Asimov’s Empire, Asimov’s Wall

https://www.publicbooks.org/asimovs-empire-asimovs-wall/

by smacktoward • 7 years ago

251 238 7 years ago

Asimov is on record as saying he didn’t help new writers because he wasn’t good at it. If the claim is that his behavior cost the speculative fiction world many young women writers, who exactly are the young men who were gained?

sinak• 7 years ago

The article doesn't claim that the harm to women was just from lack of mentorship. It states that Asimov's (repulsive) behavior made the sci-fi community inhospitable for women, particularly given his unique position as an incredibly popular author.

From the article:

From an early age, Asimov was drawn to the communal aspects of fan culture, but he made it more difficult for women to experience that sense of community. Women have long occupied an ambiguous place in science fiction, where they have been alternately welcomed, dismissed, and harassed. Asimov took advantage of what he called the rising percentage of “shrill young girls” at conventions in the 1960s, and his unique position at such events—he was invariably the center of attention—made his example especially insidious. His admirers looked to him as a model of how to behave, and fandom was complicit for years in his serial misconduct in ways that have never been fully acknowledged.
Asimov has always meant a lot to me, and the best qualities of his work—his rationality, curiosity, and imagination—changed thousands of lives for the better. Yet the visible edifice of his hundreds of books needs to be balanced against the unseen wall that he built around the heart of science fiction. His actions had a negative impact on an untold number of women [...]

LanceH• 7 years ago

Yea, it's always someone else's fault.

Too bad they couldn't cruise through life with the social status of science fiction/fantasy nerd. Doors threw themselves open.

We need some real social scientists to step in and quantify exactly how wronged everyone has been. Then we can sort ourselves out and defer to those who have scored more offense points than ourselves.

Or we could stop prosecuting 40+ year old rage on behalf of other people.

fearingreprisal2• 7 years ago

From an early age, Asimov was drawn to the communal aspects of fan culture, but he made it more difficult for women to experience that sense of community. Women have long occupied an ambiguous place in science fiction, where they have been alternately welcomed, dismissed, and harassed...

There's a common refrain heard recently regarding basically any historically male dominated domain, that women are not welcomed or encouraged. This is unfortunately all-too-common in software engineering. As a male software engineer, I feel as though no-one is welcomed or encouraged. I feel as though women are reacting to industries that have always been harsh and unwelcoming and feeling uniquely victimised.

dannylandau2• 7 years ago

I read his biography about 20 years ago, still one of most entertaining books I've ever read. Don't remember him talking about this stuff, other that his female fans were very rabid. Strangely, was never a fan of his fiction, but the biography is wonderful!

TenJack• 7 years ago

Is this the biography you read? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00317G7K6

dannylandau2• 7 years ago

Yap, it sure is, great, easy and entertaining read.

graeme• 7 years ago

He mentioned it all constantly. He mentioned his habit ribald talk especially often, but mentioned kissing and such quite frequently too. It was a definite theme of the book.

Mind you there are 2 or 3 volumes. It only really started some time after he was married; could be volume II if you only read the first.

ComputerGuru4• 7 years ago

*autobiography

ur-whale• 7 years ago

I find it very bizarre that the building of the great wall of China seems to be considered by the author an achievement.

I'm rather confident that the folks involved in the actual piling of stones and likely forced to do so at sword point would have begged to differ.

Also, building border walls is apparently an unfashionable endeavor these days, I'm not sure why one built a 1000 years ago should be treated different.

djur4• 7 years ago

The author of the linked piece doesn't really ascribe any moral value to the Great Wall that I can see. Something can be monumental without being good.

Borges certainly doesn't describe the building of the Wall as a good thing:

Herbert Allen Giles relates that those who concealed books were branded by a red-hot iron and condemned to build the outrageous wall until the day of their death. This information favors or tolerates another interpretation. Perhaps the wall was a metaphor, maybe Shih Huang Ti condemned those who worshipped the past to a work just as vast as the past, as stupid and useless.

Borges isn't comparing a good act and an evil one. He's comparing a great creation with a great destruction -- the building of an enduring historical artifact with the destruction of recorded history.

jmmcd• 7 years ago

Borges isn't comparing a good act and an evil one.

He is a bit -- at the end of the article there is a suggestion that they two acts cancel each other out, and we can agree that the burning of books is an evil one.

glangdale• 7 years ago

SF has always had a problem. As the article points out, there's a certain irony in going to Harlan Ellison to ask about Asimov being a harasser. I think the list is pretty long. But the "communal aspects of fan culture" of SF - almost groupies in the fandom - has led to some very tight networks protecting all sorts of people.

A particularly horrifying axis is that between Marion Zimmer Bradley and her husband, Walter Breen. Bradley is merely accused (to be clear: I believe the accuser) but Breen was a convicted molester who was known to be problematic for years - with people in fandom just trying to manage the situation.

