"You know, our rabbi is a wonderful man, but it is

sometimes wise to get a second opinion. Why not con-

sult Rabbi Samuel of Krichev? He is very highly spo-

ken of as a man of learning."

 

328

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

Why not, indeed? They got into the wagon and

bumped their way to the next town. As Leah whis-

pered the tale into Rabbi Samuel's ear, the old man's

earlocks uncurled and turned distinctly grayer. He

said in strangled tones, "My daughter, it was for sins

such as this that the Holy One, blessed be He, sent

down upon the earth a flood in days of yore. You

must not agree to his demands."

 

Again mother and daughter returned, and now, for

a long time, the dreary round of day-to-day living con-

tinued, until the mother said, "Let us make one final

attempt to obtain guidance. Let us go to the Grand

Rabbi of Vilna. There is no one in the whole world as

wise as he and as learned. And whatever he says we

may accept as the final word."

 

They bought their railway tickets, which seriously

depleted their meager savings, and rode to Vilna. For

the third time, Leah whispered her story into a rab-

binical ear. The Grand Rabbi listened with equanim-

ity and then said, "My daughter, be guided by your

husband. He is a young and vigorous man, and it is

fitting that you both enjoy yourselves. Have no

qualms concerning this thing."

 

Leah was thunderstruck. She said, "But, Grand

Rabbi, how can you say this? Rabbi Joshua of Khas-

lavich said it would bring a curse upon our town.

Rabbi Samuel of Krichev said such sins caused the

flood."

 

But the Grand Rabbi merely stroked his white

beard and smiled. "My daughter," he said, "what do

those small-town rabbis know about big-city sex?"

 

Among the Germans, Berlin is considered the very

epitome of Prussian brusqueness and efficiency, while

 

OPUS 200                329

 

Vienna is the essence of Austrian charm and slipshod-

dery.

 

The tale is told of a Berliner visiting Vienna who

was lost and in need of directions. What would such a

Berliner do? He grabbed at the lapel of the first pass-

ing Viennese and barked out, "The post office? Where

is it?"

 

The startled Viennese carefully detached the other's

fist, smoothed his lapel, and said in a gentle manner,

"Sir, would it not have been more delicate of you to

have approached me politely and to have said, 'Sir, if

you have a moment and happen to know, could you

please direct me to the post office?*"

 

The Berliner stared in astonishment for a moment,

then growled, "I'd rather be losti" and stamped away.

 

That very same Viennese was visiting Berlin later

that year, and it turned out that now it was he who

had to search for the post office. Approaching a Ber-

liner, he said politely, "Sir, if you have a moment and

happen to know, could you please direct me to the

post office?"

 

With machinelike rapidity, the Berliner replied,

"About face, two blocks forward, sharp turn right, one

block forward, cross street, half-right under arch,

sharp left over railroad tracks, past newsstand, into

post office lobby."

 

The Viennese, more bewildered than enlightened,

nevertheless murmured, "A thousand thanks, kind sir—"

 

Where upon the Berliner snatched furiously at the

other's lapel and shouted, "Never mind the thanksl

Repeat the instructional"

 

Pierre was celebrating his silver wedding, and while

all were unrestrainedly merry over the ample liquor

 

330

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

provided by the host, Pierre himself remained in the

comer, nursing a drink and following one of the

guests with baleful eyes.

 

A friend noticed this strange action, all the more

strange on so happy an occasion, and said, "At whom

are you glaring, Pierre my friend?"                '

 

"At my lawyer, may his soul rot."

 

"But why are you so angry with him?"

 

"It is a sad tale. After I had been married ten years,

I decided I had had enough and that the cleanest so-

lution would be to kill my wife. Painlessly, of course,

for I am no monster. Being a methodical man, I ap-

proached my lawyer—that one there—and asked him

of the possible consequences. He told me that

whereas killing a husband is, here in France, a mere

misdemeanor, killing a wife is a felony, and that even

with a most skillful defense I would have to count on

fifteen years in jail. He urged me not to do it and I let

myself be guided by his advice."

 

"Well, then, why are you angry?**

 

"Because," said Pierre, "if I had not listened, to his

idiotic advice, on this very day I would have been a

free man at last."

 

Although Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor was the

first humorous book I wrote, it was not the first I

published.

 

On March 12, 1971, I had lunch with Beth Walker

and Millicent Selsam of Walker and Company to dis-

cuss my ABC's of the Earth. When that was done, the

two editors talked shop and the conversation veered

to The Sensuous Woman and The Sensuous Man, two

sleazy books that were making money out of pruri-

ence.

 

OPUS 200                331

 

Beth turned to me and said, "Why don't you write a

dirty book, Isaac?'

 

I thought of my own propensities and said dryly,

"What do you want me to write? The Sensuous Dirty

Old Man?"

 

That turned out to be a dreadful thing to say, for

Beth fell in love with the title and hounded me into

doing the hook. She then raced it into print and it

appeared less than ninety days after my original

mocking suggestion, appearing as Book 112.

 

In no way, of course, way The Sensuous Dirty Old

Man merely sex, I should hope that I don't have to

stoop to try to write and sell a book on the basis of

salacity alone: It was satire and was intended, at all

points, to be more humorous than salacious.

 

Don't get me wrong. I don't eschew the salacious. 1

merely insist that humor be primary. Thus:

 

from THE SENSUOUS DIRTY OLD MAN (1971)

 

Sometime during the 1930s, women, having stripped

off enough layers of frontal textile, discovered that in-

sufficent material was left to protect the delicate tis-

sues of the bosom. To protect these, modem engineer-

ing devised a structure that served to compress the

bosom into firm cone-shaped objects which, far from

requiring protection, could allow unlimited maneuver

without danger. Unavoidably it caught the masculine

eye—or some other part of the male anatomy if he

weren't careful, leaving a nasty bruise.

 

The service performed to womankind by this new

garment can not easilv be exaggerated. It was first de-

signed by an organization of bioengineers who, al-

though individually anonymous, have become world

 

332

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

famous by the corporate title of Bosom Rehabilitation

Associates. The garment they engineered possessing

the small initials BRA on the strap quickly became

known, in consequence, as the "bra."

 

The gentlemen of B.R.A. carefully labored to give

each woman that firmly jutting profile one would nat-

urally associate with strength of will and character,

and it worked. Manv a woman who in her natural un-

protected state would have slunk into a room, abashed

and uncertain, could, with her bra firmly in place,

walk in, shoulders back and chest thrown out, proudly

aware that every man in the place would at once note

and admire her strength of character.

 

Every woman felt uplifted by the experience, so the

industry began to speak of the "uplift bra.**

 

And yet the uplift bra had its troubles. For one

thing, the designers had unaccountably placed its

hooks in the back. In addition, the straps cut the

shoulders, and in hot weather there were such matters

as heat, perspiration, and skin rashes.

 

Little by little the thought came that it might be

possible to eliminate the bra and allow the contents to

find their natural level; or, as President Nixon so suc-

cinctly put it in discussing this very problem, the time

had come for America to adopt a lower profile.

 

Certain of the more excitable women determined

not merely to eliminate the bra but to bum it as a

gesture of contempt. The slogan arose: LET'S IGNITE

BRAS. This was abbreviated to L.I.B. and in no time at

all Women's Lib was a power in the land.

 

The result was, in the light of hindsight, inevitable.

The ladies found themselves back where they had

been in the 1930s and, indeed, worse off than ever.

The sturdier fabrics of a much earlier day, the taffeta

dress and corduroy blouse, had given way to sheer

 

OPUS 200                 333

 

synthetics. What had earlier been hidden and pro-

tected by the bra was hidden and protected no longer

by virtually anything. Indeed, the tender caress of the

soft synthetic irritated the delicate bosom surface till

every unevenness was accentuated and softly re-

vealed.

 

At a time when President Nixon was making one

point very, very clear, the average young girl on the

streets of New York was doing exactly twice as well.

 

And dirty old men, on those same streets, found

that they had a new target—and new hazards. Without

the constriction of the bra, the average young lady,

moving forward in a healthy free-swinging stride, pre-

sents what can only be described as a moving target.

 

It is therefore difficult for the dirty old man to get

to the point; for the point shifts. It moves wildly at

the slightest bodily motion. It Jiggles, wobbles, and

dangles; heaves, yaws, and rolls; vibrates, oscillates,

and undulates.

 

The dirty old man may find himself trying to follow

every movement by use of eye muscles, head muscles,

or both. This is not advisable. Aside from the fact that

in the attempt to concentrate too entirely on the target

he may walk into a wall, the constant movement of

eyes or head or both will induce dizziness, headache,

nausea, and even that dread affliction of the inveter-

ate leerer, watering eyes. The whole complex of symp-

toms makes up the syndrome of "mammamobilism."

