Half-Breed (short story)

Last updated
"Half-Breed"
Author Isaac Asimov
Country United States
Language English
SeriesTweenie
Genre(s) Science fiction
Published in Astonishing Stories
Publisher Popular Publications
Media typeMagazine
Publication dateFebruary 1940
Followed by"Half-Breeds on Venus"

"Half-Breed" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the February 1940 issue of Astonishing Stories and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov . It was the fifteenth story written by Asimov, and the fourth to be published. At 9000 words, it was his longest published story to date.

Science fiction Genre of speculative fiction

Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction, typically dealing with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, and extraterrestrial life. Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a "literature of ideas."

Short story Brief work of literature, usually written in narrative prose

A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a "single effect" or mood, however there are many exceptions to this.

Isaac Asimov American science-fiction and non-fiction writer

Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov was a prolific writer who wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification.

Contents

"Half-Breed" was written in June 1939, and submitted to (and subsequently rejected by) Amazing Stories and Astounding Science Fiction before being accepted by Frederik Pohl in October for his new magazine Astonishing Stories.

<i>Amazing Stories</i> American science fiction magazine

Amazing Stories is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Science fiction stories had made regular appearances in other magazines, including some published by Gernsback, but Amazing helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction.

Frederik Pohl American science fiction writer and editor

Frederik George Pohl Jr. was an American science-fiction writer, editor, and fan, with a career spanning more than 75 years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", to the 2011 novel All the Lives He Led and articles and essays published in 2012.

Asimov wrote a sequel to the story, titled "Half-Breeds on Venus".

Half-Breeds on Venus short story by Isaac Asimov

"Half-Breeds on Venus" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov was asked by Frederik Pohl, editor of Astonishing Stories, to write a sequel to his earlier Tweenie story "Half-Breed", and he spent April and May 1940 doing so. He submitted the sequel to Pohl on June 3, and Pohl accepted it on the 14th, running it in the December 1940 issue of Astonishing. Asimov subsequently included the story in his 1972 collection The Early Asimov.

Plot summary

Jefferson Scanlon, a struggling scientist, is trying, and failing, to develop a cheap and reliable method of generating atomic power. While he is taking a walk to think over his work, he rescues a nineteen-year-old orphan "Tweenie", the off-spring of human and Martian parents, from a gang of teenagers. The Tweenie, Max, had escaped from the orphanage where he was raised following the death of his only friend, a fifteen-year-old Tweenie named Tom. Tweenies are despised and treated as subhuman by the general population, but Scanlon takes pity on Max, and invites him into his home. Max has picked up a scientific education at the orphanage, and within a week his insight helps Scanlon solve his problem and develop a workable atomic power source. Scanlon decides to formally adopt Max as his son.

Scientist person that studies a science

A scientist is someone who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of interest.

Martian extraterrestrial life

A Martian is a native inhabitant of the planet Mars. Although the search for evidence of life on Mars continues, many science fiction writers have imagined what extraterrestrial life on Mars might be like. Some writers also use the word Martian to describe a human colonist on Mars.

A year later, Scanlon has become wealthy and famous. He realizes that Max is lonely for others of his kind, and he adopts a young Tweenie woman named Madeline, along with two younger Tweenie girls from Madeline's orphanage. Scanlon decides to use his wealth to adopt all the other homeless Tweenies on Earth, and to establish a town in Ohio, Tweenietown, where they can run their own society free from prejudice. Max and the other Tweenies also assist Scanlon to further scientific developments such as a gravity shield.

Earth Third planet from the Sun in the Solar System

Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. According to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed over 4.5 billion years ago. Earth's gravity interacts with other objects in space, especially the Sun and the Moon, Earth's only natural satellite. Earth revolves around the Sun in 365.26 days, a period known as an Earth year. During this time, Earth rotates about its axis about 366.26 times.

Ohio State of the United States of America

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Of the fifty states, it is the 34th largest by area, the seventh most populous, and the tenth most densely populated. The state's capital and largest city is Columbus.

Gravity Curvature of spacetime attracting uneven distribution of masses together

Gravity, or gravitation, is a natural phenomenon by which all things with mass or energy—including planets, stars, galaxies, and even light—are brought toward one another. On Earth, gravity gives weight to physical objects, and the Moon's gravity causes the ocean tides. The gravitational attraction of the original gaseous matter present in the Universe caused it to begin coalescing, forming stars – and for the stars to group together into galaxies – so gravity is responsible for many of the large-scale structures in the Universe. Gravity has an infinite range, although its effects become increasingly weaker on farther objects.

