The Fun They Had

"The Fun They Had" is a science fiction story written by Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in a children's newspaper in 1951 and was reprinted in the February 1954 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as the collections Earth Is Room Enough (1957), 50 Short Science Fiction Tales (1960), and The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973). It has been modified in a Finnish English book called KEY English 8-9.

Written as a personal favour for a friend, "The Fun They Had" became more popular than he expected.^[1] It is the most anthologised of all Asimov's stories and has appeared in many publications outside of the science fiction genre.

Plot summary

The story takes place in the year 2155, where teaching is performed by computer-like robots with vast information stores. The protagonists of this story are two children, Tommy and Margie. Tom, the older child, finds a real book in his attic. He is very surprised by the object because the words on the page do not move like the words on the screen of their mechanical teacher.

The book describes the school from centuries earlier, where there was a real man as teacher that gave homework and asked questions to his students, and all the boys and girls went into a special building. Margie is very curious but her mother calls her because it is time of school. The school for Tom and Margie is at home in a room where they do homework and keep them in a proper slot in a mechanical teacher.

References