Asimov, Isaac - The Sun Shines Bright

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TITLES BY ISAAC ASIMOV

AVAILABLE IN PANTHER SCIENCE FICTION

AVAILABLE IN PANTHER SCIENCE FICTIONAVAILABLE IN PANTHER SCIENCE FICTION

AVAILABLE IN PANTHER SCIENCE FICTION

The Foundation Saga

The Foundation SagaThe Foundation Saga

The Foundation Saga

Foundation

Foundation and Empire

Second Foundation

Foundation's Edge

Other Titles

The Complete Robot

Opus: The Best of Isaac Asimov

The

Bicentennial Man

Buy Jupiter

The

TheThe

The Gods Themselves

The Early Asimov, Volume 1

The Early Asimov, Volume 2

The Early Asimov, Volume 3

Earth is Room Enough

The Stars Like Dust

The Martian Way

The Currents of Space

Nightfall One

Nightfall Two

The End of Eternity

I. Robot

The Caves of Steel

The Rest of the Robots

Asimov's Mysteries

The Naked Sun

Winds of Change

The Left hand of the Electron (Non-Fiction)

The Stars in their Courses (Non-Fiction)

Nebula Award Stories 8 (Ed)

Isaac Asimov, world maestro of science fiction, was born in Russia near

Smolensk in 1920 and brought to the United States by his parents three years

later. He grew up in Brooklyn where he went to grammar school and at the age of

eight he gained his citizen papers. A remarkable memory helped him to finish

high school before he was sixteen. He then went on to Columbia University and

resolved to become a chemist rather than follow the medical career his father had

in mind for him. He graduated in chemistry and after a short spell in the Army he

gained his doctorate in 1949 and qualified as an instructor in biochemistry at

Boston University School of Medicine where he became Associate Professor in

1955, doing research in nucleic acid. Increasingly, however, the pressures of

chemical research conflicted with his aspirations in the literary field, and in 1958

he retired to full-time authorship while retaining his connection with the

University.

Asimov's fantastic career as a science fiction writer began in 1939 with the

appearance of a short story, Marooned Off Vesta, in Amazing Stories. Thereafter

he became a regular contributor to the leading SF magazines of the day including

Astounding, Astonishing Stories, Super Science Stories and Galaxy. He has won

the Hugo Award three times and the Nebula Award once. With over two hundred

books to his credit and several hundred articles, Asimov's output is prolific by

any standards. Apart from his many world-famous science fiction works, Asimov

has also written highly successful detective mystery stories, a four-volume

History of North America, a two-volume Guide to the Bible, a biographical

dictionary, encyclopaedias, textbooks and an impressive list of books on many

aspects of science as well as two volumes of autobiography.

By the same author

Foundation

Foundation and Empire

Second Foundation

Foundation's Edge

Earth is Room Enough

The Stars Like Dust

The Martian Way

The Currents of Space

The End of Eternity

Asimov's Mysteries

The Gods Themselves

Nightfall One

Nightfall Two

Buy Jupiter

The Bicentennial Man

I, Robot

The Rest of the Robots

The Complete Robot

The Elijah Bailey novels:

The Caves of Steel

The Naked Sun

The Robots of Dawn

The Early Asimov: Volume 1

The Early Asimov: Volume 2

The Early Asimov: Volume 3

Nebula Award Stories 8

(editor)

The Stars in their Courses

(non-fiction)

The Left Hand of the Electron

(non-fiction)

Asimov on Science Fiction

(non-fiction)

Tales of the Black Widowers

(detection)

More Tales of the Black Widowers

(detection)

Casebook of the Black Widowers

(detection)

Authorized Murder

(detection)

Opus

ISAAC ASIMOV

The Sun Shines Bright

PANTHER

Granada Publishing

Panther Books

Granada Publishing Ltd

8 Grafton Street, London W1X 3LA

Published by Panther Books 1984

First published in Great Britain by

Granada Publishing Ltd 1984

ISBN 0-586-05841-9

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Collins, Glasgow

Set in Times

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of

the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or

otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's

prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published

and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the

subsequent purchaser.

Dedicated to

Carol Bruckner and all the other nice people

at the Harry Walker lecture agency

Contents

INTRODUCTION 9

THE SUN 13

1 Out, Damned Spot! 15

2 The Sun Shines Bright 29

3 The Noblest Metal of Them All 43

THE STARS 57

4 How Little? 59

5 Siriusly Speaking 73

6 Below the Horizon 86

THE PLANETS 101

7 Just Thirty Years 103

THE MOON 119

8 A Long Day's Journey 121

9 The Inconstant Moon 135

THE ELEMENTS 149

10 The Useless Metal 151

11 Neutrality! 165

12 The Finger of God 179

THE CELL 193

13 Clone, Clone of My Own 195

THE SCIENTISTS 209

14 Alas, All Human 211

THE PEOPLE 225

15 The Unsecret Weapon 227

16 More Crowded! 242

17 Nice Guys Finish First! 256

Introduction

What do I do about titles? It's a problem that, perhaps, I shouldn't plague you with,

but 1 like to think that my Gentle Readers are all my friends, and what are friends for

if not to plague with problems?

