Isaac Asimov on The David Letterman Show, October 21, 1980

[Music] my next guest most recent published work is his 220 first book I haven't written that many postcards the book is entitled enjoy still felt an autobiography welcome please dr. Isaac Asimov let's spend a minute here talking about the fact that you've written 221 books so far so far is that a compulsive behavior do I enjoy it you know why not sure but I say to myself Here I am i handsome writer yeah okay this schedule do you put into write that many books I get up in the morning you sit down and write when I finish right and go back to bed is is there one particular work that's a favorite for you out of all those publications well yes the one you've got right there is the second volume of my autobiography that in the first volume if you put them together is my favorite book because it's my favorite subject tell me a little bit about yourself what what would we need to know about you well once you've said 221 books that's it what else is there yeah I mean if you sit down and write that you haven't got time for anything else what are you working on now several things right now I'm working on my monthly essay for the magazine of fantasy and science fiction and when I get done with that I will go back to one of the books on in the middle of it is that your favorite topic area science and science fiction I suppose so though I also like to write mr. Eason like to write limericks mm-hmm like to write history books like to annotate like the Bible Shakespeare various other things what exactly does that mean when you annotate the Bible oh well you simply you simply cut me down all the will all the verses in the Bible and you make little footnotes and and say whatever you please nobody's one of your if you do it right the annotations are longer than the thing you're annotating I've got a book coming out called in the beginning in which I annotate the first eleven chapters of Genesis you can get the first eleven chapters on Genesis and maybe fifteen pages or so but the book is about two hundred pages long counting my Anna Terry why do you think there is now a real interest in in science and like these space movies Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back and Close Encounters oh well because the technology of the movie industry has reached the point where they can put in spectacular special effects and people enjoy watching those special effects yeah did you enjoy those two movies I enjoy Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back in fact I enjoyed the Empire Strikes Back so much that when they finished it I jumped off my seat and yelled stop the third part they have done that everything there they're projected like nine and I figure that at the rate they're going they'll do the last few after I'm dead which doesn't strike me as fair you know what I feel is in unfair at the height of the man space projects you know that was great because everyone's attention was focused on that and I wish we had something else like that to shoot for now do you think we backed away from the manned space program at the wrong time no yes absolutely the reason for that was that we had gone into space primarily to beat the Russians so when we got to the moon we had and so with true football fashion having scored the touchdown we went home yeah but the Russians are keeping right on going and sooner or later they'll do something spectacular and we'll get back in the race what do you think that that would be what spectacular thing could we look for well I suppose if they build a really large Space Station or they put up their version of the shuttle and make it work while we're still fussing around with ours then all of a sudden Congress will pour a lot of money into it and we'll get going again yeah what would be the next logical step after we put a man on the moon and say we wanted to continue putting men places where would we put our next man well we ought to stay here and the Earth Moon system for a while and get it really developed we have to ought to build space stations we have to build space settlements get some power stations in our build some factories get a mining station on the moon and once we've got a real space civilization going then we can explore further from a good strong space space is that speaking as a science fiction writer or a man who has studied the needs and what space can provide us no I think that's speaking as a real human being yeah have you ever written about things and then seen them come true occasionally yes I described a spacewalk in 1952 and when they did it some years later turned out to be exactly the way I described it wasn't very difficult I described pocket computers in 1950 got the appearance exactly right he talked about space stations getting energy down to earth in 1940 and got that almost right I put the put it in Mercury's orbit instead of the moon's orbit to get it closer to the Sun maybe someday we'll do that I predicted that the opposition to the space race and it was yeah so but these are little things I never tried to predict I just tried to write stories that would sell so I could pay my way through a fallacy that whole phenomenon with phenomenon with computers and digital stuff it used to be I could pretty well figure out any clock radio not so anymore it's all advanced to the point where you really have to sit down and leave the lousy book to figure these things out and it seems like things are getting more and more complex for just getting by day to day well it always happens that way things get more complex to do more and then as the technology advances further it gets simpler again until the next quantum jump and then it becomes complex again yeah I remember when radios first came out see you're too young for them and when radios first came out it was next to impossible to tune them now you know just turn them on mm-hmm I remember when television first came out you had to have a live-in television repairman now you just turned it on if anything goes wrong with it it means you buy a new said when the the radios did come out they were like the size of a Buick in some cases and now I'm you can get them just about that big its unless you want to walk down the street playing at the top of the range then it's back to the viewers yeah that's a whole different situation here in New York City we have to pause for a couple of commercials we'll be back [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] about among other