July 25, 2002

10:58 AM

"Well then, can we fight the old-fashioned fun war, where you and an enemy choose up sides, and you pick out a place, and you throw bombs at them, and they throw bombs at you for four or five years, and then you decide who wins and who looses, who pays the indemnity, and who does the helping... Can't do that anymore, because nobody's got the gasoline for it. Except the Arabs. And they can't fight a war unless somebody gives them something to put the gasoline in. So we are already in a world without war. The only thing is that what we need in the 21st century is a world that realizes it's a world without war." - Issac Asimov circa 1974 [more]
posted by ZachsMind (6 comments total)

"And one more thing: If we have a world without racism, ageism, sexism, war...it's gonna be a pretty dull world. Here we have lived all through history with a certain amount of excitement and risk in the world, and it's sort of a shame to sort of sit around this careful cold world of the 21st century and thereafter, in which not only is everybody happy, but everyone's very cautious... Because, you know, we live by slogans. Immediately after World War II, our entire foreign policy was based on the slogan "No more Munich's". Until we got into the Vietnam war by shouting that, and now it's "No more Vietnams". And well, in the 21st century, I'll tell you the slogan right now. Those of you who will live into the 21st century, come put a wreath on my grave, because this will be the slogan: 'No more 20th centuries'."

Even dead, the man's still got it.
posted by ZachsMind at 10:59 AM on July 25, 2002

I never knew how annoying a laugh track in text could be... otherwise tho, a very interesting find.
posted by malphigian at 11:03 AM on July 25, 2002

Mal said, "...how annoying a laugh track in text could be..."

yeah I purposefully removed the laughtrack to quote it here in MeFi. =)

The whole darn thing is a fun read with lots of his patented dry humor & stuff that makes fans of Asimov cheer & dissenters of Asimov cringe, but the quote I used above is what made me think: oh gee! What would the guys at MeFi think about this one?

I especially like his explanation of why eventually we'll have to slow the birth rate rather than let nature force a death rate on us, and the whole generation gap argument. And how individuals are smart but people on the whole are stupid. Asimov wasn't into popularity contests, but he often described what he saw & though not 100% accurate was rather, perhaps annoyingly, prophetic.
posted by ZachsMind at 11:12 AM on July 25, 2002

Following the links from this link, I learned that Isaac Asimov dies of AIDS contracted in a transfusion during surgery, something only revealed by his family earlier this year.
posted by MattD at 11:33 AM on July 25, 2002

I doubt if Asimov would have mispelled "loses".
posted by Ben Grimm at 12:58 PM on July 25, 2002

Ben Grimm, are suggestion this is a hoax or something? Its a transcript, he's not the one doing the spelling. Or was that just a random snarky comment?
posted by malphigian at 1:22 PM on July 25, 2002