I’ve barely sampled Isaac Asimov’s fiction. (I own a book of his short stories.) But I caught a few interviews of the late science fiction author on YouTube, and found him to be an interesting character.
I was therefore open to reading his second autobiography, I, Asimov: a Memoir. (The title is a pun on his novel, I, Robot).
I’m finishing the book up now. Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) seems to have been a powerful combination of strong intellect with an engaging personality. Reading his biography, I almost felt as if I knew him. I regretted that I never met him, in fact.
Born in the Soviet Union, Asimov and his parents emigrated to New York when the future author was only three years old. (He notes several times, with regret, that he never learned Russian.)
I, Asimov will be of most interest to fans of his fiction, and to readers who want to learn something of his prolific writing habits. I fell into the latter category.
Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books in his lifetime. He was certainly prolific. Asimov describes writing in addictive terms. Nothing, Asimov claimed, made him as happy as the time he spent at his typewriter.
Why the emphasis on “typewriter”? Asimov lived well into the personal computer/word processor age, but he preferred working on physical sheets of paper. He eventually acquired a word processor, but he used it mostly for typesetting his manuscripts before final submission.
Asimov did not survive into the age of truly modern word processing software (beginning around 1995). He did not live long enough to experience the Internet or social media, either. One suspects that he would have been an active blogger. (Asimov also wrote thousands of essays, letters, and postcards.)
He did not like to travel, and often turned down speaking engagements that would have required him to leave New York City. On this point I can sympathize with him; I have never enjoyed the logistics of travel, whether by car or by plane.
Asimov was an atheist, but he was not annoying in his atheism. He simply didn’t believe in God, or in a reality beyond the purely material. He was an avowed humanist, and had a strong (if irreligious) sense of right and wrong.
I, Asimov consists of 166 easy-to-read essays, arranged in more or less chronological order. I enjoyed Asimov’s memoir, and this book has made me want to take a deeper dive into his fiction.
-ET