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is going to search, but it is going to take an entire novel. I imagine I can do it, but I also have this horrible feeling that I'm no longer in my twenties, that The Foundation Trilogy was coterminus with my twenties. I started writing the stories at the age of 21 and I finished it at the age of 29. And now I can write much more skillfully than I could then. I am technically more proficient, but I also somehow lack some of that energy, you know? And I'm going to end up with a book which reads much more smoothly and somehow grabs people much less, I'm sure.
Gunn: You are going to do it?
A.: Well, if I ever get around to it, but I dread it. I really dread it. I fear, I fear people saying, "The Foundation Trilogy is great, but don't read that fourth volume." (Laughter)
Gunn: Let me get to a particular point of a particular story that seems anomalous in "Green Patches."
A.: Yes.
Gunn: If I read it correctly, the story talks about the little multipliers in the darkness, which apparently are bacteria, green-patch bacteria the attempt to solve the problem has failed. And I wondered that's one of the few cases, I think if that reading is correct where reason and the exercise of common caution and so forth fails in one of your stories. Is that a correct reading?
A.: Well, you know, I don't remember. The only thing I remember about that story is that I was demoralized in the middle. I had gotten halfway through and I suddenly realized that I was writing an infinitely inferior what was the name of John's story that I liked so much? oh, "Who Goes There?" I was writing an infinitely inferior "Who Goes There?" And I was halfway through it when I realized it and I called up John and I said what I was writing and I said, John, it's just like your story "Who Goes There?" Oh, well I said, Mr. Campbell now I say John, but in those days I always said "Mr. Campbell,'' to the very end. And he never said, he never said, call me "John," either. He always called me "Asimov" not "Mr. Asimov," just "Asimov." Anyway
Gunn: Proper teacher and student relationship.
A.: Right. Absolutely, absolutely. Now I say "John," and when I think back, I always describe myself as saying "John" (laughter) but I never said that. As a matter of fact my college professor, Dr. Dawson, whom I always called "Dr. Dawson" I was there at a luncheon celebrating his retirement and I'm his most prominent pupil, and I finally could bring myself to say "Charlie," always with a little hesitation. (Laughter). Anyway, I called up Campbell and told him about this, and he said, "Oh, don't worry about it, Asimov, you go right ahead; no two

 
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