Isaac Asimov Wanted to be An Historian!

In a March 1991 * article, Isaac Asimov made some very personal revelations. He begins simply, “When I was going to college, the United States was not yet out of the Great Depression … I was not going to get a job after I graduated in 1939. The only thing I could do was to go on to graduate work, obtain some advanced degrees, and hope …”

There are millions of 20-somethings today who have the same concerns as Asimov did over 70 years ago.

However, we read on, “…what subject …? I was hung up between history and chemistry. I thought I could handle either one, but there was no question in my mind that I was more interested in history.”

This point blank shocker must have made 1991 readers drop their magazine. The grand master of science fiction, and the master of explaining science to the masses wanted to be an historian? It gets more interesting.

“If I get my degree in history, then the chances are … I will get {a job} in some small college away from my beloved city of New York. … if … in chemistry … with a large research firm for an ample salary …”. The choice was made on purely pragmatic grounds. “I obtained my Ph.D. In chemistry in 1948.” He had a long delay due to WWII.

In 1949, the job he found was, ironically, at a small college away from New York at a very small salary. “Chemistry was a big flop … I didn’t like it and I was no good at it …”.

Another stunner! The great Asimov was not a good scientist? So, how did he get from the dregs of 1950 to being the notable Asimov?

“… in 1958 I was fired … by that time I had another career, that of writing … Becoming a professional writer was a third option {in college} but one that I didn’t consider for even a split-second. By the time {1949} I had begun work at the medical school, I had written 68 stories and sold 60 … my total earnings for all eleven years amounted to $7700 …”.

That was not an insignificant sum in the 1950′s, but not enough to be a full-time writer. Asimov had written a novel, and added to this, so, “…in 1958, my literary earnings amounted to only $15,000 a year, enough to keep me going … by that time I had a wife and two children …”.

Asimov made a bold choice. He decided to do what he loved the best – history. HE estimated that it would take three years of research to write a “three musketeers historical fiction novel” and little prospect of it selling well. After consulting with John W. Campbell, Jr., he decided to write science fiction historical fiction novels. Few had thought of that idea, at the time, so he began to write what would become his Foundation novels, later expanding to his Robot novels. Their popularity can scarcely be exaggerated for their time, and they allowed Asimov to essentially write anything he wanted, anytime he wanted, and make money from that time forward.

Asimov had tinkered with this idea in Astounding Tales writing eight stories between 1842 and 1950. In 1951, he published Foundation with Gnome Press. Gnome then reprinted Asimov’s original stories in two more volumes (1952, 1953) cementing his legacy and winning a 1966 Hugo award for best all-time series. [Young Lin Carter was notably influenced by this series].

Asimov circa 1965

Asimov influenced countless story writers including Gene Roddenberry (The Federation of Star Trek), and Asimov (in print) speculated on George Lucas’ Star Wars features and the possibility that the writers and producers used his novels. There is no question that Forbidden Planet‘s (1955) Robbie the Robot follows Asimov’s laws of robotics. Asimov had a 1940 story named “Robbie”, but the writer of Doc Savage (1935) predated the use of the name “Robbie the Robot”.

The iconic Asimov, later in life, as we remember him.

History will have a difficult time deciding whether Asimov, Ray Bradbury, or Robert Heinlein impacted mid-20th century culture the greatest, but Asimov – who died too soon in 1992 – is greatly missed by his many fans. He who longed to be an historian ended up making history.

* Fantasy and Science Fiction, “All Four Stanzas”, March 1991, p. 133ff. Asimov had a decades long monthly column, usually on one aspect of applied science or another, but very frequently on an historical subject such as this one: Francis Scott Key’s The Star Spangled Banner.

The “Value” of Old Magazines

Cast-offs. Read and discarded. That’s what pulps and newsstand magazines were considered.

Yet to a certain group of people, they are Aladdin’s lamp or pirate’s treasure chests buried in the sand.  Lin Carter’s life was changed when as a little boy he found a closet full of old pulp castoffs.  H. P. Lovecraft went to school, met two boys named Munroe, and he was introduced to pulps for the first time. At this writer’s local Half-Price bookstores (a chain of used bookstores originating out of Texas), there are often found 50 cent copies of ancient science fiction magazines and while some of the fiction does not hold up – one does find writers who were once up -and-comers and who got their start there. Unknowns such as Ray Bradbury, or Richard Matheson, or Harlan Ellison.

