I occasionally visited Jack to help with word processing questions on his Radio Shack Model I computer. He talked Isaac Asimov into becoming a spokesman for Radio Shack computers. He would always discuss my opinion on plot developments for whatever novel he was working on. He also expressed his joy at how well his work was accepted in Japan, but his disappointment that he received no royalties from his sales there.

Thanks for bringing back some good memories.

I’d actually argue for those who were born around 1830 or so, especially in the North American countryside.  They would have known a life in the 1840s that was still almost medieval.  If they lived to 100, on the other hand, they ended their days in the age of trains, electricity, streetcars, automobiles, zeppelins, passenger planes, radio, television, even videophones (yes, circa 1930, look it up), etc.  Outside of nuclear power, computers, and limited space travel, it could be argued that we haven’t added that much to the world of 1930.  No flying cars, no space colonies, no intelligent robots.  Our planes have become bigger and our other technologies have become much more comfortable and convenient, but the changes haven’t been as significant.  That is partly why science fiction exerted such a pull in the 1930s and 1940s.  Everything seemed possible because of what had already happened.

This one intrigues me. I believe there were maybe a couple of dozen veterans of the US Civil War, Confederate & Union. who served underage, say born ~1850, and lasted to nearly 100 years old. Perhaps a couple also saw battle. So what they initially saw was fighting little advanced from 500 years earlier, only to eventually see, assuming mental clarity in old age, the atomic bomb dropped on Japan, a device so terrible, even at Hiroshima/Nagasaki size, it has never been used again and likely never will by a rational stockpile holder.

I doubt someone sought out an individual like this and recorded their post WWII observations which would be the first thing I would do if a time machine could be invented.

And the reason I wanted Jack as a GoH was that October 2003 would mark the 75th anniversary of the publication of his first story.  75 years … something to marvel.

I’ll ave to check out “The Humanoids”. Any old dude dude that makes so trippy a video has to be cool. I may have already read some of his stuff, but I don’t recall doing so.

Also, I love Jack’s accent and voice in that video. He sounds more like a Civil War vet than a science fiction visionary.