Nemesis is a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov. One of his later science fiction novels, it was published in 1989, only three years before his death. The novel is loosely related to the future history into which he attempted to integrate his science fiction output, connecting several ideas from earlier and later novels, including non-human intelligence, sentient planets (Erythro), and rotor engines (Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain). In the context of Asimov's Foundation Universe, it is told of thousands of years later as a "legend". Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Isaac Asimov (courtesy of Jay Kay Klein) Dr. Isaac Asimov (c. ... 1989 (MCMLXXXIX in Roman) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A future history is a postulated history of the future that some science fiction authors construct as a common background for some of their stories. ... Erythro - the planet discovered in the book Nemesis by Isaac Asimov. ... Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain is a 1987 science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov about a group of scientists that shrink down to microscopic size in order to operate on a brain tumor. ... Hari Seldons holographic image, pictured on a paperback edition of Foundation, appears at various times in the First Foundations history, to guide it through the social and economic crises that befall it. ...

The demands of the plot required Asimov to hypothesize a planetary system about a star named Nemesis. At the time of the writing, the name Nemesis was given to a theoretical companion to Earth's sun which could provide a mechanism for periodic disturbances of comets in the Oort cloud, which would then fall inwards causing mass extinctions. The red dwarf star in the book turns out not to be this companion; it is simply passing through the solar system. Nemesis is the name given to a hypothetical red dwarf star or brown dwarf, orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU, somewhat beyond the Oort cloud. ... Nemesis is the name given to a hypothetical red dwarf star or brown dwarf, orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU, somewhat beyond the Oort cloud. ... This image is an artists rendering of the Oort cloud and the Kuiper Belt. ...

The novel is set in an era in which interstellar travel is in the process of being discovered and perfected. Before the novel's opening a "hyper-skipping" mode that allows travel at exactly light speed is used to move a reclusive asteroid colony from the vicinity of Earth to the newly discovered red dwarf, Nemesis (star). There, it takes up orbit around the semi-habitable planet Erythro, named for the red light that falls on it. While the colonists argue over the direction of future colonization -- down to Erythro, or up to the asteroid belts of Nemesis system -- events catch up to them. Back on Earth and a more advanced hyperjump method of travel is perfected, ending the Erythro colony's isolation and opening the galaxy to human exploration. The story also relates the breakup and reunion of a family (the mother, the discoverer of Nemesis, and the daughter were seperated from the Earthbound father when the colony departed; the father becomes part of the hyperjump research project as a result); the startling discovery that the bacterial inhabitants of Erythro, collectively, constitute a sentient and telepathic organism; and the discovery and resolution of a massive crisis: Nemesis' trajectory threatens to gravitationally destabilize the Solar system. Interstellar space travel is unmanned or manned travel between stars, though the term usually denotes the latter. ... Earth is the third planet from the Sun. ... Nemesis is the name given to a hypothetical red dwarf star or brown dwarf, orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU, somewhat beyond the Oort cloud. ... Erythro - the planet discovered in the book Nemesis by Isaac Asimov. ... Subgroups Actinobacteria Aquificae Bacteroidetes/Chlorobi Chlamydiae/Verrucomicrobia Chloroflexi Chrysiogenetes Cyanobacteria Deferribacteres Deinococcus-Thermus Dictyoglomi Fibrobacteres/Acidobacteria Firmicutes Fusobacteria Gemmatimonadetes Nitrospirae Planctomycetes Proteobacteria Spirochaetes Thermodesulfobacteria Thermomicrobia Thermotogae Bacteria (singular: bacterium) are a major group of living organisms. ... Sentience is the capacity for basic consciousness -- the ability to feel or perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness. ... Warning: This is NOT a scientific article. ... In biology and ecology, an organism (in Greek organon = instrument) is a complex adaptive system of organs that influence each other in such a way that they function as a more or less stable whole and have properties of life. ... Presentation of the solar system (not to scale) The solar system comprises the Earths Sun and the retinue of celestial objects gravitationally bound to it. ...

Interestingly, the planetary system in the book included a Jovian planet in a very short-period orbit about its primary star. (Erythro is a moon of this planet.) This was a radical idea in 1989, but was vindicated with the discovery of the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star (that orbiting 51 Pegasi) in 1995. From top: Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter. ... A planet is generally considered to be a relatively large mass of accreted matter in orbit around a star that is not a star itself. ... Infrared image of the star GQ Lupi (A) orbited by a planet (b) at a distance of approximately 20 times the distance between Jupiter and our Sun. ... 51 Pegasi (Flamsteed designation, HIP 113357 in the Hipparcos Catalogue, HD 217014 in the Henry Draper Catalogue) is the name of a Sun-like star 14. ... 1995 (MCMXCV in Roman) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...