Isaac Asimov interview (1975)

I am Simon Borgen we are with dr. Isaac Asimov a biochemist who may be the most widely read of all science fiction writers he is written 155 books and hundreds of magazine articles and short stories dr. s MOFs books are translated wherever books are published and there is no such thing as an asthma book that doesn't sell there is also no such thing as a doll as a math book and it would be hard to find a writer with wider interests his work includes science fiction Greek and Roman history mystery novels fiction and nonfiction for teenagers and a whole corpus of books interpreting Science and Technology for the layman dr. Asimov has co-authored a medical textbook and there is azimoff's guide to shakespeare and as most guide to the bible as well as a history of the United States as a professional biochemist dr. azmuth is unique among science fiction writers but it might be more accurate as simply to say that dr. azmuth is unique he was born in Russia near Smolensk and brought to New York at the age of 3 he was 9 working in his father's candy store in Brooklyn when he sneaked the copy of amazing stories from the magazine stand and confronted spaceships for the first time he had already scribbled his first novel the Greenville chums at college into a five-cent copy book a brilliant student and possessed of a phenomenal memory Asimov entered Columbia University at 15 he sold his first science fiction story at 18 by the term he had worked as a navy chemist during World War 2 and returned to Columbia to get his doctorate he was earning his living by writing science fiction he sold his first book in 1949 just as he joined Boston University Medical School to teach biochemistry after 10 years of teaching dr. ossama found that it was confining to be able to write only on weekends and he quit teaching so that he could devote writing doctor a smash readers will no doubt find it painful to think of how much they might have lost at Boston University continued to claim five sevenths of doctor asthma in the past 15 years dr. asthma as current rate of writing he will have produced 200 books by 1918 he isn't likely to tire or to slow down doctor asthma idea of a vacation is being left alone at his typewriter doctor Asimov at a time when science and technology are producing the almost incredible every day how does a science fiction writers stay ahead of things well he doesn't really have to I mean everything that science does gives him new plots right now for instance a science fiction writer can write perfectly amazing stories concerning black holes five years ago the science fiction writer never heard of black holes and yet many people who who look back to what was predicted by science fiction writers in the 1930s simply because these things have arrived they believe that that science fiction writers are out of anything to write well you're right you see people think that what we used to write about is what we have to keep on writing about not at all what we wrote about in the old days is now passing will write about new things I I think you said somewhere along the way that whereas you used to write about these things and amazing stories now you write about them in the New York Times you're right about the colonies on the moon for instance about robots well back in 1939 you publish the story that dealt with the first flight around the moon and back Frank Borman and his Apollo 8 crew actually carried this mission out in 1968 you placed the story in 1974 how does a science fiction writer feel when something like that happens well it makes them feel very good I'm a little annoyed with myself because I was so conservative you see I'm six years behind and also I didn't allow for all the various things we did before then men in flight men docking mid-course corrections I just had someone get in 'we ship and go around one man and that makes me feel as though i wish i could do it more often but as a matter of fact we go through all my books you'll find that the number of things i've spoken about that have really come true are very small that probably goes for other science fiction writers as well oh yes when people talk about how science fiction writers predict the present it's because they've gone through a large corpus of work and picked out certain things we can't just predict there isn't enough story material and straight prediction we make up futures it doesn't matter whether we really think they'll come to pass or not but we ask ourselves only will this be interesting to deal with it well let's make a nice story and then if some of them do come true well good I think you wrote an essay called flight called escape from fantasy to characterize what you thought the essence of science fiction was most people think it's a flight into fantasy I think the title is escape to reality escape to reality I'm sorry well that's because you see when you think of the future you try to make it as close a bill as possible back in 1933 for instance there was science fiction stories dealing with a world in which all the oil and coal had been burned up well the youngsters who read that story in 1933 including myself took it seriously at least I did and I said my goodness what happens if we do burn up all the oil and coal that's the first time that ever occurred to me that this might be a problem so that on and off I worried about using up our fossil fuel supplies for the last 40 years most of the world virtually all the world has only started worrying about it a few months ago you know I read a comment recently by a Russian scientist about an HG Wells story it's called when the sleeper wakes they hear awake who is gone to be gone to sleep in London in 1900 wakes up 200 years later and 2100 and he finds that London's power is being supplied by huge wind powered machines over London there are airplanes about the size of the first dc-dc trees and the scientists comment was the imagination of science fiction writers is certainly limited well that's true back in 1848 Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story set a thousand years in the future in 28:48 and in it he had transatlantic aeronautical voyages only in balloons going a hundred miles an hour in other words in his day there were balloons so his vision of the future was a faster balloons if a New Guinea native thought of a future in which you could communicate between continents he think of very loud drums you see it's very difficult really to visualize the real future well this raises the question of why science-fiction writers are constantly going into outer space and to the moon and past them to the planets do they go there because that's where the future is going to be or was going to be or or do they go there because as a device of the novelist to set up a controlled environment I suppose is a little truth in both the entire history of mankind has been that of crossing the hilltop to see what's in the next Valley mankind has been exploring