Asimov's SF, April/May 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I used a method somewhat akin to that myself, once, when I needed a story idea and I had, for the moment, run absolutely dry. It was September, 1982, a warm and golden month, and I was exhausted after having spent the previous six months writing an immense historical novel, Lord of Darkness. But now Omni magazine wanted to do a special Robert Silverberg issue, containing reprints of two of my earlier stories plus a brand-new piece to top everything off. It was too flattering an offer to refuse. But where was I going to get that brand-new story? I was wiped out. I had reached that point, so dreadfully familiar to any author who has just finished a major project, where I felt convinced that I'd never have a story idea again.

  One tactic writers sometimes try when stuck for an idea is to grab two unrelated concepts at random, jam them together, and see if they strike any sparks. I tried it. I picked up the day's newspaper and glanced quickly at two different pages.

  The most interesting words that rose to my eye were “computers” and “angels.” All right. I had my story then and there. Geek uses his computer to talk to angels.

  Corny? No. Nothing's corny if handled the right way. Trust me. The story that emerged, “Basileus,” has been reprinted in many anthologies, including the Science Fiction Writers of America's Fantasy Hall of Fame.

  The drawbacks of Plotto led to Wycliffe Hill's improved model, which uses a version of Cook's plot categories but adds the cardboard wheel to the mix so that the job of choosing the categories to use becomes far less confusing, though rather more arbitrary. The numbers turning up on the wheel, rather than the writer's own sense of an appropriate choice of elements, determine the structure of the story. Intuitive selection is replaced by mechanistic determination.

  Has either book ever resulted in the construction of a short story that some magazine was willing to publish? I have no idea. But there probably are hundreds or even thousands of would-be science fiction writers among the readers of this column, and I suggest to them that they make the experiment. Just yesterday I saw that copies of Plotto and The Plot Genie are being sold on the Internet at about $125 each. Pick one up, follow the instructions, write your story. You might just find that a grand literary career is unfolding for you in a wondrous, magical way.

  Copyright © 2011 Robert Silverberg

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  Department: THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS: CELEBRATING ISAAC by James Gunn

  On October 26 I gave a talk about Isaac Asimov at West Virginia University in Morgantown. The occasion was part of a continuing lecture series called “A Celebration of Ideas,” and the WVU library and the university's Chief of Staff Jay Cole and his marvelous student assistant Molly Simis came up with the happy idea of featuring a talk about Isaac, in large part because the library's special collections have what probably is the largest collection of Asimov materials after that held by Boston University.

  How WVU got the Asimov collection is a story in itself: a WVU alumnus, Larry Shaver, now living in Oklahoma City had been collecting Asimov books and other materials since his college days. He offered his collection to WVU, and the library had the wisdom to accept them. Later Carlos Patterson of Sacramento, California, not an alumnus, heard about the collection and added several hundred items from his Asimov collection; the WVU collection now has almost seven hundred items, including games and quizzes with Isaac's name on them. Both donors flew in to Morgantown for the occasion.

  Here are the remarks I made to an enthusiastic audience of 180 (mostly) Asimov fans in a big room at the WVU student center.

  * * * *

  I am pleased to talk about my friend and literary model, Isaac Asimov, in this, the year he would have been ninety—or maybe ninety-one. As nearly as his parents could calculate, he was born on January 2, 1920, but that was in Petrovichi, Russia, where records and memories are unclear, and he may have been born as early as October 4. He would have been astonished at the idea of this kind of celebration; when I interviewed him for my book about his science fiction, he said that I should be writing my own fiction.

  Isaac was brought to this country at the age of three and grew up in a series of Brooklyn candy stores. That, he felt, shaped his later life. He did not regret the habits they instilled in him—with the possible exception of the social awkwardness created by never visiting anyone or having anyone visit the family, tied as they were to the unrelenting demands of the store—because they resulted in the adult, successful Isaac Asimov. And that was a very good thing to be.

