Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
"Robot": Asimov didn't invent the word "robot" or the idea of mechanical or created men. Honestly, it would be hard to trace the idea of mechanical or created life. Certainly, we'd want to bring up Mary Shelley's 1818 Frankenstein as an important modern version of the story. Yes, that's right—we consider the 1800s modern in this situation because the other examples of mechanical men are from Ancient Greece and China, thousands of years ago.
"Robot" redux: It's easier to trace the word "robot," which comes from Karel Capek's 1920 Czech play RUR, which stands for "Rossum's Universal Robots," the name of the company that makes these "robots." Now, in Capek's play, these robots aren't mechanical—they're artificially grown flesh. (We'd probably call them androids today.) So where did he (and his brother Josef) get the word "robot"? Well, "robot" is related to the Czech word that means "servitude" or "peasant." So the robots are invented to do the work that we don't want to do. (Before Capek, you'd get vague terms like "creation" or "creature," as in Frankenstein; or "automaton" as the word for ancient mechanical creations.) (Source.)
Asimov, compulsive writer: Asimov sold his first story when he was 19 in 1939 and after that, he never stopped publishing. Except, he didn't just write science fiction; especially after 1957, when the US was worried because the Soviets had put the satellite Sputnik into orbit, Asimov turned to writing a lot of popular science material. All in all, Asimov wrote or edited around 500 books (check it out here) and his books are in all but one of the ten categories of the Dewey Decimal System. So not only did he write a lot, he wrote about a lot of stuff.
Asimov's robots and Asimov's Foundation: Asimov wrote a lot, but he's best known for two series that he wrote: his robot stories (sometimes called Positronic Robot stories because the robots have "positronic" brains—and yes, "positronic" is kind of a made-up word); and his Foundation stories that take place in the far future. In fact, later in his writing career, he would combine these series. So if you want to read more robot stories by Asimov, there are a lot of them, but you might want to check out his Foundation stories as well. For a quick idea of how far in the future the Foundation and later Positronic Robot stories are, here's a timeline, which also shows you how early and brief the stories of I, Robot are in comparison.
Asimov's robot legacy: Contrary to popular belief, Honda's humanoid ASIMO robot is not named after Asimov—but it is really kind of awesome and we wish it were connected to Asimov. Though Asimov doesn't have a robot named after him, his robot stories have left a pretty big mark on our culture. For one thing, it's pretty easy to find Asimovian elements in other science fiction, like in Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the android Data has a "positronic brain" (just like Asimov's robots). There are also lots of parodies and homages of Asimov too, like Futurama's "I, Roommate" episode, or the webcomic PHD's "I, Graduate Student" story. People who make science fiction like Asimov, which is no surprise—he is pretty awesome, after all.
What's more surprising? The US Congress even likes Asimov. On March 9th, 2010, the 111th Congress passed a House Resolution honoring Asimov. The resolution says that "the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week,' recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April, 1992." At least Congress agreed on something.
The adaptation of I, Robot that never got made: We'll talk about the Will Smith I, Robot movie in "Best of the Web," as well as some other TV versions. But there's also a famous story about the version of I, Robot that never got made. In the 1970s, famous science fiction author Harlan Ellison was asked to produce a script for I, Robot, but it never got made because Ellison called the studio head some mean names. (See, Ellison is not only famous for his science fiction, he's also famous for yelling at people and telling them what he really thinks of them.) So this movie never got made, even though Asimov really liked the script. But luckily, they did publish the script, both in Asimov's magazine and as the book, I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay; so if you want to see what Ellison made of Asimov's material, you can read his very clever script. (Check out this page for a review of the script or this page for a review that notes many of the differences between Asimov and Ellison.)