the earth over thousands of years somehow just because we have now explored the entire earth even Antarctica and Greenland it seems a shame to stultify this impulse of ours and the next thing to explore is the moon and the planets that's one thing it's sort of an analogy from the past and extrapolation forward but then another thing the environments on these other planets are made to order for our purposes strange environments the possibility of new forms of life this takes the place of stories in the old days about mysterious islands in the Pacific or hidden civilizations in the Amazon Valley and so on you couldn't produce that kind of heightened consciousness if you set your story New York City for instance no it gives us an interesting background and then of course no matter how strange the background is what goes on in the foreground should if it's a good story illuminate the human condition one of your stories one of your books suggested something so fantastic as a nuclear submarine floating within the bloodstream so that the crew could do an operation on the human brain what story was that that was fantastic voyage and it was an unusual book of mine in the sense that I'm not responsible for it they made the movie without me but then they came to me and asked me what I novelize it and after a certain amount of discussion I agreed to and I wrote the novel based on the movie script is is there anything to the suggestion scientifically is there anything to the suggestion of that story that you can experiment on biological miniaturization no I don't think really that's possible scientifically the movie people didn't worry about it they simply reduced everything in size but when I came to write the book and knowing a little something about atomic physics I realized that if you allowed these miniature human beings to be built up of ordinary atoms they just simply wouldn't be enough atoms in their tiny tiny brain to make the brain complex enough to be a human brain so that I also had to miniaturize the atoms as well now there is no known way of doing this and I had to use a kind of plausible gobbledygook in the book to account for it but then you see in science fiction you're allowed to depart from scientific possibility provided you know that you are departing from it and can explain it the reader will go along with you into the realm of fantasy if you will give them an excuse but to do it without realizing you are going into fantasy is insulting to the intelligent reader I expect they came to you however at least partly because of your familiarization with thee with the human body after all you're a professional biochemist well they they wanted somebody who would make the entire project sound plausible and I did my best and they felt I was qualified to do that and I hated to tell them anything else so I said yes I am dr. Asimov a writer who turns out four thousand manuscript words a day book upon magazine article upon book I would seem to be in some kind of race well I'm not it seems so but it isn't so actually what it amounts to is that I'm not happy except on I'm writing it's the only way it's almost the only way I can think of to spend my time pleasantly and so I'm naturally drawn to the typewriter at all times the day is lost in which I don't take deadlines hold no terror for you know because I I know that if I have an article to write I can generally write it without trouble whenever I sit down so if there's an article that must be written within say two weeks as there happens to be Mon I'm not concerned because sometime before the two weeks is up I'll sit down and what every day I sit down on by the end of that day the article will be written a colleague of yours once said that if he read all of your book they wouldn't have time to write any himself well it's reversed in my case considering how much I write I'm having very little time in which to read anyone else's I think it's a book guy a book a month for the last for the last four and a half years it's been a book a month I mean it's not something I've set myself as a goal I just worked it back and I said my goodness it's a book a month I think there's a general impression that the best science fiction writers are American and British is that your opinion well it's hard for me to say I read science fiction only in English and I my own surroundings my own circle of friends of the english-speaking science fiction writers but I know for instance that right now Stanislaw LEM a Polish science fiction writer is considered one of the best in the world and there are there are science fiction writers in the Soviet Union that are highly thought of and I suspect that in time to come more and more there'll be a diminution of the rent of the of the of the english-speaking domination of the field more and more we will be aware of non English science fiction dr. eyes mouth would you have been in favor of sending a science fiction writer to the moon as an astronaut well maybe but not this science fiction writer I am not only too old I'm too scared well what might we have gotten that we haven't gotten assuming that a science fiction writer qualified as an astronaut I would say we might have gotten a more dramatic description of what had happened the astronauts we do have tend to be extremely stable individuals who simply by the mere fact that they are not afraid to undergo this to me absolutely terrifying experience means that they can look at everything where they kind of calm I in addition to which they are not chosen for their poetic flights of the imagination there's no reason they should be so that it is enough for them to describe something as gee it's beautiful and if you have a science fiction writer there he might have instead of Gia's beautiful written some five thousand worries of gorgeous description memorable prose yeah that's I might've said you know I think everybody is interested in the Three Laws of Robotics could you explain those well back in 1939 I began writing robot stories and by the time I'd written two and three there was a pattern in these stories which john campbell the editor of astounding science fiction and my literary father pointed out to me he said I was having my robots behave as though they were guided by three laws the first law was that a robot couldn't hurt a human being or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm the second law was that a robot had to obey orders given it by human beings provided that didn't conflict with the first law and the third law was that a robot had to protect its own existence except where that would conflict with the first two laws and after that I always use them and the story's evolved out of those three laws out of the in the mutual contradictions out of the ambivalences the incongruities and so on the interesting thing is that scientists say that when robots are built that they may be built according to these laws and also that almost all science fiction writers have adopted them