Asimov

This past week, I've been slowly reading through Gold, Isaac Asimov's last anthology (and the first I've read). This man is hilarious.

Yesterday was also his birthday (or at least the day on which he chose to celebrate his birthday), so I thought I'd type up a few passages I found particularly entertaining.

On the Art of Writing

But what if you write and write and write and you don't seem to be getting any better and all you collect are printed rejection slips? Once again, it may be that you are not a writer and will have to settle for a lesser post such as that of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

On Ideas

Someone once asked Isaac Newton how he managed to reach solutions to problems that others found impenetrable. He answered, "By thinking and thinking about it."

I don't know what other answer people can possibly expect. There is the romantic notion that there is such a thing as "inspiration," that a heavenly Muse comes down and plunks her harp over your head and, presto, the job is done. Like all romantic notions, however, this is just a romantic notion.

On Women and Science Fiction

Prior to public recognition in the United States that babies are not brought by the stork, there was simply no sex in science fiction magazines [...] But if there's no sex, what do you do with female characters? They can't have passions and feelings. They can't participate on equal terms with male characters because that would introduce too many complications where some sort of sex might creep in. The best thing to do was to keep them around in the background, allowing them to scream in terror, to be caught and then rescued, and, at the end, to smile prettily at the hero. (It can be done safely then because THE END is the universal rescue.)

On Book Reviews

From my close observation of writers (almost all my friends are writers) they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review. 

I'm class one. Most of my friends aim at class two and don't quite make it and aren't quite aware that they don't make it.  

Unfortunately, there's no way in which one can get back at a reviewer. I have sometimes had the urge to do some fancy horse-whipping in the form of a mordant letter designed to flay the reptilian hide off the sub-moron involved; but, except in my very early days, I have always resisted. [...]  

Instead, then, I take to muttering derogatory comments about reviewing and reviewers in general. 

On The Struggle

Well, what goes for chemistry, goes for writing. I know all the miseries, but somewhere among them is happiness. I can't easily explain where it is or what it consists of, but it is there, I know the happiness and I experience it, and I will not stop writing while I live--and may I die if I would change places with the President of the United States. 

On Irony

Naturally, Socrates was not ignorant and the questions were not naive, and his method of procedure is known as "Socratic irony." You may well believe that those who suffered under his bland lash did not grow to love him, and I suspect he fully earned his final draught of hemlock.

On Prediction

There is a general myth among laymen that, somehow, the chief function of a science fiction writer is to make predictions that eventually come true. [...] I am asked with utter confidence, "Can you give us a few of your predictions that have come true?" 

I would love to be able to say, "Well, to name just a few: airplanes, radios, television, skyscrapers, and, in my early days, the wheel and fire." 

But I can't bring myself to do that. The interviewers might actually print it, and they might try to give me a medal for predicting fire.

On Continuing (a possibly Terrible) Series

In that case, anyone who says to him [the author], "You're turning out endless reams of this junk just to con the reader into buying your books," is likely to get a punch in the mouth if the writer is of the violent persuasion, or a sad look if the writer is as gentle and lovable as I am.

On Being a Best-Seller

Actually, I have no room for any feeling but that of astonishment. After publishing two hundred and sixty-one books without any hint of best-sellerdom, no matter how many of them might have been praised, I came to think of that as a law of nature. As for Foundation's Edge in particular, it has no sex in it, no violence, no sensationalism of any kind, and I had come to suppose that this was the perfect recipe for respectable non-best-sellerdom.

On Post-Best-Sellerdom

Well, Doubleday [his publisher] has informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I am condemned to write one novel after another for life, and that I am not permitted to consider dying. 

So I am working on another novel. [...] 

I'd complain, except that I love it.