Seekers of Tomorrow (34 page)

It was Asimov's first talk before a science-fiction fan group but not as an amateur. Only weeks earlier he had made his first sale to amazing stories,
Marooned off Vesta
(March, 1939). The plot was directly derived from Asimov's chemis-try studies. Survivors of a disabled spaceship find themselves with three days' air and one year's supply of water. They save themselves by utilizing the principle that the boiling point of water is so low in a vacuum that the slightest heat will turn it into steam, which can be used for jet propulsion. This same principle is today commercially used in processing freeze-dried foods.
Marooned off Vesta
was the third story Asimov had writ-ten. All had been submitted to John W. Campbell at astound-ing science-fiction and rejected, yet, when announcement of the publication of
Marooned off Vesta
was made in the January 4, 1939, issue of futurian news, official organ of The Futurian Society, it also carried the statement: "John W. Campbell remarked of Asimov that he expects him to go far as a writer. His works, as far as that editor has seen, being very, very good." Campbell was as good as his word and took a story from Asimov titled
Ad Astra
which appeared in astounding science-fiction for July, 1939, as
Trends.
While the story did not quite hit the target as entertainment, the theme was advanced for so young a writer in its premise that an anti-scientific attitude as a reaction to war might hold back space travel even when all the elements for its success were present. A few months earlier (May, 1939), Asimov's story
The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use
had appeared in amazing stories; it surmised that earthmen will tend to enslave inferior races they meet in their exploration of other planets. Ex-tremely weak as a story, it nevertheless pointed up Asimov's interest in the political and sociological aspects of interplane-tary exploration, a vein he would eventually explore more fully. Astounding science-fiction was the leading science-fiction magazine in 1939 and it would make exciting reading to learn that
Trends
proved the toast of the readership, but the fact is that Campbell featured in that issue the first story of a writer named A. E. van Vogt,
Black Destroyer,
as well as a novelette,
Greater
Than Gods
by C. L. Moore. Asimov had to be satisfied with third place in "The Analytical Laboratory," the magazine's rating' section, but he did have the ego-inflating satisfaction of beating out Nat Schachner, who, along with Edward E. Smith, was one of the two science-fiction writers he most admired. While Asimov's parents barraged out-of-town relatives with letters urging them to buy the amazing stories issue with Isaac's first published story (and most people named Asimov in the United States are related, the name being relatively uncommon), they were discouraged from repeating it for other

"successes." Many of the stories were misfiring. In 1938, Isaac had written to Clifford Simak, whose stories were beginning to appear again after a hiatus of some years, criticizing the omission of transitions between scenes in that author's stories. Now he began to wonder if Simak wasn't right, leaving out the dull parts to get to the point of the action. He decided to adopt that method.

Fred Pohl, who had been acting as his literary agent, secured a position with Popular Publications editing two new science-fiction magazines, astonishing stories and super science stories. astonishing stories had the distinction of being the first 10-cent science-fiction magazine in history and its first issue (February, 1940), carried a novelette by Asi-mov,
Half-Breed.
The "Tweenies," children of Earth and Martian ancestry, identifiable by hair that grew straight up, are subjected to a mixture of the abuses which the Jews and Negroes have fallen heir to. The story of the Tweenies' fight for equality and their eventual migration to Venus was skill-fully told and was by far the most popular story in the magazine. Astonishing stories carried in its April, 1940, issue,
Callistan Menace,
a tale of huge otherworldly worms that are able to kill at a distance by creating a deadly magnetic field. In terms of chronology, this was actually the second story written by Asimov. The first and six others written between late 1938 and 1940 were never sold and were later de-stroyed. Asimov eventually sold every story he wrote after 1940. While making his literary mark, Asimov, with the aid of his trick memory, had obtained his B.A. in June, 1939, at the age of 191/2; two years later he would have his M.A. The emphasis on physical sciences displayed in his earliest stories was to shift towards the sociological, but his technical educa-tion gave his stories an added touch of authenticity.

