THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS James Gunn CELEBRATING ISAAC

On October 26 I gave a talk about my book about his science fiction, he Isaac Asimov at West Virginia Universi- said that I should be writing my own fic- ty in Morgantown. The occasion was part tion. of a continuing lecture series called “A Isaac was brought to this country at Celebration of Ideas,” and the WVU li- the age of three and grew up in a series brary and the university’s Chief of Staff of Brooklyn candy stores. That, he felt, Jay Cole and his marvelous student as- shaped his later life. He did not regret sistant Molly Simis came up with the the habits they instilled in him—with happy idea of featuring a talk about the possible exception of the social awk- Isaac, in large part because the library’s wardness created by never visiting any- special collections have what probably is one or having anyone visit the family, the largest collection of Asimov materials tied as they were to the unrelenting de- after that held by Boston University. mands of the store—because they result- How WVU got the Asimov collection is a ed in the adult, successful Isaac Asimov. story in itself: a WVU alumnus, Larry And that was a very good thing to be. Shaver, now living in Oklahoma City had He found ways to cope with the larger been collecting Asimov books and other world, at first with wit bordering on the materials since his college days. He of- smart-alecky and later with what he fered his collection to WVU, and the li- called “gallantry to the ladies,” which con- brary had the wisdom to accept them. Lat- sisted of suggestive remarks offered as er Carlos Patterson of Sacramento, jests, and an overall air of amazement at California, not an alumnus, heard about his own success coupled with a generous the collection and added several hundred accounting of his own failings and the items from his Asimov collection; the putdowns by his friends. In his school WVU collection now has almost seven days, for instance, he recounted the occa- hundred items, including games and sion when Leigh Hunt’s “Abou Ben Ad- quizzes with Isaac’s name on them. Both hem” was scheduled for discussion. Ben donors flew in to Morgantown for the oc- Adhem, whose name is not in the angel’s casion. tablet as one who loves the lord, asks to Here are the remarks I made to an en- be written as one who loves his fellow thusiastic audience of 180 (mostly) Asi- man, and the poem ends with “And lo! mov fans in a big room at the WVU stu- Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.” Isaac dent center. was ready for the teacher’s question: “Why did Ben Adhem’s name lead all the I am pleased to talk about my friend and rest?” “Alphabetical order, sir!” Isaac vol- literary model, Isaac Asimov, in this, the unteered. He was sent to the principal, year he would have been ninety—or Isaac recounted, “but it was worth it.” maybe ninety-one. As nearly as his par- Isaac credited his transformation from ents could calculate, he was born on Jan- annoying know-it-all to genial comrade to uary 2, 1920, but that was in Petrovichi, an incident late in World War II, when he Russia, where records and memories are had been inducted into the Army and unclear, and he may have been born as sent to H-bomb tests in the Pacific. He early as October 4. He would have been heard a soldier telling a couple of others astonished at the idea of this kind of cel- about how the bomb worked. He rose to ebration; when I interviewed him for assume the smart man’s burden and offer 10 Asimov’s the correct account when he asked him- ence” in the magazine’s title. self who appointed him their educator, Isaac’s father gave him a used office- and sat down. Ironically, a few years later sized typewriter when Isaac was fifteen, he assumed the smart man’s burden by and Isaac put it to use immediately, writ- beginning a series of non-fiction books ing letters to the science fiction maga- about almost everything that we celebrate zines commenting on the stories, particu- today, that led Professor George G. Simp- larly those in Astounding Stories, which son of Harvard to call him “one of our nat- had recently been acquired by Street & ural wonders and national resources.” Smith from the bankrupt Clayton maga- Before Isaac was a celebrated sage, zine chain. His fascination was intensi- however, he was a science fiction writer, fied when John W. Campbell, Jr., was and even in his latter days he wanted to named editor of the magazine in 1937 be known as a science fiction writer. “It is and changed the name to Astounding Sci- uphill to science fiction; downhill to every- ence-Fiction. Isaac decided then to start thing