 

Mammamobilism is known to the medical profes-

sion by the euphemistic phrase "nipple shock," but in

this book I have no use for euphemisms and do not

intend to employ them. The general public, the taxi

driver, the construction worker, everyone, says "mam-

mamobilism," and that's what I shall say, too.

 

The Italians, far wiser than we in their attitude to-

 

334

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

ward sex, have no compunctions about using the

phrase. You will recall that in the great opera Rigo-

letto the Duke, when Gilda runs past him jiggling,

claps his hand to his brow and begins the brilliant

tenor aria: "Oh, mammamobile—"

 

Although you can see that the disease played so nn-

portant a part in the opera written by Joe Green* a

century and a quarter ago, thanks to the extraordinary

equipment of the pasta-consuming coloratura soprano

of his day, it did not strike the American public till

just a few short years ago. Mammambolism is not

amenable to penicillin or to any of the other antibiot-

ics. Prevention, then, is the key. Do not try to follow

the moving target. Fix the eye rather upon some key

portion of the dress pattern and allow the sense of

sight to be titillated sporadically.

 

Oddly enough, a new career (if you want to caU it

that} started for me quite unexpectedly in 1Q74.

 

I was returning by ship (I don't fty) from a visit to

Great Britain, and things were a little dull. At the ta-

ble at luncheon, as conversation lagged and as I

looked aimlessly at the ocean outside the window

from my seat in the Queens CriU of the Queen Eliza-

beth II, a limerick occurred to me.

 

I had made up an occasional limerick in my life but

had never paid much attention to them. This time,

though, the limerick flowed into my mind so easily

that I found myself unable to resist quoting it. 1 he-

 

B Green, having emigrated to Italy, adopted the Italian

version of his name, Giuseppe Verdi. For reasons known

only to opera huffs, the Italian same is actually better known

today than the name he was bom with in Poughkeepsie,

New York.

 

OPUS 200                335

 

gan, without warning, by saying, "There was a young

girl from Decatur."

 

What conversation there was stopped, and everyone

at the table turned to look at me.

 

"What went out to sea on a freighter" I said, and

now attention was focused on me with an almost pain-

ful intensity.

 

"She was screwed by the Master—an utter disaster,"

said I, and paused a little to let the suspense gather,

and then 1 added, "But the crew all made up for it

later."

 

There was an explosion of laughter.

 

1 was very pleased and, for the first time, took the

trouble to write down one of my own limericks.

 

That was fatal, for from that moment on, every time

1 made up a limerick I wrote it down. 'What's more, I

began to concentrate on constructing them. By the

time I had sixteen, I brought them to Walker and

Company with the glad tidings that when I had a

hundred I would make a book out of them, which

Walker might then publish. Sam Walker winced at

that but, like a good sport, agreed.

 

1 then got to work seriously, using the same crite-

rion 1 had used for The Sensuous Dirty Old Man. A

limerick could be as salacious as necessary, provided

it was more funny than salacious. And 1 added an-

other rule: it could never be physically repulsive.

 

Before I was through, I had not only a hundred lim-

ericks and a published book (complete with lengthy

introduction and commentary on each limerick) but

four hundred and forty-four limericks and four pub-

lished books.

 

These were: Lecherous Limericks {Book 166), in

2975; More Lecherous Limericks {Book 177), in 1976;

 

Still More Lecherous Limericks {Book 185), in 1977;

 

336

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

and Limericks: Too Gross (Book 196), in 1978. The

limericks were numbered consecutively through the

three volumes, from 1 to 300, and the happy tale of

the young girl from Decatur was, very appropriately,

given pride of place as number 1.

 

Here are two limericks from each of the first three

books:

 

from LECHEROUS LIMERICKS (1975)

 

Well, Hardly Ever

 

There was an old maid of Peru

Who swore that she never would screw

 

Except under stress

 

Of forcefuLduress

Like, "I'm ready, dear, how about you?"

 

Impatience

 

There was a young couple from Florida

Whose passion grew steadily torrider.

 

They were planning to sin

 

In a room in an inn.

Who can wait? So they screwed in the corridor.

 

from MORE LECHEROUS LIMERICKS (1976)

 

Shutting the Barn Door

 

There was an effete lazy fop

Who preferred all his women on top.

He said, "I'm no Jerk,

Let them do the work,

But if I get pregnant, I'll stop.**

 

OPUS 200

You Mean

 

A. young fellow, divinely endowed,

Once said, very haughty and proud,

When a girl, much too free,

Placed her hand on his knee,

*That isn't my knee. Miss McCloud."

 

from STILL MORE LECHEROUS LIMERICKS (J977)

 

Reasons Enough

 

The virginal nature of Donna

Had for many long years been a goner.

 

When asked whv she screwed,

 

She replied, "Gratitude,

Politeness—and just 'cause I wanna."

 

Emily Post

 

There was a young man of Connecticut

Who tore off a voung woman's petticoat

Said she, with a grin,

"You will have to get in.

For to do nothing more isn't etiquette."

 

PART 12

 

SOCIAL SCIENCES

 

Until now I Juice carefully followed the order of the

sections as originally given in Opus 100: from Part 1,

Astronomy, to Part 11, Humor.

 

I would hate, though, to have you think that, having

established a certain diversity in my writings in my

first hundred books, I would allow that diversity to

stand, that I would seek out no new fields for my sec-

ond hundred. That is not so. There are no less than

four additional sections in this present book.

 

First, the social sciences. This, I must admit, is not

my forte, and consequently I have done very little

writing in this field. It is important, after all, for any

versatile writer to have a keen perception of his limi-

tations. Otherwise, the ease with which he may hop

from subject to subject, and his vanity over being able

to do so, may lure him to write on something he

knows nothing about with diastrous consequences.

 

To be sure, some of my F & SF essays deal with one

aspect or another of the social sciences—the essays

that I refer to as "controversials" in my correspon-

dence with my editor, Edward L. Ferman. There, how-

ever, I am writing informally to an audience of friends

and giving only my opinions, making no pretense of

speaking authoritatively.

 

In one instance during my second hundred books,

 

342

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

however, I allowed myself to be talked into doing a

book that edges rather far into the social.

 

Frances Schwartz of Abelard-Schuman phoned me

in 1973 and asked me to do a book on population

aimed at an audience of young people. It is a subject

near to my heart, for I firmly believe that if the world

does not master the population problem, civilization is

very likely going to collapse within half a century..

 

I agreed to do the book therefore, and it appeared

in 1974 under the imprint of the ]ohn Day Company,

which by then was. a sister house of Abelard-

Schuman. The title is Earth: Our Crowded Spaceship

and it is Book 156. Here is an excerpt:

 

from EARTH: OUR CROWDED SPACESHIP (1974)

 

There are many people who are educated and who

know about the world population and the way it is

growing but think there is no danger. They tell them-

selves that people who talk of the danger are foolish

and wrong.

 

People who don't believe there is a crisis can point

to the Netherlands, for instance. They say that the

Netherlands is prosperous and yet is much more

densely populated than the world average. They say

that it would do no harm to let the whole world be-

come that densely populated. They don't seem to real-

ize that the Netherlands is prosperous because it has

fertile soil and much water; that it makes use of a great

deal of industrial products like fertilizer and insecti-

cides; that it imports a great deal of oil and that it has

no forests to speak of.

 

There just isn't enough fertile soil and enough water

to make the entire world into one gigantic Nether-

 

OPUS 200                 343

 

lands. There isn't enough fertilizer and insecticides

and oil, and we don't really want to cut down all the

forests. Besides, it won't take very long for the earth

to be as densely populated all over as the Netherlands

is now, and if it could be done, how would we stop

the population increase at that point?

 

Some people think that science will solve all prob-

lems. They say that more people will Just mean more

scientists working on those problems. They don't real-

ize that the problems get worse and worse, faster and

faster, and that sooner or later—probably sooner—

science just won't be able to keep up the pace.

 

Some people even think that population means

strength. They think that large nations with many

people can conquer neighboring nations with fewer

people. They think that if their own nation does not

increase its population, a neighboring nation which

does increase its population will conquer them. For

this reason, some nations think that thev must have

more and more babies, more and more people, if they

are to remain strong and free.

 

Even if war is not involved, some people think a

nation with a large population can keep its own cus-

toms, languages, and attitudes better than a nation

with a small population. If a neighboring nation

grows faster, they think, that neighboring nation

might impose its customs, language, and attitudes on

the smaller one, just by outnumbering them.

