The magnificent possessionIsaac AsimovOmniClassics · Literature
The magnificent possession
Isaac AsimovA chemist's sensational discovery attracts businessmen, politicians, and criminals eager to share his success.
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About the book
Walter Sills has spent years as an obscure chemical analyst when an experiment produces a remarkable new material. His friend Eugene Taylor helps publicize the discovery, and Sills begins imagining wealth and scientific fame. The attention arrives quickly, but admiration is accompanied by offers whose generosity runs in only one direction. An industrial representative tries to acquire the process cheaply, a former congressman volunteers his supposedly indispensable services, and less respectable opportunists notice the newspaper reports too. Asimov treats the fictional chemistry as the starting point for a comic examination of ownership and bargaining. Sills's pride in possessing something magnificent collides with the practical difficulty of keeping control of it. The changing visitors give the discovery an increasingly troublesome social life.
- Discovery and ownership
- Greed and opportunism
- Scientific ambition
Why read it
The procession of self-interested visitors turns a laboratory breakthrough into a lively comedy of negotiation.
English story from Future Fiction, July 1940