tomhudson's Journal: Who was Asimov's Ghostwriter?

I started reading Isaac Asimov's science fiction stories as a kid. Later, I also started reading his fact books, which were mostly interesting.

However, this post of mine earlier tonight got me to thinking about something relatively off-tangent. There was one science book that Asimov wrote that had 3 glaring errors in it. The one that I couldn't help thinking "how could ANYONE make such a mistake?" was his explanation of how dry cells worked - that the lead interacts with the sulfuric acid to produce electricity. He was very specific about dry cells (the type of batteries you put in a flashlight), and not car batteries.

The book felt "wrong." At the time, I figured it was probably just what happens when you try to produce too many books too quickly, but is this the sort of elementary mistake that someone with both bachelor and masters degrees in chemistry, and a doctorate in biochemistry, make? (Hey,the term "dry cell" is there for a reason - no liquid sulfuric acid, no lead, just an electrolyic paste, carbon rod and zinc casing).

The most likely explanation was that it was written by someone else and then published under his name to increase sales.

The account of how he wanted to tell the world he had AIDS, but didn't because it would decrease the resale value of his apartment, shows that, at least some of the time, financial matters matter more.

One last tidbit from this revised version of this biography. Michael White again:

"Isaac Asimov was HIV positive and died from complications associated with AIDS. I was aware of this at the time of the first edition of this book, but chose to honor the wishes of Isaac's family and friends who did not want me to bring this fact into my account. Isaac contracted the disease after being given infected blood during a surgical procedure, but it was some time before he became aware of his condition and his decline was gradual. However, a few years before his death he learned the nature of his illness and wished to make it known to his public and to bring the matter out into the open. But... he was advised against this because of fears that the news would devalue his apartment in New York...."

I won't condemn him for this - its his right - or rather, it shows that he would sometimes let money convince him to do something other than what he normally wanted.

I could see the same thinking playing out with ghost-written works. The book has more chance of success, Asimov gets some sheckels, the real writer makes some sheckels as well, and now has an "in" with the publishing house, the publishing house now knows that the ghost-writers' work can sell, and everyone is happy.

So, who are the ghostwriters? For the sci-fi books, it could be writers who later on wrote "collaborations" with Asimov, or it could be people who entered the field in the 1960s ... after ghostwriting a book or two.

The obvious candidate for at least some of them is his wife Janet, who is also an author.

BTW - Her account of why Isaac didn't reveal he had AIDS contradicts White's account, and is a bit self-serving, in that Janet is the one who would benefit from the sale of the apartment, and stood to lose the most if it "became AIDS-stigmatized" ... or whatever she would have called it ...

Janet Asimov revealed that Isaac had apparently died of AIDS complications. He contracted it from a blood transfusion during heart bypass surgery in 1983. She says that the reason it was kept secret was that Isaac did not want to deal with the stigma often associated with having the disease.

We'll probably never know the identities of the other ghostwriters, but Janet would know all of them from about 1959 on ...

Isaac first met Janet Opal Jeppson when he signed an autograph for her at an SF convention on September 2, 1956. He was suffering badly (and silently) from a kidney stone at the time, which gave her the impression that he was an unpleasant person. He later claimed to have absolutely no recollection of that first meeting. They next met on May 1, 1959, when Janet attended a mystery writers' banquet as a guest of Veronica Parker Johnson and was seated with Isaac. That time the mutual attraction was immediate. When Isaac and Gertrude finally separated in 1970, he moved in with Janet almost at once, and they were married at Janet's home by an official of the Ethical Culture Society on November 30, 1973. Asimov had no children by his second marriage.

It would be interesting to reread all the books, and see if its possible to find distinct style differences. I know that at least some of the "science fact" books read more like someone trying too hard to imitate Asimov, and, upon reflection, a few of the sci-fi books don't read like they were written by the same person.

My bet is Robert Silverberg. He did ghostwrite stories, and he certainly knows the field.

Isn't there some software to do this already?