 

Actually, this is not so. Very often in history, small

nations have conquered large ones. It's not so much

the size of the army as its organization and the techni-

cal level of its weapons. Thus, Greece took over Persia

in the 300s B.C., Mongolia took over China in the

1200s, and Great Britain took over India in the 1700s,

even though Persia, China, and India were far more

 

I

 

344

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

populous than Greece, Mongolia, and Great Britain.

 

Then, too, the Greek language and culture in an-

cient times and the English language and culture in

modem times spread over the world even though

those languages were spoken by few people to begin

with.

 

If a nation wishes to avoid being dominated by its

neighbors, its best chance is to raise its standard of

living and its level of technology. This can be done

best by not allowing its population to grow to such a

point that it is sunk in misery and poverty. In fact,

the worst way in which a nation can try to avoid

being dominated by its neighbor is to increase its pop-

ulation to the point of misery and poverty.

 

If every nation tries to compete with its neighbors

by raising its population, then the whole world will be

sunk in misery, and poverty. The nations will all de-

cline in a catastrophe that will leave nothing behind

that is worth dominating. No one will have gained any-

thing. Everyone will have lost everything.

 

Once all this is understood, and people generally

agree that population growth must not be allowed to

continue, they must also come to understand how that

growth can be stopped. Population grows because

more people are being bom than are dying. There are

two ways, then, in which the growth can be stopped.

You can increase the number of people who die until

it matches the number of people who are being born.

Or else you can decrease the number of people who

are born until it matches the number of people who

are dying.

 

The Brst method—increasing the death rate—is the

usual way in which population is controlled in all

species of living things other than ourselves. It is the

method by which human populations have been con-

 

OPUS 200                 345

 

trolled in the past. It is the "natural" method. If there

are too many people, some starve or die of disease or

by violence. If we don't do anything now, it will be

the way population will be controlled in the future.

Billions will die.

 

Must we let that happen because it is the "natural"

way?

 

Through all the history of mankind, the human

brain has been bending nature to its will. If we had

really decided that the "natural" way was the right

way, we would never have begun to make tools or

build fires or develop agriculture or study science. It

is because mankind has bent nature to its will that

there are now many, many people who live more com-

fortably and better than people ever have before. We

must continue to work out ways to be more comfort-

able by using the intelligent way, and not just the "nat-

ural" way.

 

The "natural" way to control population is by rais-

ing the death rate, but we don't want that, for castas-

trophe lies that way. The intelligent way is to reduce

the birth rate. If, say, 40,000,000 people die each year,

then not more than 40,000,000 people should be bom

each year. If fact, we may want to reduce the world

population to some reasonable value, in which case, if

40,000,000 people die each year, we may want only

30,000,000 people to be bom, or only 20,000,000, till

the desired population level is reached.

But how can the birth rate be reduced?

One way is for people to stop mating. This, how-

ever, is not very practical, since people enjoy it too

much to stop. A better way is to let mating continue

but to use methods that keep it from resulting in ba-

bies-

There are a number of different ways in which the

 

346

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

birth rate can be made to drop without interfering

with people's pleasure. In the last twenty years, the

birth rate in the United States and in some other

countries has dropped because more and more women

are using pills to keep from having babies they don't

want.

 

To make sure that mating doesn't result in babies is

called "birth control." It is by adopting methods of

birth control that population growth can be stopped

with the least damage.

 

There are many difficulties here. Certain religious

organizations are against birth control. Many groups

of people have ways of life that would not fit in easily

with birth control. Then, too, even if birth control

were desired, there are many places in the world

where people are so poor they can't afford to buy the

materials that make it possible.

 

So you see, it comes down to education again. Peo-

ple not only have to be taught that a problem exists,

they have to be taught exactly how to solve it by birth

control and why it is right to do so. And they must be

given the necessary materials without charge.

 

PART 13

 

LITERATURE

 

Perhaps the most outrageous books among my second

hundred are my annotations of literary classics.

 

In the first place, it does take a certain amount of

overweening self-assurance for a person whose intel-

lectual expertise is in the sciences to decide to do

large and complicated books on a subject that may

easily be mistaken for literary criticism. Literary cri-

tics (who are bound to be asked to review the books)

are sure to be annoyed at this invasion of their home

turf.

 

Secondly, the books tend to be elaborate and ex-

pensive and Doubleday (whom I stuck with the publi-

cation thereof) was sure to be forced to risk consider-

able sums on them that they might not earn back.

(Doubleday has never uttered a word of complaint in

the matter, but that doesn't stop me from worrying

about it.)

 

After my two-volume Asimov's Guide to the Bible,

it was inevitable that I would plan Asimov's Guide to

Shakespeare.

 

What I did, in the latter case, was to take up each of

Shakespeare's plays in turn, go through it carefully,

describing as much of the plot as was necessary for

my purposes, and quoting those passages that con-

tained historical, mythological, biographical, or geo-

 

350

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

graphical allusions. Since these might not he plain to

the reader and might get in the way of a proper un-

derstanding of the text, 1 explained each one.

 

I did not in the least attempt to discuss the plays as

dramatic vehicles or indulge in true literary criticism.

 

Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare appeared in ^wo

volumes in 1970 as Books 104 and 105, and here is my

treatment of the opening soliloquy from Richard III,

in volume 2:

 

from ASIMOV'S GUIDE TO SHAKESPEARE (1970)

 

Richard III deals with events that immediately follow

Henry VI, Part 3 and it is very likely that Shakespeare

began work on it as soon as he was through with the

Henry VI trilogy. It was probably completed by 1593

at the latest

 

At that time Shakespeare was still at the beginning

of his career. He had written two narrative poems, a

number of sonnets, a couple of light comedies, and

the Henry VI trilogy, all popular and successful, but

none, as yet, a blockbuster. With Richard til Shake-

speare finally made it big.

 

It is a play after the manner of Seneca, like Titus

Andronicus, which Shakespeare was also working on

at the time, but infinitely more successful.

 

Indeed, Richard III was so full of harrowing and

dramatic episodes, and Richard III himself was so

successful a character, so wonderful a villain, with so

much bravery and dry humor mingled with his mon-

strous behavior, that the play pleased all and made it

quite plain that Shakespeare was a new star of bril-

liant magnitude on the literary scene. Indeed, despite

 

OPUS 200                351

 

the fact that the play is quite raw compared to the

polished mastery of Shakespeare's later plays, it is still

one of his most popular and successful plays today.

 

The play opens with Richard of Gloucester, young-

est brother of King Edward IV, alone on the stage. He

sets the time of the scene by saying:

 

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of 'York;

 

(Act 1, scene I, lines 1-2)

 

This ties in well with the final speech in Henry VI,

Part 3, in which Edward IV says happily that the

troubles are all over and that only joy is left.

 

It was in 1471 that the last serious Lancastrian

threat was smashed at Tewkesbury. Old King Henry

VI and his son. Prince Edward, were dead immedi-

ately after that battle, and no one was left to dispute

the right of King Edward to the throne.

 

The "sun of York" (and a sun was one of the sym-

bols of the Yorkist house) was indeed shining.

 

The sun of York does not satisfy Richard, however.

In a speech that resembles one he had made in the

earlier play, he explains that he is so physically de-

formed that the joys of peace, such as dancing and

lovemaking, are beyond him. He will therefore con-

fine himself to the joys of ambition, and labor to

make himself a king. After all, in Henry VI, Part 3, he

waxed lyrical over the joys of being a king, and it is

not to be wondered at that he should want those joys.

 

In order to become a king, he must get out of the

way those who have a prior right to the throne.

Among them, of course, is his older brother George of

Clarence. Richard explains in his soliloquy:

 

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ISAAC ASIMOV

 

Plots have I laid, inductions [beginnings] dangerous^

By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,

To set my brother Clarence and the king

In deadly hate the one again/it the other;

 

And if King Edward he as true and fust

As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,          '

This day should Clarence closely he mewed up

About a prophecy which says that G

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

 

(Act 1, scene 1, lines 32-40)

 

Shakespeare is here condensing time, for George of

Clarence's final break with his royal brother came in

1477, six years after the climactic Battle of Tewkes-

bury, despite the appearance in the Brst two lines of

the soliloquy that it is the very morrow of the battle

that is in question.

 

Why did the break between the brothers come?

Well, it required no plot on the part of Richard, really,

for George of Clarence had some of the characteristics

in reality that Richard was later slanderously de-

scribed as having.

 

It was George who was ambitious and faithless. He

had deserted Edward and sided with Warwick in

1469, and had come back to his allegiance to York, we

may be sure, only out of a feeling that Warwick was

going to lose and that he himself would gain more by

a second double-cross.

