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Moreover, the third novel in the prospective trilogy was not going well. Asimov would not abandon what he considered to be his best writing in the midst of what he considered his best novels and never return. A third factor in his decision may have been that the first two novels led to a third only if one considers them to be about C/Fe, the blend of humanity and robots into a better-working culture. Even from that perspective, a novel placed on Aurora would have been the most difficult to bring off successfully, and out of keeping with the utopian forms of the two earlier novels. And C/Fe is only a small part of what
The Caves of Steel
and
The Naked Sun
are about. More engrossing and more vital are Earth and Solaria as cultural mirror images; in this sense a third novel would seem at best only a middle ground and at worst unnecessary.
Finally, if one reads the novels as being about Baley's education as examples of the type of plot Heinlein has called "the man-who-learned-better" then that education had been completed. Anything more was simply elaboration. Unlike
The Foundation Trilogy,
which seemed to cry out for a fourth volume,
The Robot Novels
were complete with two.
In addition to their own value as the finest expressions of Asimov's art,
The Caves of Steel
and
The Naked Sun
stand as touchstones for the way in which they exemplify a basic difference (perhaps
the
basic difference) between science fiction and mainstream fiction the concept of human adaptability. The influence of Darwin's 1859
Origin of Species
has been recognized by many scholars; evolution and natural selection not only shaped H. G. Wells, who, in turn, shaped science fiction; the theory of evolution, whether accepted or rejected, changed forever the way people thought about their place in the universe. In adopting evolution, along with all other scientific concepts of the way things work, however, science-fiction writers also adopted a view of humanity that mainstream fiction rejected: humans, like the rest of the natural world, are not fixed in form or function; people, like whales and elephants, bacteria and viruses, are mutable, not only selected by but shaped by their environments. The human environment, however, increasingly is social, and the fabric of society is woven by science and technology.
The reader can see adaptability of humanity as the unstated premise of
The Robot Novels.
Earthmen, long accustomed to living in their caves of steel, have accepted it as the natural way of life and their agoraphobia as a normal condition. The Solarians, on the other hand, have become so accustomed to their limited numbers and vast estates that they consider their agoraphilia the ideal state of humanity.
To the Darwinian theorem of human adaptability, SF writers added an important corollary: rational choice. Unlike the other species, humans can understand the evolutionary process and their own adaptations to new conditions, and choose to behave in other ways than those for which they have been conditioned. Baley, for instance, must confront and conquer his neuroses in order, first, to solve Sarton's murder, second, Delmarre's murder, and third, the problem of Earthmen becoming spacemen, as well as the proper relationship between humans and machines, C/Fe.
In his memoirs Asimov traced his reluctance to proceed with the third volume of the
Robot Novels
trilogy to his intention to have a woman fall in love with a humaniform robot such as R. Daneel Olivaw, and he could see "no way in 1958 of being able to handle it, and as I wrote the eight chapters [not four, as he stated in
The Rest of the Robots
] I grew more and more frightened of the necessity of describing the situation." Eventually
The Robots of Dawn
and
Robots and Empire
would be published in 1983 and 1985, creating not a trilogy but a tetralogy, and
The Robots of Dawn
made the bestseller lists, like
Foundation's Edge,
but they will be discussed in Chapter 8.
6
The Other Novels
Aside from the 1980s best-sellers and the posthumous
Forward the Foundation,
Asimov's other science-fiction novels do not fall into any series but do fit into the same future history. With the exception of
The Gods Themselves
and the novelization of the screenplay for
Fantastic Voyage,
they began at the start of the fifties and were all published before that decade was over.
Asimov became a science-fiction writer by design, but he became a novelist by accident. It was one of those accidents that seemed like ill fortune at the time but turned out to be great good luck in the long run. At least that is how Asimov perceived it in his autobiography, where as may be natural in a work intended to make sense out of the miscellaneous occurrences of a life that started in obscurity and ended in national treasurehood everything happened for the best.
No doubt Asimov eventually would have written novels. The time was right, and Asimov himself had worked up to longer lengths. "The Mule," completed May 5, 1945, was fifty thousand words long, just ten thousand short of the standard genre novel. But had it not been for a series of accidents, he might not have begun so soon nor succeeded so far beyond his expectations.
Asimov's novels began with a request from Sam Merwin, Jr., editor of
Thrilling Wonder Stories
and
Startling Stories.
Merwin, or possibly his superior at the magazine publishing house, Leo Margulies, had decided that the magazines should begin to publish
Astounding
-type stories. By this time Asimov was recognized as perhaps not the greatest but the most typical
Astounding
author, and when he dropped in at the magazine office on May 26, 1947, Merwin suggested that Asimov write a lead novel for
Startling Stories.
