hi everyone, i'm new here. today i just picked up from the library a copy of our man's book Of Time & Space & Other Things. i expect to have more to say on it & on Asimov in general as i move along in the book, but for now i'll specify what got me interested to seek it out: i'd read somewhere else that it contains the claim that the earliest event in human history for which an exact date can be determined was the cancellation of a war between the Lydians & Medeians in Asia Minor because of a solar eclipse. this interests me because i have a project researching calendars & new years days with the eventual goal of creating my own calendar with the indicated date (corresponding to May 28 in the Gregorian system) tentatively being my starting day, with the year count beginning either with the estimated age of the earliest known cave paintings or with that of gold mines in Africa thought far older...i haven't made up my mind which, mainly because i'd still like to know if the bit about the gold mines is in legitimate dispute.

I read one non-fiction book by Isaac, which included a telling of the hunt for more inner planets to our solar system a hundred years ago. Astronomers were baffled that they couldn't account for all of the gravity exerted on the known planets, but decades later the mess was explained by the theory of relativity. This was the first time I was able to grasp an application of e=mc2. And just try to expain it to someone....