Name: Isaac Asimov's Vision Of The Future | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-09-26T22:00:33.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Isaac Asimov's Vision Of The Future | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-26. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Isaac Asimov's Vision Of The Future | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-26. Transcript available.

My next guest's most recent published work is his 221st book.
I haven't written that many postcards.
The book is entitled, Enjoy Still Felt, an Autobiography.
Welcome, please, Dr. Isaac Asimov.
Let's spend a minute here talking about the fact that you've written 221 books.
So far.
So far.
Published.
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.
Why shouldn't I write?
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 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 and the first volume, if you put them together, is my favorite book
because it's my favorite subject.
All about yourself.
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
What would we need to know about you?
Well, once you've set 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.
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 I'm 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 like to write limericks,
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 copy down all the verses in the Bible and you make little
footnotes and say whatever you please about each one.
And 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.
Why do you think there is now a real interest in science and 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 in my seat and yelled, start the third part.
They have done that, haven't they?
They have 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.
You know what I feel 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 backed away from the manned space program at the wrong time?
Oh, yes, absolutely.
The reason for that was that we had gone into space primarily to beat the
Russians.
When we got to the moon, we had.
And so, with true football fashion, having scored 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 futzing around
with ours.
Then, all of a sudden, Congress will pour a lot of money into it, and we'll get
going again.
Yeah.
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 ought to build space stations.
We ought 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 base.
Is that 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.
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 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 there'd be opposition to the space race, and there was.
Yeah.
So, but these are little things.
I never tried to predict.
I just tried to write stories that would sell so I could pay my way through
college.
That whole 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.
Then as the technology advances further, it gets simpler again until the next
quantum jump, and then it becomes complex again.
I remember when radios first came out.
See, you're too young for that.
When radios first came out, it was next to impossible to tune them.
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.
When the radios did come out, they were like the size of a Buick in some cases.
And now, you can get them just about that big.
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.
It's a whole different situation here in New York City.
We're talking to Dr. Eiji Nazimov, talking about, among other things, his prolific
work as a writer.
This represents 221 books published.
What kind of hardware do you have in your home to keep this thing moving?
Various typewriters.
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 of 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.
How do you keep everything straight?
Well, as long as it's nonfiction, 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 don't think I could manage two fiction books.
I'd get confused in the plots.
Yeah.
I want to get back to talking about your feelings about new developments in
certain areas.
For example, in the next five to 10 to 15 years in medicine.
Well, 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 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 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 experimenting with, isn't it?
Yes, and presumably they'll do their best with animals before they try anything
on human beings.
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.
And 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 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 slaughtered domestic animals,
which is not exactly like human insulin.
It does the work, but you could get allergic to it.
And now we have human insulin, which we can get from bacteria.
Have I heard correctly about a synthetic insulin, or is that what you're
speaking of?
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.
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 tell when it'll come, but it isn't here yet.
Yeah.
What about the weapons race?
Well, now they keep talking about space weapons, 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 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 research is no weapons research.
You don't foresee that happening, though, I guess, huh?
Oh, well, 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.
We were unable to place a call here to Missouri on a fairly sophisticated piece
of equipment.
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 millions, of times as
many messages carried 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 closed-circuit television will become the great thing.
And everything from education to research will be done by way of 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 an autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920 to 1954, with a black border.
It made my wife very nervous.
She 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 this morning.
We have an applause for NBC News Upgrade.
Over at that time.