Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition)

by James Gunn

  In an Epilog, a year later, Florina has been almost completely evacuated. Rik and Valona are married, and Rik is content to go back to Earth and work there, unfit any longer to be a Spatio-analyst because the anxiety that made him one is gone but able to live once more on the radioactive Earth that had made him anxious. Terens, going down with his planet, has been granted permission to stay on Florina until the end.

  In spite of the obvious improvements in The Currents of Space over The Stars, Like Dust, the book also has some clear weaknesses. The apparent hero and heroine, Rik and Valona, are more acted upon than actors, and they develop little during the progress of the novel. The role of the real hero, Terens, who precipitates the events of the novel out of his rage at the Squires and love for Florina, is obscured because of plot necessities.

  Shifts between actors in the complex situation artificially conceal information from the reader that might naturally be revealed, from the Prolog almost to the end. This is particularly artificial when the view-point is Terens's and reveals some of his thoughts and memories but not all. Asimov's best novels the robot novels and The End of Eternity follow a single character throughout. The reader learns only what the character learns in search of a solution to a mystery. At this relatively early period in his experience as a writer of novels, Asimov may have felt uneasy about his ability to sustain a prolonged narrative while focusing on a single character. Shifting to other characters and other actions allowed him to put the novel together like a series of alternating stories.

  The sequence of flashbacks required by the concern about events of the previous year seems both a weakness and a strength. The continual shifts in time create a certain amount of confusion and a grasping for tenses, but the relationship between past and present, once the rhythm has been established, creates effective juxtapositions that have relevance to the theme.

  The characterizations are a strength of the novel. Unlike The Stars, Like Dust, the characters in The Currents of Space are less stereotyped and more lifelike, from the memory-damaged Rik and the loyal Valona to the angry Terens, the pragmatic Abel, and the powerful dwarf, Fife. They are better drawn, no doubt, because they are better motivated. In addition, Asimov's language is groping its way toward the economy of the robot novels. The social commentary on racial prejudice, developed through the counterpoint of the white-skinned cotton-pickers of Florina, makes the statements that slavery is economic, not racial, and that racial prejudice can be applied to any color of skin and be equally reprehensible and repugnant.

  Most important, the subject of the novels, the coming destruction of a planet and ultimately the discovery of a process for identifying incipient novas, is momentous. Readers feel that the twists and turns of the plot are not simply manipulations. The suspense is not built artificially, in spite of the withholding of the psycho-prober's identity, but has a natural momentum. Events finally justify themselves. The novel also shows another stage in the development of the Galactic Empire, an empire which the Asimov reader has seen fall in The Foundation Trilogy.

  Moreover, the novel unfolds as a mystery. It offers three important questions to be answered. At one point Lady Samia lists them:

  The three points were therefore these. (1) What was the danger that threatened Florina, or, rather, the entire Galaxy? (2) Who was the person who had psycho-probed the Earthman? (3) Why had the person used the psycho-probe?

  Asimov's method works best when he offers a mystery to be solved, questions to be answered that clearly must be answered and whose answers justify the concern raised about them

  In 1961 The Currents of Space, Pebble in the Sky, and The Stars, Like Dust were reprinted in an omnibus volume under the title Triangle.

  The Asimov juveniles originated March 22, 1951, at lunch with Bradbury and Pohl. Asimov considered the suggestion that he write a juvenile science-fiction novel modeled after radio's long-running series, The Lone Ranger. It might lead to a television series featuring a Space Ranger that would make millions for all concerned. No one present science-fiction editor, agent, or writer dreamed that television, then in its early years, would have few series that would run as long as The Lone Ranger. Asimov speculated in his autobiography that the reason for this was that "the addition of the sense of vision enormously hastened a sense of satiation." No one knew, either, that a juvenile television series, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, already was in the works.

  What bothered Asimov, rather, was the uniform awfulness of everything on television (with the single exception of the Sid Caesar-Imogene Coca Your Show of Shows). He did not want his name associated with the medium. (Television people, if they had known Asimov's opinion, might well have smiled at the veteran of pulps with garish covers and untrimmed edges, but Asimov would have defended the intrinsic value of the contents.) Bradbury said, "Use a pseudonym," and Asimov agreed to do it. Following the example of Cornell Woolrich, who chose a nationality for his pseudonym William Irish, Asimov selected the name "Paul French." When it became apparent that the Space Ranger would not end up on television, Asimov dropped the Space Ranger paraphernalia and put the juveniles under his real name as soon as possible.

  He wrote David Starr: Space Ranger quickly; it was completed on July 29. (His juveniles are no longer than 50,000 words compared to the 60,000 to 70,000 of his adult novels up to the bestsellers of the 1980s.) Doubleday got it into print in near-record time, and Asimov had an advance copy by January 15, 1952. By the time it was published, Asimov's relationship with Doubleday had changed. He had only to say he would do another and Doubleday produced a contract and advance. The second juvenile, Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids, was written between July 5 and October 24, 1952. (Starr had been named David, after his son, and was nicknamed Lucky in the second and subsequent books because Asimov decided David was too pedestrian for a space adventurer.) Within little more than a month Asimov began work on The Caves of Steel.

