A Biography of Isaac Asimov has been long overdue. He was a seminal
author of science fiction in the 1950s, who after many years absence returned
in 1971 to write best sellers in the field. He also wrote successful – and
highly readable – popular books about science. And he was unbelievably prolific;
by his own count he wrote and published 467 books.

It was at the age of 13 that Michael White read his first Asimov. He
never looked back, reading all of Asimov’s novels, then reluctantly going
on to read other science-fiction writers. He enjoyed them all, but writes:
‘But my first and greatest science fiction love remained Asimov.’

Anyone reading this biography will find this hard to believe. White
says that Asimov’s ‘ . . . exposition is often pained, his characters wooden’.
There is worse; he finds nothing by the author well written. And for him,
Asimov’s personality is most distasteful. He is ‘acid-tongued’ and rude,
insensitive and a bully, sometimes oversexed, sometimes undersexed.

I would like to set at least this part of the record straight. Isaac
was a complex man, a good friend, witty and entertaining. That he had sexual
hang-ups and problems I don’t doubt. But I see no need for them to be trotted
out, exaggerated and dwelt upon by a man who never met him. Someone with
no formal medical or psychological training who has the nerve to write pop
Freudianisms such as: ‘It is likely that his sexless marriage was the main
reason he needed to find solace in his work’ It is more likely that White
needs his mouth washed out with soap for writing drivel like this about
Isaac’s first marriage, about a couple who are both now dead.

In a fight for bottom place, the publisher attempts to outdo the author
with incredibly sloppy copy-editing. No one who worked on the book seems
to know anything about science fiction. Factual errors abound, reaching
their peak with every reference to the ‘father’ of science fiction, Hugo
Gernsback, as Hugo Gernsbeck.

You might well ask – with good reason – why I should recommend the purchase
of this book. The answer is simple: it performs an important function. Behind
the pop analysis, the inept criticism, there exists a solid body of facts.
The fiction is put in context, as is the author. His relationship with the
other writers and the editors in science fiction is laid out in a competent
and readable manner, although there are still plenty of annoying irrelevancies.

One example concerns that good man, and great editor, John W. Campbell
Jnr, who did not have ‘racial prejudices’ that ran deep. White has been
misinformed by some dubious source. John was politically to the far right,
yet he printed my stories which betrayed their far left leanings. He had
a twinkle in his eye when he espoused some rather exotic causes. But he
was not a racist.

So, surprising as it may seem, this book is always highly readable,
interlacing Asimov’s personal life with his writing – particularly in nonfiction.
At this Isaac was a master. He wrote with such assurance that you felt that
he knew everything, and could explain it so even the dimmest could understand.
His was easy and entertaining prose, as filled with solid material as a
nut with meat. This biography tracks source and product, pointing out the
milestones along the way. Which, of course, is the function of biography.
We forgive the biographer a good deal if he gives us what we need: a chronology
of a life, and how it relates to the work that attracted us in the first
place. If we are forgiving, as just this once we must be, we have to excuse
the lapses, the dim psychoanalysis and the slightly leering sexual assumptions.
For the content is here. If we have to wipe aside a cloud of authorial
interference, we will do just that.

A credible work about a most important writer – I just wish that a competent
and ruthless editor had been involved in the project.

Harry Harrison is a science fiction writer, editor and critic.

Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, James Blish – they could all do it.
Sometimes Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein succeeded in doing it, but very
few others. Now Stephen Baxter joins their exclusive ranks – writing hard
science fiction in which the science is right, the author knowledgeable,
and the extrapolations a sheer pleasure to read, admire, enjoy. The reaction
is that which C. S. Lewis referred to when he described science fiction
as the only genuine consciousness-expanding drug. If you liked Rendezvous
With Rama and Tau Zero, you had better nip out and buy Flux.

Baxter’s human beings live in the mantle of a star. That should certainly
capture your attention as it did mine. This is physically impossible, of
course. But they do. And as the story unfolds, we discover how and why.
This revelation enables the attentive reader to enjoy the scientific rationale
of all the interrelated details of life in this environment. So it is very
important to avoid reading the jacket copy on this book. Far too many details
are revealed that the author worked so carefully to introduce, one by one,
for the edification of the reader.

In the first few pages we meet Dura and her brother – whose hair is
a mass of hollow tubes. As Dura awakes, she feels the Magfield tremble,
reaches out and flexes her fingers in the disturbed electron gas. Fully
awake, she yawns and scratches the fleshy rims of her eye cups, worried
because the photons do not smell right . . . I am going to leave it at that
and not repeat the sins of the jacket copy. But I must admit that I was
most intrigued by Farr’s pet air-pig that moves with superfluid jetfarts.

It has been far too long since I read a science-fiction novel written
by someone who is scientifically literate and used his knowledge of science
to create a highly imaginative and moving novel.

You see, SF is different from all other forms of fiction. Whoever described
it as the thinking man’s rubbish almost hit the mark. It is really the thinking
man’s (or woman’s) relaxation and entertainment.

Take Anderson’s Tau Zero. We have all heard of the tau factor – Einstein’s
theory of space-time contraction as you approach the speed of light. Anderson
makes that the essence of his plot as he builds his story around just what
will happen if Einstein’s theory is correct. There are equally fascinating
ideas in Rendezvous With Rama in which a giant alien artefact passes through
our Solar System and its secrets must be discovered in a very limited time.
Wonderful stuff!

Flux does it as well. It is a rare thing – even rarer, unhappily, in
SF – to find such a good read. I look forward with keen anticipation to
Baxter’s next novel.

Harry Harrison is the author of The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues
(March, Bantam).