>These two numbers might seem very different, but both are central to Asimov’s legacy
Yeah, I really don't think so. The legacy of people with important contributions (technical, cultural, political, etc) is their work, not what they did in their private life, unless they were also moonlighting as the Boston strangler or something.
In 2500 nobody would care whether he did this or that. But they would probably still read some of his work.
Well his personal issues with women definitely are apparent in his work. His female characters are often shrieking ninnies.
Also I don't think anyone but an academic will be reading his work in a few hundred years. As much as I enjoy his ideas and his easy style he is actually mediocre.
> Also I don't think anyone but an academic will be reading his work in a few hundred years. As much as I enjoy his ideas and his easy style he is actually mediocre.
I don't like to point out and say people's opinions are wrong but The Embire series are cornerstone of science fiction writing and will surely be read in the future. I can't imagine someone studying the history of scifi literature and skipping Asimov at any point in time.
You said it: studying. That's why I say an Academic might be reading it. Some work becomes the preserve of specialists and other work continues to be read by people who love reading. We still read Dickens. Some of that work is almost 200 years old.
Realistically, very few books keep being read for hundreds years and those who do typically strongly influenced politics or art or because they have contemporary ideological message (teaching kids values and political attitudes we want them to get).
Dickens is not read just because it was fun.
Asimov is more in the "for fun" category. They are creative, but you must avoid thinking deeper about those societies and people in them - it breaks those books.
So while it definitely plays role in sci-fi history, it is replaceable by next fun thing (Harry Potter or whatever).
>Realistically, very few books keep being read for hundreds years
Considering his first stories came around 1930 iirc, his books are already close to the "hundred years" mark, and still read, so we're past wondering about that...
People might not read Tom Wolf ('The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' anyone?) but they'll sure keep reading Asimov and Clarke and Dick and co for a good while...
I have no idea why you would propose Tom Wolfe as an avatar for quality. No-one really knows whose work will continue to connect with generations to come. Tom Wolfe is, in my view, mediocre and a writer whose middle-brow popularity is largely to do with his capturing something about the times he lived in.
Asimov, re-reading him as an adult, is also quite mediocre. He writes space melodramas garnished with some neat ideas. He knew how to popularize scientifically novel ideas. He was genuinely imaginative. But you can't take his sentimental and cliched scenarios seriously.
Philip K Dick on the other hand I think might well be read in 500 years. His work, with its own many defects, often has something profound in it.
>I have no idea why you would propose Tom Wolfe as an avatar for quality.
I have no idea why you think I've proposed him "as an avatar of quality". I gave him as an example of someone who was once widely celebrated, but not that read anymore (much less in a "100 years").
In fact, talk about literary quality didn't enter my comments in this subthread at all. It's about whether people will still read Asimov, or whether they would care about the facts in TFA so that his legacy as a sci-fi leader is in danger, etc.
>Asimov, re-reading him as an adult, is also quite mediocre. He writes space melodramas garnished with some neat ideas. He knew how to popularize scientifically novel ideas. He was genuinely imaginative. But you can't take his sentimental and cliched scenarios seriously.
Well, a lot of well known sci-fi is mediocre, if "garnished with some neat ideas". That doesn't change the fact that it's good and popular for what it is (genre fiction, not high literature with subtle writing and profound truths). Or whether it will be read in 100 or 500 years. And I think Asimov will (well, if people are still around, that is).
Ehhhh. I agree in general but there are so many exceptions to that. Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, et al are all regularly dissected but frankly just read for pleasure.
Note that most of the fairy tales get changed to accommodate whatever message is currently popular. For example, remember the atrocity that Disney did to the original "The little mermaid" fairy tale. The main characters remain for hundred of years, but the story not.
You can study things and not be called an academic. For instance if you enter a genre by force, you usually read some sort of chronology of best hits by the decades -- because there are many more books published to discover beyond this year.
> Well his personal issues with women definitely are apparent in his work. His female characters are often shrieking ninnies.
Het also used the word "gay" as simply meaning happy in the Foundation series. Because it's written in the 50's. Remember all of those face slaps to calm down hysterical women you saw up til the 80's in movies? When I see it now I think "waaaaaaaaat" but it was a normal stereotype back then.