If this doesn't sound familiar from tech, you haven't been paying attention.

idk what to do about all this; it's pretty easy for me to pass on rereading Asimov or MZB anyhow. But the obvious lesson, still unlearned in many quarters, is "don't keep protecting harassers". To quote a better, or at least IMO more interesting author (please don't let him be a harasser too):

"Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view." - Stand on Zanibar, John Brunner

tallanvor• 7 years ago

SF is still a reflection of the world in general. From business to politics, to religion, to the entertainment industry, the "important" people have and still do get away with doing things they shouldn't, and that community will often cover for them as long as possible.

What may make things worse is that the SF community does still attract a larger percentage of socially awkward young people, mostly men, who are also extremely passionate, so seeing that type of behavior normalized can have a larger impression on them.

This behavior needs to be stopped, but it needs to continue to be addressed in all communities.

neiman2• 7 years ago

I agree with all you said, but I may put it in the past tense.

I only started visiting Worldcon in the few years, but from what I see, there is huge awareness for it there, and these phenomenons do not exist there nowadays.

They probably exist in other sff events, the sad/rabid puppies didn't disappear yet sadly, however, since Worldcon is the face of the field, I wouldn't define it as a "problem of contemporary SF"

rimliu• 7 years ago

  > SF community does still attract a larger percentage of
  > socially awkward young people, mostly men

So does gaming. You know, where often what you do is going around shooting people.

Should this be stopped too?

AllegedAlec4• 7 years ago

idk what to do about all this; it's pretty easy for me to pass on rereading Asimov or MZB anyhow.

His books don't become worse because of alleged bad behaviour.

djur4• 7 years ago

If the voice of an author can be heard through their writing, the act of reading can be affected by one's understanding of the author. "Death of the author" may be a useful critical technique but it's not the way most people emotionally or intellectually connect with art.

Having known this about Asimov for quite some time, it hasn't kept me from enjoying that of his work I really like, but it has somewhat dulled my enjoyment of him overall as an author. In particular, although it's never been a favorite of mine anyway, I can't see myself being able to avoid noticing that _Foundation's Edge_ has a plotline that pairs off a middle-aged professor with a young, pretty, sexually open-minded woman who is "bottom heavy".

hartror• 7 years ago

The philosophy you are espousing is known in literary theory as "Death of the Author".

argues against the method of reading and criticism that relies on aspects of the author's identity to distill meaning from the author's work.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author

I recommend Lindsay Ellis' video on the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGn9x4-Y_7A

Many of the golden age authors rage from "just" problematic like Asimov to a lot worse (see for more: http://www.jasonsanford.com/blog/2018/2/golden-age-sf-not-go...). I still read these authors but I for one cannot help see the author in their books, and knowledge of their actions certainly influences how I interpret these books. I therefore don't believe in Death of the Author.

TheOtherHobbes• 7 years ago

They do. His female characters might as well have been written by an adolescent.

He's hardly unique in that. MZB's Mists of Avalon has similar issues from a different gender perspective.

Asimov looks especially crude now, with the distance of a few decades. I wouldn't be surprised if more recent fiction suffers a similar reassessment in time.

SF is rarely character-led and it may be optimistic to expect depth or nuance from it. Character design is more likely to be an aspect of fan service - give the readers a fantasy they can identify with, maybe add some flaws for spice - and not so much an opportunity for self-reflection.

swiley• 7 years ago

IMO: his later books are pretty weird and have a lot of sexual themes that I personally don’t like.

His early stuff is still absolutely fantastic though.

DagAgren4• 7 years ago

No, they were always bad.

But more importantly, his behaviour kept others out of the field. It stopped them having their voice heard. His fame came at the cost of many other's. And there is no reason why we should allow that to continue. Don't read those who stole the voice others. They did not earn your attention, and you can give it to those who were less fortunate instead.

LoSboccacc• 7 years ago

"don't keep protecting harassers"

it's not just people protecting bad behavior, omerta within a social circle is often a failure of the state/society to safely protect people in the circle from being outed when they speak up while the problematic person gets away scot-free. you need to reach a critical cultural mass before people are confident in speaking up, because the fear of retaliation is often the motivation before the need to protect the circle, see i.e. the harvey weinstein case.

If this doesn't sound familiar from tech, you haven't been paying attention.

this is an overly broad generalization, there's plenty of techies outside the big flashy companies built on top of the silicon valley hero cult pattern.

elfexec• 7 years ago

idk what to do about all this; it's pretty easy for me to pass on rereading Asimov or MZB anyhow.

Then you probably can't read any great books, look at any great art, watch any great movie, listen to any great music, laugh with any great comedian, admire any great leader/politician, etc.

I hate to break this to you but there really aren't any saints in this world. And if you do find a saint, it just means he was just better at hiding his true self from the world.

Can you study physics after learning that Einstein was a racist bigot just like hitler?