[plover]

I remember reading a little while ago (in the previous year) about software that could identify authors by their writing style. Asimov certainly had his own style, so if you think a particular book isn't his, it should be a small matter of feeding in all his texts and seeing which "pop out".

Well, a quick google turned up styleometry [wikipedia.org] as the branch of linguistics that study exactly such things. Have at it! :-)

Re:

[tomhudson]

I don't have the time to scan in all the books. The science book was definitely ghost-written; nobody with a masters' in chemistry would make the mistake about dry cells that was common knowledge among most high school kids with any sort of interest in science. I'm just wondering if anyone has suspicions about any of the other books, or some of the short stories.

Hey - did anyone try this with Shakespeare's stuff?

Re:

[Tet]

The science book was definitely ghost-written; nobody with a masters' in chemistry would make the mistake about dry cells

I think you're probably jumping to conclusions there. I could equally see it being an uninformed editor altering what Asimov wrote. Asimov was quite open about not being overly bothered by his editors changing his text after he'd written it. If he was using a ghost writer (which I personally doubt), I'm not convinced it would be Silverberg. To me, the two have very different writing sty

Re:

[tomhudson]

An editor would have to either remove all the references to dry cells and flashlights, etc., or replace all the chemistry between carbon and zinc. It wasn't an editor - it was the original author who screwed up, who wasn't Asimov. Also, this was only 1 of 3 pretty glaring errors that even a kid would catch. Maybe Asimov wrote a few chapters, lost interest, and then it was farmed out. Who would know - ask his wife.

I think Silverberg for some of Asimov's sci-fi output, Asimov's wife Janet for some of the m

Thanks - most interesting thing I've read in years

[Neop2Lemus]

I certainly didn't know about his AIDS, that is really tragic. we have a lot of people up here in Canada who got it through blood transfusions too, our Red Cross wasn't screening the blood properly.

And as for ghost writers? Perhaps we can forgive his later Foundation books (i.e. Prelude) if we assume that it had been ghost written, which I can believe that it was. Well, I certainly hope it was.......

Re:

[tomhudson]

Admittedly "Prelude" stunk. So did a few of his other works (in particular some of the later Robby the Robot stories were, well, they read like juveniles, which makes me believe they were Janet's work - she writes books for kids), but that's okay - there was some real gold in there as well :-)

The tainted blood scandal (hepatitis C) is one reason the Red Cross had to surrender their blood collection operation to a government agency. Too bad, I had racked up donations of 30 pints, but it came out that they

Re:

[Neop2Lemus]

As an afterword, reading the cause of his death - it knocked me down for a few hours. It's terrible, those bloody bastards.

/Nothing more to be said.

Re:

[tomhudson]

I buy Asimov's every month, and when they announced that he was seriously ill, without naming the disease, I think a lot of us were able to "read between the lines" and figured it was HIV. At that time there was a lot of stigma attaced to AIDS, so you'd see all sorts of death notices for famous people that went along the lines of "died after a long illness" without ever mentioning what it was that did them in. It was code for "AIDS got them".

Hey, maybe in some alternate Futurama universe his head's in a

Eitehr Marlowe or Bacon.

[Shadow Wrought]

Oh, you meant Asimov, not Shakespeare;-)

Well, I certainly won't discount a ghostwriter, but consider the sheer volume of his output, mistakes are invariably going to happen also. Maybe his humaness didn't come from his greed so much as being capable of making the simplest of mistakes. I do remember reading once that he rarely, if ever, went back through and edited what he wrote. So it is a bit more understandable that didn't catch the mistake because he never read it again.

HM...

[Jerry Smith]

First: I thought he died of bowel-cancer. And second: I thought he kept quiet about the donation causing it, to not scare people of donating blood. And third: he was _arrogant_, to the point that he didn't bother to check the facts because his memory was infallible. Then again: I recently read the Robot-books again, and still was as fascinated as I was the first time I read them.

That's what I know.