for Lippershey seems to have caught the significance

of the finding at once.

 

Lippershey realized that one could not expect to

stand about holding two lenses in appropriate posi-

tions, one in each hand. He therefore devised a metal

tube into which the two lenses could be fitted in the

proper place, and he had what he called (in Dutch) a

"looker," something one could look through.

 

It came to be called, more pretentiously, an "optic

tube" or "optic glass" or "perspective glass." In the

first book of Paradise Lost, published in 1667, John

Milton still refers to such a device as an optic glass. In

1612, however, a Greek mathematician, loannes Dimi-

siani, who was secretary to an Italian cardinal, sug-

gested the word "telescope," from Greek words mean-

ing "to see at a distance." By about 1650 this word

began to gain ground and eventually drove out all

others. We can say, then, that Lippershey had in-

vented the first telescope.

 

But did he? Once the instrument became famous,

other Dutchmen lay claim to having been first in the

field. This is very possible, for given a supply of len-

ses, anyone could invent it by accident One with a

particularly good case is another optician of Middel-

burg, a neighbor of Lippershey's named Zacharias

Janssen (1580-1638?). He claimed to have con-

structed a telescope in 1604, and he may have; Lip-

pershey may have borrowed the idea and made up the

story of his apprentice to cover the theft.

 

Nevertheless, Lippershey deserves credit whether

 

OPUS 200                 273

 

he originated the telescope in the strict sense of the

word or not. All his competitors for the honor did

nothing with their telescopes, as far as we know, ex-

cept indulge in viewing for their own amusement.

Lippershey made the world conscious of the instru-

ment by offering it to the Dutch government as a war

weapon.

 

At that time, the Netherlands had been fighting a

bitter war of independence against Spain for forty

years, and all that was keeping the small nation alive

against the superior military power of Spain was the

Dutch navy. An instrument that would allow ships of

the Dutch fleet to see the approach of an enemy long

before that enemy could be aware of the Dutch would

place the Netherlands in a strong position.

 

Maurice of Nassau, the capable man who was then

stadholder of the Dutch republic, was interested in

science and saw the importance of the device at once.

He paid Lippershey 900 flonns and ordered him to

produce for the government telescopes of a binocular

variety, ones that could be looked through with both

eyes at once.

 

Maurice tried to keep the telescope a secret, but

that was impossible; the device was too simple. The

mere rumor that such a thing existed meant that any

ingenious man could duplicate it at once. Telescopes

were offered to Henry IV of France before 1608 was

over, but King Henry, while amused, was not inter-

ested.

 

The secret war weapon, then, was no secret—but

the Dutch did not lose too much. In 1609, a truce with

Spain was worked out and the Dutch were never in

real danger (from Spain, at least) thereafter. The tele-

scope could go its way, then, with not even the

sketchiest attempt to keep it secret—and it did.

 

274

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

*     *     •

 

By all odds, though, the most unusual bit of history

included in my second hundred books is fictional. In

1973, the Saturday Evening Post, aware of the coming

bicentennial, suggested that 1 write a fantasy about

Benjamin Franklin, one in which I would talk to him,

perhaps, and get the advice of the wise old sage with

respect to our contemporary problems.

 

I thought it was a fascinating idea, and I felt I

could handle it since I had already written The Shap-

ing of North America and The Birth of the United

States in addition to The Kite That Won the Revolu-

tion, a book specifically on Franklin, which was in-

cluded in my first hundred.

 

I therefore wrote a story called "The Dream" and it

was published in the January-February 1974 Saturday

Evening Post.

 

As so often happens, though, the publishers' appe-

tite was only whetted and they came after me again.

They wanted more dream conversations with Frank-

lin, and I wrote three more before mounting one of

my all-too-rare rebellions against such things and re-

fusing to do any more.

 

I called the additional stories simply "Second

Dream," "Third Dream," and "Fourth Dream," but the

Saturday Evening Post called them "Benfamin's

Dream," "Party by Satellite," and "Benjamins Bicen-

tenial Blast."

 

Then, in January 1976, the printers' union of New

York held its annual banquet on Franklins birthday

(he being the patron saint of American printers). It

was their Custom to put out a small booklet of Frank-

liniana, and on this occasion, with my permission they

 

OPUS 200                275

 

put out a collection of three of the Dreams. (For some

reason, they left out the third.)

 

It was a privately printed book, beautifully done,

and longer than some of my children's hooks. What's

more, it contained stories of mine that were not other-

wise collected in book form, so I placed it on my list as

Book 170 (with the most inconvenient name of all the

books in my entire two hiin(lred). From it, here is

"The Dream," the first in the series, in its entirety:

 

"The Dream" (1974)

 

"I'm dreaming," I said. It seemed to me that I had

said it aloud. I know that I was in bed. I was aware of

the bedclothes. I was aware of the scattered city lights

peeping through the slats of the Venetian blinds.

 

Yet he was tliere. As alive—as living—as real—

 

I could reach out and touch him, but I dared not

move.

 

I recognized him. I've seen enough pictures of him,

and so has everyone. He did not look quite like his

pictures, for he was old, very old. White hair fringed

his head. I recognized him. I simply knew who he

was.

 

He said, "I'm dreaming."

 

We stared at each other and all the world faded

away—the bed and the bedclothes and the room. I

said, "You're Benjamin Franklin,"

 

He smiled slowly and said, "It may be that this is

not a dream only. I stand close to death and perhaps

the dying may have their wishes answered, if the wish

be sufficiently earnest. Of what year are you?"

 

I felt panic rise. It might be a dream, but it might

be madness. "I am dreamingF I insisted wildly.

 

276

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

"Of course, you are, after a fashion, dreaming," said

Franklin—what else could I call him^ "And I as well-

How is it conceivable that you and I could speak but

by something outside reality? And how does man

transcend reality but in dreams? Of what year are

you, my good sir?"

 

I was silent. He waited patiently and then shook his

head.

 

"Then I will speak first," he said. "I am old enough

to have naught to fear. It is New Year's Eve of the

Year of our Lord 1790, in the fourteenth year of the

Independence of the United States, and in the first

year of the presidency of George Washington. And in

the last year of poor Benjamin Franklin, too. I will not

last the new year. I know that.

 

"I do not die prematurely. In a fortnight and a few

days I will mark my eighty-fourth birthday. A good

old age, for it has made my life long enough to see my

native land become a new nation among the nations

of the earth, and I have had something to do with

that. We have a Constitution that was hammered out,

not without pain, and will perhaps serve. And General

Washington is spared to lead us.

 

"Yet will our nation last? The great monarchies of

Europe remain hostile and there are dissensions

among ourselves. British forces still hold our frontier

posts; Spain threatens in the south; our trade lan-

guishes; the party spirit grows. Will our nation last?"

 

I managed to nod my head.

 

He chuckled almost noiselessly. "Is that all you can

say? A nod? I asked for two hundred years. With this

new year coining in, my last year, I asked what the

United States might be like on its two hundredth

birthday. Are these, then, the only tidings I am vouch-

safed?"

 

OPUS 200                277

 

"Almost," I managed to say. "Almost. It is almost

the bicentennial."

 

Franklin nodded. "For you two centuries is a long

time. It is two centuries since the first Englishmen

stepped ashore on Roanoke Island; two centuries since

Spain's invincible Armada was smashed. I fear the

many inevitable changes two more centuries will

bring."

 

He paused and then his voice seemed stronger, as

though (ie were prenaring to face whatever might be.

"You speak of the bicentennial as though you accept

the idea casually. The United States, then, still exists

in your time?"

 

"YesI"

 

"In what condition? Still independent? Still with the

princely domain we won from Great Britain?"

 

"Still independent," I said, and I felt myself grow

warm with the pleasure of bringing great news. "And

far larger. It is a land as large as all of Europe, with a

population of more than two hundred million drawn

from every nation. Fiftv states stretch from the Atlan-

tic to the Pacific, with the fiftieth leaping the sea to

the Hawaiian Islands of the mid-Pacific."

 

His eyes lightened with joy. "And Canada?"

 

"Not Canada. That remains under the British

crown."

 

"Great Britain is still a monarchy then?"

 

"Yes. Queen Elizabeth II is on the throne, but Great

Britain is our friend and lias been for a long time."

 

"Let the Creator be praised for that Does the na-

tion prosper?"

 

"The richest on earth. The strongest"

 

Now Franklin paused. Then: "You say that because

you think to please me, perhaps. Richer than Great

Britain? Stronger than France?"

 

~t'.

