Isaac Asimov
Life and career
Isaac Asimov was born in Russia in 1920 and came to the United States with his family as a small child. Reading magazines in his father's shop helped introduce him to science fiction. He studied chemistry at Columbia University, later taught biochemistry at Boston University and became a full-time writer in 1958. His fiction career began in the magazines in 1939 and eventually included the Robot and Foundation sequences alongside extensive nonfiction. He died in 1992. The shorter work here offers a chance to observe his handling of an idea on a compact scale, where an explanation can become the turning point of a plot.
An idea and its social consequences
Asimov's scientific education offers context for fiction in which explanation can drive the action. The story here nevertheless concerns more than whether a chemical discovery is possible. It gives its discoverer expectations about money, recognition and the transformation of an unsatisfying life. Other people bring different interests to the same event. The gap between understanding a process and anticipating its consequences becomes a source of comedy and conflict. The invented chemistry belongs to the fictional premise, not to instructions for an experiment.
The Magnificent Possession
Walter Sills works in a poorly funded laboratory and hopes his research will finally secure the success he believes he deserves. Eugene Taylor's arrival gives him an audience for a demonstration and an explanation of its promise. The opening contrasts long frustration with cheerful confidence, making personality part of the reception of a scientific idea. The compact story places the value of a discovery under pressure from both human interference and the properties of the world itself.
Separate discovery from expectation
List what Sills has demonstrated and what he immediately expects to follow. Which of those expectations depends on science, and which depends on other people's behaviour? Notice how dialogue changes the apparent importance of an object on the laboratory table. This is a useful way into Asimov's shorter fiction: an explanation establishes possibilities, while the story tests what happens when a person mistakes possibility for a guaranteed future.