 

Edward had forgiven the twice faithless George,

but that did not prevent George from continuing to

scheme for his own aggrandizement in such a way

that the king was bound, eventually, to suspect his

brother of aiming at the throne.

 

George did his best, for instance, to keep his hands

on the whole enormous Warwick estate. This may

 

OPUS 200

 

353

 

have been out of mere avarice, but it may also have

been out of a realization of how useful wealth would

be in planning a revolt. He had married Warwick's

elder daughter, Isabella, in the days when he and

Warwick had been friends and allies. The younger

daughter, Anne, had been married to Edward, prince

of Wales, the son of old King Henry. Prince Edward

was now dead and Anne was a widow; and George

was determined to keep her a widow, lest some new

husband insist on a half share in the Warwick estate.

While Anne remained a widow, George controlled it

all, and he kept the poor lady a virtual prisoner to see

to it that the situation would continue.

 

This intentness on wealth at all costs would natu-

rally disturb Edward.

 

Then there arose a new matter. Charles the Bold of

Burgundy died in battle in 1477, leaving behind a

twenty-year-old daughter, Mary, as his onlv heir.

(Charles's wife had been Margaret of York, the sister

of George of Clarence, but Mary was his daughter by

a previous wife.)

 

Burgundy had, for over half a century, been the

wealthiest nation in Europe, and under Charles it had

reached its political peak, for Charles had almost de-

feated France and made an independent kingdom of

his land. Now, with only a young woman to rule Bur-

gundy, its days seemed numbered under the pressure

of France to the west and the Holv Roman Empire to

the east- Unless, that is, some strong independent prince

quickly married Mary and carried on where Charles

the Bold had left off. George of Clarence was now a

widower and he saw himself as husband of Mary and

as the new duke of Burgundy.

 

King Edward thoroughly disapproved of this

scheme. It seemed to him that if his ambitious, faith-

 

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ISAAC ASIMOV

 

less brother became duke of Burgundy, with all the

resources of Burgundy at his call, he would be a

source of endless trouble. He would have the money

to finance plots against Edward and scheme at a dou-

ble throne.

 

Edward therefore forbade the marriage and the two

brothers became open enemies. It did not take much

more for Edward to begin to suspect George of plot-

ting his death. Two of George's henchmen were ac-

cused of trying to bring about that death by sorcery.

and when George insisted they were innocent, Ed-

ward angrily had his brother arrested and thrown in

the Tower of London.

 

Whether George was actually plotting Edward's

death we cannot say, but certainly his past and his

character gave cause for suspicion, and in those trou-

bled times that was enough.

 

And what had been Richard's record through all

this? Well, for one thing, he had remained utterly

faithful to Edward in the hard times when Warwick

had temporarily hurled him from the throne. He had

fought with bravery and distinction at the battles of

Barnet and Tewkesbmy. He had done Edward's dirty

work (probably) in arranging the death of old King

Henry VI in the Tower. In all respects, Richard was

as much the loyal brother as George was the faithless

one.

 

This helps explain the frustrating manner in which

the characters in Richard 111 fall prey to villainous Rich-

ard, though his villainy is made to appear patent to

all In actual history, you see, he wasn't a villain.

 

Thus, consider the prophecy that helped set the

king against his brother: that someone with the initial

G would be a traitor to him. (Undoubtedly, there

were prophecies extant of this sort, and of every other

 

OPUS 200                 355

 

too, for there are astrologers and prophets everywhere

and at all times, even m our own country now, and

only those prophecies that come true or seem to come

true are later remembered.) The king felt this applied

to George of Clarence; but why not to RiChard of

Gloucester? The king suspected George because

George deserved it; he did not suspect Glouce^er be-

cause the real Gloucester's unshakable loyalty left no

room for suspicion.

 

We can also ask ourselves whether Richard really

had a hand in raising Edward's suspicions against

George. There is no evidence of that at all until the

later anti-Richard polemicists got to work. They say

that he spoke openly in favor of his brother to the

king in order to hide his secret maneuverings. The

"maneuverings," however, are a later invention pre-

sented even by the polemicists as onlv a matter of sus-

picion, whereas the one fact they admit is that Rich-

ard defended his brother Clarence openly—which

took courage.

 

By the time Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare had come

out, my marriage had broken up and I found myself

in New fork in a two-room hotel suite and rather at a

loss.

 

For the first time in my life I needed to consult no

one's taste but my own, so I went to lower Fourth

Avenue to poke around the secondhand bookstores,

something I had always wanted to do.

 

I came across a Modem Library edition of Lord By-

ron's great'comic epic Don Juan, which I had read (or

had, at least, begun to read} in my college days. I

brought it home in triumph, feeling that I could now

haw something to read at night when I couldn't sleep

 

356

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

{and I wasn't sleeping eery well in my lonely hotel

apartment).

 

The first night, I had hardly managed to read the

seventeen-stanza dedication and the very beginning of

the first "canto before all was lost. I put the book aside

and spent the rest of the night in restless waiting ffff

the morning so that I could begin to annotate it.

 

I did annotate it, and, unlike my treatment of the

Bible and Shakespeare, 1 quoted the entire epic along

with the annotations. I managed to persuade Double-

day to publish it (which they eventually did—their

own idea—in a very beautiful and expensive edition}.

 

Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (Book 130) was

published in 1972, and I have rarely had such fun

writing a book. Here is the first verse of the first

canto wst to give you a notion of what I was doing:

 

from ASIMOV'S ANNOTATED "DON JUAN" (1972)

 

I want a hero: an uncommon want,

 

When every year and month sends forth a

 

new one,

Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,1

 

The age discovers he is not the true one:

 

Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,

 

111 therefore take our ancient friend Don

 

Juan2—

 

We all have seen him, in the pantomime,

Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.8

 

Canto 1 was written between September 6 and

 

November 1, 1818, in Venice, Italy.

 

1. The gazettes were not then, as now in the Ameri-

can sense of the word, amply newspapers. They were

 

OPUS 200                357

 

official weekly journals, publishing statistics of gov-

ernmental interest: movements of the royal family,

lists of honors granted, those killed in battle, and so

on. Byron refers to the gazettes now and then in Don

Juan, chiefly in order to bestow a sardonic glance at

their role as a mmtary obituary list.

 

2. Don Juan is an "ancient friend" because he was a

well-known figure out of Spanisli folklore. He first re-

ceived recognized literary presentation in the drama

El Bwlador de SecUJa, written in 1630 by the Spanish

dramatist Gabriel Tellez (who wrote under the pseu-

donym Tirso de Molina).

 

In the original folk tale, Don Juan was the epitome

of the licentious man, who aspired (usually success-

fully) to make love to every woman he met, and who

did so with utter disregard for any law. The climax of

his story is his liaison with a noblewoman and its con-

sequences. He kills the woman's father in a duel. The

father is buried and an effigy.of him is placed over

the tomb. Don Juan, seeing that effigy, mockingly in-

vites it to dinner. The stone figure duly arrives at the

meal and drags the rake and blasphemer to Hell.

 

Various versions of this legend had already ap-

peared in Spain and elsewhere by Byron's time- Mo-

liere had written a play on the theme and Mozart, an

opera. Byron, with no compunction whatever, utterly

altered the plot in his own version. In fact, all that

Byron left of the traditional Don Juan is his name and

birthplace; nothing more! Don Juan's character is ut-

terly changed. From a heartless blasphemer, seducer,

and libertine (as the world viewed Byron), he be-

comes an innocent, far more sinned against than sin-

ning (as Byron viewed himself). Even the hero's

name was tampered with, for Byron abandoned the

universal "Don Wahn" and called him, with sturdy

 

358

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

English disregard for the eccentric pronunciations of

foreigners, "Don Joo'un," as we can tell by the fact

that he rhymed Juan with "new one" and "true one."

 

3. Don Juan was also a favorite in pantomimes and

puppet shows, particularly one adapted from the play

The Libertine by Thomas Shadwell, The climax of/

such shows invariably came at the point where Don

Juan, defiant to the last, is dragged down to Hell by

the devil to the screaming enthusiasm of the audience.

 

NOT did working on Don Juan in the least sate me.

While it was in press, I did the same for Milton's great

tragic epic Paradise Lost, throwing in Paradise Re-

gained for good measure. In this case, too, I quoted

the entire work along, with the annotations.

 

Douhledftff did Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost"

also, and without a murmur. It was published in 1974

as Book 154.

 

1 had thought, when I first began to work on Para-

dise Lost, that it would be hard work since I was un-

der the firm impression that I didn't like Milton's

style. I changed my mind, however. Once I immersed

myself in it, I found I loved the long and rolling son-

orittf of those magnificent Latinate sentences of his.