Fifty years after the adoption of Madeline and the two girls, Tweenietown is a growing concern, with a population of 1,154. Scanlon asks a government official for help gaining full civil rights for the Tweenies, pointing out that the Tweenies are more intelligent than humans, and will one day be the leading race in the Solar System. After the official leaves, Max convinces Scanlon that the official, far from wanting to help them, now sees the Tweenies as a threat. Max also reveals that the Tweenies have spent the past five years building three interplanetary spaceships, and that they are determined to leave Earth and settle on Venus. Max invites Scanlon to come with them, but Scanlon decides to remain on Earth.

Venus Second planet from the Sun in the Solar System

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It has the longest rotation period of any planet in the Solar System and rotates in the opposite direction to most other planets. It does not have any natural satellites. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the second-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6 – bright enough to cast shadows at night and, rarely, visible to the naked eye in broad daylight. Orbiting within Earth's orbit, Venus is an inferior planet and never appears to venture far from the Sun; its maximum angular distance from the Sun (elongation) is 47.8°.

Story background

Half-Breed is set several centuries in the future: at one point, Scanlon notes with relief that it has been two centuries since a war was last fought on Earth, so there is no risk of his newly invented atomic power source being used as a weapon.

The presence of the Tweenies on Earth is unexplained by Asimov. Max, who is nineteen when Scanlon saves and adopts him, is the oldest Tweenie in the story, which suggests that the existence of the Tweenies is a recent phenomenon. This in turn implies that interplanetary travel is also a recent phenomenon, an implication supported by Scanlon's description of pre-atomic trips to Mars and Venus as "hazardous gambles". Another implication of the Tweenies' presence on Earth is that the native Martians will not allow them to remain on Mars. Those Tweenies who are on Earth were presumably brought there as infants by human spacemen returning from Mars. Their human parents (probably the crew of Earth ships who have traveled to Mars) have abandoned them, and they have become wards of the state, being raised in state-run orphanages.

When Scanlon goes searching for a female Tweenie companion for Max, he only finds one of a suitable age, which implies that the number of Tweenies on Earth at that time is small. Fifty years later, Tweenietown has a population of 1,154, some of which is undoubtedly due to natural increase by the original Tweenie population, and some of which is equally undoubtedly due to the arrival of more orphaned Tweenies from Mars (since Scanlon and Max's discovery of atomic power makes interplanetary travel more common).

In the fifty-one years that pass in the course of the story, the situation for the Tweenies remains unchanged on Earth. The Tweenies lack, as Scanlon notes, political, legal, economic, and social equality with humans (and, for that matter, with native Martians). Human (and Martian) hostility towards the Tweenies seems to be permanently ingrained.

Notes

Asimov wrote "Half-Breed" in June 1939. His new literary agent Frederik Pohl unsuccessfully submitted it to Amazing Stories . Asimov then submitted the story to John W. Campbell of Astounding Science Fiction , who also rejected it. Pohl announced in October his new job as editor of two magazines by purchasing "Half-Breed" for one. [1] It was Asimov's longest story to date at 9,000 words; "Half-Breed" was his first novelette and the first time his name appeared on the cover. [2]

As with his earlier story "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use", the theme of "Half-Breed" is the prejudice faced by minorities, something Asimov himself was familiar with due to his Jewish heritage. "I kept coming back to this theme very frequently," he wrote in The Early Asimov, "something not surprising in a Jew growing up during the Hitler era." [2] In I. Asimov he wrote, "The undercurrent of genteel anti-Semitism was always there . . . people such as the Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin and the aviation hero Charles Lindbergh openly expressed anti-Semitic views." However, he was also aware that "prejudice was universal and that all groups who were not dominant, who were not actually at the top of the status chain, were potential victims." [3]

Campbell of Astounding disagreed. Asimov noted in The Early Asimov that Campbell "seemed to me to accept the natural superiority of Americans over non-Americans, and he seemed automatically to assume the picture of an American as one who was of northwest European origin. I cannot say that Campbell was a racist in any evil sense of the term . . . . Nevertheless, he did seem to take for granted, somehow, the stereotype of the Nordic white as the true representative of Man the Explorer, Man the Darer, Man the Victor." [4]

Asimov admitted that by the standards of scientific knowledge in 1939, the possibility that Mars might have a native intelligent race was unlikely, and the possibility that Martians and humans would be interfertile was even more so. "I can only shake my head wearily," he wrote; "I knew better in 1939; I really did. I just accepted science fictional clichés, that's all. Eventually, I stopped doing that." Asimov also noted that "Half-Breed" was "the first story in which I tried to introduce the romantic motif, however light. It had to be a failure. At the time of the writing of this story, I had still never had a date with a girl." [2]

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References

  1. ↑ Asimov, Isaac (1972). The early Asimov; or, Eleven years of trying. Garden City NY: Doubleday. pp. 142–145.
  2. 1 2 3 Asimov, Isaac (1972). The early Asimov; or, Eleven years of trying. Garden City NY: Doubleday. pp. 166–169.
  3. ↑ Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov , ch. 7.
  4. ↑ Op sit.
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