Dear Isaac

Dear Isaac~

I wanted to do research on you before writing this.  To be as thorough as you were, to honor you in that way.  I had started.  Twenty pages on Wikipedia, and still it didn’t say anything about what you meant to me, what you still mean to me.

There was a time in the 80’s when you were giving a talk at one of the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C.  I signed up.  After I arrived in the theater/auditorium, only a few more trickled in.  I think there were five or seven of us.  Did you leave in a huff of injured pride?  No.  You came to the edge of the stage and squatted there, talking to us in an interactive dialog fashion.  You had committed this time on your schedule.  You had attendees.  You shared of yourself what there was to share.

As a budding, hopeful science fiction writer, that treatment by you of me as a peer was incredibly moving.  I cry now, thinking back on it.  Those are two of your qualities I strive to emulate:  your humility and your easy acceptance of yourself and others.  And there is more.  Your versatility and quality as a writer, publishing prolifically in science as well as science fiction (plus some mystery and other stuff thrown in).  These I admire and attempt to emulate in my own way.

You were known for your ability to tell a novel-length story primarily through dialog (quite challenging, experts say), and you did it in such a way that, as a reader, I never noticed.  You made your writing transparent, so I was caught up in your stories and not in admiration of your skill.  Your accessibility on a human level at science fiction conventions was legendary.  Had I the confidence then that I now have as a writer, I would have attended and sought you out.  And certainly chuckled at your predictably self-deprecating humor.

What was publicly known about your character, and what I thought I could perceive through your writing and public presence, I admired.  Now, facing end-of-life issues, I keep one of your quotes around to reassure me there are those who care:

"No decent human being would allow an animal to suffer without putting it out of its misery.  It is only to human beings that human beings are so cruel as to allow them to live on in pain, in hopelessness, in living death, without moving a muscle to help them.  It is against such attitudes that this book fights."

~ Isaac Asimov, on Final Exit:  The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying by Derek Humphrey.

Who knew there were more aspects to your character that I could admire?  You are one of my primary role models, certainly beating out Einstein.  Rest in peace, friend of my soul.  May I one day have the chance to encounter your beautiful spirit again.

Namaste’

Misha Bear