Many's the time I've sat staring at a blank sheet of paper for many minutes, unable to

start a science essay even though I knew exactly what I was going to discuss and

how I was going to discuss it and everything else about it - except the title. Without a

title, I can't begin.

It gets worse with time, too, for I suffer under the curse of prolificity. Over two

hundred and thirty books;

over three hundred short stories; over thirteen hundred non-fiction essays - and every

one of them needing a title - a new title - a meaningful title -

Sometimes I wish I could just number each product the way composers do. In fact, I

did this on two occasions. My hundredth and my two hundredth books are called

Opus 100 and Opus 200 respectively. Guess what I intend to call my three hundredth

book, if I survive to write it?

Numbers won't work in general, however. They look unlovely as titles (1984 is the

only successful example I can think of). They're hard to differentiate and identify.

Imagine going into a bookstore and at the last minute failing to remember whether it

is 123 or 132 you're looking for. I've met people who had trouble remembering the

title of a book on calculus that was entitled Calculus.

Besides, editors insist on significant titles, and the sales staff insists on titles that sell,

and I insist on titles that amuse me. Pleasing everybody is difficult, so I concentrate

first on pleasing me.

There are several types of titles that please me where my individual science essays

are concerned. I like quotations, for instance, which apply to the subject matter of the

essay in an unexpected way.

For instance, we know exactly what Lady Macbeth

meant when she cried out in agony, during her sleep-walking scene, 'Out, damned

spot!' but you could also say it to a dog named Spot that had just walked onto the

living room carpet with muddy feet, or you could apply it perfectly accurately as I

did in my first essay.

And when Juliet warns Romeo against swearing by 'the inconstant moon', she

doesn't quite mean what I mean in the title of the ninth essay.

Another way of using a quotation is to give it a little twist. Leo Durocher said,

'Nice guys finish last' and Mark Antony referred to Brutus as 'the noblest Roman of

them all'. If I change a word to make a title that fits the subject matter of the essay, I

am happy. Or I can change a cliche into its opposite and go from a 'secret weapon' to

an 'unsecret weapon'.

But I can't always. Sometimes I have to use something as pedestrian as

'Neutrality!' or 'More Crowded!' and then I am likely to write the entire essay with

my lower lip trembling and my blue eyes brimming with unshed tears.

Even my science-essay collections have become numerous enough to cause me

problems. This one is the fifteenth in a series taken from The Magazine of Fantasy

and Science Fiction (not counting four books which are reshufflings of essays in

older volumes).

The first book in the series was entitled Fact and Fancy because, logically enough,

the essays dealt with scientific fact (as understood at the time of writing) and

with my own speculations on those facts.

The second and third books were entitled View from a Height and Adding a

Dimension respectively. In each case, the title was a phrase taken from the

introduction.

The third title gave me an idea, however. Why not, in each title, use a different

word that is associated with science. The third title included the word 'dimension',

for instance.

The fourth title, therefore, became Of Time and Space and Other Things,

which had the words 'time' and 'space' in it and which was (more or less) a

description of the nature of the essays. After that, the titles included successively

'earth', 'science', 'solar system', 'stars', 'electron', 'moon', 'matter(s)', 'planet', 'quasar'

and 'infinity'.

Doubleday & Company, my esteemed publishers, did not altogether trust my

colourful titles. They subtitled the first in the series 'Seventeen Speculative

Essays' on the book jacket, though not on the title page. They continued ringing

changes on 'essays on science' in the first five books in the series and then gave

up and let the names stand by themselves. Sales were not adversely affected when

the subtitles were omitted.

The title of the eighth book was The Stars in Their Courses which happened to

be the title of one of the essays in the book.

That struck my fancy. Not every essay title is suitable for the entire

collection, but out of seventeen essays at least one is very likely to be useful. It

came about, then, that the eighth to fourteenth volumes inclusive (except for Of

Matters Great and Small) each had titles duplicating that of one of the essays.

That brings us to this volume.

Some of the individual essay titles in this volume are obviously unsuitable for the

book as a whole. To call the book How Little? or Just Thirty Years would give no

idea at all as to the contents and that is unsporting.

To call it The Finger of God or Nice Guys Finish First would give an actively wrong

view of the contents. I wouldn't want people to think the book dealt with either

theology or self-improvement.

The Inconstant Moon would be a good title, but one of my essay volumes is already

called The Tragedy of the Moon.

I was strongly tempted by Clone, Clone of My Own, but clones are a subject of such

interest to the general public right now that many people who have never heard of

me might be tempted to buy the book on the basis of the 'title and they would then be

disappointed.

So that brought it down to The Sun Shines Bright. There is a slight flaw there in that

the word 'bright' occurs also in Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright, but I have not used

the word 'sun' in any of the titles and it deserves a play, so I decided on that as the

title.

Just remember, though, that the book has nothing to do with Kentucky, or with

Stephen Foster.

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TITLESBYISAACASIMOVAVAILABLEINPANTHERSCIENCEFICTIONAVAILABLEINPANTHERSCIENCEFICTIONAVAILABLEINPANTHERSCIENCEFICTIONAVAILABLEINPANTHERSCIENCEFICTIONTheFoundationSagaTheFoundationSagaTheFoundationSagaTheFoundationSagaFoundationFoundationandEmpireSecondFoundationFoundation'sEdgeOtherTitlesTheCompleteRo...

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