Queer has always first and foremost meant “strange” or “odd” - “How queer!” was a common refrain in all the literature I’ve read dating back more than a couple of decades.
You know it was quite common in those days for Pulp Sci Fi...but for example the character of Jezebel Baley in The Caves of Steel is so bad that it almost suggests actual hatred on the part of the author.... certainly contempt.
> In his two-volume Guide to the Bible (1967 and 1969), Isaac Asimov describes Jezebel's last act: dressing in all her finery, make-up, and jewelry, as deliberately symbolic, indicating her dignity, royal status, and determination to go out of this life as a queen.
The characters in the book discuss the symbolism of her name. She goes by "Jessie" because she does not want to identify with Jezebel.
Apparently some commenters here would have us believe that if there's a highly emotional woman, it's because the author hates women. Jezebel's/Jessie's husband and main character of Caves of Steel, Elijah, is himself kind of an anxious headstrong type who's wrong more often than he's right. Of course, this indicates with high certainty that Asimov also hates men.
Edit: Also worth noting that Bliss/Gaia in Foundation is pretty much the most powerful character in the Foundation universe. Mayor Branno, woman mayor of the First Foundation, is also revered as an incredibly capable and bold leader by all accounts.
Edit 2: And not to mention the young girl taken from Solaria, who is the only character to potentially rival Bliss. What a laughable claim that all the women in Asimov’s stories are weak or hysterical.
Yes they discuss her name. But if you recall Jessie liked her name and enjoyed the secret thrill of its salacious implication exactly because she is quite a square in real life. However Elijah one day reads the Bible and gives her the more correct interpretation of Jezebel's behaviour as that of a woman protecting her interests and not at all a harlot. This greatly upsets Jessie because it robs her of that secret thrill. She then never uses the full name again. Elijah often regrets this.
Despite its intricacies I found this particular part of their marital back story to be totally unconvincing and ineffective. Sorry Isaac.
>His female characters are often shrieking ninnies.
I don't recall his works. But review the US family TV shows from the 1950s and 1960s and see the 'fond, goofy' portrayal of women -- it was everywhere. Similarly, many cartoons of that era ... shown across the nation in theatres ... cannot be seen anymore. The level of thick-headed, cloddish insensitivity was pervasive. We've changed as a culture in the US, and I'm grateful.
>Also I don't think anyone but an academic will be reading his work in a few hundred years. As much as I enjoy his ideas and his easy style he is actually mediocre.
While I don't agree 100%, that never hurt any artist's commercial success or fan following...
In any case, for the sci-fi field he's one of the classics. Most others in the genre weren't exactly subtle deep literature either, it's the ideas and sci-fi exploration of them that count.
> The damage he caused was inseparable from his power. In general, Asimov chose targets who were unlikely to protest directly, such as fans and secretaries, and spared women whom he saw as professionally useful. There were exceptions—he chased the editor Cele Goldsmith around her desk—but he preferred to focus on women who were more vulnerable, which inevitably raises the issue of mentorship.
> Yet many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual. When the author Frederik Pohl questioned his tendency to touch women “in a fairly fondling way,” Asimov replied, “It’s like the old saying. You get slapped a lot, but you get laid a lot, too.”
He's deliberately finding vulnerable women -- who may be forced to laugh off or allow his unwanted advances in order to keep their jobs (keep in mind the time period also -- women even having some of these jobs was something special in itself), and he's doing it to, ultimately, get sex.
That may not quite be the definition of rape, but it certainly isn't "a[n] unwelcome pinch on the butt."
Sounds to me like Asimov wasn't that far off from Weinstein -- keep in mind for every accusation of rape Weinstein is facing, there were dozens if not hundreds of women who claim lesser degrees of inappropriate actions. It's more likely that the women who would today, in the #metoo era, have reported legal sexual assault or rape, were silenced back then -- I can't imagine we will ever know though; maybe he stopped at just "pinches on the butt," but I doubt it.
The fact that two acts that differ in severity can be considered under the same umbrella does not cheapen the term - everybody recognizes the matter of scale, concrete action and intention that is different in both figures. An unwelcome pinch on the butt isn't rape - but it could be sexual assault. I don't think anybody argued that it is rape.
