Paul Flocken
Posts: 290
Joined: Dec. 2005
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Isaac Asimov wrote it. It is one of what he called his short-shorts. It's probably been twenty years since I read it but give me a minute.
Ah now. Here it is in full. Isaac has been my absolute favorite author for almost thirty years. The first book I ever read by him was given to me when I was in second grade. It was Asimov on Astronomy and was a F&SF magazine essay collection. Not to derail this thread, but anyone care to expound on their favorite authors and the books that got them started?
HOW IT HAPPENED by Isaac Asimov
My brother began to dictate in his best oratorical style, the one which has the tribes hanging on his words.
“In the beginning,” he said, “exactly fifteen point two billion years ago, there was a big bang and the Universe–”
But I had stopped writing. “Fifteen billion years ago?” I said incredulously.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m inspired.”
“I don’t question your inspiration,” I said. (I had better not. He’s three years younger than I am, but I don’t try questioning his inspiration. Neither does anyone else or there’s #### to pay.) “But are you going to tell the story of Creation over a period of fifteen billion years?”
“I have to,” said my brother. “That’s how long it took. I have it all here,” he tapped his forehead, “and it’s on the very highest authority.”
By now I had put down my stylus. “Do you know the price of papyrus?” I said.
“What?” (He may be inspired but I frequently noticed that the inspiration didn’t include such sordid matters as the price of papyrus.
I said, “Suppose you describe one million years of events to each roll of papyrus. That means you’ll have to fill fifteen thousand rolls.
You’ll have to talk long enough to fill them and you know that you begin to stammer after a while. I’ll have to write enough to fill them and my fingers will fall off. And even if we can afford all that papyrus and you have the voice and I have the strength, who’s going to copy it? We’ve got to have a guarantee of a hundred copies before we can publish and without that where will we get the royalties from?”
My brother thought a while. He said, “You think I ought to cut it down?”
“Way down,” I said, “if you expect to reach the public.”
“How about a hundred years?” he said.
“How about six days?” I said.
He said, horrified, “You can’t squeeze Creation into six days.”
I said, “This is all the papyrus I have. What do YOU think?”
“Oh well,” he said, and began to dictate again, “In the beginning — does it have to be six days, Aaron?”
I said, firmly, “Six days, Moses.”
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"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
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? (sigh) Well, if that's all we can manage, I guess I'll have to leave out a few things. Trilobites. Dinosaurs. Continental drift. (sigh).
