Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

by Isaac Asimov

  Then, too, think of the boost to my ego! (Yes, I know! You think that’s the last thing it needs.) People who till now have known I was a writer and accepted it with noticeable lack of excitement even over the number of books I have committed, now stop me in order to congratulate me, and do so with pronounced respect. Personally, I don’t think that being on the best-seller lists makes a book any the higher in quality and, all too often, it might indicate the reverse, but I must admit I enjoy the congratulations and all that goes with it.

  Q. Are there any disadvantages to all this great stuff: Isaac?

  A. Oddly enough, there are. For one thing, my esteemed publishers, Doubleday and Company, would like me to travel allover the United States pushing the book. (It is, at the moment, their only fiction best-seller and they are as eager as I am to have it stay on the lists forever.) They are putting considerable money into advertising and promotion and it would only be fair that I do my bit as well. However, I don’t like to travel, and so I have to refuse their suggestions that I go to Chicago, for instance. And it makes me feel guilty, and a traitor both to my publisher and my book. I have made a trip to Philadelphia, though.

  There is also a higher than normal demand for interviews through visits or on the telephone. This doesn’t demand traveling on my part and I try to oblige (telling myself it’s good publicity for the book), but it does cut into my writing time, and I can’t allow too much of that.

  Then, too, there’s an extraordinary demand for free copies. This is a common disease among writers’ friends and relations, who feel that there is no purpose in knowing a writer if you have to help support him. My dear wife (J. O. Jeppson), who is a shrewd questioner, has discovered the astonishing fact that some people think writers get unlimited numbers of free copies to give out. They don’t! Except for a certain very small number, they have to buy copies just as anyone else does. (Even if they did have unlimited numbers of free copies, giving them rather than selling them would ruin a writer, just as giving meat rather than selling it would ruin a butcher.)

  What I have done is to resist firmly any temptation to hand out Foundation’s Edge. I have told everyone they must buy copies at a bookstore. If they insist, I will give them copies of other books, but those sales of Foundation’s Edge must be registered. Every little bit helps.

  Q. Do you see any importance in this situation aside from personal profit and gratification?

  A. I do, indeed. Soon after Foundation’s Edge was published, Arthur C. Clarke’s new novel, 2010: Odyssey Two was published, and it hit the best-seller lists, too. At the moment of writing it is in fifth place on The New York Times list. Earlier this year, Robert A. Heinlein made the list with Friday and Frank Herbert did so with White Plague.

  I think this is the first year in which four different science fiction writers made the lists with straight science fiction books. I also think that in the case of Clarke and myself, this is the first time straight science fiction has landed so high on the lists.

  This is gratifying to me as a long time science fiction fan. It indicates to me that, finally, science fiction is coming to be of interest to the general public and not simply to those few who inhabit the SF “ghetto.”

  In fact, I wish to point this out to those SF writers who are bitter and resentful because they feel that their books are shoved into the background and disregarded merely because they have the SF label on them. Neither Foundation’s Edge nor 2010: Odyssey Two makes any effort to hide the fact that it is science fiction. The publishers’ promotion in each case utterly fails to obscure that fact. In the case of Foundation’s Edge, The New York Times carefully describes it as “science fiction “ each week in its best-seller listing.

  And yet it continues to sell.

  To be sure, there is a trace of the “ghetto” just the same. There is one thing that Arthur and I have in common, aside from bestselling books. As of the moment of writing, neither Foundation’s Edge nor 2010: Odyssey Two has been reviewed in The New York Times. I presume the paper hesitates to bestow that accolade on mere science fiction. Oh, well!

  Q. And what are your present projects, Isaac?

  A. Well, Doubleday has informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I am condemned to write one novel after another for life, and that I am not permitted to consider dying.

  So I am working on another novel. This one is to be the third novel of the robot series. Both Lije BaIey and R. Daneel will reappear, and will complete the trilogy that began with The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. The third novel is called World of the Dawn.

  After that, I am afraid that Doubleday expects me to do a fifth Foundation novel; and, apparently, so do the readers. For three decades they badgered me for a sequel to the Foundation trilogy and when I gave that to them, the ungrateful dogs responded by badgering me for a sequel to the sequel.

  I’d complain, except that I love it.

  Note:

  On December 19,1982, The New York Times finally reviewed Foundation’s Edge, and very favorably too. On that day, the book had slipped to sixth place in the best-seller list (still not bad) but Clarke had climbed to second place.

  Pseudonyms

  It was quite fashionable, in earlier times, to refrain from putting one’s name to things one had written. The writer could leave himself unnamed (“anonymous”-from Greek words meaning “no name”), or else he could use a false name (“pseudonym”-from Greek words meaning “false name”). So common was the practice that a pseudonym is often referred to as a “pen-name,” or, to give it greater elegance by placing it in French, a “nom de plume.”

  There were a variety of reasons for this. In most places in the world and at most times, it was all too easy to write something that would get you in trouble. The corruption, venality, and cruelty of those in power cried out for exposure, and those in power had the strongest objections to being exposed. For that reason, writers had to expect all sorts of governmental correction if caught-anywhere from a fine to death by torture.