Normally a story as clever and entertaining as Isaac's next in astounding science-fiction,
Homo Sol,
would have at-tracted considerable attention. Any hope of that was thwart-ed by the appearance in that same September, 1940, issue of A. E. van Vogt's
Slan
and Robert Heinlein's
Blowups Hap-pen.
As it was, this satire of the positive and negative aspects of the human race as evaluated by members of a galactic federation considering whether to open commerce with the Earth, rated just below those two historic landmarks.

The first robot story attempted by Isaac Asimov,
Strange Play-fellow,
was submitted to and rejected by Campbell in June, 1939. Pohl published it in the September, 1940 super science stories. A pleasant tale of the affection of a little girl for her play robot, it caused no stir at the time of publication, though it did introduce the name "Robbie" for robot, which has since become as common a designation for a mechanical man as "Rover" used to be for dogs.

Undeservedly forgotten was a short story called
The Secret Sense,
a well-thought-out and nicely written account of an Earthman whose cortex is stimulated by Martians to enable him to obtain a sensory experience common only to them. When he loses this ability after only ten minutes, he is overcome by anguish at the realization that he can never again know the beauty of that "secret sense." This story was written free by Asimov for fellow Futurian Donald A. Wollheim, who had become editor of the low-budget cosmic stories and stirring science stories. When it appeared in the March, 1941, cosmic stories, and word got to F. Orlin Tremaine, then editor of comet, a maga-zine that
did
pay for its stories, he read the riot act to Asimov and insisted that he either show proof of payment or submit stories to him on the same generous basis. Asimov tearfully induced the powers at cosmic stories to pay him, not because he feared Tremaine, but because the story had already gotten out and if Campbell at astounding science-fiction were to take the same stand the results would be disastrous.

Had any ban been placed on Asimov, the loss would undoubtedly have been science fiction's, for at that very time he had submitted to Campbell a story about an intelligent robot assembled on a space station who refuses to believe either that there is an Earth or that robots were built by man. This story was to make history.
Reason,
published in astounding science-fiction, April, 1941, laid the foundation for the now-famous Three Laws of Robotics.

The first time Asimov heard of those laws was when he walked into Campbell's office after the story was accepted and had them recited to him:

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Asimov claims that Campbell invented the laws, but Camp-bell asserts they were implicit in the story, as indeed they were. The results were truly revolutionary. Not only did Asimov go on to write a tremendously successful series of robot stories (a selection of which were collected in
I
,
Robot,
Gnome Press, 1950), most of which were based on seeming breaches of the three laws, but these rules have come to be accepted by an ever-growing body of contemporary science-fiction writers. That robots, when they are eventually built, will be subject to the Three Laws of Robotics has become axiomatic in a large area of science fiction.

Ordinarily that story should have clinched Asimov's reputa-tion. Unfortunately, Campbell was callous enough to include in the same issue as
Reason
Theodore Sturgeon's masterpiece
Microcosmic Gods
and a novel by L. Sprague de Camp at his satiric best,
The Stolen Dormouse.

Asimov's ability was not lost on Campbell. At his next visit to Street & Smith's offices, Campbell read him the famous quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "
If
the stars should appear one night in a
thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the
remem-brance of the city of God!"

"What do
you
think would really happen if men saw stars only once in a thousand years?" Campbell asked.

Asimov shrugged.

"They would go mad!" Campbell shouted. "Now go home and write the story." The realistic delineation of a world of six suns, where an eclipse causes darkness but once every two thousand years, and the account of the psychological doom that overtakes its inhabitants at that time, possessed such an impact that Camp-bell gave Asimov a financial bonus as well as the cover of the September, 1941, astounding science-fiction. An acknowledged masterpiece,
Nightfall
was acclaimed at the time of printing but—again—the near-tragedy of including it in the same issue as the conclusion of Robert Heinlein's famed novel
Methuselah's Children
deprived it of a first-place rating. Nevertheless, it proved that Asimov had the stuff that makes front-rank science-fiction writers. During the time Asimov was making his mark as a writer and adding a B.A. to his academic record he was not oblivi-ous to the attractions of the opposite sex. Among the girls for whom he provided escort was Mary G. Byers, one of the few feminine science-fiction fans of that era, who was in New York on a visit from a Midwestern farm. She eventually was introduced to Cyril Kornbluth by Asimov, and she married him.

