet, in the airless vacuum of space in Star Wars, the spaceships always (unnecessarily) bank when turning. Physicist Lawrence M. Krauss says this is for a simple reason: "it looks good." By banking, the center of gravity would be maintained so up is still up but the g forces generated at such speeds would surely injure the occupants. This is handled in the films by devices known as "inertial compensators".

In order to turn in non-atmospheric flight, some force must still be applied to the craft, presumably by some sort of thruster or generated force field wave, the location of which (in relation to the craft's centre of gravity) will dictate the orientation of the ship, or bank angle, required to make the turn.

Destruction over Endor

See also: Theoretical physics

Following the events of Return of the Jedi, there has been widespread speculation that the destruction of the second Death Star as seen in the film would cause a radiation spread on the forest moon of Endor's atmosphere and surface, given that the explosion was caused by an attack on its (nuclear) core reactor.

The phenomenon has been around supposedly since 1997 following a number of comic book productions on Star Wars beyond the original trilogy (of unknown canonicity, although like most other works it has been declared non-canonical and part of the distinct Star Wars Legends continuity in 2014) and has been known as "The Endor Holocaust". It came about from a rational analysis in multiple commentaries of the aftermath of the second Death Star's destruction and its hypothetical effects on the forest moon and its living inhabitants. Based on all the information from the stories, it has been concluded that a nuclear fallout would cause radioactive contamination on the surface of the planet (or moon), leading to widespread death and destruction.

More recent analysis by physicists has supported the theory from a scientific perspective.

Studying and analyzing the second Death Star's destruction, physicists hypothesize its results and consequences. Astrophysicist and Star Wars fan Dave Mosher covers the film's events in a 10,000 word essay. His first argument is the Death Star explosion resulting from the rebel attack on its nuclear reactor, the whole space station would be reduced to a large number of fine metallic pieces raining down on Endor. The debris would burn up in Endor's atmosphere turning into toxic soot and spark planetary firestorms.

Another scientist, Sarah Stewart, reanalyzes the situation and theorizes the moon's previous state after some environmental cleanup from the Death Star's fallout.

Matija Cuk, who studies orbital dynamics, theorizes the Death Star's reactor blowing up in one second, sending enormous chunks of debris at about 220,000 miles per hour. He argues the energy carried by the debris would not be sufficient to destroy the moon, but erode the side facing the Death Star. He also argues all ships near the Death Star at the time of its explosion would be destroyed by it. He also adds the rebels witnessing the explosion from the planet's surface would be killed by the radiation released from the explosion even before the debris reaches them.

He concludes the debris following the explosion would strike the moon's surface and would send rocks on the surface to the far side of the moon. In his analysis, the extinction of the Ewoks is inevitable.

Planetary physicist Erik Asphaug, who also studies giant impacts on moons and planets opposes these theories. He argues the Death Star would not be reduced to tiny bits following explosion. He argues that all nuclear explosions in rock would vaporize matter near it, but break matter a further distance away into pieces. The further away the pieces, the less they would break. He concludes large chunks of the Death Star would hit the forest moon's surface, some even creating craters. The most problematic result in his analysis is the fire caused by the large radioactive debris that would set the moon's forests ablaze.

A detailed analysis to the aftermath of the Death Star explosion in Return of the Jedi by planetary scientist Dave Minton, concludes all the Ewoks would have died as a result. Using the information provided from the holograms in the briefing scene aboard the giant cruiser Home One in Episode VI, Minton estimates the diameter of the Death Star (or Death Star II to distinguish it from the first Death Star in Episode IV: A New Hope) is about three hundred forty three kilometers or about seven percent the diameter of Endor.

This would make Endor slightly larger than Mars but about 15% the size of Earth. He also notes that in diameter, Endor would still be smaller than Mars, but denser in mass by his measurement formula. Endor's composition being smaller would be unusual, but not impossible according to him.

He applies this data to the orbital dynamics problem. Discounting the possibility of the second Death Star being preserved in Endor's orbit by the use of anti-gravitational repulsors (a commonality in the Star Wars galaxy), Minton instead compares the Death Star in the forest moon's orbit to that of a satellite in Earth's orbit. Applying Kepler's Third Law, he determines an orbital period as exactly one day. But applying this law, he determines astrophysical problems with the Death Star using Endor's gravity to sustain itself in the forest moon's orbit. For simplicity, he assumes a day on Endor as 24 hours.

Minton also argues the explosion of the second Death Star in Episode VI is lighter than that of the first one in Episode IV. His argument is drawn from the two films where the one in A New Hope explodes instantaneously; wheres the second one in Return of the Jedi explodes in a longer time period, allowing the rebel pilots to escape alive and their ships unharmed by the explosion. The film specifically shows Wedge Antilles and Lando Calrissian hitting two main sections of the core reactor from an X-wing fighter and the Millennium Falcon (co-piloted by Nien Nunb), causing the reactor to collapse and start a chain explosion and resulting in the Death Star blowing up from a series of internal explosions and collapses.