 

278

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

"If you asked to have the future revealed to you,        f

would it be lies you would hear? The time has not

been all bliss. If we are a mighty union of states now,

under our thirty-seventh President in unbroken suc-

cession from George Washington, it is because we        ''

have survived a long and bloody war between the '

states. In this present century, we have fought war

after war overseas. We have had periods of economic

disaster and periods of political corruption. It has not

been the best of all possible worlds, but we have sur-

vived, and, as we approach the bicentennial, we are

the richest and strongest nation on earth."

 

The old man seemed restless. He stirred in his bed

and said, "I feel that I would like to walk about. I am        ^

not yet so old as to be bedridden. Yet I fear it will

break the vision. It grows stronger, do you not feel

that?"

 

"Yes," I said. It was as though we two alone, sepa-        ^

rated by two centuries, were all that existed in a uni-        ^

verse closed tightly about us.                                '^

 

Franklin said, "I feel your thoughts without asking.        ^-

1 begin to grow in you, or you in me. I sense your        •-'

world—the world that is to come."                           ^

 

There was a tickling in my skull—not a tickling, ei-        S

ther—a sensation I could not describe and still cannot.        <t

It was another mind which, even in great old age, was        ^

more powerful than my own and had gently inserted        t

itself into the interstices of my own.                         ^

 

Franklin said, with infinite satisfaction, "Yours is an         t'

age in which natural philosophy, then, is highly ad-         t

vanced, I see."                                               a,

 

"We call it science now," I said, "and you are right.        "A

We fly through the air and can circle the globe in less

time than it took you to go from Boston to Philadel-

phia. Our words streak at the speed of light and reach

 

OPUS 200                279

 

any comer of the globe in a fraction of a second. Our

carriages move without horses and our buildings

tower a quarter of a mile into the air."

 

He was silent and for a time seemed to be attempt-

ing to absorb what might have seemed like wild fan-

tasy.

 

I said, "Much of it stems from you. You were the

first to penetrate the nature of electricity, and it is

electricity that now powers our society. You invented

the lightning rod, the first device, based on the find-

ings of pure science, to defeat a natural calamity. It

was with the lightning rod that men first turned to

science for help against the universe."

 

He said, "You make it unnecessary for an old man

to praise himself. I am too old to play at the game of

modesty. I look back at my life and my eyes are not so

blind as to fail to show me something of my true

worth. Do you think, then, the lightning rod is my

greatest invention?"

 

"One of them, certainly," I said.

 

"Not at all," said Franklin seriously, "for my great-

est invention is the United States, which I see is fated

to increase so mightily in strength and wealth. But

you think I exaggerate?"

 

"Well," I said, "you were a member of the commit-

tee that wrote the Declaration of Independence—"

 

"Tom Jefferson did the writing," interupted Frank-

lin, "though I suggested a passage or two."

 

"And you were a member of the Constitutional

Convention—"

 

"Where I devoted myself to quieting tempers. None

of that. I invented the United States over a score of

years before it was born. Have you forgotten that in

your time?"

 

"I am not certain—"

 

280

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

"The French!" he said, impatiently. "Have the

Americans of the future forgotten the day when

France controlled Canada and Louisiana and reached

out to take the Ohio Valley, too. The day when they

would have penned us between the mountains and the

sea, to take us at their leisure later?"               ,

 

"We remember," I said. "We remember Wolfe and

the capture of Quebec."

 

"But that was victory, in 1759. Cast your mind back

to 1754. The French were at Fort Duquesne, only two

hundred fifty miles from Philadelphia. Young George

Washington's mission to the French—and he was

Young George then, a lad of twenty-one—had failed.

Yet the colonies would not take action against the

menace. The Pennsylvania proprietary government

was torpid. The British were concerned with Europe,

not with us. And even the Iroquois, our old Indian

allies, were threatening to transfer their friendship to

the French. Do you remember all that?"

 

"Only dimly, sir."

 

"So Governor De Lancey of New York called a con-

gress of the colonies to meet and confer about the

common danger. On June 19, 1754, twenty-five dele-

gates from seven colonies—the four of New England,

plus New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland-met at

Albany. We comforted the Iroquois and held them

firm, and then, on June 24, I presented my plan of

union to the Albany congress."

 

He paused dramatically, then said, "I suggested the

colonies be governed by a governor-general, appoint-

ed and paid by the British crown. Partner with

him was to be a grand council in which delegates

from the various colonies, in number proportional to

population, would sit. The grand council would deal

 

OPUS 200                281

 

with American affairs, and the govenor-general would

see to it that the interests of the empire were pre-

served. The congress accepted it—on July 4. It might

have saved the colonies for Great Britain."

 

I nodded. "It might have. Canada finally came to

much the same arrangement and is still under the

British crown, though it rules itself."

 

"Ah! But the colonies ignored my plan because it

gave too much power to the crown, and Parliament

ignored it because it gave too much power to the colo-

nies. But the idea of union, which was mine, did not

die. you see. And what I suggested, molded into modi-

fied form by time, came to pass, so that my intention

became the United States of America. And," he added

with deep satisfaction, "I lived to see it and to play

my small—no, my large part."

 

I nodded again.

 

"And now," he said, "you live in a great world that

has grown curiously small, a world far smaller than

my thirteen colonies of 1754. Around the world in a

day, you say? Words at the speed of light? The astron-

omer royal, Mr. Bradley, had worked that out to be

some 180,000 miles per second."

 

"That is right; 186,282 miles per second."

 

"Even to the exact mile? And yet your world is as

divided as our American states once were."

 

"More divided, I fear."

 

"I catch a dim view of devices that make war

deadly," he said.

 

"We have bombs that can destroy—"

 

But old Franklin waved his hand. "Do not tell me. I

see enough. And yet with the chance of universal de-

struction, there remains no certainty of peace?"

 

"The nations are armed and hostile."

 

282

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

"The United States arms also?"                       ^

"Certainly. It is the strongest nuclear power.**          ^

 

*Then man does not advance in wisdom as he does   ^

 

'y                                            e"

m power.''                                            ^

 

I shrugged. What could I say?                       ||

 

Franklin said, "Are there no enemies against which    ^

the nations can unite? We tried to unite against

France, but relied too greativ on Great Britain to feel

the absolute need. We did unite against Great Britain,

at last, when we stood alone."

 

I said, "There is no power against whom the nations

of the world feel the need to unite. There is no enemy

from beyond the earth to threaten us with universal

defeat and slavery."

 

"Are there no enemies other than those who are liv-

ing beings?" asked Franklin angrily. "Is there not ig-

norance? Is there not miserv? Is there not hunger and

disease, hatred and bigotry, and disorder and crime?

Has your world changed so much that these things do

not exist?"

 

"No. We have them. Not all of man's, material ad-

vance has ended the threat of those things you men-

tion. We multiply still in great number—nearly four

billion the world over—and that multiplies our prob-

lems and may even destroy us all."

 

"And mankind will not combine against this imma-

terial foe?"

 

I said, "No more than the colonies combined against

France or even against Great Britain until bloodshed

in New England brought them a clear and present

danger."

 

Franklin said, "Can you wait for a clear and present

danger? What you call a nuclear war would make it

too late at once. If matters advanced to the point

where your complex society broke down, then even

 

OPUS 200

 

283

 

in the absence of war you could not prevent catas-

trophe."

 

"You are correct, sir."

 

"Is there no way, then, to dramatize the—" His head

bent in thought. He said, "You spoke of a war be-

tween the states. Are the states still at enmity? Is the

nation still divided?"

 

"No, the wounds are healed."

 

"How? In what manner?"

 

"That is not easy to explain. For one thing, in the

years after that war, the nation was engaged in build-

ing the West. In this great colonizing venture, all the

states, north and south, combined. In that common

task. and in the further task of strengthening the na-

tion, smaller enmities were forgotten."

 

"I see," said Franklin. "And is there no great ven-

ture in which the world is engaged in your time. Is

there nothing so grand that in it all the nations may

find a common goal and, as you say, forget the

smaller enmities?"

 

I thought for a moment. "Space, perhaps."

 

"Space?"

 

"Both ourselves and the Soviet Union—which used

to be the Russian Empire—have sent out exploring

vessels as far as the planets Mars and Jupiter."

 

For a moment Franklin seemed speechless. Then he

said, "With men on board?"

 

"No, unmanned. But six vessels, carrying three men

each, have traveled to the moon. Twelve Americans

have walked on the moon. A seventh vessel miscarried

but brought its crew safely back to earth."

 

Franklin said, "And with so majestic a feat at the

disposal of mankind, the nations of the world can yet

quarrel?"

 

"I am sorry, but it is so."

 

284

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

"Is the venture, perhaps, merely a useless show?"

