by Isaac Asimov
I can’t explain Heinlein in that way at all, for I cannot believe he would follow his wives’ opinions blindly. I used to brood about it in puzzlement (of course, I never would have dreamed of asking Heinlein—I’m sure he would have refused to answer, and would have done so with the utmost hostility), and I did come to one conclusion. I would never marry anyone who did not generally agree with my political, social, and philosophical view of life.
To marry someone at complete odds with myself in those basics would be to ask for a life of argument and controversy, or (in some ways, worse) one that comes to the tacit understanding that these things were never to be discussed. Nor could I see any chance of coming to agreement. I would certainly not change my own views just for the sake of peace in the household, and I would not want a woman so feeble in her opinions that she would do so. No, I would want one compatible with my views to begin with and I must say that this was true of both my wives.
Another point about Heinlein is that he was not among those writers who, having achieved a particular style, cling to it during their lives, despite changing fashions. I have already mentioned that E. E. Smith was such a dinger and so, I must admit, am I. The novels I have been writing lately are the kind I wrote in the 1950s. (I have been criticized for this by some critics, but the day I pay attention to critics is the day the sky will fall.)
Heinlein, on the other hand, tried to keep up with the times, so that his later novels were “with it” as far as post-1960s literary fashions were concerned. I say “tried” because I think he failed. I am no judge of other people’s writings (or even of my own) and I don’t wish to make subjective statements about them, but I am forced to admit that I always wished that he had kept to the style he achieved in such stories as “Solution Unsatisfactory” (October 1941 ASF), which he wrote under the pseudonym of Anson MacDonald, and such novels as Double Star, published in 1956, which I think is the best thing he ever wrote.
He made a mark outside the limited magazine world of science fiction too. He was the first of our group to break into the “slicks,” publishing “The Green Hills of Earth” in The Saturday Evening Post.
I was quite envious of this for a while till I reasoned out that he was advancing the cause of science fiction generally and making it easier for the rest of us to follow in that direction. Heinlein was also involved with an early motion picture that tried to be both sensible and science-fictional—Destination Moon. When the Science Fiction Writers of America began to hand out their Grand Master Awards in 1975, Heinlein received the first by general acclamation.
He died on May 8, 1988, at the age of eighty to an outpouring of sentiment from even the non-science-fiction world. He had kept his position as greatest science fiction writer unshaken to the end.
In 1989, his book Grumbles from the Grave was published posthumously. It consists of letters he wrote to editors and, chiefly, to his agent. I read it and shook my head and wished it hadn’t appeared, for Heinlein (it seemed to me) revealed, in these letters, a meanness of spirit that I had seen in him even in the NAES days but that I feel should not have been revealed to the world generally.
Lyon Sprague de Camp
Lyon Sprague de Camp was born in 1907, the same year that saw the birth of Robert Heinlein. He is tall and handsome, holds himself erect, and has a beautiful baritone speaking voice (though he cannot sing a note). When I first met him, he had a neat mustache and in later years he added a neat close-cut beard. There is something very British about his appearance.
Of all the people I know he is the most unchanging in his looks. I met him when he was thirty-two. Now, fifty years later, he is quickly and certainly recognizable—a little thinner in the hair, a little grayer in the beard, but still L. S. de Camp. Others have changed and if placed near a picture of their younger selves would seem to be some other person, but not he.
He seems formidable and aloof, but that is a delusion. What he is (quite unbelievably) is shy. I think that is why he and I get along so well, for in my presence no one can be shy; I don’t allow it. He can relax with me. In any case, my feeling for him is one of the deepest affection. From the start, when we met in Campbell’s office in 1939, when I was a callow youth of nineteen and he was already a seasoned writer, he treated me with grave respect and won my heart. And in all the years since, we have remained in touch by phone and letter whenever we were in different cities.
I was always too affected by awe and reverence to call Campbell by his first name, and I was always just unfriendly enough with Heinlein to avoid using his first name. De Camp, however, is “Sprague” to me, always has been, always will be.
He has now been married to his wife, Catherine, for over fifty years (when I met him they were newlyweds). She was born the same year he was and she has kept her looks every bit as well as he has. Seemingly ageless, they keep up a busy life of writing and travel.
Sprague had trouble making a living during the Depression (didn’t we all?) and in 1937 turned to the writing of science fiction. His first story, “The Isolinguals,” appeared in the September 1937 ASF. This was in the pre-Campbell days, and when Campbell took over he introduced such changes in the field that many authors who were renowned before Campbell’s time couldn’t make the transition and fell by the wayside. (It was like the carnage among the silent-film stars once talking pictures arrived.) Sprague, however, weathered the change easily.
He is one of those science fiction writers who can manage fiction and nonfiction with equal ease. He has written many books on fringe aspects of science and has always maintained the strictest rationality in doing so. He has also written wonderful fantasy and excellent historical novels.
