|
|
|
|
|
|
collections published between 1980 and 1990 were entertaining, though some were no more than one-liners. They represent the casual and uncommitted Asimov. During the early part of the 1950s, Asimov's energies were going into his novels (particularly the robot novels), into the occasional robot story, into the first of his science texts and popularizations, and then, after 1958, when he gave up his full-time teaching at Boston University School of Medicine, almost totally into non-fiction of all kinds. In his science fiction after 1958 the Asimov of his younger days occasionally appeared with several of the robot stories, including "The Bicentennial Man" and such stories as "Founding Father." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Founding Father" (Galaxy, August 1965) was written at the request of Frederik Pohl. Pohl, now editor of Galaxy, sent Asimov a cover painting showing, as Asimov recalled in Buy Jupiter and Other Stories, "a large, sad space-helmeted face, with several crude crosses in the background and with a space helmet balanced on each cross." Stories commissioned to fit a cover were common in science fiction, since many magazines bought the cover art first. Most such stories were eminently forgettable but a surprising number of memorable ones did emerge. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
One of them was "Founding Father," which relates the story of five men, members of the Galactic Corps, who are stranded by a series of accidents on a planet they had come to explore. They are forced to live in the wreckage of their spaceship while they try to reverse the ammonia-chlorophyll-protein cycle on the planet by inducing Earth plants to grow. Nothing seems to work, however, as one by one the crew members die from ammonia poisoning or from some micro-organism. Petersen, the final survivor, buries the others in the garden. As he too goes out to die amid the helmeted crosses, he sees that the Earth plants, nourished by the bodies of his comrades, are looking healthy. He dies knowing that, because of their sacrifice, this alien planet one day will be capable of supporting human life. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Perhaps the most meaningful aspect of this story is the way in which it illustrates the species orientation of science fiction. Science fiction is a literature of the human species, and unless an SF story involves the basic Darwinian concept of human adaptability (as will be discussed in Chapter 5), the story will seem more like fantasy or traditional fiction. In traditional (or, as the SF fans say, "mundane") fiction, the final physical defeat of the exploratory crew would be occasion for an awareness of tragedy or a realization of the futility of human efforts to prevail against the unforgiving environment, or even an example of the universe or God punishing the hubris of people who dare to pit their |
|
|
|
|
|