Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition) (80 page)

BOOK: Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition)

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A.:
Well, I'll re-read the story and then I'll write you on that. [He never did, and the ambiguity remains. J.G.]

Gunn:
In his book, Joseph Patrouch wrote that you have not written about what you are most concerned about that is pollution, overpopulation and so forth in your fiction but it seems to me that you show people living with these problems and solving them in your fiction. In
The Caves of Steel
there is the problem of overpopulation, but it's something the people are living with people are adaptable. But it seems to me that in talks and in your science articles you exhibit a kind of an alarm about our public position, about our situation what I call your public despair as contrasted to your fictional optimism.

A.:
Yes, that's because in my public statements I have to deal with the world as it is which is a world in which irrationality is predominant; whereas in my fiction I create a world, and in my world, my created worlds, things are rational. Even the villains, the supposed villains are villanous for rational reasons.

Gunn:
The way I put it is this: that in your science writing you try to persuade by showing the terrible consequences of what is likely to happen, and in your fiction you try to persuade by showing how people can solve their problems.

A.:
OK.

Gunn:
Finally, I think we're getting close to the end. At least I sense in your autobiographical writings of all kinds a great deal of what I might call a high level of loyalty to what you were; to the boy you were and to what science fiction was when you discovered it. That is unlike what has happened to some other writers, who have gone on and put away what they once were. Like Harlan Ellison, for instance, who may say, well, that's all past, it's not me any longer, I now am off doing my own thing. A perfectly reasonable attitude, but the opposite is what you display. I think a lot of people feel that this kind of loyalty makes you different and maybe admirable. But I wonder whether you ever felt that science fiction is not as important as it was.

A.:
It's not as important to me, personally. I write comparatively little science fiction. But, Jim, this is a matter of deliberateness on my part. In many respects I frequently say I follow the line of least resistance. I don't deliberately try to write well, I just write as it comes, and if it happens to be good, thank goodness, that sort of stuff. But as far as this business of not abandoning my origins, that's deliberate. I made up my mind when I was quite young and I said it in print in places that no
matter whatever happened to me, no matter where I went, I would never deny my origins as a science-fiction writer and I would never break my connection to science fiction and I never have. I attend every convention that I can reach. Unfortunately, I don't travel much, so I can't reach many of them, but I attend every one. I never accept any money, not even for car fare, not even when it is out of town. I'll talk at every one, as I did today, and I never try to deny that I'm a science fiction writer, even when I am writing very little science fiction. I identify myself as a science fiction writer, and so on. Now, why do I do this? In the first place, because I consider loyalty one of the prime virtues. When we started my magazine I wouldn't give up my
F&SF
articles, for instance, and I forced Joel Davis to accept that as a condition. And I probably bore everybody with my endless repetition of how much I owe to John Campbell, because I would rather bore them than be disloyal in my own mind. It is the easiest thing in the world to forget the ladder you climb or to be embarrassed at the thought that there was a time when somebody had to help you. And the tendency is to minimize this, minimize that, and I suppose I'm normal enough and human enough to do the same thing if it were left to itself, but this is a matter of having once made a vow and I stick to it. It's inconvenient to always have to tell people that Campbell made up the three laws of robotics, and the more important the three laws become the more I want to be the originator and take the credit, but I can't. Now, as to why this is so, I never really thought about it. I guess I like to think about it only as a matter of virtue. I don't consider myself a particularly virtuous person, but I like to think I have some virtues, of which loyalty is one. But possibly it is because I am not a very good Jew. I don't attend any Jewish religious functions, I don't follow any of the Jewish rituals, or its dietary laws, or anything about it, and yet never under any circumstances do I leave any doubt at all that I'm Jewish. I really dislike Judaism. I'm against it it's a form of particularly pernicious nationalism in my opinion. I don't want humanity divided up into these little groups that are firmly convinced each one that it is better than the others, and Judaism is the prototype of the "I'm better than you" group we were the ones who invented this business of the only God. It's not just that we have our God and you have your God it's that we have the only God and you've got something less, you know? And I feel a deep and abiding historic guilt about that. And every once in a while when I'm not careful I think that the reason Jews have been persecuted as much as they have has been to punish them for having invented this pernicious doctrine. And so, I suppose, because I feel that in some ways I have
been a traitor to Judaism, which I try to make up for by making sure that everybody knows I'm a Jew, so while I'm deprived of the benefits of being part of a group, you know, I make sure that I don't lose any of the disadvantages, because no one should think that I am denying my Judaism in order to gain certain advantages. But in order to make up for that, I made up my mind that I'm not going to be disloyal in any other way, and there it is, I suppose. I'm not saying I believe this, but this is the sort of thing that people do work up for reasons, and, after all, I'm imaginative enough to think up such reasons, too. So if you want one, there's one handed to you free of charge, but I don't guarantee it's correct.

