Some Interesting Facts About Magazine And Post-Magazine SF

Martin H. Greenberg (Ed.)., Isaac Asimov's Universe, Volume I: The Diplomacy Guild (London, 1990).

This anthology contains one story each by:

Robert Silverberg
David Brin
Robert Sheckley
Poul Anderson
Harry Turtledove

I will probably read only the story by Anderson just as I have read only the Man-Kzin Wars stories by:

Larry Niven
Poul Anderson
Jerry Pournelle & SM Stirling

- which means that I own but have not read Man-Kzin War stories by several other authors. I am interested in "The Burning Sky" as part of Poul Anderson's complete works, not as part of a multi-authored series.

Isaac Asimov: Introduction INVENTING A UNIVERSE IN Isaac Asimov's Universe: Volume I.

Summary
(i) After only ten or fifteen years of writing, Asimov came to be classed as one of the "Big Three," along with Heinlein and Clarke.

(ii) They remained the Big Three for nearly fifty years.

(iii) Heinlein died aged 80 in 1988 whereas Asimov and Clarke were still writing in 1990.

(iv) Publication of Heinlein's works, including a posthumous novel, continued.

(v) The Big Three remained on the shelves of bookshops whereas new works were continually replaced by newer.

(An aside: Bob Shaw once said in conversation that he had considered asking Asimov, out of his love for sf, to stop having his books republished. It seems, from this Introduction, that Asimov did feel responsible for keeping newer writers out.)

(vi) Not only the Big Three but several other important writers "...started in the early days of science fiction..." (p. vii):

Lester del Rey
Poul Anderson
Fred Pohl
Clifford Simak
Ray Bradbury

- and those who died young:

Stanley Weinbaum
Henry Kuttner
Cyril Kornbluth

(vii) Back then, magazines paid at most one cent per word.

(viii) There were no sf book publishers and few films.

(ix) For decades, the pioneers built the popularity of sf.

(x) As a result, a new writer earns more from a single novel than his predecessors did from ten years of effort.

(xi) In 1958, Asimov decided that he preferred writing nonfiction and wrote almost no sf until 1981.

(xii) However, his earlier sf remained in print while his articles in FSF kept his name before the public as a current author, still one of the Big Three.

(xiii) In 1981, in response to publisher insistence, then to bestseller status, he began to write one new novel per year.

(xiv) However, he also co-edited over 100 anthologies, lent his name to other publications, e.g., "Isaac Asimov Presents" and "Isaac Asimov's Robot City," and created "Isaac's Universe"/"Isaac Asimov's Universe," for other authors to write in.

But these endeavors still have Asimov's name all over them. I have argued on this blog that:

Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is better in every way than Asimov's Robots and Empire future history;

Anderson's many works on time travel are better in every way than Asimov's few;

Asimov invokes an sf cliche of "hyperspace" whereas Anderson presents an ingenious multiple quantum jumps hyperspace as well as several other original rationales for faster than light travel;

Anderson's Chunderban Desai analyzes actual history whereas Asimov's Hari Seldon wrongly states that individual actions cancel out in a galactic population just as molecular motions cancel out on a macroscopic scale so that mathematical psychohistory can become a predictive science;

Anderson's Psychotechnic Institute is a more convincing application of science to society than Asimov's Second Foundation;

Anderson's Time Patrol series is a much more concrete synthesis of sf with historical fiction than Asimov's Foundation series.

In my opinion, Anderson is the Big One and Heinlein is important as his precursor.