"It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2018/06/13/albert-einste...

Einstein worried about the "chinese" ( and by chinese he most likely meant asians ) taking over the world like hitler worried about jews taking over the world. Granted Einstein never did anything about it, though he indirectly helped in the nuking of the "automaton spiritless and obtuse 'chinese' children" in hiroshima and nagasaki.

If you were wondering, Newton wasn't any better.

Can you enjoy the Christmas Carol knowing that Dickens was a racist bigot?

Or maybe you should do what we are all taught in philosophy and the arts and learn to separate the art from the artist. They are not one and the same. You can appreciate the art and despise the artist.

watwut9• 7 years ago

Can you study physics after learning that Einstein was a racist bigot just like hitler?

Thankfully to us, Einstein was not just like Hitler. Einstein was an asshole to his wife and had few personal flaws, but he very conclusively did not displayed same behavior nor same opinions as Hitler. Einstein had also some good redeeming qualities like pretty strong anti-racism.

fractallyte4• 7 years ago

He was a product of his time. For all his intellect, cultural imprinting resides at a deeper level, and is hardest to shake.

djur4• 7 years ago

Even his contemporaries thought that his behavior was exceptional and worthy of comment, though. It's less that such behavior was accepted in his time than that it was tolerated of a "great man".

Cthulhu_• 7 years ago

I don't believe you. Come on. In what time was it considered normal to shake a woman's breast? Was your father like that? Your grandfather?

ivanhoe• 7 years ago

Normal not, but widespread and tolerated by society at large yes. Pinching, grabbing, hugging, making lascivious comments and cat calling had the same treatment as swearing, it was considered rude, but nothing more than that...

fractallyte4• 7 years ago

OK, I'll clarify. His attitude was a product of the time. I love that his fiction had strong female protagonists, but his everyday attitude toward women is typical of the era.

Mad Men illustrated this very well (slight spoiler: especially consider what happened to Peggy, by Pete, early in the series..). Women were expected to take a lot 'on the chin'. After all, guys will be guys, right?

If others raised eyebrows about his behavior, it was only because it was more risqué than normal, but not out of any consideration for the victims.

roca7• 7 years ago

His female protagonists were mostly sex objects. The only exceptions I can think of are Susan Calvin (who is portrayed as hardly a woman at all) and Arkady (too young, just).

fractallyte4• 7 years ago

I find myself angered by the negative reactions to my comments here. Are people seriously suggesting that Asimov's attitude was unusual for the time? Actions, perhaps, but attitude?

I will defend my comments! Men of that era, in that society, were incredibly sexist. Women suffered through that, and continue to suffer today.

If people here can only react emotionally without comprehending what they're actually reading, there's not much hope to improve anything.

fatbird5• 7 years ago

It's important to understand that his attitude and behaviour were common at the time, but also that the means of condemning it and punishing it were much more hidden then (and invisible to us today): whisper networks among women to keep their distance because he was "handsy"; his male friends telling him that he should be careful because one day an angry husband or boyfriend might punch him out for his behaviour. It was handled quietly and informally, and with very limited effectiveness. Mad Men didn't get into this side of it.

Low status men might notice they don't get invitations to dinner that other men get, but high status was effectively immunity: Asimov was important; you couldn't not invite him to a con or a party.

lurkercommenter• 7 years ago

isn't slap in the face an appropriate response to a unwanted ass grab? Sex is everywhere, and each person have their own approach to sex. This is too deep in the rabbit hole for me, collecting opinions of opinions of opinions

goto113• 7 years ago

So imagine this scenario: A big fat guy with a creepy smile follows you around and grabs your ass. What would be an appropriate response?

RobertRoberts5• 7 years ago

The real dilema though is everyone has done something wrong. Everyone.

So why do some people get called out and lambasted while other continue (right now) to get away with it?

I think there is a mob mentality out there that controls the media and wants to take down a very specific set of people and leave the others standing.

Edit: To not be misunderstood I have personally suffered molestation as a kid/teen, and even the single photo of Asimov trying to kiss that girl is sickening. Power, fame and narcissism corrupts.

reagent_finder2• 7 years ago

That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

If you see someone doing something wrong, call them out. Like this article does. Otherwise they will simply keep doing it.

If you have a problem with someone not getting called out, call them out. Otherwise you are simply protesting the act of calling out because you're afraid to do so yourself.

javajosh2• 7 years ago

If you see someone doing something wrong, call them out. Like this article does. Otherwise they will simply keep doing it.

Yes, thank God: this article (and the outrage it creates) will save young women from being groped by Asimov's corpse.

RobertRoberts5• 7 years ago

Mob justice benefits no one in the long run. Hypocritical mob justice is the worst of it's kind.

It simultaneously enrages one side against another while claiming it's actions are justified by it's own group, but no other group can act the same.

The accused should be taken to court.

