A Comparison Isaac Asimov to H.G. Wells

Brian Aldiss has compared Asimov to H.G Wells - both prolific SF novelists who were also scientifically trained and major producers of popular science books; and like Wells Asimov has contributed to the atmosphere which has allowed other popularisers of science to become well known - so Wells had peers like Haldane, Julian Huxley and James Jeans, and Asimov has had Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking and Douglas Hofstadter among others. Yet I doubt if the people who leave A Brief History of Time on their coffee tables had previously bought The New Intelligent Man's Guide to Science or any other of Asimov's science guides. Asimov was a pathfinder - none of his books made a loss, but I get the impression others have made the big bucks.

Asimov apparently wrote easily, though in his early days he lacked ideas for stories. He began reading science fiction early - his father (who had emigrated from Russia to avoid the anti-Jewish pogroms) ran a drug store, and would not allow Isaac to read rubbish, but allowed him to read SF pulps because his English was not good enough to realize that a science fiction magazine is not an educational science magazine. At the age of eighteen Asimov wrote three short stories and submitted them to Astounding. The second and third were accepted. John W. Campbell, the editor, took Asimov under his wing as he did with many others of his contributors, feeding him with ideas and creative criticism. Asimov, while still going through college, became a writer for the pulps, making one cent a word. You can understand why he did not immediately give up his day job.

Without Campbell Asimov would not have been the writer he was. Campbell gave him the themes for stories - "Nightfall", for instance, while in other cases such as the Three Laws of Robotics, these arose out of the long discussion Campbell liked to have with his authors (as both were in New York they could meet relatively easily). Campbell also identified the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and its subject nations as a paradigm for all future history.

On the other hand Asimov must always have felt the newish world of SF to be of value - no matter how well you think he succeeded in handling the subjects, he took two and made them important - the implications of automation in his robot stories, and the philosophy of history in the Foundation stories. He handled other themes as well, of course, and some things he never really touched - space journeys, alien cultures, bug eyed monsters, supermen, yet no other author of the period managed to identify some major elements so well.

As Eisenhower replaced Truman the economics of publishing changed - the pulps disappeared. Astounding became Analog. In 1950 Asimov published his first novel - his first book - Pebble in the Sky, and the collection I, Robot. He published The Stars, Like Dust in 1951, and Foundation, ...