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"Marooned off Vesta" by Isaac Asimov
in Amazing Stories, March 1939 |
Uncertain about the exact date of his birth,
Isaac Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2nd and my plan is to celebrate 100 years of Asimov early next year (2020). However, here in 2019, we can celebrate the 80 year history of Asimov's science fiction stories being in print. Previously, I commented on Asimov's first published story (March 1939), "
Marooned Off Vesta".
In 1939, Asimov was a young man trying to get into medical school. Four years ago, I wrote a story called "
The Asimov Reality" which described an alternate
Reality in which Asimov got help from an Interventionist agent (
Svahr) who made it possible for Asimov to attend medical school. However, in our Reality, Asimov instead studied chemistry at the post-graduate level. This career path forced Asimov to take a physical chemistry course and that soon led to Asimov's famous imaginary science of
Psychohistory.
Alternate History
It is very difficult for me to imagine all of the challenges that Asimov overcame when he started writing science fiction stories for publication. According to the Asimov legend, his first Sci Fi story was called "
Cosmic Corkscrew", a time travel story that Asimov submitted for publication in 1938. That story was rejected and it was never published. It would be fun to have a chance to read "Cosmic Corkscrew".
In March of this year, as part of my story called "
The Zal Intervention", I imagined that the typed manuscript of "Cosmic Corkscrew" was "lost" when an Interventionist agent stole it from Asimov in 1947. That theft was part of the
Reality Change that created the
Final Reality.
Telesensory
Another early story that Asimov had trouble publishing was "
The Secret Sense". In that story (download
here), Asimov imagined that the human brain has a latent capacity to sense electric fields. In later stories, Asimov would go on to explore the idea that some
positronic robots and some special humans might develop the ability to sense patterns of electrical activity. In Asimov's stories about telepathic robots and telepathic
Second Foundationers, the ability to sense electric fields in human brains was what could endow a being such as
Daneel with a telepathic "sense": the ability to "read thoughts" and detect emotions. Not only could Daneel detect another person's thoughts, he could even reach into the mind of another person to alter their on-going brain activity, a type of mind control.
"The Secret Sense" was written in 1939 and submitted for publication in
Astounding. Editor
John Campbell rejected the story, but it was finally published (March 1941) in an obscure pulp magazine called
Cosmic Stories.
Look at those covers for the March 1939
Amazing Stories and the March 1941
Cosmic Stories (above, right) The
Amazing cover depicts a "raid from Mars" with humanoid aliens in a war machine. The
Cosmic cover shows another battle scene; nine months later, the United States would formally enter into
World War II.
Escapism
As a sister publication along with
Cosmic Stories, another new pulp Sci Fi magazine that started in 1941 was
Stirring Science Stories. Asimov was a fairly prolific writer of letters to the pulp magazines that he read. In a letter that was published in the
second issue of
Stirring Science Stories, Asimov wrote the following:
"
Sure, I'm an escapist. So what! Take a look at the awful mess around us. Don't you want to escape?"
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| The Escapist Clan. |
I like to imagine that there has been an
analogue of Isaac Asimov in every Reality of Earth's
Reality Chain. Back in the
First Reality, the Asimov analogue was a member of the
Escapist Clan and among the first humans to ever write science fiction stories.
Only one member of the Escapist Clan had a normal human morphology:
Gohrlay. The other Clan members were humans, but they had been modified by developmental control nanites so as to take on a physical form that mimicked that of the hermaphroditic
Prelands.
Asimov may have been a self-declared escapist, but other writers of science fiction took escapism to a whole new level. In his time travel novel,
The End of Eternity, Asimov wrote imaginatively about alternate Realities, but science fiction story writer Philip K. Dick developed the idea that the shared existence of our day-to-day reality is some kind of cosmic deception that shields us from another, deeper, true reality.
In a strange twist of fate, Philip K. Dick was first exposed to science fiction by reading an issue of
Stirring Science Stories. In the first edition of
Stirring Science Stories, there was a full-page advertisement for
Cosmic Stories that mentioned Isaac Asimov. Dick also read
Astounding and
Unknown and while he read stories by Asimov, Dick was more strongly influenced by other Sci Fi writers such as Alfred Vogt. I previously commented on Dick's 1954 story "
The Golden Man", but I've read very few stories by Dick... I'm more the Asimov hard science fiction type of Sci Fi fan.
Last month, in August, as part of my annual celebration of the science fiction stories that were written by
Jack Vance, I wrote a story called "The Qua Intervention". Both Jack Vance and Philip Dick are characters in that story. "
The Qua Intervention" is set in the time when Vance was attending UC Berkley and Dick was regularly attending Sci Fi fan club meetings at a nearby high school.
