"ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS IN THE HISTORY OF MODERN SCIENCE FICTION": PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION FIRST EDITION OF I, ROBOT, WARMLY INSCRIBED BY ISAAC ASIMOV

ASIMOV, Isaac. I, Robot. New York: Gnome Press, (1950). Octavo, original red cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition, first issue, of Asimov's influential collection of nine robot stories, presentation copy with a memorable provenance inscribed by Asimov, a longtime professor of biochemistry at Boston University, to a friend and colleague, the director of Boston University Medical Center: "To Lewis Rohrbaugh with all best wishes, Isaac Asimov, March 17, 1966."

Asimov's robot stories were among his most successful and popular, and helped establish his reputation as a pioneer of the science fiction genre. "I, Robot is by most critical accounts one of the most influential books in the history of modern science fiction because it established new conventions for writing robot stories… Asimov did much in his stories to counter the Faustian image of science that had arisen in the public imagination. Prejudice against machines and technology is in fact the constant background, if not the subject matter, of the robot stories… Asimov's robot stories also have predicted certain real developments. Robotics is now recognized as a field of study, and computer-controlled machines are now in industrial use. In addition, Asimov added two new words to the English language through these stories. The Oxford English Dictionary credits him with the earliest uses of robotics and positronic" (Touponce, Isaac Asimov, 32). These nine stories first appeared in the early 1940s in Astounding magazine. I, Robot is "the first major break-away from the robots-as-menace cliché… Asimov broke another genre cliché in this series by introducing a high-powered scientific thinker who was not male, Susan Calvin" (Anatomy of Wonder II-49). Made into a film version starring Will Smith in 2004. First issue, in cloth binding (second issue was bound in paper wrappers). Currey, 13. Dr. Lewis H. Rohrbaugh, director of Boston University Medical Center, was remembered by Asimov in his memoir: "Lewis Rohrbaugh, who had succeeded Chester Keefer as head of the the medical school and with whom I had been friendly, died in 1989 at eighty-one" (I, Asimov). Asimov, a longtime professor of biochemistry at Boston University, was honored by Dr. Rohrbaugh in a 1965 Boston University Medical Center newsletter that highlighted a Service Recognition Dinner for "ten or more years of service" by Asimov and his colleagues.

Book fine; minor expert coloring to near-fine dust jacket. A splendid inscribed presentation copy with a distinctive provenance.