Nightfall Two by Isaac Asimov

Author:Isaac Asimov [Asimov, Isaac]
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780586035375
Publisher: Panther
Published: 2010-05-08T18:30:00+00:00

Surprises work both ways, I explained in my introduction to 'Nightfall' that its success had been completely unexpected. Well, in the case of 'Strikebreaker', I thought I had a blockbuster. It seemed to me to be fresh and original; I felt it contained a stirring sociological theme, with lots of meaning, and with considerable pathos. Yet, as nearly as I can make out, it dropped silently into the sea of audience reaction without as much as marking out a single circular ripple on its surface.

But I can be stubborn about such things. If I like a story, I like it, and I include it here to give the audience a second chance.

This is one of those stories where I can remember the exact occasion that put it into my mind. It involved one of my periodic trips to New York which have, more and more, become a kind of highlight to my life. They are the only occasions on which I can stop writing for as much as three or four days at a time without feeling either guilty or restless.

Naturally, anything that would tend to interfere with one of my trips would ruffle my otherwise imperturbable sang-froid. Actually, I would throw a fit. It was bad enough when something enormous would get in my way - a hurricane or a blizzard, for instance. But a subway strike? And not of all the subway employees, but only a few key men, say thirty-five. They would stall the entire subway and, with that, the entire city. And if the strike came to pass, I could scarcely venture into a stalled city.

'Where will this all end?' I apostrophized the heavens in my best tragical manner, one fist raised high and the other clenched in my hair. 'A mere handful of men can paralyze an entire megalopolis. Where will it end?"

My gesture remained frozen as, in thought, I carried the situation to its logical extreme. I carefully unhooked the gesture, went upstairs, and wrote 'Strikebreaker.'

The happy ending is that the threatened strike did not come to pass, and I went to New York.

One more point about this story. It represents my personal record for stupid title changes. The editor of the magazine in which this story first appeared was Robert W. Lowndes, as sweet and as erudite a man as I have ever known. He had nothing to do with it. Some idiot in the higher echelons decided to call the story 'Male Strikebreaker'.

Why 'Male'? What possible addition to the sense of the title can be made by that adjective? What illumination? What improvement? Heavens, I can understand (though not approve) a ridiculous title change which the publisher felt would imply something salacious and thus increase sales, but the modified title doesn't even do that.

Oh, well - 'I'll just change it back.

First appearance - The Original Science Fiction Stories, January 1957, under the title 'Male Strikebreaker'. Copyright, 1956, by Columbia Publications, Inc.

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