Isaac Asimov is well known to both Science Fiction fans and Mystery readers. In the 1970s, Ike wrote a straight Mystery series for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine about a group of men called The Black Widowers. This invitation by Frederic Dannay shouldn’t surprise anyone. Ike had cut his mystery-writing teeth since the 1950s with mysteries set in Science Fictional setting, usually featuring robots. For these stories, click here.
Now back in the early 1950s, Asimov complained though there were SF detectives, none of them had really played fair. The detective either solved the problem by some fantastic gizmo or some obscure knowledge unknowable to readers.
Asimov wrote in the introduction to Asimov’s Mysteries (1968):
Back in the late 1945, this was finally explained to me [by John W. Campbell]. I was told that ‘by its very nature’ science fiction would not play fair with the reader. In a science fiction story, the detective could say, ‘But as you know, Watson, ever since 2175, when all Spaniards learned to speak French, Spanish has been a dead language. How came Juan Lopez, then, to speak those significant words in Spanish!’ Or else, he could have his detective whip out an odd device and say, ‘As you know, Watson, my pocket frannistan is perfectly capable of detecting the hidden jewel in a trice.’
Such arguments did not impress me. It seemed to me that ordinary mystery writers (non-science-fiction variety) could be just as unfair to the readers. They could deliberately hide a necessary clue. They could introduce an additional character from nowhere. They could simply forget about something over which they had been making a great deal of fuss, and mention it no more. They could do anything. The point was, though, that they didn’t do anything…
If you’d like to read the rest, please check out Monster 3:From the Pages of Dark Worlds Quarterly