Several of Asimov’s robot books included a foreward called “The Story Behind the Robot Novels.” This is an essay I’ve read and reread countless times. For me the key section is this:
It became very common, in the 1920s and 1930s, to picture robots as dangerous devices that invariably destroyed their creators. The moral was pointed out over and over again that “there are some things Man was not meant to know.” Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance. To me, it always seemed that the solution had to be wisdom. You did not refuse to look at danger, rather you learned how to handle it safely. After all, this has been the human challenge since a certain group of primates became human in the first place. Any technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so (even more so) was speech — and both are still dangerous to this day — but human beings would not be human without them.
This pro-science, pro-technology sentiment is at the heart of Asimov’s philosophical outlook, which is why it’s such a horrific travesty that Hollywood turned his brilliant short story collection I, Robot into exactly the sort of moronic robots-run-amok hysteria-fest that Asimov was responding to by writing a more intelligent and nuanced treatment of the subject in the first place. (It’s also pretty pathetic that Hollywood is still churning out material — such as the Battlestar Galactica series finale — built around the sort of notions that would strike a bright teenager living a century ago as worn-out and intellectually contemptible.)
Anyway, the other Asimov foreword I used to reread regularly was “The Story Behind Foundation,” from his book Foundation. The part that struck me as romantic and memorable was this:
I had an appointment to meet [magazine editor] Mr. Campbell to tell him the plot of a new story I was planning to write, and the catch was that I had no plot in mind, not the trace of one. I therefore tried a device I sometimes use. I opened a book at random and set up a free association, beginning with whatever I first saw. The book I had with me was a collection of the Gilbert and Sullivan plays. I happened to open it to the picture of the Fairy Queen of Iolanthe throwing herself at the feet of Private Willis. I thought of soldiers, of military empires, of the Roman Empire — of a Galactic Empire — aha! Why shouldn’t I write of the fall of the Galactic Empire and of the return of feudalism, written from the viewpoint of someone in the secure days of the Second Galactic Empire?
It occurs me now that, as much time as I spent reading and re-reading this anecdote, and as much time as I’ve spent remembering it since, I can’t say that I’ve ever actually used the technique described. I can’t say why. It certainly sounds like it should work, and obviously it worked for Asimov. Maybe I’ll try it sometime.
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