Evidence (short Story)

Evidence (short Story)

"Evidence" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the September 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the collections I, Robot (1950), The Complete Robot (1982), and Robot Visions (1990).

Many people choose to see Asimov's treatment of technophobia as an allegory to the anti-Semitism with which he was bitterly familiar; he wrote Evidence during Army service shortly after World War II.

Orson Welles purchased the movie rights for Evidence. Asimov was initially gleeful, imagining that a grand, Citizen Kane-style motion picture would soon be in the works. However, Welles did nothing further, and Asimov earned nothing except two hundred fifty dollars and Welles's letter. (His then-wife, Gertrude Blugerman, advised him to hold out for more money, but neither of them considered option payments which could be renewed every several years, allowing the movie rights to relapse if Welles took no action.) The fact that other parties held movie rights to Asimov's stories was a significant impediment to filming his story collection I, Robot.