I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  I rarely oblige any of the nonbook purveyors, partly because the questions are often so silly. Thus, one woman wanted me to write an essay on my father and why I admired him, and she sent me a list of other celebrities she was asking to write such essays. Actually, I have frequently written about my father (as in this book) and it is perfectly clear that I do admire him. Still, I thought the idea was a silly one because she could scarcely

  expect to get anything but saccharine essays about fathers. What celebrity was going to admit his father was an alcoholic wife-beater, even if he was?

  I was incautious enough to write and tell her this and she returned a virulent letter, accusing me of hating my father. I was sorry I had written, but I never heard of the book being published, so maybe it didn’t work out.

  One time I was asked to describe the very worst date I had ever had. I answered briefly and truthfully that I had never had a bad date. I had rarely dated anyone but the two women I eventually married and I always made it my business to see that the date would be a pleasant one. They printed that letter in among a whole mess of others describ ing disasters so horrible they nauseated me when I tried to read them. (I’ve been luckier than I knew.)

  I was once asked to say what I wanted for Christmas in the way of computers. I was urged to describe anything I could imagine, whether it was feasible or not. I answered briefly and truthfully that I had an antediluvian electric typewriter and a medieval word processor and printer and both worked properly. They were all I needed, and I didn’t want, for Christmas or for any other time, anything beyond what I really needed.

  The questioner replied that it was a pleasure to receive my letter among all the letters of unalloyed greed that she had received but her editor wouldn’t let her print it because it would make everyone else in the nonbook look bad. (Besides, I thought to myself, not being greedy is probably un-American and subversive.) In the same letter she asked me to tell her what made traveling pleasurable for me and how did I compare travel for business and travel for pleasure. I had to explain that I didn’t travel. (Un-American again.)

  There are other things I have written that are apparently un-American and unfit to print. The Chicago Tribune asked me to write an essay on Christmas. “Anything you want to say,” they assured me. I agreed gladly, and seized the occasion to denounce the crass commercialism of the holiday. You can guess the nature of the remarks when I tell you the title was “And Now, a Word from Scrooge.” It was accepted enthusiastically and was paid for, but, as far as I know, it was never printed.

  Plagiarism

  One of the plagues of the prolific writer is the constant concern over the possibility of plagiarism, which is the appropriation of someone else’s words with the pretense that they are your own. This is, in my opinion, the greatest crime a writer can commit, and there isn’t any chance at all I’ll ever do that. The trouble is that I want to avoid even the appearance of plagiarism and I write so much that this is sometimes difficult.

  For instance, Jack Williamson’s 1934 story “Born of the Sun” had a scene in which a bunch of fanatics tried to destroy an astronomical observatory at which a startling new theory had been developed. I read the story and was undoubtedly impressed by the scene, which remained in my unconscious mind.

  Seven years later, I published “Nightfall,” in which there was a scene in which a band of fanatics tried to destroy an astronomical observatory at which a startling new theory had been developed. It wasn’t till thirty years after “Nightfall” had been written, when I reread “Born of the Sun” because I wanted to include it in an anthology of mine which I called Before the Golden Age (Doubleday, 1974), that I realized what had happened and was embarrassed by it.

  It was not really plagiarism, of course, for ideas and situations are repeated over and over again in different stories—but in different words, in different contexts, and with different consequences. Ideas

  and situations can even be deliberately borrowed provided they are used sufficiently differently.

  I borrowed freely from Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in planning the Foundation series, and I believe that the motion picture Star Wars did not hesitate, in turn, to borrow from the Foundation series.

  I learned not to consider overlapping of ideas to be a crime when I was writing “Each an Explorer,” which appeared in 1956 in the undated Future Fiction #30. Halfway through I recognized that the idea was uncomfortably similar to that in Campbell’s great story “Who Goes There?” I broke into an immediate perspiration. I phoned Campbell, told him what was happening, and asked his advice.

  Campbell laughed and said that duplication of ideas was unavoidable and, in the hands of honest, capable writers, harmless. “I can give the same idea to ten different writers,” he said, “and get back ten completely different stories.”

  Even so, however, I labored to make it as different from “Who Goes There?” as possible. Again, I wrote a story called “Lest We Remember,” which appeared in the February 15, 1982, issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (IASFM). As I wrote it, I recognized a similarity in idea to that in Daniel Keyes’s classic “Flowers for Algernon” (April 1959 F&SF) and labored like a Trojan to make my story as different as possible.

  The closest call I ever had was in a short short story I wrote for someone who asked me to portray a computer at the moment of selfawareness. I wrote of one that stopped working for a while, then began to ask the question “Who am I? Who am I?”

  It appeared in an amateur computer newsletter, but was later re printed in a children’s magazine. Another writer saw it and sent me a tear sheet of one of his own stories that also ended in a computer asking, “Who am I? Who am I?” (The stories were otherwise com pletely different.) The other writer told me where his story had appeared and I real ized with a sinking heart that it had been included in an anthology that also contained one of my stories and that I therefore had in my library. I looked for it and there was the other story, published years earlier than mine.

