Isaac Asimov: Science, Technology and Space

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Space settlements won't be made entirely of metal and glass and concrete. There will be areas given over to agriculture, to the raising of plants and small animals . . . both those species that are useful and some others that aren't necessary but please us aesthetically. But we'll want to exclude disease germs, or plants and animals that we would consider harmful. So we'll try to form a kind of simplified ecology that includes only those "companions" that we find beneficial in some way.

PLOWBOY: I was really wondering what role you see for the natural world on Earth. Do you see that world as intrinsically important?

ASIMOV: It is important in that it's loaded with variety. Anything that's done to decrease that variety is likely to lessen the natural world's value and usefulness. On the other hand, ecological balances have shifted constantly through the history of life . . . and have sometimes done so drastically. We can't suppose that there is some cosmic rule which says the ecology must exist forever as it exists now.

And, in fact, I look forward to a multiplicity of human habitats and a multiplicity of ecologies! Not only will we have the enormous lifework and interdependence of Earth's natural system—one that I would be reluctant to see us interfere with—but we would have other habitats, each with its own ecological lacework. The sum total may represent a new level of complication beyond that which we have now.

Space settlers may someday feel sorry for Earth residents, who have only one limited ecology and are so much at the mercy of their natural environment.

PLOWBOY: Those are interesting points. Still, it seems as if every time I ask you about Earth's environment, you end up talking about space again.

ASIMOV: I guess for me everything does come back to space. Maybe that's because I've been writing science fiction all these years . . . but I definitely believe that humanity's destiny will be found in expansion beyond our planet's surface.

I told you before that I'm pessimistic about our short term future, and I am. But if we do manage to solve the immediate problems, to control population, to achieve some sort of international cooperation, and to move out into space . . . then after that, I'm very optimistic. It may be shortsightedness on my part that I fail to see the obstacles behind those that now exist, or that I dismiss those future predicaments by saying, "Well, we'll be able to solve them."

And maybe I'm wrong. But it seems to me that if we can solve our immediate problems—those that will come up in the next three decades or so—and get out into space . . . we'll have relatively clear sailing from there on!

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