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

by James Gunn

  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.

  When Asimov returned the corrected proofs to Bradbury on November 4, he described a new novel he might write. Bradbury told him to go ahead and write two chapters and an outline, and on that basis he would judge whether he wanted to offer a contract. Asimov was launched as a novelist and a writer of books. Books were to be the source of his future success and reputation and fortune, and Pebble in the Sky was to be number one in a list that would grow to 470. Before the year was over, Greenberg had offered Asimov a contract for publication of a collection of his robot stories, and Doubleday, an option on his new novel. Even this earl
y in his book-publishing career, Asimov could look back on the rejection of "Grow Old with Me" by Merwin two and a half years earlier as the best thing that could have happened. "Doubleday," he recalled in his autobiography, "had found [the manuscript] more valuable because it had not been published and they might not have taken it if it had been. Since I wouldn't trade ten magazine appearances for that book, I now realized that Merwin had, all unwittingly, done me an enormous favor by rejecting it."

  What was the novel that formed the cornerstone of Asimov's gigantic edifice of books? Asimov described it in these terms:

  It dealt with a tailor who managed to get transferred into a future in which old people underwent euthanasia unless they could prove themselves useful to society. The problem was to work out a way in which an old tailor from the past could prove useful enough to a society of the future to be kept alive.

  The plot is more complicated than usual for Asimov fiction. The story develops along several simultaneous lines, beginning with the accidental translation (by means of an unrelated laboratory incident) of a sixty-two-year-old retired tailor named Joseph Schwartz to an Earth thousands of years in the future. That Earth has been turned radioactive by atomic wars so remote that the wars themselves have been forgotten. Earth is a neglected and detested world, poor in resources and populated by only 20 million people. It exists in the early period of Asimov's Galactic Empire, which is described at the time of its fall and disintegration in the Foundation stories. The Empire consists of 200 million inhabited planets. Fifty more each day are achieving provincial status. From the heart of that Empire a distinguished young archeologist named Bel Arvardan has come to Earth to find evidence to support his theory that humanity originated on Earth and radiated to other planets and to disprove the "merger" theory that humanity was the natural climax of evolution on any world with a water-oxygen chemical base and that each independent strain of humanity could intermarry.

  Arvardan believes that life could not develop on planets that were naturally radioactive. Since only one radioactive planet is inhabited, Earth must have turned radioactive after life developed. Outsiders are forbidden to read the sacred book of Earthmen, The Book of the Ancients, but Arvardan has obtained parts of it and read statements that support his theory. He hopes to discover evidence of prior human habitation in areas now so intensely radioactive that humans cannot survive in them. His task is complicated by the anti-Terrestrialism that exists everywhere else in the Galaxy. Earthmen are considered dirty and diseased, ignorant and superstitious. Earth has a corresponding anti-Outside prejudice that counters the feelings of the rest of the Galaxy with an equally violent hatred of everything non-Terrestrial. Arvardan considers himself free of prejudice, but in an episode in which he travels in an airplane with a group of Earthmen his belief is challenged.

  Earth is so poor that everyone, with a few exceptions for unusual service or distinction, must submit to euthanasia at the age of sixty or when no longer productive. The law is called "the Sixties" and is so much a part of Earth culture that though it may be evaded, like taxes, acceptance is universal.

  In another plot line, an Earth scientist named Affret Shekt has invented a Synapsifier, which reduces the resistance of non-nervous tissue between adjoining nerve cells and improves the quickness and effectiveness of thought. The process by which people undergo the treatment, however, is believed to be dangerous, often fatal. A farm family with whom Schwartz finds himself volunteer Schwartz, who is considered feeble-minded, for the Synapsifier in the hope of rendering him capable of helping meet their farm quota for produce, for they are sheltering from euthanasia the wife's father, Grew, who has suffered a paralysis of the legs. The process makes Schwartz weak and confused, but as he recovers he learns the language quickly and then slowly develops the Mind Touch, the ability to read minds and then the ability to kill with the mind, and finally the ability to immobilize others and even to control their gross physical movements.

