Thiotimoline
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Thiotimoline is a fictitious chemical compound conceived by science fiction author Isaac Asimov and described in a spoof scientific paper entitled "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" in 1948.
[edit] Chemical properties
In Asimov's writing, thiotimoline is notable for the fact that when it is mixed with water, the chemical actually begins to break down before it contacts the water. This is explained by the fact that in the thiotimoline molecule, there is at least one carbon atom such that, while two of the carbon's four chemical bonds lie in normal space and time, one of the bonds projects into the future and another into the past.
[edit] Background
The story of the genesis of this spoof was one of Asimov's favourite personal anecdotes and he retold it a number of times in print. At the time, Asimov was engaged in doctoral research in chemistry and, as part of his experimental procedure, he needed to dissolve catechol in water. As he observed the crystals dissolve as soon as they hit the water's surface, it occurred to him that if catechol were any more soluble, then it would dissolve before it encountered the water.
By that time Asimov had been writing professionally for nine years and was shortly to face the challenge of writing up his research as a doctoral dissertation. He feared that the experience of writing readable prose for publication might have impaired his ability to write the prose typical of academic discourse, and decided to practice with a spoof article (including fake citations) describing experiments on a compound, thiotimoline, that was so soluble that it dissolved in water up to 1.3 seconds before the water was added.
Asimov was uncertain as to whether the resulting work of fiction was publishable, but offered it to John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction (his preferred publication outlet). Campbell was delighted with the piece, and accepted it for publication, agreeing to Asimov's request that it appear under a pseudonym in deference to Asimov's concern that he might alienate potential doctoral examiners at Columbia University if he were revealed as the author.
Some months later Asimov was shocked to see the piece appear under his own name. In later years Campbell insisted that this was an oversight, though Asimov maintained a suspicion that Campbell had acted deliberately out of greater worldliness, for, in Asimov's words, "The Columbia Chemistry Department proved far less stuffy than I had feared" and his examiners effectively delivered their favorable verdict on his dissertation by good-naturedly asking him a final question about thiotimoline.
In subsequent years Asimov wrote three sequels ("The Micropsychiatric Applications of Thiotimoline", "Thiotimoline and the Space Age", and "Thiotimoline to the Stars"), though only the first of these matched the hoax article format of the original. In one of these he expounded a putative rationale for thiotimoline's behaviour: namely that the chemical bonds in the compound's structural formula were so starved of space that some were forced into the time dimension.
The original "article" was published (complete with anecdotes) in the anthology, The Early Asimov by Victor Gollancz in 1973, and again in The Early Asimov - Volume 3 by Granada in 1974.
