I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  (In fact, and this is a sore point, those portions of my fiction output that are intended for an adult audience are sometimes considered “teenage reading” by the more arrogant critics. This, I presume, arises from the fact that my adult novels eschew violence and graphic sex, and also commit the terrible crime of being clearly written. This means, of course, that intelligent teenagers can read my adult novels with ease and understanding, but that does not make them “teenage reading.”)

  Occasionally, I have also written books for the grade school youngster—that is, the preteener. That’s harder. There you have to be careful of your vocabulary. Fiction has to be short, while nonfiction books about science have to be particularly clear.

  My first attempt at science fiction for the preteen audience was The Best New Thing, which I wrote in early 1962. I intended it for very published till 1971 under the World Publishing imprint.

  I wrote a number of short stories for Boys’ Life at a slightly higher age level. My most successful story in this magazine was “Sarah Tops,” which was the first of my tales to feature Larry, my junior high school detective. It has been anthologized about a dozen times.

  As far as nonfiction is concerned, there was the ill-fated Ginn Science Program, to which I contributed to the text of those volumes intended for the fourth to the eighth grade. I don’t want to talk about them.

  Much more my own work was a series of four books I did for Walker & Company: ABC’s of Space (1969), ABC’s of the Ocean (1970), ABC’s of the Earth (1971), and ABC’s of Ecology (1972).

  These books sounded good when Beth Walker first suggested them to me. They also sounded easy. As it happened, they turned out to be neither good nor easy.

  The point was to pick two words with each letter of the alphabet and define them. Some letters, however, had many possibilities. Thus in the book about space, S could be used for sun, star, Saturn, satellite, space, and so on. Other letters, like Y, had virtually no candidates. The result was that some very important words had to be omitted and some very borderline words had to be admitted. Defining each word clearly and accurately in only three or four lines wasn’t easy either.

  By the time I did my fourth ABC book, I rebelled and would do no more. The Walkers didn’t try to argue with me, for the books didn’t do very well either. The How Did We Find Out About . . . ? series I have done for Walker for a somewhat older audience was much more satisfactory and did much better financially.

  Then, in 1987, a gentleman named Gareth Stevens was establishing a publishing house in Milwaukee, and Marty Greenberg, ever alert to the possibilities of the ground floor, got to know him somehow. The result was a series of children’s books on astronomy with me as the author. Marty acted as my agent, and then refused to accept an agent’s fee. He is a very difficult person to work with, in that respect.

  Gareth asked me to do a series of thirty-two books on astronomy. Each of them was to consist of twelve mini-essays on the subject, plus three more on “amazing facts” and yet another three on “puzzling mysteries.” In each case, I would get an outline of the subjects to be covered, as prepared by someone knowledgeable in educational requirements.

  The first book in the series, Did Comets Kill the Dinosaurs’?, was written on June 19, 1987, and was published before the end of the year. I believe that one was chosen to initiate the series because it dealt with dinosaurs and cataclysms, both of which are popular with youngsters. It certainly did the trick, for on the basis of how well that book was received, Gareth went ahead full speed on the rest.

  At the present time of writing, twenty-nine of the series have been published and two are still in press. The thirty-second and last of the series came up at a time when my health was such that I couldn’t write it. It was therefore written in-house, but I may be credited with it as author, for the sake of series uniformity. (If it is, I won’t give it a number.)

  These books seem to be successful. They are filled with marvelous and spectacular artwork, and are popular with schools and libraries. Gareth, through trips abroad and aggressive promotion, has sold a large number of foreign editions, all of which (of those I have seen) keep the size, artwork, and the aura, and translate only my words.

  Only one of the topics assigned to the series displeased me. One book was assigned to UFOs and I objected on the ground that UFOs were not astronomy, but mythology. However, Gareth said he was selling the series on the basis of the list of the topics and the one on UFOs aroused particular interest.

  “All right,” I said, “but if I do that book, I will make it perfectly clear that there is no evidence whatever that UFOs are alien spaceships and I will stress the fact that there is a great deal of hoax and illusion involved in the subject.”

  “Go ahead,” said Gareth, and that is exactly what I did.

  Recent Novels

  The ending of Foundation and Earth had left me in a quandary. It is my custom to try to leave one loose and untied matter at the end of a novel, in the very likely case that I would want to continue the story. At the end of the previous novel of the Foundation series, Foundation’s Edge, I had even placed at the end the notation: “The End (for now).” Janet had strongly disapproved of that, saying that I would make the readers wait for it when I might not get around to writing a sequel for years.

  I did write the sequel quickly, however, but in Foundation and Earth, the last paragraph strongly implied that there were complications existing that could only be handled in another book, and I had no idea how those complications could be handled. I still don’t know, though five years have passed since I finished the novel.

  That may have been one of the reasons I wrote Fantastic Voyage II, as one way of putting off the necessary further exploration of the Foundation universe. But when that was done, what was I to do next?

