Magic, page 27
Whatever significance IQ may have, then, it is, at present, being made a game for bigots.
Let me end, then, by giving you my own view. Each of us is part of any number of groups corresponding to any number of ways of subdividing mankind. In each of these ways, a given individual may be superior to others in the group, or inferior, or either, or both, depending on definition and on circumstance.
Because of this, “superior” and “inferior” have no useful meaning. What does exist, objectively, is “different.” Each of us is different. I am different, and you are different, and you, and you, and you—
It is this difference that is the gory of Homo sapiens and the best possible salvation, because what some cannot do, others can, and where some cannot flourish, others can, through a wide range of conditions. I think we should value these differences as mankind’s chief asset, as a species, and try never to use them to make our lives miserable, as individuals.
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“To Your Health”—Copyright © 1989 by Asimov Holdings, LLC. First appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.
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FOOTNOTES
* * *
Extraordinary Voyages
1 I don’t favor the term “speculative fiction” except insofar as it might abolish that abominable abbreviation “sci-fi.” But then it might substitute “spec-fic” which is even worse.
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* * *
* * *
Knock Plastic!
1 Some people say that knocking wood is symbolic of touching the True Cross, but I don’t believe that at all. I’m sure the habit must antedate Christianity.
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* * *
Look Long Upon a Monkey
1 Anyone who reads these essays knows that I am a women’s-libber, but I also have a love for the English language. I try to circumlocute “man” when I mean “human being” but the flow of sound suffers sometimes when I do. Please accept, in this article, “man” in the general, embracing “woman.” (Yes, I know what I said.)
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2 Antievolutionists usually denounce evolution as “merely a theory” and cite various uncertainties in the details, uncertainties that are admitted by biologists. In this, the antievolutionists are being fuzzy-minded. That evolution has taken place is as nearly a fact as anything nontrivial can be. The exact details of the mechanism by which evolution proceeds, however, remain theoretical in many respects. The mechanism, however, is not the thing.
Thus, very few people really understand the mechanism by which an automobile rus, but those who are uncertain of the mechanism do not argue from that that the automobile itself does not exist.
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Thinking About Thinking
1 I was asked to be on one of these shows and refused, feeling that I would gain nothing by a successful display of trivial mental pyrotechnics and would suffer needless humiliation if I were human enough to muff a question.
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2 The great trumpeter Louis Armstrong, on being asked to explain something about jazz, is reported to have said (translated into conventional English), “If you’ve got to ask, you aren’t ever going to know.” These are words fit to be inscribed on jade in letters of gold.
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About the Author
Isaac Asimov, world maestro of science fiction, was born in Russia near Smolensk in 1920 and brought to the United States by his parents three years later. He grew up in Brooklyn where he went to grammar school and at the age of eight he gained his citizen papers. A remarkable memory helped him finish high school before he was sixteen. He then went on to Columbia University and resolved to become a chemist rather than follow the medical career his father had in mind for him. He graduated in chemistry and after a short spell in the Army he gained his doctorate in 1949 and qualified as an instructor in biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine where he became Associate Professor in 1955, doing research in nucleic acid. Increasingly, however, the pressures of chemical research conflicted with his aspirations in the literary field, and in 1958 he retired to full-time authorship while retaining his connection with the University.
Asimov’s fantastic career as a science fiction writer began in 1939 with the appearance of a short story, Marooned Off Vesta, in Amazing Stories. Thereafter he became a regular contributor to the leading SF magazines of the day including Astounding, Astonishing Stories, Super Science Stories and Galaxy. He won the Hugo Award four times and the Nebula Award once. With nearly five hundred books to his credit and several hundred articles, Asimov’s output was prolific by any standards. Apart from his many world-famous science fiction works, Asimov also wrote highly successful detective mystery stories, a four-volume History of North America, a two-volume Guide to the Bible, a biographical dictionary, encyclopaedias, textbooks and an impressive list of books on many aspects of science, as well as two volumes of autobiography.
Isaac Asimov died in 1992 at the age of 72.
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Isaac Asimov, Magic