Here's the very first sentence in the epic, one that

rumbles on for sixteen lines of iambic pentameter—

together with my annotations, of course.

 

from ASIMOV'S ANNOTATED "PARADISE LOST" (1974)

 

Of Man's First disobedience,1 and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree,2 whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,

 

OPUS 200                 359

 

With loss of Eden,3 till one greater Man*

 

Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

 

Sing, Heav'nly Muse,5 that on the secret top

 

Of Oreb, or of Sinai,6 didst inspire

 

That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,7

 

In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth8

 

Rose out of Chaos:9 Or if Sion Hill10

 

Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd

 

Fast by the Oracle of God;" I thence

 

Invoice thy aid to my advent'rous song,

 

That with no middle flight intends to soar

 

Above th* Aonian Mount,12 while it pursues

 

Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme.

 

1. The epic poem Paradise Lost begins immediately

with a statement of purpose. Its story is that told in

the second and third chapters of the biblical book of

Genesis: that of Eve's, then Adam's, disobedience to

God and their violation of the one negative command

given them after their creation. Since Adam and Eve

were the first (and, till then, the onlv) human beings

to exist, according to the biblical account, and since

this was their first disobedience, it was the first dis-

obedience of mankind generally.

 

2. It was this tree that was involved in the one nega-

tive command given to Adam: "And the Lord God

commanded the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the gar-

den thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the

knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it;

 

for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt

surely die'" (Genesis 2:16-17).

 

The quotation I have just given is from the Author-

ized Version of the Bible (generally known as the

King James Bible), which was first published in 1611,

fifty-six years before the publication of Paradise Lost.

 

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ISAAC ASIMOV

 

It has been the traditional Bible of EngUsh-spealdng

Protestants, both in Milton's time and now, so I will

use it for quotations throughout these notes.

 

3. It was the land of Eden in which Adam and Eve

existed before their disobedience and from which they

were evicted afterward, as the poem will describe in-

great detail. Specifically it was in a garden in that region

in which they dwelt: "And the Lord God planted a gar-

den eastward in Eden; and there he put the man

whom he had formed" (Genesis 2:8).

 

It is common, but not correct, to refer to the garden

itself as Eden, as Milton does here. This is not to say

that Milton did not know better, of course. In the con-

stricting bounds of poetry, the necessities of rhyme,

rhythm, or imagery may require a certain departure

from strict accuracy. This is tolerated as "poetic li-

cense."

 

4. The "greater Man" is Jesus. The New Testament

worked out the doctrine that there was a symmetry in

the story of man. By the sin of one man, Adam. all

mankind was condemned, and by the virtue of one

man, Jesus, all mankind was saved again: "For as by

one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so

by the obedience of one shall many be made right-

eous" (Romans 5:19).

 

5. Milton draws his sources not only from the Bible

but from Greek and Latin literature, primarily the

great epic poems: Homer's lliad and Odyssey and

Vergil's Aeneid. Paradise Lost is quite obviously and

undeniably an imitation of all of these, particularly

the last. Indeed, so densely packed with classical allu-

sions is Milton's epic, so reverent is its treatment of

classical myths, and so slavish (almost) is its picture

of angels as Homeric heroes, that we are bound to

 

OPUS 200                361

 

consider Paradise Lost a pagan translation (and a glo-

riously majestic one) of the biblical creation tale.

 

It was customary for the pagan epic poets to invoke

the Muse at the start of their poem, the Muse being

the spirit of poetic inspiration. Homer and Vergil both

did so and Milton does so as well.

 

6. There is a limit, of course, to how pagan the rig-

idly Puritan Milton can allow himself to be. The Muse

must therefore be identified with the revealing and

inspiring Spirit of Cod.

 

One place where the divine Spirit revealed itself

was at "the secret top of Oreb" (Mount Horeb). Thus

the Bible tells us that Moses, while still in exile in

Midian, "led the flock to the backside of the desert,

and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.

And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a

flame of fire out of the midst of a bush" (Exodus

3:1-2).

 

After Moses went to Egypt, at the behest of God,

and then led the Israelites out of Egypt, he brought

them to Mount Sinai; "And the Lord came down upon

Mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the Lord

called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses

went up" (Exodus 19:20).

 

Many biblical commentators decided that Horeb

and Sinai are alternate names for the same mountain,

and that is how Milton treats them here.

 

7. It is Moses who is "that Shepherd" who received

the message of God on Mount Horeb, or Sinai.

Though raised in the palace of Egypt's pharaoh, he

had killed an Egyptian and been forced to flee the

land. He reached Midian and married the daughter of

an important man of the region, one with large herds

of sheep. "Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his fa-

ther in law, the priest of Midian" (Exodus 3:1).

 

362

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

The teachings of Moses were addressed to the Isra-

elites, who believed themselves divinely chosen to

keep God's commandments and to worship him in. the

correct manner. Thus: "0 ye seed of Israel his servant,

ye children of Jacob, his chosen ones" (1 Chronicles

16:13). Hence the reference to "the chosen Seed."

 

8. It was Moses, according to a Jewish tradition

adopted by the Christians, who wrote the Brst five

books of the Bible, under the inspiration of God. In

particular, he was supposed to have written the first

verse, which opens with the phrase used here by Mil-

ton: "In the beginning God created the heavens and

the earth" (Genesis 1:1).

 

9. In the Hebrew tradition, it is stated in the very

first biblical verse that heaven and earth were cre-

ated. The implication was that, before the creation,

nothing existed.

 

In the Greek tradition, however, chaos existed to

begin with, and even antedated the gods. Chaos was

viewed as matter in formless disorder, so the creation

of the universe in the Greek view consisted of impos-

ing form on formlessness and extracting order out of

disorder.

 

Milton accepts the pagan view when he speaks of

**how die Heav'ns and Earth/Rose out of Chaos." He

is not, however, entirely without biblical authority, for

the Bible goes on to say after the initial verse, "And

the earth was without form, and void'* (Genesis 1:2).

In other words, even though heaven and earth were

created out of nothing, they appeared as chaos to be-

gin with, and it was out of that that God, in six days,

extracted form and order.

 

10. "Sion hill" is Mount Zion, which was the height

about which the citv of Jerusalem was built. It was

the fortified center of the city, the site of the ruler s

 

OPUS 200

 

363

 

palace, the place of last defense. It was David's cap-

ture of Mount Zion that placed Jerusalem in Israelite

hands: "Nevertheless David took the strong hold of

Zion" (2 Samuel 5:7). It was on Mount Zion that Da-

vid's son, Solomon, built the Temple. Zion therefore be-

came the religious center of the kingdom as well. It

was on Mount Zion, with its Temple, that the Spirit of

Cod might be thought to be resting.

 

11. Siloa ("Siloam," in the Greek form) is a tunnel

in Mount Zion through which water was conducted.

The water formed a pool at the base of the mountain

and served as a water supply. Its connection with di-

vine inspiration comes in a tale of the manner in

which Jesus cured a blind man by placing saliva-

caked soil on his eyes, "And said unto him, 'Go, wash

in the pool of Siloam'" (John 9:7). Since the pool was

at the base of the mount on which the Temple stood,

it "flow'd Fast by the Oracle of God."

 

12. Milton never stays long with biblical allusions,

but always finds himself irresistibly drawn back to

the classical. He moves now from biblical to pagan

sources of inspiration. Aonia is an alternate name for

the Greek district known as Boeotia. The "Aonian

Mount" is Helicon, a mountain in Boeotia sacred to

the Muses and therefore symbolizing a source of po-

etic inspiration.

 

7n 1975,1 had lunch with James Fixx of Horizon over

the possibility of my doing a piece for it. Fixx was

astonished at the variety of my writing, and since I

don't suffer from overdeveloped humility, I cheerfully

described some of the books I had done and rather

emphasized my annotations—of which I am inordi-

nately proud.

 

He hadn't heard of them and asked if I could anno-

 

364

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

tote a poem for Horizon. I agreed readily, ecen jubi-

lantly, and decided to do Rudyard Kipling's ''Reces-

sional."

 

Alas Horizon rejected it with, I suspect, something

akin to horror. Fixx had gotten the idea, 1 think, that

my annotations were satirical or humorous and,' of

course, they are completely serious.