Minton therefore concludes there would be little vaporization of remaining material and that the explosion would move a lot slower than what is required to keep them in orbit, which he estimates is about 212 miles per second. Using the equation representing orbital velocity of the Death Star, he theorizes the fragments would need to be orbiting at about 4.5 kilometers per second to maintain orbit at the same altitude the Death Star had been. Since this does not happen, he argues the remains of the former Death Star would fall straight into the area where the shield generator has been on the moon's surface.

To estimate the effects of the second Death Star, Minton looks into its mass. According to estimated data from some students of Lehigh University, the steel mass needed for building one would be around 770 kilograms times the mass cubed in weight ⁠— ⁠this would give the Death Star a mass of about 10¹⁹ kg. Using this data, Minton produces equations that lead him to conclude the fragments would hit the moon's surface so hard it would cause craters almost four times the size of the Chicxulub crater in Mexico. This impact would cause a planetary firestorm and vaporize all lifeforms on the moon.

Hyperspace travel

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding missing information. (May 2016)

The hyperspace travel in the Star Wars franchise requires two elements, light speed travel and hyperspace. Ships in the Star Wars Universe have engines capable of propelling them to the speed of light. However, current physical theory states that it is impossible for any physical object to attain that speed, as long as the object has a non-zero mass, because an infinite amount of energy would be required to accelerate the mass to such a speed ⁠— ⁠a logical impossibility in our universe. Moreover, even if one were traveling at light speed, it would still take thousands of years to travel even a moderately sized galaxy. It is for these reasons that Star Wars space vessels use a "hyperdrive".

This is explained by having the ships warp to another "dimension", presumably a brane universe with different physical laws. Gravity supposedly reaches between branes. In Star Wars, gravity in real spaces forms gravitational "mass shadows" in hyperspace. Hyperspace in Star Wars is unrelated to the presumed space between universal "bubbles" in real life physics.

Hyperspace travel has also been noted to have some form of air resistance, as seen in "Deal No Deal", an episode of the Star Wars: the Clone Wars TV series. Trace Martez – smuggler and friend of Ahsoka Tano – apologises for flight turbulence on her heavily modified Nebula-class freighter, nicknamed the "Silver Angel", having "left the air brakes on". This would be normal, if Martez was encountering air resistance in the atmosphere of Coruscant - the planet she had just left. However, she only encountered turbulence once she entered hyperspace, which suggests that hyperspace has some form of gaseous atmosphere, for lack of a better term.

Planets, moons and planetoids

See also: Biophysics

Map of the Star Wars galaxy

In the Star Wars franchise, almost everyone can breathe and move on many planets, and these, as well as the star systems, are treated as small places. Both defects have an accurate explanation.

The Star Wars Expanded Universe states that many of the planets of the galaxy were colonized and adapted to the atmosphere and gravity of the most populated species, and there are also many species—such as Kel Dor and Skakoans—that need to use devices like breathing masks or pressurized suits. In the other case, since the Star Wars franchise develops itself to the intergalactic level, it is assumed that almost all the planets on it are planetary civilizations, a theory well-based in reality and that could possibly happen in a distant future.

The novelization of A New Hope, ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster, mentions that humans colonized Tatooine in the section introducing the Tusken Raiders. The section implies that humans colonized the planet and settled in the more remote areas of the much sparsely populated planet, which did not give much chance of contact between the Tusken Raiders and the human colonists, who settled on the planet in small numbers.

Also in the same novel, the section introducing the planet Yavin describes it as uninhabitable. Its satellite moons are described as planet sized. The fourth moon called "Yavin IV" as it was named by early human colonizers is described rich with plant and animal life. It describes an ancient civilization that once existed in the jungles of the moon but disappeared centuries before human explorers ever set foot on the moon. The only evidence of their existence the ancient architectural sites and monuments they left behind (as seen in the film), most of which were mysteriously built. At the time the Rebel Alliance used territory on Yavin as their hidden base, the only thing left on the moon was plant, insect and animal life.

Jeanne Cavelos points to the Tales of the Jedi comic book series that document the early colonization of much of the populated Star Wars galaxy. Her argument is that the humans in the Star Wars galaxy being a single species, as well as appearing and living like human beings on Earth, likely originated from a single Earth-like planet, though the exact origin or home world of the human species in the Star Wars universe is not exactly known. She suggests that to be able to colonize other planets, the humans of the Star Wars galaxy could not have been genetically altered. She points to the fact that Luke Skywalker lived his life on Tatooine but did not require any genetic altering to adapt to Hoth, a planet with a climate estimately the opposite of Tatooine.

There are also problems with the possibility of humans altering the climate of the planet they colonize. She mentions the fact that there are native species on planets that humans live on, such as the Jawas alongside the Tusken Raiders on Tatooine who survive in the same climate as humans live on. If they lived in another climate prior to human colonization and environmental modification/alternation, such as terraforming, they are unlikely to survive.

Another possibility she suggests is the use of artificial aids that would help the colonists adapting to life on a newly settled planet before gradually adapting to life there. Some variations in climate and gravity would be adaptable to the colonists over a few generations as long as the variations are not too great. Through a period of generations, the colonists would evolve and adapt, even perhaps by evolutionary mutations.