Gunn:
If I were seeking an explanation I don't want to embarrass you by giving you descriptions of yourself as I've been trying to do, there seems to me to be a kind of common element among science fiction readers and science fiction writers that is a kind of disturbed puberty, or a disturbed adolescence, one which finds itself uneasy socially and there is a kind of displaced sexual activity which goes into reading and a desire to write and the whole thing, which I think one finds among many science fiction writers, myself among them, a kind of emphasis more on reason and intellectual abilities, perhaps to make up for the fact that most science fiction writers have problems fitting in. I think Damon Knight said that all science-fiction writers and fans start out as toads. But that is a preface. I wonder whether you could accept that you see yourself as a person who is trying to live a life of reason in an emotional world. A world where reason is not that much valued and certain conflicts arise out of this.

A.:
Well, first I'll have to admit, you can see for yourself in my autobiography, that I had a great deal of difficulty adjusting to the world when I was young, and to a large extent the world was an enemy world, and Robert Silverberg, who read my autobiography, has written me saying he can't wait for the second volume and he wants the galleys. Because he says there is so much in my life that parallels his own, that it gives him a feeling of déjà vu to read it. And I suspect that what you have said and what Knight has said is not only true of science-fiction writers, and to a lesser extent of science-fiction readers, but obviously true. It is science fiction and its very nature is intended to appeal a) to people who value reason and b) to people who form a small minority in a world which doesn't value reason. And science fiction is that kind of an escape. Now, I am trying to lead a world of reason in an emotional world. For instance, I have just recently
Reader's Digest
asked me to see a person who claims he has a way of breaking up water into hydrogen
and oxygen and then burning it and solving the energy problems of the world and I listened and I said it's impossible it's a perpetual-motion machine, it goes against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and he told me it's not. And I said there is no reason to argue about it. If you will make it work I will cheerfully admit I'm wrong. And to my way of thinking, this is my feeling. Here is a person who I can clearly see is in a sense irrational, or at least he supports something which cannot be supported by rationality. I oppose that with what I consider a rational statement. He denies it, why argue? Since it is irrational, it's not going to work. When it does work, we'll talk about it. In a way, it's a way of retreating from something that is too painful to immerse yourself in fully. I once received a postcard from someone who said what would you do this was after an argument about Velikovsky what would you do if some scientific discovery tomorrow proved that Velikovsky was correct? I replied, saying in that case I would cheerfully accept Velikovskyism and admit I had been wrong. I would also go skating in hell, which by that time will have frozen over.

Gunn:
You mention in many places that you have a remarkable memory. From one who does not have a very good memory do you have any clues as to how your memory works? Not how you got it, but was it just something that you know how it operates or is it something that is sheer magic and simply comes up with what you want to know?

A.:
It has to be sheer magic. Talking to somebody about when people realized that sound was a wave phenomenon, I said that I thought it couldn't be before somebody had worked up a system in which they would spread sand over a flat surface, a flat, level surface, and then draw a bow, a fiddle bow along one end of it and set it to vibrating, so that the sand would be thrown off the parts that vibrated and you get interesting little symmetrical patterns and that made it clear, at least as I remember, that sound was a wave phenomenon. Now what bothered me at the time is that I couldn't remember, and invariably I go into a kind of panic when that happens.

This is where the battery ran out and the rest is too faint for transcription. But I recall that Asimov went on to say that his memory almost always supplies the information he needs, so that when it doesn't he feels the kind of panic he expressed here. And he mentioned an occasion when he was addressing a group of Gilbert and Sullivan enthusiasts and for a moment couldn't recall a line of one of the lyrics and panicked, and then the line came to him and he went on. He didn't think anyone else noticed, but he thought this is what most people must feel most of the time.

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