  The third novel in the juvenile series, Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, required some revision that Asimov thought justified. (Doubleday objected to Starr's being so close-mouthed that his loyal partner thinks he is "an utter bastard.") The final manuscript was submitted on March 17, 1953, and published in 1954. A year went by without a Lucky Starr novel. Asimov was busy with The End of Eternity and a series of science books he had begun to write for Abelard-Schuman (The Chemicals of Life, 1954; Races and People, 1955; and Inside the Atom, 1956) and for McGraw-Hill (Chemistry and Human Health, 1956). He also was busy with short stories and with the cares of a homeowner, for he and his wife had bought their first house. Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury appeared in 1956, Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter in 1957, and Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn in 1958.

  The juveniles were in the older style of the science-fiction adventure story that Jules Verne had pioneered, H.G. Wells had stooped to upon occasion (notably for a good part of The First Men in the Moon), and E. E. "Doc" Smith and John W. Campbell (in his earlier writing) had adapted to the new science-fiction magazines. The formula that evolved requires two (or sometimes more) continuing characters, usually a hero and his best friend. The hero usually is a scientist and the best friend does not understand much science but is loyal and good in a fight. A great deal of conversation takes place between the hero and his friend in which the science of the story is explained, and a certain amount of byplay is involved that substitutes for characterization and stage action, created by the difficulties the hero's friend gets into through his hot temper and rash actions. One might note a certain resemblance of the hero and his friend to the Lone Ranger and his loyal Indian sidekick, Tonto.

  In the Asimov juveniles, the scientist hero is David "Lucky" Starr, a member of Earth's Council of Science at an astonishingly youthful age. The friend is John "Bigman" Jones, who is five feet two but strong and sensitive about his height. In the first book, Starr picks up Jones on Mars. With humanity flying about among the planets and even among the stars, science has become of constantly increasing importance, f
or solving both internal problems of health and energy and external problems of scientific and alien threats to Earth. So the Council of Science has become a major political force on Earth, and Starr is its best roving investigator.

  He roves first to Mars, then to the Asteroids, third to Venus, fourth to Mercury, fifth to Jupiter, and sixth to Saturn. It is clear that Asimov intended to visit each of the planets1 and possibly expand his arena to other star systems, but Starr (and Asimov) ran out of gas at Saturn, with Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto still to go.

  Asimov's juvenile novels added little to the development of science fiction, or to Asimov's reputation, or even to the development of the science-fiction juvenile. They were largely scientific exposition with a frosting of narrative to keep the youthful reader involved between discussions. In contrast, Robert A. Heinlein's juveniles, once he developed his skills at the genre beginning with Red Planet in 1949, were so thoroughly science-fiction novels that most were serialized in adult magazines. One might speculate that the Heinlein juveniles led young readers to read more science fiction; those by Asimov, to read more science. Nevertheless, the Lucky Starr books were successful juveniles and have remained in print.

  The typical Asimov juvenile opened with a scientific mystery that Starr and Jones are sent to investigate. At their best the novels develop with the skill of Asimov's mysteries: the puzzles are fascinating and the solutions are ingenious. In between, the reader is presented with a great deal of information about the nature of the universe and the laws that govern its behavior. It is ironic that the facts known about several of the planets have changed since the novels were written. In Opus 100 (1969) Asimov noted this fact with embarrassment and speculated that the novels, then out of print, might have to stay out of print. The Mars book might be reprinted (all that had then been discovered was that Mars was cratered, and craters were not difficult to insert), but the Venus and Mercury books "cannot be patched; they can only be scrapped." Nevertheless, they all were put back into print with Asimov forewords explaining the current state of scientific knowledge, that Venus has no oceans, for instance, and that Mercury does not keep one side perpetually toward the sun so that there is a bright side and a dark side. Typically, Asimov used the forewords to explain how the new information was obtained and what the new understanding revealed.

  The novels probably did for their young readers what they were intended to do: they made the readers think and value the intellectual

  1. In Volume Two of his autobiography Asimov wrote that the next book, if he had written it, would have been Lucky Starr and the Snows of Pluto. process and sometimes made them marvel at the wonders of the universe, and even sometimes experience what is still beyond our abilities to experience. Those things all were important to Asimov. In Opus 100 he recounted how some people teased him about his refusal to get into an airplane and told him, "You don't know what you're missing." "Hah!" he wrote. ''I've floated in Saturn's rings. They don't know what they're missing."

  But the scientific emphases of the juvenile novels, with sizable chunks (attractive and digestible chunks) of scientific description dropped into the middle of them, were leading Asimov out of science fiction into science writing. He wrote in Opus 100:

  One of the special delights of writing science fiction is mastering the art of interweaving science and fiction; in keeping the science accurate and comprehensible without unduly stalling the plot. This is by no means easy to do and it is as easy to ruin everything by loving science too much as by understanding it too little.

  In my case, I loved science too much. I kept getting the urge to explain science without having to worry about plots and characterization.