else,” he commented. He wrote writing science fiction stories, and, more about attending a World Book meeting of importantly,to write them for Astounding. contributors where each was introduced Soon afterward Isaac discovered that with an orchestral theme. To Isaac’s cha- the magazine was edited in Manhattan, grin, he was introduced with “How deep is a subway ride away, and Isaac ventured the ocean, how high is the sky?” “No mat- in to meet Campbell. It was the first of a ter how various the subject matter I series of meetings that would shape wrote on,” he said, “I was a science fiction Isaac’s developing mind and future. writer first and it is as a science fiction Campbell was patient and provocative writer that I want to be identified.” about science, culture, and writing, and In the introduction to Nebula Award he was willing to talk by the hour to the Stories Eight, he wrote: inexperienced teenager, even reading the I began by writing science fiction . . . stories Isaac began bringing to him and and for thirty years I’ve found that pointing out their flaws while he reject- my training in science fiction made it ed them. The first story Isaac published, possible for me to write anything. . . . “Marooned Off Vesta,” when he was I have written about 150 books as of nineteen, was in Amazing Stories and now, and I tell you, that of all the the second as well, but he counted the things I write, science fiction is by real beginning of his career from the story far the hardest thing I do. “Trends” that he published in Astound- Isaac fell in love with science fiction in ing a couple of months later. his father’s candy store, which stocked That began a remarkable collabora- newspapers and magazines. Isaac tion of editor and author that lasted ten learned to read them so carefully they years. That collaboration included Isaac’s could be returned looking untouched—a robot stories, his Foundation stories, and habit that he retained until the end of his non-series stories, among which was, his life. Among those magazines was a in 1942, his first story featured on the new kind of publication that had started cover, “Nightfall.” Although he didn’t when Isaac was six years old: Amazing know it, this publication would establish Stories, then Science Wonder Stories and his reputation as a major writer. The sto- Astounding Stories of Super Science. ry illustrated the way in which the edi- Isaac had taught himself to read at the tor and the author worked together. age of five, and Isaac’s father always Isaac had come to Campbell’s office on viewed his son with a sense of awe and a one of his frequent visits, and Campbell determination that his elder son would quoted a sentence from Ralph Waldo be a doctor. He ordered Isaac not to Emerson’s Nature: “If the stars should waste his time on such pulp magazines appear one night in a thousand years, until Isaac pointed out the word “sci- how would men believe and adore; and Thought Experiments: Celebrating Isaac 11 April/May 2011 preserve for many generations the re- disliked anatomy and dissection. membrance of the city of God.” And Camp- He also discovered that he could not get bell said, “What do you think would hap- into medical school and decided to study pen, Asimov, if men were to see the stars chemistry toward a graduate degree, in- for the first time in a thousand years.” “I terrupted by a period of military research don’t know,” Isaac said, and Campbell at the U.S. Navy Yard in Philadelphia replied. “I think they would go mad. I with Robert Heinlein and L. Sprague de want you to write a story about that.” Camp. All this time Isaac was writing The incident brings up a question and selling stories regularly to Campbell. about Isaac’s writing style. Style, Todor- As a writer who had experienced finan- ov wrote, is what stands between the cial struggles myself, I was surprised— reader and the text, and Isaac wanted and, to be honest, somewhat bemused—to nothing to stand in the way. One of the read in Isaac’s autobiography that he had first scholars writing about Isaac’s work, earned a total of $7,821.75 in his first Joe Patrouch, commented that Isaac eleven years, or about $710 a year. could write poetically when he wished Isaac earned his Ph.D. in 1948 and, af- and cited a paragraph near the end of ter a year of post-doctoral research at “Nightfall.” Isaac replied that trans- Columbia, was hired as an instructor in parency was a style, and that paragraph biochemistry at the Boston University didn’t prove that he could write poetical- School of Medicine. That was the year he ly, since it had been inserted by Camp- wrote his first novel, Grow Old With Me, bell and made no