as well in their story that's true about the science fiction writers adopting them they are now taken for granted no writer actually quotes them except myself but the readers are so used to it now that they know it then they take it for granted and they somebody writing in an architectural journal pointed out that these laws hold for tools generally number one a tool must be safe to use and to provided it is safe to use it's got to do what you wanted to do and third provided it is safe to use and it does what you want to who's got a last but could your Three Laws of Robotics be overloaded on the side of humanism there are those who believe that the machines we create are going to be Frankenstein's well of course the Three Laws of Robotics were originally invented by me in order to avoid the Frankenstein motive because before I wrote my stories most robot stories were filled with this Frankenstein bit about the robot destroying its creator there are some things that men were not meant to know however having worked with the 3los for now for thirty-five years practically I was asked to write a robot story to end all robot stories so I wrote one which robots became so intelligent that by any reasonable definition they defined themselves as human beings you see so that now the three laws of robots be robotics became the Three Laws of humanics and we're right back to the Frankenstein motif I received letters from readers saying does this mean you're never going to write anymore robot stories and I wrote back saying don't worry if I think of a good robot story I'll write it anyway tell me does it disturb you that that science fiction has been taken over by the academicians I think there are about a hundred universities that now teach science fiction is literature there are students in various universities writing doctoral thesis about Isaac Asimov there are science fiction textbooks yes it is frightening for two different reasons in the first place as you say people are now getting master's degrees and working for their doctorates analyzing my my stories there is a course given in the university of dayton ohio entitled the science fiction of Isaac Asimov three points three college credits in fact the guy who gave that course is publishing a book on my science fiction and it frightens me because I'm not sure that I can stand up under all this scrutiny well the question is whether the body of science fiction can stand up as well whether the delight will remain one of the professor's said since I've been teaching it I don't enjoy reading it as much well you know that's a very important factor when I started writing it I stopped enjoying it as much as I did before and eventually after I've been writing it for twenty years I found I wasn't reading science fiction anymore that's one of the reasons I don't write as much now as I you still I feel the field has gotten away with way from me and with academicians interested in the field has become so quote literary unquote that it frightens me now I feel I'm not competent to write science fiction because I don't know that much about literature what is it that draws readers to science fiction my own feeling is that science fiction is the relevant literary form for today of all the different types of fiction science fiction is the only one which takes as its basic assumption that societies are going to change and which sets its stories against a different a fundamentally different Society is something with with great differences in it that whether it's time travel whether it's overcrowded miss whether it's space Travel whatever it's not the present society and there was a phrase you used and I think what was your first your very first novel you talked about the awful powers of darkness is that is the whole question of magic and fantasy and mystery and myths what brings people to it as well some people have that theory mm-hmm but I don't I said because there is real fantasy now there is there are the Christmas the Lord of the Rings that trilogy there is to order you know token one watership down right now is an excellent fantasy by fellow called Adams people who want that can still find it undiluted no I think science fiction refers to different societies which are connected to ours through scientific and technological change there is always that feeling that we are heading right now rapidly into changing societies people who are young people today know that when they're middle-aged life will be nothing like what it is now and science fiction gives them an opportunity to try on different societies it's the only thing that's relevant anything which deals with the world of today is going to be have no meaning to young people of today when say 30 years from now a personal no dr. Asimov it's been known to your friends for years that you that you were almost totally allergic to travel and that you don't like airplanes in fact you don't ride on airplanes yes I'm afraid that so everyone thinks it's very funny because in my stories I go to the ends of the galaxy and yet I won't get into an airplane well there's the question of the one of the most eloquent advocates of Technology refusing or resisting one of the most common products of it well there may be a connection I mean going to the ends of the galaxy I feel a sort of anticlimactic to fly to another city actually I'm not I'm not very brave and I'm afraid of airplane crashes and I don't like to travel anyway keeps me away from my typewriter dr. Asimov most people when they think about the future try to reach out to the year 2000 let's try it 500 years from now what kind of planet do you see one of two depending on what happens by the year 2000 if by the year 2000 we have not solved the problems that face us today then I would say 500 years we'll see a world containing a technological civilization in ruins in which there will be a relatively small number of human beings sort of surviving and with New York City is the most magnificent ruin in the history of the human race the other if we succeed if we succeed in solving our problems today than 500 years now we can well be living in a kind of utopia a world with a relatively small population carefully husbanding their resources with a working colony on the moon and perhaps on mars reaching out to the entire solar system taking advantage of advances in technology we now can't even imagine living under conditions which when they look back on the present they will be horrified and wonder how we could have survived thank you dr. Asimov I am Simon Borden [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Humanoid History

Views: 7,979

Keywords: asimov, isaac asimov, interview, talk show, science fiction, science, future, futurism, tech, technology, robotics, robot, robots, scifi, sci-fi, syfy, ciencia ficcion, fantascienza, space age, 1970s, seventies, chemistry, 1975, sy bourgin

Id: G3_Df2qmuHs

Length: 23min 40sec (1420 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2019