I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  My favorite del Rey story is “The Day Is Done” (May 1939 ASF),

  which I read in the subway and cried over. I incautiously told him that once and he has held it over my head ever since.

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Theodore Sturgeon, born in 1918, had originally been named Edward Hamilton Waldo, but he adopted his stepfather’s name. Like Fred Pohl, Jack Williamson, Lester del Rey, and others, Ted had a difficult childhood and a limited education. (Does a limited education turn people to writing because of the lack of a more obvious profession? )

  Ted rattled from job to job until he finally turned to writing science fiction. His first story was “Ether Breathers” in the September 1939 ASF. That was one month after Heinlein’s first and two months after my first. Campbell was discovering major writers on a monthly basis in those happy days.

  Ted was, like Ray Bradbury, a particularly poetic writer. (Bradbury was the one major writer of the 1940s who had not been discovered by Campbell and who virtually never sold to Campbell. The two just didn’t fit each other, but it didn’t bother Bradbury, who went on to fame and fortune anyway.)

  The trouble with writing poetically is that if you hit the target, the result is beautiful; if you miss, it is rotten. Poetic writers are usually uneven. A prosaic writer like me, who consistently misses the heights, also avoids the depths. In any case, Ted’s stories were usually on the button.

  Sturgeon was a fey individual. (I’m not sure what that adjective means, but whatever it means, it fits Ted.) He was soft-spoken, sweet, and seemed shy and he was just the type of person that young women loved to mother—even after he grew older. The result was that he had an elaborate sexual life and a complicated marital one that I never tried to get straight. This was reflected in his fiction too, which dealt increasingly with love and sex in its different varieties.

  He wrote quite prolifically in the 1940s and 1950s, but then writer’s block became an increasing problem, and the later portion of his life saw him reduced to a considerable state of insecurity. At times, he would write to me for small sums to keep from having to undergo embarrassing contretemps and I would send them to him.

  I’m a “soft mark” in that sense and dozens of writers have put the bite on me for small amounts, now and then. The thing is that my wants are few and I have little occasion to spend my money wildly. Even in the army, other soldiers would line up for small sums from me to be paid back on payday. If you don’t smoke or drink, the money stays in the pocket. My own feeling is that every time I lend money it is a way of expressing my deep gratitude that I am lending it rather than borrowing it.

  Nor do I expect to get it back. By considering each loan a virtual gift, I am, in the first place, accepting the matter realistically. People who are forced to borrow from friends are often not in a position to repay, and, of course, I never dun them. In the second place, by not expecting it back, I avoid disappointment. I must say, however, that in many cases, though not all, the money does come back.

  A Gentile friend once came to me for a small sum and, without saying a word, I pulled out my checkbook and made out the check. He promised he would pay me back in six weeks, and so he did. He then said, “I asked all my Gentile friends first and they all turned me down. I came to you last because you were Jewish, and you lent me the money.”

  I said, with what I hope was only gentle irony, “Gee, and I didn’t charge interest either. I must have forgotten I was Jewish.” But back to Sturgeon. Ted was among those who always repaid, in one case so long after the loan that I had forgotten I had made it.

  It worked both ways, of course. Once Ted had arranged for a number of science fiction writers to participate in some sort of radio project. Unfortunately, the impresario who was in charge of the project couldn’t make it go and abandoned it while owing the writers money —not large amounts, but still it was money. Ted worked for months to get the impresario to disgorge. He finally did, and checks were sent to each writer concerned, including me.

  A few weeks later, I got a rather plaintive letter from Ted. He detailed all the work he had had to do to get the money and then he said, “And of all the writers to whom I had checks sent, you were the only one to write and thank me.”

  It always seems to me that it’s not hard to be nice to people in small ways, and surely that must make them more willing to be nice in small ways in return.

  Graduate School

  But despite how full 1939 was with science fiction writing and with meeting science fiction people, a major problem remained. I couldn’t live on $197 a year, so I had to view writing as merely a delightful avocation and nothing more.

  My failure to get into medical school left me with the problem of what to do as my college career came to a close. It still seemed useless to me to simply walk off with my bachelor’s degree. I would find no job—so I had to stay in school.

  If an M.D. was out, I would have to work toward a Doctor of Philosophy degree (Ph.D.). Whether a Ph.D. would help me get a job, I couldn’t be sure, but the crucial point was that it would keep me in school anywhere from two to four years and the passage of time might solve the problem.

  But if I went for my Ph.D., in what subject should I do so? When I was in college, I continued to be fascinated by history, just as I had been in my early library reading. I had long since graduated to the reading of Herodotus and Edward Gibbon.

  I had thought, and I remember this distinctly, that perhaps I ought to become a professional historian. My heart longed for it, but I thought further that as a professional historian, I could only find a place on a college faculty, probably a small one. I might have to go far from home, and I might never make much money.

  So I decided I would have to become a scientist of some sort, for then I would have the opportunity of working in industry or in some important research institution. I might make a great deal of money, gain a great deal of fame, win (who knows) a Nobel Prize, and so on.

