Seekers of Tomorrow (35 page)

"Without the interplay of human against human, the chief interest in life is gone; most of the intellectual values are gone; most of the reason for living is gone."

That is why aliens appear so infrequently in Asimov sto-ries.

Drafted after World War II, Corporal Isaac Asimov was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps and ordered to a Pacific atoll where an atomic test was scheduled to be held. He got as far as Hawaii, where he was discharged after only six months. Asimov then returned to Columbia and worked toward his doctorate, which he received in 1949.

A faculty member of the Boston University School of Medicine who was an Asimov fan and correspondent urged him to establish himself at that New England institution. Asimov qualified for a post as instructor in biochemistry at Boston University in 1949.

The Asimov stories that appeared during his studies at Columbia were few but they were outstanding. Previously Asimov was rated in a secondary stratum of science-fiction writers. Every time a story of his appeared it would be overshadowed by a still better one by a top-level writer. Beginning with the appearance of his Foundation story
Now You See It,
concerning the great mutant conqueror The Mule, in astounding science-fiction for January, 1948, that wasn't going to happen so often any more. That one even beat out, in readers' estimation, the final installment of
Children of the Lens
by one of Asimov's old idols, E. E. Smith, Ph.D.

Yet, though growing swiftly in skill and maturity, Asimov still encountered sales problems. At the solicitation of Sam Merwin, Jr., who was in the process of publishing more mature material in his two magazines startling stories and thrilling wonder stories, Asimov wrote a short novel which he titled
Grow
Old Along with Me.
Merwin rejected it and so did Campbell. Two science-fiction fans, Paul Dennis O'Connor and Martin Greenberg, were ready to schedule it for a limited hardcover edition under the aegis of New Collector's Group, a fledgling company which had already published
The Fox Woman
and
The
Black Wheel,
two unfinished novels by A. Merritt completed by Hannes Bok. Then word came through that Doubleday was looking for science fiction. Asi-mov sent it to Doubleday editor Walter Bradbury, who suggested the story be lengthened to full novel size. The result was
Pebble in the Sky,
a story inspired by lines from Robert Browning which Asimov had memorized in his youth:

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made ....

Pebble in the Sky
preached that the old age of the planet Earth could be anything but beautiful. In the Galactic Era 827 Earth is radioactive, still inhabited, but by men who are pariahs to the rest of the galaxy. No one any longer remem-bers that Earth was the mother planet. Despite an over-burdening allegory against racial intolerance which weights down the book, the setting of a radioactive world and the society it breeds evoked some of the effectiveness of The Last Redoubt in William Hope Hodgson's imaginative tour de force
, The Night Land
(1912).

Joseph Schwartz, the older-than-middle-aged co-hero, is catapulted into the future from the twentieth century by an atomic mishap (he possesses a "trick" memory similar to Asimov's own). A device which temporarily stimulates the intelligence of mice, who usually die from the aftereffects, is tried on Schwartz, who has been as helpless as a moron in his strange situation. With his newly acquired advanced intelli-gence he is able to contribute toward saving himself and the entire galaxy. Daniel Keyes'

Hugo-winning short story,
Flowers for Algernon,
could well have been inspired by
Pebble in the Sky;
it puts a different twist on the identical plot device.

This novel, more than any other single thing, was responsi-ble for elevating Asimov into the top rank of science-fiction writers. Reviews of the book were excellent. It was reprinted in two complete science adventure novels, galaxy novels, in paperback, and abroad. Most significantly, it was made a Unicorn Mystery Book Club selection by Hans Stefan Santesson, who recognized classic mystery story technique in its plot structure.

Heartened by this success, Asimov decided to concentrate on novels.
Tyrann,
his first work deliberately written as a novel was serialized in the rapidly rising new science-fiction magazine galaxy science-fiction beginning with the Janu-ary, 1951, issue. Published in hard covers by Doubleday as
The Stars Like Dust,
it tells of a chase through the galaxy in search of a secret document which may be the key to the overthrow of tyranny.

