Mission in 1949

From left to right: Joanna,
Dani (Grean's robot) and a Fru'wu robot.
1936 in the Ekcolir Reality

It was in 1949 that Isaac Asimov sold for publication in Astounding the last of the Foundation stories that would later come to be packaged and sold in book format as the Foundation Trilogy. I recently tried to imagine an alternate universe where it might have been possible for the Foundation Trilogy to appear as a series of films in the 1950s.

Origins Project
Asimov suggested that it might be possible to go back and look at the pulp magazines he read as a boy and find most of the ideas that he later incorporated into his science fiction stories. However, I really can't believe that it was those magazines that gave Asimov his motivation to become a scientist. Beyond all the fiction that he read, there must have been other important influences in his early life, but it is impossible for me to imagine what it was like for Asimov to live through the 20s, 30s and 1940s.

cover art by Joseph Tillotson

In the absence of real knowledge about what caused Asimov to become a scientist, it is easier (and more fun) to invent imaginary accounts of Asimov's life as it unfolded in other Realities. For Grean's Hack, I imagined how Asimov's writing career might have been differently shaped in the Ekcolir Reality.

Mad  Robots
In our universe, Asimov was appalled by the endless stream of stories that depicted robots as evil, destructive monsters. Asimov tried to imagine how engineers would build safety features into programmable machines.

In our Reality, the universe as we know it, Asimov wrote both his Foundation stories and a series of positronic robot stories during the 1940s.

image source

In "Terminus Planet", I depicted the young Isaac Asimov of the Ekcolir Reality as trying to write and publish a positronic robot story at the start of his career, but that effort got derailed.

Now I am imagining that in the Ekcolir Reality, there was an author named Joanna MacDonald who had a major influence on both Isaac's writing and his career in science because of her story called "G-Robot".

I've often wondered how Asimov's life would have been changed if his family had not been able to sell tobacco in their "candy" stores. In the Ekcolir Reality, restrictions were put on the sale of tobacco products in the 1930s. This created financial hardship for Asimov's family. After Isaac learned to type, he started a business doing paid typing jobs for fellow writers, earning money to help pay for college. This is how he came to know Joanna.

Philip Morris advertising from
a pulp magazine, April 1949

It would be interesting to know what fraction of the advertising revenue for pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s came from companies such as Philip Morris. In the 20s and 30s, "G-men" struggled to contain illegal alcohol distribution, but the products sold by tobacco companies were happily consumed, taxed and killing millions of people during that time.

image source

Evil Weed
I've previously imagined that tobacco was used as a way of modulating the activity of human brains so as to make them more compatible with the zeptite endosymbionts that exist inside humans. What if in the Ekcolir Reality, the science fiction stories of Joanna MacDonald led to an early discovery (in Asimov's research lab) of the zeptite endosymbionts? Maybe the lurking R. Nyrtia also provided some hints to Sven?

I've previously written a story about how Isaac Asimov came to the attention of government agents when he wrote a story about sedrons. What would be the consequences of revealing to Earthlings that have hidden devices of alien design inside their bodies?

1951 cover art by Lawrence Stevens

1930s
I'm now imagining a new story in which aspiring story writer Joanna MacDonald is provided with information about positronic robots by her nanoscopic replicoid, then at work in the Writers Block. However, Grean has decided that in the Ekcolir Reality, Earthlings cannot know anything about positronic robots. Grean routinely makes use of some robots as agents on Earth (such as Ariel Adler's companion, Dani) and does not want to risk their exposure.

After Joanna publishes a story (called "G-Robot") about positronic robots in 1936, Grean makes sure that the story is forgotten and Grean also forces Joanna to stop writing science fiction. Asimov is astonished by this sudden change in Joanna's behavior.

in the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by Lawrence Stevens

Then, in 1951, a second such story (called "Positronic Robots") is published and Grean must organize a trip back in time to 1949. Joanna is taken off of Earth and sent to the Hierion Domain. However, Isaac Asimov saw "Positronic Robots", and that launches O.A. (the analogue of Asimov at the Writers Block) on an investigation of Joanna's fate.

O.A. learns that Joanna was transformed by Grean into a synpaz and hidden in the highest chamber of Seelie. Later, when Grean needs to send an Asimov replicoid into the Final Reality, she crafts one from O.A.

Grean has a secret that she does not want to share with her operatives in the Hierion Domain. Their tasks completed, almost all the writers living in the Writers Block and the residents of Seelie are not going to be allowed to continue their existence in the Final Reality.

the lost issue

However, by Viewing the future Reality, Grean knows that she needs to make an exception for a few of her helpers, including both Asimov's replicoid and the replicoid of Joanna.

Grean created Joanna as the mind clone of Mary. Assisting O.A. in his investigation of Joanna, Mary recruits Artep to search High Seelie. A few of Grean's helpers, including Dani, Wendy, O.A. and Joanna escape from the Ekcolir Reality and they can live on within the Final Reality where O.A. becomes known as Azynov.

Next: "Final Change"

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