Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), one of the best science fiction writers, wrote two years before he died a fantastic autobiography with a galactic sense of humor. In I, Asimov. Memoirs (Arpa), the author of the Foundation trilogy, among other futuristic sagas, speaks openly about his friends, his philosophy of life, and the readings that inspired his extensive work.
In total, this New Yorker of Russian origin (a language he did not speak, as his parents emigrated to New York when he was three years old) left behind almost 500 books for eternity, ranging from treatises on Shakespeare (whom he read, line by line in his youth) to history books (his true love). His encyclopedic curiosity encompassed medicine, zoology, etymology, or physics, and he was even able to answer, if someone asked him, what was the wavelength of the bat's screeches.
Asimov also wrote mystery short stories (he loved Agatha Christie and the detective Hercule Poirot), puzzle books, songs for a musical (one of his passions was Gilbert and Sullivan, an operetta that turned the world upside down), even an anthology. with his 640 favorite jokes (Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor), as he was an inveterate prankster who loved to make people laugh, something he did very often.
In many ways, Asimov was an alien. His individualism and not submitting to any rule that challenged his intelligence led him to be a Malay drop for his hierarchical superiors. Instead, he was extraordinarily loyal to his many friends, with whom he traded brilliant insults.
Among these, it is worth noting Arthur Charles Clarke. “Arthur and I share the same views on science, social issues and politics. I have never disagreed with him on any of these things, which shows the brilliance of his intelligence. Of course, there are differences between the two. He is bald, he is more than two years older than me and not as handsome, but he is not bad at all for being the second, ”he wrote about the author of The Sands of Mars or The End of Childhood.
Asimov and Clarke signed the Park Avenue Treaty in a taxi, whereby they agreed to say, when asked, that the best science fiction writer in the world was their friend (believe it or not), although they were also allowed declare, if they insisted, "that I am on their heels in the race". Asimov was also very close friends with Lester del Rey or Lyon Sprague de Camp.
Another example of Clarke and Asimov's sharp sense of humor occurred when a plane crashed, killing half the passengers. Surprisingly, one of the passengers who survived the accident declared that he had kept his cool reading a novel by Arthur C. Clarke, a story that appeared in a newspaper article. Clarke, as was his habit, made hundreds of copies of the article and sent them to everyone he knew, even if only by hearsay. Asimov received one such copy from his friend Arthur Clarke with a handwritten note in the bottom margin: “Too bad I wasn't reading one of your novels. I would have continued to sleep through the entire ordeal." It didn't take Asimov a minute to respond: "On the contrary, the reason I was reading your novel was because if the plane crashed, death would come like a heavenly release," he told her in his reply letter.
Asimov's detractors, on the other hand, scolded him for having "an ego the size of the Empire State" for his tendency to flaunt himself, even though most of the things he boasted were as true as the Earth revolving around the Sun. However, at the age of 26, Asimov learned not to continually display the “I know everything” syndrome. The key moment occurred in Hawaii, just after being drafted into the army to test the atomic bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Listening to the military in a Honolulu barracks explain "everything backwards" about the nuclear bomb, Asimov was able, almost for the first time in his life, to keep his mouth shut and not display his intelligence to correct the countless errors. .
Asimov's biggest dream was to be able to lock himself in his office with the blinds down (sun or snow) from five in the morning until ten at night, a habit he kept since he started writing in the Jewish candy store in his father with 11 years. He was once asked in an interview: "If a doctor gave you six months to live, what would he do? 'Type faster,'" he replied.
The style of his books was bright as a spring morning. In his opinion, the best literary lesson he received in his entire life only lasted ten seconds. "Do you know," asked his editor Walter Bradbury, "what Hemingway would say: 'The sun came up the next day'?" Asimov said no, shaking his head. "I would say, 'The sun came up the next day,'" Bradbury responded.
Regarding his family, his father, Judah Asimov, was raised as an orthodox Jew, although deep down in his heart he did not feel like one. Her mother, Anna Rachel Berman, was a Russian peasant girl who stood just over five feet tall and had a character as strong as the horseradish and hard-boiled egg she made. Unlike his parents, Isaac was never tempted by any religion. “The fact is that he doesn't feel any spiritual emptiness. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any supernatural aspects and which I find totally satisfactory. In short, I am a rationalist and I only believe what reason tells me."