  He found ways to cope with the larger world, at first with wit bordering on the smart-alecky and later with what he called “gallantry to the ladies,” which consisted of suggestive remarks offered as jests, and an overall air of amazement at his own success coupled with a generous accounting of his own failings and the putdowns by his friends. In his school days, for instance, he recounted the occasion when Leigh Hunt's “Abou Ben Adhem” was scheduled for discussion. Ben Adhem, whose name is not in the angel's tablet as one who loves the lord, asks to be written as one who loves his fellow man, and the poem ends with “And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.” Isaac was ready for the teacher's question: “Why did Ben Adhem's name lead all the rest?” “Alphabetical order, sir!” Isaac volunteered. He was sent to the principal, Isaac recounted, “but it was worth it."

  Isaac credited his transformation from annoying know-it-all to genial comrade to an incident late in World War II, when he had been inducted into the Army and sent to H-bomb tests in the Pacific. He heard a soldier telling a couple of others about how the bomb worked. He rose to assume the smart man's burden and offer the correct account when he asked himself who appointed him their educator, and sat down. Ironically, a few years later he assumed the smart man's burden by beginning a series of non-fiction books about almost everything that we celebrate today, that led Professor George G. Simpson of Harvard to call him “one of our natural wonders and national resources."

  Before Isaac was a celebrated sage, however, he was a science fiction writer, and even in his latter days he wanted to be known as a science fiction writer. “It is uphill to science fiction; downhill to everything else,” he commented. He wrote about attending a World Book meeting of contributors where each was introduced with an orchestral theme. To Isaac's chagrin, he was introduced with “How deep is the ocean, how high is the sky?” “No matter how various the subject matter I wrote on,” he said, “I was a science fiction writer first and it is as a science fiction writer that I want to be identified."

  In the introduction to Nebula Award Stories Eight, he wrote:

  I began by writing science fiction . . . and for thirty years I've found that my training in science fiction made it possible for me to write anything. . . . I have written about 150 books as of now, and I tell you, that of all the things I write, science fiction is by far the hardest thing I do.

  Isaac fell in love with science fiction in his father's candy store, which stocked newspapers and magazines. Isaac learned to read them so carefully they could be returned looking untouched—a habit that he retained until the end of his life. Among those magazines was a new kind of publication that had started when Isaac was six years old: Amazing Stories, then Science Wonder Stories and Astounding Stories of Super Science. Isaac had taught himself to read at the age of five, and Isaac's father always viewed his son with a sense of awe and a determination that his elder son would be a doctor. He ordered Isaac not to waste his time on such pulp magazines until Isaac pointed out the word “science” in the magazine's title.

  Isaac's father gave him a used office-sized typewriter when Isaac was fifteen, and Isaac put it to use immediately, writing letters to the science fiction magazines commenting on the stories, particularly those in Astounding Stories, which had recently been acquired by Street & Smith from the bankrupt Clayton magazine chain. His fascination was intensified when John W. Campbell, Jr., was named editor of the magazine in 1937 and changed the name to Astounding Science-Fiction. Isaac decided then to start writing science fiction sto
ries, and, more importantly, to write them for Astounding.

  Soon afterward Isaac discovered that the magazine was edited in Manhattan, a subway ride away, and Isaac ventured in to meet Campbell. It was the first of a series of meetings that would shape Isaac's developing mind and future. Campbell was patient and provocative about science, culture, and writing, and he was willing to talk by the hour to the inexperienced teenager, even reading the stories Isaac began bringing to him and pointing out their flaws while he rejected them. The first story Isaac published, “Marooned Off Vesta,” when he was nineteen, was in Amazing Stories and the second as well, but he counted the real beginning of his career from the story “Trends” that he published in Astounding a couple of months later.

  That began a remarkable collaboration of editor and author that lasted ten years. That collaboration included Isaac's robot stories, his Foundation stories, and his non-series stories, among which was, in 1942, his first story featured on the cover, “Nightfall.” Although he didn't know it, this publication would establish his reputation as a major writer. The story illustrated the way in which the editor and the author worked together. Isaac had come to Campbell's office on one of his frequent visits, and Campbell quoted a sentence from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature: “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God.” And Campbell said, “What do you think would happen, Asimov, if men were to see the stars for the first time in a thousand years.” “I don't know,” Isaac said, and Campbell replied. “I think they would go mad. I want you to write a story about that."

