Cat and Girl Make America Geocentric Again

The Sensuous Dirty Erstwhile Man (1971) is credited to "Dr. A"… but "the secret is out," admits a paperback edition, naming the author as Isaac Asimov, "undoubtedly the all-time author in America" per the Mensa Bulletin. A response to a then-popular book chosen The Sensuous Adult female, Asimov's book instructs dirty sometime men on how to leer ("don't peep at girls—STARE!"), make suggestive remarks ("What a magnificent dress… or am I but judging past the contents?"), and fondle.

The sensuous muddied old man has learned the fine fine art of the touch on, that of making it so gentle and innocent that the young lady involved tin can scarcely believe information technology is happening and therefore ignores it. This presents an exercise of innocence both on the part of the toucher and touchee that should bring tears of envy to all beholders.

January two, 2020 marked the centenary of Isaac Asimov'due south nascency; at least, of the nascence date the tardily author celebrated. (In his native Russia, the engagement of Asimov'southward birth wasn't precisely recorded.) The anniversary passed with little notice, although Asimov was a towering presence in science fiction and one of the about prolific writers to e'er live. A Golden Age m master and a protegé of Astounding Science Fiction editor John W. Campbell, Asimov coined the word "robotics" and wrote the Foundation series.

The Foundation stories beat J.R.R. Tolkien'southward Lord of the Rings to win a 1966 Hugo Honour for Best All-Time Series. Today, Tolkien commands a much more than visible pop-culture presence than Asimov, but the Foundation stories are nevertheless widely read; bring them up in any grouping, and ane or two people are probable to say they devoured the books.

From the 1960s through his decease in 1992, Asimov was an iconic celebrity regarded as an authority on science and science fiction alike. The author of hundreds of books, he could speak lucidly on near any subject area and made frequent media appearances. Today, though, his image—with its wide grin backside heavy black eyeglass frames, its bushy gray mutton chops, and its ubiquitous bolo necktie—is most recognizable from vintage book jackets.

That image is set to gain fresh visibility with the forthcoming release of an Apple tree TV series based on the Foundation stories (in pre-production, filming of the evidence was postponed at the end of March because of the coronavirus). The original stories were published in science fiction magazines from 1942 to 1950 and later collected in a trilogy of books, ultimately supplemented with iv tardily-career Foundation novels. They chronicle a visionary scientist's efforts to relieve chaos and suffering during an interregnum between afar-future galactic empires.

Repeatedly, women told Asimov he was out of line; many more didn't speak, probable cowed by his celebrity and the double standard.

To read Asimov is to escape into a world where space progress seems tantalizingly possible. If you're inclined to spend a lot of time with Asimov's work, you'll come to an appreciation of his many gifts: his wide-ranging intellect, his amiable writing style, his optimistic spirit, and the latitude of his imagination.

You'll likewise, however, notice a frequently lascivious attention to his female characters. If you lot begin to suspect that Asimov looked at actual women that way, you'll exist troubled by interactions that the writer himself reveals in his 2-volume autobiography: In Memory Yet Green, published in 1979, with In Joy Still Felt following in 1980.

In Retentiveness Yet Dark-green recounts a 1952 incident in which writer Judith Merril seemed to hit on Asimov, inspiring the author, past his own account, to speed away. When writing the book he invited Merril to comment, and Asimov included her response in a footnote. (Italics in the book.)

The fact is that Isaac (who was at that time a spectacularly uxorious and virtuous husband) obviously felt obliged to leer, ogle, pat, and proffer every bit an act of sociability. When it went, occasionally, beyond purely social enjoyability, there seemed no way to clue him in. […] Asimov was known, in those days, to diverse women, as "the homo with a hundred hands." On [one] occasion, the third or fourth fourth dimension his hand patted my rear finish, I reached out to clutch his crotch. He never manhandled me in vain again.

The following yr, Asimov explained, he began to have extramarital affairs. His beginning encounter left him "riddled with guilt," he wrote, but he went on to boast that "once I gathered I was good in bed, I was automatically far more than cocky-bodacious in every other respect, and I believe this contributed to the mid-1950s as my peak flow in science fiction."

Asimov writes that at his publisher Doubleday, "my small peculiarities were condign known and allowed for… any woman I disregarded in my all-embracing suavity was liable to be offended." He explains that "my attitude toward young women amused anybody more often than not," and that he came to "suspect that new girls were warned of my feckless lechery in advance so that they wouldn't run screaming or, worse still, bop me on the olfactory organ."

About that. "When I am feeling particularly suave during the autographing sessions, which is almost all the time," he wrote in Joy Still Felt, "I kiss each immature woman who wants an autograph and have establish, to my please, that they tend to cooperate enthusiastically in that item activeness."

As documented by Stephanie Zvan, Asimov was so infamous for this beliefs by the early on 1960s that the organizer of a Chicago science fiction convention offered to "furnish some suitable posteriors" for a talk nigh, and sit-in of, "The Positive Power of Posterior Pinching."

Whatsoever the author's conscious ideals may have been, his female characters tended towards restrictive stereotypes.