There is also the unlikelihood of other planets having air just like Earth's and automatically being breathable according to other scientists, Cavelos claims. Only a small number of such planets probably exist. The chances are greater of finding planets with similar atmospheres that would require minimal atmospheric modification, but unlikely to be identical to Earth's that arriving humans could simply survive on them.

Another issue amongst this is that if human species would be unlikely to encounter a planet with an exact Earth-like environment, it would be even more unlikely for so many different alien species to be of the same environmental background and surviving in the same environmental conditions as seen at the Mos Eisley cantina in A New Hope.

Lightsabers

See also: Photonic molecule

Green lightsaber

Often, lightsabers are said to be composed of lasers. However, using lasers raises several issues:

• The necessity of something to reflect the end of the beam.
• Having a compact and powerful enough power source.
• Lasers do not clash when their beams cross.
• Lasers are silent.
• There are some materials that can withstand a lightsaber, and some can even deactivate one upon contact.

Earlier forms of the weapon were known as "protosabers" in the Star Wars galaxy that required battery packs which were connected to the lightsaber hilt through a power cord. The battery pack was attached to a belt worn by the Jedi using the lightsaber, similar to how a flamethrower is worn, but was not ideal as it restricted the Jedi's movements during combat.

Lightsabers have been generally explained as plasma kept in a force field, usually an electric or magnetic field. The force field could not be magnetic, because the field contains heat, something a magnetic field is incapable of doing. Thus, the force field must be a shield not known by modern technology. Additionally, when two plasma blades would come into direct contact, it would almost certainly result in magnetic reconnection, causing an explosive release of the plasma contained in both sabers.

The problems with lightsabers that use actual light blades mentioned at the beginning of this section are not all insurmountable. For instance, it is mentioned that "Lasers do not clash when their beams cross", which is a statement based on our day-to-day experience with light. But Euler and Heisenberg have shown in 1936 that, for sufficiently high intensities, light can actually interact with itself (an effect due to quantum fluctuations of the vacuum). Given this, then it is possible to imagine a scenario of two lightsabers clashing in which photons coming from the hilt of one lightsaber are scattered toward the hilt of the other lightsaber (the scattering is done in the region where the two lightsabers overlap). Since photons have momentum, those scattered photons would exert radiation pressure on the hilt of the other lightsaber. Using techniques from ultrahigh intensity lasers, it has been shown that for lasers with an electric field strength of the order of 10¹⁵ V/m, the force felt in the hilt of each lightsabers is approximately 10 N (roughly the weight of a one kilogram object). This force due to scattered photons would give an impression of blade solidity when the two lightsabers clash. An incredible amount of energy is necessary to power such a lightsaber. For instance, powering a lightsaber with an electric field strength of 10¹⁵ V/m for one minute requires 10²⁵ J, or ten times less than the total energy output of the Sun in one second. If the energy source is nuclear fusion, such a lightsaber would require 10¹¹ kg of nuclear fusion fuel to operate for one minute. In other words, one would need to fit the equivalent of ten Great Pyramid of Giza-s of nuclear fusion fuel in the hilt to operate such a lightsaber for one minute.

Asimov's Science Fiction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov's_Science_Fiction

 

Cover for the Mid-December 1994 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction

Asimov's Science Fiction is an American science fiction magazine edited by Sheila Williams and published by Dell Magazines, which is owned by Penny Press. It was launched as a quarterly by Davis Publications in 1977, after obtaining Isaac Asimov's consent for the use of his name. It was originally titled Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and was quickly successful, reaching a circulation of over 100,000 within a year, and switching to monthly publication within a couple of years. George H. Scithers, the first editor, published many new writers who went on to be successful in the genre. Scithers favored traditional stories without sex or obscenity; along with frequent humorous stories, this gave Asimov's a reputation for printing juvenile fiction, despite its success. Asimov was not part of the editorial team, but wrote editorials for the magazine.

Scithers was fired in 1982, and his replacement, Kathleen Moloney, only lasted a year. Shawna McCarthy took over as editor in 1983, and quickly relaxed the strictures on the kind of fiction Asimov's was willing to publish. "Her Furry Face", by Leigh Kennedy, with a plot that involved sex with an intelligent orangutan, scandalized some readers, as did other stories involving sex or violence. Asimov defended McCarthy's choices in an editorial, and "Her Furry Face" was nominated for a Nebula Award. McCarthy transformed the magazine into a leading market for science fiction writers, and more award-winning stories appeared, including fiction by Frederik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, Lucius Shepard, and John Varley.

Gardner Dozois took over as editor in 1985 and stayed for nearly twenty years. Asimov's continued to be a prestigious market and several award-winning stories appeared during Dozois's tenure, including Lucius Shepard's "R&R"; Orson Scott Card's "Hatrack River"; Pat Murphy's "Rachel in Love"; Suzy McKee Charnas's "Boobs"; and Terry Bisson's "Bears Discover Fire". Mike Ashley, a historian of science fiction magazines, describes Dozois's time at Asimov's as "one of the greatest of all editorial careers". Dozois was succeeded by Sheila Williams in 2004.