Lead novels for science-fiction adventure magazines such as
Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, Planet Stories,
and Merwin's two magazines ran about forty thousand words, and suitable stories of this length were
difficult to find. Some novels could be cut to fit, but not many novels were being written except those intended for serialization. The time for the publishing of original science-fiction novels had not yet arrived. The fan presses were being created in fact Thomas P. Hadley of Boston had announced the publication of E. E. "Doc" Smith's
The Skylark of Space
in the August 1946 issue of
Astounding
but they were mostly interested in putting the magazine serials (primarily those of Doc Smith, Jack Williamson, and Robert A. Heinlein) into more enduring form. Mainstream publishers were publishing anthologies of short fiction, such as Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas's
Adventures in Time and Space
and Groff Conklin's
The Best of Science Fiction
and their annual successors, and were beginning to show interest in reprinting serials of authors with broader appeal, such as A. E. van Vogt at Simon & Schuster. Robert A. Heinlein was getting the science-fiction juvenile started with Scribners' 1947 publication of
Rocket Ship Galileo.
But, with all the wealth of the untouched science-fiction magazines waiting to be mined for anthologies and novels, no one was actively seeking new novels.
Lead novels usually were written by authors such as Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, and Edmond Hamilton, and by Richard Shaver, Don Wilcox, and Chester S. Geier for the
Amazing
and
Fantastic
magazines, as a way of making a quick $400 to $800. Asimov was not averse to a quick $800. He also wanted to try other markets. If something happened to Campbell or to
Astounding
he might find himself unable to sell to anybody else. (Almost two years later, on April 9, 1949, Asimov's worst fears seemed to be realized when he read in the newspaper that Street & Smith had suspended all its pulp magazines, only to discover a day or two later that this did not include
Astounding.
) On June 2, then, Asimov began work on a story dealing with old age. He called it "Grow Old with Me," misquoting the opening line of Robert Browning's panegyric to old age in "Rabbi Ben Ezra":
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made. . . .
Asimov showed twelve thousand words of the story to Merwin on July 1 and was encouraged to finish it. He began rewriting on August 3 and completed the forty-eight-thousand-word novella on September 22. The next day he took it to Merwin's office. As Merwin took the manuscript he told Asimov that Margulies had decided the attempt to
publish
Astounding
-type stories had been a failure. He now wanted blood-and-thunder
Amazing
-type stories. Asimov was taken aback but felt no need for concern since Merwin had asked for the novella and had approved part of it.
On October 15 Asimov called Merwin and was told that the story would need revision. He went to the office and asked to see Margulies. Merwin came out instead and described the extensive revisions necessary. To Asimov it meant starting all over again, ending not only with a poorer story but still without assurance that it would be accepted. In a rare moment of anger, Asimov said, "Go to hell!" and stalked from Merwin's office with his manuscript. Later he regretted the violence of his reaction, though not the action itself, particularly when Merwin kept apologizing every time he saw Asimov. "An editor is entirely within his rights to reject a story, even a story he has ordered," Asimov wrote in his autobiography. But his disappointment was compounded when Campbell rejected the novella as well.
Asimov stuck the manuscript in a drawer, more than half convinced himself that it was worthless. A few months later, however, Frederik Pohl, who was returning to the literary agent business, persuaded Asimov to let him show the novella to Martin Greenberg, a young man who was going into the publishing of science-fiction books under the name of Gnome Press. There wouldn't be much money in it for Asimov, but few science-fiction novels were being published and not only would the prestige be great but the publication might lead to more important things. At the end of January Pohl reported that Greenberg wanted the manuscript, but by the end of that year nothing had happened with it or seemed likely to happen.
On February 25, 1949, Pohl suggested to Asimov that he try "Grow Old with Me" on Doubleday. By this time Asimov was thoroughly discouraged with it. "No, Fred, it stinks," he said. "Who cares about your opinion?" Pohl replied, and once more the manuscript went out. By the end of March Doubleday had agreed to take an option on the book if Asimov rewrote it and lengthened it to seventy thousand words. The option brought him $150 (of which Pohl, as his agent, kept $15) and the promise of $350 more, as an advance against standard royalties, if Doubleday liked the revisions and agreed to publish the novel.
Asimov completed his revisions on May 20, taking six and a half weeks. He was asked to provide a new title and came up with
Pebble in the Sky,
taken from a statement by one of his characters, a scientist named Shekt, that "Earth is but a pebble in the sky." Pohl picked up the manuscript and delivered it to Doubleday on May 22. A week later
Walter Bradbury, the editor in charge of the new science-fiction line at Doubleday, called and told Asimov's wife that Doubleday was accepting the novel and had scheduled it for the following January.

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