"No. Not at ail. Vessels bearing instruments circle

earth. They help in our planetary communications.

They serve as navigational aids. They report on our

cloud cover and help us predict the weather. They in-

vestigate the properties of space and help us under-

stand our universe. Through their observations we can

plot earth's resources, pinpoint earth's physical prob-

lems of pollution, understand the planet as a whole in

ways we never could before. We can add to our

 

knowledge in an as yet unsuspected fashion that will

help us in—"

 

"And still the nations quarrel?"

"Yes."

 

Franklin's eyes began to blaze at this. One arm

reached out tremblinglv toward me. 'Then there must

be further dramatization. Tell me, is it an American

venture only—those vessels to the moon—or are other

nations involved?"

 

"It is strictly American."

 

"Ah. And the bicentennial approaches. Then cannot

the United States establish a birthday party that will

be the greatest birthday of all time by making it a

celebration for mankind?"

 

"In what way, sir?"

 

"Launch one of your vessels on the bicentennial,"

he said energetically. "Or, if there is not time for that,

announce one to be launched by the united aid of all

the nations of the world. Let there be a celebration of

the Fourth, not as the bicentennial of a single nation,

but as a glorification of the principle of the union of

 

political entities against a common foe and for a com-

mon purpose.

 

"Let there be the largest birthday cake in the world,

if you will; the decoration of whole cities; the saluting

 

OPUS 200

 

285

 

'; of a thousand guns; the playing of ten thousand

bands—but let it be for mankind. Let the leaders of all

nations assemble to praise the union of mankind. Let

them all plan their own part in the launching of ves-

sels into space under the auspices of a united planet.

; Let the conquest of space be the source of pride for

 

nothing smaller than mankind. Let it be that in which

, all men can find a common glory, and in which all

men can forget enmities."

 

I said, "But the problems of mankind will remain.

They will not disappear."

 

Franklin's figure seemed to waver, grow less sub-

stantial. "Do you want everything at once? The Amer-

ican union did not solve all problems for Americans.

But it made it possible for solutions to be sought, and

sometimes found."

 

He grew dimmer still, wraithlike, and then vanished

in a fading smoke. And I woke up.

 

If it were a dream, it was Franklin's dream, too.

And a greater dream still—of a union beyond our Un-

ion.

 

But what could I do? I do not make policy.

Yet I am a writer. With help, I might make myself

heard. With help!

 

So I picked up the telephone and called a certain

editor, for, in addition to the lightning rod and the

United States, hadn't Benjamin Franklin also invented

the Saturday Evening Post?

 

PART 9

 

THE BIBLE

 

Among my first hundred books is the two-volume Asi-

mov's Guide to the Bible. What could I do for an en-

core?

 

One thing J could do was to write articles on bibli-

cal subjects for people who were impressed with the

Guide. Reader's Digest Books asked me to contribute

essays to an elaborate book they were compiling

about men and women in the Bible. 1 wrote articles

for them on Jacob, Ruth, and so on.

 

Although 1 was well paid, I didn't particularly enjoy

the task since the editors had their ideas and they

were not mine. Eventually, when the book came out, I

found that everyone who had had anything to do with

the book was carefully acknowledged—the editors,

photographers, paper cutters, office boys, garbage col-

lectors—everyone but the writers. The written words,

it could only be assumed, had been carved on Sinai

by direct revelation.

 

I was furious. Although I had contributed a sub-

stantial portion of the book, I refused to include it in

my list—not if my authorship were in no way acknowl-

edged. In fact, I didn't even keep the book.

 

It was not, however, an effort that had been en-

tirely wasted. My biography on Ruth got me to think-

ing about the subject, and for Doubleday I wrote a

 

290

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

book for young people called The Story of Ruth

(Book 127). It was published in 1972.

 

I repeated the thesis of this book in an F & SF es-

say, "Lost in Non-Translation" which appeared in

March 1972 and was then included in my essay collec-

tion The Tragedy of the Moon {Book 144), published

by Doubleday in 1973. The essay is included here in

full.

 

"Lost in Non-Translation'* (2972)

 

At the Noreascon (the Twenty-ninth World Science

Fiction Convention), which was held in Boston on the

Labor Day weekend of 1971, I sat on the dais, of

course, since, as the Bob Hope of science fiction, it is

my perennial duty to hand out the Hugos. On my left

was my daughter, Robyn—sixteen, blond, blue-eyed,

shapely, and beautiful. (No, that last adjective is not a

father's proud partiality. Ask anyone.)

 

My old friend Clifford D. Simak was guest of honor,

and he began his talk by introducing, with thoroughly

justified pride, his two children, who were in the au-

dience. A look of alarm instantly crossed Robyn's face.

 

"Daddy," she whispered urgently, knowing full well

my capacity for inflicting embarrassment, "are you

planning to introduce me?"

 

"Would that bother you, Robyn?" I asked.

 

"Yes, it would."

 

"Then I won't," I said, and patted her hand reassur-

ingly.

 

She thought awhile. Then she said, "Of course,

Daddy, if you have the urge to refer, in a casual sort

of way, to your beautiful daughter, that would be all

right."

 

OPUS 200

 

291

 

So you can bet I did fust that, while she allowed her

eyes to drop in a charmingly modest way.

 

But I couldn't help but think of the blond, blue-eyed

stereotype of Nordic beautv that has filled Western lit-

erature ever since the blond, blue-eyed Germanic

tribes took over the western portions of the Roman

Empire, fifteen centuries ago, and set themselves up

as an aristocracy.

 

. . , And of the manner in which that stereotype has

been used to subvert one of the clearest and most im-

portant lessons in the Bible—a subversion that con-

tributes its little bit to the serious crisis that today

faces the world, and the United States in particular.

 

In line with my penchant for beginning at the be-

ginning, come back with me to the sixth century B.C.

A party of Jews had returned from Babylonian exile to

rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, which Nebuchad-

nezzar had destroyed seventy years before.

 

During the exile, under the guidance of the prophet

Ezekfel, the Jews had firmly held to their national

identity by modifving, complicating, and idealizing

their worship of Yahweh into a form tliat was directly

ancestral to the Judaism of today. (In fact Ezekiel is

sometimes called "the father of Judaism.")

 

This meant that when the exiles returned to Jerusa-

lem, they faced a religious problem. There were peo-

ple who, all through the period of the exile, had been

living in what had once been Judah, and who wor-

shiped Yahweh in what they considered the correct,

time-honored ritual. Because their chief city (with Je-

rusalem destroyed) was Samaria, the returning Jews

called them Samaritans.

 

The Samaritans rejected the newfangled modifica-

 

292

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

tions of the returning Jews, and the Jews abhorred the

old-fashioned beliefs of the Samaritans. Between them

arose an undying hostility, the kind that is exacer-

bated because the differences in belief are compara-

tively small-

In addition there were, also living in the land, those'

who worshiped other gods altogether—Ammonites,

Edomites, Philistines, and so on.

 

The pressures on the returning band of Jews were

not primarilv military, for the entire area was under

the more or less beneBcent rule of the Persian Em-

pire; they were social pressures, and perhaps even

stronger for that. To maintain a strict ritual in the face

of overwhelming numbers of nonbelievers is difficult,

and the tendency to relax that ritual was almost irre-

sistible. Then, too, young male returnees were at-

tracted to the women at hand and there were inter-

marriages. Naturally, to humor the wife, ritual was

further relaxed.

 

But then, possibly as late as about 400 B.C., a full

century after the second Temple had been built, Ezra

arrived in Jerusalem. He was a scholar of the Mosaic

law, which had been edited and put into final form in

the course of the exile. He was horrified at the back-

sliding and put through a tub-thumping revival. He

called the people together, led them in chanting the

law and expounding on it, raised their religious fervor,

and called for confession of sins and renewal of faith.

 

One thing he demanded most rigorously was the

abandonment of all non-Jewish wives and their chil-

dren. Only so could the holiness of strict Judaism be

maintained, in his view. To quote the Bible (and I

will use the recent New English Bible for the pur-

pose ):

 

"Ezra the priest stood up and said, *You have com-

 

OPUS 200                 293

 

mitted an offense in marrying foreign wives and have

added to Israel's guilt. Make vour confession now to

the Lord the God of vour fathers and do his will, and

separate yourselves from the foreign population and

from vour foreign wives.' Then all the assembled peo-

ple shouted in reply, 'Yes; wte must do what vou say

. . . (Ezra 10:10-12).

