| Isaac Asimov |
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Asimov in 1965
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| Born | Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
Between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920[1]
Petrovichi, Russian SFSR |
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| Died | April 6, 1992(1992-04-06) (aged 72)
New York City, United States |
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| Occupation | writer, professor of biochemistry |
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| Nationality | Russian (early years), American |
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| Ethnicity | Russian Jewish |
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| Education | Columbia University, PhD. Biochemistry, 1948 |
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| Period | 1939–1992 |
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| Genres | Science fiction (hard SF, social SF), mystery |
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| Subjects | Popular science, science textbooks, essays, literary criticism |
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| Literary movement | Golden Age of Science Fiction |
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| Notable work(s) | The Foundation Series
The Robot series
Nightfall
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science
I, Robot
The Bicentennial Man
The Gods Themselves |
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| Spouse(s) | Gertrude Blugerman (1942–1973; divorced; 2 children)
Janet Opal Jeppson (1973–1992; his death) |
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| Signature |  |
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Isaac Asimov (
/ /;
[2] born
Isaak Yudovich Ozimov;
circa January 2, 1920
[1] – April 6, 1992) was an American author and professor of
biochemistry at
Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his
popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and
postcards.
[3] His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the
Dewey Decimal Classification.
[4]
Asimov is widely considered a master of
hard science fiction and, along with
Robert A. Heinlein and
Arthur C. Clarke, he was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers during his lifetime.
[5] Asimov's most famous work is the
Foundation Series;
[6] his other major series are the
Galactic Empire series and the
Robot series. The
Galactic Empire novels are explicitly set in earlier history of the same fictional universe as the
Foundation series. Later, beginning with
Foundation's Edge, he linked this distant future to the Robot and Spacer stories, creating a unified "
future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by
Cordwainer Smith and
Poul Anderson.
[7] He wrote hundreds of short stories, including the
social science fiction "
Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the
Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time. Asimov wrote the
Lucky Starr series of
juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.
[8]
Asimov also wrote
mysteries and
fantasy, as well as much nonfiction. Most of his popular science books explain scientific concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. He often provides nationalities, birth dates, and death dates for the scientists he mentions, as well as
etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Examples include
Guide to Science, the three-volume set
Understanding Physics, and
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery, as well as works on
astronomy,
mathematics, the
Bible,
William Shakespeare's writing, and
chemistry.
Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of
Mensa International, albeit reluctantly;
[9] he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
[10] He took more joy in being president of the
American Humanist Association.
[11] The
asteroid 5020 Asimov, a
crater on the planet
Mars,
[12] a
Brooklyn, New York elementary school, and a
literary award are named in his honor.
Writings
Rowena Morrill's portrait of Asimov enthroned with symbols of his life's work
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of
The Naked Sun. He began publishing nonfiction in 1952, co-authoring a college-level textbook called
Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite
Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly
popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of
Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories.
[48]
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "
Three Laws of Robotics" and the
Foundation series (see
Yours, Isaac Asimov, p. 329). Furthermore, the
Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing the words '
positronic' (an entirely fictional technology), '
psychohistory' (which is also used for a
different study on historical motivations) and '
robotics' into the English language. Asimov coined the term 'robotics' without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as
mechanics and
hydraulics, but for
robots. Unlike his word 'psychohistory', the word 'robotics' continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition.
Star Trek: The Next Generation featured
androids with "
positronic brains", giving Asimov credit for conceiving this fictional technology.
Science fiction
Asimov first began reading the science fiction
pulp magazines sold in his family's confectionery store in 1929. In the mid-1930s he came into contact with
science fiction fandom, particularly the circle that became the
Futurians. He began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew", in 1937; finished it on June 19, 1938, inspired by a visit to the offices of
Astounding Science Fiction; and personally submitted it to
Astounding editor
John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell rejected "Cosmic Corkscrew", but encouraged Asimov to keep trying, and Asimov did. In October, he sold the third story he finished, "
Marooned Off Vesta", to
Amazing Stories, then a monthly edited by
Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue.
