Gold

by Isaac Asimov

  But then, soon after World War II, Bob Heinlein was involved with a motion picture, Destination: Moon. It wasn’t a very good motion picture; it didn’t make the hit that the later 2001: A Space Odyssey or Star Wars did. But it was the first motion picture involving one of us, and while I said not a word, I was secretly unhappy. Bob had left our group and become famous in the land of the infidels.

  To make it worse, he had published “The Green Hills of Earth” in The Saturday Evening Post and it had created a stir. It was a real science fiction story and it was in the slicks; not only in the slicks, but in the greatest and slickest slick of them all. We all dreamed of publishing in the SEP (I, also) but that was like dreaming of taking out Marilyn Monroe on a date. You knew it was just a dream and you had no intention of even trying to make it come true. And now Bob had done it. He hadn’t just tried, he had done it.

  I don’t know whether I simply mourned his loss, because I thought that now he would never come back to us; or whether I was simply and greenly envious. All I knew was that I felt more and more uncomfortable. It was like having a stomachache in the mind, and it seemed to spoil all my fun in being a science fiction writer.

  So I argued it out with myself—not because I am a noble person but because I hated feeling the way I did, and I wanted to feel better. I said to myself that Bob had blazed new trails, and that it didn’t matter who did it, as long as it was done. Those new trails had been opened not for Robert Heinlein, but for science fiction, and all of us who were in the business of writing or reading science fiction could be grateful and thankful for we would sooner or later experience the benefit of Bob’s pioneering.

  And that was true. Because Bob made science fiction look good to people who did not ordinarily read science fiction, and who despised it when they thought of it at all, it became more possible for the rest of us to have our stuff published outside the genre magazines—even in the SEP. (I had a two-part serial published in that magazine myself eventually, but that was when it was long past its great days.)

  The result of my working this out meant I was free of sickness on later occasions. When my first book, Pebble in the Sky, appeared under the Doubleday imprint, it was followed in a matter of months by The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. I don’t have to tell you that Ray’s book far outshone mine. It didn’t bother me, for it seemed to me that the better Ray’s book did, the more people would read science fiction in book form, and some of them would be sure to look for more of the same and stumble over mine. And they did. Pebble is still earning money, thirty-six years later.

  And however annoying it might be that Michael Crichton could enter our field straight out of medical school, move right up to the novel level, and land on the best-seller list, and have everyone drooling over him, where’s the harm? He did it (unintentionally, perhaps) for us. He added to the respectability of science fiction among those who found us unrespectable, and made it easier for the rest of us to get on the best-seller list occasionally.

  Far from snarling, we should have been cheering.

  Another point. A band of brothers (and sisters) is at its best when there is nothing much to compete for. As long as we were all getting no more than one and two cents a word (as we did in that wonderful Golden Age of Campbell) with no chance at book publication, foreign sales and movies; as long as the only kudos we could get was first place in the “Analytical Laboratory” which meant a half-cent-a-word bonus; as long as no one outside our small field had ever heard of any of us under any circumstances—what was there to compete over? The most successful of us were almost as permanently impecunious as the least so there was no reason to snarl and bite.

  Now, however, times have changed. There are many more of us, and some of us write best-sellers. In fact, the greatest best-seller of the 1980s, Stephen King, is, after a fashion, one of us. It’s no longer a few thousand bucks that’s at stake; it’s a few million. And that brother bit fades, bends, and crumples under the strain.

  I don’t write reviews, but I do read them, and I’m beginning to see the venom again as one writer discusses the work of another member of the brotherhood. What’s more, the annual award of the Nebulas, which are determined by vote among the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America, seems to rouse hard feeling and contentiousness every year. The stakes are simply too high.

  Thus, a young member of the brotherhood (to me he seemed a child) complained to me the other day that the “young writers” (young to him) were ferocious in their competitiveness. There was none of the friendliness, he said, that there was in our day (meaning his and mine, though I was a published writer when he was born).

  I suppose he’s right, though.

  In a way, I can’t ache to return to the good old days when we were all impoverished together. It seems a glamorous time in my mind now, but I remember Sophie Tucker’s immortal dictum: “I’ve tried poor, and I’ve tried rich, and rich is better.”

  But is there a price we must pay for it? Must the camaraderie be gone? Must the friendly back-and-forth be over?

  Why not remember that science fiction is still a relatively specialized field; that SF writers have to know a great deal more, and develop more unusual skill, than ordinary writers; that SF readers, too, demand more because they need more? Can we remember that we’re all in this together? That those in front pave the way for those behind? That at any time someone can appear from the strange land of outside, or the stranger land of youth, and carve out new territory for all of us, and that they should be welcomed gladly?

  Let’s be friends. There are endless worlds of the mind and emotions to conquer, and we can advance more surely, if we support—not fight—each other.