 

From that time on, the Jews as a whole began to

practice an exclpsivi.sm, a voluntary separation from

others, a multiplication of peculiar customs that fur-

ther emphasized their separateness; and all of this

helped them maintain their identity through all the

miseries and catastrophes that were to come, through

all the crises, and through exiles and persecutions that

fragmented them over the face of the earth.

 

The exclusivism, to be sure, also served to make

them socially indigestible and imparted to them a

high social visibility that helped give rise to condi-

tions that made exiles and persecutions more iikely.

 

Not everyone among the Jews adhered to this pol-

icy of exclusivism. There were some who believed

that all men were equal in the sight of God and that

no one should be excluded from the community on

the basis of group identity alone.

 

One who believed this (but who is forever name-

less) attempted to present this case in the form of a

short piece of historical fiction. In this fourth-century-

B.C. tale the heroine was Ruth, a Moabite woman.

(The tale was presented as having taken place in the

time of the judges, so the traditional view was that it

was written by the prophet Samuel in the eleventh

century B.C. No modem student of the Bible believes

this.)

 

Why a Moabite women, by the way?

 

It seems that the Jews, returning from exile, had

 

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ISAAC ASIMOV

 

traditions concerning their initial arrival at the bor-

ders of Canaan under Moses and then Joshua, nearlv a

thousand vears before. At that time, the small nation

of Moab, which lay east of the lower course of the

Jordan and of the Dead Sea, was understandably

alarmed at the incursion of tough desert raiders and

took steps to oppose them. Not only did they prevent

the Israelites from passing through their territory, but,

tradition had it, they called in a seer, Balaam, and

asked him to use his magical abilities to bring misfor-

tune and destruction upon the invaders.

 

That failed, and Balaam, on departing, was sup-

posed to have advised the king of Moab to let the

Moabite girls lure the desert raiders into liaisons,

which might subvert their stem dedication to then-

task. The Bible records the following:

 

"When the Israelites were in Shittim, the people be-

gan to have intercourse with Moabite women, who in-

vited them to the sacrifices offered to their gods; and

they ate the sacrificial food and prostrated themselves

before the gods of Moab. The Israelites joined in the

worship of the Baal of Peor, and the Lord was angry

with them" (Numbers 25:1-3).

 

As a result of this, "Moabite women" became the

quintessence of the type of outside influence that by

sexual attraction tried to subvert pious Jews. Indeed,

Moab and the neighboring kingdom to the north, Am-

mon, were singled out in the Mosaic code:

 

"No Ammonite or Moabite, even down to the tenth

generation, shall become a member of the assembly of

the Lord . . . because they did not meet you with

food and water on your way out of Egypt, and be-

cause they hired Balaam ... to revile you . . , You

shall never seek their welfare or their good all your

life long" (Deuteronomy 23:3-4, 6).

 

OPUS 200                 295

 

And yet there were times in later history when

there was friendship between Moab and at least some

men of Israel, possibly because they were brought to-

gether by some common enemy.

 

For instance, shortly before 1000 B.C., Israel was

ruled by Saul. He had held off the Philistines, con-

quered the Amalekites, and brought Israel to its great-

est pitch of power to that point. Moab naturally

feared his expansionist policies and so befriended any-

one rebelling against Saul. Such a rebel was the Ju-

dean warrior David of Bethlehem. When David was

pressed hard by Saul and bad retired to a fortified

stronghold, he used Moab as a refuge for his family.

 

"David . . . said to the king of Moab, 'Let my fa-

ther and motlier come and take shelter with you until

I know what God will do for me.' So he left them at

the court of the king of Moab, and they stayed there

as long as David was in his stronghold" (1 Samuel

22:3-4).

 

As it happened, David eventually won out, became

king first of Judah, then of all Israel, and established

an empire that took in the entire east coast of the

Mediterranean, from Egypt to the Euphrates, with the

Phoenician cities independent but in alliance with

him. Later, Jews always looked back to the time of

David and his son Solomon as a golden age, and Da-

vid's position in Jewish legend and thought was unas-

sailable. David founded a dynasty that ruled over Ju-

dah for four centuries, and the Jews never stopped

believing that some descendant of David would yet

return to rule over them again in some idealized fu-

ture time.

 

Yet, on the basis of the verses describing David's

use of Moab as a refuge for his family, there may have

arisen a tale to the effect that there was a Moabite

 

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ISAAC ASIMOV

 

strain in David's ancestry. Apparently, the author of

the Book of Ruth determined to make use of this tale

to point up the doctrine of nonexclusivism by using

the supremely hated Moabite woman as his heroine.

 

The Book of Ruth tells of a Judean family of Bethle-

hem—a man, his wife, and two sons—who are driven

by famine to Moab. There the two sons marry Moa-

bite girls, but after a space of time all three men die,

leaving the three women—Naomi, the mother-in-law,

and Ruth and Orpah, the two daughters-in-law—as

survivors.

 

Those were times when women were chattels, and

unmarried women, without a man to own them and

care for them, could subsist only on charity. (Hence

the frequent biblical injunction to care for widows

and orphans.)

 

Naomi determined to return to Bethlehem, where

kinsmen might possibly care for her, but urged Ruth

and Orpah to remain in Moab. She does not say, but

we might plausibly suppose she is thinking, that Moa-

bite girls would have a rough time of it in Moab-

hating Judah.

 

Orpah remains in Moab, but Ruth refuses to leave

Naomi, saying, "Do not urge me to go back and desert

you . . . Where you go, I will go, and where you stay,

I will stay. Your people shall be my people, and your

God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I

will be buried. I swear a solemn oath before the Lord

your God: nothing but death shall divide us" (Ruth

1:16-17).

 

Once in Bethlehem, the two were faced with the

direst poverty, and Ruth volunteered to support her-

self and her mother-in-law by gleaning in the fields. It

was harvest time, and it was customary to allow any

stalks of grain that fell to the ground in the process of

 

OPUS 200

 

297

 

gathering to remain there to be collected bv the poor.

This t^leanin^ was a kind of welfare program for those

in need. It was, however, backbreaking work, and any

young woman, particularly a Moabite, who engaged

in it underwent certain obvious risks at the hands of

the lusty young reapers. Ruth's offer was simply he-

roic.

 

As it happened, Ruth gleaned in the lands of a rich

Judean farmer named Boaz, who, coming to oversee

the work, noticed her working tirelessly. He asked

after her, and his reapers answered, "She is a Moabite

girl . . . who has Just come back with Naomi from

the Moabite country" (Ruth 2:6).

 

Boaz spoke kindly to her and Ruth said, "Why are

you so kind as to take notice of me when I am only a

foreigner?" (Ruth 2:10). Boaz explained that he had

heard how she had forsaken her own land for love of

Naomi and how hard she worked to take care of her-

 

As it turned out, Boaz was a relative of Naomi's

dead husband, which must be one reason why he was

touched bv Ruth's love and fidelity. Naomi, on hear-

ing the story, had an idea. In those days. if a widow

was left childless, she had the right to expect her dead

husband's brother to marry her and offer her his pro-

tection. If the dead husband had no brother, some

other relative would fulfill the task.

 

Naomi was past the age of childbearing, so she

could not qualify for marriage, which in those days

centered about children; but what about Ruth? To be

sure, Ruth was a Moabite woman and it might well be

that no Judean would marry her, but Boaz had proven

kind. Naomi therefore instructed Ruth how to ap-

proach Boaz at night and, without crudely seductive

intent, appeal for his protection.

 

Boaz, touched by Ruth's modesty and helplessness,

 

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ISAAC ASIMOV

 

promised to do his duty, but pointed out that there

was a kinsman closer than he and that, by right, this

other kinsman had to have his chance first.

 

The verv next day, Boaz approached the other kins-

man and suggested that he buy some property in

Naomi's charge and, along with it, take over another

responsibility. Boaz said, "On the day when you ac-

quire the field from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the

Moabitess, the dead man's wife . . ."(Ruth 4:5).

 

Perhaps Boaz carefully stressed the adjectival

phrase "the Moabitess," for the other kinsman drew

back at once. Boaz therefore married Ruth, who in

time bore him a son. The proud and happy Naomi

held the child in her bosom and her women friends

said to her, "The child will give you new life and

cherish you in your old age; for your daughter-in-law

who loves vou, who has proved better to you than

seven sons, has borne him" (Ruth 4:15).

 

In a society that valued sons infinitely more than

daughters, this verdict of Judean women on Ruth, a

woman of the hated land of Moab, is the author's

moral—that there is nobilitv and virtue in all groups

and that none must be excluded from consideration in

advance simply because of their group identification.

