Rising Star Adventure

Author Isaac Asimov

Prompt: Isaac Asimov, born on this day in 1920, once said "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." What are your thoughts on this quote? Is writing simply a brain-to-hand exercise, or is there more involved?

First, a bit of background on Isaac Asimov, or Isaak Ozimov, as he was born in Petrovichi, Russia (while it was still the USSR). He was born January 2, 1920 and died April 6, 1992 in Brooklyn, NY at the age of 72. (Technically, the exact date of his birth is unknown but somewhere between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1020, but he celebrated it on January 2.) He immigrated to the U.S. with his family at the age of 3 and became a naturalized citizen at age 8. Over time, he became a professor at Boston University in biochemistry and an author, mainly of science fiction and popular science.

He either wrote or edited over 500 books during his lifetime, along with many more short stories, letters, etc. He is considered one of the best science fiction writers of all time. In fact, his story, "Nightfall" was voted best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1964. He was also good friends with science fiction superstars, Kurt Vonnegut and Gene Roddenberry (creator of Star Trek). In addition, he coined several new words, including the word "robotics," still in use today.

Ultimately, he died of heart and kidney failure as the result of HIV that he contracted during a blood transfusion during his triple bypass surgery in 1983. The fact that he was HIV positive was withheld until about 10 yrs after his death when fear of the disease had been better replaced with some understanding.

Asimov wrote three autobiographies, but in 2002, his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov, edited them down to one work titled "It's Been a Good Life."

I left out giant chunks of a great man's life. I encourage you to read about him for yourself!

All information about Asimov was found on the link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov.

Now, to my official response to the prompt. I agree with him. Writing is thinking through our fingers. Now, naturally, we can think faster than we can type or write and we generally censor what we write, but in the end, that is what it is.

Our fingers, without our brain, are useless. However, our brain, by its very nature, thinks and desires to communicate. If it cannot communicate through one means, it will find another. Before we wrote down our stories, we had oral traditions of stories passed down from one generation to the next. If one could not speak or write, they would find another means, blinking, mouthing, looking at objects (or words on a board, if they are so lucky to have that), or even banging out Morse code with their head, as a movie once showed a Soldier doing after he'd lost his arms and legs and the ability to communicate in any other way. Our fingers are the instrument of our mind. We think and they act. They act and we communicate. We communicate and a sense of satisfaction seeps into our brain, affecting how we think next.

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