That’s a bit of a stretch, even though Asimov was a notorious lech. In any event, although his first wife Gertrude was three years older than he was, his second wife Janet was only six years younger than him. It’s not like he shacked up with one of his fans or one of his students.
Also, he didn’t start seeing his second wife until after he had separated from his first wife and moved back to New York City.
(Yes, I have read all of Asimov’s autobiographies and even sent him a fan letter in high school…to which he replied by postcard.)
I don’t remember that, but it’s been decades since I’ve read those novels and I will take your word for it. I was referring more to the part where you said, “…like he himself had done.”
In the later Foundation books two characters that I can think of are middle-aged men who are unaccountably attractive to younger attractive women, but neither of them had a previous wife to leave (IIRC)
I was satisfied with the answer over at “StackExchange” but now it seems like you remember the story the same way I did, with the alien scout being in full black-and-white. Maybe there’s a second story with the same hook only as we both remember it. Especially given that cribbing was a big thing is comics.
While the majority of chapters (2/3?) are from the Human Perspective, another 1/3 are from the Alien Perspective in Illegal Aliens. There’s actually a couple of different “invasions” - from a First Contact with an interesting agenda (the first bit) to a second designed to deal with humanity. Different aliens are more and less sympathetic of course.
It’s a comedy of course, but a fun little book from my teens.
A couple came to mind, both by Eric Frank Russell. The first is basically a 21 page rarity called “Exposure” in which a spacecraft lands in what might be the Pacific northwest. The aliens, who are shapeshifters, grab up a couple of guys from an encampment on their way to catch some fish. Eight of them shift to look like the pair, duplicating their personal effects and are then dispatched to four nearby towns to do recon. The aliens made one fatal mistake. They didn’t realize that the two guys they grabbed as models for their scouts were coming from a nudist colony!
The other story is a novelette called “Legwork”. This one is a more serious work involving a single scout who comes down in a shuttlecraft. He’s a grade A hypno capable of mentally convincing you that you didn’t see him, saw him as your neighbor, whatever and is quite arrogant, and not unjusfifiably so. I recommend this one if you can find it.
What about the TV series “Resident Alien”? An alien on a mission to destroy Earth crash-lands and has to try to fit in as a human while attempting to locate his crashed ship and complete his mission. There are frequent voice-over comments from the alien showing us his perception of things.
Thank y’all for these suggestions. I just finished a novel and now have new things to put in my reading list. I read Footfall when I was in high school a few years (decades) ago. I should have thought of that one. I may reread it; it’s still on my bookshelf.