In the October 1973 Analog P. Schuyler Miller (1912-1974) had a small “column” in which he digressed into a little history. Before there were internet forums and blogs, there were “letters to the editor”. No one knew, but he was only mere months from shuffling from this mortal coil, but his memory was still vivid. The then-publication of Mirage’s “Planets and Dimensions” accumulating arcana of Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) included the fire-fight between Smith and Miller in the letter columns of Wonder Stories.

He relates, “…two of [Mirage's] best items are excerpts from a ‘debate’ Clark Ashton Smith, an established poet and author, carried on in the letter columns of Wonder Stories with a twenty-year-old-me. At twenty, I was valiantly espousing an overdue “new wave” that would bring the values of mainstream writing (Victorian mainstream writing, I guess) to fantasy and science fiction. Smith defended the old values, as I do now. He felt fantasy gave a writer more elbow-room (a term he would never have used, but I can’t find the one he did use) than stories tied to the known and limited.”

Upon that statement, and after four decades or so, perhaps the deceased Smith won the argument with Miller. If the Fates are kind, Miller and Smith are still debating with Ackerman and Lovecraft in some writer’s heaven. If not, we can imagine such things, because we still have the fantasy genre alive with us.

The World of Gor

No not “gore” although critics may disagree.  After Robert E. Howard single-handedly created the “sword and sorcery” genre (with due apologies to John Carter of Mars and Tarzan) it vanished for a while upon his sad and untimely death.   A few picked up on the theme, and they did so-so, until L Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter had a brainstorm.  Why not bring it back with a vengeance and reinvigorate the fantasy genre.  It was temporarily, though grudgingly, adopted into the then popular science-fiction umbrella.  It was ‘savagely’ popular with eventually Lin Carter, de Camp, John Jakes (later North and South), Bjorn Nynorg, Karl Edward Wagner, and others jumping in to lesser or greater success.

However, in 1966, a literary curiosity appeared.  Totally smashing the popular and growing women’s liberation movement, John Norman created an alternate world story wherein even James Bond might have blushed at the male chauvinist hedonism.  Combining fantasy, science-fiction, magic, myth, and male-hormone-pumping eroticism no one had seen anything this soft-porn and yet well-written.  Tarnsman of Gor transmitted an ordinary person to another world and in that world the man had to fight like Conan, experience alienness like John Carter of Mars, and romanced better than the best Sean-Connery-James-Bond.  Oh, and did we mention the constant belittlement of women who when not parading about harem-naked, quickly submitted to any and all male whims while only lightly protesting.

Such a horrible story line could never be popular.

Could it?

Writers, never give up!

Twenty-nine installments have ensued with multi-million dollar paperback sales.  It was later revealed that this was the creation of a Princeton philosophy professor, John Lange (b. 1931) who pulled together every ancient lore and myth to create a panoply of flora, fauna, beasty –  and hot babe – one could imagine.

Linwood Vrooman Carter

Lin as Baby ! Won first prize (of course).

Horror and Weird Fantasy has its characters, and sometimes that rare individual becomes a lightning rod. Forest Ackerman, August Derleth, Adolph de Castro, L Sprague de Camp, and Lin Carter all spring to mind.

Lin had an odd name, Linwood Vrooman Carter, and from the time he found a stack of old pulps getting ready to be tossed out, he became fixated on fantasy. His lifelong dream, from his earliest days, was to be a professional cartoonist. That didn’t happen, but along the way he became a poet, a convention stalwart, collector of all things weird, and in the 1960′s he made quite a mark as an editor, writer, and correspondent of Tolkein.

Lin's High School Photo

Lin was a Florida boy, and got terrific marks in school, but became known quickly as a poet and extrovert. He attended college, and in his spare time created his own fan magazine and hob-nobbed via correspondence with most of those in the field.

Lin Posing in Costume - about age 20

In the 1960′s, after placing numerous illustrations and articles in fanzines and prozines, he and L Sprague de Camp came up with a plan to revive Conan the Barbarian and created Sword and Sorcery with a few of their colleagues. Science Fiction didn’t know what to make of this, but it soon consumed the then-stagnant sales of SF and is now a dominant part of the field. Over a roughly ten year period, millions of S&S paperback and comic issues were sold. Lin had his own monthly column in an SF magazine, and for about a year wrote scripts for Marvel’s TV comic cartoon, Spiderman. These were some of the oddest segments in its history, presaging the 21st century oddities of the Cartoon Network.

Now virtually forgotten except by those who are still fans or knew him, Lin was always a cutting figure filled with life and energy.  He was one of the true celebrities of the genre.

Lin About 1975

[Some images, above, from Chris Perridas' collecion]