[49] Two more of his stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May
Amazing and "Trends" in the July
Astounding.
[49] For 1940,
ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in
Astounding.
[49]
In September 1941,
Astounding published the 32nd story Asimov wrote, "
Nightfall", which has been described as one of "the most famous science-fiction stories of all time".
[50] In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written.
[45] In his short story collection
Nightfall and Other Stories, he wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'."
"Nightfall" is an archetypal example of
social science fiction, a term coined by Asimov to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including Asimov and
Heinlein, away from
gadgets and
space opera and toward speculation about the
human condition.
By 1941, Asimov had begun selling regularly to
Astounding, which was then the field's leading magazine. From 1943 to 1949, all of his published science fiction appeared in
Astounding.
In 1942, he published the first of his
Foundation stories—later collected in the
Foundation trilogy:
Foundation (1951),
Foundation and Empire (1952), and
Second Foundation (1953)—which recount the collapse and rebirth of a vast
interstellar empire in a universe of the future. Taken together, they are his most famous work of science fiction, along with the
Robot series. Many years later, due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another,
[29] he continued the series with
Foundation's Edge (1982) and
Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with
Prelude to Foundation (1988) and
Forward the Foundation (1992). The series features his fictional science of
psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted.
His
positronic robot stories—many of which were collected in
I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of
ethics for robots (see
Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in one of his biographical pieces that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977
Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of
I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile
science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie
I, Robot, starring
Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by
Jeff Vintar titled
Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired.
[51] (Ironically, the title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for
a story by
Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "
The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel
The Positronic Man by Asimov and
Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie
Bicentennial Man, starring
Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his
Foundation and
Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as
Roger MacBride Allen,
Greg Bear,
Gregory Benford, and
David Brin. These appear to have been done with the blessing, and often at the request of, Asimov's widow,
Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a
spoof chemistry article, "
The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral
dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at
Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. During his oral examination shortly thereafter, Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he received. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". The hysterically laughing Asimov was led out of the room then.
After a five-minute or so wait, he was summoned back into the Examination Room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
[52]
In 1949, the book publisher
Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished
novelette "Grow Old Along With Me" (40,000 words) for publication, but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of
Pebble in the Sky. The Doubleday company went on to publish five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile
Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with
The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw the
Gnome Press company publishing one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as
I, Robot and his
Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the
Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as
The Rest of the Robots.
When new science fiction magazines, notably
Galaxy magazine and
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, appeared in the 1950s, Asimov began publishing short stories in them as well. He would later refer to the 1950s as his "golden decade". A number of these stories are included in his
Best of anthology, including "
The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of
entropy. It was his personal favorite and considered by many to be equal to "
Nightfall". Asimov wrote of it in 1973:
Why is it my favorite? For one thing I got the idea all at once and didn't have to fiddle with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing endears any story to any writer.
Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes to ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they 'think' I may have written, and tell them where to find it. They don't remember the title but when they describe the story it is invariably "The Last Question". This has reached the point where I recently received a long-distance phone call from a desperate man who began, 'Dr. Asimov, there's a story I think you wrote, whose title I can't remember—' at which point I interrupted to tell him it was "The Last Question" and when I described the plot it proved to be indeed the story he was after. I left him convinced I could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles.
In December 1974, former
Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group
Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue, and probably as a consequence, McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now
Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived
Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion
Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's and
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine's "anthologies").
Popular science
During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov shifted gears somewhat, and substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's
The Naked Sun and 1982's
Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). At the same time, he greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of
Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap", which Asimov's publishers were eager to fill with as much material as he could write.
