Big Game (short story)

Big Game is a short story (1,000 words) by the American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. He wrote it in November 1941 when he was 21, failed to sell it to any magazine, and eventually lost the manuscript. When in 1972 Asimov compiled a collection of his earliest stories, The Early Asimov, he listed "Big Game" as the last of eleven stories which he had failed to publish anywhere and which he thought were lost forever. However a fan of his, Matthew B. Tepper,[1] discovered the missing manuscript in a collection of Asimov's old papers which were archived in the library of Boston University and sent it to him. Asimov included it in an anthology he was editing at the time, Before the Golden Age (1974), although he pointed out that he had re-used the plot of the rejected story to write "Day of the Hunters" in 1950.[2]

"Big Game"
AuthorIsaac Asimov
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Science fiction short story
Published inBefore the Golden Age
PublisherDoubleday
Media typeBook
Publication dateApril 1974

Plot summary

The entire story consists of a conversation in a bar. A drunk man tries to convince his audience that ten years ago he built a time machine and travelled back to before the extinction of the dinosaurs, where he met an intelligent race of humanoid dinosaurs who communicated with him telepathically. These dinosaurs enthusiastically hunted other dinosaur species as game. The drunk believes that when they wiped out all other species, they turned on each other, and that is the true cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs. He concludes by observing that humans are likely to end up the same way.

Significance in Asimov's personal life

Asimov read the manuscript aloud at a meeting of the Brooklyn Authors Club, and one of the attendees was so impressed by the story that he invited Asimov on a double date. Since Asimov had no girlfriend, a blind date was arranged, and this was how Asimov met his first wife.[3]

gollark: I mean, outside of toy models or whatever.
gollark: Maybe you could make a good scifi thing a hundred years in the future or something about faster computers/better optimization algorithms/distributed system designs/something making central planning more tractable. Although in the future supply chains will probably be even more complex. But right now, it is NOT practical.
gollark: In any case, if you have a planned system and some new need comes up... what do you do, spend weeks updating the models and rerunning them? That is not really quick enough.
gollark: If you want to factor in each individual location's needs in some giant model, you'll run into issues like:- people lying- it would be horrifically complex
gollark: Information flow: imagine some farmer, due to some detail of their climate/environment, needs extra wood or something. But the central planning models just say "each farmer needs 100 units of wood for farming 10 units of pig"; what are they meant to do?

See also

References
  1. Asimov, I. (1981). In Joy Still Felt. Avon Books. p. 582.
  2. Asimov, I. (1973) Buy Jupiter and Other Stories Doubleday
  3. Asimov, I. (1980) In Memory Yet Green, Avon Books, pp. 329–330, 363–364

Further reading
  • Asimov, I. (1976). "Before the Golden Age 4". Orbit. pp. 147–148 and 151. (Originally published as a single volume by Doubleday, 1974, ISBN 0-385-02419-3.)
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