  First, however, Asimov finished The End of Eternity (1955). This novel and The Naked Sun (1957) were the last novels of his nearly twenty-year career as a science-fiction writer until he returned in the 1970s with The Gods Themselves and in the 1980s with his bestsellers. His 1960s and 1970s novels were to be surrounded by oceans of nonfiction books. Fantastic Voyage (1966) was a better-than-competent novelization of a screenplay, but the creative act was the screenplay, and even that was a collaboration. It was written by Harry Kleiner, based on a story by Otto Klement and sometime science-fiction writer and editor of Planet Stories Jerome Bixby and adapted by sometime science-fiction writer David Duncan. The Gods Themselves (1972) was an important afterthought that will be taken up in Chapter 7.

  The End of Eternity had its origin in an advertisement in a pre-1945 Time magazine. Typically, Asimov had been checking out bound copies of the magazine from the Boston University library and leafing through them nostalgically. In one he noticed an advertisement that for a moment looked like "the familiar mushroom cloud of the nuclear bomb." Then, as he looked closer, he recognized it as Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park. Asimov began to wonder under what circumstances a drawing of a nuclear bomb might be published in a magazine many years before 1945.

  On December 7, 1953, he began work on a novelette titled "The End of Eternity." He finished it on February 6, 1954, and sent the 25,000-word story off to Horace Gold at Galaxy. Three days later Gold called him and wanted a complete revision. Asimov refused, and on March 17 he left the manuscript with Bradbury at Doubleday to see if it had possibilities as a novel. On April 7 Bradbury offered a contract. By now, the advance had climbed to $1,250.

  The End of Eternity is about reality manipulation. In the 24th century Vikkor Mallansohn discovered the Temporal Field that made possible existence outside time and travel between times. In the 27th century, an organization was created to travel outside of time, in what was called "Eternity." At first, the organization existed mostly to handle trade between Centuries, but gradually it began to alter Reality by changing key events that were calculated to improve the general good of humanity. "The greatest good of the greatest number" became the working principle of Eternity.

  Asimov imagined the system in thorough detail. He peopled Eternity with maintenance personnel, who keep physical facilities operating, and administrators. The emphasis of the novel, however, is upon a third group, those Eternals, as they are called, who actually operate upon Reality: Observers, who gather data about the various Times; Sociologists, who calculate the effects of change on society; Life-Plotters, who calculate the effects of change on individuals; Computers, who analyze the individual acts that will produce the desired changes; and Technicians, who effect the changes in Reality. The ideal is the Minimum Necessary Change (MNC) for the Maximum Desired Response (MDR). The Technicians are the scapegoats of Eternity. Reality-changing results in guilt feelings among the Eternals, and they displace this onto the Technicians who actually accomplish the changes.

  Eternals are recruited from various Centuries after the creation of Eternity. They are men, always men because women have ten times the impact on Reality and men's absence from Reality will cause the least effect. They are recruited into Eternity as fifteen-year-olds, educated for ten years, spend an indefinite period of time as Observers (physiotime it is called, to distinguish it from Time in Reality), and then, if successful, become Specialists. If they are not successful, they become maintenance men. As Andrew Harlan reflects at one point, "The life of an Eternal may be divided into four parts: Timer . . . Cub . . . Observer . . . Specialist."

  Eternity started with only a few Centuries. Maintenance of its existence outside Time requires great expenditures of power; it became possible only by tapping the nova that the sun eventually becomes.

  Gradually, Eternity expanded "upwhen" until it discovered in one Century, later altered, a matter duplicator that allowed it to re-create itself throughout upwhen. From 70,000 to 150,000 upwhen Eternity, for reasons it cannot discover, cannot enter Time. These are called the Hidden Centuries. After 150,000 Earth still has living creatures, but humanity has disappeared. Eternity cannot discover why this is so, nor can it do anything about the situation until it can enter the Hidden Centuries.

  All this background is revealed gradually through the
tightly controlled viewpoint of Andrew Harlan. After serving his ten-year stint as Cub and four years as Observer, Harlan became Senior Observer to Assistant Computer Hobbe Finge in the 482nd. They do not get along, but Harlan's reports are good and within three months he becomes a Technician, the personal Technician of Senior Computer Laban Twissell, an important member of the Allwhen Council. One of Harlan's first assignments is to teach a Cub, Brinsley Sheridan Cooper, about Primitive history, that period before the creation of Eternity. Primitive history is Harlan's hobby, and he has assembled a number of references, including a complete bound set of a news magazine of the 20th. Cooper is an unusual Cub: he was taken into Eternity at the age of twenty-three and after he already was married.

  After two physioyears, Harlan once more is assigned to Finge at the 482nd and meets Finge's secretary Nos Lambent, who has been recruited from the permissive society of the 482nd to fill a minor position. Harlan suspects that she is involved in a sexual liaison with Finge and dislikes her. Thus, a bit later, he finds himself in a difficult situation when he is assigned to her estate to make some observations of her time. When they are alone, Nos gives him an intoxicating drink, whispers to him, and they make love. Harlan discovers that he not only enjoys the experience, but that he is in love with Nos.