Davis sold the magazine to Dell Magazines in 1992, and Dell was acquired by Penny Press in 1996. Asimov's switched to bimonthly publication in 2017. Circulation declined steadily over the life of the magazine and as of 2020 it was below 20,000, more than half of that coming from online subscriptions.

Asimov's Science Fiction was purchased in February 2025, along with Analog Science Fiction and Fact and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, by Must Read Books Publishing.

Publication history

In February 1976, Isaac Asimov visited the offices of Davis Publications in New York to drop off a story he was submitting to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Joel Davis, the publisher, had recently acquired Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and was interested in adding new fiction magazines to his list. One of his employees had gone to a Star Trek convention with their children, and had told Davis how much the children had enjoyed it. This prompted Davis to talk to Asimov about a new science fiction magazine,^{[3][5][note 1]} and Davis asked Asimov if he could use his name as part of the magazine's title. Asimov was concerned about the potential impact on two of the major science fiction magazines of the day, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF), both of which were edited by friends of his, Ben Bova and Ed Ferman. Davis argued that a new magazine would be good for the field, and Bova and Ferman both told Asimov that they agreed with Davis. Asimov agreed to go ahead with the plan on condition that he did not act as editor. Asimov wrote a regular science column for F&SF, which he continued, but Davis asked him not to submit fiction to competing magazines.

George Scithers was soon hired to fill the editorial role, with Gardner Dozois as associate editor; Dozois only stayed a year, as he and Scithers did not agree on what kind of stories should be accepted. Davis initially committed to three quarterly issues, the first of which was dated Spring 1977, and appeared on December 16, 1976. The magazine was immediately successful, circulation reaching 108,843 for the first year, a little higher than Analog's. Circulation was helped by the distribution network that Davis Publications already had access to for its existing magazines, with robust newsstand distribution. Paperback anthologies of stories from the magazine were assembled, starting at the end of 1977; these were profitable and also attracted new readers. The magazine's success persuaded Davis to move to a bimonthly schedule for 1978, and to monthly starting with the January 1979 issue. Davis decided to launch a second magazine, Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine, targeted to a younger audience. The first issue was dated Fall 1978. Four quarterly issues appeared, but sales were weak, and a planned fifth issue never appeared.

Davis moved all four of his fiction magazines to a four-weekly schedule in 1981, meaning there were thirteen issues per year. The change took effect at Asimov's with the January issue, which was dated January 19, 1981. This led to newsstand vendors removing the magazine more quickly, since the date implied that it was a weekly magazine. The cover date was changed back to the current month starting with the April 1982 issue, but the new schedule remained in place, with "Mid-December" issues for more than a decade thereafter.

Davis launched two more magazines in 1981: Crime Digest and Science Fiction Digest; these carried book excerpts and publishing news. Scithers had been announced as the editor of Science Fiction Digest, but when it was launched Shawna McCarthy was given the editorial role. This may have been because Scithers was based in Philadelphia, with a local team of first readers to help read the incoming manuscripts, and Davis wanted an editor who was in the New York office five days a week. According to Asimov, Scithers and Davis never got along very well. Scithers's refusal to move to New York made matters worse, and there were other sources of tension: Davis appointed Carol Gross as executive director in charge of marketing and production, and Gross instigated a redesign of the magazine and took control of the art department away from Scithers. In December 1981, Scithers was fired.^[10]

Scithers's replacement was Kathleen Moloney, who was hired away from Bantam where she had been a book editor. At first Moloney edited the stories heavily without consulting the authors until the galley proofs were printed, against McCarthy's advice. After pushback from the authors, Moloney turned over manuscript editing to McCarthy. Moloney was hired away by Times Books later that year, and replaced by McCarthy, who was told that Asimov had insisted that she become the next editor if the magazine wanted to keep his name. Her first issue was dated January 1983. She was succeeded in May 1985 by Gardner Dozois, though he was not credited on the masthead until January 1986.

Circulation had declined from its first-year peak to about 80,000 by the time Dozois became editor. The 1987 recession caused Davis Publications financial problems, and Davis decided to sell all four fiction magazines. While he searched for a buyer, changes were made to increase profitability: two issues per year were doubled in size and increased in price. The magazines were bought in January 1992 by Bantam-Doubleday-Dell, and became part of Dell Magazines. The title was shortened that November to Asimov's Science Fiction.

In September 1996 Dell Magazines was sold to Penny Press. The schedule returned to monthly and the October and November issues were combined, so that only eleven rather than thirteen issues appeared per year. The page count was cut, and prices increased. In June 1998 the size was increased from a standard digest size of 7.5 in × 5 in (19 cm × 13 cm) to 8.25 in × 5.25 in (21.0 cm × 13.3 cm) to match other Penny Press magazines, which made printing and binding more efficient. The page count dropped at the same time, but the changes were announced as an increase in total text of 10%, with no change in price. However, a year later the price rose again. Circulation dropped over 30% over the first four years of Penny Press's ownership, from about 46,000 to under 32,000, probably partly because of these changes. Most of the decline was in subscription sales, though profitability was helped by subscribers who came through the magazine's website, which had been started in 1998, instead of through a third party that took a commission from the subscription price.