  The best-known example of this type of pseudonym was Voltaire, the eighteenth century French satirist, whose real name was Francois-Marie Arouet.

  A second major reason was that any nonscholarly writing was looked upon as rather frivolous, and a decent person guilty of concocting such material might well be looked upon askance by society, and considered as having lost caste. A pseudonym, therefore, preserved respectability. This was especially true of women who were widely considered subhuman in mentality (by men) and who would have shocked the world by a too-open demonstration of the possession of brains. Mary Ann Evans, therefore, wrote under the name of George Eliot, and Charlotte Bronte at first wrote under the name of Currer Bell.

  One would think that neither reason would hold for the world of modern American science fiction.

  Why should anyone fear punishment for writing science fiction in our free land, or why should anyone fear the loss of respectability if convicted of the deed. And yet

  It is conceivable, particularly in the early days of magazine science fiction, that people in the more sensitive professions, such as teaching, would not have cared to have it known that they wrote “pseudoscientific trash “ and so would protect themselves from lack of promotion, or outright dismissal, by the use of a pseudonym. I don’t know of such cases definitely, but I suspect some.

  It is even more likely that in the bad old days before the women’s movement became strong, women who wrote science fiction concealed their sex from the readers (and even, sometimes, from the editors). Science fiction was thought to be a very masculine pursuit at the time and I know two editors (no names, please, even though both are now dead) who insisted on believing that women could not write good science fiction. Pseudonyms were therefore necessary if they were to sell anything at all.

  Sometimes, women did not have to use pseudonyms. Their first names might be epicene, and that would be protection enough. Thus, Leslie F. Stone and Leigh Brackett were women but, as far as one could tell from their names, they m
ight be as masculine as Leslie Fiedler and Leigh Hunt. Editors and readers at first believed they were.

  Or women might simply convert names to initials. Could you tell that A. R. Long owned up to the name of Amelia, or that C. L. Moore was Catherine to her friends?

  There were other reasons for pseudonyms in science fiction. In the early days of the magazine many of the successful writers could only make a living by writing a great deal just as fast as they could, for a variety of pulp markets. They might use different names for different markets, creating separate personalities, so to speak, that wouldn’t compete with each other. Thus Will Jenkins wrote for the slicks under his own name, but adopted the pseudonym Murray Leinster when he wrote science fiction.

  Sometimes, even within the single field of science fiction, particular writers wrote too many stories. They were so good that editors would cheerfully buy, let us say, eighteen stories from them in a particular year in which they only published twelve issues of their magazines. This meant (if you work out the arithmetic carefully) that it would be necessary to run more than one story by them in a single issue now and then, and editors generally have a prejudice against that. Readers would feel they were cheated of variety, or suspect that editors were showing undue favoritism, or who knows what. Therefore some of the stories would be put under a pseudonym.

  The pseudonyms might be transparent enough. For instance, Robert A. Heinlein at the height of his magazine popularity wrote half his stories under the name of Anson MacDonald, but Bob’s middle initial A. stood for Anson, and MacDonald was the maiden name of his then-wife. Similarly, L. Ron Hubbard wrote under the name of Rene Lafayette, but the initial L. in Hubbard’s name was Lafayette, and Rene was a not-too-distant version of Ron. Still, as long as the readers were led to believe that not too many stories of one author were included in the inventory, all was well.

  Sometimes, an author is so identified with a particular type of story, that when he writes another type of story, he doesn’t want to confuse the reader by false associations-so he adopts a new name. Thus, John w. Campbell was a writer of super-science stories of cosmic scope, and one day he wrote a story called “Twilight” which was altogether different. He put it under the name of Don A. Stuart (his then- wife’s maiden name was Dona Stuart, you see) and rapidly made that name even more popular than his own.

  Sometimes, an author simply wants to separate his writing activities from his nonwriting activities, if they are of equal importance to him. Thus, a talented teacher at Milton Academy, who is named Harry C. Stubbs, writes under the name of Hal Clement. He’s not hiding. Hal is short for Harry, as all Shakespearian devotees know, and the C. in his full name stands for Clement.

  Again, my dear wife has practiced medicine for over thirty years as Janet Jeppson, M.D. As a writer she prefers J. O. Jeppson. The earnings fall into two different slots as far as the I.R.S. is concerned and that makes it convenient for her bookkeeping.

  In my own case, I have eschewed pseudonyms almost entirely; I am far too fond of my own name, and far too proud of my writing to want to sail under false colors for an y reason. And yet, in one or two cases…

  Thus in 1951, I was persuaded to write a juvenile science fiction novel in the hope that it would be sold as the beginning of a long-lived television series. (Those were early days, and no one understood how television was going to work.) I objected, very correctly I think, that TV might ruin the stuff and make me ashamed of having my name associated with it. My editor said, “Then use a pseudonym.”

  I did, plucking Paul French out of the air for the purpose, and eventually wrote six novels under that name. (Some people, with little knowledge of science fiction, assumed from this that all my SF was written under Paul French, a suggestion that simply horrified me.)

