I am a big fan of Isaac Asimov, and this made my day.
“Perhaps the most revolutionary development in recent years has been that of the computer. Because for the first time we’ve discovered a machine that can substitute, at least in part, the human brain. Before that, it was just a matter of saving human muscles, of using machinery to spare what human muscles couldn’t do very well. And computers come in all sizes because they have been getting smaller and smaller. We’ve have these tiny little micro-chips now, and as a result every industry, the government itself, tax collecting agencies, airplanes, everything depends on computers. We have personal computers in the home, and they are constantly getting better, cheaper, more versatile, capable of doing more things. So that we can look into a future, one for the first time humanity in general will be free of all kinds of work that is really an insult to the complex human brain, that requires no great thought, no great creativity. Leave all that to the computer, and we can leave to ourselves those things that computers can’t do. Such things as imagination, creativity, fantasy, intuition, problem solving where we don’t have to have the exact conditions and know exactly what’s happening, we have an intuitive field for what the solution ought to be. No computer can do that.”
—Isaac Asimov
I have never seen this movie (1966), but I had read the novelizations by Isaac Asimov (Fantastic Voyage I and Fantastic Voyage II).
Isaac Asimov found many inconsistencies with science in the movie, so he took a chance and started writing Fantastic Voyage II, more attached to science facts, regarding how things can become smaller.
I had read that at the beggining of the movie a title card appears, reading:
THIS FILM WILL TAKE YOU WHERE NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN BEFORE. NO EYE-WITNESS HAS ACTUALLY SEEN WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE. BUT IN THIS WORLD OF OURS WHERE GOING TO THE MOON WILL SOON BE UPON US AND WHERE THE MOST INCREDIBLE THINGS ARE HAPPENING ALL AROUND US, SOMEDAY, PERHAPS TOMORROW, THE FANTASTIC EVENTS YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE CAN AND WILL TAKE PLACE.
And three years later Neil Armstrong was dancing on the moon.
Isaac Asimov on homosexuality
Isaac Asimov had thoughts in many areas, and he always was willing to answer most of the questions that arrived to him, by mail, and sometimes he also avoided some questions in a very wisely way.
Here is what Asimov thought about homosexuality, when he was asked.
How does homosexuality fit into the overpopulation issue?
1 December 1962
I see nothing “wrong” with homosexuality and, what´s more, nothing dangerous either. I am not a homosexual myself, but the population explosion is so dangerous that any device that cuts down the birthrate without doing significant harm should be positively encouraged and defined as a “right”. Homosexuality is one of these.