Virtually the only redeeming feature of this novel is its denouement. In its early days, science fiction was thought of as a medium of Utopian proclamation, most often construc-tive, democratic, and hopeful in tone. When dictatorships were projected, they were inevitably held up as a "warning." Since 1939, governments of the future based on democratic principles have been all but nonexistent in science fiction gen-erally. Perhaps the pessimism created by World War II and the arrival of atomic explosives are responsible. But it is singularly notable that the "secret document," the object of the action in
The Stars Like Dust,
turns out to be a copy of the Constitution of the United States. When Asimov concludes, "The time for maturity has come as it once came on the planet Earth, and there will be a new kind of government, a kind that has never yet been tried in the Galaxy," he is, sadly enough, virtually the only science-fiction author in modern times to suggest it.

His next novel,
The Currents of Space
(astounding science-fiction, October-December, 1952), was a far better work. Especially memorable is Big Lona, the peasant girl of the planet Fiorina, who befriends Rik, a member of the galactographic corps. Scientific originality is displayed in de-scribing the function of this corps, which measures the nature and movement of particles in space.

Asimov now felt up to attempting a full-length novel based on robots, broaching the idea to H. L. Gold, who suggested the incorporation of a robot detective and the Malthusian outlook on overpopulation. Serialized in galaxy science-fiction, beginning in October, 1953, the novel,
Caves of Steel,
put Asimov in a class by himself. No one had previously succeeded so brilliantly in wedding the detective to science fiction and Asimov's carefully thought-out overpopulated me-tropolises of the future were drawn more with love than with loathing.

Science-fiction readers offered Isaac Asimov their greatest personal tribute. They made him Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Cleveland, Septem-ber 2-5, 1955. The same year he was made Associate Professor at Boston University, pursuing research in nucleic acid. The exigencies of writing made it increasingly difficult for him to do justice to either vocation. A change in deans at the University resulted in pressure on Asimov for more research and less writing. Asimov, who had already had published several books in a popular scientific vein, felt that he could be of more benefit to the university in that manner than through research. When Asimov took his post at the University the rules of the institution permitted a faculty member with a certain number of years of service to retain his title for life, even if he resigned. Those rules had been changed in the interim so that the title could be lost on departure. Asimov took the matter to a vote of the full faculty and won out, retiring to full-time writing in 1958 and holding his title of Associate Professor by lecturing several times a year. Science fiction was no longer a profitable market, so he channeled his energies into scientific articles and books writ-ten in popular language. His facility in expressing himself clearly and engagingly, which made him one of the finest lecturers in the history of Boston University, coupled with his extraordinarily retentive memory, added up to instant success as a purveyor of popular education. As many as six books a year flowed from his refer-ence-lined attic workshop:
The Chemicals of Life,
The Well-springs of Life, The World of Nitrogen, The World of Carbon, Inside the Atom, Building
Blocks of the Universe, The Clock We Live On, The Realm of Numbers,
and many others. The major opus in this area thus far is the critically acclaimed
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science,
a two-volume boxed set, ambitiously aimed at familiarizing the layman with the complete range of the physical and biological sciences.

The impact on the general public of Isaac Asimov's two-pronged writing career is apparent to no one more than brother Stanley Asimov, now night city editor of newsday, the leading Long Island newspaper.

"It's gotten so I avoid telling anyone my name," he moans. "Co-workers, chance acquaintances, people I meet in the course of business, all follow the same pattern. 'Asimov? Asimov? Any relative to
the
Isaac Asimov?'

"Why, when I was introduced to my wife Ruth, the first words out of her mouth were: 'Asimov?

Asimov? Any rela-tive to
the
Isaac Asimov?' "

If Isaac Asimov has changed in any way in the past twenty years, it is in the gradual diminution of his mad exhibitions and the spontaneous explosions of humor which he employed to reduce his self-consciousness by making himself the center of attraction at any public function. Only the robot stories reflect this aspect of his nature and then satirically. At heart Isaac Asimov is and always has been a very serious man.