  As soon as it was clear that TV was not interested in my juveniles, I dropped all pretense, and made use of the Three Laws of Robotics, for instance, which was a dead giveaway. Eventually, when it was time for new printings, I had my own name put upon it.

  Again, in 1942, I wrote a short story for an editor who wanted it done under a pseudonym in order to give the impression that it was bya brand-new author. (The reason is complicated and I won’t bore you with it. You’ll find it in my autobiography.) I wrote it, reluctantly, under the name George E. Dale, but eventually included it in my book The Early Asimov as a story of my own.

  Also, in 1942, I sold a story to the magazine Super Science stories which printed it under the pseudonym H. B. Ogden, for reasons I no longer remember. (Even my memory has its limits.) So little did I care for the story, and so unhappy was lover the nonuse of my name that I totally forgot about it, until nearly forty years later when I was going over my diary carefully in order to prepare my autobiography.

  I was shocked to find there was a story of mine that I had forgotten and didn’t own in printed form. Fortunately, with the help of Forrest 1. Ackerman I got the issue and reprinted the story in the first volume of my autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, acknowledging it as my own. In 1971, I was persuaded to write a book entitled The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, in which I gently satirized sexual how-to books such as The Sensuous Woman. Since the latter book was written by a writer identified only as “1,” my editor felt the joke should be carried on by having my book written by “Dr. A.” Even before publication day, however, it was announced that I was the author and my identity was never a secret.

  At the present moment, then, absolutely none of my writing appears under anything but my own name.

  Which brings up one puzzle. The early pulps occasionally made use of “house names.” A particular magazine would use a pseudonym that was never used except in that magazine, but that pseudonym might be used by any number of different writers. I have never really understood why this was done and if any reader knows I would appreciate being told.

  Dialog

  Most stories deal with people and one of the surefire activities of people is that of talking and of making conversation. It follows that in most stories there is dialog. Sometimes stories are largely dialog; my own stories almost always are. For that reason, when I think of the art of writing (which isn’t often, I must admit) I tend to think of dialog.

  In the romantic period of literature in the first part of the nineteenth century, the style of dialog tended to be elaborate and adorned. Authors used their full vocabulary and had their characters speak ornately.

  I remember when I was very young and first read Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby. How I loved the conversation. The funny passages were very funny to me, though I had trouble with John Browdie’s thick Yorshire accent (something his beloved Matilda, brought up under similar conditions, lacked, for some reason). What I loved even more though was the ornamentation-the way everyone “spoke like a book.”

  Thus, consider the scene in which Nicholas Nickleby confronts his villainous Uncle Ralph. Nicholas’s virtuous and beautiful sister, Kate, who has been listening to Ralph’s false version of events, which make out Nicholas to have been doing wrong, cried out wildly to her brother, “Refute these calumnies.”

  Of course, I had to look up “refute” and “calumny” in the dictionary, but that meant I had learned two useful words. I also had never heard any seventeen-year-old girl of my acquaintance use those words but that just showed me how superior the characters in the book were, and that filled me with satisfaction.

  It’s easy to laugh at the books of that era and to point out that no one really talks that way. But then, do you suppose people in Shakespeare’s time went around casually speaking in iambic pentameter?

  Still, don’t you want literature to improve on nature? Sure you do. When you go to the movies, the hero and heroine don’t look like the people you see in the streets, do they? Of course not. They look like movie stars. The characters in fiction are better looking, stronger, braver, more ingenious and clever than anyone you are likely to meet, so why shouldn’t they speak better, too?

  And yet there are values in realism
-in making people look, and sound, and act like real people.

  For instance, back in 1919, some of the players on the pennant-winning Chicago White Sox were accused of accepting money from gamblers to throw the World Series (the so-called “Black Sox” scandal) and were barred from baseball for life as a result. At the trial, a young lad is supposed to have followed his idol, the greatest of the accused, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, and to have cried out in anguish, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”

  That is a deathless cry that can’t be tampered with. It is unthinkable to have the boy say “Refute these calumnies, Joseph,” even though that’s what he means. Any writer who tried to improve matters in that fashion would, and should, be lynched at once. I doubt that anyone would, or should, even change it to “Say it isn’t so, Joe.”

  For that matter, you couldn’t possibly have had Kate Nickleby cry out to her brother, “Say it ain’t so, Nick.”

  Of course, during much of history most people were illiterate and the reading of books was very much confined to the few who were educated and scholarly. Such books of fiction as existed were supposed to “improve the mind,” or risk being regarded as works of the devil.

  It was only gradually, as mass education began to flourish, that books began to deal with ordinary people. Of course, Shakespeare had his clowns and Dickens had his Sam Wellers, and in both cases, dialog was used that mangled the English language to some extent-but that was intended as humor. The audience was expected to laugh uproariously at these representatives of the lower classes.

  As far as I know the first great book which was written entirely and seriously in substandard English and which was a great work of literature nevertheless (or even, possibly, to some extent because of it) was Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, which was published in 1884. Huck Finn is himself the narrator, and he is made to speak as an uneducated backwoods boy would speak-if he happened to be a literary genius. That is, he used the dialect of an uneducated boy, but he put together sentences and paragraphs like a master.