logical sense in the which Doubleday published as Pebble in context of the story. But he never re- the Sky in 1950. The same year a fan moved the paragraph from later reprint- publisher, Gnome Press, collected his ings. He also resented readers telling him first robot stories as I, Robot and fol- that “Nightfall” was his best story and lowed that with his Foundation books, suggesting that he write more stories like all eventually taken over by Doubleday. that; he felt that he had learned a good It was the beginning of a relationship deal about writing since he was twenty- with Doubleday that lasted until his two. But when he incorporated himself, death, reaching its high point with The he did so under the name of “Nightfall, Caves of Steel in 1954 and its sequel The Inc.” Isaac had no fears of irony. Naked Sun in 1957. Meanwhile he had joined a fan group Meanwhile Isaac had turned to non- called the Futurians, one of many char- fiction at Boston University, publishing tered by Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Sto- his first scientific book, Biochemistry ries. The Futurians included Fred Pohl, and Human Metabolism in 1952 and Donald Wollheim, Cyril Kornbluth, progressing to his first solo text The Richard Wilson, James Blish, Robert Chemistry of Life. He had been ap- Lowndes, Damon Knight, Judith Merril, proached to write a book about science and Virginia Kidd—fans who would help for teenagers. His career as a writer was shape science fiction for the next few taking off in surprising ways. He had decades as writers, editors, agents, and earned $1,695 for his writing in 1949, even publishers. Isaac continued his ed- more than $4,700 in 1950, $3,625 in ucation into college, not always happily 1951, and an astonishing $8,550 in 1952. as he discovered that he could not get The last was half again as large as his admitted to the right college (he was ad- university salary, now $5,500. mitted to Columbia’s Seth Junior Col- By 1957, Isaac realized that he was pri- lege and then to Columbia University marily a writer. A new dean asked him to rather than Columbia College), that the devote more of his time to research. “My wonder child who had skipped several writing is my research,” he insisted, but grades was not as good as some of his the dean persisted, and Isaac was forced classmates at some subjects, and that he to resign everything except his title—by 12 James Gunn Asimov’s that time he was a tenured associate pro- icant contribution to a general awaken- fessor—and turn to full-time writing. Un- ing of the American public to the need fortunately for science fiction, he decided for greater understanding of science if to devote his time to non-fiction. He at- the U.S. was going to maintain its lead- tributed that decision to the launching of ership in the world. In 1973 he pointed Sputnik, the first satellite, by the Soviets out that we were living in a science fiction and the need for a greater emphasis on world, a world of spaceships, atomic ener- scientific education, but his non-fiction gy, and computers, a world very much like was a lot easier to write, more publishers the world that he and other science fiction were eager for it, and they paid better. He writers had been describing a quarter- wrote short stories with some regularity, century before. It was a world typified by but he did not write another science fic- the first moon landing, four years before. tion novel for fifteen years. “Science fiction writers and readers didn’t Isaac was so prolific as a non-fiction au- put a man on the moon all by themselves,” thor that it is impossible to describe even he told me, “but they created a climate of a small proportion of his production. His opinion in which the goal of putting a fiction listing covers two pages in the man on the moon became acceptable.” compilation that accompanied every au- In I, Asimov he described his prolifica- tobiographical work. His anthologies—it cy. Once he turned to writing full-time, should be admitted that Isaac delighted he averaged thirteen books a year, and in the number of works he had published, his books ranged over nearly every divi- and toward the end of his career he sion of the Dewey decimal system. Dur- padded the list with dozens of anthologies ing a question-and-answer period a man he edited with Martin H. Greenberg, the asked, “If you had to choose between all-time champion of anthologists—cov- writing and women, Dr. Asimov, which ered nearly three pages. But his non-fic- would you choose?” And Isaac answered tion covered more than five pages. instantly, “Well, I can type for twelve They are best described by categories, hours without getting