 

And then, to clinch the argument for any Judean so

nationalistic as to be impervious to mere idealism, the

story concludes: "Her neighbors gave him a name:

 

'Naomi has a son,' they said; 'we will call him Obed.'

He was the father of Jesse, the father of David" (Ruth

4:17).

 

Where would Israel have been, then, if there had

been an Ezra present to forbid the marriage of Boaz

with a "foreign wife"?

 

Where does that leave us? That the Book of Ruth is

a pleasant story, no one will deny. It is almost always

 

OPUS 200

 

299

 

referred to as a "delightful idyll," or words to that ef-

fect. That Ruth is a most successful characterization

of a sweet and virtuous woman is beyond dispute.

 

In fact everyone is so in love with the storv and

with Ruth that the whole point is lost. It is, by right, a

tale of tolerance for the despised, of love for the

hated, of the reward that comes of brotherhood. By

mixing the genes of mankind, by forming the hybrid,

great men will come.

 

The Jews included the Book of Ruth in the canon

partly because it is so wonderfully told a tale but

mostly (I suspect) because it gives the lineage of the

great David, a lineage that is not given beyond Da-

vid's father, Jesse, in the soberly historic books of the

Bible that anteceded Ruth. But the Jews remained, by

and large, exclusivistic and did not leam the lesson of

universalism preached by the Book of Ruth.

 

Nor have people taken its lesson to heart since. Why

should they, since every effort is made to wipe out

that lesson? The story of Ruth has been retold any

number of ways, from children's tales to serious nov-

els. Even movies have been made of it. Ruth herself

must have been pictured in hundreds of illustrations.

And in every illustration I have ever seen, she is pre-

sented as blond, blue-eyed, shapely, and beautiful—

the perfect Nordic stereotype I referred to at the be-

ginning of the article.

 

For goodness' sake, why shouldn't Boaz have fallen

in love with her? What great credit was there in

marrying her? If a girl like that had fallen at your feet

and asked you humbly to do your duty and kindly

marry her, you would probably have done it like a

shot.

 

Of course she was a Moabite woman, but so what?

What does the word "Moabite" mean to you? Does it

 

300

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

arouse any violent reaction? Are there many Moabites

among vour acquaintances? Have vour children been

cha-sed bv a bunch of lousv Moahites latelv? Have

thev been reducing property values in vour neighbor-

hood? When was the last time vou heard someone sav,

"Got to get those rotten Moabites out of here. They

just fill un the welfare rolls"?

 

In fact, judging by the way Ruth is drawn, Moa-

bites are English aristocrats and their presence would

raise property values.

 

The trouble is that the one word that is not trans-

lated in the Book of Ruth is the kev word "Moabite,"

and as long as it is not translated, the point is lost; it is

lost in non-translation.

 

The word "Moabite" reallv means "someone of a

group that receives from us and deserves from us

nothing but hatred and contempt." How should this

word be translated into a single word that means the

same thing to, sav, many modern Greeks? . . . Why,

Turk." And to manv modem Turks? . . . Why,

"Greek." And to many modern white Americans? . . .

Why, "black."

 

To get the proper flavor of the Book of Ruth, sup-

pose we think of Ruth not as a Moabite woman but as

a black woman.

 

Reread the story of Ruth and translate "Moabite" to

"black" every time you see it. Naomi (imagine) is

coming back to the United States with her two black

daughters-in-law. No wonder she urges them not to

come with her. It is a marvel that Ruth so loved her

mother-in-law that she was willing to face a society

that hated her unreasoningly and to take the risk of

gleaning in the face of leering reapers who could not

possibly suppose they need treat her with any consid-

eration whatever.

 

OPUS 200                 301

 

And when Boaz asked who she was, don't read the

answer as, "She is a Moabite girl," but as, "She is a

black girl." More likely, in fact, the reapers might have

said to Boaz something that was the equivalent of (if

you'll excuse the language), "She is a nigger £?rl."

 

Think of it that way and you find the whole point is

found in translation and only in translation. Boaz' ac-

tion in being willing to marry Ruth because she was

virtuous (and not because she was a Nordic beauty)

takes on a kind of nobility. The neighbors' decision

that she was better to Naomi than seven sons becomes

something that could have been forced out of them

only by overwhelming evidence to that effect. And

^. the final stroke that out of this miscegenation was

I-born none other than the great David is rather breath-

k taking.

 

\.

 

; We get something similar in the New Testament. On

one occasion a student of the law asks Jesus what

^must be done to gain eternal life, and he answer? his

, own question by saying, "Love the Lord your God

^with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your

r strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor

r&s yourself (Luke 10:27).

 

These admonitions are taken from the Old Testa-

ment, of course. That last bit about your neighbor

 

• comes from a verse that says, "You shall not seek re-

 

-venge. or cherish anger towards your kinsfolk; you

shall love your neighbor as a man like yourself' (Leviti-

cus 19; 18).

 

 

 

 

(The New English Bible translation sounds better

to me here than the King James's: "Thou shalt love

thy neighbor as thyself." Where is the saint who can

truly feel another's pain or ecstasy precisely as he feels

own? We must not ask too much. But if we simply

 

302

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

grant that someone else is "a man like yourself," then

he can be treated with decency at least It is when we

refuse to grant even this, and talk of another as our

inferior, that contempt and cruelty come to seem nat-

ural, and even laudable.)

 

Jesus approves the lawyer's saying, and the lawyer

promptly asks, "And who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:-

29). After all, the verse in Leviticus first speaks of

refraining from revenge and anger toward kinsfolk;

 

might not, then, the concept of "neighbor" be re-

stricted to kinsfolk, to one's own kind, only?

 

In response, Jesus replies with perhaps the greatest

of the parables—of a travel&r who fell in with robbers,

who was mugged and robbed and left half dead by

the road. Jesus goes on, "It so happened that a priest

was going down by the same road; but when he saw

him, he went past on the other side. So too a Levite

came to the place, and when he saw him went past on

the other side. But a Samaritan who was making the

Journey came upon him, and, wh^n he saw him, was

moved to pity. He went up and bandaged his wounds,

bathing them with oil and wifie. Then he lifted him

onto his own beast, brought Mm to an inn, and looked

after him there" (Luke 10:31-34).

 

Then Jesus asks who the traveler's neighbor was,

and the lawyer is forced to say, "The one who showed

him kindness" (Luke 10:37).

 

This is known as the Parable of the Good Samari-

tan, even though nowhere in the parable is the rescuer

called a good Samaritan, merely a Samaritan.

 

The force of the parable is entirely vitiated by the

common phrase "good" Samaritan, for that has cast a.

false light on who the Samaritans were. In a free-

association test, say "Samaritan" and probably every

person being tested will answer, "Good." It has be-

 

OPUS 200

 

303

 

come so imprinted in all our brains that Samaritans

are good that we take it for granted that a Samaritan

would act like that and wonder why Jesus is making a

point of it.

 

We forget who the Samaritans were, in the time of

Jesus!

 

To the Jews, they were not good. They were hated,

despised, contemptible heretics with whom no good

Jew would have anything to do. Again, the whole

point is lost through non-translation.

 

Suppose, instead, that it is a white traveler in Mis-

sissippi who has been mugged and left half dead. And

suppose it was a minister and a deacon who passed by

and refused to "become involved." And suppose it was

a black sharecropper who stopped and took care of

the man.

 

Now ask yourself: Who was the neighbor whom you

must love as though he were a man like yourself if

you are to be saved?

 

The Parable of the Good Samaritan clearly teaches

that there is nothing parochial in the concept "neigh-

bor," that you cannot confine your decency to your

own group and your own kind. All mankind, right

down to those you most despise, are your neighbors.

 

Well, then, we have in the Bible two examples—in the

Book of Ruth and in tlie Parable of the Good Samari-

tan—of teachings that are lost in non-translation, yet

are terribly applicable to us today.

 

The whole world over, there are confrontations be-

tween sections of mankind denned by a difference of

race, nationality, economic philosophy, religion, or

language, so that one is not "neighbor" to the other.

 

These more or less arbitrary differences among

peoples who are members of a-single biological spec-

 

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ISAAC ASIMOV

 

ies are terribly dangerous, and nowhere more so than

here in the United States, where the most perilous

confrontation (I need not tell you) is between white

and black.

 

Next to the population problem generally, mankind

faces no danger greater than this confrontation, par-

ticularly in the United States.

 

It seems to me that more and more, each year, both

whites and blacks are turning, in anger and hatred, to

violence. I see po reasonable end to the steady escala-

tion but an actual civil war.

 

In such a civil war, the whites, with a preponder-

ance of numbers and an even greater preponderance

of organized power, would in all likelihood "win."