Meanwhile, the monthly
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction invited him to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine
Venture Science Fiction Magazine, ostensibly dedicated to
popular science, but with Asimov having complete editorial freedom. The first of the
F&SF columns appeared in November 1958, and they followed uninterrupted thereafter, with 399 entries, until Asimov's terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by his principal publisher,
Doubleday, helped make Asimov's reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science, and were referred to by him as his only pop-science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects at hand on the part of his readers. The popularity of his first wide-ranging reference work,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science, which was nominated for a
National Book Award, also allowed him to give up most of his academic responsibilities and become essentially a full-time
freelance writer.
Asimov wrote several essays on the social contentions of his time, including "Thinking About Thinking" and "Science: Knock Plastic" (1967).
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings once prompted
Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience—"Uneasy".
[53] In the introduction to his story collection
Slow Learner, Thomas Pynchon admitted that he relied upon Asimov's science popularizations (and the
Oxford English Dictionary) to provide his knowledge of
entropy.
Asimov also contributed science article entries to several encyclopaedias, including Groliers, The Encyclopaedia Americana, The Encyclopædia Britannica, and the World Book Encyclopaedia Yearbook.
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and
Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of
Park Avenue", put together as they shared a cab ride in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself).
[54] Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book
Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "
robotics" in his 1941 story "
Liar!",
[55] though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in
Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"), though while acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one-third of the way down the first column of page 100,
Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "
Runaround".
[56][57]
Asimov also coined the term "
spome" in a paper entitled, "There's No Place Like Spome" in
Atmosphere in Space Cabins and Closed Environments,
[58] originally presented as a paper to the American Chemical Society on September 13, 1965. It refers to any system closed with respect to matter and open with respect to energy capable of sustaining human life indefinitely.
Asimov coined the term "
psychohistory" in his
Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines
history,
sociology, and
mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the
Galactic Empire. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 novel
Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "
psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was also greatly interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, most notably
The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965),
The Roman Republic (1966),
The Roman Empire (1967),
The Egyptians (1967) and
The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968).
He published
Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the
Old Testament in 1967 and the
New Testament in 1969— and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981.
Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970),
Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and
The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He only published two full-length mystery novels, but wrote 66 stories about the
Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, whom he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends.
[59]
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of
limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with
Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975.
Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of
puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by
John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of
Sherlockian limericks (and embarrassed one fan by autographing her copy with an impromptu limerick that rhymed "Nancy" with "romancy"). Asimov featured
Yiddish humor in
Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel.
Asimov's
Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on
humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as
The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and
The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A
'" (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972).
Asimov published two volumes of autobiography:
In Memory Yet Green (1979) and
In Joy Still Felt (1980). A third autobiography,
I. Asimov: A Memoir, was published in April 1994. The epilogue was written by his widow
Janet Asimov a decade after his death.
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet, is a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing,
Opus 100 (1969),
Opus 200 (1979), and
Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote
How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and
Star Trek creator
Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during
Star Trek's initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on
Star Trek's scientific accuracy for
TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to
TV Guide claiming despite its inaccuracies, that
Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging
science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of
Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for
calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
[60]
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half dozen lifetime awards.
[61] He also received 14
honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
[citation needed]
- 1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award, for Building Blocks of the Universe
- 1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
- 1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
- 1963 – special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction" for essays published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
- 1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[62]
- 1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story[45]
- 1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
- 1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation series
- 1967 – Westinghouse Science Writing Award
- 1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves[63]
- 1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves[64]
- 1973 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for The Gods Themselves[64]
- 1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
- 1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
- 1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
- 1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge[65]
- 1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge[65]
- 1986 – The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented 1987).[66]
- 1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for Gold
- 1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
- 1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon to "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction[61]
- 1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells and following editors Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell.[67]
- 2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov,[12] was named in his honor
- 2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
- "Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as `National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April, 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved..."[68]
Writing style
Characteristics
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar
James Gunn, professor
emeritus of
English at the
University of Kansas wrote of
I, Robot:
[69]
Except for two stories—"Liar!" and "Evidence"—they are not stories in which character plays a significant part. Virtually all plot develops in conversation with little if any action. Nor is there a great deal of local color or description of any kind. The dialogue is, at best, functional and the style is, at best, transparent ... The robot stories and, as a matter of fact, almost all Asimov fiction—play themselves on a relatively bare stage.
