Айзек Азимов - Before The Golden Age

Looking back on “Minus Planet” now, some thirty-six years after it was written, I find that it is a little dated. A proton is looked at in the story as a neutron plus a positron, but it’s actually more likely to be made up of mesons or quarks.

It’s also interesting that the interloping body of anti-matter was discovered by optical telescope and that science fiction writers uniformly imagined an astronomical future in which telescopes would be just like the 100-incher of the 1930s, only larger. Nobody, including Clark in this story, foresaw the possibility of radio telescopes, though the basic discovery had been made in 1931.

Stories such as “Minus Planet” were convincing demonstrations that it wasn’t enough for writers to make use of hoary catchwords like “radium” and “fourth dimension.” They had to keep abreast of the latest developments in science.

And by 1937, I was beginning to realize that my knowledge of science was progressing to the point where I clearly knew more about it than most science fiction writers. That meant that my awe was vanishing and that, more and more, I became convinced that I knew enough to write science fiction.

As I look back on it now, I think that my appreciation of “Minus Planet” and my eagerness to be another John Clark contributed strongly to my decision (at last!) to write a science fiction story not merely for my own amusement but for possible publication.

My long-winded science fiction novel had suffocated to death some months before, and on May 29, 1937, about two months after I read “Minus Planet,” I began, for the first time, a science fiction short story. I called it “Cosmic Corkscrew,” and I worked at it, in fits and starts, for about a month.

However, it was another false start. As soon as I began to imagine myself writing with the intent of publishing, I froze. I managed to get the story half finished, and then I put it away in a drawer and forgot about it for nearly a year.

My enjoyment of science fiction had risen steadily through the years, ever since I first began reading it, in 1929, and in 1937 it reached its peak. I remember exactly when that peak came.

It came in the month of August 1937, when I was spending the summer waiting for my junior year at Columbia to begin. In that month, the September 1937 issue of Astounding Stories arrived, and I remember the precise feelings that swept over me as I sat in the living room of our apartment and read the first installment of Edward E. Smith’s new four-part serial, Galactic Patrol.

Never, I think, did I enjoy any piece of writing more, any piece of any kind. Never did I savor every word so. Never did I feel so keen a sense of loss when I came to the end of the first installment and knew that I would have to wait a full month for the second.

Never anything like it before. Never anything like it after.

And in the September 1937 issue was another story, a novelette by Nat Schachner, “Past, Present, and Future,” and at the time I enjoyed it nearly as much as I did Galactic Patrol.

Schachner was one of my favorite writers for the Tremaine Astounding. Among the stories I wish I could have included in this anthology (well, I couldn’t include them all—even after I had cut the number to the bone, the fine gentlemen at Doubleday turned pale at the length of the book) were “Ancestral Voices,” in the December 1933 issue (the first of the thought-variants, I think), “The Ultimate Metal,” in the February 1935 issue, and “The Isotope Men,” in the January 1936 issue.

However, “Past, Present, and Future” was far and away my favorite among his stories.

Kleon stood on the edge of the jungle, stared out at the bright-blue bay. The great trireme, with its steeply pitched banks of oars, burned furiously. Fire and smoke crackled up to the tropic sun, licked like running tongues around the poop, swirled with final fury over the god Poseidon, whose wooden beard and pointing trident adorned the high-beaked prow.

As the god tottered and fell, charred beyond recognition, into the briny waters, Kleon bowed his head, uttered the classic prayer of Homer. It was an omen, a sign to him that never again would he see his native vines and twisted olive trees, that never again would he discourse with the philosophers or hear the godlike Alexander shout the Macedonian charge against the Persian hosts.

Slowly the embers died, slowly the sound of the crackling timbers ceased. Behind him, framed against a tangle of festooned trees and outlandish blooms, cowered his crew. They were not of his race; they were swart Egyptian sailors from Thebes, impressed by the mighty Alexander for his fleet against Arabia and the Indian potentates.

They held their spears uneasily, bracing themselves against the terrible wrath of their young commander, knowing that they had been guilty of foulest treachery, yet not sorry withal for what they had done. Their eyes feasted hungrily on the women by their sides—whom they had found inhabiting this incredible land where strange stars glowed overhead and the earth teemed with food and shelter and sustenance for the taking. These women were tall and light and straight, with copper-colored skins and laughing eyes that were a delight to sailors who had seen not even a mermaid for many moons.

Why should they leave these newfound delights, this gentle race of friendly people who called themselves Mayas in their own liquid tongue, to embark once more on restless Oceanus and steer back toward the setting sun? That was tempting the gods too much. This time, they were sure, their bones would molder in the sunless caverns of the fathomless seas, or their ship sweep over the rim of the world into the maw of old Chaos.

No, they had had enough of tempting the spirits of the waters. Only Isis and Osiris had saved them thus far, since the great wind had sprung up in the Indian Ocean and separated them from the fleet of Nearchus, admiral of Alexander, as it skirted the hostile coasts. They would stay here, with the people who thought them and their blond young commander, forsooth, gods from across the sea. Had they not kneeled and worshiped Kleon when the trireme had sailed into the fantastic bay? Had they not cried on him and called him by some outlandish name, as though he had been long expected? Quetzal—that was it.

Yet Kleon, in his Greek obstinacy, had ordered them, after a month of soft surrender to the balmy airs, after replenishment of food and water casks, to the oars again, to brave once more the perils they had so miraculously escaped. His mouth had set in a grim, hard way to all their protestations.

So they had burned the ship! It would be impossible for Kleon, for all his Greek learning, for all the magic arts he had learned among the wizards of the Persians, the Hindus, and the one-eyed Anthropophagi who lurked in caves on the Roof of the World, to force them to breast the waves again.

Yet, because he was their commander and they were but Egyptian slaves, because he wore bright armor and knew how to wield with slashing strokes the Macedonian short sword at his side, they cowered and were uneasy—though they outnumbered him an even hundred to one.

And still the Greek, terrible in his armor like the young sun god, made no move. The trireme was a dead-black hulk on the silent waters. The Mayas, black-haired, tall, stared at the stranger they had hailed as Quetzal, with fixed adoration. Even the raucous birds of many hues, who seemed to mock them from the trees with human cries, were still.

Hotep, the steersman, approached him timidly. “You are not angry with us, noble Kleon,” he pleaded. “We have done only that which seemed best. Here, among these people, we are as gods. Why breast the floods to suffer hunger and thirst and hideous monsters, and perchance, the outraged edges of the world, to return once more to—slavery and back-bending toil and the hewing of fierce weapons?”