"I have no doubt I could requite a stimulating talk that would stiffen the manly fiber of everyone in the audition," Asimov responded. However, permission would need to be sought from those being pinched, and "if they say 'no,' information technology will be 'no.' Of course, I could be persuaded to do so on very short detect; even after the convention began, if the posteriors in question were of particularly compelling interest."

Past 1969, Asimov himself reported, he was beingness described by longtime friend Frederick Pohl equally someone who "turned into a dirty one-time man at the historic period of fifteen." Asimov, by his own account, was "perfectly willing to encompass the title; I even use it on myself without qualms." He wasn't kidding. Two years later, he published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man.

I have seen many a dirty quondam man with an arm that began at the lady's waist, shifted past such slow and gentle degrees equally to pass eventually through the warmth of the armpit to the budding softness of the maidenly bosom, without that shift e'er beingness noticed by the young lady. At least, she gave no signs of noticing.

For "the homo with a hundred hands," this "satire" was rather on-the-nose. "Laugh yourself to expiry," raved the Detroit Gratuitous Press.

Pohl's wife, Asimov learned later her death, "thought I was a 'creep' and wouldn't have me in the apartment." She wasn't the only one who spoke upward. When Asimov brought his usual "suave" self to a meeting of the National Association of Non-Parents (N.O.N.) in 1975, the New York Times reported on what the author described in his autobiography equally an "imbroglio." In the Times business relationship,

One of the most heated parts of the convention came during a public discussion of whether Due north.O.N. should take a stand on feminism. It was prompted by the disgruntlement of several Due north.O.N. members who thought that Isaac Asimov, the author, had introduced Ellen Peck, author of The Infant Trap and a N.O.N. officer, in a "sexist" style at the convention'due south general session. He described Miss Peck, who was wearing a clingy beige knit pants suit with her long blond hair in a Brigitte Bardot style, as "a sexual tornado."

In his autobiography, Asimov added a particular the Times failed to mention: a dirty composition he shared "to loosen up the early-morn audience."

By the fourth dimension he published his autobiography, Asimov was divorced from his showtime wife Gertrude and married to the author Janet Jeppson. Even the first fourth dimension he met Jeppson in 1956, Asimov afterward admitted, he cracked a blue joke. As Jeppson proffered a book for Asimov to sign, he asked about her field. When she said she was a psychiatrist, he responded, "Good. Allow's get on the couch together." Reader, she married him.

Asimov enjoyed substantive, mutually rewarding relationships with peers like Jeppson, Judy-Lynn del Rey, and Jennifer Brehl, a Doubleday staffer in the 1980s when she impressed Asimov with her insights. Brehl eventually became Asimov's editor and "similar a second daughter" to the author, in the words of his biographer Michael White. Given these relationships, how could Asimov comprehend "dirty erstwhile man" as a personal make?

The answer is tied up in personal and social history. As a self-conscious, sexually inexperienced boyfriend, Asimov learned that his lightning wit was a social lubricant. From early on on, he sprinkled titillating quips into his banter, using his concrete ungainliness to frame his lascivious persona as a colossal joke.

This was never a condom prospect, though. Even before he'd accomplished celebrity, his manner could be offensive, especially when his quips were precisely aimed. His autobiography contains accounts of women who'd tweak his insecurity about his own body, simply to find pointed and uncomplimentary jabs shot back at them. A woman who mocked the author'south growing belly only shrieked at a response criticizing her chest, wrote Asimov, "could mitt it out but apparently didn't like to get information technology back."

Asimov'south willingness to go there—in both verbal and concrete terms—continued as his fame grew. He experienced mutual interest frequently enough to reinforce his behavior, only he failed to respect the line between reciprocal flirtation and harassment.

Repeatedly, women told Asimov he was out of line; many more didn't speak, likely cowed by his glory and the double standard. White cites a friend'southward wife reacting angrily to having her bottom forcefully pinched by the author, who obviously made it a habit.

"God, Asimov," she snapped. "Why do you always practise that? Information technology is extremely painful and as well, don't you lot realize, it'south very degrading."

In one of the most public spectacles involving Asimov's "usual suave cocky," he appalled his married woman and teenage girl past propositioning a female invitee on The Dick Cavett Bear witness in 1970. By the following year, Asimov had moved out, divorce negotiations were underway, and he was back on Cavett wearing a bra on his face up to promote The Sensuous Dirty Old Man.

Gender issues aren't the but reason Asimov's books have proved resistant to successful adaptation: although his plots were clever and his ideas were large, he wasn't a especially visual author.

Chronicling fifty-fifty more harassment, Alec Nevala-Lee convincingly argues in Public Books that Asimov's beliefs was enabled past other men, and some women, who helped him officially play it off with books like The Sensuous Dingy Old Man. "In full general," writes Nevala-Lee, "Asimov chose targets who were unlikely to protest directly, such as fans and secretaries, and spared women whom he saw every bit professionally useful."

On the page, Asimov considered himself a feminist, decrying "male chauvinism" and arguing that women should be given wider professional opportunities. He was proud of his fictional robopsychologist Susan Calvin—only the toll that character paid for her extraordinary abilities was to have her concrete unattractiveness constantly remarked upon.

