my next guest most recent published work is his 221st book I haven't written that many postcards
uh the book is entitled enjoy still felt an autobiography welcome please Dr Isaac Asimov
okay let's spend a minute here talking about the fact that you've written 220
21 books so far so far is that a compulsive Behavior do you think I enjoy it you know
why not sure but I say to myself here I am a handsome writer I should know right yeah
what kind of schedule do you put in to write that many books I get
up in the morning sit down and write when I finish writing go back to bed
is uh is there one particular work that's a favorite for you out of all of those Publications
well yes the one you've got right there is the second volume of my autobiography that
in the first volume if you put them together is my favorite book because it's my favorite subject
tell me a little bit about yourself what uh what uh what would we need to know about you
well once you've said 221 books that's it what else is there I mean if you sit down and write
that you haven't got time for anything else uh what are you working on now several things
right now I'm working on my monthly essay for the magazine of fantasy and science fiction and when
I get done with that I will go back to one of the books some in the middle of is that your favorite
topic area science and science fiction I suppose so though I also like to write Mysteries and
I like to write limericks I like to write history books like to annotate like the Bible Shakespeare
various other things what exactly does that mean when you annotate the Bible oh well you simply you
simply copy down all the all the verses in the Bible and you make little footnotes and and say
whatever you please about each one and if you're if you do it right the annotations are longer than
the thing you're annotating I've got a book coming out called in the beginning in which I annotate
the first 11 chapters of Genesis you can get the first 11 chapters on Genesis and maybe 15 pages or
so but the book is about 200 pages long counting my annotations um why do you think there is now uh
a real interest in in science and uh like these space movies Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back
Close Encounters oh well because the technology of the movie industry has reached the point
where they can put in 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
the Empire Strikes Back so much that when they finished it I jumped up my seat and yelled start
the third part they have done that haven't they they're projected like nine and I figure that at
the rate they're going they'll do the last few after I'm dead which doesn't strike me as Fair
um you know what I feel uh is unfair at the height of the manned space projects you know that was
great because everyone's attention was focused on that and I wish we had something else like that to
shoot for now do you think we uh backed away from the manned space program at the wrong time no yes
absolutely the reason for that was that we had gone into space primarily to beat the Russians so
when we got to the Moon we had and so it was true football fashion having scored the the touchdown
we went home yeah but the Russians are keeping right on going and sooner or later they'll do
something spectacular and we'll get back in the race what do you think that that would be what
spectacular thing could we look for well I suppose if they build a really large space station or they
put up their version of the shuttle and make it work while we're still fussing around with ours
then all of a sudden Congress will will pour a lot of money into it and we'll get going again yeah
um what would be the next logical step after we put a man on the moon and say we wanted
to continue putting men places where would we put our next man ah well we ought to stay here
in the Earth Moon system for a while and get it really developed we have to ought to build space
stations we have to build space settlements get some power stations in orbit build some factories
get a mining station on the moon and once we've got a real space civilization going then we can
explore further from a good strong space space if that's speaking as a science fiction writer or a
man who has studied the needs and what space can provide us no I think that's speaking as a real
human being have you ever written about things and then seen them come true occasionally yes I
described a spacewalk in 1952 and when they did it some years later it turned out to be exactly
the way I described it wasn't very difficult I described pocket computers in 1950 got the
appearance exactly right I talked about space stations getting energy Down to Earth in 1940.