  What could I do? I wrote to him admitting that his story had been

  available to me and that the ending might have clung to my mind. I asked if he would be satisfied if I were never to allow my story to be published again anywhere. He replied that that would be satisfactory and was kind enough to say that he never thought for a moment that I had committed a plagiarism.

  But what can I do? The danger is always there. Scraps of this and that cling to my tenacious memory and I might at any time think that one of these scraps is my own creation. Worse yet, I haven’t read even a small fraction of all the science fiction stories written, and I might overlap ideas with something I have never read, through sheer coincidence.

  Once Theodore Sturgeon and I independently, and almost simultaneously, wrote stories which made use of the word “hostess” in a double meaning, the same double meaning. What’s more, two of his characters were Derek and Verna and two of mine were Drake and Vera. Both stories were sent to Galaxy—pure coincidence. Since Ted’s story arrived in Horace’s office a few days earlier, it fell to me to make a few cosmetic changes. (Vera was changed to Rose, for instance.) My story appeared as “Hostess” in the May 1951 Galaxy. No matter how carefully I try to stay far away from even the hint of plagiarism, tiiere is nothing I can do about being plagiarized myself. All over the country, students are being asked to write essays and stories and a very small percentage of them are cretinous enough to seek the shortcut of copying some existing item.

  I say “cretinous” because any kid so uncertain of his own abilities that he is forced to plagiarize must be a rotten writer, even for a kid. If he suddenly hands in a polished professional piece of work, whom can he possibly fool, unless he has an equally cretinous teacher?

  One professor from a Rhode Island college once sent me a copy of a long manuscript. One of her students had submitted it as his own work. However, it had robots in it, and was far too good for the student. She knew that I was know
n for my robot stories and she felt I could tell her whether the student had plagiarized.

  Yes, indeed, he had. The dumb jackass had copied my story “Galley Slave” (December 1957 Galaxy), and had done so word for word. He lacked the capacity to paraphrase so that he might plead coincidence and he didn’t even have the wit to change the names of the characters.

  I reported all this to the professor, and I hope the young man was duly punished.

  A few years ago, someone came across a high school literary magazine which contained, under some student’s name, my story “Nothing for Nothing” (February 1979 IASFM). I wrote an indignant letter to the school and so did Doubleday, but there was never any answer. Either the people at the school were too embarrassed to answer or (and I don’t consider this impossible) they were annoyed at my objection to one of their very own students finding such a clever way of fulfilling an assignment.

  If you doubt that the latter viewpoint could be possible, listen to this (even though it doesn’t involve a plagiarism). A young man wrote me once for a recommendation letter. He was trying to get into some school, had read my stories, and thought that my name on a letter saying how great he was would carry much weight. He admitted that I didn’t know him, but he felt it wouldn’t be very difficult for me to pretend I did, and to speak highly of his intelligence and character, in order to help him. After all (the old bromide) hadn’t Campbell helped

  me?

  I boiled over. I wrote back an austere letter pointing out that he was asking me to commit an unethical act and that he insulted me by assuming I was capable of one. His letter, I said, showed neither intelligence nor character.

  That, I thought, was that, but to my surprise, I got an answer, not from the young man, but from his mother. She castigated me quite eloquently for making her son feel bad when he had only been joking. What was the matter with me (and my colossal ego, I suppose) that I could not take a joke?

  I boiled over again. I replied even more austerely that if she and her son did not change their minds about what was funny and what was not, the young man would someday end in jail. This time I got no answer.

  The funniest plagiarism story involving me took place on May 23, 1989. Tor Books had put out a “double.” It was a paperback that contained a Ted Sturgeon novella. If you turned the book over, top to bottom, you found yourself facing another cover, with another story reading from that end. The other story was my “The Ugly Little Boy.”

  After the double had been announced as a forthcoming event and the stories briefly described with teasers, I received a furious letter from a young woman accusing me of plagiarism. Apparently, one and a half years earlier (in 1987 or 1988) she had written a story, submit

  ted it, and had it rejected. She sent me a precis of the story, which had a litde boy in it (as did Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist). She felt that the editors had been unwilling to print her story under her unknown name, so they gave the idea to me in order to have it appear under my own famous name and sell better. In this way “The Ugly Little Boy” was written. “How else can you explain it?” she demanded.

  It had to be answered. No matter how ridiculous, a charge of plagiarism must be nailed to the wall. I was cruel enough to address her as “Dear Crazy Lady.”

  I then told her that if she had looked at the Tor double instead of merely reading an announcement of its forthcoming appearance, she would have seen that “The Ugly Little Boy” was a reprint and that the copyright notice, right there in the book, showed it to have been published in 1958, long before she wrote her story, and, possibly, before she was born. How had it happened, then? Perhaps she had plagiarized me.

