Why Isaac Asimov turned down an offer to write a sci-fi film from Steven Spielberg

1977 Steven Spielberg film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was an aberration when it was released in 1977. American cinema, throughout the 1970s, was best known for its bold, adult exploration of adult stories based on harsh reality. It was a time when the first generation of film students was beginning to take the country by storm and filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Roman Polanski, and Woody Allen were pushing cinema in new directions. George Lucas’ “Star Wars” in 1977 and Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” and “Close Encounters” were outliers, in that they were based on fantasy, science fiction and special effects. The whole world loved Lucas and Spielberg’s films, but it’s telling that Allen’s “Annie Hall” won the Best Picture Oscar over “Star Wars.”

“Close Encounters” was the most cerebral of the science fiction hits, exploring the real-life history of modern UFOs in the context of a thriller. The film starred Richard Dreyfuss as a guy who recently encountered a flying saucer and was suddenly struck by images and urges he couldn’t explain. He was led to travel to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, where the climax of the film takes place. “Close Encounters” is most famous for the climactic sequence, in which a massive UFO appears on Earth and aliens emerge to greet hundreds of researchers. Spielberg is the credited author of “Close Encounters,” and it contains the filmmaker’s signature sense of dread.

Here are some fun anecdotes: Spielberg once approached famous science fiction author Isaac Asimov to write the screenplay. In a 1988 interview with the Los Angeles TimesAsimov revealed that he was definitely approached and hurriedly turned down the job. It seems he didn’t want to write a UFO story glorifying flying saucers.

Asimov started off by saying that he rejected Spielberg’s offer because, well, he didn’t know who this Spielberg kid was. “I didn’t know who he was at the time, or how successful the film was going to be,” Asimov said. “I would still have refused, but with even more regret.” This was, of course, a joke about the eventual mega-success of “Close Encounters.” The main reason he turned down the film was that, as he remembered it, it had a stupid story. As he said:

“[‘Close Encounters’ was]in some ways a silly plot. [Hollywood sci-fi films] sacrificing common sense and rationality for special effects. […] Honestly, I’d rather stay at home and write my books.”

Asimov wrote many crazy science fiction stories set in the distant future and often dealing with fantastical technologies like robots etc., but he was always careful to keep his fantasy in the realm of the practical. At the very least, he wanted to explore the philosophy of new technologies; we all know Asimov’s rules of robotics, the commandments that must be implanted into every android’s brain if we are to escape a robot takeover.

Asimov lamented the current state of science fiction in 1988, knowing that, thanks to the success of “Star Wars” the previous decade, visual effects had come to overwhelm the genre. “[D]Modern science fiction won’t do well,” he said, “because people want special effects…they have come to dominate.” He added that if visual effects were not a problem, then “400 million people would read my books.” Asimov was always popular, but was not a blockbuster creator like George Lucas.

Asimov died in 1992, but his works currently inspire many successes. “Foundation” is currently streaming on Apple TV.