It's Been a Good Life [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

The initial chapters of the book are ordered chronologically, beginning with Asimov's birth in Russia and his arrival in the United States in 1923, and continue onward from his youth in Brooklyn, his beginnings as a writer, marriage, fatherhood, divorce, remarriage, and his last years of declining health. Janet Asimov has interwoven accounts from all three of the earlier volumes, supplementing his earliest autobiographical recollections with the additional reflections of their significance that came a bit later in his life. She fills the abridgements and adds her own brief commentary with parenthetical remarks, aiming to tread lightly so as not to interfere with the story at hand. Throughout the book she also sprinkles excerpts from the many letters he had written to her over the years, giving the reader a first look at the personal insights shared during their correspondence. Those letters were also used by Janet to compose "A Way of Thinking", Asimov's 400th essay for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which appears as an appendix to the book.

The selections chosen paint a portrait of who Isaac Asimov was. The pinnacle of quiet, peaceful happiness in his youth was to spend a summer afternoon sitting in a chair tipped back against the wall of his parents' candy store, with a book in his lap, lost in the world of the slowly turning pages. As an adult, his favorite day was one with cold and unpleasant weather, spent in comfort and security in front of his typewriter. Growing up, he learned to love science fiction, and in turn science, and found his calling as a writer and explainer. He became a fearless defender of rationality and reason, denouncing folly and superstition at every turn, and embraced the label of humanist, one who believes that both the triumphs and ills of society are the product of humanity alone, not a supernatural power.

A revised version of the epilogue that appeared in the 1994 volume I. Asimov, has drawn a great deal of interest, for it reveals that Asimov's death was a consequence of AIDS contracted from a transfusion of tainted blood received from a 1983 triple bypass operation. Janet explains the circumstances that led to the discovery that he had the disease, and why his doctors convinced him to keep it a secret from the public. The epilogue includes a description of Asimov's final days, together with some poignant passages that describe his views of life and death.

Even for those who have read the previously published autobiographical works, IT'S BEEN A GOOD LIFE is a very worthwhile read, and for those that haven't, the new book provides a fine means to gain an insight into the life of the most prolific author of twentieth century America. Ten years have now passed since his death, and this book affords a new opportunity to reflect upon the life he lived. It WAS a good life, and appropriately enough, the story of his life is a good one indeed.

This book both benefits and suffers from its source material: the best chapters are those on Asimov's early life and career, and were extracted from his first volume of autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, which was strongly narrative and, as a result, stronger; the second volume, In Joy Still Felt, was more anecdotal and quotidian, as Asimov settled into the routine of a workaholic full-time writer, and as a result yielded less insightful material to excerpt.

Like Asimov's third autobiography, I. Asimov: A Memoir, and his collection of letters, Yours, Isaac Asimov, the chapters are topical. While some chapters are solid, others are quite thin: the chapters that simply collect funny anecdotes could have been dispensed with. For example, Chapter 26, "The Bible", includes a couple of not-very-illuminating anecdotes related to Asimov's Guide to the Bible, and could have been folded, along with the chapter on humanism, into a longer chapter on religion and unbelief. I would have preferred fewer, longer chapters that went into more depth. Substantial introductory and connective material to piece Asimov's own work together would have strengthened the book; instead, we're given passages that sometimes look like they were excerpted, word by word, with a razor blade.

On a more mundane level, the proofreading is sometimes surprisingly bad, with several misspelled authors' names and even one book title ("I, Robert"?!?) -- just the sort of thing that Isaac would have found bothersome.