  The incident brings up a question about Isaac's writing style. Style, Todorov wrote, is what stands between the reader and the text, and Isaac wanted nothing to stand in the way. One of the first scholars writing about Isaac's work, Joe Patrouch, commented that Isaac could write poetically when he wished and cited a paragraph near the end of “Nightfall.” Isaac replied that transparency was a style, and that paragraph didn't prove that he could write poetically, since it had been inserted by Campbell and made no logical sense in the context of the story. But he never removed the paragraph from later reprintings. He also resented readers telling him that “Nightfall” was his best story and suggesting that he write more stories like that; he felt that he had learned a good deal about writing since he was twenty-two. But when he incorporated himself, he did so under the name of “Nightfall, Inc.” Isaac had no fears of irony.

  Meanwhile he had joined a fan group called the Futurians, one of many chartered by Hugo Gernsback's Wonder Stories. The Futurians included Fred Pohl, Donald Wollheim, Cyril Kornbluth, Richard Wilson, James Blish, Robert Lowndes, Damon Knight, Judith Merril, and Virginia Kidd—fans who would help shape science fiction for the next few decades as writers, editors, agents, and even publishers. Isaac continued his education into college, not always happily as he discovered that he could not get admitted to the right college (he was admitted to Columbia's Seth Junior College and then to Columbia University rather than Columbia College), that the wonder child who had skipped several grades was not as good as some of his classmates at some subjects, and that he disliked anatomy and dissection.

  He also discovered that he could not get into medical school and decided to study chemistry toward a graduate degree, interrupted by a period of military research at the U.S. Navy Yard in Philadelphia with Robert Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp. All this time Isaac was writing and selling stories regularly to Campbell. As a writer who had experienced financial struggles myself, I was surprised—and, to be honest, somewhat bemused—to read in Isaac's autobiography that he had earned a total of $7,821.75 in his first eleven years, or about $710 a year.

  Isaac earned his Ph.D. in 1948 and, after a year of post-doctoral research at Columbia, was hired as an instructor in biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine. That was the year he wrote his first novel, Grow Old With Me, which Doubleday published as Pebble in the Sky in 1950. The same year a fan publisher, Gnome Press, collected his first robot stories as I, Robot and followed that with his Foundation books, all eventually taken over by Doubleday. It was the beginning of a relationship with Doubleday that lasted until his death, reaching its high point with TheCaves of Steel in 1954 and its sequel The Naked Sun in 1957.

  Meanwhile Isaac had turned to non-fiction at Boston University, publishing his first scientific book, Biochemistry and Human Metabolism in 1952 and progressing to his first solo text The Chemistry of Life. He had been approached to write a book about science for teenagers. His career as a writer was taking off in surprising ways. He had earned $1,695 for his writing in 1949, more than $4,700 in 1950, $3,625 in 1951, and an astonishing $8,550 in 1952. The last was half again as large as his university salary, now $5,500.

  By 1957, Isaac realized that he was primarily a writer. A new dean asked him to devote more of his time to research. “My writing is my research,” he insisted, but the dean persisted, and Isaac was forced to resign everything except his title—by that time he was a tenured associate professor—and turn to full-time writing. Unfortunately for science fiction, he decided to devote his time to non-fiction. He attributed that decision to the launching of Sputnik, the first satellite, by the Soviets and the need for a greater emphasis on scientific education, but his non-fiction was a lot easier to write, more publishers were eager for it, and they paid better. He wrote short stories with some regularity, but he did not write another science fiction novel for fifteen years.

  Isaac was so prolific as a non-fiction author that it is impossible to describe even a small proportion of his production. His fiction listing covers two pages in the compilation that accompanied every autobiographical work. His anthologies—it should be admitted that Isaac delighted in the number of works he had published, and toward the end of his career he padded the list with dozens of anthologies he edited with Martin H. Greenberg, the all-time champion of anthologists—covered nearly three pages. But his non-fiction covered more than five pages.

