Friday, April 2, 2010

The Wendell Urth Stories of Isaac Asimov

Asimov's Mysteries




What I want to write about today is a somewhat obscure part of Isaac Asimov’s corpus.  The
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Wendell Urth stories.  There were not many of them, 4 altogether.  They are collected in Asimov’s Mysteries, although some of them appear elsewhere, and they all were originally in magazine form.
As far as I know, that was it.  Did  Isaac run out of ideas to write for Wendell?  He managed to write dozens of Black Widower stories and Union Club mysteries.  Why so few of these?  Especially since I think they are great.  The character of Wendell Urth  is, to my eye, clearly based on himself and one of his best characters. 
A somewhat rotund, jovial scientist that has issues with the outdoors.  Isaac did not fly and I think had some agoraphobia himself.  They are clever puzzle mystery stories, with a science basis.  Does anyone know why there were so few?  I list the ones I know about below.  Are there any others?  Where are they collected if so.  It would give me a great deal of pleasure to read an unknown Wendell Urth story. 
The Singing Bell
The Talking Stone
The Dying Night
The Key
and sort of- The Dust of Death-no Wendell, but the same detective.
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