  As it happened, I was going up in my apartment elevator one day when a young man said to me that he had read the Foundation series and he always wanted to know what had happened to Hari Seldon when he was young and how he had come to invent psychohistory (the fictional science that underlies the series).

  I seized on that, and when the time came to sign contracts for new novels, I suggested that I go back in time and write Prelude to Foundation, which would deal with events that took place fifty years before the first book in the series and with Hari Seldon and the establishment of psychohistory.

  Jennifer Brehl at once agreed and, sensing my weariness with the Foundation books, suggested that the novel after that be not part of either the Foundation series or the robot series, but be an entirely independent product, with a completely new background.

  I agreed, and began to write Prelude to Foundation on February 12, 1987. It was completed nine months later and was published in 1988. It appeared in paperback form in 1989 as the first volume in a new paperback line established by Doubleday/Bantam, that line being called “Foundation” in my honor.

  I then began Nemesis on February 3, 1988. It was placed closer to our time than was true of either the robot novels or the Foundation novels. It dealt with the colonization of a satellite that circled a Jovian-type planet that, in turn, circled a red-dwarf star. My protagonist was a teenaged girl and I also had two strong adult women characters. I placed considerably more emotion in the novel than was customary for me.

  I enjoyed writing it, but it took me thirteen months rather than the ordinary nine, for reasons I will soon explain. The book was published in the fall of 1989 and it was quite successful.

  Back to Nonfiction

  While I was turning out my late novels of the 1980s, I didn’t entirely abandon nonfiction. I wrote essays in great numbers and published collections of them. There were Far as the Human Eye Could See (Doubleday, 1987) and The Relativity of Wrong (Doubleday, 1988), two collections of my F&SF essays. There were also several of the How Did We Find Out About . . . ? series for Walker and of course the astronomy books for Gareth Stevens.

  However, I didn’t write any nonfiction books for adults, except for
Beginnings (Walker, 1987), my account of the evolution of the Universe, of the Earth, and of man, told backward; and my annotation of Gilbert and Sullivan.

  I was simply aching to do something, and what I missed most of all were the history books I had written for Houghton Mifflin. The sixteenth and last of these (before Houghton Mifflin decided to end them) was The Golden Door, the fourth volume of my history of the United States, which was published in 1977.

  Since then, I had not published a single book on history and I had suffered a whole decade of history starvation.

  You might wonder why I did not continue the series with another publisher. The thought was indeed in my mind, but somehow the matter had worked itself into something larger. It occurred to me that I ought to do a history of the world from the very beginning, and include all the nations that I could. I would tell it in my way, as a story, with the old-fashioned emphasis on war and politics.

  I knew that it was more important to discuss sociology, economics, and cultural events, and I intended to put in as much as possible of that sort of material. Still, the stuff that nowadays is considered the important essence of history is dull, and I wanted the book read for fun. I didn’t care what the critics would say; I intended to write the book to please myself and to insert the kind of excitement and drama that makes for fun. That in turn called for war and politics. After all, since I write rather old-fashioned science fiction and rather old-fashioned mysteries, why not write rather old-fashioned histories too?

  I got Walker to agree to publish it and they gave me a contract with a $1,000 advance. (I didn’t care if they gave me no advance at all; I just wanted it published.) In January 1979, I began writing it, and I kept at it on and off for well over a year, doing nearly half a million words and reaching the year 1850. But then my novels started, and it was clear that the final century and a quarter would take another half a million words at least, so I gave up.

  I hated to let all that go for nothing, for I like to boast that I never waste anything and that I publish everything I write, one way or another, but that project defeated me. I didn’t consider it a permanent defeat, of course, since I felt, for years, that I would go back to it and finish it someday, but I never did.

  (It wasn’t even the first large project that failed. During World War II, I wrote notes on everything that was happening, incredible quantities too, because I intended to write a history of the war once it was over. It was never written. I never even began it.)

  While I was writing my novels, various publishing houses would advance complex ideas to me. Doubleday itself asked me to do an overview of science in question-and-answer form, and I started it and did quite a bit, but that too died under die pressure of the novels. I handed back Doubleday’s fairly sizable advance.

  Then, Harper & Row asked me to write a history of science, year by year. I agreed to do it unenthusiastically, for I felt sure that my novel writing would interfere with any large nonfiction project. But then the further suggestion was made that I include in each year something of what was going on in the world outside of science. That filled me with excitement. It would be a kind of history book, a general one, and not just one about science.

  With my novels going at a hot pace, I couldn’t start it, but I kept thinking about it, and dreaming about it. Then, on November 8, 1987, when I was nearly finished with Prelude to Foundation, I cast aside caution and began the book I called Science Timeline. Eventually, Harper & Row gave it the ungainly, but descriptive name of

  Asimov’s Chronology of Science and Discovery.

  I have rarely had so much fun in my life. I used my own ‘Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology as a mine of names and dates. I got out every other science history in my library. I used my various encyclopedias. I collected data from everywhere and set about telling the story of science, beginning 4 million years ago when the first hominids appeared. In addition, I threw in a great deal of straight history, using my own histories, including even my suspended world history manuscript, and all the history books in my library to supply me with data.

