Then, too, there’s an extraordinary demand for free copies. This is a common disease among writers’ friends and relations, who feel that there is no purpose in knowing a writer if you have to help support him. My dear wife (J. O. Jeppson), who is a shrewd questioner, has discovered the astonishing fact that some people think writers get unlimited numbers of free copies to give out. They don’t! Except for a certain very small number, they have to buy copies just as anyone else does. (Even if they did have unlimited numbers of free copies, giving them rather than selling them would ruin a writer, just as giving meat rather than selling it would ruin a butcher.)
What I have done is to resist firmly any temptation to hand out Foundation’s Edge. I have told everyone they must buy copies at a bookstore. If they insist, I will give them copies of other books, but those sales of Foundation’s Edge must be registered. Every little bit helps.
Q. Do you see any importance in this situation aside from personal profit and gratification?
A. I do, indeed. Soon after Foundation’s Edge was published, Arthur C. Clarke’s new novel, 2010: Odyssey Two was published, and it hit the best-seller lists, too. At the moment of writing it is in fifth place on The New York Times list. Earlier this year, Robert A. Heinlein made the list with Friday and Frank Herbert did so with White Plague.
I think this is the first year in which four different science fiction writers made the lists with straight science fiction books. I also think that in the case of Clarke and myself, this is the first time straight science fiction has landed so high on the lists.
This is gratifying to me as a long time science fiction fan. It indicates to me that, finally, science fiction is coming to be of interest to the general public and not simply to those few who inhabit the SF “ghetto.”
In fact, I wish to point this out to those SF writers who are bitter and resentful because they feel that their books are shoved into the background and disregarded merely because they have the SF label on them. Neither Foundation’s Edge nor 2010: Odyssey Two makes any effort to hide the fact that it is science fiction. The publishers’ promotion in each case utterly fails to obscure that fact. In the case of Foundation’s Edge, The New York Times carefully describes it as “science fiction “ each week in its best-seller listing.
And yet it continues to sell.
To be sure, there is a trace of the “ghetto” just the same. There is one thing that Arthur and I have in common, aside from bestselling books. As of the moment of writing, neither Foundation’s Edge nor 2010: Odyssey Two has been reviewed in The New York Times. I presume the paper hesitates to bestow that accolade on mere science fiction. Oh, well!
Q. And what are your present projects, Isaac?
A. Well, Doubleday has informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I am condemned to write one novel after another for life, and that I am not permitted to consider dying.
So I am working on another novel. This one is to be the third novel of the robot series. Both Lije BaIey and R. Daneel will reappear, and will complete the trilogy that began with The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. The third novel is called World of the Dawn.
After that, I am afraid that Doubleday expects me to do a fifth Foundation novel; and, apparently, so do the readers. For three decades they badgered me for a sequel to the Foundation trilogy and when I gave that to them, the ungrateful dogs responded by badgering me for a sequel to the sequel.
I’d complain, except that I love it.
Note:
On December 19,1982, The New York Times finally reviewed Foundation’s Edge, and very favorably too. On that day, the book had slipped to sixth place in the best-seller list (still not bad) but Clarke had climbed to second place.
Pseudonyms
It was quite fashionable, in earlier times, to refrain from putting one’s name to things one had written. The writer could leave himself unnamed (“anonymous”-from Greek words meaning “no name”), or else he could use a false name (“pseudonym”-from Greek words meaning “false name”). So common was the practice that a pseudonym is often referred to as a “pen-name,” or, to give it greater elegance by placing it in French, a “nom de plume.”
There were a variety of reasons for this. In most places in the world and at most times, it was all too easy to write something that would get you in trouble. The corruption, venality, and cruelty of those in power cried out for exposure, and those in power had the strongest objections to being exposed. For that reason, writers had to expect all sorts of governmental correction if caught-anywhere from a fine to death by torture.
The best-known example of this type of pseudonym was Voltaire, the eighteenth century French satirist, whose real name was Francois-Marie Arouet.
A second major reason was that any nonscholarly writing was looked upon as rather frivolous, and a decent person guilty of concocting such material might well be looked upon askance by society, and considered as having lost caste. A pseudonym, therefore, preserved respectability. This was especially true of women who were widely considered subhuman in mentality (by men) and who would have shocked the world by a too-open demonstration of the possession of brains. Mary Ann Evans, therefore, wrote under the name of George Eliot, and Charlotte Bronte at first wrote under the name of Currer Bell.
One would think that neither reason would hold for the world of modern American science fiction.
Why should anyone fear punishment for writing science fiction in our free land, or why should anyone fear the loss of respectability if convicted of the deed. And yet
It is conceivable, particularly in the early days of magazine science fiction, that people in the more sensitive professions, such as teaching, would not have cared to have it known that they wrote “pseudoscientific trash “ and so would protect themselves from lack of promotion, or outright dismissal, by the use of a pseudonym. I don’t know of such cases definitely, but I suspect some.
It is even more likely that in the bad old days before the women’s movement became strong, women who wrote science fiction concealed their sex from the readers (and even, sometimes, from the editors). Science fiction was thought to be a very masculine pursuit at the time and I know two editors (no names, please, even though both are now dead) who insisted on believing that women could not write good science fiction. Pseudonyms were therefore necessary if they were to sell anything at all.
Sometimes, women did not have to use pseudonyms. Their first names might be epicene, and that would be protection enough. Thus, Leslie F. Stone and Leigh Brackett were women but, as far as one could tell from their names, they might be as masculine as Leslie Fiedler and Leigh Hunt. Editors and readers at first believed they were.
Or women might simply convert names to initials. Could you tell that A. R. Long owned up to the name of Amelia, or that C. L. Moore was Catherine to her friends?
There were other reasons for pseudonyms in science fiction. In the early days of the magazine many of the successful writers could only make a living by writing a great deal just as fast as they could, for a variety of pulp markets. They might use different names for different markets, creating separate personalities, so to speak, that wouldn’t compete with each other. Thus Will Jenkins wrote for the slicks under his own name, but adopted the pseudonym Murray Leinster when he wrote science fiction.