Dozois gave up the editorship in 2004, and was succeeded by Sheila Williams, whose first issue was dated December of that year. The number of issues per year was reduced to ten starting in 2004, with the April and May issues combined into a double-sized issue. In 2008 the size was increased again, to 8.5 in × 5.75 in (21.6 cm × 14.6 cm), to make the magazine more prominent on newsstands. From January 2017, the schedule was changed to six bimonthly double-sized issues per year.

In February 2025, the magazine was purchased by a group of investors led by Steven Salpeter, president of literary and IP development at Assemble Media.

Contents and reception

Scithers (1977–1982)

The rear cover of the October 1950 first issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, featuring a sardonic parody of bad science fiction. This was the basis for a parody by G. Richard Bozarth that appeared in Asimov's in 1978.

Asimov and Scithers agreed at the launch of the magazine on their goals for the magazine. In an editorial in the first issue, Asimov said "we will lean toward hard science fiction, and toward the reasonably straightforward in the way of style ... We will have humorous stories and we will have an occasional unclassifiable story". Mike Ashley, a historian of science fiction, summarizes the plans for the magazine: "It was not to be one full of stories trying to put the world to rights, nor to be full of experimental or New Wave material."

The first issue included stories by Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Jonathan Fast, and Fred Saberhagen, and an excerpt from Gordon R. Dickson's novel Time Storm which would be published later that year. John Varley contributed two stories: "Good-Bye, Robinson Crusoe", one of his Eight Worlds stories; and (under a pseudonym) "Air Raid", which was turned into a film, Millennium, in 1989. Asimov's soon became known for humorous stories. The only touch of humor in the first issue was Clarke's story, "Quarantine", which was a very short story originally written to fit on a postcard, but more quickly appeared. Two stories by Asimov based on puns appeared in the second issue, and the third issue saw the re-appearance of Reginald Bretnor's "Feghoot" series of punning stories that had appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Venture Science Fiction decades earlier. More "spoofs or parodies and occasional limericks" appeared which "threatened to overshadow the more serious fiction", according to science fiction historian Mike Ashley. For example "Bat Durston: Space Marshal" by G. Richard Bozarth was a parody, inspired by an advertisement that had appeared on the back cover of Galaxy Science Fiction in the 1950s; Ashley points out that new readers might have thought it was intended as a serious story. Allied with some stories clearly written for younger readers, these stories gave the impression that the magazine was not aimed at an adult audience. Orson Scott Card commented in an early review of Asimov's that it had "tapped a juvenile market that none of the other magazines was reaching", and other reviewers made similar comments. As a result, some writers did not submit manuscripts to Asimov's despite the competitive rates of pay. Ashley suggests that when Dozois left the editorial staff after only a year, it was because he wanted to acquire stories that were more sophisticated than the material Scithers preferred.

Scithers bought the first published stories of many writers over his tenure, and his habit of announcing in the magazine when a story was a first sale may have encouraged more submissions from new writers. His discoveries included Barry Longyear and Diana Paxson, and several more authors who had only just started their careers began selling regularly to Scithers, including John M. Ford, Nancy Kress, and Somtow Sucharitkul. Longyear's "Circus World" series began in the magazine, but his best-received story was "Enemy Mine", which appeared in the September 1979 issue and won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Some well-established writers appeared in the magazine, despite its reputation as a juvenile market: Varley contributed "The Barbie Murders" in early 1978, and Michael Bishop, Brian Aldiss, Tanith Lee, Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe, and James Tiptree, Jr, all appeared during Scither's tenure. Scithers won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor in 1978, the first year in which he was eligible, and again in 1980.

Asimov's readership included many who were new to the field, and many more who had given up on the other major science fiction magazines. This combination was a good fit for Scithers's approach: traditional stories, without sex or profanity: "nothing too challenging or revolutionary", in Ashley's words. Some veteran science fiction writers such as L. Sprague de Camp, Hal Clement, and Jack Williamson fit in well with Scithers's constraints, producing material that could have been printed in a 1950s magazine, but Frederik Pohl's "Like unto the Locust", which appeared in 1979, did not. Letters poured in objecting to the profanity that appeared in the story. Scithers responded: "... we want to apologize for not copy-editing this installment as well as we should. It's not our intention to use language quite that strong when we (and the authors) can avoid doing so." Evidence from circulation figures suggest that longtime readers of science fiction were becoming a smaller percentage of Asimov's readership, and Ashley describes the result as stagnation: Scithers's had "dumbed down" the material to please the new readers Asimov's was attracting, but as a result the magazine was becoming isolated within the field. John Shirley criticized the magazine in 1979 as "a fog of predictability, formula, and done-to-death techno-bullshit imagery", adding a year later that Scithers was playing it safe, "And when you're that safe, you're schlock .... People think that this is science fiction and I fear that it is a major neutralizing influence on the field." Ashley argues that the magazine's success cannot be ascribed only to the unchallenging fiction it printed; Asimov's name drew in many fans of his books, and Davis Publications' marketing experience helped as well.

