I.Asimov by Isaac Asimov

Author:Isaac Asimov [Asimov, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-57353-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1994-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

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Reference Library

I mentioned in the previous section that I use my histories as reference works for my later writings, and that reminds me that I am frequently asked whether I have a reference library.

Of course I have one. Once I reached the stage of affluence where I could buy books, I began accumulating one. I now have some 2,000 books divided into sections: mathematics, history of science, chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, biology, literature, and history. I have an Encyclopaedia Britannica, an Encyclopedia Americana, a McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, a complete Oxford English Dictionary, books of quotations, and so on.

An interviewer who inspected my library on June 21, 1978, wrote afterward, in a contemptuous way, that it was quite small, but he didn’t know what he was talking about. I deliberately keep it small by getting rid of old books as I get new ones. I have no use for books that are out of date or that, for one reason or another, I have had no occasion to use. What I have is a working library, and not one for show.

Of course, my most important reference is my mind and memory. My memory is excellent and very useful, but some of my friends view it with exaggerated, even superstitious awe. I am, every once in a while, called by one friend or another who has failed to locate some piece of information and has, in desperation, said to himself, “I’ll call Isaac. He’ll know.”

Sometimes I do. Lin Carter, a fellow member of my club, the Trap Door Spiders, once called me and said, “Isaac, I need to know who said, ‘Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!’” I answered at once, “Madame Roland, as she passed a statue to Liberty on her way to the guillotine in 1794.” Carter dined out on that incident for months, I think, and it just encouraged others to use me as a handy and portable encyclopedia.

Sometimes I don’t come through. Some months ago, Sprague de Camp called me from his new home in Texas to ask me about the wavelengths of the supersonic squeaks of bats. That piece of information could not be dredged out of my memory, so I said with chagrin (for I like being able to answer arcane questions offhand) that I’d have to call him back.

I then ransacked my library and finally came across an excellent article on sound in my Encyclopedia Americana which contained precisely the information Sprague needed. I phoned him, read off the information, received his thanks, and then, after I had hung up, I found that the encyclopedia article was one that I had myself written!

As I said, my own books are extremely good sources of information for me. In order to make use of them, though, I have to remember in which book I included a particular piece of information and where it might be. Prolificity has its terrors too.

When I first began to write, I naturally saved the issues of those

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