For the
Exode Saga, I imagine that Dick was the original "
Editor", the special human who was selected to tell the people of Earth all about the
Secret History of Humanity: how alien
Interventionists had long guided the course of human civilization on Earth. In my imagination, Dick had the ability to use the
Bimanoid Interface and so he was able to telepathically receive information from sources inside the
Hierion Domain. However, at the last minute, a better alternative was found (a new "Editor") and so Dick was abandoned by the Interventionists and that is why he was forced to invent his own explanations for the strange ideas that popped into his head, mysteriously arriving from the Hierion Domain.
Psychology
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| Solaris in an alternate Reality (source) |
By all accounts, Philip Dick had a difficult childhood. During some parts of his life he (over)used
amphetamines and other drugs. In college, he apparently took some psychology classes (among other subjects), but he never graduated. I can offer no diagnosis of Dick's mental state, but others have written about the possibility that he flirted with
Schizophrenia. For me, Dick seems "custom made" to serve as an imagined target for alien Interventionists who unsuccessfully tried to use him to pass information to the rest of humanity.
It would be interesting to know the extent to which John
Campbell's interest in psychology led writers such as Asimov and A. E. van Vogt to devise stories that would scratch this particular itch.
Earlier this month, I wrote down
my thoughts about the novel
Solaris by Stanisław Lem. While reading
Solaris at the age of 14, I was baffled by Lem's choice to depict the main character in his novel as being a psychologist. It is easy to imagine that during his medical school training, Lem had known working psychologists. Maybe it was obvious to Lem that it should be a psychologist who would be best prepared to make
First Contact with an alien creature on a distant planet. Alternatively, I can't avoid imagining the possibility that Lem was deeply troubled by the efforts of psychologist to understand human behavior. Maybe the writing of
Solaris was a way for Lem to point out the futility of psychology as science of behavior when it treats the human brain as a black-box.
Unlike the perspective on psychology afforded to Lem by his medical background, the young Isaac Asimov had a different kind of exposure to psychology.
Homo Sol
I don't know how Asimov first became so interested in psychology when he was in school. Apparently he had a
National Youth Administration (work-study) job working for a psychology professor, so he may have gotten interested in psychology while he was in his second year of
college. Starting in 1892 under the leadership of James Catell, Columbia University became a center for experimental psychology. Psychologists at Columbia when Asimov was there included people such as
Edward Thorndike. I wonder if Asimov read about some of the biophysics researchers at Columbia. Kenneth Cole arrived at Columbia university in 1937 and published research on
squid axonal electrical signals with
Howard Curtis. Cole devised equations that could be used to study the
electrical properties of tissues. Asimov was taking physical chemistry in the fall of 1939 and it is easy to imagine Asimov being impressed by the application of mathematical equations to biological systems such as neurons and their action potentials.
Asimov's story
Homo Sol was written early during his studies for a Masters Degree in chemistry, at the end of 1939. Asimov was trying to earn money from his Sci Fi story writing to help pay for his education. The main character in the story is an alien psychologist named Tan Porus. However, Porus is not
too alien. As a Rigellian, he is relatively tall (about 5 feet tall) and has green eyes. The story begins on Eon, second planet of Arcturus, a center of psychology research within the Galactic Federation of humanoids. Tan Porus is hard at work studying a "
damned freak squid from Beta Draconis IV" when his work is interrupted by a news flash: the humanoids of
Sol have just developed interstellar space travel and they are soon to be invited to join the Federation.
The psychology research of Tan Porus involves much use of the
slide rule (with some help from experts in the Mathematics Department) to do calculations and solve equations that describe animal behavior. What sort of equations? In the words of Dr. Santins of the math department, the "
damnedest sort of screwy equations I’ve ever seen". Central to the story is "Kraut’s Law", a behavioral rule that is thought to apply to all humanoids, but the humans of Earth seem to defy "
Kraut’s Law". The story in
Homo Sol is silly and makes little sense, but it is of historical interest because when sold to Campbell for publication in
Astounding, it helped pay for Asimov's first year in graduate school. Also, the use of equations to predict behavior foreshadows the later development of the mathematical science of "Psychohistory" as it soon appeared in Asimov's famous
Foundation Saga.
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Harey and Dr. Snout (1972)
"What damned freak alien made
her clothing with no zipper?" |
I have no idea if Lem ever read
Homo Sol, but I've never heard a good explanation for why Lem called the cybernetician in
Solaris "Dr. Snout". Asimov's
Homo Sol is one of the many egregious depictions of a galaxy full of humanoid aliens who all evolved on various planets and who all reached the same technological level within a few thousand years of each other. It is easy to imagine Lem, reading such stories and reacting against their silliness; he may have then created the non-humanoid life form of planet Solaris.
