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enough to rise above such sordid things as money, but the fact is I couldn't and didn't. The money I earned or didn't earn has influenced my pathway through life, and I must go into the financial details if the pathway is to make sense.
In the course of the chapters that follow, the reader will find frequent mention of why the fiction was written and how it got into print. The goal of the science-fiction writer was to get published, and the writing done was shaped by what was read in the magazines, what was said by an editor, what was paid for a story, and sometimes how readers responded. More traditional critics may feel that such concerns disqualify the writing from serious literary study. And yet scholars have been trying for centuries to ferret out the same kind of information about Shakespeare's plays.
Asimov's early ambition, for instance, was to sell stories to Astounding Science Fiction. Two of his stories were published in Amazing Stories before one appeared in Astounding; to get published was a triumph, but only the Astounding story meant true success. The relationship between Asimov and John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding beginning in 1937, was influential in Asimov's development. Asimov gave Campbell most of the credit for his early science fiction and even his later writing career.
In the analysis of Asimov's fiction that makes up most of this book, then, the reader will find mixed in with the critical comments many details of Asimov's life as they related to his writing. This was more of his life than one might think: as Asimov himself recognized, his life was his writing, and his other relationships were either detractions from or contributions to it.
Asimov provided a couple of illustrative anecdotes. When he received copies of his forty-first book from Houghton Mifflin, he mentioned to his wife the possibility of reaching a hundred books before he died. She shook her head and said, "What good will it be if you then regret having spent your life writing books while all the essence of life passes you by?" And Asimov replied, "But for me the essence of life is writing. In fact, if I do manage to publish a hundred books, and if I then die, my last words are likely to be, `Only a hundred!'"
On another occasion his beloved daughter Robyn asked him to suppose he had to choose between her and writing. Asimov recalled he said, "Why, I would choose you, dear." And added, "But I hesitated and she noticed that, too."
Asimov was born January 2, 1920 (as nearly as his parents could calculate; it may have been as early as October 4, 1919) in Petrovichi,

 
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