I heard back a little while ago from whoever runs the Pimsleur Approach Twitter feed in response to my contacting them about their company’s presumably unauthorized use of Isaac Asimov in its advertising.

Here’s what they had to say.

I’m happy to hear that the Good Doctor will be set free. Still waiting to hear back to my follow-up question asking what bizarre mix-up could have led to this happening in the first place, though—after all, Asimov didn’t get there on his own.

In case you were wondering, this morning, 48 hours after I first noticed it, the face of Isaac Asimov is still being used to tout Pimsleur Approach on the front page of the Huffington Post.

Only today, poor Isaac is doing it twice!

I’m hoping that since it’s no longer a weekend, someone at one of those two companies will quickly take notice of the fact that this is presumably an unauthorized usage and quickly put an end to it.

But what do you think the chances are of that?

I woke up today and checked the Huffington Post, as I often do as part of my morning new scrounge, and was surprised to spot Isaac Asimov’s head bouncing around in an ad for Pimsleur Approach.

Check out my (non-moving) screen grab.

I find it hard to believe that the use of his well-known face in this ad is authorized.

Isaac Asimov … endorsing Pimsleur? This can’t be a real thing. Can it? I don’t recall him ever writing anything on that subject, or hearing him pontificate on it, and a Google search only turns up a single reference that connects the two—and that’s for people who are equally as pissed off at seeing a great man misused by it as I am!

This traduces his memory and lessens his (though I kinda hate to use this word about the Good Doctor) brand.

So Pimsleur Approach people, just stop, OK? And if it’s not something the Pimsleur people did, but is instead the responsibility of the Huffington Post’s ad department, then they should knock it off. A photo of Isaac Asimov is not a stock image that can be used to imply endorsement.

I’ve written both companies to ask WTF is going on, and will let you know what I find out.

UPDATE: As of 9:00 a.m. Sunday morning, Asimov’s face is still shilling …

I interviewed Isaac Asimov on November 7, 1972—Election Day—for my high school alternative newspaper, Kong. When I ran across the tape last year, I discovered to my horror that three years later, I’d recorded over the first 31 minutes of that tape with a second interview, this one with Steve Gerber. So all that remains of my Asimov interview are these concluding five minutes.

Please don’t hate me … but you’re free to hate the impetuous 19-year-old me who reused the tape!

The photo embedded on the video below shows us in Doubleday’s Park Avenue offices. Isaac is wearing his traditional bolo necktie. Unfortunately, I can be seen wearing a puka shell necklace, which I guess I thought was cool back when I was 17.

We discuss the sexual aspects of The Gods Themselves, the number of typewriters he owns, his advice for breaking into the business, and more.

I’m the one who asks the first complete question about the collection The Early Asimov, and it’s Asimov, of course, who answers. The third voice is that of high school classmate Eric Shalit.

I was looking back through some of my earliest publications and came across this ad for GEnie’s SF & Fantasy RoundTable as printed on the inside front cover of the November 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

Raise your hand if you can remember GEnie, or having to “set your modem for half duplex (local echo) at 300 or 1200 baud.” Does anyone still have to do that sort of thing, or have such manipulations gone the way of the buggy whip?

I can’t remember the exact year I joined GEnie, only that it was so early in the online timeline that there really wasn’t any other reason to be online. Back then, GEnie was where all the cool kids hung out … sort of like LJ today.

The solicitation may look primitive now, but it sure seemed tantalizing and state of the art back then.

I can’t wait to see how primitive today’s online interfaces (and the ads for them) will look nineteen years from now!

I interviewed Isaac Asimov on November 7, 1972—Election Day—for my high school alternative newspaper, Kong. I found the tape recently and discovered to my horror that in 1975, I recorded over the first 31 minutes of the interview with a second interview with Steve Gerber. All that remains of my Asimov interview are these concluding five minutes.

Please don’t hate me … but you’re free to hate the 19-year-old me who’d reused the tape!

I’m the one who asks the first complete question about the collection The Early Asimov, and it’s Asimov, of course, who answers. The third voice my high school classmate Eric Shalit.