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| The Great Debate |
And if Asimov could write about a psychologist named Porus violating "Kraut’s Law" in the run-up to the U.S.A. entering
World War II, the why shouldn't Lem name the cybernetician in
Solaris, "Snout"? The psychologist in
Solaris was named Dr. Kelvin, which I can't help imagining was a name selected by Lem so as to be similar to Asimov's famous robopsychologist,
Dr. Calvin.
Kelvin's wife was named "Harey". Why "Harey"? I suspect that Lem had read some of the Foundation stories and knew about Asimov's character "Hari" Seldon. Asimov attributed the creation of Psychohistory to the mathematician who he named
Hari Seldon.
Why did Lem decide to call an exoplanet "Solaris"? I like to call the alien inhabitants of Solaris the "
Solarians". In
Homo Sol, Asimov calls we humans the "Solarians".
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| The dead hand of Hari Seldon. Interior art by Manuel Isip |
Old Age
Sadly, Asimov's Foundation Saga has not aged very gracefully. Motivated by Asimov's reading about the fall of the Roman Empire, his account of the fall of a Galactic Empire reads like a a fictionalized version of politics in New York City of the 1930s.
Imagine that you live 50,000 years in our future, long after humans have spread from Earth to 25,000,000 other planets of the Galaxy. For 10,000 years all those worlds have lived together as part of a single political unit: the Galactic Empire.
Now, imagine that you are put in charge of a project aimed at recording all human knowledge. Strangely, nobody has ever thought of doing this before! However, you dive into the project and spend 50 years collecting the vast amount of information (kept in "vast storehouses of reference
films) that is available and you are now finally ready to start publishing the results, one volume at a time, just as encyclopedias were published back in the ancient era of Earth, before space flight. And there you sit at your desk, using a stylus to write "scrapingly" across sheets of paper. Such is the life of Lewis Pirenne as described by Asimov in his 1942 story,
Foundation.
Here in 2019, when we increasingly avoid using money and often use electronic monetary transactions, we wonder if the day is not too far off when conventional money in the form of coins and paper bills will be abandoned.
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Salvor Hardin and Rodric exchange ceremonial blasters.
Notice the Hi Tek spaceship. |
And yet, in "Foundation", the political head of planet Terminus (Terminus is the home of Pirenne's great Encyclopedia Galactica project) pulls a metal coin out of his vest pocket and casually flips it into the air. Metal is on Salvor Hardin's mind because, like some ancient metal-poor nation of Earth, Terminus needs to import metal from distant sources in the Empire. As Mayor of Terminus City, population 1,000,000, Hardin must deal with Anselm haut Rodric, envoy from the nearby newly-independent province of Anacreon. To demonstrate good will, when Rodric lands at the Terminus spaceport, he and Hardin exchange "blasters".
It all reads like the kind of diplomatic saber-ratting that Asimov must have witnessed in the run-up to
World War II. Picture neutral Switzerland dealing with an envoy from Nazi Germany. In the interior artwork by
Manuel Isip, Rodric's spaceship looks like a
World War II era bomber.
In 1942, it was hard to keep military topics out of science fiction. Campbell's
May 1942 editorial in
Astounding had nothing to do with Sci Fi, it was about the chemistry of explosives and shifting automobile gasoline consumption towards arms production.
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City Councilman Slavor Hardin in 50,932.
Notice the Hi Tek transportation equipment
on the street in Terminus City. |
After I read the "Foundation Trilogy" in the early 1970s, I threw away my copy of
Foundation, but I kept my copies of
Foundation and Empire and
Second Foundation. For me, the Foundation Saga did not really get going until
the Mule walked on stage.
Few things bore me more than
fictional politics, and there was plenty of it in
Foundation. Also, I did not buy the whole "
Church of Science" religion explanation for how Terminus was able to control the nearby Kingdoms of the Galactic Periphery.
Asimov had put himself in a difficult situation: he needed to tell 1,000 years of "future history" and he wanted to do so through the eyes of just a few major characters, the first being Mayor Hardin. The plot called for the near-instantaneous creation of a new religion by Hardin, which had to be accomplished within 30 years. That makes no sense, unless there is some unseen force at work, off stage.
Eventually, Asimov realized that as originally constructed, his "future history" did not make sense and he later
retro-fitted the Foundation Saga by telling readers that Daneel the telepathic robot and his army of robotic helpers was there, helping assure the survival of the Foundation.
It would be interesting to know to what extent Asimov's "Church of Science" influenced the creation of the "
Church of Scientology". Hubbard's stated goal of "A civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights, are the aims of Scientology" sounds good, but achieving it by creating a new space opera-based religion seems like a story idea ripped right out of the pages of
Astounding Science-Fiction magazine, or possibly
a silly fantasy in the pages of
Unknown.
Imagine looking at the table of contents for the
May 1942 Astounding...