things is prolific work as a writer this represents 221 books published what what kind of hardware do you have in your home to keep this thing moving various typewriters yeah is about all you just get up and wander from room to room type a little and then type a little and type a little no there's just one typewriter and the other three just sit there in case something happens to the one I can't grab under the other three is it possible to write more than one book at a time well not simultaneously but I've got three different books in various stage that's what I mean do you ever how do you keep everything straight well as long as it's nonfiction there's no trouble you just or at least for me there's no trouble if it were fiction I'd have to work on one book I don't think I could manage two fiction books I'd get confused in the plots yeah I want to get back to talking about your feelings about new developments in certain areas for example in the next five to ten to fifteen years in medicine why it seems to me that the important discoveries will be how to fiddle around with genes so as to perhaps correct some of the diseases we that are congenital maybe instead of treating diabetes with insulin we can fix up a gene so that you make your own maybe perhaps we can get rid of some other conditions like that how would that be administered you you get like an inoculation at birth or the parents get in early how would that happen well I suppose that eventually we'll reach the stage where children who as born will have a genetic analysis and that you could then try to do something like that graft the necessary genes into the pancreas for instance and hope that they'll do sufficient work to prevent the eventual development of the diabetes that's a very risky area to be experimenting with isn't it yes and presumably they'll do their best of animals before they try anything on human beings you could you could alter or add to or detract from any characteristic of a human that one couldn't you well in theory yes but you know you have to work up the technology to a high pitch of excellence and we're just at the beginning of that now yeah and what what signals the beginning what have we done so far well we've been working mostly with bacteria mm-hmm that's how far we are and we've managed to engineer bacteria so to speak so that particular bacteria can form chemicals that they themselves naturally wouldn't make but we insert the genes for it so that we can now have bacteria making human insulin diabetics now take insulin obtained from domestic I slaughtered domestic animals which is not exactly like human insulin it does the work but you could you could get allergic to it and now we have human insulin which we can get from bacteria yeah have I heard correctly about a synthetic insulin or is that what you're speaking of well in a sense its synthetic in that it's manufactured as a result of human agency but it's exactly like human insulin and the body can't tell the difference what about cancer research any breakthroughs there well heaven only know so you've been waiting for one for thirty years at least maybe fifty and we can never can never tell when it'll come but it isn't here yet what about the weapons race well now they keep talking about space weapons about using about using laser beams or ion beams things like that against satellites and you'll have either killer satellites doing the job or stations on earth and as long as the satellites are unmanned I suppose it doesn't do any harm to shoot them down but I figure that the best weapons research is no weapons research yeah you don't foresee that happening though I guess huh oh well I imagine that I imagined that in 30 years we'll have a situation in which there won't be any worse either that or there won't be any us hmm let's get to the matter of communications developments we were unable to place a call here to Missouri on a fairly sophisticated piece of equipment you see any monumental breakthroughs in the area of communications well there are monumental breakthroughs that are underway now in terms of communication satellites and optical fibers and I imagine that more and more will be using laser beams for communicating rather than either electrical currents or radio waves and it will then be possible to have millions literally millions of times as many messages carried on a on a wire or on a beam as we now can so that everyone can possibly have their own television channel the way they all now have our own telephone numbers and closed-circuit television will become the great thing and everything from education to research will be done by by way of communication communication devices the book is called enjoy still felt which is part two of your autobiography correct right part one was in memory yet green that had a said autobiography of Isaac Asimov 1922 1954 with a black border made my wife very nervous you hadn't even met me in 1954 she kept saying who's this imposter dr. Isaac Asimov thank you very much doctor for being River [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Don Giller

Views: 364,946

Rating: 4.9603534 out of 5

Keywords: The David Letterman Show, Isaac Asimov

Id: 365kJOsFd3w

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/doubletwist]

Love Asimov. I think it's great how close he got near the end discussing advances in communications and fiber optics. Not quite "closed circuit television" but with modern technology and Youtube we basically have exactly what he described. Everyone on the planet is/can be their own television station.

[u/making-flippy-floppy]

Just saw this linked over on Hacker News, and thought it might be of interest here.

[u/Stegopossum]

I like to think that there must be at least one living person who has read all of his books.

[u/StrikitRich1]

For what it's worth, that was David Letterman's afternoon talk show before Late Night. I remember sometimes watching it with my grandmother after school, which proves that my then 70s something grandmother was hip before the suits at GE.

[u/Matthewandbeth]

What a guy!

[u/warragh]

Thank you so much for this

[u/plasma1147]

wow, what a smart and interesting man. So much respect for this guy. One of my favorite authors.

[u/UltraFlyingTurtle]

Thanks for much for this. His writings, not just his fiction, but also his editorials in his magazine as well as the little introduction to stories in his anthologies, were so integral to my childhood.

[u/plasma1147]

no fucking way, this is so awesome