Humanist Heroes: Isaac Asimov by Ariadne Tampion
Isaac Asimov was an American/Russian Sceince Fiction writer, famous for his Robot and Foundation stories. Ariadne Tampion tell us why he is her Humanist Hero.
Isaac Asimov
My Humanist hero is the American writer Isaac Asimov (1920-1992).
I became interested in Asimov’s work in my teens. First, I acquired a three-volume collection of his early stories, linked by an autobiographical commentary. From this I developed an admiration for the man which bordered on adulation, and wanted more than anything to be just like he was. I was delighted that we had both started writing stories at an early age. I was even pleased that we had the same type of appalling eyesight; especially when a character similarly afflicted provided an essential clue in one of his more famous mysteries. I started keeping records of the number of words I had written each day, just as he did.
His robot stories had the greatest impact on me. From them I acquired a fascination with artificial intelligence and a sense of the excitement of engineering development. It was significant that the principal character in these stories was a woman, Susan Calvin. Back in the 1970′s, attitudes which would seem unacceptably discriminatory today appeared ‘natural’ and ‘logical’: for example, that Man would go to the Moon while Woman stayed home, cooked dinner, and worked out how to wash a space suit. Asimov was a passionate advocate of women’s full participation in the space programme, and no doubt instrumental in giving me the confidence that I, a girl, could aspire to an engineering career. In doing this, I was also ‘being like Asimov’, as he had pursued a scientific career first of all alongside his writing.
The popular science writing to which Asimov turned in the 1950′s had its impact on me too. I shall always remember his explanation of how para-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde got its name, and the way he tackled the paradoxical question of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. Then when, at University, my fellow students felt they had to ‘act the part’ and write dry scientese, I stayed true to Asimov’s alternative philosophy. It paid off: the external examiner on my doctoral thesis opened the viva by declaring that it was a rare treat to get a thesis which was actually a pleasure to read!
In my twenties and thirties I left Asimov behind, under pressure of life and work, and to pursue new interests. He briefly came to my attention again in 1992 when he died. I discovered then that he had been President of the American Humanist Association, and I was pleased to learn that Humanism was something else he and I had in common.
Then in 2004 a film was made, based on his short story collection I, Robot. It starred Will Smith, of whom my then ten-year-old daughter was a fan. This set me re-reading the original stories and discovering them in a new light. In the Humanist Family Network we had been discussing what books should be recommended to schools for the teaching of Humanism. I thought ‘I, Robot’ would be perfect: it illustrates beautifully the pitfalls of trying to follow a simple ethical code, in the form of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics.
It was the story “Satisfaction Guaranteed”, about a woman falling in love with a prototype domestic robot, that led me to choose a robot lover theme when I wrote a satirical novella for my friends in the Women’s Engineering Society a year later. As a result of this, I found myself creating a character for programmer Rollo Carpenter’s prizewinning conversational artificial intelligence, ‘Joan’, and eventually writing a full-length novel. I then discovered Asimov’s later novels, in one of which he, too, deals more explicitly with the question of intimate relationships between robots and human beings. I suspect he had always seen this as one inevitable consequence of his Laws of Robotics, but in the pre-Lady Chatterley era would not have been able to publish stories on the topic.
Isaac Asimov is my Humanist Hero because of the huge influence he had on the course of my life. But I believe he would stand high in any general list of Humanist Heroes. Not only did he set out to communicate the understanding and joy of science and engineering to the world; but he was wise enough to do it both through popular science writing, which speaks to the intellect, and through stories, which speak to the emotions. It is necessary to cover both to displace the need for a God in the human mind and release us to be content with the one world that we have.
This post is part of a series written by members, friends and Distinguished Supporters of the British Humanist Association about their own “humanist heroes”.
You can find out more at www.humanism.org.uk/humanism/humanist-tradition/heroes
Ariadne Tampion is the author of acclaimed robot romance Automatic Lover. She has been active in Humanist circles since her Humanist wedding in 1991.
My Humanist hero is the American writer Isaac Asimov (1920-1992).
I became interested in Asimov’s work in my teens. First, I acquired a three-volume collection of his early stories, linked by an autobiographical commentary. From this I developed an admiration for the man which bordered on adulation, and wanted more than anything to be just like he was. I was delighted that we had both started writing stories at an early age. I was even pleased that we had the same type of appalling eyesight; especially when a character similarly afflicted provided an essential clue in one of his more famous mysteries. I started keeping records of the number of words I had written each day, just as he did.
His robot stories had the greatest impact on me. From them I acquired a fascination with artificial intelligence and a sense of the excitement of engineering development. It was significant that the principal character in these stories was a woman, Susan Calvin. Back in the 1970′s, attitudes which would seem unacceptably discriminatory today appeared ‘natural’ and ‘logical’: for example, that Man would go to the Moon while Woman stayed home, cooked dinner, and worked out how to wash a space suit. Asimov was a passionate advocate of women’s full participation in the space programme, and no doubt instrumental in giving me the confidence that I, a girl, could aspire to an engineering career. In doing this, I was also ‘being like Asimov’, as he had pursued a scientific career first of all alongside his writing.
The popular science writing to which Asimov turned in the 1950′s had its impact on me too. I shall always remember his explanation of how para-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde got its name, and the way he tackled the paradoxical question of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. Then when, at University, my fellow students felt they had to ‘act the part’ and write dry scientese, I stayed true to Asimov’s alternative philosophy. It paid off: the external examiner on my doctoral thesis opened the viva by declaring that it was a rare treat to get a thesis which was actually a pleasure to read!
In my twenties and thirties I left Asimov behind, under pressure of life and work, and to pursue new interests. He briefly came to my attention again in 1992 when he died. I discovered then that he had been President of the American Humanist Association, and I was pleased to learn that Humanism was something else he and I had in common.
Then in 2004 a film was made, based on his short story collection ‘I, Robot’. It starred Will Smith, of whom my then ten-year-old daughter was a fan. This set me re-reading the original stories and discovering them in a new light. In the Humanist Family Network we had been discussing what books should be recommended to schools for the teaching of Humanism. I thought ‘I, Robot’ would be perfect: it illustrates beautifully the pitfalls of trying to follow a simple ethical code, in the form of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics.
It was the story ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’, about a woman falling in love with a prototype domestic robot, that led me to choose a robot lover theme when I wrote a satirical novella for my friends in the Women’s Engineering Society a year later. As a result of this, I found myself creating a character for programmer Rollo Carpenter’s prizewinning conversational artificial intelligence, ‘Joan’, and eventually writing a full-length novel. I then discovered Asimov’s later novels, in one of which he, too, deals more explicitly with the question of intimate relationships between robots and human beings. I suspect he had always seen this as one inevitable consequence of his Laws of Robotics, but in the pre-Lady Chatterley era would not have been able to publish stories on the topic.
Isaac Asimov is my Humanist Hero because of the huge influence he had on the course of my life. But I believe he would stand high in any general list of Humanist Heroes. Not only did he set out to communicate the understanding and joy of science and engineering to the world; but he was wise enough to do it both through popular science writing, which speaks to the intellect, and through stories, which speak to the emotions. It is necessary to cover both to displace the need for a God in the human mind and release us to be content with the one world that we have.