 

I shrugged off the rejection, and since J am strongly

averse to lettinv am/thing I have written go (o waste, I

annotated three dozen other poems and persuaded

Doubled^i to publish Familiar Poems Annotated in

2977 (Book 181). From that book, here is my origi-

nally rejected annotation of "Recessional":

 

from FAMILIAR POEMS ANNOTATED (J977)

 

Recessional1

by RUDYARD KiPLiNG2

 

God of our fathers, known of old,3

 

Lord of our far-flung battle line,4

Beneath whose awful hand we hold

 

Dominion over palm and pine—®

Lord God of Hosts,6 be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!7

 

The tumult and the shouting dies,

 

The captains and the kings depart:8

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

 

An humble and a contrite heart.9

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forgetl

 

Far-called, our navies melt away;10

On dune and headland sinks the fire:11

 

OPUS 200

 

365

 

, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh13 and Tyre!1'

Judge of the Nations,14 spare us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

 

Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,

Such boostings as the Gentiles15 use,

 

Or lesser breeds without the Law—16

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

 

For heathen heart17 that puts her trust

 

In reeking tube and iron shard,18

All valiant dust'" that bmlds on dust,20

 

And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard—

For frantic boast and foolish word,

Thy Mercy on Thy People, LordI21

 

1. By 1897, the year "Recessional" was written,

Great Britain was at the peak of her power. Victoria

had been queen for sixty years—sixty years that had

seen the nation advancing steadily in population,

prosperity, prestige, and power. Now the nation was

celebrating the Diamond Jubilee, the sixtieth anniver-

sary of Victoria's accession to the throne.

 

Great Britain ruled over an empire that had been

expanding throughout the nineteenth century and was

still expanding. To symbolize British glory and suc-

cess, Victoria had been promoted to a higher title

and had been made empress of India in 1876. Small

though Great Britain might be in area, she ruled

nearly a quarter of the world directly, and dominated

virtually all the rest financially.

 

And yet the most famous literary work to emerge

from this ecstatic celebration turned out to be this

 

366

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

somber poem. Its very name indicates the manner in

which its mood went precisely contrary to that of the

happy nation.

 

A recession is an act of retiring or withdrawing,

and a recessional is a piece of music plaved at the end

of some performance or ceremony, as the audience is

leaving. The poem, therefore, deals with the possible

decline of the empire; its departure, so to speak, from

the stage of history.

 

2. Joseph Rudyard Kipling was bom in Bombay, In-

dia, on December 30, 1865, and India was the very

epitome of imperial success. It was India that was the

most populous, the most historic, the most exotic, and

the most impressive of all British possessions. It was

of India that the British monarch became empress. In

the years Kipling spent in India, he grew interested in

Indian life and culture but always from the viewpoint

of a member of a master race.

 

Kipling came to be viewed as the outstanding liter-

ary spokesman for imperialism—that is, for the view

that men of European descent (and of British descent

in particular) had a kind of natural right to rule over

non-Europeans, and that it was even their duty to do

so. Yet in the midst of the frantic Jubilee celebration,

a chill foretaste of the nemesis of imperialism seemed

to come over him.

 

He died in London on January 18,1936.

 

3. The poem is biblical in tone and flavor. The Brit-

ish, in Kipling's view, were God's chosen people, des-

tined for worid rule, and it was impossible for him not

to hark back to that other chosen people, the Israel-

ites. Throughout the poem, the British are made into

the contemporary equivalent of biblical Israel-

 

Thus, when Moses came to the Israelite slaves in

Egypt with the news that God would rescue them, he

 

OPUS 200

 

367

 

had to assure them that it was no invention of his own

that he was bringing, no unknown deity, but an ances-

tral God of proven work, one that was known of old.

God's instructions to Moses were: "Thus shalt thou

say unto the Children of Israel, the Lord God of Isaac,

and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you" (Exo-

dus 3:15).

 

And so Kipling, in addressing God, stresses the

same historic continuity, the same ancestral respect-

ability, to lend a more somber note to the prayer.

 

4. "Far-Sung" indeed! The empires of the past had

been limited in size. The largest had been that of the

Mongols, who from 1240 to 1340 had ruled over most

of Asia and half of Eruope. Even that empire had

been contiguous, however, with all parts land-

connected; it was not truly intercontinental; not truly

a world empire.

 

. It was only after the opening of the age of explora-

tion that world empires became possible. In the

course of the sixteenth century, Portugal and Spain

each established trading posts on every continent and

took over large land areas in the Americas. Indeed,

from 1580 to 1640 Spain took over Portugal and com-

bined both empires. These Iberian empires could only

be held together feebly, however, in the days of sail-

ing ships, especially since the home nations were in

the grip of a depressed and declining economy.

 

It was with the coming of industrialization that a

real gap opened between those nations that could im-

pose colonialization and those that must suffer it.

Great Britain, which was the first to industrialize.

forged on to outstrip tile earner world empires in ex-

tent, far outstrip them in population, and far, far out-

strip them in power.

 

Of the previous world empires, it had been said

 

368

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

that the sun never set upon them. At every moment

during earth's rotation some region forming part of

the empire was on the day-lit portion of the globe.

The earlier examples were forgotten, however, in the

greater example of the newer empire. Throughout

the nineteenth century, it was common to say that "thfe

sun never set upon the British Empire." And it was

easy to begin to believe this in the figurative sense,

too—that the sun of history and power would never set

and that the British Empire would remain basking in

an eternal noon.

 

5. Again a reference to the wide extent of the Brit-

ish Empire. The palm is a characteristic tree of the

tropics, and the pine the characteristic tree of the north-

ernmost forests. The palm trees of India and the pine

forests of Canada were both under the rule of the

government in London. (Canada had dominion status

and considerable self-rule, to be sure.)

 

6. The ancient peoples all had war gods, lords of the

hosts (armies), and why not? When did a people need

their god more than when they were meeting their en-

emies in battle (and when, presumably, the enemies

were busily calling upon their gods for help). Kipling

specifically recognizes the role of God as generalis-

simo when he refers to him earlier as "Lord of our

far-flung battle line."

 

In the Bible, the Creator is sometimes spoken of as

"God of hosts" or "Lord of hosts" when the divine role

on the battlefield, or as an agent of destruction, is to

be emphasized. Thus, when the Bible describes the

manner in which God will inflict military defeat upon

the Egyptians, it says, "And the Egyptians will I give

over into the hand of a cruel lord; and a fierce king

shall rule over them, saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts"

(Isaiah 19:4).

 

OPUS 200                 369

 

Again, in a plea to reverse the civil war that is giv-

ing the enemy an opportunity to destroy Israel, we

have, "Turn us again, 0 Lord God of hosts, cause thy

face to shine; and we shall be saved" (Psalms 80:19).

 

7. To the biblical writers, the military defeat and

physical destruction of a land are the direct result of

forgetting what is due to God, since God's people can-

not suffer defeat except as punishment by an angry

and forgotten Cod. Thus, the Bible quotes God as say-

ing: "For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and build-

eth temples; and Judah hath multiplied fenced cities,

but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall de-

vour the palaces thereof (Hosea 8:14).

 

8. Tumult and shouting evoke a picture of the

clamor of battle, and "captains" and "kings" are the

leaders of armies. There is a biblical passage describ-

ing the war horse that is reminiscent of these lines:

 

"He saith among the trumpets. Ha, ha; and he smel-

leth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains

and the shouting" (Job 39:25).

 

But the noise dies and the warriors depart. Military

glory alone is insufficient, for the wars end and there

must be something to maintain the nation afterward.

 

These two lines also evoke the "tumult and the

shouting" of the Jubilee, the gathering of royalty and

of military notables from every European nation.

The noise of the Jubilee has to die, too, and the cele-

brants must depart, and what then?

 

9. It is a common biblical notion that it is not the

proud, the powerful, and the arrogant who are cared

for by God, but the humble, the repentant, and the

unassuming. The former are too apt to be tempted

into feeling they have no need of God and are there-

fore likely to forget Him. The latter cannot forget

Him because they have nowhere else to turn.

 

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ISAAC AS1MOV

 

Thus: 'The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a

broken heart; and saveth such as be of contrite spirit"

(Psalms 34;18). Again: "The sacrifices of God are a

broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, 0 God,

thou wilt not despise" (Psalms 51:17).

 

10. Great Britain's prime defense was its navy. It was'

through its navy's defeat of the Spanish Armada in

1588 that England became an important power on the

stage of the modern world. It was because its navy

patrolled and controlled the waters about itself that

Great Britain was held inviolate from the armies of

Philip II of Spain and of Louis XIV and Napoleon of

France—armies that would have destroyed the nation,

could they have but set foot on it.

 

What's more, it was British control of the sea be-

yond its own waters that controlled the trade of the

world, poured wealth into the unblockaded island,

and, in the end, wore out and frustrated all the Conti-

nental conquerors and left their land victories useless.

