The Billiard Ball
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The Billiard Ball is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov, written in September 1966 and first published in the March 1967 issue of If. It appeared in Asimov's 1968 collection Asimov's Mysteries, in his 1973 collection The Best of Isaac Asimov and in The Complete Stories, Vol. 2.
An example of Asimov's "late style", the story is a journalist's recollection of the events surrounding the discovery of an anti-gravity device in the mid-21st century. Heavy with physics theory, the story describes the relationship between the creator of the device, the billionaire inventor Edward Bloom, and his former classmate James Priss, a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist who had discovered most of the theory that made the device possible.
Central to the story is the concept of a pure anti-gravity machine that turns out to be a perpetual motion machine of the 1st order. Energy can be freely created in a volume of space time which is pulled 'flat' as definied within the Theory of Relativity as determined by Einstein. However, this field possesses remarkable properties, which are the centrepiece of the story.
Asimov himself had some reservations about the name of the story, and noted that his friend Frederick Pohl's suggested title of 'Dirty Pool' was far better than his own. The story retains its title despite the feeling of its author, as he preferred to remain consistent.
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