A.:
It's not as important to me, personally. I write comparatively little science fiction. But, Jim, this is a matter of deliberateness on my part. In many respects I frequently say I follow the line of least resistance. I don't deliberately try to write well, I just write as it comes, and if it happens to be good, thank goodness, that sort of stuff. But as far as this business of not abandoning my origins, that's deliberate. I made up my mind when I was quite young and I said it in print in places that no
matter whatever happened to me, no matter where I went, I would never deny my origins as a science-fiction writer and I would never break my connection to science fiction and I never have. I attend every convention that I can reach. Unfortunately, I don't travel much, so I can't reach many of them, but I attend every one. I never accept any money, not even for car fare, not even when it is out of town. I'll talk at every one, as I did today, and I never try to deny that I'm a science fiction writer, even when I am writing very little science fiction. I identify myself as a science fiction writer, and so on. Now, why do I do this? In the first place, because I consider loyalty one of the prime virtues. When we started my magazine I wouldn't give up my
F&SF
articles, for instance, and I forced Joel Davis to accept that as a condition. And I probably bore everybody with my endless repetition of how much I owe to John Campbell, because I would rather bore them than be disloyal in my own mind. It is the easiest thing in the world to forget the ladder you climb or to be embarrassed at the thought that there was a time when somebody had to help you. And the tendency is to minimize this, minimize that, and I suppose I'm normal enough and human enough to do the same thing if it were left to itself, but this is a matter of having once made a vow and I stick to it. It's inconvenient to always have to tell people that Campbell made up the three laws of robotics, and the more important the three laws become the more I want to be the originator and take the credit, but I can't. Now, as to why this is so, I never really thought about it. I guess I like to think about it only as a matter of virtue. I don't consider myself a particularly virtuous person, but I like to think I have some virtues, of which loyalty is one. But possibly it is because I am not a very good Jew. I don't attend any Jewish religious functions, I don't follow any of the Jewish rituals, or its dietary laws, or anything about it, and yet never under any circumstances do I leave any doubt at all that I'm Jewish. I really dislike Judaism. I'm against it it's a form of particularly pernicious nationalism in my opinion. I don't want humanity divided up into these little groups that are firmly convinced each one that it is better than the others, and Judaism is the prototype of the "I'm better than you" group we were the ones who invented this business of the only God. It's not just that we have our God and you have your God it's that we have the only God and you've got something less, you know? And I feel a deep and abiding historic guilt about that. And every once in a while when I'm not careful I think that the reason Jews have been persecuted as much as they have has been to punish them for having invented this pernicious doctrine. And so, I suppose, because I feel that in some ways I have
been a traitor to Judaism, which I try to make up for by making sure that everybody knows I'm a Jew, so while I'm deprived of the benefits of being part of a group, you know, I make sure that I don't lose any of the disadvantages, because no one should think that I am denying my Judaism in order to gain certain advantages. But in order to make up for that, I made up my mind that I'm not going to be disloyal in any other way, and there it is, I suppose. I'm not saying I believe this, but this is the sort of thing that people do work up for reasons, and, after all, I'm imaginative enough to think up such reasons, too. So if you want one, there's one handed to you free of charge, but I don't guarantee it's correct.