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| Which story would you read first? |
Had I gazed upon these story blurbs (above), I suspect my
last choice among the three listed novelettes would have been Asimov's "Foundation". Given my interest in the
Fermi Paradox, that description of "Asylum" would leap out at me.
Asylum
There are "Galactic
Observers" in "Asylum", watching over Earth and guiding human civilization into the future. Sadly, "Asylum" should have been called "The
Vampire Case" because two aliens, Merla and Jeel (the
Dreeghs of Galactic Civilization) arrive on Earth, sneak past the Observers and start sucking the blood of unsuspecting Earthlings.
"Asylum" reads like a sequel to Asimov's own "Homo Sol". The Earthlings are on the brink of being given knowledge of the Galactic Civilization that they have long been prevented from knowing about. Unlike Asimov's alien humanoids in
Homo Sol, A. E. van Vogt did not even bother giving the various humanoids of his Galactic Civilization different hair styles and ear shapes. However, A. E. van Vogt made a big deal out of the fact that different humanoids might have different IQs, with the poor humans of Earth at the bottom of the intelligence scale.
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Merla and Jeel probe Leigh's mind,
making use of a "psychograph report"
created by a "mechanical psychologist". |
"Asylum" has aged slightly better than "Foundation". For one thing, this story is only set a hundred years or so into Earth's space age, not 50,000. The ace reporter (Leigh) in "Asylum" who covers "The Vampire Case" has a Hi Tek
Dick Tracy wrist radio that he uses to stay in touch with his editor.
Sadly, in this future Earth (where folks routinely travel to the planets and the moons of Jupiter) they still distribute Big News Stories to the masses by means of thousands of Newspaper Companies that distribute printed newspapers to everyone in the Solar System. One saving grace: A. E. van Vogt describes what seems to be a personal computer in Leigh's bedroom.
There is also an apparently computerized device called a "mechanical psychologist" that can (when used with "psycho-gas") be used to reveal a person's unconscious memories.
The Sting
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Start of the Golden Age of Sci Fi?
July 1939, cover art by James Gladney |
The low-IQ Earthlings remain ignorant of the fact that aliens secretly visit Earth. Good ole Professor Ungarn can spot a spaceship "18 light years out" and speeding towards Earth, but hearing of this raises no suspicion in Leigh. Readers learn that "Professor" Ungarn is actually the Galactic Observer who lives in the Solar System. "Asylum" is a rather confused; I suspect that Campbell ruthlessly edited out several sections of the story that offended him. In the end, we learn that the Galactic Observer, Ungarn, disguised himself as Leigh in order to trick a large group of renegade Dreeghs (they have been on the run for a million years) into visiting the Solar System where they could fall into a trap and be captured.
Much of the story is about the types of "mind control" exercised upon Leigh by aliens from the Galactic Civilization and it seems to fore-shadow Asimov's later account of
Bail Channis and how he was used as an undercover agent by the Second Foundationers to defeat the Mule.
Mechanical Psychology
In A. E. van Vogt's future Earth, there is no more murder, theft, war or any unsocial perversions; all because of the universal application of good ole Professor Ungarn's "mechanical psychology". For the past 7,000 years, Galactic Observers have been gradually improving human civilization, getting Earthlings ready to join Galactic Civilization. Sadly, we readers learn little about this amazing gift from the Galactics, Ungarn's "
mechanical psychology".
There is a big difference between A. E. van Vogt's style of Sci Fi and that deployed by Asimov. "Asylum" is based on the silly idea that there is an electrical "life force" that can be sucked out of people, in addition to their blood. As a science student and atheist, Asimov was never in such a hurry to include magical life forces in his science fiction stories.
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Heinlein's imagined technology
that can reveal the future.
interior art by Pagsilang Isip |
A. E. van Vogt had been writing for several years previously, but his first science fiction story was published in 1939. Asimov felt that it was the arrival of A. E. van Vogt and
Robert A. Heinlein within the Sci Fi genre in 1939 that launched a Golden Age of science fiction.
It is fun to speculate about how Lem and Philip Dick were influenced by the science fiction stories of "Golden Age" writers like A. E. van Vogt and Isaac Asimov. Lem, with his medical school training, seems more likely to have been influenced by Asimov while it is easy to imagine why Dick would go more in the direction of A. E. van Vogt.
But even as "far out" as Dick got, he did not follow A. E. van Vogt into the
magical land of Dianetics.
Elron who?
I love the idea that science fiction story tellers can borrow story ideas from each other and take them in new directions. Part of the fun of looking back at old stories like
Homo Sol is imagining how they may have helped inspire famous works of science fiction and even
Dianetics.
Related Reading: "
Black Destroyer" and "
The Man Trap"
See Also: "Cosmic Corkscrew" by Michael A. Burstein
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