tired.” And Bar- which helps, as well, to illustrate the as- bara Walters asked him, off camera, tonishing scope of his interests. General “What if the doctor gave you six months science—typified by his Intelligent to live. What would you do.” “Type faster,” Man’s Guide to Science—totaled twenty- Isaac said. four books. Mathematics was a measly Tackling as many topics as he did, seven. Astronomy—clearly a favorite— Isaac depended upon information he reached sixty-eight; earth sciences, could dig up. “What I contribute to my eleven; chemistry and biochemistry, six- books,” he wrote in his autobiography, teen; physics, twenty-two; biology, seven- “are (1) ease and clarity of style, (2) sen- teen; history, nineteen; the Bible, nine; sible and logical order of presentation, literature, ten; humor and satire—in- and (3) apt and original metaphors, cluding The Sensuous Dirty Old Man analogies, and conclusions.” that got Isaac an appearance on the Several moments in this remarkable “Tonight” show—nine; science essay col- record of productivity stand out for me. lections mostly from the monthly arti- One was when I filmed a part of my Lit- cles he wrote for The Magazine of Fanta- erature of Science Fiction series with sy & Science Fiction, forty; science fiction Isaac in 1973. When Isaac learned that I essay collections from the editorials he shared an office with Prof. Paul Kendall, wrote for Isaac Asimov’s Magazine, two; a renowned Shakespearean scholar, he autobiography, three; and miscellaneous, gave me one of his own Shakespeare fourteen. In all, 470 books, a record books to take back with me. I wondered about which he was inordinately proud how Paul would respond, but clearly he and one that may never be surpassed. was pleased. His science books represented a signif- On another occasion Isaac was invited Thought Experiments: Celebrating Isaac 13 April/May 2011 to be part of a panel discussing the hu- tion he needed, and he developed the man brain at a meeting in Washington, ability to translate that information into D.C. He responded that he didn’t know narratives as readable and dramatic as anything about the human brain. The fiction. He could make the difficult seem inviter came back by saying, “You must simple. In the book I wrote about him, I be an expert. You’ve just written a book suggested that his fiction got its charac- about it.” And Isaac said, “I’m an expert teristic Asimovian flavor from the fact at sounding like an expert.” that it was written like science, and his That was what Isaac did best: he non-fiction got its readability from the sounded like an expert. He had a mar- fact that it was written like fiction. His velous memory. In his childhood he would science fiction also was distinguished by read all his school books the first couple its rationality. When I wrote about him of days and then never open them again. in The Road to Science Fiction, I titled I asked him once about his memory and the section “The Cool, Clear Voice of Asi- if he ever wondered how other people’s mov.” His heroes were the most rational memories worked, and he said that in a and had the longest view, like Hari Sel- meeting of Gilbert and Sullivan enthusi- don, whose psychohistorical plans were asts he was reciting some lyrics and for a intended to shorten twenty-five thou- moment couldn’t think of the next line. sand years of barbarism to a thousand. That was when he realized what many His villains weren’t villains but rational people, not blessed with his recall, expe- people whose vision was too limited. And rienced all the time. But even Isaac’s emotional responses were frustrations of memory was not infallible. He began in- the need to behave rationally. cluding autobiographical notes when he That is why two of his personal fa- took on the editing of the Hugo volumes vorites are anomalies. His favorite story and continued it into his own story col- was “The Last Question,” which is cool lections. But when he wrote his enor- and rational, but his second and third fa- mous autobiography, to mark the mile- vorites were “The Bicentennial Man” and stone of his two hundredth published “The Ugly Little Boy,” which were emo- book, he referred to the diaries that he tional and irrational—what I have called had been updating every day since 1938 “Un-Asimovian”—though, of course, so ef- and discovered that he had to correct fective as fiction that one was made into some of his earlier recollections. He had a film and the other has been optioned. published Opus 100 with Houghton Mif- Isaac called their creation “writing over flin to mark his first hundred books, and his head,” like the middle section of The he thought it only