Legacy Matters

Sci Fi Godfather

Many years ago I heard a speech by Isaac Asimov when he spoke about the  Manhattan Project, the highly classified, highly secret work to build the first atomic bomb.    The Germans, Asimov said, knew that some big project was underway, but they didn't know where.

If they had only thought to ask themselves what were all the best scientists reading, they would have answered, science fiction.

Science fiction, according to science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein, is "realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method."

If the Germans then had taken themselves to New York and looked at the subscriber lists of the most popular science fiction pulp magazines like "Astounding",  and "Amazing Stories " and "Super Science Stories",  they would have found the majority of subscribers coming from two American towns that nobody had ever heard of,  Oak Ridge in Tennessee and Los Alamos in New Mexico.

Jack Williamson, born in Arizona Territory before it was admitted as a state, died in New Mexico last week at 98.  He was one of the earliest sci fi writers, beginning before the term science fiction was coined and lived to be the "longest-serving" science fiction writer in America.

The London Telegraph has a terrific obituary.