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50 free Isaac Asimov trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Isaac Asimov coined the word robotics by accident, wrote or edited more than 500 books across nine of the ten Dewey Decimal classes, and was afraid of flying despite sending humanity across the galaxy. He invented the Three Laws, dreamed up psychohistory on the subway and called The Last Question his own favourite story. This Isaac Asimov trivia quiz covers the Foundation and Robot series, Nightfall and The Gods Themselves, the Brooklyn candy store, Boston University, the Clarke-Asimov Treaty and the illness that was hidden until after his death. Every answer is sourced and explained.
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Q 01Isaac Asimov was a professor of which subject at Boston University?
Biochemistry
He was offered the associate professorship at the School of Medicine after a postdoctoral year, largely thanks to a fan letter about his story Nightfall from a faculty member.
Q 02In which country was Asimov born?
Russia
His exact birth date in the village of Petrovichi is unknown; he celebrated January 2, 1920. The family sailed to New York via Liverpool when he was three.
Q 03What kind of business did Asimov's parents run in Brooklyn, where he discovered pulp magazines?
A candy store
The shops sold newspapers and magazines, giving him an endless supply of free reading. He became a science fiction fan in 1929 at age nine.
Q 04Roughly how many books did Asimov write or edit in his lifetime?
More than 500
He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He used an outline only once, likening it to playing the piano in a straitjacket.
Q 05Asimov's books span every Dewey Decimal class except which one?
100 (Philosophy)
He covered the other nine, from Bible guides to limericks to the history of the slide rule. His works on religion include the two-volume Asimov's Guide to the Bible.
Q 06Which word did Asimov coin without realising it was new, in his 1941 story Liar!?
Robotics
He assumed it was the natural analogue of 'mechanics' and 'hydraulics'. The OED also credits him with 'positronic' and 'psychohistory'.
Q 07Which 1942 short story was the first to list all Three Laws together?
Runaround
It appeared in Astounding Science Fiction and was collected in I, Robot in 1950. Robbie, from 1940, was his first positronic-robot story.
Q 08According to the First Law, a robot may not injure a human being or, through what, allow one to come to harm?
Inaction
Asimov said he added the clause because of Arthur Hugh Clough's satirical lines 'Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive / officiously to keep alive'.
Q 09What name did Asimov give the extra law he later placed ahead of the original three?
The Zeroth Law
It puts humanity as a whole above any individual human, and was needed once his robots were quietly running whole civilisations.
Q 10Which fictional science lets Hari Seldon predict the future in the Foundation series?
Psychohistory
It treats human masses statistically, like gas molecules. Seldon foresees a 30,000-year dark age and plots to shrink it to a thousand.
Q 11Which historical work inspired the premise of the Foundation series?
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Asimov said the idea came to him spontaneously on the way to meet editor John W. Campbell, who helped shape the Galactic Empire's collapse.
Q 12How long a dark age does Seldon predict will follow the Galactic Empire's fall, before his plan?
30,000 years
The Seldon Plan cannot stop the collapse, only deflect events 'just a little' so the interregnum lasts a mere thousand years.
Q 13The original Foundation trilogy won a one-off Hugo Award in 1966 for what?
Best All-Time Series
Q 21The 2004 film I, Robot starring Will Smith was originally based on a script with what title?
Hardwired
Jeff Vintar's screenplay had Asimov's ideas grafted on after the studio acquired the title. Harlan Ellison had written a faithful I, Robot screenplay in 1977 that was never filmed.
Q 22Detective Elijah Baley and robot R. Daneel Olivaw were introduced in which 1954 novel?
The Caves of Steel
They became Asimov's favourite protagonists. Daneel turns out to survive for tens of thousands of years, linking the Robot and Foundation universes.
Q 23Which 1972 stand-alone novel won Asimov the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for Best Novel?
The Gods Themselves
It beat Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, among others. Asimov had assumed Tolkien would win and was stunned.
Q 14Which 1982 novel revived the series after three decades and won the 1983 Hugo for Best Novel?
Foundation's Edge
Fan pressure pushed him back to the series. Foundation and Earth followed in 1986, then two prequels, ending with Forward the Foundation in 1992.
Q 15Who plays Hari Seldon in the Apple TV+ adaptation of Foundation?
Jared Harris
The ten-episode straight-to-series order was announced in August 2018. In the first five books Seldon appears in the flesh only once.
Q 16Which 1941 story was voted the best science fiction short story of all time by the SFWA in 1964?
Nightfall
It was only his 32nd story, written after Campbell discussed an Emerson quotation about the stars with him. Robert Silverberg expanded it into a novel in 1990.
Q 17Which 1956 story about entropy did Asimov name as his personal favourite?
The Last Question
Generations of humans ask the computer Multivac how to reverse entropy. Its answer, finally, creates a universe.
Q 18What is the name of the giant computer that appears in several Asimov stories, including his favourite?
Multivac
The name extrapolated 1950s machines like UNIVAC into a single centrally managed global computer.
Q 19Susan Calvin, the recurring character of the robot stories, holds what job at US Robots?
Chief robopsychologist
US Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. is the fictional dominant robot maker of the 21st century. Calvin is the sharp centre of Liar! and Evidence.
Q 20Asimov's collection I, Robot was published in which year?
1950
The title had already been used by Eando Binder for a 1939 story. The 2004 Will Smith film was built on an unrelated script called Hardwired.
Its title comes from Schiller: 'Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.' The middle section features genuinely alien aliens, a rarity for Asimov.
Q 24Robin Williams starred in the 1999 film of which Asimov robot story?
The Bicentennial Man
The novelette won both the Hugo and Nebula in 1977. Asimov and Robert Silverberg expanded it into the novel The Positronic Man.
Q 25Asimov wrote the novelisation of which 1966 film, which was released before the movie itself?
Fantastic Voyage
He called the script full of plot holes and got permission to fix them. Because the book came out six months early, many assumed the film was based on it.
Q 26Under what pen name did Asimov write the Lucky Starr juvenile novels?
Paul French
Doubleday published six of them in the 1950s. He dropped the disguise after a planned TV deal fell through and started slipping in his Three Laws.
Q 27Asimov's first novel, Pebble in the Sky, was published by Doubleday in which year?
1950
Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin went on to publish about 60 percent of his work up to 1969; he said both represented 'a father image'.
Q 28Asimov's first sold story, Marooned Off Vesta, went to which magazine in 1938?
Amazing Stories
Astounding's John W. Campbell had rejected his earlier efforts but became his mentor. The first story Campbell bought appeared in 1939.
Q 29With Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov was grouped as one of science fiction's what?
Big Three
Under the jokey Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue, Asimov had to call Clarke the best SF writer and Clarke had to call Asimov the best science writer.
Q 30Where was the Clarke–Asimov Treaty on who was the best SF writer negotiated?
In a New York taxi
Each reserved second-best in the other's category for himself. Clarke's dedication in Report on Planet Three honoured the pact.