Although Asimov had no editorial role, he was named the magazine's editorial director and wrote many editorials for it. A puzzle column by Martin Gardner began in the first issue. A book review column, by Charles N. Brown, followed in the second issue; Brown was replaced by Baird Searles in May 1979.

Moloney (1982)

Moloney had no background in science fiction, but soon realized that Asimov's name was a significant asset. She persuaded Asimov to submit his Azazel stories, which he had begun publishing in the competing magazines, to Asimov's, starting with "To the Victor" in July 1982. Moloney added two non-fiction columns: a profile of a writer, often written by Charles Platt, and an opinion column called Viewpoint. A cartoon series, "Mooney's Module", began, and she commissioned crosswords from Merl Reagle. Reader reaction was mixed, some letters complaining about the non-fiction columns taking up space that could have been used for another story. Moloney's impact on the fiction was limited; negative author reaction to her habit of heavily editing their manuscripts, and advice from McCarthy, led to her giving McCarthy a good deal of control over the fiction. Two well-known stories published during Moloney's tenure were Connie Willis's "A Letter from the Clearys", and David Brin's "The Postman", which later formed the basis of a novel and film of the same name.

McCarthy (1983–1985)

McCarthy took over fully as editor with Moloney's departure at the end of 1982. The February 1983 issue, the second one with McCarthy's name on the masthead, included Greg Bear's novella "Hardfought", which went on to win the Nebula Award. McCarthy was willing to expand the range of fiction the magazine published, and most readers who wrote in agreed that the prohibition on sex and violence could be relaxed, but Davis Publications did not want to risk alienating the young readers whom they knew formed part of the magazine's audience. McCarthy was unable to resolve this conflict for Connie Willis's "All My Darling Daughters", a story featuring "lesbianism and bestiality and incest", in Willis's words, and it never saw print in Asimov's, appearing in Willis's short story collection Fire Watch instead. McCarthy continued to be open to a broader range of fiction than Scithers had been, and at the end of the year published Leigh Kennedy's "Her Furry Face", with a plot that involved sex with an intelligent orangutan. Two stories in the next issue featuring street violence: Norman Spinrad's "Street Meat", and Octavia Butler's "Speech Sounds". McCarthy introduced "Street Meat" by saying "What follows is not for the faint of heart." Kennedy's story led to many complaints and canceled subscriptions, and McCarthy was asked by Davis to be cautious in future, but the stories were well received: "Speech Sounds" won that year's short story Hugo Award and "Her Furry Face" was nominated for the Nebula Award. Asimov defended the publication of "Her Furry Face" in a subsequent editorial. McCarthy commented afterwards that "the long-time Asimov fans were shocked and we hadn't gotten enough new readers yet". Other stories from McCarthy's first year in charge included Dozois's "The Peacemaker", in the August 1983 issue, which won the Nebula Award.

Well-received stories from 1984, McCarthy's second year in charge, included Lucius Shepard's "A Traveler's Tale", John Kessel's "The Big Dream", and Varley's "Press Enter■", which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Ashley singles out Octavia Butler's "Bloodchild", in the June 1984 issue, as "arguably the single most important story publiished during McCarthy's editorship". The story was about a race of insectoid aliens. The human protagonist has a relationship with one of the aliens, and agrees to allow the alien to lay their eggs in his body. "Bloodchild" won the Hugo and Nebula Awards and appeared in all that year's "Best of Science Fiction" anthologies. Reader reaction in Asimov's was positive, and a 1995 review of Butler's collection Bloodchild and Other Stories described the story as "one of the genre's undisputed classics".

McCarthy's effect on the magazine was quickly noticed. Dozois's summary of 1983 in science fiction commented that "If there was an award for the most dramatically improved magazine of the year, it would have to go to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and the credit for that sea change seems to belong almost entirely to new editor Shawna McCarthy." Writers began to make Asimov's their first market to submit to, and 1985 saw more award-winning stories as a result: Pohl's "Fermi and Frost"; Silverberg's "Sailing to Byzantium"; Roger Zelazny's "24 Views of Mount Fuji, by Hokusai"; and "Portraits of His Children", by George R. R. Martin. For the three years that McCarthy edited, Asimov's dominated the annual science fiction awards, accounting for almost a third of the nominations for Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards, and inclusions in the annual "Year's Best" anthologies.

McCarthy discovered or encouraged many new writers, including Mary Gentle, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Paul J. McAuley, and Karen Joy Fowler. She won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor in 1984.

Dozois (1986–2004)

Gardner Dozois

When Dozois took over the editorship of Asimov's, McCarthy's work had changed the image of the magazine, and Dozois worked to solidify the impression that, in Ashley's words, "Asimov's was where the 'cutting edge' work in the field was appearing, so that authors would be eager to appear there". Dozois's tenure began as cyberpunk (a subgenre of science fiction focused on the consequences of virtual reality and computer technology) was becoming more popular, and cyberpunk fiction soon appeared: in January 1986, Dozois serialized William Gibson's Count Zero, the sequel to Gibson's debut novel, Neuromancer, and he also printed Pat Cadigan's "Pretty Boy Crossover". Asimov's did not focus solely on cyberpunk, though; Dozois printed a wide variety of speculative fiction. Stories from Dozois's first year include Lucius Shepard's "R&R", which won the Nebula; Orson Scott Card's "Hatrack River", which won the World Fantasy Award; and Kate Wilhelm's "The Girl Who Fell From the Sky", which won a Nebula. Pat Murphy and Kim Stanley Robinson began selling regularly to Dozois; Murphy's "Rachel in Love", in the April 1987 issue, about a teenage girl's personality in a chimpanzee's body, won a Nebula and a Locus Award, and Robinson's "The Blind Geometer", in the August issue, also won a Nebula.

