Today, January 2, is the birthday of Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). In observance of his birthday, I read “The Dying Night”. It’s a science fiction mystery. I read it in the collection Nine Tomorrows. It doesn’t appear to be in print.

In this story four friends are at a conference, meeting for the first time since they graduated. Ten years have passed and three of them are working at observatories on Mercury, the Moon, and Ceres. The fourth was never able to leave Earth due to a medical condition, and he’s very bitter about it.

He claims to have developed a method of matter transmission, which he is going to present in a couple of day at the conference. Only he dies before he can. One of the three surviving friends is a murderer. The question is which one.

This was a nice little mystery. I’m not sure I buy the psychology behind some of the things the killer does, but Asimov did a good job of putting this one together. I’ve only read a handful of Asimov’s mysteries, but they’ve all been well put together. I’ll have to try to track down more of them.