2023-05-06 01:36:27
July 1, 1958 Isaac Asimov (Petrovichi, 1920-New York, 1992) was very nervous. He was already a mature man and he perceived the unhappiness of his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman, with whom he shared his cigarette smoke, and two children. Boston University stopped paying his salary, where he had worked as a professor in the medical school thanks to William C. Boyd, an admirer expert in immunological chemistry.
I had no job and he was overwhelmed by the instability of the writing profession. But the gifted professor, the vain self, the atheistic spirit, the indomitable rationalist, the introducer of mystery in science fiction, if not modern science fiction itself, along with “greats” like Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, the absolute protagonist of the Hugo and Nébula awards (Grand Master included), the columnist of the magazine F&SFhe creator of the three laws of roboticsShakespeare and Bible expert, creator of humorous poems, series consultant Star Trekthe scientific popularizer, the historian, Isaac Asimov, had already laid the foundations of his revolution with works such as a pebble in the sky (1950), Yo, Robot (1950), the Foundation saga (started in 1951), The steel vaults (1954) y the naked sun (1957), among others.
Of course, many books would come later (up to nearly 500, including those in his Lucky Starr series, which he would sign with the pseudonym Paul French) and of course he would not stop delving into the bowels of knowledge, whatever the discipline, but Asimov, descendant of Russian Jews and son of the nascent country of the Soviets, could never forget his father’s candy store and the large Brooklyn Library, his New York neighborhood.
Sci-fi ‘Pulps’
That small shop, where he spent long hours thinking about the future of humanity, became his particular Rosebud. There he was formed lurching, with no more criteria than his reading passion, among the pulps science fiction and adventures iliad and the Odyssey. “Before the period of the pulps, there was the time of ‘dime novels’. I witnessed the end of that era. When my father bought the first store, he also sold some old, dusty, yellowed paperbacks featuring Nick Carter and Frank and Dick Merriwell,” he notes in I, Asimov. Memoriesone of his three books about his life published in 1994 (therefore posthumous) that would complete In memory still green (1979) y In the joy still felt (1980).
[Isaac Asimov: “Quizá acabemos como Don Quijote, que quiso vivir loco y morir cuerdo”]
That is why it was normal that in July 1958 Asimov was nervous. That year he would tear it in two. A new path began, already the definitive one, towards an Olympus in which he never wanted to enter. “As my success in chemistry waned my literary achievements kept increasing. and the very impression that it was extraordinary was entrenched more strongly (and perhaps more logically) than ever.
The Foundation Saga
It was already dragging numerous sales successes. History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empireby Edward Gibbon, was not only your bedside bookwas also one of his main sources of inspiration, capable of guiding (as he later guided with his legacy each episode of the Star Wars) to the smallest detail of the foundation saga -also The limits of the Foundation (1982), Foundation and Earth (1986), Foundation Prelude (1988) y Towards the Foundation (1993)–.
Unstoppable, methodical and propelled by publishers such as John Campbell and labels such as Doubleday, Asimov allowed himself to be swept away by characters such as Daneel Olivaw, detective Elijah Baley and the hero Hari Seldon, some of whom were also present in his robot saga –integrated by titles such as robots of dawn (1983) o robots and empire (1985), where he merges both series–. “The fact that my robots were evolving in each one of my books made it more difficult to prevent me from introducing them in my Foundation series,” he admits in Memories.
The ‘Black Widowers’
The impact of his prodigal imagination would reach the oxford dictionarywhich would accept among its entries terms such as ‘positronic’, ‘psychohistory’ and ‘robotics’ or at baptism of an asteroid with his name (5020). But perhaps his least known series, apart from science fiction, is that of the black widowers, where he openly cultivates his particular way of understanding the police genre: “I don’t like modern mystery stories about tough guys, suspense novels that are too violent or studies of criminal psychopathologies. I always prefer the ones that include a limited number of suspects and that are solved through reasoning and not with a clean shot.
That justifies that in titles like Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), The Black Widowers File (1980) y The riddles of the black widowers (1990) included the style and exquisite shapes that her admired Agatha Christie breathed into Hercule Poirot. Style (simple and clear) and intuitions that she had already distilled in characters like Golan Trevize, from the Foundation series.
To become night
One of his last hits (based on a 1941 short story) was, forebodingly, To become night (1990), a title written together with Robert Silverberg, another science fiction essential, in which he poses a hypothetical “blackout” on the planet Kalgash. Nightfall (English title) would give name to the company that he would manage together with Janet, his second wife, an income that began to be bulky thanks to his mammoth workwhich at the end of his days was immeasurable.
Isaac Asimov’s last years were marked by his heart problems (inherited from his father). She faced the first onslaught in 1977 but it was not until December 12, 1983 when, due to a coronary bypass, things began to get complicated. In a transfusion he was infected with HIV, that pathology that was not yet called AIDS and that only two years before the American organization for disease surveillance and prevention (CDC) had described as “a rare form of pneumonia.”
“What do I believe? Since I am an atheist and do not believe that there is a God or the devil, or heaven or hell, I can only assume that when I die all there will be is a eternity made of nothing. After all, the Universe existed fifteen billion years before I was born.” Asimov’s word.
#memoirs #master #science #fiction