  They are best described by categories, which helps, as well, to illustrate the astonishing scope of his interests. General science—typified by his Intelligent Man's Guide to Science—totaled twenty-four books. Mathematics was a measly seven. Astronomy—clearly a favorite—reached sixty-eight; earth sciences, eleven; chemistry and biochemistry, sixteen; physics, twenty-two; biology, seventeen; history, nineteen; the Bible, nine; literature, ten; humor and satire—including The Sensuous Dirty Old Man that got Isaac an appearance on the “Tonight” show—nine; science essay collections mostly from the monthly articles he wrote for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, forty; science fiction essay collections from the editorials he wrote for Isaac Asimov's Magazine, two; autobiography, three; and miscellaneous, fourteen. In all, 470 books, a record about which he was inordinately proud and one that may never be surpassed.

  His science books represented a significant contribution to a general awakening of the American public to the need for greater understanding of science if the U.S. was going to maintain its leadership in the world. In 1973 he pointed out that we were living in a science fiction world, a world of spaceships, atomic energy, and computers, a world very much like the world that he and other science fiction writers had been describing a quarter-century before. It was a world typified by the first moon landing, four years before. “Science fiction writers and readers didn't put a man on the moon all by themselves,” he told me, “but they created a climate of opinion in which the goal of putting a man on the moon became acceptable."

  In I, Asimov he described his prolificacy. Once he turned to writing full-time, he averaged thirteen books a year, and his books ranged over nearly every division of the Dewey decimal system. During a question-and-answer period a man asked, “If you had to choose between writing and women, Dr. Asimov, which would you choose?” And Isaac answered instantly, “Well, I can type for twelve hours without getting tired.” And Barbara Walters asked him, off camer
a, “What if the doctor gave you six months to live. What would you do.” “Type faster,” Isaac said.

  Tackling as many topics as he did, Isaac depended upon information he could dig up. “What I contribute to my books,” he wrote in his autobiography, “are (1) ease and clarity of style, (2) sensible and logical order of presentation, and (3) apt and original metaphors, analogies, and conclusions."

  Several moments in this remarkable record of productivity stand out for me. One was when I filmed a part of my Literature of Science Fiction series with Isaac in 1973. When Isaac learned that I shared an office with Prof. Paul Kendall, a renowned Shakespearean scholar, he gave me one of his own Shakespeare books to take back with me. I wondered how Paul would respond, but clearly he was pleased.

  On another occasion Isaac was invited to be part of a panel discussing the human brain at a meeting in Washington, D.C. He responded that he didn't know anything about the human brain. The inviter came back by saying, “You must be an expert. You've just written a book about it.” And Isaac said, “I'm an expert at sounding like an expert."

  That was what Isaac did best: he sounded like an expert. He had a marvelous memory. In his childhood he would read all his school books the first couple of days and then never open them again. I asked him once about his memory and if he ever wondered how other people's memories worked, and he said that in a meeting of Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiasts he was reciting some lyrics and for a moment couldn't think of the next line. That was when he realized what many people, not blessed with his recall, experienced all the time. But even Isaac's memory was not infallible. He began including autobiographical notes when he took on the editing of the Hugo volumes and continued it into his own story collections. But when he wrote his enormous autobiography, to mark the milestone of his two hundredth published book, he referred to the diaries that he had been updating every day since 1938 and discovered that he had to correct some of his earlier recollections. He had published Opus 100 with Houghton Mifflin to mark his first hundred books, and he thought it only fair to allow them to publish Opus 200. But Doubleday was his first and still his major publisher, so Doubleday asked him to let it publish his autobiography. He protested that he had never done anything, but Doubleday insisted. A year later he brought in a thick stack of manuscript and put it on the editor's table. When the editor didn't flinch, he went into the hall and returned with another stack just as thick. The editor said, “What would you have written, Isaac, if you had ever done anything?” Isaac could make even a life of reading and writing a fascinating account.