Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Friends.pdf - Isaac Asimov - margozap

FOUNDATION’S FRIENDS

Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov

Edited by Martin H. Greenberg

To Isaac, with love

Contents

Preface

The Nonmetallic Isaac or It’s a Wonderful Life

Strip-Runner

The Asenion Solution

Murder in the Urth Degree

Trantor Falls

Dilemma

Maureen Birnbaum After Dark

Balance

The Present Eternal

PAPPI

The Reunion at the Mile-High

Plato’s Cave

Foundation’s Conscience

Carhunters of the Concrete Prairie

The Overheard Conversation

Blot

The Fourth Law of Robotics

The Originist

A Word or Two from Janet

Fifty Years

Preface

by Ray Bradbury

O NE OF MY FAVORITE STORIES AS A CHILD WAS THE ONE ABOUT the little boy who got a magical

porridge machine functioning so wildly that it inundated the town with three feet of porridge.

In order to walk from one house to the other, or head down-street, one had to head out with a large

spoon, eating one’s way to destinations near or far.

A delightful concept, save that I imagined tomato soup and a thick slush of crackers. Going on a

journey and making a feast, all in one!

I imagine the name of the little boy in that tale should have been Isaac Asimov. For it seems to me that

since first we met at the First World Science Fiction Convention in New York City the first week in July 1939,

Isaac has been journeying and feasting through life, now at the Astronomical tables, now in a spread of other

sciences, now in religion, and again in literature over a great span of time. One could call him a jackdaw, but

that wouldn’t be correct. Jackdaws focus on and snatch bright objects of no particular weight. Isaac is in the

mountain-moving business, but he does not move but eat them. Hand him a book and a few hours later, like

that above-mentioned porridge, Isaac comes tunneling out the far side, still hungry. Is there a body of

literature he hasn’t taken on? I severely doubt it.

And now here, with this book, we have Asimov’s honorary sons and daughters. Their machines may

not run amok and inundate a city, but they are producing, nevertheless, and looking to Papa Asimov and us

for approval, which will not be withheld.

To say more would be to call attention to my comparable size, a mole next to a fortress or a force of

nature. I would add only a final note. People have said Isaac is a workaholic. Nonsense. He has gone mad

with love in ten dozen territories. And there are a few dozen virgin territories left out there. There will be few

such virgins left, when Isaac departs earth and arrives Up There to write twenty-five new books of the Bible.

And that’s only the first week!

One night two years ago, I dreamed I was Isaac Asimov. Arising the next day, it was noon before my

wife convinced me that I should not run for President.

Bless you, Isaac. Bless you, Isaac’s children, found herein.

February 21, 1989

The Nonmetallic Isaac or It’s a Wonderful Life

by Ben Bova

A STROPHYSICISTS (TO START WITH A SCIENTIFIC WORD) CLASSIFY the universe into three chemical

categories: hydrogen, helium, and metals.

The first two are the lightest of all the hundred-some known elements. Anything heavier than

helium, the astrophysicists blithely call “metals.” Hydrogen and helium make up roughly ninety-eight

percent of the universe’s composition. To an astrophysicist, the universe consists of a lot of hydrogen, a

considerable amount of helium, and a smattering of metals.

Now, although Isaac Asimov is known throughout this planet (and possibly others, we just don’t

know yet) as a writer of science fiction, when you consider his entire output of written material--all the

four-hundred-and-counting books and the myriads of articles, columns, limericks, and whatnots--his science

fiction is actually a small percentage of the total. As far as Asimov’s production is concerned, science fiction

tales are his “metals.”

Science fact is his mettle.

It is the “nonmetallic” Asimov that I want to praise.

Remember the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life!? The one where an angel shows suicidal James

Stewart what his hometown would be like if Jimmie’s character had never been born?

Think of what our home planet would be like if Isaac Asimov had never turned his mind and hand

to writing about science.

We narrowly missed such a fate. There was a moment in time when a youthful Isaac faced a critical

career choice: go on as a researcher or plunge full-time into writing. He chose writing and the world is

extremely happy with the result.

Knowing that science fiction, in those primeval days, could not support a wife and family, Isaac

chose to write about science fact and to make that his career, rather than biomedical research.

But suppose he had not?

Suppose, faced with that career choice, Isaac had opted for the steady, if unspectacular, career of a

medium-level research scientist who wrote occasional science fiction stories as a hobby.

We would still have the substantial oeuvre of his science fiction tales that this anthology celebrates.

We would still have “Nightfall” and “The Ugly Little Boy,” the original Foundation trilogy and novels such

as Pebble in the Sky. We would, to return to the metaphor we started with, still have Isaac’s “metallic” output.

But we would not have his hydrogen and helium, the huge number of books that are nonfiction,

mainly books about science, although there are some marvelous histories, annotations of various works of

literature, and lecherous limericks in there, too.

If Isaac had toiled away his years as a full-time biomedical researcher and part-time science fiction

writer, we would never have seen all those marvelous science books. Probably a full generation of scientists

would have chosen other careers, because they would never have been turned on to science by the books that

Isaac did not write. Progress in all fields of the physical sciences would have slowed, perhaps disastrously.

Millions of people allover the world would have been denied the pleasure of learning that they could

understand the principles of physics, mathematics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, the workings of the

human body, the intricacies of the human brain--because the books from which they learned and received

such pleasures would never have been written.

Entire publishing houses would have gone into bankruptcy, no doubt, without the steady, sure

income that Isaac’s science books have generated for them over the decades. And will continue to generate for

untold decades to come. The wood pulp and paper industry would be in a chronic state of depression if Isaac

had not turned out all those hundreds of books and thousands of articles. Canada might have become a

Third World nation, save for Dr. Isaac Asimov.

To make it more personal, I would have never started to write popularizations of science if it had not

been for Isaac’s works--and for his personal encouragement and guidance. The gods themselves are the only

ones who know how many writers have been helped by Isaac, either by reading his books or by asking him

for help with science problems that had them stumped.

Blighted careers, ruined corporations, benighted people wandering in search of an enlightenment

that they cannot find--that is what the world would be like if Isaac had not poured his great energies and

greater heart into nonfiction books about science.

Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Friends.pdf

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