But mobs don't like court, they want a lynching.

0x445442• 7 years ago

If you see someone doing something wrong

I think it's here where you may get hoisted on your own petard and that's the price society pays for moral relativism...

Case in point, these days one who thinks abortion is obviously wrong is more likely to be scorned for calling it out than those they're calling out.

One can't sanely wish for, while at the same time deny the existence of absolute truth.

LatteLazy• 7 years ago

I too find this whole thing really confusing. I am not saying anything he did was right, I just don't get why people can't separate art from artists or deal with any possibility of nuance in any of this. Ultimately, I have to ask, why does anyone care, doubly see when Asimov has been dead for almost 30 years and other people are doing this today?

watwut9• 7 years ago

The article is pretty good in separating them, appreciating the books while not whitewashing behavior or pretending it did not happened or was not known.

scarejunba3• 7 years ago

The article mentions Harlan Ellison and his grabbing a Hugo Award host's breast and I thought to myself that surely that can't have been possible a mere fifteen years ago in front of all those people and yet https://youtu.be/Zxd1jFDXzsU that's a video.

I can't imagine someone doing that in front of me. I don't even know how I'd act. Probably just sit there wondering if they really did just do that.

ZoomZoomZoom• 7 years ago

I know nothing about the incident nor about that particular person (except his most famous short story), but what I can see on this video is an awkward and misplaced move that sometime happen in nervous situations to some people. Like someone was trying to pat other person's shoulder and shake their hand (using his left) at the same time while speaking and failing both. If you ever had similar situation, you know what I mean.

Please, mind it, I don't say that's what happened, I just say it looks like it and may be interpreted this way. A person can hide his intentions using awkward behaviour, of course. Prior information and context tip the scale in the end.

chris_wot4• 7 years ago

It looked pretty deliberate to me. They always say never meet your heroes - I loved the Stainless Steel Rat.

staticman2• 7 years ago

Ellison freely admitted to doing it on his web site intentionally at the time and as I recall called it "playing" and asked people not to "lynch" him. (Paraphrasing from memory)

MichaelMoser1232• 7 years ago

I find it hard to believe that such behavior was socially acceptable; I mean was there really no way at the time to complain about advances like this? I mean I was born in 1970 but that was never part of my experience.

tudorw3• 7 years ago

I expect one could complain and it seems apparent at least some did, but in the context of the environment it would have seemed out of place, it's very hard to apply contemporary moral values to historical times, morality is not a fixed thing, our lives are entwined with social convention that for the most part is invisible until viewed from the future. Try and consider now, what things we do that in the future could be seen as abhorrent, it's hard, eating meat maybe, not including externalized costs in commercial endeavours, but, history shows, it's probably true that something we do now will fall 'out of time' and be viewed as a moral deviation in the 'new contemporary'.

MichaelMoser1232• 7 years ago

'Out of place' means they would not have followed up on a complaint. Isn't it?

roca7• 7 years ago

FWIW I don't think Asimov's behavior would have been broadly accepted in "historic times" in general. If you think that groping another man's wife in public has generally been acceptable in the past, see "thou shalt not covet" and the Sermon on the Mount. Of course men, especially powerful men, have often ignored such restraints, but the sexual revolution of the 20th century gave them a lot more license.

jimhefferon• 7 years ago

Not so very long ago the New Yorker was routinely running cartoons showing an executive chasing his secretary around a desk. It was socially acceptable, at least on some level.

jccalhoun4• 7 years ago

Things haven't changed much. For example, look at the response Christine Blasey Ford got when she testified against Brett Kavanaugh.

coldtea16• 7 years ago

These two numbers might seem very different, but both are central to Asimov’s legacy

Yeah, I really don't think so. The legacy of people with important contributions (technical, cultural, political, etc) is their work, not what they did in their private life, unless they were also moonlighting as the Boston strangler or something.

In 2500 nobody would care whether he did this or that. But they would probably still read some of his work.

sytelus• 7 years ago

It's not about reading his work, it's about being an aspirational figure that generations want to follow and emulate. I didn't know any of these about Asimov and he has written some of the stories that I believe is the finest. But would I say to my kids "look at this great guy, be like him!"?

coldtea16• 7 years ago

It's not about reading his work, it's about being an aspirational figure that generations want to follow and emulate.

People can still "follow and emulate" the achievements he did, not whatever bad side.

Like people still try to follow all kinds of public figures, despite their known bad sides, from Hemingway to Jobs.

Else we would only follow saints.

() not to mention, if the tide turns, even the bad side could be "cool" again. There are even people into things like satanism or self-destruction, or womanizing, or machoism after all, and they too have their idols.

doliveira• 7 years ago

Honestly I never could relate to this focus I see nowadays on role models and aspirational figures. I think you should at most get inspired by specific actions scoped to the relevant areas of their lives.

