Isaac Asimov: Runaround

It was one of Gregory Powell's favorite platitudes that nothing was to be gained from excitement, so when Mike Donovan came leaping down the stairs toward him, red hair matted with perspiration, Powell frowned.

"What's wrong?" he said. "Break a fingernail?"

"Yaaaah," snarled Donovan, feverishly. "What have you been doing in the sublevels all day?" He took a deep breath and blurted out, "Speedy never returned."

Powell's eyes widened momentarily and he stopped on the stairs; then he recovered and resumed his upward steps. He didn't speak until he reached the head of the flight, and then:

"You sent him after the selenium?"

"Yes."

"And how long has he been out?"

"Five hours now."

Silence! This was a devil of a situation. Here they were, on Mercury exactly twelve hours-and already up to the eyebrows in the worst sort of trouble. Mercury had long been the jinx world of the System, but this was drawing it rather strong-even for a jinx.

Powell said, "Start at the beginning, and let's get this straight."

They were in the radio room now-with its already subtly antiquated equipment, untouched for the ten years previous to their arrival. Even ten years, technologically speaking, meant so much. Compare Speedy with the type of robot they must have had back in 2005. But then, advances in robotics these days were tremendous.

Powell touched a still gleaming metal surface gingerly. The air of disuse that touched everything about the room-and the entire Station was infinitely depressing.

Donovan must have felt it.

He began: "I tried to locate him by radio, but it was no go. Radio isn't any good on the Mercury Sunside not past two miles, anyway. That's one of the reasons the First Expedition failed. And we can't put up the ultrawave equipment for weeks yet-'

"Skip all that. What did you get?"

"I located the unorganized body signal in the short wave. It was no good for anything except his position. I kept track of him that way for two hours and plotted the results on the map."

Isaac Asimov: The Backward Look

If Emmanuel Rubin knew how not to be didactic, he never exercised that knowledge.

"When you write a short story," he said, "you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only

the end to a reader. To a writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every

minute that you're writing, you'll never get there—or anywhere."

Thomas Trumbull's young guest at this particular monthly banquet of the Black Widowers seemed all

eyes as he watched Rubin's straggly gray beard quiver and his thick-lensed glasses glint; and all ears as

he listened to Rubin's firm, de-cibelic voice.

The guest himself was clearly in the early twenties, quite thin, with a somewhat bulging forehead and a

rather dimin-utive chin. His clothing almost glistened in its freshness, as though he had broken out a

brand-new costume for the great occasion. His name was Milton Peterborough.

He said, a small quiver in his voice, "Does that mean you have to write an outline, Mr. Rubin?"

"No," said Rubin, emphatically. "You can if you want to, but I never do. You don't have to know the

exact road you're going to take. You have to know your destination, that's all. Once that's the case, any

road will take you there. As you write you are continually looking backward from that known destination,

and it's that backward look that guides you."

Mario Gonzalo, who was quickly and carefully drawing a caricature of the guest, making his eyes

incredibly large and filling them with a childlike innocence, said, "Come on, Manny, that sort of tight

plotting might fit your cockamamie mysteries, but a real writer deals with character, doesn't he? He

creates people; and they behave in accordance with their characters; and that guides the story, probably

to the surprise of the author."

Rubin turned slowly and said, "If you're talking about long, invertebrate novels, Mario—assuming you're

talking about anything at all—it's possible for an experienced or gifted writer to meander along and

produce something pass-able. But you can always tell the I-don't-know-where-I'm-going-but-I'm-going

book. Even if you forgive it its amorphous character for the sake of its virtues, you have to forgive it, and

that's a strain and a drawback. A tightly-plotted story with everything fitting together neatly is, on the

other hand, the noblest work of literature. It may be bad, but it never need ask forgiveness. The

backward look—"

At the other end of the room, Geoffrey Avalon glanced with resignation at Rubin and said, "I think it was

a mistake, Tom, to tell Manny at the start that the young man was an aspiring writer. It brings out the

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worst in him, or—at any rate—the longest winded." He stirred the ice in his drink with his fore-finger and

brought his dark eyebrows together forbiddingly.

"Actually," said Thomas Trumbull, his lined face unchar-acteristically placid, ' 'the kid wanted to meet

Manny. He ad-mired his stories, God knows why. Well, he's the son of a friend of mine and a nice

youngster and I thought I'd expose him to the seamy side of life by bringing him here."

Avalon said, "It won't hurt us to be exposed to youth now and then, either. But I hate being exposed to

Rubin's theories of literature.—Henry."

Isaac Asimov: Azazel - The Two-Centimeter Demon

I met George at a literary convention a good many years ago, and was struck by the peculiar look of innocence and candor upon his round middle-aged face. He was the kind of person, I decided at once, to whom you would give your wallet to hold while you went swimming.

He recognized me from my photographs on the back of my books and greeted me gladly, telling me how much he liked my stories and novels which, of course, gave me a good opinion of his intelligence and taste.

We shook hands cordially and he said, "My name is George Bitternut."

"Bitternut," I repeated, in order to fix it in my mind. "An unusual name."

"Danish," he said, "and very aristocratic. I am descended from Cnut, better known as Canute, a Danish king who conquered England in the early eleventh century. An ancestor of mine was his son, born on the wrong side of the blanket, of course."

"Of course," I muttered, though I didn't see why that was something that should be taken for granted.

"He was named Cnut for his father," George went on, "and when he was presented to the king, the royal Dane said, 'By my halidom, is this my heir?' "

"'Not quite,' said the courtier who was dandling little Cnut, 'for he is illegitimate, the mother being the launderwoman whom you '