  But a fat lot of good careful reasoning can do sometimes. I did become a scientist and what was the result? I found a place on a college faculty, a rather small one and far from home, and I never made much money. (Fortunately, events nullified all that, as I shall explain later.)

  Yet you know, I never quite let go of my desire to be a historian. My brother Stan’s son, Eric, after he had completed his college education, went to Texas to work toward a doctorate in history, and I felt a distinct twinge of envy and wondered how my life might have been changed if I had done this. (However, Eric had a change of heart, returned to New York, and became a journalist like his father.)

  If I decided on getting my Ph.D. in science, which science would that be? Fortunately, that question answered itself. I had selected a major when I entered college, and because I was under the impression I was aiming for medical school and that I would therefore take a premed course, I majored in zoology. It was one of my more incredible mistakes. I could not endure zoology. Oh, I would have done well enough if it were a mere matter of book learning, but it wasn’t. There was a laboratory and we dissected earthworms, frogs, dogfish, and cats. I disliked it intensely but I grew inured to it.

  The trouble was that we had to find a stray cat and kill it by dumping it in an ashcan which we filled with chloroform. Like a fool, I did it. After all, I was only following the orders of my superior, like any Nazi functionary in the death camps. But I never recovered. That killed cat lives with me, and to this day, over half a century later, when I think of it, I double up in misery.

  I dropped zoology at the completion of the year.

  This, incidentally, is an example of the division between intellectual and emotional understanding. Intellectually, I understand the necessity for animal experimentation if medicine is to be advanced (provided the experimentation is absolutely necessary and is carried through with a minimum of suffering). I can argue the point eloquently.

  However, I will never, under any circumstances, participate in such experimentation or even observe it. When the animal
s are brought in, I always leave.

  With zoology eliminated, I had to choose either chemistry or physics. Physics was quickly eliminated, for it was far too mathematical. After years and years of finding mathematics easy, I finally reached integral calculus and came up against a barrier. I realized that that was as far as I could go, and to this day I have never successfully gone beyond it in any but the most superficial way.

  That left me with chemistry, which was not too mathematical. What it amounted to was that chemistry won by default, scarcely a good basis for a profession, but there was nothing else to do.

  Unfortunately, because I had not aimed for a Ph.D. but for an M.D., I found that applying to graduate school was a problem. I did not have enough in the way of undergraduate chemistry courses. For medical school, yes; for graduate school, no. In addition, the head of the chemistry department did not like me. I gathered, in fact, that he very much didn’t like me.

  This did not disturb me greatly in itself. I had a long history of teachers and professors who did not like me, undoubtedly for good and sufficient reason. However, the head of the department could keep me out of graduate school and it seemed to be his intention to do so.

  There began a duel between us. He kept ordering me out of the office; I kept returning with rule books that showed I could qualify for graduate school if I was put on probation until I had passed the undergraduate course I had missed—physical chemistry.

  Sheer dogged persistence won the day for me. I was gaining the sympathy of the other members of the department and the head gave in, but didn’t make it easy for me. I could take physical chemistry, provided I took a full program of other courses (for all of which physical chemistry was the prerequisite). What’s more, I would have to achieve at least a B average or I would get no credit at all for any of the courses, and all the money I would have spent on a year of tuition would be thrown away. These were draconian terms, but I agreed. What choice did I have?

  I managed. In the physical chemistry course given by Louis P. Hammett, I was one of only three students in a large class who obtained an A. That shifted me from probation to a regular graduate student after only half a year.

  I was twenty at the time and that happened to be my last scholastic triumph. As a matter of fact, my academic career had gone steadily downhill

  from my remarkable beginnings. In college, I had still been a smart student. By the time I reached graduate school, I was simply no better than mediocre. The other students, in general, seemed to understand the material better and more easily than I did, and I was simply hopeless in the laboratory. Experiments rarely worked for me, and when they did, I showed less deftness and expertise than anyone else in the class.

  In a way, this was not surprising. The other students had made chemistry their life’s work. They were seriously heading for positions in academe or industry. I was merely marking time, working on chemistry on an everything-else-is-worse basis, merely in order to stave off the evil day when I would have to look for a job and (I gloomily felt) not find one.

  But what happened to my view (held so firmly in childhood) that I was a remarkable person? Now that I was no longer a monument of glittering smartness, but merely a quite ordinary B-level student (still disliked by my professors), would I have to draw in my horns, lose at least some of my self-assurance, take a back seat, and prepare for obscurity and for regrets over a life so well begun and so poorly maintained?

  Oddly enough, none of this happened. I was entirely unshaken and my opinion of myself remained firm. You see, I had become wiser. I began to realize that scholastic achievement was more than grades and test marks, because they were only more or less arbitrary and trivial criteria designed to judge youngsters’ progress in their schooling. The true value of what I had done in school (and in the library) was to lay a groundwork of knowledge and understanding in a wide variety of fields.

