Quatro-Decadal Review: Asimov’s Science Fiction, November 1989, edited by Gardner Dozois
An unappealing cover by Wayne Barlowe, more on that in a second
After the somewhat uninspiring November 1989 Analog, I turned next to Asimov’s, and found it to be pretty good.
Editorial — “Half Done” by Isaac Asimov
Starting with the quote ‘Half done is hardly begun,’ Isaac Asimov (That’s Dr. Asimov, if you’re nasty) jumps into looking at how we conceptualize and compare time. Starting with the fact the Earth is 15 billion years old, half of that is 7.5 billion years, before our solar system existed by easily 3 billion years. Earth itself comes into play 4.6 billion years ago., and half of that, 2.3 billion Earth life is just prokaryotes. At 1.4 eukaryotic cells start showing up. Half of that, 700 million years ago, the highest life is just worms, nothing that even has shells.
The exercise is to show how rapidly things start to change. Leading to the question of how long can it go on? How do we get off on setting stories in the future. On thinking we can even realistically do it?
While reading this essay I could not shake the knowledge that Asimov had four years of life left.