  Science Fiction Anthologies

  I hear it said now and then that the short story is a lost literary art form, that the magazines and various outlets that fostered the short story are dead and gone, that fiction today concentrates on the novel.

  That would be too bad if it were true; but, of course, it isn’t entirely true. In the field of science fiction, at least, the short story absolutely flourishes and the readers simply can’t get enough of it. Indeed, any good science fiction story can count on periodic resurrection in the form of items in single-author collections and in multi-author anthologies. Some of my stories have been anthologized up to thirty times, and I by no means hold the record for such things. I suspect that both Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison (to name but two) can cite stories of their own that have seen far more repetitions than any of mine have.

  And there you have something that is oddly characteristic of science fiction—the vast number and varying nature of anthologies in the field. I have the impression that there is no precedent in literature for this.

  Why is it so? Why should science fiction, rather than some other subsection of popular literature, spawn an unending series of anthologies of enormous variety?

  I suspect that, in part at least, what is responsible is the unusual fervor of the devoted science fiction reader. Particular stories strike such a reader with the force of a sledgehammer. Combine this with the fact that magazine science fiction tends to be ephemeral. Few young readers save the magazines for long. Even if they start a collection, after a few years there comes college or marriage or other interests generally; and the collection falls apart, drifts away, vanishes.

  Yet the memory of those particularly good stories lingers, and a glow of glory builds about them. I have long lost count of the number of letters I have received from readers who tell me that once, when the world was young, they read a story about thus-and-so. They can’t remember the title, the author, where it appeared or anything more than thus-and-so; but could I tell them what the story was and how they could go about finding it again?

  Sometimes I remember the story from the small clues they present and can give them the missing information. More often I cannot.

  You see, then, that anthologies offer a second chance. They sometimes bring back for readers stories once loved
and then lost. Once I deliberately devised an anthology (Before the Golden Age, Doubleday, 1974) in order to present some stories that I myself had loved and lost.

  Sometimes such stories are better not found, for they don’t, in actual fact, bear the prismatic colors that fond memory lends them; but sometimes they do. When I reread “Tumithak of the Corridors” during the preparation of my 1974 anthology, I found it to be a time machine that restored me to my teenage years for an hour or two.

  The first anthology of magazine science fiction appeared in 1943. It was The Pocket Book of Science Fiction, edited by Donald A. Wollheim. Among the stories it contained was Stanley G. Weinbaum’s “A Martian Odyssey,” which I had never read, having missed the issue in which it first appeared. I was able to enjoy it for the first time when I bought the anthology. And there is another service such books offer. They allow you to recover stories you never knew you had lost.

  In 1946, there appeared the first hardcover anthology of magazine science fiction, The Best of Science Fiction, edited by Groff Conklin. It was an anthology of almost painfully intense interest to me for it was the first to contain a story of mine—“Blind Alley.” That was never one of my own favorites; in fact, I considered it then, and now, too, as rather second-rate. Still, I discovered eventually that Groff’s opinions of quality could usually be relied on, so perhaps I underestimate “Blind Alley.”

  In any case, Astounding, the magazine in which “Blind Alley” had originally appeared, retained all rights in those days; but John Campbell insisted that anthology income go to the authors involved. It was in this way that I made the great discovery that the same story could be paid for twice and, therefore, by extension, any number of times. (It is only that which makes it possible for a science fiction writer to earn a living, so this was by no means a non-significant discovery.)

  Later in that same year, the most successful science fiction anthology ever to appear was published. It was Adventures in Time and Space, edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas. It was a large, thick volume, with stories drawn almost entirely from the Golden Age of Astounding, and it contained my story “Nightfall.” That was my introduction to the strange notion that one of my own stories was already considered a classic.

  The success of the Healy-McComas anthology opened the floodgates. I haven’t the faintest idea how many anthologies have been published since, but I am quite certain that there isn’t an issue of any science fiction magazine that hasn’t been carefully picked over to see if any gems have remained undiscovered—nor any gem or even semi-gem that hasn’t been discovered and rediscovered and rediscovered.

  Lately, I myself have joined the parade. I’m not entirely a novice at the anthologists’ game, for I edited The Hugo Winners (Doubleday, 1962) along with successor volumes in 1971 and 1977, all of which were quite successful.

  However, I never let myself get too involved in such matters because every anthology entails a great deal of tedious scutwork—selection, obtaining of permissions, the making out of payments and so on. The result was that through 1978, I edited only nine anthologies, which is very few for a person of my own wholesale proclivities who considers nothing worth doing that isn’t worth doing a lot.

  With my ninth anthology, however, One Hundred Great Science Fiction Short-Short Stories (Doubleday, 1978), I made the marvelous discovery that my friend, Martin Harry Greenberg—tall, a little plump, intelligent, conscientious, hard-working, and good-humored—found a peculiar perverted pleasure in doing all those things, like getting permissions and taking care of payments, that I hated to do.