Would we call fondling male breasts (a "nipple twister" the internet informs me is called) or a slap on their ass (butt slapping, common sometimes after a sport game) against their owner’s will, a sexual assault (much less rape)? What if it had been performed by a stronger man to another weaker man, but in some casual setting?
How serious would we consider it, and how "traumatized" we would consider the person after the incident? (Some would call it "very serious". But then again there are people who suffer trauma over a wrong order at Starbucks).
At best most people would call it a tasteless antic or light bullying or crappy behavior (like farting in public)...
A better example is "tapping": a quick backhand to a male's crotch, trying to hit the testicles hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to incapacitate. Riot Games' COO, Scott Gelb, got two months of unpaid leave after he "repeatedly touched subordinates’ balls or butt or farted in their faces" [0].
I would absolutely describe that as sexual assault; deliberately, just to emphasize that playful male aggression crosses lines that absolutely should not be crossed, including in the workplace. Touch my balls without my consent, and I won't care whether you're horsing around or making an awkward pass. It's assault, and it's sexual. It doesn't cheapen other kinds of sexual assault to draw clear boundaries.
>But the way people see the first point will be through the lens of the second.
Only certain people, who think themselves as saints and that others should be too, and judge creators by their failings.
Most people care just for the work -- the fact they actually matters to them in 2020 and that they get to read --, and they could not give less ducks who some creator was and what they did in their personal lives.
There is only a limited amount of time available to me. I can only consume so much media. If I have a choice between two books, one written by someone with a tainted legacy and one written by someone without a tainted legacy, I'm going to pick the book with a nice author.
Of course you can't really apply ceteris parabus to books, but normally you have to decide what you're going to read on limited information, two very different books might seem close enough given you know little about either. When you choose what to read you reduce all the context and comparison to a decision. "author was a creep" definitely makes me less likely to want to read his work, especially if they are still alive and could personally profit.
>There is only a limited amount of time available to me. I can only consume so much media. If I have a choice between two books, one written by someone with a tainted legacy and one written by someone without a tainted legacy, I'm going to pick the book with a nice author.
The choice should be for the best book. Not the nicest author.
In fact the "nicest author" would probably have the most boring work -- personal failings add spice to fiction writing (and poems, songs, etc).
How can you know which book is best until you read both?
I don't want to read scifi all the time. So when I do read a scifi book, I have tons of good ones to pick from.
I actually recently read Foundation by Asimov and I don't see what all the big deal is about. It presupposes faster than light travel but not the spread of ideas. Also his sexist attitudes are apparent. He basically states that the entire female population planet of the foundation planet isn't important.
That's probably the last Asimov work I will read in my lifetime, based purely on the quality of the work, and nothing to do with his character.
>How can you know which book is best until you read both?
There are reviews, excepts, literary fame, word of mouth, tv adaptations, and several other things to get an idea about that. How moral the author was during their time on earth is hardly on my list of such things.
>I don't want to read scifi all the time. So when I do read a scifi book, I have tons of good ones to pick from.
Sure, but that's neither here nor there as to the point we're discussing. We'd have the same issue with any other genre (or even any other art rather than literature).
>There are reviews, excepts, literary fame, word of mouth, tv adaptations, and several other things to get an idea about that. How moral the author was during their time on earth is hardly on my list of such things.
I don't have time to read all Sci fi books, nor do I have time to read all reviews. I have to make a decision on very limited information. That's why I said between two seemingly equal books, meaning equal reviews, prestige, whatever, if one author is a creep and the other isn't, I'll pick to read the book by the author who isn't a creep.
>Sure, but that's neither here nor there as to the point we're discussing. We'd have the same issue with any other genre (or even any other art rather than literature).
I'm not discussing the abstract concept of separating art from artist. I'm discussing how it applies to me. This topic has pretty extensive treatment in literary/critical theory.
The reason this is applicable to me is that I have a goal to consume all the best scifi, and I don't have enough time in my lifetime to consume all the best scifi. Therefore I can afford to be more picky. I personally choose to limit myself to the best of the best Sci fi that happens to not be written by creeps.
