Isaac Asimov - Opus Two Hundred

Published by

Dell Publishing Co., Inc.

1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza '

New York, New York 10017

Copyright 1979 by Isaac Asimov

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address Houghton Miffim Company, Boston, Massachusetts.

Dell TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc.

ISBN: 0-440-16666-7

Reprinted by arrangement with Houghton Miffiin Company Printed in the United States of America

First Dell printingDecember 1980

The author wishes to thank the following for permission to quote selections from the works listed:

Page 1

Apocalypse: Good Taste. Copyright 1976 by Isaac Asimov.

Atonic Energy Commission: Worlds Within Worlds.

Thomas Y. Crowell: Earth: Our Crowded Spaceship. Copyright 1974 by Isaac Asimov. A John Day book. Quoted by permission of Thomas Y. Crowell.

Doubleday & Company, Inc.: Asimoo's Guide to SJwkespeare.

Copyright 1970 by Isaac Asimov. Asimov's Annotated Don Juan. Copyright 1972 by Isaac Asimov. The Cods Themselves.

Copyright 1972 by Isaac Asimov. The Tragedy of the Moon.

Copyright 1972 by Mercury Press, Inc. Asimoc's Annotated Paradise Lost. Copyright 1974 by Isaac Asimov. Before the Golden Age. Copyright 1974 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.

Tales of the Black Widowers. Copyright 1974 by Isaac Asimov.

By Jupiter and Other Stories. Copyright 1973 by Saturday Evening Post Company. Of Matters Great and Small. Copyright

1974 by Mercury Press, Inc. The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories. Copyright 1976 by Random House, Inc. More Tales of the Black Widowers. Copyright 1976 by Isaac Asimov. Murder at the ABA. Copyright 1976 by Isaac Asimov. The Beginning and the End. Copyright 1974 by Triangle Publications. Inc.

Familiar Poems Annotated. Copyright 1977 by Isaac Asimov.

Page 2

Follett Publishing Company: Comets and Meteors. Text copyright 1972 by Isaac Asimov. Light. Test copyright 1970 by Isaac Asimov. Used by permission of Follett Publishing Co., a division of Follett Corporation.

Houghton Mifflin Company: Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor. Copyright 1971 by Isaac Asimov. The Land of Canaan.

Copyright 1971 by Isaac Asimov. More Words of 'Science.

Copyright 1972 by Isaac Asimov. The Shaping of France.

Copyright 1972 by Isaac Asimov. Please Explain. Copyright

1966, 1969, 1972 by the Hearst Corporation. Eyes on the Universe. Copyright 1975 by Isaac Asimov. T/ie Golden Door.

Copyright 1977 by Isaac Asimov. Reprinted by permission.

David McKay Company, Inc.: The Ends of the Earth. Copyright 1975 by Isaac Asimov. Reprinted by permission of the David McKay Company, Inc.

William Morrow & Company, Inc.: Alpha Centauri, the Nearest Star. Copyright 1976 by Isaac Asimov. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow & Company, Inc.

Mysterious Press: Asimoo's Sherlockian Limericks. Copyright

1978 by Isaac Asimov.

Page 3

The Saturday Evening Post Company; "The Dream"; "Benjamin's Dream"; and "Benjamin's Bicentennial Blast." Copyright

1973 by the Saturday Evening Post Company. Reprinted by permission of The Saturday Evening Post Company.

Walker and Company: ABC's of Space. Copyright 1969 by Isaac Asimov. The Sensuous Dirty Old Man. Copyright 1971

by Isaac Asimov. How Did We Find Out About Numbers? Copyright 1973 by Isaac Asimov. How Did We Find Out About Genus? Copyright 1974 by Isaac Asimov. How Did We Find Out About Comets? Copyright 1975 by Isaac Asimov. Lecherous Limericks. Copyright 1975 by Isaac Asimov. More Lecherous Limericks. Copyright 1976 by Isaac Asimov. Still More Lecherous Limericks. Copyright 1977 by Isaac Asimov. "The

Thirteenth Day of Christmas." First published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and reprinted from The Key -Word and Other Mysteries by Isaac Asimov, published by Walker and Company, 1977. Copyright 1977 by Isaac Asimov.

Page 4

Who saw me through the second hundred

CONTENTS

ROBOTS

MATHEMATICS

PHYSICS

CHEMISTRY

BIOLOGY

WORDS

HISTORY

THE BIBLE

SHORT-SHORTS

HUMOB

SOCIAL SCIENCES

LITERATURE

MYSTERIES

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

MY SECOND HUNDRED BOOKS

In October 1969, Houghton Mifflin published my book Opus 100. It wasn't named at random. It was the hundredth book of mine to be published.

That hundredth book took its time coming, of course. It wasn't till I was eighteen, after all, that I became a professional writer. (To be specific, my first sale took place on October 21, 1938.) Then, for eleven years after that, my only sales were to the science fiction magazines, so. that I became a well-known and successful writer (within the highly specialized and non-numerous ranks of the science fiction world, anyway) without having a single book to my name."

Then, on January 19, 1950, just after I had turned thirty, I finally published my first book. Pebble in the Sky. It was a science fiction novel.

After that, first slowly (two books in 1950 and two more in 1951) and then more rapidly (eight books in 1960 and twelve books in 1966), I began to pile them up.

What with one thing and another, I finally managed Page 6

to reach the hundredth book not quite twenty years

* In later years, these early stories were included in various books, so they didn't go to waste forever, you may be sure.

ISAAC ASIMOV

after I had published the first one. That's an average of five books a vear, wliich isn't bad, at least as far as quantity is concerned.

With regard to quality, it is perhaps harder to judge, but even if we disregard my own personal opinion that my books are great, it remains fair to assume that, publishers are reasonably sane and would not have published so many of my books if they didn't think they were good.

Once a hundred books had come boiling out of my typewriter ribbons, I could have been forgiven if I had then retired. I might have considered a hundred books a reasonable life's work and spent the rest of my existence doing other thingshaving a good time, Page 7

for instance.

There was a catch, though; two catches, in fact.

In the first place, when mv hundredth book came out I was still ten weeks on the sunny side of fifty (which mav not be much of a sunnv side, but where age is concerned, 1*11 snatch at a hair's breadth), and I didn't feel old enough to retire.

In the second place, I was already having a good time and, if I retired, the only thing I would really want to do in retirement would be to write. So why retire only to do what I was already doing?

So I kept on working; and to such good effectfor one gets better (or at least faster) with practicethat in a surprisingly brief period of time I found I was reaching my two hundredth book.

The second hundred was completed by 1979, so that it had only taken me ten years to turn them out, which is an average of ten books a year.

Naturally, Hougliton Mifflin (stifling who-knows-how-many-sighs) feels honor-bound to publish Opus Page 8

200 now, and I'm perfectly content to let them do so.

OPUS 200 13

Let me emphasize now that, in publishing first Opus 100 and then Opus 200, neither I nor Houghton Mifflin is in any way celebrating the matter of quantity. My two hundred books are far from being a record.

According to The Guinness Book of World Records, an Englishman named Charles Hamilton and an American named Charles Andrews each published about 100,000,000 words in their lifetimes, whereas mv published output so far comes to perhaps 15,000,000