and got that almost right I put the put it in Mercury's orbit instead of moon's orbit to get
it closer to the Sun maybe someday we'll do that I predicted that the opposition to the space race
and there was yeah so uh but these are little things I never tried to predict I just tried
to write stories I would sell so I could pay my way through college that whole Phenomenon with
the Phenomenon with computers and digital stuff it used to be I could pretty well figure out any
clock radio not so anymore it's all advanced to the point where you really have to sit down and
read the lousy book to figure these things out now and it seems like things are getting more and more
complex for just getting by day to day well it always happens that way things get more complex to
do more than as the technology advances further it gets simpler again until the next Quantum jump and
then it becomes complex again yeah I remember when radios first came out so you're too young for that
when radios first came out it was next to impossible to tune them uh now you just turn
them on I remember when television first came out you had to have a live-in television repairman
now you just turn it on if anything goes wrong with it it means you buy a new set yeah when when
the uh the radios did come out they were like the size of a of a Buick in some cases and now
I'm you can get them just about that big it's uh unless you want to walk down the street playing
at the top of the range then it's back to the Buick yeah that's right that's a whole different
situation here in New York City talking about among other things is prolific work as a writer
this represents 221 books published what uh what kind of Hardware do you have in
your home to keep this thing uh moving various typewriters yeah that's about all you just get
up and Wander from room to room type a little and then type a little and type a little no
there's just one typewriter and the other three just sit there in case something happens to the
one 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've got three different books in various stages that's
what I mean do you ever how do you keep everything straight well as long as it's non-fiction there's
no trouble you just or at least for me there's no trouble if it were fiction I'd have to work
on one book I I don't think I could manage two fiction books I'd get confused in the plots yeah
uh I want to get back to talking about your feelings about new developments in certain
areas for example uh in the next five to ten to fifteen years in medicine why it seems to me that
the important discoveries will be how to fiddle around with genes so as to perhaps correct some of
the diseases we that are congenital maybe instead of treating diabetes with insulin we can fix up
a gene so that you make your own maybe perhaps we can get rid of some other conditions like that how
would that be administered do you do you get like an inoculation at Birth or the parents get it or
how would that happen well I suppose that eventually we'll reach the stage where children
as born will have a genetic analysis and that you could then try to do something like that graft the
necessary genes into the pancreas for instance and hope that they'll do sufficient work to prevent
the eventual development of the diabetes that's a very risky area to be uh experimenting with isn't
it yes and presumably they'll do their best with animals before they try anything on human beings
you could you could alter or add to or detract from any characteristic of a human that way
couldn't you well in theory yes but you know you have to work up the technology to a high pitch
of excellence and we're just at the beginning of that now yeah uh and what what signals the
beginning what have we done so far well we've been working mostly with bacteria that's how far we are
and we've managed to engineer bacteria so to speak so that uh particular bacteria can form chemicals
that they themselves naturally wouldn't make but we insert the genes for it so that we can now
have bacteria making human insulin diabetics now take insulin obtained from domestic as slaughtered
domestic animals which is not exactly like human insulin it does the work but you could you could
get allergic to it and now we have human ensure which we can get from bacteria and have I heard
correctly about a synthetic insulin or is that what you're speaking of or well in a sense it's
synthetic in that it's manufactured as a result of human agency but it's exactly like human insulin
and the body can't tell the difference uh what about cancer research any breakthroughs there
well Heaven Only Knows we've been waiting for one for 30 years at least maybe 50 and we can
never we can never tell when it'll come but it isn't here yet um what about the weapons race
well now they keep talking about space weapons about using about using laser beams or ion beams
things like that against satellites and you'll have either killer satellites doing the job or
stations on Earth and uh as long as the satellites are unmanned I suppose it doesn't do any harm to
shoot them down but I figure that the best weapons researchers no weapons research yeah
you don't foresee that happening though I guess huh oh well I imagine that uh I imagine that in 30
years we'll have a situation in which there won't be any wars either that or there won't be any us
let's get to the matter of communications developments uh we were unable to place a
call here to Missouri on a fairly sophisticated piece of equipment
um you see any Monumental breakthroughs in the area of communications well there are Monumental
breakthroughs that are underway now in terms of communication satellites and Optical fibers
and I imagine that more and more we'll be using laser beams for communicating rather than either
electrical currents or radio waves and it will then be possible to have millions literary minions
of times as many messages carried on a on a wire or on a beam as we now can so that everyone can
possibly have their own television channel the way we all now have our own telephone numbers
and uh closed circuit television will become the great thing and everything from education to
research will be done by by way of communication communication devices the book is called enjoy
still felt which is part two of your autobiography correct right part one was in memory at Green it
had a autobiography of Isaac asthma of 1920 to 1954 with a black border made my wife very
nervous you hadn't even met me in 1954 she kept saying who's this imposter right Dr Isaac Asimov
thank you very much doctor for being with us we're going to pause for an NBC news update [Applause]