"Asimov, Isaac - 2. Foundation and Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

apparently falling over all the world, what was chiefly on my mind was a meeting
toward which I was hastening.
I was 21 years old, a graduate student in chemistry at Columbia University, and
I had been writing science fiction professionally for three years. In that time,
I had sold five stories to John Campbell, editor of Astounding, and the fifth
story, "Nightfall," was about to appear in the September 1941 issue of the
magazine. I had an appointment to see Mr. Campbell to tell him the plot of a new
story I was planning to write, and the catch was that I had no plot in mind, not
the trace of one.
I therefore tried a device I sometimes use. I opened a book at random and set up
free association, beginning with whatever I first saw. The book I had with me
was a collection of the Gilbert and Sullivan plays. I happened to open it to the
picture of the Fairy Queen of lolanthe throwing herself at the feet of Private
Willis. I thought of soldiers, of military empires, of the Roman Empire – of a
Galactic Empire – aha!
Why shouldn't I write of the fall of the Galactic Empire and of the return of
feudalism, written from the viewpoint of someone in the secure days of the
Second Galactic Empire? After all, I had read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire not once, but twice.
I was bubbling over by the time I got to Campbell's, and my enthusiasm must have
been catching for Campbell blazed up as I had never seen him do. In the course
of an hour we built up the notion of a vast series of connected stories that
were to deal in intricate detail with the thousand-year period between the First
and Second Galactic Empires. This was to be illuminated by the science of
psychohistory, which Campbell and I thrashed out between us.
On August 11, 1941, therefore, I began the story of that interregnum and called
it "Foundation." In it, I described how the psychohistorian, Hari Seldon,
established a pair of Foundations at opposite ends of the Universe under such
circumstances as to make sure that the forces of history would bring about the
second Empire after one thousand years instead of the thirty thousand that would
be required otherwise.
The story was submitted on September 8 and, to make sure that Campbell really
meant what he said about a series, I ended "Foundation" on a cliff-hanger. Thus,
it seemed to me, he would be forced to buy a second story.
However, when I started the second story (on October 24), I found that I had
outsmarted myself. I quickly wrote myself into an impasse, and the Foundation
series would have died an ignominious death had I not had a conversation with
Fred Pohl on November 2 (on the Brooklyn Bridge, as it happened). I don't
remember what Fred actually said, but, whatever it was, it pulled me out of the
hole.
"Foundation" appeared in the May 1942 issue of Astounding and the succeeding
story, "Bridle and Saddle," in the June 1942 issue.
After that there was only the routine trouble of writing the stories. Through
the remainder of the decade, John Campbell kept my nose to the grindstone and
made sure he got additional Foundation stories.
"The Big and the Little" was in the August 1944 Astounding, "The Wedge" in the
October 1944 issue, and "Dead Hand" in the April 1945 issue. (These stories were
written while I was working at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia.)
On January 26, 1945, I began "The Mule," my personal favorite among the
Foundation stories, and the longest yet, for it was 50,000 words. It was printed