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The Asimov Project
The "To Be Sure" Game
The Asimov Project
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The Isaac Asimov Project

The Asimov Quote Book
Asimov Essays Revisited
Asimov on Science Fiction Index PDF

Isaac Asimov
Fiction and Non-Fiction author
1920 - 1992

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The "To Be Sure" Contest

Asimov included the phrase "to be sure" in ... a lot... of his essays.

In a contest running until November 30, 2008, we want you to send us any and all examples of Asimov' using "to be sure" that you find. (This includes all his essays, not just those from F & SF.

We'd prefer the entire sentence (as seen in the examples below) but if you just want to send us the title of the book, the title of the essay, and the page on which the phrase occurs, that will be fine. Send to The Thunder Child. You can do them one at a time as you find them, or send them in all in a batch.

Contest ends November 30, 2008. The top three entries will receive their choice of either a DVD of the Will Smith movie, I Robot, a copy of I, Asimov, or a copy of the 1975 National Archives Interview with Isaac Asimov.

If you want to turn this into a drinking game as well, remember that Asimov didn't drink! So when you find an example and celebrate by taking a drink, make it a sip of ice-cold water...

We've done the first book, and half the second book, in Asimov's F & SF anthology series for you.

Fact and Fancy

Edition: Discus Books, First Edition March 1972

2. No More Ice Ages
Third paragraph, pg 23:
The ash of coal and oil isn?t radioactive to be sure; it is only good harmless carbon dioxide, which is already present in the atmosphere anyway.

3. Thin Air
Fifth paragraph, pg 36:
The mercury in the tube started pouring out, to be sure, but only to the extent of a few inches.

4. Catching Up With Newton
Pg 47, 10th paragraph
To be sure, actual heavenly bodies are not uniformly dense, but Newton also showed this central-point business to be true for spheres which consisted of a series of layers (like an onion) each of which was uniform in density, though the density might vary from layer to layer.

6th paragraph, Pg. 58
To be sure, in powered flight, we don?t have to attain escape velocity, we can just keep the engines going.

5. Of Capture and escape
Pg 68, paragraph 1
SaveCancelCloseETo be sure, it [the first successful Moon-probe] has a higher velocity than the Earth has so that it?s orbit bellies out into the space between Earth and Mars.

6. Catskills in the Sky
Pg 80, sixth paragraph:
To be sure, Jupiter is further from the Sun than Mars is and would be less strongly illuminated, so that its globe as seen from Amalthea would be only 3/10 as bright as that which Mars presents to Phobos.

9. The Planet of the Double Sun
Pg. 111, final paragraph
To be sure, since Sun B is much larger than the other planets, it could be expected to have a satellite much larger and more distant from itself than is true for any other planet.

(Only 6 in 17 essays! Did we miss any?)

View From A Height

Doubleday & Company, Inc., First edition, 1963

That's About The Size of It
5th paragraph, pg 10
This is respectable to be sure.

2. The Egg and Wee
Second paragraph, page 18
To be sure, the average man may contain 50,000,000,000,000 (fifty trillion) cellsand the largest whale as many as 100,000,000,000,000,000 (a hundred quadrillion) cells, but these are exceptional.

3. That's Life
First paragraph, pg. 38
To be sure, there are human cells (such as those of the heart) that run together and are not properly separated by membranes.

....

Okay, there are 14 more essays in this collection... we'll leave you to knock yourself out...certain in the knowledge that there are many more "to be sure"'s to be found.

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