Just tell your kids to be themselves. They don't need to emulate anyone.

scandox5• 7 years ago

Well his personal issues with women definitely are apparent in his work. His female characters are often shrieking ninnies.

Also I don't think anyone but an academic will be reading his work in a few hundred years. As much as I enjoy his ideas and his easy style he is actually mediocre.

lawlessone• 7 years ago

I hadn't noticed this before about his female characters.. and now i can't unotice it that you have mentioned it

kabacha• 7 years ago

Also I don't think anyone but an academic will be reading his work in a few hundred years. As much as I enjoy his ideas and his easy style he is actually mediocre.

I don't like to point out and say people's opinions are wrong but The Embire series are cornerstone of science fiction writing and will surely be read in the future. I can't imagine someone studying the history of scifi literature and skipping Asimov at any point in time.

coldtea16• 7 years ago

Also I don't think anyone but an academic will be reading his work in a few hundred years. As much as I enjoy his ideas and his easy style he is actually mediocre.

While I don't agree 100%, that never hurt any artist's commercial success or fan following...

In any case, for the sci-fi field he's one of the classics. Most others in the genre weren't exactly subtle deep literature either, it's the ideas and sci-fi exploration of them that count.

dep_b• 7 years ago

Well his personal issues with women definitely are apparent in his work. His female characters are often shrieking ninnies.

Het also used the word "gay" as simply meaning happy in the Foundation series. Because it's written in the 50's. Remember all of those face slaps to calm down hysterical women you saw up til the 80's in movies? When I see it now I think "waaaaaaaaat" but it was a normal stereotype back then.

phonon• 7 years ago

Susan Calvin????????

8bitsrule• 7 years ago

His female characters are often shrieking ninnies.

I don't recall his works. But review the US family TV shows from the 1950s and 1960s and see the 'fond, goofy' portrayal of women -- it was everywhere. Similarly, many cartoons of that era ... shown across the nation in theatres ... cannot be seen anymore. The level of thick-headed, cloddish insensitivity was pervasive. We've changed as a culture in the US, and I'm grateful.

Ar-Curunir2• 7 years ago

The fuck? Sexual harassment is as much part of his legacy as his novels. It drives out people from your field if your leaders are lauded despite being terrible to others.

coldtea16• 7 years ago

No field has any shortage of leaders / people being "terrible to others" in this and other ways.

People could take issue in how their leaders, and people they interact with are today.

If, on the other hand, they take issue for past leaders being lauded for their "within-the-field achievements" despite their personal behavior (as if that has any bearing on the field), especially after 50+ odd years, then those people "driven out" weren't that driven to be in the field in the first place.

Would anybody go off of physics because Einstein was sexist (and worse), and still (rightly so) lauded as the greatest physicist (perhaps after Newton)?

Not sure when people forgot how to compartmentalise...

watwut9• 7 years ago

Afaik, everything the article writes about is his public life. None of it is privite dispute with wife or who he dated.

coldtea16• 7 years ago

Private as in not in his public output/work, not "private" as in inside his house or with his spouse.

afro88• 7 years ago

The legacy of their work is tainted by their person. Two things are independently true:

1) Asimov was a prolific writer who authored many works that were fundamental in shaping science fiction into what we know it as today

2) Asimov sexually assaulted women on a regular basis

But the way people see the first point will be through the lens of the second.

coldtea16• 7 years ago

But the way people see the first point will be through the lens of the second.

Only certain people, who think themselves as saints and that others should be too, and judge creators by their failings.

Most people care just for the work -- the fact they actually matters to them in 2020 and that they get to read --, and they could not give less ducks who some creator was and what they did in their personal lives.

rbanffy2• 7 years ago

Behavior like 2 is an important reason we have so few women writing works fundamental in shaping science fiction into what we know it as today. When we tolerate sexual harassment we demean women and make the community not welcoming to them. The article explores that.

9nGQluzmnq3M• 7 years ago

I think we cheapen the word "sexual assault" when we use it like this. Asimov was not Harvey Weinstein, and a unwelcome pinch on the butt is not rape.

chris_wot4• 7 years ago

They will care. His contributions will still be remembered, but history doesn’t forget transgressions. Nor should it.

coldtea16• 7 years ago

His contributions will still be remembered, but history doesn’t forget transgressions

We don't care for the transgressions (including much more serious, down to murder, slave ownership, and other things) for 99% of historical figures...

jean_tta• 7 years ago

If I understand your comment, you are saying that what people do in their private life does not matter unless it is important enough (e.g. being the Boston strangler): this is tautological (what is important in the legacy of someone if the important things they did, their work and/or their private life if their private life is important).

You are just saying that hundreds of such "incidents" is simply not important enough to be remembered. But murder would be according to you. Where do you draw the line?

Gibbon12• 7 years ago

I'll drop right in here to say the in their private life argument doesn't fly here. Because the complaints aren't about his private relationships, they're about public and professional behavior.