 

But what if Great Britain, foolishly vainglorious, at-

tempted tasks too great for her, or entered into tasks

without careful forethought and planning? The navy,

"far-called" (that is, spread thin over the waters of a

worldwide empire, too thin) would melt away. The

links binding the empire would be broken, and the

homeland itself would be left defenseless before the

attack of armies that could not be prevented from

landing.

 

11. Dunes are sandy ridges common along sea-

shores. Headlands are spits and capes, bits of land jut-

ting out into the sea. Lighthouses on such places

guide incoming ships at night or in fogs. They are

necessary for a maritime nation, whose ships are its

life line. They are unnecessary once a navy no longer

exists, since trade can no longer be protected once the

 

OPUS 200                371

 

life line is cut And with the life line cut, the sinking

of the fire in the lighthouses becomes a symbolic way

of representing the dying of the nation.

 

12. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire

in the seventh century B.C. during the days of its

greatest glory. Under Ashurbanipal, it became not

only the military center of western Asia, but the cul-

tural center as well. It might have seemed to the

proud warrior caste of Assyria that their power and

rule were eternal, yet Ashurbanipal died in 627 B.C.

with his empire essentially intact, and •within twenty-

five years it was all gone, forever.

 

Nineveh fell to Chaldean rebels from within the

empire and to Median horsemen from without in 612

B.C. It was never rebuilt, and two centuries later,

when a Creek army passed that way, they had to ask

what the mounds were.

 

13. Tyre is a particularly close approximation to

Great Britain. It, too, was a naval power, with a citadel

on an island that could not be forced while its ships

controlled the seas about it. Tyre, too, built up a vast

network of trading posts and flung its merchantmen

and warships far out, from end to end of the Mediter-

ranean and even into the Atlantic.

 

Tyre's prosperity declined slowly as it adjusted to

the realities of the mighty Asian empires of Assyria

and its successors. Finally, in 323 B.C., Tyre was be-

seiged by Alexander the Great, who filled in the sea

between the island and the coast. He took the city

after nine months and destroyed it. It exists to this

day as a small coastal city in Lebanon, but no shadow

of its former glory remains.

 

14. This title, given to God, harks back to the bibli-

cal passage in which Abraham attempts to dissuade

God from destroying Sodom with indiscriminate anger

 

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ISAAC ASIMOV

 

against its inhabitants. After all, there may be some

people of Sodom who are righteous. Abraham said,

"That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay

the righteous with the wicked; and that the righteous

should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall

not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis

18:25).

 

15. It is the wild overweening pride, the "hubris" of

the Jubilee, that makes Kipling uneasy. The behavior

is not British in his opinion, but is more suited to

other and inferior people (a viewpoint which is itself

an example of hubris, of course).

 

"Gentiles" are, strictly speaking, related members of

a tribe or clan (from the Latin word "gens," meaning

tribe or clan). Any group that considers itself in a spe-

cial relationship to God, or as having a special signifi-

cance in history, is likely to lump all other people as

Gentiles, as members of the (other) tribes. Thus, to

Jews, all non-Jews are Gentiles; and to Mormons, all

non-Mormons are Gentiles.

 

To Kipling, with his attitude that the British are the

modem Israelites and the new-chosen of Cod, all non-

British are Gentiles, and therefore inferior beings who

know no better than to indulge in vainglorious boast-

ings. That the British should do that as well would be

shameful.

 

16. The agreement, or covenant, by which the Isra-

elites became the chosen of God, required that, in ex-

change, they obey the Law as delivered to Moses on

Mount Sinai. Thus, God says, "Now, therefore, if ye

will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant,

then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all

people" (Exodus 19:5).

 

To be "without the Law," then, is not to be of the

elect. Again, there is the flavor of inferiority about

 

OPUS 200

 

373

 

those not chosen. They are not British (Israelite), and

therefore they are "lesser breeds."

 

17. The word "heathen" is used in the English trans-

lation of the Bible for those who did not worship the

God of Israel: "Why do the heathen rage—" (Psalms

2:1). The word means those of the heath, or back-

woods, who are unsophisticated and cling to primitive

traditions and worship,

 

18. The "reeking tube" is the gun barrel generally,

of all sizes, and the "iron shard" is the bullet or other

ob'ect fired from it. The trust in force exclusively,

without regard to moral justification, is exemplified

in a Jingle that became current in Great Britain after

the invention of a new and improved machine gun by

the American inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884:

 

Whatever happens, we have got

The Maxim-gun, and they have not

 

Ironically enough, even as Kipling wrote, the word

"reeking" became obsolete.

 

For six hundred years the chemical explosive used

on the battlefield to prooel bullets and balls had been

gunpowder. That had produced smoke, soot, and reek-

ing odors that fouled the pms, choked the gunners,

and obscured the battlefield. In the last decades of

the nineteenth centurv, however, smokeless powders

were developed. In the wars of the twentieth century,

various smokeless powders were used, and though the

"tube" grew steadily more deadly, it was no longer

"reeking."

 

19. From the biblical view, man was a creature

compounded of dust: "And the Lord God formed man

of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nos-

trils the breath of life" (Genesis 2:7). In battle, man

 

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ISAAC ASIMOV

 

might display valor, but that did not dignify his ori-

gins; he was merely "valiant dust," a phrase William

Shakespeare uses in Much Ado About Nothing.

 

20. This is a reference to the biblical parable of the

"foolish man, who built his house upon the sand: And

the rain descended, and the Roods came, and the'

winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell"

(Matthew 7:26-27).

 

21. The last plea is, or course, biblical: "Be merci-

ful, 0 Lord, unto thy people Israel—" (Deuteronomy

21:8), and Kipling here directly equates the British

with Israel.

 

Yet God chose not to have mercy, for immediately

after 1897, the year of the Diamond Jubliee, the Brit-

ish Empire began its decline.

 

Even while the Jubilee was being celebrated, Brit-

ish imperialism was pressing hard on the independent

Boer territories north of British dominions in South

Africa. In 1899 this turned into open war, which, to

British surprise and humiliation, lasted nearly three

years. The British won in the end after they had suffi-

ciently reinforced their armies, but world sympathy

was with the Boers.

 

The British, surprised at being cast in the role of

villains, and cast down at finding they had not a

friend in the world, lost the euphoria of 1897, and it

was never, quite, to return.

 

One more hH of literature remains to be mentioned,

something rather widely removed from the great liter-

ary classics 1 have referred to.

 

Somehow, almost accidentally, 1 found myself in-

volved with the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of

lovable eccentrics who find no pleasure greater than

 

opus 200

 

375

 

reading, rereading analyzing, and discussing the sixty

stories and novels that involve Sherlock Holmes plus

all the simple and arcane side-issues thereof.

 

Drawn in, I found myself producing items of Sher-

lockian interest.

 

Otto Penzler, a hook collector and the proprietor of

Mysterious Press, a small house given over to items of

specialized interest to mystery fans, suggested in July

1977 that I write sixty limericks, one for each of the

items in the Sherlock Holmes canon. Since I was

about to make a small trip on the Queen Elizabeth II

and wanted desperately to keep myself busy while

doing so (I have an aversion to pure vacationing], I

agreed.

 

The sixty limericks that resluted, all written on the

QE II, were put together as Asimov's Sherlockian

Limericks {Book 19l}, which was published on Janu-

ary 6, 2978, Sherlock Holmess one hundred twenty-

fourth birthday (by BSI reckoning) and the day of

that year's meeting of the Bakef Street Irregulars.

 

Here is the last of my Sherlockian limericks:

 

from ASIMOV'S SHERLOCKIAN LIMERICKS (1978)

 

Farewell, Sherlock! Farewell, Watson, too.

First to last, you've been loyal and true.

 

Of the human totality

 

Who've lived in reality

There've been none quite as real as you.

 

PART 14

 

MYSTERIES

 

Although the list of mif second hundred hooks is dis-

turbingly short on science fiction, things aren't alto-

gether bad. At least, I have begun to write fiction in

addition.

 

This is not to say I was a complete stranger to the

mystery story in my first hundred books. A number^of

my science fiction stories were mysteries, including

my two novels The Caves of Steel and The Naked

Sun.

 

1 wrote only one "straight" mystery among my first

hundred books. The Death Dealers, but that involved

scientists and science all the way through. Even the

gimmick was a chemical one. The small number of

straight mystery short stories 1 wrote were similarly

I-   saturated with science and scientists.

 

From 1971 onward, however, I have written no less

than thirty straight mystery short stories that had

nothing to do with science—rather old-fashioned mys-

teries in the ratiocinative tradition of Agatha Christie

and John Dickson Carr. The first twelve of them were

collected in Tales of the Black Widowers {Book 155},

which Doubleday published in 1974, and the next

twelve in More Tales of the Black Widowers (Book

178), which they published in 1976. The remaining

 

380

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

six, along with six more yet to he written, will some-

day (f hope) be included in a third hook.