fair to allow them to Gods Themselves. publish Opus 200. But Doubleday was Another difference between Isaac’s fic- his first and still his major publisher, so tion and his non-fiction was that his fic- Doubleday asked him to let it publish tion was always optimistic: solutions his autobiography. He protested that he would be found, rationality would pre- had never done anything, but Doubleday vail. But Isaac’s non-fiction, when it ad- insisted. A year later he brought in a dressed the many problems that faced thick stack of manuscript and put it on the world, like pollution or overpopula- the editor’s table. When the editor didn’t tion or war, was pessimistic. It was a flinch, he went into the hall and returned matter, he said, of dealing with the world with another stack just as thick. The edi- as it is—”the world in which irrationali- tor said, “What would you have written, ty is predominant,” and he told me, “I am Isaac, if you had ever done anything?” trying to live a life of reason in an emo- Isaac could make even a life of reading tional world.” and writing a fascinating account. In 1970 he wrote in a letter: “I wish I To his memory, he added a good could say I was optimistic about the hu- knowledge of where to find the informa- man race. I love us all, but we are so stu- 14 James Gunn Asimov’s pid and shortsighted that I wonder if we psychohistory or robotics or the musings can lift our eyes to the world about us of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He also was long enough not to commit suicide. I fond of history, and the Foundation sto- keep trying to make people do so.” ries are the fall of the Roman empire writ But the year before he wrote: “In con- large. The Gods Themselves, however, sidering the future society, let us assume showed that Isaac could do hard science that (1) there will be no nuclear war; (2) fiction when he wished; it began with the the population will increase but not disas- challenge of writing a novella about the trously; and (3) the trend toward automa- impossibility of plutonium-186. tion will continue.” He followed that by In 1982, Isaac returned to his Founda- some predictions about work becoming tion roots and wrote Foundation’s Edge. more administrative and managerial, His Doubleday editors insisted on it. Bet- which would accelerate the trend toward ty Prashker called him into her office and sexual equality; and that the increased said, “Isaac, we want you to write a novel amount of leisure would provide a great for us.” Isaac protested that he didn’t emphasis on creativity and the purvey- write novels any more, but Prashker said ing of amusement. “I suspect,” he con- they were going to send him a contract cluded, “that in the twenty-first century, with a large advance; that frightened one third of the human race will be en- Isaac, who always signed for a small ad- gaged . . . in supplying amusement for vance that allowed him the freedom to the other two-thirds.” write what he wanted rather than what Isaac’s love for writing made him a dif- the publisher wanted. That evening Dou- ficult husband and, sometimes, a de- bleday editor Pat LoBrutto called to say tached father. When he received copies of that when Betty said “a novel,” she his forty-first book from Houghton Mif- meant” a science fiction novel,” and when flin, he mentioned to his wife the possibil- Doubleday said “a science fiction novel” ity of reaching a hundred books before he they meant “a Foundation novel.” died. She shook her head and said, “What I can’t help mentioning that Founda- good will it be if you then regret having tion’s Edge was not only Isaac’s tri- spent your life writing books while all the umph—it was his first best-seller but essence of life passes you by?” And Isaac not the last—it was mine as well. The replied, “But for me the essence of life is greatest tribute a scholar can have is writing. In fact, if I do manage to publish when his scholarship has a positive im- a hundred books, and if I then die, my last pact on his subject, and Isaac wrote that words are likely to be, ‘Only a hundred!’ ” my book, Isaac Asimov: The Foundations On another occasion his beloved daughter of Science Fiction had made Founda- Robyn asked him to suppose he had to tion’s Edge possible. choose between her and writing. Isaac re- He wrote: called he said, “Why, I would choose you, I was on the edge of deciding it dear.” And he added, “But I hesitated— was all a terrible mistake and of in- and she noticed that, too.” sisting on giving back the money Isaac did return to writing science fic- when (quite by accident, I swear) I tion novels, with a novelization of Fan- came across some sentences by sci- tastic Voyage in 1966 and The Gods ence fiction writer and critic James Themselves in 1972. He is ranked among Gunn, who in connection with the hard science fiction writers, which Foundation series said, “Action and means that the fiction is based on real romance have little to do with the science or on new developments in sci- success of the Trilogy—virtually all ence, but he was not the hard science fic- the action takes place offstage, and tion writer that Hal Clement was, or the romance is invisible—but the Larry Niven; Isaac’s fiction was more stories provide a detective-story fas- philosophical, based on concepts like cination with the permutations and Thought Experiments: Celebrating Isaac 15 April/May 2011

reversals of ideas.” name had been misspelled “Issac Asmi- Oh well, if what was needed were mov.” “Isaac,” I said, “are you going to give “permutations and reversals of it back?” “Not on your life,” he replied. ideas,” then that I could supply. Panic Isaac had triple bypass surgery in 1983 receded, and on June 10, 1981, I dug and was hospitalized in 1990 for a kidney out the fourteen pages I had written infection and in 1991 for heart and kid- more than eight years before. . . . ney failure. He died April 6, 1992. He had Let me conclude with my two favorite often expressed the hope of dying with anecdotes about Isaac. Early in 1956, his nose caught between two typewriter Isaac wrote me that he had just written keys, but at the end he had lost the a pornographic scene that the postmas- strength to write and that, for him, may ter couldn’t touch. (This, of course, was have been almost worse. He had already more than fifty years ago when the post- written a couple of inscriptions for his master general was still declaring books epitaph. One of them said, “It’s not dying obscene and refusing to allow them to be I mind. It’s having to stop writing,” and mailed.) It wasn’t until I read The Naked the other, “Wait, I’m not finished!” Sun the following year that I knew what In the epilogue to Forward the Foun- he meant. In that novel, Lije Baley, his dation, his widow Janet noted that writ- agoraphobic detective of The Caves of ing his last Foundation novel was hard Steel, is called to Solaria to solve an im- on Isaac, “because in killing Hari Seldon portant murder case. Solaria has been he was also killing himself. . . .” The first settled by Spacers, who restrict their paragraph of that novel ends “It has numbers to twenty thousand while the been said that Hari Seldon left this life robot population has increased to twen- as he lived it, for he died with the future ty-five million. Solarians have become he created unfolding all around him. . . .” claustrophobic and neurotically afraid of That could have been written about personal contact, but as Lije is complet- Isaac himself. H ing his mission and saying goodbye to * ** Gladia, the victim’s widow, she strips off Afterword: Janet Asimov revealed in her glove and touches his cheek. It is, in an epilogue to Isaac’s posthumous auto- the circumstances, truly pornographic. biographical It’s Been a Good Life that Finally, Isaac was stubbornly attached Isaac had died of AIDS contracted from to his name, even though he was warned blood transfusions during open-heart that it might cause him to suffer from surgery a decade earlier, a fact that she prejudice and his stories to be rejected. had been persuaded to conceal at the When he was five, he remembered, his time of Isaac’s death. mother considered changing his first James Gunn, emeritus professor of name to Irving, but he wailed in protest English at the University of Kansas, that he would never answer to any name wrote Isaac Asimov: The Foundations but Isaac. Later, because his name had of Science Fiction (which won a Hugo already appeared in print, John Camp- Award) and is the author or editor of bell never asked him to use a pseudo- forty other books, including The nym, as Campbell had sometimes done Immortals, The Listeners, Alternate with other writers. His last name was Worlds: The Illustrated History of not always easy for readers to spell or re- Science Fiction, and the six-volume member, and when it appeared in the Road to Science Fiction anthology. He letter columns as Azimov (with a “z” in- has served as president of both the stead of an “s”) he was quick with a cor- Science Fiction Writers of America and rection. So it happened that when he re- the Science Fiction Research Associa- ceived his much coveted Grand Master tion and he received a Damon Knight Award in 1987, I approached to inspect Grand Master award in 2007. the award and congratulate him. His Copyright © 2011 James Gunn 16 James Gunn