Gunn observes places where Asimov's style rises to the demands of the situation; he cites the climax of "Liar!" as an example. Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines:
Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence",
Arkady Darell in
Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in
The Caves of Steel, and
Hari Seldon in the
Foundation prequels. Asimov addresses this criticism at the beginning of his book
Nemesis:
[70]
I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing—to be 'clear'. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics—Well, they can do whatever they wish.
Other than books by Gunn and Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's
Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
His words do not easily lend themselves to traditional literary criticism because he has the habit of centering his fiction on plot and clearly stating to his reader, in rather direct terms, what is happening in his stories and why it is happening. In fact, most of the dialogue in an Asimov story, and particularly in the Foundation trilogy, is devoted to such exposition. Stories that clearly state what they mean in unambiguous language are the most difficult for a scholar to deal with because there is little to be interpreted.
In fairness, Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both take the stand that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book goes into considerable depth commenting upon each of Asimov's novels published to that date. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but he does call some passages in
The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of
Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited
Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated
narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in non
chronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the
nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of
The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material.
[71] (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "
Reason", one of the early
Robot stories. See
In Memory Yet Green for details of that time period.) Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of
The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-
kyrt[72] Asimov fan" could enjoy it. Asimov's tendency to contort his timelines is perhaps most apparent in his later novel
Nemesis, in which one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Views
Religion
Isaac Asimov was an
atheist, a
humanist, and a
rationalist.
[74] He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against
superstitious and
pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed
Orthodox Jewish traditions, though not as stringently as they had in
Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the
Torah represented
Hebrew mythology in the same way that the
Iliad recorded
Greek mythology. As his books
Treasury of Humor and
Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God,
Satan, the
Garden of Eden,
Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar"
[75] versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an
atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "
humanist" and considered that term more practical. He did, however, continue to identify himself as a nonobservant Jew
[76] as stated in his introduction to
Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction,
Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the
bar mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied, "I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."
[77]
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote, "If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul."
[78] The same memoir states his belief that
Hell is "the drooling dream of a
sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
[79]
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the
Democratic Party during the
New Deal, and thereafter remained a political
liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the
Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed
George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography,
In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure
Abbie Hoffman; Asimov's impression was that the
1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
He vehemently opposed
Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He followed the unfolding events of Watergate day-to-day, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign.
He was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by
his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
[80]
Though Jewish by birth, Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards
Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though remaining careful to insist he is by no means a
Zionist."
[81] However, in his third autobiography, he clarifies his position by stating his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he is opposed to the concept of nation states in general, and supports the notion of a single humanity. He especially worries about the safety of Israel given that it has been created among hostile neighbours, and that Jews have merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
[82]
Social issues
Asimov considered himself a feminist even before
Women's Liberation became a widespread movement; he joked that he wished women to be free "because I hate it when they charge".
[83] More seriously, he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that
homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all
consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction.
[84]
He issued many appeals for
population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from
Thomas Malthus through
Paul R. Ehrlich.
[85]
In a 1988 interview by
Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed
computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested.
[86] He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the
one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace.
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of
nuclear power even after the
Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in
Yours, Isaac Asimov,
[84] he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on
Love Canal or near "a
Union Carbide plant producing
methyl isocyanate" (referring to the
Bhopal disaster).
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the
middle-class flight to the suburbs. His last nonfiction book,
Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author
Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as
overpopulation,
oil dependence,
war,
global warming and the destruction of the
ozone layer.
[In response to this question by Bill Moyers: What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?] "It's going to destroy it all... if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, aren't you through yet, and so on. And in the same way,
democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears.
[87]
