Foundation’s Friends

The Nonmetallic Isaac
or It’s a Wonderful Life
by Ben Bova

Astrophysicists (to start with a scientific word) classify the universe into three chemical categories: hydrogen, helium, and metals.

The first two are the lightest of all the hundred-some known elements. Anything heavier than helium, the astrophysicists blithely call “metals.” Hydrogen and helium make up roughly ninety-eight percent of the universe’s composition. To an astrophysicist, the universe consists of a lot of hydrogen, a considerable amount of helium, and a smattering of metals.

Now, although Isaac Asimov is known throughout this planet (and possibly others, we just don’t know yet) as a writer of science fiction, when you consider his entire output of written material-all the four-hundred-and-counting books and the myriads of articles, columns, limericks, and whatnots-his science fiction is actually a small percentage of the total. As far as Asimov’s production is concerned, science fiction tales are his “metals.”

Science fact is his mettle.

It is the “nonmetallic” Asimov that I want to praise.

Remember the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life!? The one where an angel shows suicidal James Stewart what his hometown would be like if Jimmie’s character had never been born?

Think of what our home planet would be like if Isaac Asimov had never turned his mind and hand to writing about science.

We narrowly missed such a fate. There was a moment in time when a youthful Isaac faced a critical career choice: go on as a researcher or plunge full-time into writing. He chose writing and the world is extremely happy with the result.

Knowing that science fiction, in those primeval days, could not support a wife and family, Isaac chose to write about science fact and to make that his career, rather than biomedical research.

But suppose he had not?

Suppose, faced with that career choice, Isaac had opted for the steady, if unspectacular, career of a medium-level research scientist who wrote occasional science fiction stories as a hobby.

We would still have the substantial oeuvre of his science fiction tales that this anthology celebrates. We would still have “Nightfall” and “The Ugly Little Boy,” the original Foundation trilogy and novels such as Pebble in the Sky. We would, to return to the metaphor we started with, still have Isaac’s “metallic” output.

But we would not have his hydrogen and helium, the huge number of books that are nonfiction, mainly books about science, although there are some marvelous histories, annotations of various works of literature, and lecherous limericks in there, too.

If Isaac had toiled away his years as a full-time biomedical researcher and part-time science fiction writer, we would never have seen all those marvelous science books. Probably a full generation of scientists would have chosen other careers, because they would never have been turned on to science by the books that Isaac did not write. Progress in all fields of the physical sciences would have slowed, perhaps disastrously.

Millions of people allover the world would have been denied the pleasure of learning that they could understand the principles of physics, mathematics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, the workings of the human body, the intricacies of the human brain-because the books from which they learned and received such pleasures would never have been written.

Entire publishing houses would have gone into bankruptcy, no doubt, without the steady, sure income that Isaac’s science books have generated for them over the decades. And will continue to generate for untold decades to come. The wood pulp and paper industry would be in a chronic state of depression if Isaac had not turned out all those hundreds of books and thousands of articles. Canada might have become a Third World nation, save for Dr. Isaac Asimov.

To make it more personal, I would have never started to write popularizations of science if it had not been for Isaac’s works-and for his personal encouragement and guidance. The gods themselves are the only ones who know how many writers have been helped by Isaac, either by reading his books or by asking him for help with science problems that had them stumped.

Blighted careers, ruined corporations, benighted people wandering in search of an enlightenment that they cannot find-that is what the world would be like if Isaac had not poured his great energies and greater heart into nonfiction books about science.

A final word about a word: popularization.

In the mouths of certain critics (including some professional scientists) “popularization” is a term of opprobrium, somewhat akin to the sneering “pulp literature” that is still sometimes slung at science fiction. “Popularizations” of science are regarded, by those slandering bastards, as beneath the consideration of dignified persons.

Such critics regard themselves as among the elite, and they disdain “popularizations” of science with the same lofty pigheadedness that George III displayed toward his American subjects.

To explain science is probably the most vital task any writer can attempt in today’s complex, technology-driven society. To explain science so well, so entertainingly, that ordinary men and women all over the world clamor for your books-that is worthy of a Nobel Prize. Too bad Alfred Nobel never thought about the need to explain science to the masses. I’m certain he would have created a special prize for it.

Isaac Asimov writes about science (and everything else) so superbly well that it looks easy. He can take any subject under the sun and write about it so lucidly and understandably that any literate person can grasp the subject with hardly any strain at all.

For this incredible talent he is sometimes dismissed as “a mere popularizer.” As I have offered in the past, I offer now; anyone who thinks that what Isaac does is easy is welcome to try it. I know I have, with some degree of success. But easy it is not!

Thanks be to the forces that shape this universe, Isaac decided not to be a full-time researcher. He became a full-time writer instead. While he is famous for writing science fiction, his “nonmetallic” output of science fact is far larger and far more important-if that word can be applied to writing-than his deservedly admired and awarded fiction.

If all this adds up to the conclusion that Isaac Asimov is a star, well, by heaven, he is! One of the brightest, too.