The Story I Read: "Black Friar of the Flame" by Isaac Asimov

Public Domain

 This was the thirteenth story that Isaac Asimov wrote...and apparently it is one of his least favorite pieces. (In fact, in the afterward he even says that it is not a "good" story.) It also seems to be disliked by his fans, and Wikipedia says that it "has a reputation as Asimov's worst story" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friar_of_the_Flame). 

I liked it, though, and see it as pretty pivotal in several ways.

First off, it marks the last time that Asimov did such extensive re-writing. (He rewrote the story six times, mostly in an effort to get John W. Campbell to accept it for Astounding Science Fiction. After this story, he says in the afterword, he decided that if an editor required extensive revisions, he was either not the right editor for the story or the story was not worthy of being published. An interesting perspective. It also makes me wonder about editors. Who's to say that  Maxwell Perkins improved Thomas Wolfe's O Lost? I've never read Wolfe's original version, so I wouldn't know. (Although now part of my brain is thinking, "I could read both of them as part of my Daily Devotional Reading program, couldn't I?" After all, at 544 and 694 pages (Amazon numbers), we're only talking about a two month commitment at most.)

Second off, it was Asimov's first stab at Galactic Empire fiction, which is pretty much considered his thing now...with a side order of Robots, of course--none of which show up in this story.

Third off, and closely allied with second off, there are several mentions of Trantor in this story, and Trantor is at the very heart of the Foundation series, so if you're going to include Pebble in the Sky in the Full Frontal Foundation reading list, then why isn't "Black Friar of the Flame" included, Wikipedia?

And fourth off, in my experience, Asimov rarely writes about aliens in his stories. But The Lhasinu are not only an "alien" species, they actually look a bit like reptiles. So that's a plus.

And perhaps fifth off, though I'm not completely confident about this one, I don't think Asimov often wrote fiction about religious matters, but even after editorial intrusion, a religious heart remains here. So that's another plus.

In fact, the only thing I didn't like about this story was the military solution enacted in order to attempt to defeat the Aliens. I'm going to go ahead and spoil it, because it doesn't really matter very much: the Earth ships are equipped with spear-tips, and they stab the Alien ships with them. There are a whole lot of reasons that that wouldn't work, and as a scientist (and a hard science fiction-y writer), Asimov was well aware of all of those reasons. So why did he write such a stupid thing into this story? 

By the way, I read this story in the collection The Early Asimov, which reprints stories from very early on is his writing career...stories which have not seen the light of day since they were first published in magazine form. (I think that's true, at least. It's definitely true for "Black Friar of the Flame.") Since the stories are surrounded by Asimov's reflections on them, it also serves as a kind of autobiography (specifically of the years 1938 to 1949). And I've been enjoying it immensely. For one thing, I love Isaac Asimov, and have for some time been intending to re-read the two volumes autobiography he wrote, so this serves as a ramp up to that project. For another thing, I love to see a writer develop, and this book gives you ample opportunity to see Asimov grow. In fact, just in these first few stories ("Black Friar" was the 6th in the book) I've seen him growing in various ways, becoming more confident and adept. It's good fun. Highly recommended. And even though I'm just a little ways in, I feel that I can say that with confidence because (1) each story gets a little bit better than the one before and (2) I read this book before...admittedly a long time ago, but the taste of a bad book lasts a lifetime, and I'm not getting any hint of that.