I just ran across a 2005 post which appeared at The Comics Reporter site in which comic-book personalities were asked to share famous industry events at which they wish they’d been flies on the wall, such as “Sit in on a Lee/Kirby or Lee/Ditko plotting session, circa 1963” and “Joe and Jerry signing the contract to give Superman to DC.”

Which got me thinking—what science-fiction events would I have wanted to witness as a fly on the wall? Here are the first five that came to mind:

The discussion in which Astounding editor John W. Campbell, Jr. inspired Isaac Asimov to create his classic story “Nightfall.”

Jack Williamson’s face at the newsstand that day in 1928 upon seeing his creature from “The Metal Man” illustrated on the cover of Amazing and realizing that he must have made his first fiction sale—only no one had bothered to tell him!

The screening George Lucas held for friends such as Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma of a rough cut of Star Wars before the special effects were laid in.

Don Wollheim, Frederik Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth and others as they were being ejected from the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939 by Sam Moskowitz and Will Sykora as part of one of the earliest fan feuds.

Daniel Keyes bringing the manuscript of “Flowers for Algernon” over to the apartment of Horace Gold, and listening as the agoraphobic editor of Galaxy told him that he needed to change the ending to make it more upbeat.

I can think of many other moments I’d like to have witnessed. How about you?

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.