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(More customer reviews)Isaac Asimov's three volumes of autobiography published in the seventies, eighties and nineties totaled over 2100 pages and 870,000 words. To condense such an enormous amount of detail down to a manageable 300 or so pages, with the addition of enough new material to make the book fresh and interesting, while keeping the story of Isaac's magnificent life lively and entertaining must have been a daunting task, but Janet Jeppson Asimov has done it well. Make no mistake, IT'S BEEN A GOOD LIFE is an autobiography, told in Isaac Asimov's own words, yet it is also the story of his life as Janet Asimov has chosen to tell it.
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.
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