"Susan Calvin was a obviously spinster," Asimov wrote in his memoir I. Asimov, "a highly intelligent 'robopsychologist' who fought it out in a man's world without fear or favor and who invariably won. These were 'women's lib' stories twenty years before their time, and I got very little credit for that."

One of Asimov'due south virtually of import early on robot stories, "Liar!" (1941), turns on precisely the fact of Calvin'south embarrassment after she dares aspire to be sexually appealing, wearing makeup to her task at The states Robot & Mechanical Men, Inc. When Calvin realizes that a well-intentioned robot has lied to her about a coworker's mutual allure, "the inexpertly applied rouge fabricated a pair of nasty red splotches upon her chalk-white face."

Whatever the author'due south conscious ideals may have been, his female characters tended towards restrictive stereotypes. Those characters range from Artemisia oth Hinriad, a comely majestic who just can't resist the man-of-activity hero of The Stars, Like Dust (1951), to Bayta Darell, a sensible newlywed whose feminine compassion underlies a pivotal plot development in the original Foundation stories.

That was, of course, consistent with how many female characters were treated in genre fiction of the era: readers won't be surprised to find a submissive space princess in a Truman-era scientific discipline fiction novel. There's another level of queasiness, though, in the fashion Asimov's attention tends to run all up and downwards his fictional women's figures.

The author'due south acclaimed early work was published at a time when sensuality in scientific discipline fiction was strictly limited.

Nor is that attention always on characters like Artemisia, a stereotypically gorgeous immature woman ready to be painted for the comprehend of a pulp. When Bayta Darell meets her father-in-police Fran in a 1945 Foundation story, the older human being turns to Bayta with an "appreciative stare." She recites her age, peak, and weight to salve him the effort of guessing, but Fran corrects her and says she actually weighs 120, non 110.

He laughed loudly at her flush. So he said to the company in general, "You can always tell a woman's weight past her upper arm—with due feel, of course. Practice you want a drink, Bay?"

The female grapheme with the nearly complex journey in Asimov's future history is Gladia Delmarre, a stunning Solarian who proves well-matched with Earthman Lije Baley in a quartet of robot novels. Afterward the books dismiss Baley's wife Jezebel (an ironic moniker), Gladia and Lije have a restrained amour that finally blossoms into star-crossed dearest.

Asimov'south 1980s, though, were also the decade that gave us Elation: a curvaceous earth mother who appears in two Foundation novels. She plays supple lover to the aged Janov Pelorat, nag to the breathtakingly rude Golan Trevize ("She's bottom-heavy!" he snorts), and instantly attached mother to an orphan child with unsafe powers.

The author'due south acclaimed early work was published at a time when sensuality in science fiction was strictly limited. Later focusing largely on nonfiction throughout the 1960s and 70s, Asimov returned prolifically to fiction in the 80s, a more open up era. He became more than frank, but seemed incapable of writing about sexuality in a warm, man manner. (A rare Asimov novel from the 70s, The Gods Themselves, centered on the somewhat abstract sexual practices of a non-humanoid conflicting race.)

A typical tardily-career passage comes in Foundation and Earth (1986) when a starship lands on a secluded earth and Trevize appraises the topless adult female who appears to greet the visitors.

She was not much more than 1.5 meters in height, and her breasts, though shapely, were small. Yet she did not seem unripe. The nipples were large and the areolae dark, though that might be the issue of her dark-brown peel colour.

The forthcoming Foundation testify, with David Goyer as showrunner, seems to be remixing the stories' sexual politics: at least 3 women have been cast as characters who are male in the books. Robyn Asimov, the writer'due south daughter from his first marriage, is an executive producer.

Gender issues aren't the only reason Asimov's books have proved resistant to successful adaptation: although his plots were clever and his ideas were big, he wasn't a particularly visual author. The best-known screen adaptations are the mawkish Bicentennial Human (1999), starring Robin Williams as a robot who wants to exist human, and I, Robot (2004) with Volition Smith.

The I, Robot movie says it'south "suggested by Isaac Asimov's book," and fifty-fifty that cautious credit may be putting it a fleck strongly. Asimov was suspicious of Hollywood, but not in his wildest nightmares could he have imagined Susan Calvin bravado robots away with a machine gun. Nor would i ever use the word "obviously" to describe Bridget Moynahan, the actor and model cast as Calvin.

"To loyal fans of science fiction and Isaac Asimov," wrote the author'southward girl Robyn in SF Gate upon the movie's release, "the only matter more than disconcerting than robots attacking humans—a violation of the author's First Constabulary of Robotics—is that the camera filming I, Robot focused conspicuously on a buff Will Smith in the shower only not on the statuesque Bridget Moynahan, equally Asimov would accept preferred."

In the film Smith plays Del, a cop assigned to investigate a suspicious expiry at United states of america Robotics. In an early scene, he steps into an elevator with Moynahan, who says she's been instructed "to assist you in any fashion possible."

Taking a shell and turning appreciatively to face up his host, Del smiles. "Existent-ly?" he says. "Okay." Smith leaves it at that. Asimov, in all likelihood, would not have.

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