The Early Asimov. Volume 1 by Isaac Asimov

Author:Isaac Asimov [Asimov, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf
ISBN: ISBN 034-532590-7
Published: 1986-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

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“History,” you will notice, mentions Hitler’s end. It was written in the first days of September 1940, when Hitler seemed at the very peak of his success. France was defeated and occupied and Britain was at bay and seemed unlikely to survive. -Still, I had no doubt as to his ultimate defeat. I did not visualize his ending in suicide, however. I thought that like Napoleon and the Kaiser, he would end his life in exile. Madagascar was the place I picked.

Also mentioned in the story are “the tiny ‘Drops of Death,’ the highly-publicized radioactive bombs that noiselessly and inexorably ate out a fifteen-foot crater wherever they fell.”

By the time I wrote the story, uranium fission had been discovered and announced. I had not yet heard of it, however, and I was unaware that reality was about to outstrip my prized science fictional imagination.

On October 23, 1940, I visited Campbell and outlined to him another robot story I wanted to write, a story I planned to call “Reason.” Campbell was completely enthusiastic. I had trouble writing it and had to start over several times, but eventually it was done, and on November 18 I submitted it to John. He accepted it on the twenty-second, and it appeared in the April 1941 issue of Astounding .

It was the third story of mine that he had accepted and the first in which he did not ask for a revision. (He told me, in fact, that he had liked it So well, he had almost decided to pay me a bonus.)

With “Reason,” the “positronic robot” series was fairly launched, and my two most successful characters yet, Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan (improvements on Turner and Snead of “Ring Around the Sun”) made their appearance. Eventually, “Reason” and others of the series that were to follow, together with “Robbie,” which Campbell had rejected, were to appear in I, Robot .

The success of “Reason” didn’t mean that I was to have no further rejections from Campbell.

On December 6, 1940, influenced by the season and never stopping to think that a Christmas story must sell no later than July in order to make the Christmas issue, I began “Christmas on Ganymede.” I submitted it to him on the twenty-third, but the holiday season did not affect his critical judgment. He rejected it.

I tried Pohl next, and, as was happening so often that year, he took it. In this case, for reasons I will describe later, the acceptance fell through. I eventually sold it the next summer (June 27, 1941, the proper time of year) to Startling Stories, the younger, sister magazine of Thrilling Wonder Stories.

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