If someone told me the best scifi novel ever was written by Hitler, I would probably read it. But if someone told me Hitler wrote a pretty good scifi novel I would skip it until I read all the really good ones. And then maybe I'll switch to reading a really good book from another genre before reading a pretty good book by Hitler.
Also I find it much, much more important to apply this principle to authors who are still alive. I don't want to financially support authors who are creeps. If they are dead, then it just is really some completely arbitrary selection criteria that I choose to apply to limit the total number of works I could read from some super huge number I could never hope to consume in my lifetime to some slightly smaller super huge number I could never hope to consume in my lifetime.
Which one is good though? Saints rarely make anything that is above mediocre quality. It's sad, but it is empirically true.
Jesus, if we had omniscience into the personal lives of every person, and were to chose to disregard their works if they did things that are objectionable to the taboos of the day, we'd be naked, looking over our shoulders fearfully for leopards.
Behavior like 2 is an important reason we have so few women writing works fundamental in shaping science fiction into what we know it as today. When we tolerate sexual harassment we demean women and make the community not welcoming to them. The article explores that.
I struggle to see the logic behind your assertion. If the capacity for involvement of female creators/contributors is limited by the likelihood of possible sexual harassment, then how do you account for female involvement/contribution in microblogging (specifically Instagram), discos & clubs, and large scale social events. These three types of thing all have the very rich potential for sexual harassment opportunities, yet it would appear a lot of women flock to them all the same. I would argue that the motivation to be involved is the largest factor in involvement, by any party, and consequences are secondary, if even considered, depending on potential status gain.
The relevance to the issue at hand is that science fiction is already a subgenre (though it is on the rise) that has a rather narrow range of fan base with an even more narrow range of potential authors. There are so few people writing good science fiction; I honestly wonder how much the carnal predilections of a now dead but no less prolific author is moving the needle.
If you could magically make science fiction authorship on par with being a YouTube personality in terms of perceived status, an army of Weinsteins and Dworkins couldn't keep little girls and boys out of crafting stories.
It's not about reading his work, it's about being an aspirational figure that generations want to follow and emulate. I didn't know any of these about Asimov and he has written some of the stories that I believe is the finest. But would I say to my kids "look at this great guy, be like him!"?
Honestly I never could relate to this focus I see nowadays on role models and aspirational figures. I think you should at most get inspired by specific actions scoped to the relevant areas of their lives.
Just tell your kids to be themselves. They don't need to emulate anyone.
>It's not about reading his work, it's about being an aspirational figure that generations want to follow and emulate.
People can still "follow and emulate" the achievements he did, not whatever bad side.
Like people still try to follow all kinds of public figures, despite their known bad sides, from Hemingway to Jobs.
Else we would only follow saints.
() not to mention, if the tide turns, even the bad side could be "cool" again. There are even people into things like satanism or self-destruction, or womanizing, or machoism after all, and they too have their idols.
The fuck? Sexual harassment is as much part of his legacy as his novels. It drives out people from your field if your leaders are lauded despite being terrible to others.
No field has any shortage of leaders / people being "terrible to others" in this and other ways.
People could take issue in how their leaders, and people they interact with are today.
If, on the other hand, they take issue for past leaders being lauded for their "within-the-field achievements" despite their personal behavior (as if that has any bearing on the field), especially after 50+ odd years, then those people "driven out" weren't that driven to be in the field in the first place.
Would anybody go off of physics because Einstein was sexist (and worse), and still (rightly so) lauded as the greatest physicist (perhaps after Newton)?
Not sure when people forgot how to compartmentalise...
> Would anybody go off of physics because Einstein was sexist (and worse), and still (rightly so) lauded as the greatest physicist (perhaps after Newton)?
It affected his wife I think (she was actually good in math). I think Einstein behavior was more personal through. He was never in "public figure groping women while everybody knows about it and culture adjusts to accept and enable" category. And like, it is ok to talk about Einstein flaws too, why do we need to pretend that past figures were better then they actually were?
> they take issue for past leaders being lauded for their "within-the-field achievements" despite their personal behavior
Asimov was not successful despite his personal behavior. His personal behavior happened because of his success and escalated with success. It is the way people in power accepted the acts that they would not accept from somebody else.