  She never answered, though the decent thing would have been to apologize rather humbly.

  That reminds me that I am frequently asked by beginners whether their stories might be stolen if they submitted them to an editor. The answer is: “Not a chance.” If the story were good enough to steal, the editor would want the writer more than the story, for the writer might then write more good stories. Why steal one when you can get many legitimately?

  often asked to serve as master of ceremonies at the banquet. But there was one time when I muffed things badly, giving an award, mistakenly, to a writer who had not won it. My embarrassment was so ex

  Science Fiction Conventions

  The same push that caused science fiction to gather into local clubs and that had led to the formation of the Futurians, for instance, also acted to force the local clubs into larger associations.

  In 1939, it occurred to Sam Moskowitz to set up a World Science Fiction Convention. It was held on July 2, 1939, in a hall in midtown Manhattan with only a few hundred people. Sam, who was a member of the Queens Science Fiction Club, from which the Futurians had broken away, refused to allow any Futurians to participate. I, however, had not yet been firmly associated with them in Sam’s mind, and I had already sold three stories, so I was able to get in.

  Thereafter, a World Science Fiction Convention has been held every year (except the war years of 1942, 1943, and 1944) in different cities. At each there is some important guest of honor and there are speeches, fancy-dress parties, banquets, and so on. It is always held over the Labor Day weekend, unless it is held outside the United States where Labor Day is not a factor.

  Attendance has generally increased with time until it is possible to have as many as six or seven thousand people at a convention. Other, smaller conventions were set up and the time came when a really enthusiastic conventioneer such as Jay Kay Klein or Sprague de Camp could, if he wished, attend some convention or other nearly every day of the year.

  Since I don’t like to travel, I rarely attend a World Science Fiction Convention, but on those occasions when I was present I used to be treme that I have usually refused to toastmaster at convention banquets since.

  There was one exception. In 1989, in Boston, we celebrated the golden anniversary of that first convention in 1939, and I was one of the few people who had attended it (and certainly the most prominent of the survivors). I therefore consented to travel to Boston and serve as toastmaster for the “nostalgia luncheon” that served as the celebration. I was delighted to do it too.

  The guest of honor of the World Science Fiction Convention is usually chosen from some section of the country far from the place where the convention is being held. After all, the bulk of the attendees are locals and they don’t want to see someone they are likely to see at local meetings. A distant guest of honor not usually seen by local fans drags in the registrations and helps pay the expenses of the convention. Since I only attend conventions close to home, I am usually not suitable as a guest of honor. In 1955, however, the convention was held in Cleveland and they asked me to be the guest of honor. I was not proof against the flattery and I drove to Cleveland so that I could serve.

  This is the only time I have ever been the guest of honor at a World Science Fiction Convention (some people have served as such twice or even three times) but that doesn’t bother me. I have been the guest of honor at a number of lesser conventions and, in fact, I have a set of plaques and scrolls that line my walls and fill my closets.

  My fourteen honorary doctorate degrees, moldering in a trunk, have their inconvenient side, for I am considered an alumnus of each college and therefore fair game for fund-raising letters. (That reminds me of the man who complained that his wife was always after him for money, day and night. A friend said, “What does she do with it?” The man replied, “Nothing. I don’t give her any.”)

  But I digress—

  The Cleveland World Science Fiction Convention of 1955 was the thirteenth (for those of you who are superstitious). It was very nearly the smallest of all the conventions. Only three hundred attended. This had its advantages. In later years I was sometimes at a convention with an attendance in the many thousands, which means large hotels, enormous programs, crowded halls and function rooms, and hordes and

  hordes of unknowns among whom it was impossible to find one’
s friends and cronies. There was simply too much confusion, chaos, and anarchy.

  When I am asked to sign books at one of these large conventions, the line stretches out anaconda-like. This is very flattering, but one gets tired of signing books too after a steady hour and a half of it. As I am a prolific writer, it is not unheard of for some eager reader to come with a suitcase containing two dozen books for me to sign. And even when it is not a formal signing time, fans stop me in the halls to sign programs and scraps of paper too.

  It’s partly my fault. Arthur Clarke, for instance, is notorious for being willing to sign only hardcover books, but I can’t bring myself to refuse anyone who is actually standing there and looking at me with what might be devotion.

  An attendance of three hundred was just right. There was no confusion. Writers met each other without trouble. Book signing was limited. For years, the 1955 convention was looked back upon as the friendliest one of all.

  In the 1953 convention awards had been handed out for the best books of the year in different categories. That was viewed as just a gimmick made use of by that particular convention. In 1954, for instance, it wasn’t done.

  In 1955, however, the custom was revived and made permanent. From then on, the grand climax of the convention was always the banquet at which a series of awards were handed out very much in the fashion of the movie Oscars. The awards were called Hugos in honor of Hugo Gernsback, who had founded the first all-science-fiction magazine twenty-nine years earlier.