 

How I came to write these mysteries T explain in

the introduction to Tales of the Black Widowers.

 

from THE TALES OF THE BLACK WIDOWERS (1976)

 

But then, back in 1971, I received a letter from that

gorgeous blond young ladv Eleanor Sullivan, who is

managing editor of EUery Queen's Mystery Magazine

(or EQMM, for short), asking if I would consider

writing a short story for the magazine. Of course, I

Jubilantly agreed, because I thought that if they asked

for one, they couldn't possibly have the cruelty to re-

ject it once written, and that meant I could safely

write my own kind of storv—very cerebral.

 

I began revolving plot possibilities in my head

rather anxiously, for I wanted something with a rea-

sonable twist to it and Agatha Christie, all by herself

had already used virtually all possible twists.

 

While the wheels were slowly turning in the recesses

of my mind, I happened to be visiting the actor David

Ford (who was in both the Broadway and Hollywood

versions of 1776). His apartment is filled with all

kinds of interesting oddities, and he told me that he

was convinced once that someone had taken some-

thing from his apartment, but he could never be sure

because he couldn't tell whether anything was miss-

ing.

 

I laughed and all the wheels in my head, heaving a

collective sigh of relief, stopped turning. I had my

twist.

 

I then needed a background against which to dis-

play the twist, and here we have something else.

 

OPUS 200                381

 

Back in the early 1940s, legend has it, a man mar-

ried a lady who found his friends unacceptable, and

vice versa. In order to avoid breaking off a valued

relationship, those friends organized a club, without

officers or bylaws, for the sole purpose of having a

dinner once a month. It would be a stag organization

so that the husband in question could be invited to

join and his wife legitimately requested not to attend.

(Nowadays, with women's lib so powerful, this might

not have worked.)

 

The organization was named the Trap-Door Spiders

(or TDS, for short) probably because the members

felt themselves to be hiding.

 

Thirty years have passed since the TDS was organ-

ized, but it still exists. It is still stag, though the mem-

ber whose marriage inspired the organization is long

since divorced. (As a concession to male nonchauvin-

ism, a cocktail party was given on February 3, 1973, at

which the TDS wives could meet one another—but

this did not become an annual custom.)

 

Once a month the TDS meets, always on a Friday

night, almost always in Manhattan, sometimes in a

restaurant, sometimes in a member's apartment. Each

meeting is co-hosted by two volunteers who bear all

the expenses for the occasion and who may each bring

a guest. The average attendance is twelve. There are

drinks and conversation from 6:30 to 7:30 P.M.; food

and conversation from 7:30 to 8:30 P.M.; and just con-

versation thereafter.

 

After the meal each guest is grilled on his interests,

his profession, his hobbies, his views, and the results

are almost always interesting, often fascinating.

 

The chief among the general eccentricities of the

TDS are these: (1) Ever)' member is addressed as

"Doctor" by the others, the title going along with the

 

382

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

membership, and (2) each member is supposed to try

to arrange for a mention of the TDS in his obituary.

 

I had been a guest myself on two different occa-

sions, and when I moved to New York in 1970, I was

elected to membership.

 

Well, then, thought I, why not tell my mystery story

against the background of the meeting of an organiza-

tion something like the TDS? My club would be called

the Black Widowers and I would cut it in half to make

it manageable—six people and one host

 

Naturally, there are differences. The members of

the TDS have never, in real life, attempted to solve

mysteries, and none of them is as idiosyncratic as the

members of the Black Widowers. In fact, the members

of the TDS are, one and all, lovable people, and there

is a mutual affection that is touching to see. There-

fore, please be assured that the characters and events

in the stories in this book are my own invention and

are not to be equated with anyone or anything in the

TDS, except insofar as they may seem intelligent or

lovable.

 

In particular. Henry, the waiter, is my own inven-

tion and has no analogue, however remote, in the TDS.

 

Most of the Black Widowers stories appeared in EUery

Queen's Mystery Magazine (EQMM) and a few in

F & SF. Three of the stories in each book, however, did

not see prior publication, and I will choose one of

them to include here, complete, as a sampling of the

group. It is "Earthset and Evening Star."

 

OPUS 200

"Earthset and Evening Star" (1976)

 

383

 

Emmanuel Rubin, whose latest mystery novel was

clearly proceeding smoothly, lifted his drink with sat-

isfaction and let his eyes gleam genially through his

thick-Iensed glasses.

 

"The mystery story," he pontificated, "has its rules,

which, when broken, make it an artistic failure, what-

ever success it may have in the marketplace."

 

Mario Gonzalo, whose hair had been recently cut to

allow a glimpse of- the back of his neck, said, as

though to no one, "It always amuses me to hear a

writer describe something he scrawls on paper as

'art.'" He looked with some complacency at the car-

toon he was making of the guest for that month's ban-

quet session of the Black Widowers.

 

"If what vou do is the definition of art," said Rubin,

"I withdraw the term in connection with the writer's

craft. One thing to avoid, for instance, is the idiot

plot."

 

"In that case," said Thomas Trumbull, helping him-

self to another roll and buttering it lavishly, "aren't

you at a disadvantage?"

 

Rubin said loftily, "By 'an idiot plot,' I mean one in

which the solution would come at once if an idiot in-

vestigator would but ask a logical question, or if an

idiot witness would but tell something he knows and

has no reason to hide."

 

Geoffrev Avalon, who had left a neatly cleaned

bone on his plate as the only evidence of the slab of

roast beef that had once rested there, said, "But no

skilled practitioner would do that, Manny. What you

do is set up some reason to prevent the asking or tell-

ing of the obvious."

 

"Exactly," said Rubin. "For instance, what I've been

 

384

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

writing is essentially a short story, if one moves in a

straight line. The trouble is the line is so straight, the

reader will see its end before I'm halfway. So I have

to hide one crucial piece of evidence, and do it in such

a way that I don't make an idiot out of it So I invent

a reason to hide that piece, and in order to make the'

reason plausible I have to build a supporting structure

around it—and I end with a novel, and a damn good

one." His sparse beard quivered with self-satisfaction.

 

Henry, the perennial waiter at the Black Widowers'

banquets, removed die plate from in front of Rubin

with his usual dexterity. Rubin, without turning, said,

"Am I right. Henry?"

 

Henry said softly, "As a mystery reader, Mr. Rubin,

I find it more satisfying to have the piece of informa-

tion delivered to me and to find that I have been in-

sufficiently clever and did not notice."

 

"I fust read a mystery," said James Drake in his

softly hoarse smoker's voice, "in which the whole

point rested on character one being really character

two, because the real character one was dead. I was

put on to it at once because, in the list of characters at

the start, character one was not listed. Ruined the

story for me."

 

"Yes," said Rubin, "but that wasn't the author's

fault Some flunky did that. I once wrote a story that

was accompanied by one illustration that no one

thought to show me in advance. It happened to give

away the point."

 

The guest had been listening quietly to all this. His

hair was just light enough to be considered blond, and

it had a careful wave in it that looked, somehow, as

though it belonged there- He turned ras rather narrow

but clearly good-humored face to Roger Halsted, his

neighbor, and said, "Pardon me, but since Manny

 

OPUS 200                385

 

Rubin is my friend, I know he is a mystery writer. Is

this true of the rest of you as well? Is this a mystery

writers' organization?"

 

Halsted, who had been looking with somber ap-

proval at the generous slab of Black Forest torte that

had been placed before him as dessert, withdrew his

attention with some difficulty and said, "Not at all.

Rubin is the only mystery writer here. I'm a mathe-

matics teacher myself; Drake is a chemist; Avalon is a

lawyer; Gonzalo is an artist; and Trumbull is a code

expert with the government.

 

"On the other hand," he went on, "we do have an

interest in this sort of thing. Our guests often have

problems they bring up for discussion, some sort of

mystery, and we've been rather lucky—"

 

The guest leaned back with a small laugh. "Nothing

of the sort here, alas. Of the mystery, the murder, the

fearful hand clutching from behind the curtain, there

is nothing in my life. It is all very straightforward,

alas; very dull. I am not even married." He laughed

again.

 

The guest had been introduced as Jean Servais, and

Halsted, who had attacked the torte with vigor and, in

consequence, felt a friendly glow filling him, said,

"Does it matter to you if I call you John?"

 

"I would not strike you, sir, if you did, but I pray

you not to. It is not my name. Jean, please."

 

Halsted nodded. "I'll try. I can manage that zh

sound, but getting it properly nasal is another thing.