Heinlein, Sprague, and I were at the Naval Air Experimental Station together during World War II. We were all civilians when we started. Heinlein wasn’t allowed to achieve officer status and I strongly did not want to. Sprague, however, bucked for it and soon became a lieutenant in the navy. Before the war’s end, he had been promoted to lieutenant commander, though his duties kept him behind a desk at NAES.
I will now repeat a story that I told in my earlier autobiography—
For security reasons, we all had to wear identifying badges when we entered the grounds of NAES. If we forgot our badges, we were put through a period of humiliation, given a temporary badge and docked an hour’s pay.
In our early days there, Sprague and I often went to work together, and one time when Sprague and I reached the gate he clasped his hand to his jacket lapel and said, “I’ve forgotten my badge!” To him this was serious, for he imagined that such an incident, entered on his record, might hamper his attempt to attain offkerhood.
So I unpinned my own badge and said, “Here, Sprague, take this and wear it. No one will look at it and you’ll get through. You can give it back to me after work.”
He said, “But what will you do?”
“So I’ll be jerked about a bit. I’m used to it.”
Sprague’s voice became husky as he muttered, “Kind hearts are more than coronets.”
Ever since, Sprague has never ceased to sing my praises, by word and by print, though he claims he doesn’t remember the incident. I like to think my action was motivated out of my sincere love for Sprague, but if I were a true cynic with the gift of foresight, I would have considered it a sound business investment.
After World War II, Sprague stayed in Philadelphia while I returned to New York. I attended the celebration of his eightieth birthday on November 27, 1987. In 1989, Sprague and Catherine moved to Texas to take advantage of a warmer climate and to be near their two sons, Lyman and Gerard. It doesn’t matter. We spoke on the phone yesterday evening.
Clifford Donald Simak
Clifford Donald Simak was born in 1904 and was a journalist by profession, working in Minneapolis. My first contact with him was when I read a story, “The World of the Red Sun,” in the December 1931 Wonder Stories. I loved it to such an extent that during lunchtime at my junior high school, I sat on the str
eet curb and told it in detail to a crowd of attentive kids.
I paid no attention to the fact that the author of the story was Cliff Simak. I didn’t even realize this till over forty years later when I was putting together an anthology of my favorite stories of the 1930s, which was published as Before the Golden Age (Doubleday, 1974). By that time, Cliff was an old and valued friend and I was thunderstruck to find the story I had loved was his.
Actually, “The World of the Red Sun” was Cliffs very first story. He wrote a few more and then quit because he didn’t like the science fiction being published. When Campbell took over ASF, however, Cliff was galvanized into renewed action and quickly became one of Campbell’s mainstays.
I must here tell the story of how we became friends, though I have told it often before.
Cliff Simak wrote “Rule 18” (July 1938 ASF), and in the monthly letter that I was then writing to the magazine, I said that I hadn’t liked that story and gave it a very low rating indeed.
Promptly, there came a polite letter to me from Cliff, asking me for the details of what was wrong so that he could improve. His courtesy and his sweetness took my breath away and, frankly, I cannot conceive of myself showing the same courtesy and sweetness to any brash young whippersnapper who had the temerity to criticize one of my stories.
This, however, was typical of Cliff, who was surely one of the least controversial figures in science fiction. I never heard a bad word about him but only universal approval and approbation.
In any case, I promptly reread “Rule 18” (I had now reached the point where I was keeping my science fiction magazines) and I found, to my intense embarrassment, that it was a very good story and that I liked it.
What had thrown me was that Cliff had slipped from scene to scene without any interlarding material and on my first reading, since I wasn’t used to the technique, I got confused. On the second reading, I understood and realized what he had done and why. It had immensely speeded the story.
I wrote a very humble letter and explained my error. A correspondence and friendship thus began even before I had sold my first story, and it lasted till Simak’s death.
More than that, the incident caused me to read his stories carefully and to imitate his easy and uncluttered style. I think I have succeeded to an extent and that it has immeasurably improved my writing. He is the third of the three people, then, who formed my writing career. John Campbell and Fred Pohl did it by precept, and Cliff Simak by example.
I have told this story so often that Simak, a most unassuming fellow, asked me in some embarrassment if I were ever going to stop praising him.
My answer was in one word. “Never!”
Cliff was one of those who received the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, and well deserved it was. He died on April 25, 1988, at the age of eighty-four. Heinlein, however, died less than two weeks later, so that Simak’s death was relegated to second place in the minds of most science fiction readers. I felt bad about this, for although Heinlein was the more successful writer, I could not help but feel that Cliff was the better man.
Jack Williamson
Jack Williamson is the kind of Anglo-Saxon name that just fits the pulp magazines, but he comes by it honestiy. His actual name is John Stewart Williamson, and Jack is the natural nickname. He was born in 1908 and he is the unquestioned dean of science fiction writers at this time, for his first story, “The Metal Man,” ap peared in the December 1928 Amazing, and he is still writing actively now, a record unmatched in the field by any major writer, as far as I know. He is another beloved figure, above all controversy and criti cism, second only to Cliff Simak. His writings in the 1930s were among the stories I most loved.