The lauding of great people is often based on lie - either by omission or direct. The exactly same impulse of "must not criticize him" is what make people enable his behavior and would make people enable next successful person.
> then those people "driven out" weren't that driven to be in the field in the first place.
I think this is nonsense. Of course people take rational decisions about which field they can be reasonably successful in and where they can will be treated badly.
It is like with companies - most capable employees tend to leave faster when faced with toxic management.
> Would anybody go off of physics because Einstein was sexist (and worse), and still (rightly so) lauded as the greatest physicist (perhaps after Newton)?
>It affected his wife I think (she was actually good in math)
Yes, I'm talking about today. Would anybody go off of physics today, because Einstein is still very much lauded (and will probably forever be)?
>Asimov was not successful despite his personal behavior. His personal behavior happened because of his success and escalated with success.
Yes, but I'm dividing the two as the stuff remaining and actually accessible/relevant to people today (the actual work), and stuff where someone to be affected had to be there and present in his private life at the time.
So whether the success drove his personal behavior, the point remains, the public output we have today is the books. We don't care if Marlowe knifed a couple of people when enjoying his plays (in fact, come to think of it, J. S. Bach did too).
> The lauding of great people is often based on lie
After they are dead, the lauding is based on "what's in for us". If there are artifacts from which the future generations benefit, then the "at the time" dealings are not really relevant.
>I think this is nonsense. Of course people take rational decisions about which field they can be reasonably successful in and where they can will be treated badly.
Yes, but not based on what someone dead 30 years ago did 50+ years ago.
If people dropped out a while ago, then it matters for history of genre and past gender imbalance. It matters for the dispute on whether culture inside genre could have influenced gender ratio - or whether girls simply can't appreciate sci-fi due to their nature.
It matters because it influenced what people in gendre think about what is cool and what is wrong. It matters for us to understand how past culture really functioned, because past is used as argument today.
It matters because it shows how much of 1950 nostalgia is pure bullshit.
The full Bachs biography and Marlowe biographies are interesting too. At least for those of us interested in history beyond "cool stories".
If I understand your comment, you are saying that what people do in their private life does not matter unless it is important enough (e.g. being the Boston strangler): this is tautological (what is important in the legacy of someone if the important things they did, their work and/or their private life if their private life is important).
You are just saying that hundreds of such "incidents" is simply not important enough to be remembered. But murder would be according to you. Where do you draw the line?
I'll drop right in here to say the in their private life argument doesn't fly here. Because the complaints aren't about his private relationships, they're about public and professional behavior.
Frankly the callousness of people like Asimov bothers me. You're left with two possibilities. Either they simply don't care that they are making the other person uncomfortable, angry or scared. Or worse that they're getting off on that.
While I personally believe that you have to understand historical figures in the context of the time and society they lived in and not judge them by modern societal rules (even if these are improvements), I think we are seeing an increase in judging historical figures. For example, in terms of American Founding Fathers, John Adams is rising in estimation and Thomas Jefferson is falling. Obviously a large part in this is that Adams didn't own slaves.
Historical works to a point. There were people who obviously knew that slavery was bad back then. It's more controversial to think that everyone thought it was OK.
Then there will be very very few pedestals, and small ones when there are at all. I have no trouble believing that everyone has done or said or caused something that could be called out.
I am not making excuses or forgiving anyone. I'm just trying to point out that using today's "acceptable" to judge the past will devalue everything that's ever been accomplished.
E.g., no doubt Salk had ideas about male/female roles in society that would be considered poorly today. That should be acknowledged as part of his time. Does that affect the success of the polio vaccine?
"I'm just trying to point out that using today's "acceptable" to judge the past will devalue everything that's ever been accomplished"
I disagree, even in the time of the Founding Fathers it was common knowledge that slavery was bad, they just didn't care. Is that not wrong?
And in this case, clearly Asimov knew that what he was doing was wrong. We can call out what these figures did as being wrong, while also acknowledging the work that they have done.
Yeah, I really don't think so. The legacy of people with important contributions (technical, cultural, political, etc) is their work, not what they did in their private life, unless they were also moonlighting as the Boston strangler or something.
In 2500 nobody would care whether he did this or that. But they would probably still read some of his work.