Like many others, I was deeply troubled by the article written about one of scifi’s greats – Isaac Asmiov – for all his success as an author, he wasn’t a nice person. Reading through the details, it underscores yet another reason I don’t want to be famous. More and more, notoriety sounds like a problem rather than a solution.
“’Whenever we walked up the stairs with a young woman, I made sure to walk behind her so Isaac wouldn’t grab her tush,” the writer Harlan Ellison is quoted as saying in Nat Segaloff’s biography A Lit Fuse (2017). “He didn’t mean anything by it—times were different—but that was Isaac.’ […] The damage he caused was inseparable from his power. In general, Asimov chose targets who were unlikely to protest directly, such as fans and secretaries, and spared women whom he saw as professionally useful.” You can read the full story below:
My takeaway from all of this is, I’d like to think that I’d be one to stand up to Asimov. Maybe every other person quoted in the article feels the same way. When confronted by success and fame, Asimov succumbed to his baser instincts, and his reputation will forever bear that mark.
These are things I think about as I contemplate Mesh and it’s potential success. I’ve done my time being a person who can’t stand to look in the mirror. I have no interest in anything resembling that again, so like an alcoholic who avoids bars, I’m gunshy of any circumstance where something like this could happen to me.
If all power corrupts, then so can all fame, because in this society fame is power. One cannot ignore the corrupting influence of fame on otherwise civilized individuals. Just as there are dozens of horror stories about the destructive influence of fame, when was the last time you heard about fame making someone into a better person?
Again and again and again, I’m here to tell stories. Fame won’t help me do that. I’ll talk more later about the financial side of creativity, but I wanted to jot some thoughts down while I work on other things.