Perhaps the accelerating acceptance by the public of his scientific expositions have convinced him that it is no longer necessary to guffaw and wiggle his ears to attract attention. It has been a long time since that was necessary in science fiction.

It was Sunday afternoon, September 6th, 1959, in the banquet room of the Hotel Fort Shelby, Detroit, and Robert Bloch was reading the names of the winners of the Hugo awards to the audience as Isaac Asimov announced the categories. The revelation that Clifford D. Simak's novelette,
The Big Front Yard,
from the October, 1958 issue of astounding science-fiction had been voted the best story of its length during the previous year was lost in the gale of affectionate laughter precipitated by Bloch's expression as he opened the next envelope to find that his own story,
That Hell-Bound Train
(fantasy and science fiction, September, 1958), had won a Hugo as the best short science-fiction story of the year. But by winning this Hugo, Clifford D. Simak had become the first science-fiction author in history to receive both of the major awards possible in the fantasy world. Earlier, he had taken the 1952 International Fantasy Award for the best novel of science fiction or fantasy published during 1952,
City.
Had this point been emphasized, no one would have been surprised. Simak's
The Big Front Yard
was but one of dozens of his superbly wrought tales that endowed ordinary folk with the special qualities to cope with bizarre aberrations of space and time, as well as with technologies that would have baffled an Einstein. In
The Big Front Yard,
Hiram Taine, repair man and antique dealer, in the company with a handyman misfit who claims to be able to talk with animals, drives a hard bargain with the inhabitants of another world, who have warped his front yard through another dimension so that it faces out upon an alien planet in an unguessable corner of the cosmos. He was typical of scores of other Simak "heroes," who, whether dirt farmer, near-idiot, or love-struck robot, had a function, a reason for being in the universe, who could some-how fathom the unknowable and defeat the omnipotent.

Five years later, at the age of 60, Clifford D. Simak again received the Hugo at the 22nd World Science Fiction Conven-tion at Oakland, California, September 6, 1964. This time it was for the best novel of the year and he was there to accept it. The novel was
Way Station
(Doubleday, 1963), originally serialized in galaxy magazine as
Here Gather the Stars
(June and August, 1963). It is the story of Enoch, who for one hundred years, ever since the Civil War, has tended a way station in the Wisconsin hills for the intelligent races of the galaxy. Agelessly he carries on, with the macabre "good fellows" of the hundred worlds as his nocturnal companions, waiting for the day when circumstances will permit him to reveal his secret to the world—perhaps for its salvation. The Earth is on the verge of a cataclysmic war, but in the simple steadfastness of the rustic Enoch, there still rests hope.

Simak manages to accentuate the positive in the personali-ties of his diverse group of unlikely

"supermen." He rarely dwells on the morbid, the horrifying, or the decadent. In his worlds and in the lives of his characters, there is room for hope, for kindness, for decency, and for a morality that would be obvious if the reader were not spellbound by the artistry of the storytelling. Regardless of their origins, his characters are more saints than sinners. Good predominates over evil and optimism over despair. Simak's greatest love and affection is reserved for the farmer. Directly and indirectly, more farmers traipse through the science fiction of Clifford Simak than through the works of any author apart from country gentleman's writers. Born on the farm of his grandfather Edward Wiseman on August 3, 1904, in the township of Millville, Grant County, Wisconsin, Simak has never sweated the sweet memory of rural life from his body. His grandfather's farm was on an inland promontory, from which the meeting of the Wisconsin and Mis-sissippi rivers was clearly visible. It was a hill farm, with nearby woods filled with game and streams choked with obliging fish. Almost everything his grandfather's family ate came off that farm. Clifford's father, John L. Simak, was born in Bohemia, in a town near Prague. Son of a butcher (though related to noblemen who had seen better days) he came to work as a hired hand on the Wiseman farm when he emigrated to America where he met and married Margaret Wiseman. A year later he secured some nearby acreage, used lumber from the land to build a log house, and gradually cleared a farm for himself.