A Letter from Isaac Asimov to His Wife Janet, Written On His Deathbed.
One night, studying an egg tray in my kitchen, that first novel fell together in my mind: apes blowing blood into the air, the robot nymphs dipping their slender metal legs into an ammonia brook.
I began those flights from Earth in plywood space capsules, fleeing to a place Satan could not find. That was my hope. Getting away from the chain letters, fever, rats, and unemployment, away from the dark uncles that strayed over the globe, cutting the brake lines and loosening screws.
And as a Jew I asked myself what good are hidden things, and as a Jew I admonished myself for asking. I knew that the best things were hidden, and all of this was said in a private voice, a cousin to the one I used to speak to pets.
I am writing this under the illumination of an old American stereo. For once I don’t want to know the weather forecast. In fact, I can’t bear to hear it. The jealousy would kill me before midnight. Perhaps they will make jokes at Doubleday tomorrow. I can imagine an intern asking, “What were his last ten thousand words…”
I want to know too. From my sickbed I’ve seen cellophane rams shimmering in the yard and cardinals that look like quarts of blood balanced in the branches. The doctor calls them apparitions. Perhaps my last words will be random.
I am so drowsy, here listening to the wild dressage of a housefly, thinking about the loyal robots in my paperbacks. Thinking about the little chalet I would have built for you on Neptune.
A Neptune indiscernible from Vermont.
/end ID.]
written by David Berman (whew, I didn’t think Asimov could write quite like that)