  Then the two of us discovered Charles G. Waugh, also tall, hard-working, intelligent, and conscientious, but less plump and much more grave than either Martin or I. It turned out, he knew every science fiction story ever published, remembered all the statistics and plots, and could put his hand on any of them instantly. Ask him for a story about extraterrestrials from Uranus who reproduce by binary fission and I imagine he would have three different sets of xeroxes in your hand the next day.

  That changed everything. In 1979 and 1980, I helped edit no less than twelve anthologies and, at the moment of writing, there are six in press and more in preparation. (Not all are with Martin and Charles: a couple are with Alice Laurance, who has an attribute that the first two lack to an enormous degree—beauty; and one is with J. O. Jeppson, to whom I am closely related by marriage.)

  Very often these recent anthologies have had my name blown out of proportion on the covers for crass commercial reasons, and over my protests, since I contribute no more than my fair share.

  On the other hand I contribute no less than my fair share either, and it chafes a little when someone takes it for granted that I am merely collecting money for the use of my name. I would overlook the slur on my integrity involved in this, since all great men suffer calumny; but I hate to lose credit for all the work I do.

  Charles, Martin, and I constantly consult each other by mail and phone; and we each dabble in every part of the work; but there is division of labor, too. Charles works particularly hard at locating stories and making photocopies. Martin works particularly hard at the business details.

  And as for me—Well, all the stories descend on me; and I read them all and do the final judging (what I throw out is thrown out). I then write the introduction or the headnotes or (usually) both. And since I’m the one who lives in New York, I tend to do the trotting round to various publishers when that is necessary.

  The net result is that each of the three of us does what he best likes to do so that preparing the anthologies becomes fun for all of us. To be sure, I labor under the steady anxiety that something might happen to Martin or Charles; but, under my shrewd questioning, both Sally Greenberg and Carol-Lynn Waugh have made it clear that each entirely understands the importance of keeping her husband functioning; and I rely on them with all confidence.

  The Influence of Science Fiction

  I suppose it’s only natural that those of us who are devotees of science fiction would like to find in it something more than a matter of idle amusement. It ought to have important significance.

  On many occasions in the past I have advanced arguments for supposing such significance to exist. Here is how it goes:

  The human way of life has always been subject to drastic and more or less irreversible change, usually (or, as I believe, always) mediated by some advance in science and/or technology. Thus, life is forever changed with the invention of fire—or the wheel—or agriculture—or metallurgy—or printing.

  The rate of change has been continually increasing, too; for as these changes are introduced, they tend to increase the security of the human species and therefore increase its number, thus in turn increasing the number of those capable of conceiving, introducing, and developing additional advances in science and technology. Besides that, each advance serves as a base for further advance so that the effect is cumulative.

  During the last two centuries, the rate of change has become so great as to be visible in the course of the individual lifetime. This has put a strain on the capacity of individuals, and societies, too, to adapt to such change, since the natural feeling always is that there should be no change. One is used to things as they are.

  During the last thirty years, the rate of change has become so great as to induce a kind of social vertigo. There seems no way in which we can plan any longer, for plans become outdated as fast as they are implemented. By the time we recognize a problem, action must be taken at once; and by the time we take action, however quickly, it is too late; the problem has changed its nature and gotten away from us.

  What makes it worse is that, in the course of scientific and technological advance we have reached the stage where we dispose of enough power to destroy civilization (if it is misused), or to advance it to unheard-of heights (if we use it correctly).

  With stakes so high and the situation so vertiginous, what can we do?

  We must learn to anticipate fairly c
orrectly and, in making our plans, take into account not what now exists, but what is likely to exist five years hence—or ten—or twenty—whenever the solution is likely to come into effect.

  But how can one take change into account correctly, when the vast mass of the population stolidly refuses to take into account the existence of any change at all? (Thus, most Americans, far from planning now for 1990, have shown by their recent actions that what they want is to see 1955 restored.)

  That is where science fiction comes in. Science fiction is the one branch of literature that accepts the fact of change, the inevitability of change. Without the initial assumption that there will be change, there is no such thing as science fiction, for nothing is science fiction unless it includes events played out against a social or physical background significantly different from our own. Science fiction is at its best if the events described could not be played out at all except in a social or physical background significantly different from our own.

  That doesn’t mean that a science fiction story should be predictive, or that it should portray something that is going to happen, before it can be important. It doesn’t even have to portray something that might conceivably happen.

  The existence of change, the acceptance of change, is enough. People who read science fiction come, in time, to know that things will be different. Maybe better, maybe worse, but different. Maybe this way, maybe that way, but different.

  If enough people read science fiction or are, at least, sufficiently influenced by people who read science fiction, enough of the population may come to accept change (even if only with resignation and grief) so that government leaders can plan for change in the hope of meeting something other than stolid resistance from the public. And then, who knows, civilization might survive.