  Meanwhile, Arvardan, Schwartz, Shekt, and Shekt's daughter Pola find themselves enmeshed in a plot by the Society of Ancients to revenge themselves upon the rest of the Galaxy for the long history of oppression and anti-Terrestrial prejudice, and perhaps even to win control of the Galaxy and its riches for Earth. The plan is to send off toward a number of the planets in the Galaxy automatically guided missiles loaded with a mutated virus called Common Fever that is prevalent among Earthmen but fatal to Outsiders. The virus has been isolated and prepared in quantity by biological scientists treated secretly by Shekt's Synapsifier. The virus will sweep the Galaxy, destroying almost everyone within months unless the Empire surrenders and begs for the antitoxin. In the beginning, as the virus is spread to untouched planets by infected Outsiders, no one will even know that Earth is responsible.

  The person in charge of the plot and the police state, with its spies and informers, is the secretary to the High Minister, a Machiavellian character named Balkis who looks for hidden motives behind every action. As in the Foundation stories, an assistant without real authority manipulates the High Minister, who is a figurehead. Balkis even has visions not simply of Earth's revenge but of himself as the new ruler of the Galaxy.

  In a final subplot, Arvardan and Pola Shekt meet by accident and fall in love, although their romance is disrupted for a time by Pola's discovery that Arvardan is an Outsider.

  All of these elements entwine themselves in a complicated series of events that ends with Schwartz setting off for the nearby city of Chica (Chicago) in order to avoid the Census and death, and being captured, in spite of the Mind Touch, because of his lack of familiarity with the society; Pola and her father revealing to Arvardan the plot against the Galaxy; and all of them captured and imprisoned together by Balkis, who has linked them in his mind in a twisted but purely imaginary plot of agents and deceit. Although Balkis intends to kill them, Schwartz identifies with the Earthmen and their desire for revenge and does not want to interfere. But the others finally persuade him to use his strange mental powers to help them escape and reach a nearby Imperial garrison where they can reveal the impending attack.

  In a climactic scene Arvardan is humiliated by an officer of the garrison and challenges the authority of the commanding officer. Eventually, he and the others are not believed even by Ennius, the Procurator, who finds Balkis's story more credible. Only after Schwartz has escaped and the time of the missiles' firing has passed does Balkis boast of his success and Ennius shamefacedly admit his error. At this point, Schwartz enters to reveal that he Mind-Touched an Imperial officer to fly him to Senloo (St. Louis) and bomb the building where the missiles and virus were ready to be sent off.

  In the final chapter, the Galaxy is sending vast loads of soil to restore Earth, Schwartz has been decorated by the Empire and is about to leave with the newly married Arvardan and Pola Shekt on a tour of the Galaxy, after which the Arvardans plan to return to Earth to work. Arvardan has become a naturalized citizen.

  The novel has three major strengths. The first is the historical development of the Galactic Empire, a background that Asimov built with convincing detail through the Foundation stories and in other works. The Empire is ready-made for his use, and the lowly estate of the birthplace of humanity, which has been part of other stories (in the Foundation stories, the birthplace has been lost, as it has been in the Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth), serves as a satisfying irony. The second strength is the use of an elderly tailor as hero (at sixty-two, Schwartz must have seemed ancient to the twenty-nine-year-old Asimov and his by-and-large youthful readers). It was an act of daring in a genre that specialized in young men for action and older men for inventions. The choice of hero that may have put off Merwin and perhaps Campbell was ultimately rewarding: Schwartz is convincing and his development into a man of understanding and strange abilities turns the novel into something of a novel of character. The third strength is in its historical parallel: just as the Empire in The Foundation Trilogy is comparable to the Roman Empire when it began its long fa
ll, so Earth in Pebble in the Sky is comparable to Judea under the rule of the Romans, when it was awaiting the Messiah.

  Asimov's choice of the historical parallel is deliberate. As proof, one can point to his successful use of the same technique in the Trilogy and to his fascination with history. There is internal evidence as well: 1) Earthmen clearly represent the Jews; 2) the Empire's representative on Earth is called a Procurator, as was Pontius Pilate, the Roman administrator of Judea who condemned Jesus to the Cross; 3) Earthmen are bloodthirsty, always asking for the death penalty for one of themselves, as did the Jews when they were asked whether to spare Jesus (the High Minister says, ''. . . my people are an obstinate and stiff-necked race . . ."); 4) Earth's extremists are called Zealots, as was the radical group that advocated the overthrow of Roman rule; and 5) at one point a troubled Ennius, as Pilate, says of Balkis, "I find no fault with this man." Though Ennius might double for Pilate, the Machiavellian Balkis as Christ stretches the parallel a bit. Perhaps it is not intended to be carried that far.