They would do so, however, at an enormous material

cost and, I suspect, at a fatal spiritual one.

 

And why? Is it so hard to recognize that we are all

neighbors, after all? Can we, on both sides—on both

sides—6nd no way of accepting the biblical lesson?

 

Or if quoting the Bible sounds too mealy-mouthed,

and if repeating the words of Jesus seems too pietistic,

let's put it another way, a practical way:

 

Is the privilege of feeling hatred so luxurious that it

is worth the material and spiritual hell of a white'

black civil war?

 

If the answer is really yes, then one can only de-

spair.

 

PART 10

 

SHORT-SHORTS

 

Tee always liked short-short stories.

 

First, since they are brief and can be read quickly,

you can get the value of one even if you only have

five minutes to spare—while waiting for a telephone

call or while drinking a cup of coffee. It can fill in. a

disregarded corner of the day.

 

Second, there can be no frills. Youce sot to have

the story distilled down to 1500 words or less, and ide-

ally that leaves room only for the point; and that

point, when the story is well done, can jab itself into

your mind and never be forgotten.

 

Third, writing one is a challenge, and I enfoy c1wl-

lenges.

 

In May 1973, the Saturday Evening Post asked me

to write a short-short science fiction story for them

and I did. I meant to write a lighthearted robot story

and even called it "Light Verse," intending o. pun.

Alas, the story squirmed in my hands (even short-

shorts can do that) and became rather more tragic

than I had intended,

 

I included it eventually in my short-story collection

Buy Jupiter and Other Stories (Book 164), which Dou-

bleday published in 1875. Here it is in full:

 

308                 ISAAC ASIMOV

 

"Light Verse" (1973)

 

The very last person anyone would expect to be a

murderer was Mrs. Avis Lardner. Widow of the great

astronaut-martyr, she was a philanthropist, an art col-

lector, a hostess extraordinaire, and, everyone agreed;

 

an artistic genius. But above all, she was the gentlest

and kindest human being one could imagine.

 

Her husband, William J. Lardner, died, as we all

know, of the effects of radiation from a solar flare,

after he had deliberately remained in space so that a

passenger vessel might make it safely to Space

Station 5.

 

Mrs. Lardner had received a generous pension for

that, and she had then invested wisely and well. By

late middle age she was very wealthy.

 

Her house was a showplace, a veritable museum,

containing a small but extremely select collection of

extraordinarily beautiful jeweled objects. From a

dozen different cultures she had obtained relics of al-

most every conceivable artifact that could be embed-

ded with jewels and made to serve the aristocracy of

that culture. She had one of the first jeweled wrist-

watches manufactured in America, a jeweled dagger

from Cambodia, a jeweled pair of spectacles from It-

aly, and so on almost endlessly.

 

All was open for inspection. The artifacts were not

insured, and there were no ordinary security provi-

sions. There was no need for anything conventional,

for Mrs. Lardner maintained a large staff of robot ser-

vants, all of whom could be relied on to guard every

item with imperturbable concentration, irreproach-

able honesty, and irrevocable efficiency.

 

Everyone knew of the existence of those robots, and

there is no record of any attempt at theft, ever.

 

OPUS 200

 

309

 

And then, of course, there was her light-sculpture.

How Mrs. Lardner discovered her own genius at the

art, no guest at her many lavish entertainments could

guess. On each occasion, however, when her house

was thrown open to guests, a new symphony of light

shone throughout the rooms; three-dimensional curves

and solids in melting color, some pure and some fus-

ing in startling, crystalline effects that bathed every

guest in wonder and somehow always adjusted itself

so as to make Mrs. Lardner's blue-white hair and soft,

unlined face gently beautiful.

 

It was for the light-sculpture more than anything

else that the guests came. It was never the same twice

and never failed to explore new experimental avenues

of art. Many people who could afford light-consoles

prepared light-sculptures for amusement, but no one

could approach Mrs. Lardner's expertise. Not even

those who considered themselves professional artists.

 

She herself was charmingly, modest about it. "No,

she would protest when someone waxed lyrical.

 

no

 

'I wouldn't call it 'poetry in light.' That's far too kind.

At most, I would say it was mere light verse."" And

everyone smiled at her gentle wit

 

Though she was often asked, she would never cre-

ate light-sculpture for any occasion but her own par-

ties. "That would be commercialization," she said.

 

She had no objection, however, to the preparation

of elaborate holograms of her sculptures so that they

might be made permanent and reproduced in mu-

seums of art all over the world. Nor was there ever a

charge for any use that might be made of her light-

sculptures.

 

"I couldn't ask a penny," she said, spreading her

arms wide. "It's free to all. After all, I have no further

 

310

 

BAAC ASIMOV

 

use for it myself." It was true! She never used the

same light-sculpture twice.

 

When the holograms were taken, she was coopera-

tion itself. Watching benignly at every step, she was

always ready to order her robot servants to help.

"Please, Courtney," she would say, "would you be so

kind as to adjust the stepladder?"

 

It was her fashion. She always addressed her robots

with the most formal courtesy.

 

Once, years before, she had been almost scolded by

a government functionary from the Bureau of Robots

and Mechanical Men. "You can't do that," he said se-

verely. "It interferes with their efficiency. They are

constructed to follow orders, and the more clearly you

give those orders, the more efficiently they follow

them. When you ask with elaborate politeness, it is

difficult for them to understand that an order is being

given. They react more slowly."

 

Mrs. Lardner lifted her aristocratic head. "I do not

ask for speed and efficiency," she said. "I ask good-

will. My robots love me."

 

The government functionary might have explained

that robots cannot love, but he withered under her

hurt but gentle glance.

 

It was notorious that Mrs. Lardner never even re-

turned a robot to the factory for adjustment. Their

positronic brains are enormously complex, and once in

ten times or so the adJustment is not perfect as it

leaves the factory. Sometimes the en-or does not show

up for a period of time, but whenever it does, U.S.

Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc., always makes the

adjustment free of charge.

 

Mrs. Lardner shook her head. "Once a robot is in

my house," she said, "and has performed his duties,

 

OPUS 200

 

311

 

any minor eccentricities must be bome. I will not

have him manhandled."

 

It Was the worst thing possible to try to explain that

a robot was but a machine. She would -<ay very

stiffly, "Nothing that is as intelligent as a robot can

ever be but a machine. I treat them like people."

 

And that was thati

 

She kept even Max, although he was almost help-

less. He could scarcely understand what was expected

of him. Mrs. Lardner denied that strenuously, how-

ever. "Not at all," she would say firmly. "He can take

hats and coats and store them very well, indeed. He

can hold objects for me. He can do many things."

 

"But why not have him adjusted?" asked a friend

once.

 

"Oh, I couldn't He's himself. He's very lovable, you

know. After all, a positronic brain is so complex that

no one can ever tell in just what way it's off. If he

were made perfectly normal there would be no way to

adjust him back to the lovabittty he now has. I won't

give that up."

 

"But if he's maladjusted," said the friend, looking at

Max nervously, "might he not be dangerous?"

 

''Never," laughed Mrs. Lardner. "I've had him for

years. He's completely harmless and quite a dear."

 

Actually he looked like all the other robots—smooth,

metallic, vaguely human, but expressionless.

 

To the gentle Mrs. Lardner, however, they were all

individual, all sweet, all lovable. It was the kind of

woman she was.

 

How could she commit murder?

 

The very last person anyone would expect to be mur-

dered would be John Semper Travis. Introverted and

 

312

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

gentle, he was in the world but not of it. He had that

peculiar mathematical turn of mind that made it pos-

sible for him to work out in his head the complicated

tapestry of the myriad positronic brainpaths in a ro-

bots mind.

 

He was chief engineer of U.S. Robots and Mechani-

cal Men,Inc.

 

But he was also an enthusiastic amateur in light-

sculpture. He had written a book on the subject,

trying to show that the type of mathematics he used

in working out positronic brain-paths might be modi-

fied into a guide to the production of aesthetic light-

sculpture.

 

His attempt at putting theory into practice was a

dismal failure, however. The sculptures he himself

produced, following his mathematical principles, were

stodgy, mechanical, and uninteresting.

 

It was the only reason for unhappiness in his quiet,

constrained, and secure life, and yet it was reason

enough for him to be very unhappy indeed. He knew

his theories were right, yet he could not make them

work. If he could but produce one great piece of

light-sculpture—

 

Naturally, he knew of Mrs. Lardner^s light-

sculpture. She was universally hailed as a genius, yet

Travis knew she could not understand even the sim-

plest aspect of robotic mathematics. He had corre-

sponded with her, but she consistently refused to ex-

plain her methods, and he wondered if she had any at

all. Might it not be mere intuition? But even intuition

might be reduced to mathematics. Finally he man-

aged to receive an invitation to one of her parties. He

simply had to see her.