Throughout his life, Asimov defended African-Americans and did not forgive Roosevelt for leaving the Spanish Republicans in the lurch. Instead, he was very critical of Zionism. “I do not believe that Jews have an ancestral right to occupy a land just because their ancestors lived there nineteen hundred years ago. This kind of reasoning would force us to hand over North and South America to the Indians, and Australia and New Zealand to the Aborigines and Maoris,” he notes in his memoirs.
“Nor do I consider the biblical promises made by God that the land of Canaan would belong forever to the children of Israel to be legally valid (especially since the Bible was written by the children of Israel). Therefore, I am not a Zionist because I do not believe in nations. There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand this soon, the nations will disappear, because there will be no humanity,” he added.
On the love plane, Isaac Asimov's life was divided between two women, although at the age of 21 he was still a virgin. Gertrude, the woman he married and had two children with, smoked too much, but that little big detail ended up ruining everything. Asimov's campaign to get his wife to stop smoking, or if that wasn't possible, to get her to smoke less, or at least to stop smoking in the bedroom, in the car, or when they ate, had no effect. success. Over the years, this issue became a sore that, from so much rubbing and irritating it, generated increasingly painful blisters.
In 1970, after 24 years of marriage, Asimov understood that divorce was the only way out, so he loaded his bookcase, electric typewriter, and bookshelves into a moving truck and returned to Manhattan, after years of practicing Professor of Biochemistry at Boston University. As a curiosity, Asimov never wanted to have children (both David and Robyn arrived unexpectedly) because they believed that one of the biggest problems on the planet was overpopulation.
His second marriage was to Janet Jepsson, whom he met in 1956 through her little brother, John, who had gone to his Biochemistry classes and was a big fan of science fiction, just like her. One day, while Asimov was signing books, she approached him about dedicating his copy of Second Foundation to her. "What do you do?" Asimov asked to be inspired by the dedication. "I'm a psychiatrist," he replied. "Great. Let's lie down on the sofa together,” he said, barely looking at her, irritated by the kidney stones that tormented him. Janet walked away thinking, "Well, he may be a good writer, but he's an edge."
However, years later, they met again and everything was different. They corresponded to each other for 14 years and, after marrying civilly in the living room of Janet's house (he was 50 years old and she was 47), they lived happily in New York for almost twenty years. As a small curiosity, just the day before they got married, Asimov found Janet crying and asked her in alarm what was wrong. “I can't help it, Isaac. I feel like I'm going to lose my identity," she confessed. "Crap. You will not lose your identity, you will gain subservience,” he replied. Janet burst out laughing, and all was well. Janet was, without a doubt, the woman of his life.
Within science fiction, Asimov was a futurian. This minority group, which emerged in the mid-1930s, thought that science fiction fans should take more anti-fascist stances, while the majority held that science fiction was above politics.
In addition to being a Futurian, Asimov was a liberal (in the best sense…) and a convinced humanist. For the rest, the plots of his novels always tended to celebrate the triumphs of technology rather than its disasters, so it is possible to consider him (like Robert Heinlein and Arthur Clarke) as "technologically" optimistic.
Regarding the readings that influenced him, the list is endless (in his library were stacked the 2,000 books that he liked the most). One of them was The Iliad. When he was very young, he recounts in his memoirs, he asked for it in the library whenever he could and started it again with the first verse as soon as he had reached the last one. Another of his favorite books was Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He also greatly enjoyed Shakespeare (especially The Comedy of Errors and Much Ado About Nothing), as well as Charles Dickens (in his autobiography he admits to having read The Pickwick Club Posthumous Papers twenty-six times, and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby ten times). ).
Despite reaching the age of 60 in an acceptable state of health, his problems (overweight, kidney stones, fluid retention, triple bypass, etc.) began to take their toll on him as he approached his seventies, which is why he decided to write then. his autobiography, since he feared that he would not be able to reach the year 2000, when he would have liked to publish it.
However, he took death with serenity. “When he dies, all there will be is an eternity made of nothing. After all, the Universe existed fifteen billion years before I was born,” the last part of his 655-page autobiography can be read.
“And if he dies - he was asked in an interview - and finds himself face to face with God? What then?", to which Asimov replied: "I would say: Sir, you should have given us more evidence."