Asimov's had never run serials before Count Zero, and there was some resistance from the readers, since in most cases the novel would also be published in book form. Dozois persisted for a while, with Michael Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers beginning serialization in the Mid-December 1986 issue. Harlan Ellison's script for a film based on Asimov's robot short stories was serialized at the end of 1987 as I Robot: The Movie, and Swanwick's Stations of the Tide ran in the Mid-December 1990 and January 1991 issues, but those were the last to appear.

A regular feature of the magazine was a long novella as the lead story. Orson Scott Card's "Eye for Eye", which won a Hugo, appeared in this slot, as did Megan Lindholm's "A Touch of Lavender", voted the most popular novella of 1989 by Asimov's readers. Dozois also published shorter fiction: short stories from Dozoi's tenure at Asimov's that won the Hugo or Nebula awards include Suzy McKee Charnas's "Boobs" (1989), Terry Bisson's "Bears Discover Fire" (1990), and Michael Swanwick's "The Very Pulse of the Machine". Newer writers discovered by Dozois included Allen Steele and Mary Rosenblum, but overall the number of new writers appearing in the magazine fell. Ashley suggests this was because the magazine's reputation was now high, and Dozois received hundreds of manuscripts a week, making it harder for new authors to break through.

In 2004, Asimov's was included in a list of magazines available for school fundraising drives. The mother of a 13-year-old girl who bought a copy complained about the magazine, which contained strong language and other material she objected to, and the complaint led to some negative news coverage, described by the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as "over-sensationalized".

Paul DiFilippo and Peter Heck took over the book reviews from Baird Searles in 1994, and Spinrad began contributing critical essays. A column on role-playing games, by Matthew Costello, began in 1996 and lasted for four years. James Patrick Kelly and Robert Silverberg both began contributing columns during Dozois's tenure; Kelly's column, "On the Net", began in 1998, and Silverberg's "Reflections" started in the July 1994 issue. Silverberg's column had originally begun in Galileo, in 1978, and had moved to Amazing Stories from 1981 to 1994. It is still running in Asimov's as of 2023.

Dozois's editorship was well regarded in the field. Dozois won the Hugo Award for best professional editor every year from 1988 to 2004 with only two exceptions, in 1994 and 2002, and Ashley describes his time at Asimov's as "one of the greatest of all editorial careers". Dozois made Asimov into "the most important magazine of its generation", according to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which comments that Dozois's success "stimulated the sf field to rebuild and regenerate itself after the identity crises it had gone through in the 1960s and 1970s". In 2014 Gary Westfahl praised the "creative editors of the 1980s and 1990s, such as Gardner Dozois of Asimov's Science Fiction and Gordon Van Gelder of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction", but added that "such editors were no longer the most important figures in the field".

Williams (2004 – present)

In Williams' first editorial, in the January 2005 issue, she made it clear she did not plan to make dramatic changes to the approach established by McCarthy and Dozois. Williams reinstated the letter column, and began an intermittent non-fiction column, "Thought Experiments", starting with a reminiscence by Roger Ebert of his involvement in science fiction fandom. To mark the 30th anniversary of the magazine in 2007, she published a 30th Anniversary Anthology.

She won the Hugo Award for short-form editor in 2011 and 2012.^[40]

Bibliographic details

Paid circulation figures. No data is available for 1979–1980. The first few years of digital subscription numbers are estimated.

The editorial succession at Asimov's is as follows:

• George H. Scithers, Spring 1977 – February 15, 1982
• Kathleen Moloney, March 15, 1982–Mid-December 1982
• Shawna McCarthy, January 1983 – December 1985
• Gardner Dozois, January 1986–October/November 2004
• Sheila Williams, December 2004–January 2026
• Emily Hockaday, Interim Editor during Sheila Williams’ illness

The title was originally Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine; it was changed to Asimov's Science Fiction with the November 1992 issue. Asimov's has been digest-sized throughout its history, though the size was increased slightly with the June 1998 issue to conform with the publisher's other magazines. The first issue was 196 pages; issues since then have varied between 112 pages up to (for the double issues) 288 pages. The price was originally $1.00, and has since risen frequently. As of 2023 each double issue is priced at $8.99.