Frankly the callousness of people like Asimov bothers me. You're left with two possibilities. Either they simply don't care that they are making the other person uncomfortable, angry or scared. Or worse that they're getting off on that.

neskiredk• 7 years ago

Sigh, in Summary: The reason why most women dont write nor like science fiction is because of Asimov's behavior.

What a joke, Even if the article has plenty of valid points (unsourced of course), the above insinuation makes the whole article untrustworthy.

wslack• 7 years ago

I don't see that insinuation in the article. It says he was part of a bad tone and that his actions had a negative impact on an untold number of women, but that's a far cry from what you said above.

jccalhoun4• 7 years ago

That is a very inaccurate summary. I think a more accurate summary would be "Asimov's behavior discouraged women from writing science fiction."

Ma8ee5• 7 years ago

He probably never understood the harm he did. His writings reveal quite a lack of real understanding of other people. And I guess no one ever sat down with him and tried to explain the consequences for him.

I'm very happy that these things are brought up loud and clear nowadays so no one can continue to be ignorant.

zozbot2344• 7 years ago

The article does describe Asimov as a loser in romantic relationships, so one should not underestimate the harm he did to his own prospects. It's also true that we care a lot more about these behaviors than we did in the 1950s, and that's mostly for the better. But Asimov seems to have had comparatively little of that narcissistic, overentitled attitude which you'd find in so many harassers, and which perhaps should be of most concern.

Ma8ee5• 7 years ago

But Asimov seems to have had comparatively little of that narcissistic, overentitled attitude which you'd find in so many harassers

Exactly. I think he would have been horrified if he actually understood the harm he caused. It sometimes amazes me how people who are extremely intelligent in some aspects of life can be so utterly clueless in other.

soylentcola• 7 years ago

This is why I'm generally supportive of contemporary efforts to call out that kind of behavior as unacceptable.

I think on some level, everyone who finds someone else attractive has at least some instinctual desire to touch them or hug them or kiss them, etc. It's the definition of sexual attraction. If all you've been told and all of your experience says "hey, go for it! It's not a big deal and occasionally they'll reciprocate," why would you refrain?

It's important for people to learn and understand at a very basic level that it's inappropriate, unacceptable, and degrading to the person on the receiving end. When I was in my mid 20's I used to work with a lot of young guys who would catcall and pester women all the time. I'd shake my head and ask them why they did that. Didn't they know it annoyed the hell out of the women (at the very least)?

Their response was usually along similar lines to the one quoted in the article: "well, some of them like it and occasionally it might work!" Without a real understanding of how flawed this logic was, these dudes had been taught that the ideal approach was just to proposition as many women as possible in the hopes that one might respond positively.

Without understanding the flip side, they just didn't consider or grasp the harm it caused to the vast majority of their "targets".

zozbot2344• 7 years ago

I'm not sure that it's always sexual attraction, although it might have been for Asimov. Look at the Joe Biden case, how he used to hug, touch etc. people all the time in a problematic way. It wasn't sexual, but it was still an overstepping of sensible boundaries, intimacy etc. that we intuitively feel as "creepy".

Whatever the context (sexual or not) it's important for people to learn how to go about that sort of implied social negotiation that ultimately might make these contacts non-problematic and perhaps even desirable. Just telling them "it's not okay" is not nearly as effective. Tell them it's not OK, and then ask them why they aren't doing it the right way. Do they feel that entitled to another person's boundaries?

scarejunba3• 7 years ago

In an economic game sense, it is rational behaviour. The costs are externalized on the people who don't want to be propositioned and the gains accrue exactly to the propositioner and the propositionee who wants it.

We're solving it by internalizing that externality (calling out cat callers) and I think that's the right thing to do.

I wonder if there is a mechanism (there probably isn't) which instead rapidly matches folks so that they can catcall exactly the people who want to be cat called, assuming there are any.

cambalache• 7 years ago

An aside about the article's author. His blog is very interesting and full of fantastic articles that will delight a science fiction fan, especially for those who like their SF combined with "high" literature. He writes thoughtfully also on the craft of being an SF writer, showing discipline and care. Given all of that, I was really looking forward to read his first novel. Well, I wish I hadn't done it. It was terrible in almost every aspect: Pace, dialogue, characters, plot, and prose. It goes to show for the n-th time that to theorize about a topic is a very different skill that to practice it well.

square_usual2• 7 years ago

Often theorizing about something makes it much harder to do it, because you get bogged down by constantly thinking about how bad what you're doing is.

chongli• 7 years ago

What sets science fiction apart from high literature is that it tends to emphasize the novum, that new idea or technology that distinguished the setting from the real world, at the expense of characterization. It’s any ideas, not people.