He was one of the few who made the transition from pre-Campbell to Campbell without trouble, and he was the second person (after Heinlein) to get the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America.
My first experience with Jack’s goodness came in 1939, when after my first story, “Marooned off Vesta,” appeared, I received a postcard from him saying, “Welcome to the ranks.” It was the first event that made me feel like a science fiction writer and I have never stopped being grateful to him for this thoughtful and generous gesture.
Williams had an impoverished background in the Southwest and had only a limited education at the time he started writing. In the fullness of time, however, he went back to school and eventually obtained a professorial position. A most amazing gentieman.
As in the case of Cliff Simak, I have only seen Jack on those rare occasions when we are both attending the same science fiction convention.
Lester del Rey
Lester del Rey (the simple form of a sonorous Spanish name) was born in 1915. He is a short, slight fellow with a big voice and a pugnacious personality. He has a triangular face, narrowing to his chin, and wears thick-lensed glasses since he was operated on for cataracts. He was clean-shaven when I met him in 1939, but he has since grown a sparse beard. I always have the irresistible feeling that he is what Gandalf in Tolkien’s Lord of the Kings looks like.
Horace Gold (a science fiction writer and editor, of whom I will have more to say later) liked to say that Lester “had the body of a poet and the soul of a truck driver” and that sounds right to me. Unfortunately, Horace tried to complete the epigram by saying, “And Isaac has the body of a truck driver and the soul of a poet.” There I think he was wrong on both counts.
Lester is one of those people whom good luck has thrown my way. He is completely honest, a man of his word, and absolutely trustworthy. After all, one meets so many phonies in the world, so many sleazeballs, so many people who lie and twist and whose word cannot be trusted, that one sometimes gets the sick feeling that life is a garbage pit in which people are the rotting banana peels. Yet one honest man refreshes the air fouled by a thousand devious rascals. For that reason I value Lester and the other honest men I have met in and out of science fiction.
There is a story in Jewish moralistic literature that God refrains
from destroying this wicked, sinful world only for the sake of the few
just men who can be found in it in every generation. Were I religious,
I would believe this devoutiy, and I can never be sufficiendy grateful that so many just men have come my way, and that I have so rarely
fallen into the hands of the wicked.
Lester has had four wives altogether. I don’t know if there is some thing about writers that encourages divorce. Perhaps writers are so self-absorbed as a necessary part of their profession, so consumed by their writing, that they have little or no time for their families. It’s a rare spouse who can endure this for long, I imagine. This may be especially true because writers so seldom become affluent and a mate cannot even mutter to herself (or himself), “Well, at least he (or she) is a good provider.”
I knew Lester’s third wife, Evelyn, quite well. She was thin-faced, attractive, and intelligent. I believe she was not fond of me at first. (I don’t know why; I never know why.) However, as she got to know me better, she got to like me better. I liked her all the time. She helped me get back into science fiction after I had been out of it for a while (something I will explain in due course). She said to me in March of 1967, “Why don’t you write science fiction anymore, Isaac?” I said, sadly, “You know very well that the field has moved beyond me. I’m a back number.”
And she said, “You’re crazy, Isaac. When you write, you are the field.”
I hugged that to my bosom and it did help me get back into science fiction in time.
Evelyn died tragically in an automobile accident on January 28, 1970. She was only forty-four years old at the time.
There was a period during Lester’s earlier days when it seemed to me that he drank too much. I may have exaggerated this because of my antipathy to alcohol, and in any case, if he had a problem, he defeated it decades ago.
It does raise the question, though, as to whether alcoholism is an
occupational hazard for writers. I have heard this seriously suggested and I think I can understand why it might be. Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his typewriter or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.
What’s more, a writer is notoriously insecure. Is he turning out pure junk? Even if he is a popular writer who is sure of publishing whatever he writes, he might still worry about quality. It seems to me that the combination of loneliness and insecurity (plus, in some cases, the inexorable pull of the deadline) makes it all too easy to seek the solace of liquor. And, certainly, I know many science fiction writers who are heavy drinkers.
How did I escape? For one thing, I was brought up as a nondrinker by a strict father. For another, the causes that drive writers to drink don’t exist in my case. I like being alone, though I can be very convivial if I find myself in a group and if I am allowed to do all the talking. Nor do I ever think that my writing might be junk. I am totally uncritical and I like everything I write.
What surprises me is that Harlan Ellison (whom I will write about later), who is a more talented writer than I, but has had a far more difficult literary life, also doesn’t drink at all. We and Hal Clement (whom I will also write about later) are, I think, the three most promi nent teetotalers in science fiction.
But I digress—
Lester’s life changed completely when he married his fourth wife, Judy-Lynn. That was a most dramatic event that I will deal with later.
Lester’s first story, “The Faithful” (April 1938 Astounding), was written under circumstances that are often met with in fiction but not in real life. Having read a science fiction story he didn’t like, he threw the magazine against the wall and said, “I could write a better story than that.”
Whereupon his girlfriend, to whom he had made the remark, said, “I dare you to.” He promptly sat down to write the story and the rest is history.