Publishers

• Davis Publications (1977–1992)
• Dell Magazines (1992–1996) – owned by Dell Publishing
• Dell Magazines (1996–2025) – owned by Penny Publications in Connecticut.
• 1 Paragraph, Inc. (2025–present) – Also owns Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Anthologies

A series of five anthologies was issued under the series title Asimov's Choice, selected from the 1977 and 1978 issues. All were edited by Scithers: the titles were Astronauts & Androids, Black Holes & Bug-Eyed Monsters, Comets & Computers, Dark Stars & Dragons, and Extraterrestrial & Eclipses. Another series, titled Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology, followed, with volume 1 appearing in 1979, and the eighth and final volume in 1983. An anonymously edited anthology appeared in 1986, titled Asimov's Choice. Dozois edited The Best of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (1988); Transcendental Tales from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (1989); Isaac Asimov's Mars (1991); and Isaac Asimov's SF Lite (1993). Dozois and Williams jointly edited Isaac Asimov's Robots (1991) and Isaac Asimov's Earth (1992). Williams edited three short anthologies made available only to subscribers: Isaac Asimov's Puzzle (1984); Science Fiction by Asimov (1986); and Robots From Asimov's (1990).

Martin Gardner's puzzles from the first few years of the magazine were collected in three volumes: Science Fiction Puzzle Tales, Puzzles from Other Worlds: Fantastical Brainteasers from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and Riddles of the Sphinx and Other Mathematical Puzzle Tales. Some of Spinrad's critical essays for Asimov's, along with a couple of essays from other sources, were collected in Science Fiction in the Real World (1990).

Why am I me?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_am_I_me

"Why am I me?" is a philosophical question that asks why, of all the subjects of experience, it is one in particular whose experiences are lived by each person. In other words: "Why am I me and not someone else?"

Overview

Philosophers have used various terminology to describe the phenomenon of individuals existing as themselves and not as someone else. Herbert Spiegelberg has called it the "I-am-me experience", or the Ich-Erlebnis experience in German.

An abstract diagram depicting the "constellation" view with subjects represented as circles (○)

An abstract diagram depicting the "embedded" view, with the lived subject depicted as a black circle (●)

An abstract diagram depicting the world as "centered" around a specific individual

Benj Hellie has called it the vertiginous question and discussed various responses. A simple response is that this question reduces to "Why are Hellie's experiences lived from Hellie's perspective", which is trivial to answer. But Hellie argues, through a parable, that this response leaves something out. His parable describes two situations, one reflecting a broad global constellation view of the world and everyone's phenomenal features, and one describing an embedded view from the perspective of a single subject. The former seems to align better with the simple response above, but the latter seems to be a better description of consciousness.

The question may have a number of philosophical implications. Christian List argues that the existence of first-personal facts are evidence against physicalism, and against other third-personal metaphysical pictures, including standard versions of dualism. List also argues that the question implies a "quadrilemma" for theories of consciousness. He claims that at most three of the following metaphysical claims can be true: "first-person realism", "non-solipsism", "non-fragmentation", and "one world"—and thus one of the four must be rejected. List has proposed a model he calls the "many-worlds theory of consciousness" to account for the subjective nature of consciousness without lapsing into solipsism.

Some philosophers have argued that there is a connection between the nature of the self and the nature of time. Vincent Conitzer argues that the vertiginous question is related to A series and B series theories of time, and that arguments in favor of the A-theory of time are more effective as arguments for the combined position of both A-theory being true and the "I" being metaphysically privileged from other perspectives. Caspar Hare has made similar arguments with the theories of egocentric presentism and perspectival realism, of which several other philosophers have written reviews.

Thomas Nagel extensively discusses the question of personal identity in The View from Nowhere. He contrasts passive and active points of view in how humanity interacts with the world, relying either on a subjective perspective that reflects a point of view or an objective perspective that is more detached. Nagel calls the objective perspective the "view from nowhere", one where the only valuable ideas are ones derived independently.

In his book Anthropic Bias, Nick Bostrom discusses observation selection effects such as the self-sampling assumption and self-indication assumption as indexical reductionist reponses to the question.

David Lewis proposed a thought experiment in which there are two omniscient gods. The gods each live in different possible worlds, and know all propositional facts about their particular world. One god lives on top of the tallest mountain and throws manna, while the other lives on top of the coldest mountain and throws thunderbolts. Lewis argued that the gods would still be ignorant about which particular god they are, and that if they lack knowledge but not propositional knowledge, this implies the existence of non-propositional indexical facts about who the world is centered around.

Chuming Liang argues that the “first-person problem”—why experience is given from a particular perspective rather than another—has been misinterpreted through what he calls the “distribution model,” the idea that a special inner entity (s*) is assigned to a center of consciousness to make it “me.” He contends that this model fails because such an entity cannot fulfill its explanatory role: if it is experiential, it presupposes first-person givenness; if non-experiential, it cannot individuate a subject; if purely formal, it cannot distinguish centers; and if made fully explanatory, it becomes unfalsifiable. Liang instead proposes a non-distributive account in which first-personhood is not a private object but a non-substantial condition of appearance from within, reframing the problem as one of how experience arises from a local perspective rather than who possesses an inner self.

Other philosophers have discussed various other related ideas. J. J. Valberg asks similar questions in justifying his horizonal view of the self. Japanese philosopher Hitoshi Nagai has used the concept of first-person perspectives as a way to define the self as the "one who directly experiences the consciousness of oneself". It has also been argued that the self is an "idiomodific" concept.