Literary fiction is the opposite. It’s about people, their relationships and struggles, situated in reality. It tends not to deal with high concept counterfactuals which are the bread and butter of science fiction.

chris_wot4• 7 years ago

Is my memory failing me, but I seem to recall in one of the Foundation books one of the female characters is interrogated and assaulted during the interrogation, but she just shrugs it off.

It seriously disturbed me when I read it.

reagent_finder2• 7 years ago

Also in the Foundation books: Sex as a weapon (for men), sex as a reward (for men), sex as payment by the (suddenly irresistible) main character to get concessions out of an amazon politician.

jccalhoun4• 7 years ago

I only read the first Foundation book and noticed that there were basically no female characters. I did read that he was made aware of that and was sure to have female characters in subsequent books but I didn't care enough about the books to read any more of them. This makes me glad I didn't take the time to do so.

Hokusai• 7 years ago

People do not protect harassers. People protect their own jobs and status. Let someone unimportant to have the same behaviour and it will land in prison. It is the system that rewards the people protecting the harassers. Think about Human Resources in your company. Do they work for the employees, for the company or for upper management? I have seen upper management abusing their positions while damaging people and projects alike. And Human Resources have always protected them. The few times that is not like that, the person that tries to fix the situation get silently fired. We should request from people to NOT protect famous/important/rich harassers. But, we also need to change the system to make sure that they are not protected by people looking for a reward. Without changing the system we are doomed to continue suffering these behaviours.

goto113• 7 years ago

Yes and no - you will often see people trivialize or make excuses for harassers even if there is noting on the line for themselves. Nobody is scared of Asimov since he is long dead, but just look in this comment section.

javajosh2• 7 years ago

You're right, people protect more than their job; they protect their ideologies, too.

There's an interesting story about the early Buddhist monks who, while the Buddha was alive, would squabble and fight over "right view". So, even after giving up almost everything, they were still attached! The Buddha, in classic Buddha way, responded by walking into the forest to meditate alone.

Personally, I wish we'd all just relax and realize what assholes we ALL are, each and every one. There are no exceptions.

dadarepublic• 7 years ago

This is a good thread if just for highlighting how people will protect famous/rich/important harassers and abusers if it serves their sense of "self" in some way - whether it be attached to career, ideology, fandom, "coolness", etc. or if it be because of some form of kompromat.

wickedwiesel• 7 years ago

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21989855 from yesterday (where there was 0 interaction with the subject)

gus_massa2• 7 years ago

This happens all the time. It's usual to link to the old post when it had a lot of attention. (The thresholds is not clear. 20 upvotes? 20 comments? 20 upvotes + comments? 40? ...)

An exception is when the older post has a very good comment. And in those cases I sometimes quote the comment partially.

More (less?) details in: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

gadders• 7 years ago

Interesting article, but doesn't this come back to the age-old question of whether you can divorce a person from their art?

Isaac Asimov, Michael Jackson, Roman Polanski - can you enjoy their work knowing what you know about the creator?

Konnstann• 7 years ago

I personally can, maybe that says something about my moral code, maybe not. Orson Scott Card's works are some of my favorite books to read, and it puzzles me how he was able to write a book like Speaker for the Dead while holding the xenophobic and racist views he did. Mel Gibson also holds some pretty reprehensible views, however that doesn't stop me from watching the Lethal Weapon films.

Contextualizing works of art is important in some cases, and moreso if the art is political. In cases where author bias either isn't present or doesn't matter, however, I don't think it matters.

jholman• 7 years ago

I think the point about Card is particularly interesting. Card's writing can be terrific, and in particular some of it is terrific because of the nuanced way it questions religious orthodoxy and/or the role of religion in society. As an anti-religionist, I greatly appreciate how Card's writing has both acknowledged my concerns and also raised counterpoints. It is indeed hard to reconcile that with what we have heard about his personal positions. Good on him, I guess.

I note that he's not the only Mormon SF writer I've thought that about, though the other one that comes to mind has evolved his public politics over the last decade. But making that connection ("Mormon SF writer") may be an invalid cognitive bias.

jccalhoun4• 7 years ago

I like to reframe the question. Can I divorce the person from the art? Of course. But should I?

I don't think so. There are so many books, movies, song, games, etc. that I could never consume them all so there is still a near infinite list of works for me to enjoy by creators who aren't known to be terrible people.

mrmuagi2• 7 years ago

My philosophy is a bit different. I have found that although there are a lot of things to consume, a fraction (maybe even %1-%10) is even top shelf and worth your time (I wish I had the ability to delete books from my memory, not to re-read the book, but to never experience it ever) -- as time for those hobbies is limited and, well, why not optimize life for great works and skip the bad ones. I'm still having Foundations on my reading list but my opinion of the author is less no doubt.

cerealbad• 7 years ago

very little of a writer survives with time; asimov had interesting world building but his characters are a little flat. the surviving great works of literature deal with human beings rather than the world they find themselves in. there is also the problem today of new authors breaking through and having to compete with a giant cannon of golden age sci fi or fantasy, and it can be overwhelming. if you read genre fiction, you could continue to do so for another 20 years and never leave the 20th century. there is a similar problem in literature, but there you get a lot more adventurous readers and experimental writers so novelty is sought out.

the general problem is a massive bloat of amassed and received works. record keeping is almost exhaustive so new books, movies, shows and songs just keep piling up, and the immensity of choices is overwhelming. i wonder how many people are subscribed to dozens of channels on youtube but just never find the time to catch up with more than 2 or 3 videos a day, and their backlog just keep growing and growing.... overcommunication and data creep. i can see a near future where the virtual you goes off and tests entertainment products then comes back and offers recommendations. in a primitive way this is already happening it's just past-you helping make selections for present-you.

it reminds me towards the end of the middle ages, when chroniclers amassed hundreds of manuscripts and began creating world history by condensing it down into something readable and understandable. maybe the essence of the age we live in is that of the neo-chronicler, tools that will reconnect people with the passage of time.

defertoreptar• 7 years ago

If Asimov was still living, what do you think he would say about younger Asimov?

The Civil Rights Act of 1991 happened the year before he died. There was a big change in the way people saw this behavior between the 80s and now.

How many celebrities, who lived through that era, would now say that behavior is okay? I honestly think had he lived, he'd say he was wrong.

rbanffy2• 7 years ago

I'd like to believe he'd be deeply ashamed. I don't have many reasons to believe that, however.

People are flawed. Some people are deeply flawed and fame has been for far too long an enabler foe behavior that should never be tolerated from anyone.

ianai• 7 years ago

Great point! The dead may never change. Is it fair to eternally damn them from a modern perspective?

One of the reasons I left religion was principally this eternal damnation practice. It’s extreme. The variety of life and even the universe requires nuance and forgiveness.

roca7• 7 years ago

There's plenty of nuance and forgiveness in traditional religion.

Speaking of which, Asimov was certainly aware that "thou shalt not covet" and "whoever looks at a woman lustfully..." had been preached for a couple of thousand years, so it's not like he had no idea what he was doing could possibly be wrong.

roca7• 7 years ago

What do you think Asimov's father would have said about Asimov?

I reject the idea that before the 1990s it was always acceptable to grope women in public. In older, more traditional and more conservative societies it was not acceptable.

kangnkodos2• 7 years ago

One possible data point is to look at the half-hearted apologies of Robert Crumb. He lived through the 80's and treated women in a similar manner. Now, as an old man in a new era, he has issued some vague apologies. And yet, he also leaves so many transgressions out.

My guess is that Asimov might have done something similar if he were alive in the #MeToo era. Some vague apologies, but no true reckoning of everything.

roca7• 7 years ago

IMHO, Asimov was a terrible writer of fiction. (I haven't read his non-fiction.) Some interesting ideas, but nothing like the imagination of, say, China Miéville. Terribly thin characters and plots, and very mediocre writing.

He had the good fortune to get into sci-fi near the beginning and crank out a lot of readable material, and get some good ideas out there first. The rest is confirmation bias. Had he appeared 30 years later he would have been writing Star Trek or Star Wars novels.

I've got nothing against classics per se. "Dune" for example is still very good. But some classics were only considered great because they broke new ground, and they do not stand the test of time.

mLuby• 7 years ago

Asimov gave the world plenty of mind-expanding ideas, many that we take for granted today as staples of science fiction. I'm also amused and a bit humbled at reading his many stories featuring futures with "a world market for maybe five [building-size] computers" on my one-of-billions smartphone.

That said, I've witnessed (and been guilty of) full-throated defenses against character assassinations based on little more than being a fan of the work. It's important for fans, who ought to be more informed than average, to be aware of and acknowledge the works' and creator's flaws. This both gives the fan more credibility, and by reducing the perceived personal protection the creator may feel from their fans, in aggregate should discourage bad behavior.

So thanks for sharing.

nzealand• 7 years ago

It was Watson who said "a world market for maybe five [building-size] computers"

Asimov wrote about AI everywhere - positronic brains inside androids, multivac etc...

WorldMaker3• 7 years ago

Yeah, acknowledging flaws is more useful than ignoring them or papering over them.

"a world market for maybe five [building-size] computers" on my one-of-billions smartphone

Though in some of Asimov's books' terms, it easy to imagine that the internet would have counted to Asimov as having only one "building sized computer" and we just have billions and billions of terminals. The microcomputer revolution remade what the world calls a computer [1], and it's hard to predict futures when the words themselves shift out from under you. ;)

[1] Just as I like to half-jokingly predict the lasting impact of the smartphone revolution is that it is possible the word phone eats the word computer, bringing about AT&T's 50s retro future visions in a roundabout pathway they didn't foresee.

Asimov’s Empire, Asimov’s Wall

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