Thursday, May 29, 2025

Shakespeare Reference in Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories: 12 (1950)

Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories: 12 (1950) is, as its title tells us, a collection of science fiction stories from 1950. One of them, "The New Reality" by Charles L. Harness, contains a reference to Romeo And Juliet. Harness writes: "And why do you say the 'Einsteinian' universe? The universe by any other name is still the universe, isn't it" (p. 304). That is a reference to Juliet's speech from the balcony scene, where she says, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other word would smell as sweet." Many people quote the line as "By any other name," which is from the Q1 text, the bad quarto. This book was published in 1984.

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