 

Mr. Travis arrived rather late. He had made one

 

OPUS 200                313

 

last attempt at a piece of light-sculpture and had

failed miserably.

 

He greeted Mrs. Lardner with a kind of puzzled re-

spect and said, "That was a peculiar robot who took

my hat and coat."

 

"That is Max," said Mrs. Lardner.

 

"He is quite maladjusted, and he's a fairly old

model. How is it you did not return it to the factory?"

 

"Oh, no," said Mrs Lardner. "It would be too much

trouble."

 

"None at all, Mrs. Lardner," said Travis. "You

would be surprised how simple a task it was. Since I

am with U.S. Robots, I took the liberty of adjusting

him myself. It took no time and you'll find he is now

in perfect working order."

 

A queer change came over Mrs. Lardner*s face.

Fury found a place on it for the first time in her gen-

tle life, and it was as though the lines did not know

how to form.

 

"You adjusted him?" she shrieked. "But it was he

who created my light-sculptures. It was the maladjust-

ment, the maUidjustment, which you can never re-

store, that—that—"

 

It was really unfortunate that she had been showing

her collection at the time and that the Jeweled dagger

from Cambodia was on the marble tabletop before

her.

 

Travis's face was also distorted. "You mean if I had

studied his uniquely maladjusted positronic brain-

paths I might have learned—"

 

She lunged with the knife too quickly for anyone to

stop her and he did not try to dodge. Some said he

came to meet it—as though he wanted to die.

 

314

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

Short-shorts need not he fiction. On occasion I am

asked to do short nonfiction articles for one outlet or

another, and I particularly enjoy doing them for TV

Guide, since there the opportunity exists for immers-

ing myself in any of a wide variety of subjects.

 

There was a television special on carious reputed

monsters, for instance, such as the abominable snow-

man, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and so on. 1

view reports of such objects with the deepest scepti-

cism, and when TV Guide asked for a "backgrounder"

on the program, I produced an article entitled "The

Monsters We Have Lived With," which brought me

angry letters from some readers who didn't want their

monsters taken away from them Just because they

didn't exist.

 

As it happens, Douhleday occasionally publishes

collections of miscellaneous essays of mine that have

appeared in places other than F & SF. My second

hundred books contain three of these collections, of

which the latest is The Beginning and the End (Book

187), published in 1977. It includes my monster back-

grounder, which is here reproduced in full.

 

"The Monsters We Have Lived With" (7974)

 

Mankind has always lived with monsters. That fact

dates back, no doubt, to the time when the early

ancestors of man moved about in constant fear of the

large predators around them. Fearful as the mam-

moths, saber-toothed tigers, and cave bears may have

been, it is the essence of the human mind that still

worse could be imagined.

 

The dread forces of nature were visualized as super-

animals. The Scandinavians imagined the sun and the

 

OPUS 200                 315

 

moon to be pursued forever by gigantic wolves, for

instance. It was when these caught up with their prey

that eclipses took place.

 

Relatively harmless animals could be magniBed

into terrors. The octopuses and squids, with their writh-

ing tentacles, were elaborated into the deadly Hy-

dra, the many-headed snake destroyed by Hercules;

 

into Medusa with her snaky hair and her glance that

turned living things to stone; into Scylla with her six

heads, whom Ulysses encountered.

 

Perhaps the most feared animal was the snake.

Slithering unseen through the underbrush, it came

upon its victim unawares. Its lidless eyes, its cold and

malignant stare, its sudden strike, all served to terror-

ize human beings. Is it any wonder that the snake is

so often used as the very principle of evil—as, for in-

stance, in the tale of the Garden of Eden.

 

But imagination can improve even on the snake.

Snakes can be imagined who kill not by a bite, but

merely by a look, and this is the "basilisk" (from the

Greek word meaning "little king").

 

Or else make the snake much larger, into what the

Greeks called Python, and it can represent the original

chaos which had to be destroyed by a god before the

orderly universe could be created. It was Apollo who

killed the Python in the early days of the earth, ac-

cording to the Greek myths, and who then established

the oracle of Delphi on the spot.

 

Another Greek word for a large snake was "drakon,"

which has become our "dragon." To the snaky length

of the dragon were added the thicker body and

stubby legs of that other dread reptile, the crocodile.

Now we have the monster Tiamat, which the Baby-

Ionian god Marduk had to destroy in order to or-

ganize the universe.

 

316

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

Symbolize the burning bite of the venomous snake

and you have the dragon breathing fire. Dramatize

the swift and deadly strike of the snake and you have

the dragon flying through the air.

 

Some monsters are, of course, animals that have

been misunderstood into beauty rather than horrqr,

The one-homed rhinoceros may have contributed to

the myth of the unicorn, the beautiful one-horned

horse. And the hom of the mythical unicorn is exactly

like the tooth of the real-life narwhal.

 

The ugly sea cow with its flippered tail, rising half

out the sea and holding a newborn young to its breast

in the human position, may have dazzled shortsighted

sailors into telling tales of beautiful mermaids.

 

Throughout history, of course, man's greatest enemy

was man, so it is not surprising that man himself

served as the basis for some of the most fearful mon-

sters—the giants and cannibalistic ogres of all sorts.

 

It may well he that the origin of such stories lies in

the (act that various groups of human beings made

technological advances in different directions and at

different times. A tribe of warriors armed with stone

axes, meeting an army of soldiers in bronze armor and

carrying bronze-tipped spears, will be sent flying in

short order with many casualties. The Stone Age sur-

vivors may well have the feeling that they have met

an army of man-eating giants.

 

Thus, the primitive Israelite tribes, on first ap-

proaching Canaan and encountering walled cities and

well-armed soldiers, felt the Canaanites to be a race of

giants. Traces of that belief remain in the Bible.

 

Then, too, a high civilization may fall and those

who follow forget the civilization and attribute its

works to giants of one kind or another. The primitive

Greeks, coming across the huge, thick walls that encir-

 

OPUS 200                317

 

cled the cities of the earlier, highly civilized Mycen-

aeans, imagined those walls to have been built by

giant Cyclopes.

 

Such Cyclopes were later placed in Sicily (where

Ulysses encountered them in the tales told in the Od-

yssey) and were supposed to have but one eye. They

may have been sky gods, and the single eye may rep-

resent the sun in heaven. It may also have arisen from

the fact that elephants roamed Sicily in prehuman

times. The skull of such an elephant, occasionally

found, would show large nasal openings in front

which might be interpreted as the single eye of a

giant.

 

There can be giants in ways other than physical.

Thus medieval Englishmen had no notion of how or

why the huge monoliths of Stonehenge had been

erected. They blamed it on Merlin's magic. He caused

the stones to fly through the air and land in place.

(The Greeks also had tales of musicians who played

so beautifully that, captivated *by the sweet strains,

rocks moved into place and built a wall of their own

accord.)

 

But as man's knowledge of the world expanded, the

room available for the dread or beautiful monsters he

had invented shrank, and belief in them faded. Large

animals were discovered—giant whales, moose, Komodo

lizards, okapis, giant squids, and so on. These were,

however, merely animals and lacked the super-terror

our minds had created.

 

What is left then?

 

The giant snakes and dragons that once fought with

the gods and terrorized mankind have shrunk to a

possible sea serpent reported to be cowering at the

bottom of Loch Ness.

 

The giants, the ogres, the monstrous one-eyed can-

 

318

 

BAAC ASIMOV

 

' nibals that towered over our puny race of mortals,

have diminished to mysterious creatures that leave

footprints among the snows of the upper reaches of

Mount Everest or show their misty shapes fugitively in

the depths of our shriveling forests.

 

Even if these exist (which is doubtful), what a

punv remnant thev represent of the glorious hordes

man's mind and imagination have created.

 

"I discussed in Opus 100 my struggles to achieve a bit

of humor in my writing. 1 may have succeeded there,

for reviewers often mentioned my sense of humor (as

revealed in my writing) and seemed to do so with ap-

proval.

 

That may be, hut it was not till my second hundred

books that I produced volumes that dealt with humor

per se or that were specifically humorous books rather

than other kinds of books that fust happened to have a

bit of humor as seasoning.

 

The first book of this sort that I wrote was Isaac

Asimov's Treasury of Humor (Book 114), a large

compendium of jokes and comments on humor and

joke-telling. Houghton Mifflin published it in 1971.

