Anniversary (short story)

Infobox Short story
name = Anniversary
title_orig =
translator =
author = Isaac Asimov
country = United States
language = English
series = Silver Queen, Multivac
genre = science fiction short story
published_in = "Amazing Stories"
publisher = Ziff-Davis
media_type = Magazine
pub_date = March 1959
english_pub_date =
preceded_by = Marooned Off Vesta, All the Troubles of the World
followed_by = The Machine that Won the War "Anniversary" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the March 1959 issue of "Amazing Stories" and subsequently appeared in the collections "Asimov's Mysteries" (1968) and "The Best of Isaac Asimov" (1973). The story was written to mark the twentieth anniversary of Asimov's first published story, "Marooned Off Vesta", in the March 1939 issue of "Amazing". [cite book|title=The Best of Isaac Asimov|date=1973|author=Isaac Asimov|isbn=0-385-05078-X|publisher=Doubleday|chapter=Introduction] The story is also part of a loosely connected series of stories by Asimov about the supercomputer Multivac.

Plot summary

Warren Moore and Mark Brandon are two of the three survivors of the wreck of the interplanetary spacecraft "Silver Queen" in the Asteroid Belt. Every year, they meet on the anniversary of the disaster to celebrate their survival. On the 20th anniversary, though, Brandon has a surprise: he appears at Moore's house with Michael Shea, the third survivor.

As the three men reminisce, Brandon admits that he is unhappy with the way their fame has faded over the years. Even though the three are still the only people ever to survive a spaceship wreck, the public has forgotten them. The only thing the general public remember about the wreck of the "Silver Queen" is that Dr. Horace Quentin, one of the world's great scientists, was killed.

When Shea mentions that Trans-space Insurance is still searching for wreckage from the ship, twenty years later, it occurs to Brandon that there must have been something extremely valuable on board, and that Trans-space still hasn't found it. The three men learn via Moore's Multivac terminal that Quentin had a revolutionary new optical device with him on the ship, and that it hasn't turned up. Moore realizes that he has had it all along; he picked it up from the wreckage of the ship twenty years before during his spacewalk. With Quentin's device in their possession, the three men will once again become famous.

tory notes

* Asimov notes in his comments on the story that Moore picking up the device had been a throwaway line he included in the original "Marooned Off Vesta".

References