  It did not matter that the graduate chemistry students about me were all better in chemistry than I was. Most of them were virtually illiterate in each of a dozen areas of knowledge in which I felt quite at home.

  I was beginning to see that I was not a specialist; that in any field of knowledge there would be many who would know far more than I, who could make a living and attain fame, perhaps, working in that field, whereas I could not. I was a generalist, who knew a considerable amount about almost everything. There were many specialists of a hundred or a thousand different kinds, but, I told myself, there was going to be only one Isaac Asimov. This feeling was only dim to begin with, but grew rapidly stronger with time.

  Megalomania? No! I had a firm understanding of my own abilities and talents and I intended to show them to the world.

  As my success in chemistry continued to fade (and, alas, it did) my success in writing continued to grow, and my sense of being remarkable was more firmly (and, perhaps, more logically) fixed than ever.

  Women

  As luck would have it, I never felt any confusion or doubt over sex. Even in kindergarten, I found that littie girls were a great deal more pleasant to look at than litde boys were. I never asked myself, at that time, why that should be. I just accepted it as a fact.

  As time went on, I did, of course, learn about the nature of sex. This was not from my parents, you understand. My father and mother would not have dreamed of discussing sex with me (or, I suspect, though I may be wronging them, even with each other). And I, for my part, would not have dreamed of approaching them with questions on the subject.

  Nor did I learn about sex from any reasoned source of instruction. I learned about it from the distorted and imperfect knowledge of other boys. This is the usual fate enforced upon youngsters by a society that is too prim and too hypocritical to have sex taught like any other branch of knowledge.

  Considering how important sex is, how great a source of joy, how enormous a source of misery and disease, how it permeates the workings of courtship and marriage, isn’t it strange that we go to great lengths to teach our children to play football and make no effort whatever to teach them to play sex?

  Any attempt to introduce sex education classes into the school curriculum is always met with fierce opposition. The feeling among those who oppose it (after you strip off the hypocrisies of “morality”) is that learning about sex will encourage youngsters to experiment with it and lead to unwanted pregnancies and disease.

  To me, this seems ridiculous. Nothing on earth can stop youngsters from experimenting with sex, unless they are kept so brutally in ignorance and captivity that their lives are distorted and ruined. By stripping away the mysteries of sex and treating it openly, the act is robbed of its illegality, of its attraction as “forbidden fruit.” In my opinion, good knowledge of all aspects of sex, including proper methods of contraception and hygiene, will actually reduce unwanted pregnancies and disease.

  I might, of course, have gone on to learn a bit more about sex than the boys told me and to put my dim and imperfect knowledge to the test. It would surely have been easy to experiment with willing young women. I might, best of all, have met a young woman with sexual experience who would have been pleased to teach me.

  The fact is that I did not. It was not for lack of desire on my part. I looked at young women longingly and learned how to flirt in a rather heavy-handed way, but nothing ever came of it.

  The chief reason is that I had no time. There was my swotting away in college and my pegging away in the candy store. To put the cherry on it, my father decided to get the early night-before edition of the Daily News, which was not delivered directly to the newsstands. Therefore, each night of my late teenage years, without exception and whatever the weather, I had to walk about half a mile to a distribution center, wait for the truck to come, collect the papers, pay for them, and then carry them back to the store. That effectively occupied my evenings, and made it impossible for me to have even an innocent social relationship with a young woman.

  In fact, I didn’t have a date with a girl until I was twenty years old
.

  The situation was exacerbated by the fact that between the ages of twelve and nineteen I attended Boys High School, Seth Low Junior College, and Columbia College, from all of whose classes girls were excluded. It meant that at school I remained in monastic solitude.

  This may not have been all bad. The absence of the opposite sex meant I could concentrate on my studies without the distraction that their presence would have ensured. Besides, because of my having been pushed ahead, all the young women in my classes would have been two years older than I and they would have looked down upon me as a child and rejected, with contempt, any advances I dared make.

  It was not all good either. The absence of women contributed to the distortion of my social development. It also meant that I started my wedding night (at the age of twenty-two) as a virgin, with a new wife who was also a virgin. To moralists that may sound like a wonderful thing, but I think it turned out to be disastrous.

  Heartbreak

  Finally, on entering graduate school at the age of nineteen, I found myself in classes that included young women. As luck would have it, the young woman at the adjoining desk in my synthetic organic chem istry course was blond, attractive, only a year older than I, and a much better chemist than I.

  (When I was one of three who got an A in physical chemistry, she was another of them, and she did it much more easily than I did.)

  Under the circumstances, I don’t consider it surprising that I promptiy fell in love. It was stupid to do so with such celerity but, I think, very natural.

  It did not bother me in the least that she was a much better chemist than I was. That is to me, as I look back on it, the strongest evidence that, by that time, I had rearranged my priorities. In earlier life, when grades were all-important to me, I had never really been fond of the students who did better than I or who even threatened to do better than I (though I never wasted my time in strenuous hate or envy). If I had still had that view of “smartness,” her being better than I at chemistry would have turned me off.