 

How I came to write it is described in the introduc-

tion to that book, and this is given here:

 

from ISAAC ASIMOV*S TREASURY OF HUMOR (1971)

 

For nearly all my life I have been swapping jokes. At

almost every friendly gathering that I have attended,

there have been two or three people present with a

large repertoire of funny stories and the ability to tell

them with finesse, and so joke-swapping was almost

 

322

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

inevitable. Modesty compels me to refrain from saying

that of all those present I generally had the largest

repertoire of jokes and could tell them with the most

finesse, but if I weren't modest I would say so.

 

This has led to my having been asked, on occasion,

why someone like myself, with pretensions to intellect,

should content himself with endless Joke-telling while

shunning the ardent discussions of politics, philoso-

phy, and literature that might be proceeding in an-

other comer of the room.

 

To this my answer is threefold, in order of increas-

ing importance:

 

1) I spend most of my day being intellectual at my

typewriter, and telling jokes on an evening now and

then helps balance the situation.

 

2) Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do

more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy,

and literature than any number of dull arguments.

 

3) I like to.

 

Then, too, as it happens, this whole business of

Joke-telling saved my life not too long ago—

 

In June 1969, my wife and I, along with another

couple, Howard and Muriel Hirt, were off on a motor

trip that was to end in a vacation. As it happens, vaca-

tions send me into deep melancholy and I had been

achingly apprehensive of this one for weeks. It was

only to last for a weekend but it was to be at an elab-

orate hotel of a type that I detested beyond measure.

 

With doom hastening closer at every turn of the

whirling wheels, I tried to fight off my gathering mis-

ery by telling Jokes in feverish succession.

 

Muriel was kind enough to laugh quite a bit, and

then she said, "Listen, Isaac, why don't you write a

jokebook?"

 

OPUS 200                 323

 

That made it my turn to laugh.

 

"Who would publish it?" I asked.

 

She said, "I thought you said you could get someone

or other to publish anything you wrote."

 

I do say things like that when I am feeling more

than ordinarily megalomaniac, but that was not what

suddenly began to circle wildly through the tortuous

meshes of my mind.

 

A new thought arose—

 

Suppose that while I was ostensibly vacationing,

and while everyone around me was going through the

horrifying ritual of lying in the sun and volleyballing

and hiking and doing whatever other forms of refined

torture are supposed to be fun, I was secretly writing

down Jokes and, in that wav, working on a book.

 

I would then be having no vacation at alii (Oh,

magic words!)

 

As soon as we had registered and unpacked, there-

fore, I approached the desk and said, "I would like to

check out a typewriter for the weekend."

 

This hotel, you must understand, is marvelously

equipped. I do not remember the exact figures, but

the impression I have is that the hotel possesses three

swimming pools, four golf links, seventeen tennis

courts, twenty-eight miles of hiking trails, and

seventy-five thousand beach chairs in serried ranks

and files, each one laden with a vacationer slowly

frying in his own juice. It also has an enormous night-

club, fourteen buildings, and sixty miles of corridors.

 

With a hotel that has everything, I had no hesitation

in asking for a typewriter.

 

I was quickly disabused. The desk clerk said, "You

want to check out a what^9

 

"A typewriteri" I said.

 

324

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

He looked blank, and I could see he was wondering

if a typewriter might be anything like a set of golf

clubs.

 

I said, "Well, then, do you have writing paper?"

 

He handed me a sheet of writing paper in which

the monogram of the hotel took up half the area, leav-

ing just enough room to write a message to a friend

that might go: "Here I am at the X Hotel, dying."

 

I said, "Give me about fifty."

 

He handed them over, and for the next two and a

half days, wherever we were—tramping the corridors,

lying in the sun, sitting in the shade, waiting for food

at the table, enduring the unbelievable, dinning may-

hem at the nightclub—I quietly scribbled jokes on pa-

per while carefully maintaining a fixed smile on my

face to indicate how much I was enjoying the vaca-

tion.

 

Occasionally, I would overhear someone at a neigh-

boring table say, "Watch out, Sadie, and be careful

what you say. That fellow there is writing down every

word he hears."

 

It was undoubtedly all that kept me alive.

 

I finished the vacation with a sheaf of handwritten

Jokes, which I converted into typescript and brought

to Houghton Miffiin as a sample,

 

And eventually the book was completed and pub-

lished, and here it is!

 

It would scarcely be suitable to let it go at that. The

book contains 640 jokes {almost all of them quite

clean), and I include several of them here.

 

OPUS 200               325

from ISAAC ASIMOV'S TBEASUBY OF HUMOR (1971)

 

Moskowitz had bought a parrot and one morning

found the bird at the eastern side of the cage, with a

small prayer shawl over its head, rocking to and fro

and mumbling. Bending low to listen, Moskowitz was

thunderstruck to discover the parrot was intoning

prayers in the finest Hebrew.

 

"You're Jewish?" asked Moskowitz.

 

"Not only Jewish," said the parrot, "but Orthodox.

So will you take me to the synagogue on Rosh Ha-

shanah?"

 

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, was indeed

only two days off, and it would as always usher in the

high-holiday season which would end with Yom Kip-

pur, the Day of Atonement, ten days later.

 

Moskowitz said, "Of course, I'll take you, but can I

tell my friends about you? It isn't a secret, I hope?"

 

"No secret at all. Tell anyone you want to." And the

parrot returned to his praying.'

 

Moskowitz went to all his friends, full of the story

of his Jewish parrot. Of course no one believed him,

and in no time at all Moskowitz was taking bets. By

Rosh Hashanah, he had a hundred dollars, all told,

riding on the parrot,

 

Grinning, Moskowitz brought the parrot to the syn-

agogue in its cage. He put him in a prominent place

and everyone turned to watch, even as they mumbled

their prayers. Even the rabbi watched, for he had

seven dollars that said the parrot could not pray.

 

Moskowitz waited. Everyone waited. And the par-

rot did nothing. Moskowitz carefully arranged the

prayer shawl over the bird's head, but the parrot

ducked and the shawl fell off.

 

After the services, Moskowitz's friends, with much

 

326

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

mockery, collected their money. Even the rabbi snick-

ered as he took his profit of seven dollars.

 

Utterly humiliated, Moskowitz returned home,

turned viciously on the parrot, and said, "Perpare to

die, you little monster, for I'm going to wring your

neck. If you can pray, now's the time."           '

 

Whereupon the parrot's voice rang out clearly:

 

"Hold it, you dumb jerk. In ten days it's Yom Kinpur,

when all Jews will sing the tragic, haunting Kol Nidre.

Well, bet everybody that I can sing the Kol Nidre."

 

"Why? You didn't do anything today."

 

"Exactly! So for Yom Kippur, just think of the odds

you'll getl"

 

A young man is reported to have approached the re-

nowned composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (one of

the great musical prodigies of all time) and asked,

"Herr Mozart, I have the ambition to write sympho-

nies, and perhaps you can advise me how to get

started."

 

Mozart said, 'The best advice I can give you is to

wait until you are older and more experienced, and

try your hand at less ambitious pieces to begin with."

 

The young man looked astonished. "But, Herr Moz-

art, you yourself wrote symphonies when you were

considerably younger than I."

 

"Ah," said Mozart, "but I did so without asking ad-

vice."

 

Young Leah, in the old days of eastern Europe, was

the sole support of her mother, and had been fortu-

nate enough to marry a substantial young man, despite

 

OPUS 200

 

327

 

the miserable state of her dowry. Leah was happy and

her mother was ecstatic.

 

Imagine her mother's shock, then, when, on the

morning after the wedding, Leah returned in misery

and announced she would not return to her husband.

"I love him madly," she said, "but I had to leave him."

 

Stubbornly, she refused to give the reason, but

from what she said, it was apparent that the young

man had made some rather sophisticated sexual de-

mands on her.

 

As the days passed, both mother and daughter grew

more and more miserable, the former out of frustrated

finances, the latter out of frustrated love. Finally, the

mother suggested that they visit the town rabbi, the

beloved Rabbi Joshua of Khaslavich. After all, in such

matters one needed guidance-

 

They were granted an audience, and when the

rabbi demanded the details and Leah hung back,

Rabbi Joshua said kindly, "Whisper it into my ear, my

daughter. No one will know" but we ourselves and

God/-

She did so, and as she whispered, the rabbi's kindly

brow furrowed, and lightning flashed from his mild

eyes.

 

"My daughter," he thundered, "it is not fitting for a

Jewish girl to submit to such vile indignities- It would

be a deadly sin, and because of it a curse would be

laid on our whole town."

 

Back went mother and daughter, disconsolate, and

after a week of continued privation, the mother said,