Death Sentence, by Isaac Asimov

Death Sentence, by Isaac Asimov

From Golden Age Fiction by Paul Lawley-Jones

April 19, 2026 · 48 min

About this episode

This episode narrates Isaac Asimov's short story 'Death Sentence', exploring themes of experimentation and psychology.

Our psychologists of today have set up colonies of monkeys and other animals as experiments. On a larger scale, with larger means, a greater experiment could be undertaken — Today's story is "Death Sentence" by Isaac Asimov. It appeared in the June 1944 United Kingdom issue of "Astounding Science Fiction" on pages 55 to 63. ----- Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as popular science and other non-fiction. Asimov's most famous work is the "Foundation" series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the "Galactic Empire" series and the "Robot" series. He also wrote more than 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall", which in 1964 was…

People in this episode

Host: Paul Lawley-Jones

Topics covered

  • science fiction
  • psychology
  • experimentation
  • literature
  • Asimov

Keywords

  • Isaac Asimov
  • Death Sentence
  • science fiction
  • Astounding Science Fiction
  • psychology
  • experimentation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Astounding Science Fiction

Books & works: Death Sentence

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