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| Cult of Trump |
Having reached the age of 60,
Isaac Asimov published an article called “
A Cult of Ignorance”. In that short essay, Asimov lamented the fact that some people distrust well-educated authorities and don't read very much. It would have been interesting had Asimov lived to a ripe old age and had a chance to comment on the state of American society in 2019.
Asimov was a persistent promoter of his own writing, so it is not a surprise that in 1980 he re-published one of his "space ranger" stories (
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, originally published in 1954). We have to ask: wasn't Asimov "dumbing down" the science fiction literature by re-publishing one of his "
Lucky Starr" juveniles without any obvious indication on the cover that this story had originally been written for kids, long before the age of space exploration? By
1970 it was clear that the surface of Venus was dry, hot and crushed under a thick carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
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| life on Venus (1950) |
I suspect that
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus played an important role for Asimov as a writer in that creating this particular story allowed him to explore both 1) the impact of telepathy on human society and 2) how humans might interact with alien life forms native to other planets. In a sense,
Oceans of Venus allowed Asimov to get the conventional Space Opera approach to telepathy and aliens "out of his system". When Asimov returned to writing science fiction novels (after a 20 year hiatus), telepathy was still on his mind, but he wove that plot element into
Foundation's Edge and the
Robots of Dawn and did so in a much more subtle and intellectually stimulating way than had been possible in
Oceans of Venus.
The idea that
Thomas would write a fantasy novel called
Daveed the Luk'ie was inspired by Asimov's adventures of Lucky Starr (which I read when I was about 12 years old) and the positronic robot
Daneel.
In 1980, Asimov published
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954-1978. Most of his autobiography was an obsessive account of how he had published his work, but he also told the story of the pain of his divorce and the joy of his second marriage. Asimov was one of the science fiction story writers interviewed by
Charles Platt in 1980.
In 1980, Asimov also did an interview that appeared in
The Mother Earth News, which you can read online
here.
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| The Red Queen |
In that interview, Asimov mentioned that in 1957, after the launch of
Sputnik, it was a good time to write books that took on the task of explaining science to the public. There was concern among many scientists that America needed to "catch up" technologically with the Russians and the American people needed to become more knowledgeable about science.
"
it's my opinion that anyone who can possibly introduce science to the nonscientist should do so" ... "
it is very important that people be able to 'follow [science]' well enough to have some intelligent opinions on policy" (
source)
In the Mother Earth interview, Asimov also mentioned that he had recently been writing more mystery stories than science fiction stories. In 1980, Asimov published
Casebook of the Black Widowers, which included some of the more recent mystery stories he had been writing in the Black Widowers series. My
Dead Widowers were inspired by Asimov.
I recently mentioned Asimov's story "
The Key", one of Asimov's tales that includes the recurring character
Wendell Urth. In 1980, an essay by Asimov about his series of Wendell Urth stories appeared in
The Great Science Fiction Series.
Also published by Asimov in 1980 was
The Annotated Gulliver's Travels. I suppose some parts of Gulliver's Travels might be imagined to be a type of proto-science fiction, but for science fiction fans, there was not much production from Asimov back in 1980 as he turned 60 years old.
However, in 1980 Asimov was publishing essays such as "
The World I Invented" in which he commented on topics such as how a
positronic brain might work. Lucky for science fiction fans, Asimov would soon return to writing science fiction novels:
Foundation's Edge and
The Robots of Dawn were on the way.
1976
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| 1952 |
When
Jack Vance turned 60 years old, it was the year 1976, still one year before I discovered the existence of his science fiction stories. In 1976, Vance published an essay introducing
The Best of Jack Vance, a story collection that includes "
Abercrombie Station",
The Moon Moth and
Rumfuddle. In 1977 I read "The Moon Moth" and since then I have never stopped reading his science fiction stories.
In 1976 Vance published the novel
Maske: Thaery, which I have never read. I've seen it suggested that Vance proposed this novel to a publisher as the first book of a trilogy, but eventually that plan fell apart and there was only ever one novel, the start of what fans can fantasize could have become a series of books.
This commentary draws an analogy between Vance's fictional world of Maske and America. I've
previously done the same with Vance's novel
Trullion. I can't stop myself from wondering if
Maske: Thaery began as an
Alastor Cluster novel, but drifted in a different direction. Since I have previously imagined
additional books in the Alastor Cluster series, I should probably read
Maske: Thaery. Vance mentions "loch Maske" in his autobiography, but I wonder if he visited "
Lough Mask" when he was in Ireland and later imagined the planet Maske.
1977
Arthur C. Clarke reached the age of 60 in 1977. In 1977, two collections of his writings were published:
The Best of Arthur C. Clarke 1937-1971 and
The View from Serendip.
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| 1984 edition |
The View from Serendip was mostly a collection of essays and it included an essay called "
Introducing Isaac Asimov" from the January 1975 issue of
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. This particular essay describes snide comments that Clarke had made while introducing Asimov to an audience (as mentioned
here). The so-called "
Clarke-Asimov treaty" was part of the inspiration for the
Trysta-Grean Pact.
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| 1977 republishing |
In 1977, a very short story by Clarke called "Quarantine" was published in the
Spring 1977 issue of
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and also included in
Asimov's Choice: Astronauts & Androids. An old idea in science fiction is that Earth might be monitored by space aliens and kept in quarantine to prevent primitive war-like humans from contaminating the galaxy. This story by Clarke was supposed to be a kind of
nerdy joke.
In 1977, Clarke recycled his 1951 novel,
Prelude to Space, publishing it along with an added essay that retrospectively acknowledged the actual method that had been used to put a man on the moon (which differed from what Clarke had imagined back in 1950). Clarke's science fiction story output was low at age 60, but his novel
The Fountains of Paradise was on the way.
After 60
It is inspirational to look at the great science fiction stories that were written by Asimov, Vance and Clarke after they reached 60 years of age. For me, having grown up during the
Space Race of the 1960s, some older science fiction stories such as
Prelude to Space and
Oceans of Venus were not of much interest to me because they were outdated and their imaginary settings in outer space had been paved-over by a new understanding of reality arising from actual 20th century space exploration.
Hard
However, Clarke's
The Fountains of Paradise was able to provide a post-moon landing Sci Fi fan like me with an intellectually stimulating and updated adventure story going to the next step beyond
Prelude to Space.
Medium
In this blog, I've frequently
congratulated Asimov for his later science fiction stories in which he
linked together his positronic robot stories with his Foundation Saga. For a deep thinker like Asimov, it was useful to take a break from science fiction after his early story writing period and then return with fresh eyes to his old plots and extend those old stories in new directions. Asimov was writing fun and interesting science fiction (
Forward the Foundation, "
Cal") right up until his horribly early death at age 72.
Soft
In the case of Vance, after turning 60 he completed his
Demon Princes series, showing his mastery of what I'll call the "space detective" genre in his last two books in the series
The Face and
The Book of Dreams.
Even at age 71, Vance was still at his story-weaving peak when he published
Araminta Station, launching the
Cadwal Chronicles as yet another variant of his "space detective" fictional sagas that were set among far stars of the galaxy.
The stories of Asimov, Vance and Clarke cover the whole range of science fiction approaches from
hard to
soft and with their works they provided us with a worthy "how to manual" for the
science fiction genre.
100 years:
Asimov,
Vance,
Clarke
Next:
the tryp'At Interventionists
In 1980, Asimov published In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954-1978. Most of his autobiography was an obsessive account of how he had published his work, but he also told the story of the pain of his divorce and the joy of his second marriage. Asimov was one of the science fiction story writers interviewed by Charles Platt in 1980.
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