< previous page page_77 next page >

Page 77
process of falling; its fall has been predictable from the introduction of positronic robots into the Sirian sector colony Aurora, and from the establishment of an immigration quota against Earth by the Outer Worlds. A possible war by the Outer Worlds against Earth will be the final blow for the Empire. But a former Terrestrian ambassador sets up Earth to lose a quick war in order to prepare for a second Terrestrian Empire in which the citizens of the Outer Worlds will have deteriorated because of the alien chemistry of their planets and revolted against Outer Planet genetic policies or will have produced different varieties of humanity on all fifty Outer Worlds. Variety will be the norm, and they will no longer be united against Earth. Some details of the story were picked up, such as the fifty Outer Worlds and the possibility of deterioration, almost forty years later for the 1980s Foundation novels, Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth.
By the time "Mother Earth" was published, Asimov's career had taken several new directions. He had finished the last of the Foundation stories, ". . . And Now You Don't," Doubleday had asked him to expand the rejected novella "Grow Old with Me" to 70,000 words in order to publish it as a book, and he had accepted a teaching job at the Boston University School of Medicine for $5,000 a year. He still had no way of knowing he could make a living as a freelance writer. As he reported in The Early Asimov, his total earnings for eleven years of writing had not reached $8,000.
By 1952, as his books began to be published with comforting regularity two a year beginning in 1950 Asimov's income from writing began to exceed his salary. By 1957 he discovered that he was primarily a writer and was making considerably more money by writing than as a professor. When a new dean began to pressure him to devote more time to research and would not be convinced that Asimov's writing was his research, Asimov resigned everything except his title by that time he had been promoted to associate professor and turned to full-time writing for the first time. Unfortunately for science fiction, he decided to devote his time to non-fiction. In the years between 1949 and 1958, however, Asimov had produced his best science-fiction novels and some of his best stories. He was particularly inspired by the creation in 1950 of Galaxy Science Fiction, edited by Horace L. Gold. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, founded in 1949 under the editorship of Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, was more of an inspiration to others than to Asimov. F&SF specialized in fantasy and literary stories; Asimov, in technology and problem-solving. To F&SF Asimov

 
< previous page page_77 next page >