Isaac Asimov - Out of the Everywhere

OUT OF THE EVERYWHERE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Isaac Asimov is America's most prolific author, with over four hundred and thirty books published. He is known and loved the world over for his science fiction I including the Foundation seriesmystery stories, and nonfiction. The essays in this collection were first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1987 and 1988.

Contents

INTRODUCTION: Social Commentary and I

PART I ASTRONOMY

1 The Very Error of the Moon

2 Asking the Right Question

3 Out of the Everywhere

4 Into the Here

PART II - HUMANITY 5 The Road to Humanity

6 Standing Tall

7 The Longest River

8 Is Anyone Listening?

PART III - RADIATION

9 The Unrecognized Danger

10 The Radiation That Wasn't

PART IV - MAGNETISM 11 Iron, Cold Iron

12 From Pole to Pole

PART V FUEL

13 The Fire of Life

14 The Slave of the Lamp

15 The Horse Under the Hood

PART VI TIME 16 The Unforgiving Minute

PART VII SOMETHING EXTRA 17 A Sacred Poet

Introduction:

Social Commentary

A young lady phoned me yesterday. She was writing a "profile" of me and needed a few questions answered. I invited her to ask them and she said: "Your writings seem to be very concerned with your views of social ethics. Even in your fiction, for instance, you have the Three Laws of Robotics, which deal with the manner in which robots and human beings should interact. You also have invented the science of 'psychohistory,' which makes it possible to foresee the future and leads people to direct history into desirable channels."

It was very flattering to be taken as a social philosopher, but truth is mighty and will prevail. I had to explain to her the facts as they were.

The Three Laws of Robotics were first invented by me when I was nineteen years old and psychohistory came along when I was twenty-one. My purpose was no at all social commentary, but merely the writing of interesting and different science fiction stories so that I could have the pleasure of seeing my name in print and (secondarily) so that I could earn enough money to pay my way through college.

Nor, in all the years since, have I ever seen myself as someone whose duty it was to lecture humanity and change the world.

What I have been doing in my writing, through the years of my maturity, has been (a) to continue to write stories and novels that interest me and, if possible, the editors and readers as well; (b) to explain science to the interested public; and (c) to express my personal views and opinions on any subject it occurs to me to do so.

Points a and b are duties I have set myself, and are the serious work of my life. Point c is my pleasure and it is my incredible luck to have found publishers who are willing to let me do this. It sometimes happens that my personal views and opinions sound like social commentary and are taken as suchbut I don't write them with that in mind. I'm just pounding the table as anyone would like to.

I have a couple of examples of this in the collection you are now holding in your hand.

For instance, I have labeled Part II of the collection "Humanity" for the obvious reason: That is what Part II deals with. The first two essays in the section deal with the evolution of humanity. "The Road to Humanity" carries the story from the origin of the Earth to the coming of the first hominid. "Standing lall" continues the story to the coming of Homo sapiens sapiens. Then in "The Longest River" I deal with early historic times.

It's in the fourth essay of the section, "Is Anyone Listening?", that I take up the human plight in the present and pound the table. I have been writing occasional articles on the dangers of overpopulation for over thirty

years now, and in that time the population of the Earth has nearly doubled and is still going up. I cannot understand how it is possible for people not to be aware of the terrible danger we are all in from this endless proliferation of human mouths and human needs. In each article I write on the subject, I stress the problems that inevitably arise out of population increase, and point out by how much everything has grown worse since I wrote my previous article.

And still human beings go forward blindly, pretending that nothing is happening or that if population is going up, it doesn't really matter, which is why I entitled the overpopulation essay in this book with a plaintive question. The United States, in fact, consistently refuses to help any nation or any international organization that is attempting to control population. Why? Because the nation is in the grip of the cavemen of conservatism who interpret all things in the murky light of an irrational ideology.

Once, in one of my earliest essays on the matter of overpopulation, I received a note from someone who said, "I'd say this was God's problem, wouldn't you?" It was the work of a moment to send back the answer, "God helps those who help themselves."

1. And then, once in a while, I even feel it necessary to express my opinion on subjects concerning which (it is my uneasy feeling) I don't really have any expertise. For instance, modern poetry, for the most part, leaves me cold. I have this notion that modern poets are writing strictly for each other, and that there is no attempt to reach the ordinary intelligent nonpoet. Indeed, I even have the feeling if a poem appealed to nonpoets that would be taken as a certain sign that it was a bad poem.

I remember once reading an essay by a poet who explained that modern poems were intensely autobiographic. As an example, she presented one she had written which made absolutely no sense to me, although I have this notion that I am able to interpret the English language with reasonable expertise. The poet offered to explain the poem by detailing the autobiographic background to anyone curious enough to write to her, but I didn't bother. I wasn't curious.

You see my feeling is that all writing is a device to transfer ideas from the brain of the writer to that of the reader, and that different types of writing are different modes of doing so. If a piece of writing does not succeed in making any such transfer at all, then it has failed. (But then, I may perhaps be influenced by my own lifetime obsession witfi making some of the difficult concepts of science accessible to nonscientists.)

It seemed to me that poetry could affect people and that some poems did affect them. Quite apart from whether such a poem is "good" or "bad" by the academic criteria of poets, ought not a poem achieve some sort of recognition because it is effective?

I thought it should and I decided I would write an essay on the matter. It is included in this book as the very last item, "A Sacred Poet." I must admit, I wrote it with a certain tremor of uncertainty. Would the Noble Editor sit still for my venturing so far out of my field? For that matter, would the readers tolerate it?

To my astonishment, the editor wrote me a very complimentary letter and I received a richer harvest of comments from my readers for this one essay than for any of the hundreds of other essays in the series. And not one letter condemned it.

I was delighted.

Part I Astronomy

The Very Error of the Moon

I suppose I have seen more comments in print about my towering ego than almost anybody. The most recent case (at the present writing) is in a review of a new edition of my essay collection The Roving Mind (Prometheus Books, 1983), which the reviewer found "exhilarating." He then couldn't resist referring to my opinion of myself, but added a saving clause. He said, "The egotistic Asimov, who has plenty to be egotistic about..."

Well, I'll accept that.

The truth is, though, that I am an easy mark. There is such an obvious self-assurance about me that everyone has the ambition to put me in my place, and a sizable percentage of them succeed, and that helps keep me humble. In fact, I am sometimes put in my place when it seems to me there is no chance of its happening. I remember a prize example of this...