Reddit reviews Yours, Isaac Asimov: A Lifetime of Letters

I'm jealous!

I've been an Asimov fan for years, and your post made me recall this book that I read several years ago. It is well-edited and I found it to be quite interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/Yours-Isaac-Asimov-Life-Letters/dp/0385476248

Here's what fellow author Frederick Pohl said about this:

> But by the latter ’60s, he had become a good deal more adventurous. On meeting an attractive woman — one who was not obviously the Most Significant Other of some male friend — he was inclined to touch her … not immediately on any Off Limits part of her anatomy but in a fairly fondling way. (When I called him on it once, he said, “It’s like the old saying. You get slapped a lot, but you get laid a lot, too.”)

I also think you're too quick to dismiss the article you linked to - the letters between the Chicon chair and Asimov include both a clear reference to Asimov's behavior, both in the nature of the request itself and the comment, "frankly, your reputation". Asimov acknowledges this in his response, saying "...there is some age at which I ought to gain a kind of minimal dignity suiting my age position in life."

There is also apparently some discussion of these issues in Asimov's letters published in the book Yours, Isaac Asimov. One of the Amazon reviews mentions this, saying:

> "...and combination of feminist sympathies with a habit of what he calls "flirting" with women (but it's likely to make a contemporary reader think of sexual harassment lawsuits)."

I'm a big fan of Asimov's (more his non-fiction than much of his scifi), but that's not going to cause me to simply try to deny that he might have been imperfect. The article you linked to has a good take on that, reminding us that the problem was not just with the individuals who engaged in such behavior, but with the society that tolerated and even condoned it:

> [The slogan "We Don't Do That Anymore"] reminds us all that we have all been a part of a cultural of sexual harassment at conventions. We have been harassed and not reported it. We have crossed boundaries and not known. We have been told we crossed boundaries and not known how to make amends. We have witnessed and not intervened.

> “Don’t Do That.” But now we know better. Now we have been educated and informed. We have strategies and plans. We have people and institutions that we can trust to help us navigate the muddy waters of harassment.

> “Anymore.” We have failed in the past. We intend to fail less in the future.