  I tried to write it along with Nemesis when it came time to do that novel, alternating the two. I used Nemesis as a bribe and the Chronology as a reward. If I managed to do ten pages of Nemesis, I felt free to do twenty of the Chronology, and so on.

  The advantage was all on the side of the Chronology. I knew that Nemesis would make ten times as much money as the Chronology, but my heart was with nonfiction. The result was that I finished the Chronology by the end of 1987, on schedule, but Nemesis, which had the same deadline, was still incomplete. Only when Jennifer frowned at me and gave me a final deadline did I get to work and get it in by March 1988.

  Both books were published in October 1989. Asimov’s Chronology of Science and Discovery is a large book, about 700 pages long, with three times the wordage of Nemesis, and I was very proud of it indeed, although there were two items about it that bothered me.

  One was that preparing the index, though no more difficult than for my other large books, seemed more difficult because I was older and because (though I didn’t fully realize it at the time) my health was deteriorating, and I was growing tired more rapidly.

  The other bothersome item was that I had rather spread myself on the matter of historical events other than science and, on the whole, the nonscientific portion of the book made up a sizable fraction of it. Harper & Row, anxious not to price the book out of the market, and equally anxious not to have to do it in two volumes, cut out much of the straight history, though they cut out not a paragraph of my science history.

  I agreed to that without trouble because a new idea had occurred to me.

  The recording of historical events in the world, year by year, brought back to mind the failed world history for Walker that I had given up nearly a decade earlier. Why not try it again on a different pattern—one which was closer to that of the Chronology? Then I could, perhaps, get Harper & Row to publish it as a companion piece.

  I got to work and spent even more time on it than I had on my earlier attempt at such a history. I started 15 billion years ago with the Big Bang creation of the Universe, and it was my intention to come up to the present moment.

  I went well past 1850, which had been the cutoff point of the first attempt, partly because I was more systematic in the arrangement of the book and partly because I was being more concise. By the time I reached World War II, however, I realized (once again) that I could not make it up to the present. It would be far too long. It seemed to me that 1945 would be a good point at which to stop and then, sometime in the future, I could write another book dealing with the history of the world since 1945.

  Actually, halfway through World War II, I had to stop for reasons I will soon explain, but this time I know the stop is only temporary. Barring my death, the book will be finished.

  Of course, the one question of ethics in my mind was: What about the contract I had with Walker to do a world history?

  I might easily have argued that that didn’t matter. Since I had undertaken that first world history, I had published nearly forty books with Walker, so they couldn’t complain I was neglecting them.

  Nevertheless, there was the $1,000 advance they had paid me for the book. Fortunately, in 1989, Beth Walker became conscious of the approach of the year 2000 and suggested I do a book describing what the earth was like at every millennium as far as human history was concerned. Then, once I got to the present, I would continue with a chapter on what things might be like in the year 3000.

  I at once said I would do it if they would let it substitute for the failed world history and would apply the $1,000 advance I had been paid for it toward the new book. They agreed but insisted on paying me an additional thousand. (Publishers rarely let me have my way in the matter of advances. They always shove more money at me than I ask for.)

  The book was easy to do and I had it done in a matter of a few months. It will appear under the name of The Next Millennium.
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br />   Robert Silverberg

  Robert Silverberg was born in 1936 and his early years may have been much like mine. At least, when he read the first volume of my autobiography, he found a great deal in it, he said, that was reminiscent of his own life.

  I can well believe it, for he must undoubtedly have been every bit as bright as I had been, and may have fit into society as poorly as I did. The results were different, though. I was always loud and brash and ready to mix with company, so that those who were unimpressed by me saw in me something of the buffoon. Bob, on the other hand, was serious and grave, and though he had a keen and effective sense of humor, it tended to flash out only periodically—and unexpectedly.

  I interpreted this gravity of Bob’s as unhappiness and commented on that in the earlier volumes of autobiography. He later told me that he was unhappy in his first marriage. But then, so was I, and if we subtract that unhappiness, he was still grave, and I was still brash.

  This bothered him a little, I think, for I remember him once saying that he could not indulge in the self-promoting antics of people like Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison. I protest, however, that it’s not a matter of self-promotion; it’s just the way Harlan and I are. If we were not that way by nature, it would be impossible for us to assume the fakery just to promote ourselves. It must come naturally or not at all.

  Bob has a lot going for him anyway. In the first place, he is one of the best writers in science fiction, and if he had been born fifteen years earlier, he would have been one of the Big Three, rather than I. Second, he is extremely prolific. Certainly, he has the capacity to be as prolific as I am, and he has a surprising range too. He has written first-rate nonfiction books, and I remember reading, with enormous pleasure, his books on such subjects as the Mound Builders of pre-Columbian America and on Prester John. In later life, he has also written very good historical novels—I enjoyed one that dealt with Gilgamesh of Sumeria.