I’m rereading Foundation right now, probably the book I’ve reread the most.

My copy has brittle, yellowed pages with the slightly uneven typesetting you see in older books.

It’s so old that Salvor Hardin’s line is far superior, “The Galaxy is going to pot!” – something they changed after a few edits.

I wonder how much it shaped my view of the world.

How wisdom overcomes savagery, how decadence wants to destroy its own salvation, how a tiny and sterile particle of a world can divert the course of history…

It made me think.

Asimov was famously prolific. The guy could write like it was nobody’s business. Through a sheer tide of high quality quantity, he redefined the science fiction genre.

There is also another story of his life.

Ol’ Isaac saw a lot of himself in Hari Seldon, the genius of Foundation who launches a project that saves the galaxy from 29,000 years of anarchy and misery.

Seldon dies early in the story, off-screen, so to speak. It is not his story, but the story of what he left behind.

Asimov later wrote more about Seldon’s life, fleshing it out and stitching together the Foundation environment with his series of robots.

He was able to write more about this character that was such an important part of him.

He wrote about his funeral.

And he didn’t live long after that.

You could say that the timing was a coincidence. Or that he knew, consciously or not, that his days were short, so he finished his work in the time he had left.

I admit, both explanations are likely.

But there is another:

He mourned the death of his character, the death of himself in fictional form.

As a writer, I can’t stop thinking about this. I mean, Miyamoto Musashi died shortly after (or towards the end?) of writing his magnum opus as well.

I’m sure you can think of other examples, written or not, where the last thing a creator did was create something great or meaningful.

I know what the joke answer to that is.

“You never believe anything great, it’s dangerous!”

At least I hope it’s a joke. It’s 2020 and a lot of people have strange ideas about danger.

If you’re like me though?

That sounds beautiful.

We all die sometime. I plan to create my whole life, I can’t retire because it’s part of me.

The idea of ​​pouring the last of my essence into something sounds sublime. It’s the writer’s equivalent of dying gloriously in battle, I suppose.

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