The girl who really "took," however, was Gertrude Bluger-man, a Toronto Miss whom Asimov met in Brooklyn on St. Valentine's Day in 1942 and married on July 26 that same year. Perhaps one secret of their marital success is, as Isaac put it: "As far as writing is concerned I am my own boss. She neither reads what I write nor offers advice nor in any way, directly or indirectly, guides my professional life. Around the house, it's another matter." Inordinately sensitive to even minor criticism, the last thing Asimov needed was a literary quarterback. Eventually there would be two children, David in 1951 and Robyn in 1955. Only weeks before the wedding, Robert A. Heinlein was instrumental in helping Asimov obtain his first important job, at Naval Aircraft Lab in Philadelphia where Heinlein was then working, as was L. Sprague de Camp. Asimov spent 1942 to 1945 as a chemist in the experimental laboratories. But neither marriage nor the new position affected Asimov's devotion to writing. He came to Campbell with the plot suggestion for a story based on the raise of a second galactic empire after the fall of the first. Asimov had just read Edward Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
and was mightily impressed. He had initially intended but one story but Campbell suggested a series. The Foundation Stories, as they since became known, were based on the "science" of psychohistory, a means of accurately projecting trends, in a highly specialized manner, thousands of years into the future. The method was perfected by a man named Hari Seldon who established two "Foundations" to speed the rebuilding of galactic civilization after its imminent collapse.

A related group of novelettes and novels, the series ran in astounding science-fiction intermittently from 1942 through 1949. When they were concluded they were gathered into three volumes by Gnome Press:
Foundation
(1951),
Foundation and Empire
(1952), and
Second Foundation
1953). The series, fundamentally, possesses the same appeal as Heinlein's "Future History." It adheres to a consistent pattern and a galactic frame of reference to which most of Asimov's major works, even those not part of the series, also conform.

The action is primarily cerebral. Everything that happens is the result of the machinations of a prime mover, shifting power elements like pieces on a chess board. In Asimov's own words: "It seems to me that the Conans are less apt to have permanent importance than the Richelieus. Even when a great conniver uses wars as a means to an end, they are only incidental and usually short." In this respect, physical action plays only a very minor role in most of Asimov's stories after 1942. There may be some relationship between this fact and the young Asimov who had no fondness for participation in sports. The most important characteristic of the Foundation sto-ries was not immediately obvious, possibly not even to Camp-bell and certainly not to the readers who ranked the first story in the series,
Foundation,
fourth in preference in the May, 1942, astounding science-fiction in which it ap-peared, well behind Robert Heinlein's
Beyond This Horizon,
A. E. van Vogt's
Asylum,
and Alfred Bester's
The Improba-ble Man.
What the Foundation series contributed to science fiction was a concept. There had been galactic empires de-scribed in science fiction before. Olaf Stapledon outlined them magnificently in
The Star Marker
and they were inherent in the background of Edward E. Smith's
Galactic Patrol,
but this was the first time that any author had the effrontery to insist that
all
the myriad worlds of the vast galactic cluster would be colonized and dominated by a single species—man!

The psychological basis for this concept does not rest in imaginative inertia but may be found in Asimov's primer for his own "Future History,"
The End of Eternity.
Rejected by the major magazines and finally published by Doubleday in 1955, it is the book that Asimov most enjoyed writing. Clearly inspired by John Russell Fearn's action epic
The Liners of Time
(amazing stories, May to August, 1935) and carrying echoes of A. E. van Vogt's
The Search,
it postulates a time traveling "foundation" whose members eventually change the past enabling human beings to conquer all the stars of our galaxy before alien intelligences can stop them. As the book nears its conclusion, Asimov, through one of his characters, states: