Isaac Asimov's Vision Of The Future | Letterman

My next guest, the most recent work published is his 221st book. I haven't written that many postcards. uh the book is titled "Enjoy it, it still feels like an autobiography" welcome please Dr. Isaac Asimov okay let's take a minute to talk about the fact that you've written 220. 21 books so far is a compulsive behavior. Do you think I enjoy it? Do you know why I'm not sure? But I tell myself: I'm an attractive writer. I should know, yeah, what kind of schedule do you put on to write that many? books I get up in the morning I sit down and write when I'm done writing I go back to bed it's uh, is there a particular work that's your favorite among all those posts? well, yes, the one you have there is the second volume of my autobiography that in the first volume if you put them together it is my favorite book because it is my favorite subject tell me a little about yourself what uh what uh what would we need to know about you well once we you said 221 books that's all what else is there I mean if you sit down and write you don't have time for anything else uh what are you working on now various things right now I'm working on my monthly essay for the fantasy and science fiction magazine and when finish that I'll go back to one of the books in the middle, your favorite subject area is science and science fiction I suppose, although I also like to write Mysteries and I like to write limericks. writing history books how to annotate like the Bible Shakespeare various other things what exactly does that mean when you annotate the Bible?

Well, you just copy all the Bible verses and make little footnotes and say whatever you want. Please about each one and if you do it right, the notes are longer than what you are writing down. I have a book coming out called at the beginning in which I write down the first 11 chapters of Genesis that you can get. the first 11 chapters on Genesis and maybe 15 pages or so, but the book is about 200 pages counting my annotations. Why do you think there is a real interest now in science and like these space movies? Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back Close Encounters, well, because the technology of the film industry has gotten to the point where they can include spectacular special effects and people enjoy watching those special effects.

Did you enjoy those two movies? I enjoyed Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back In fact, I enjoyed Empire Strikes Back so much that when they finished it I jumped out of my seat and screamed, start the third part they've made, right? They're projected like nine and I imagine that at the rate they're going they'll be doing The Last Days After My Death, which doesn't seem fair to me, um, you know what I feel, it's unfair at the height of manned space projects. You know, that was great because everyone's attention was focused on that and I wish we had something. something else like that to shoot for now do you think we walked away from the manned space program at the wrong time no yes absolutely the reason for that was that we had gone into space mainly to beat the Russians so when we got to the moon So it was a true football fashion after scoring the touchdown we went home yeah but the russians keep going and sooner or later they will do something spectacular and we will be back in the race what do you think that?

What spectacular thing could we look for? Well, I guess, if they build a really big space station or put up their version of the shuttle and get it running while we're still working on ours, then all of a sudden Congress will do it. we invested a lot of money in it and we'll start over, yeah, um, what would be the next logical step after putting a man on the moon and saying we want to keep putting men in places where we would put our next man? Ah well, We should stay here in the Earth-Moon system for a while and really develop it, we have to build space stations, we have to build space settlements, put some power plants into orbit, build some factories, get a mining station on the Moon and, once we have a real space civilization, then we can explore further from a strong space space if that is to speak as a science fiction writer or a man who has studied the needs and what space can provide us.

No, I think that's talking like a real human being. Have you ever written about things and then seen them come true from time to time? Yes, I described a spacewalk in 1952 and when they did it a few years later it turned out to be exactly as I described it, it wasn't very difficult, I described pocket computers in 1950 it looked exactly right. I talked about space stations bringing power to Earth in 1940. And I got it almost right. I put it in the orbit of Mercury instead of the orbit of the Moon to get it closer to the Sun, maybe one day we'll do that.

I predicted there would be opposition to the space race and yes, but these are little things I never tried to predict. I just tried to write stories that I would sell to pay my way through college, that whole phenomenon with the computer phenomenon. and digital things used to be, I could understand any clock radio, not anymore, everything is advanced to the point where you really have to sit down and read the lousy book to understand these things now, and it seems like things are getting better. It is becoming more and more complex to survive day by day.

Well, it always happens like that. Things become more complex to do. As technology advances, it becomes simpler until the next quantum leap and then becomes complex again. Yes, I remember when the radios. It came out for the first time, so you're too young for that. When radios first came out, it was almost impossible to tune them. Now you just turn them on. I remember when tele

vision

first came out, you had to have a resident tele

vision

repairman. just turn it on if something goes wrong, it means you buy a new set, yeah when radios came out they were like the size of a Buick in some cases and now, you can get them.

That's how big it is, uh, unless you want to walk down the street playing at the top of the range, then you have to go back to the Buick, yeah, that's right, that's a completely different situation here in New York City, speaking, among other things, of a prolific work as a writer. This represents 221 published books, what kind of hardware do you have in your house to keep this thing moving multiple typewriters? Yeah that's all you just get up and walk from room to room write a little bit and then write a little bit and write a little no there's only one typewriter and the other three just sit there in case Something happens to the one that I can grab one or the other three.

Is it possible to write more than one book at a time? Well, not simultaneously, but I have three different ones. books in various stages, that's what I mean, do you ever know how to keep it all right as long as it's non-fiction? No problem, just or at least for me, no problem if it were fiction. I would have to work on one. book I I don't think I can handle two fiction books. I would be confused by the plots, yes, uh, I want to talk again about your feelings about new developments in certain areas, for example, in the next five, ten or fifteen years. in medicine why it seems to me that the important discoveries will be how to play with genes to maybe correct some of the diseases that we are congenital with, maybe instead of treating diabetes with insulin we can fix a gene so that you can make your own such maybe maybe we can get rid of some other conditions like that, how would that be managed?

Is it obtained as a vaccine at birth or do the parents receive it or how would that happen? Well, I suppose we will eventually get to the stage where children when they are born will have genetic testing and then you could try to do something like that, graft the necessary genes into the pancreas for example, and hope that they do enough work. to prevent the eventual development of diabetes, which is a very risky area. Be experimenting with right? Yes, and presumably they'll do the best they can on animals before trying anything on humans. Could you alter, add or detract from any characteristic of a human in that way?

Couldn't you? in theory, yes, but you know you have to take the technology to a high level of excellence and we're just at the beginning of that now, yeah, uh, and what marks the beginning, what have we done so far, well, we've been working . mainly with bacteria, that's how far we are and we have managed to engineer bacteria, so to speak, so that particular bacteria can form chemicals that they themselves would not produce naturally, but we inserted the genes for it so that now we can have bacteria that produce the diabetics on human insulin now take insulin obtained from slaughtered domestic animals, which is not exactly like human insulin, it does the job, but you could become allergic to it and now we have human security that we can get it from bacteria.

Have I heard correctly? about a synthetic insulin or is that what you're talking about or well, in a sense it's synthetic because it's made as a result of human action but it's exactly like human insulin and the body can't tell the difference. What about cancer research? Any breakthrough there, well, God only knows we've been waiting for one for 30 years, at least maybe 50, and we'll never be able to say when it's coming, but it's not here yet. What about the arms race? Well, now keep talking about space weapons, about using laser beams or ion beams, things like that against satellites and you'll have killer satellites doing the job or stations on Earth and as long as the satellites are unmanned, I guess it's no good.

It doesn't hurt to shoot them down, but I imagine the best weapons researchers don't do weapons research, yeah, you don't foresee that happening, although I guess, uh, well, I imagine that uh, I imagine that in 30 years we'll have a situation where There will also be no wars, or there will be none. Let's get to the topic of communications development. We couldn't make a call here to Missouri with some pretty sophisticated equipment. Um, do you see any monumental advances in the area of ​​communications, there are monumental advances taking place in terms of communication satellites and optical fibers, and I imagine that we will use more and more laser beams to communicate instead of electrical currents or waves radio, and then it will be possible. have millions of literary minions of times as many messages transmitted by wire or by lightning as we can now so that everyone can have their own television channel in the same way that we now all have our own telephone numbers and, uh, a closed circuit television Become the best and everything from education to research will be done through communication devices.

The book is called Enjoy. I'm still sorry, which is the second part of your autobiography. Correct. The first part was in Green's memory. Had an autobiography of Isaac asthma. from 1920 to 1954 with a black border made my wife very nervous you hadn't even met me in 1954 she kept saying who this imposter is right Dr. Isaac Asimov thank you very much doctor for being with us we are going to pause for an NBC update of the news