I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  I once entered an elevator with her, and behind her walked a woman with a five-year-old child. The child, in all innocence, stared at something he had never seen before and said, “Mama, look, a little woman!”

  Judy-Lynn, of course, neither blinked an eye nor turned a hair, but what astonished me (afterward, when I had time to think about it) was that I was so unaware of Judy-Lynn’s deficiency that I looked about me, searching for the little woman the child claimed he saw.

  She had lived a successful intellectual life. She attended Hunter College, where she majored in English, specialized in the study of James Joyce, and won various honors. She took a job with Galaxy in 1965, was associate editor in 1966, and full editor in 1969.

  Of course, Judy-Lynn’s sense of humor was not always benign. She was intelligent enough to sense in me a certain gullibility, a certain

  eagerness to believe people, and a nature sufficiently easygoing to be willing to accept being made the butt of a practical joke if it did no physical harm. For two years or more, she therefore made a career of setting up elaborate charades at my expense. Helping her was Lester del Rey, who was also working at Galaxy at the time. Thus, Judy-Lynn once sent me proofs of the cover of an issue of Galaxy which was to contain a story of mine, and my name was on that cover, misspelled. Of course, I was on the phone in half a second in a fever of concern, and she insisted my name was not misspelled. Once I wrote the script for a television special and Judy-Lynn used the facilities of the office to prepare a review of the special that looked as though it had appeared in a newspaper. Lester wrote the review, designing it to push every last button that would be sure to send me into a rage. Again I called in a fury, demanding to know the name of the newspaper so I could write them a stiff letter.

  Worse than these little pranks was the time I got a letter telling me that Judy-Lynn had been fired. The letter was written by her replacement, one Fritzi Vogelgesang. I replied with a most indignant letter, demanding to know how the magazine could possibly have let go a woman such as Judy-Lynn. Miss Vogelgesang answered so soothingly and with such innocent flirta tiousness that my anger seemed to disappear, and in no time at all, I was writing pleasant letters back. By the time I had decided that this Fritzi was every bit as nice as Judy-Lynn, she suddenly disappeared forever. I got a waspish letter from Judy-Lynn:

  “So, Asimov! How quickly you forget all about me and take up with my replacement.”

  She had never been fired, and she was Fritzi Vogelgesang.

  The most elaborate joke consisted of getting the news to me, one morning, that Judy-Lynn and Larry Ashmead had run off to get married. I found myself in a quandary. The news was given to me so seriously that it seemed to me I had to believe it. Yet, knowing each of the two individuals involved, I thought a marriage between them utterly unlikely.

  I wasted hours calling everyone who might know anything about the matter, and there was only endless frustration. Either the person I tried to reach was out or if they came to the phone they said only that the marriage was taking place and that they knew no details.

  It never occurred to me that Judy-Lynn had bulldozed all of Doubleday (and possibly the entire New York publishing industry) into going along with the joke. Nor did I stop to think that the day was April 1, 1970—April Fools’ day.

  Which is what it was, an April fool joke, and it was I who played the role of fool. Everyone else enjoyed themselves immensely as my phone calls grew more and more frantic.

  Fifteen years later, on April 15, 1985, Janet and I, along with Judy-Lynn, Lester del Rey, and Larry Ashmead, had dinner at a very posh restaurant and celebrated the “anniversary” of that nonmarriage.

  But life wasn’t just “Let’s get Asimov” with her. She made arrangements with Austin Olney to invite me and my family to an intimate dinner celebrating my fiftieth birthday on January 2, 1970, and then, through a complicated fiction, had me led off somewhere to a large surprise party she had arranged—attended by an astonishing number of friends from all over.

  But in the same month, Lester’s wife, Evelyn, died in an automobile accident. She was only forty-four and the accident all but prostrated me, for Evelyn was one of my favorite people. Lester himself managed to keep hold of himself, but I honestly think he would have fallen apart if Judy-Lynn, a dear friend of both, had not rallied round and offered her strength and warmth in support. Lester appreciated that and, before long, decided he didn’t want to do without it. In March 1971, Judy-Lynn Benjamin became Judy-Lynn del Rey. I was at the wedding, grinning.

  (Judy-Lynn told me afterward that she had been strongly tempted to interrupt the ceremony and say, “It’s just another practical joke, Asimov,” because she wanted to see me faint dead away—since I had been pushing the wedding as strongly as I knew how. She had refrained, she said, only because she knew her mother would have been upset if she had said that.)

  I was a little bit afraid that Lester might be too much for her, but I needn’t have feared. In no time at all, Judy-Lynn had flicked all the rough edges off Lester and he was as tame and devoted a husband as I have ever seen. The next fifteen years were the happiest and most successful of Judy-Lynn’s life, and of Lester’s life too. Lester always gladly admitted that Judy-Lynn had induced a sea change in all things about him, large and small.

  In 1973, Judy-Lynn left Galaxy to join Ballantine Books, which had become part of the Random House conglomerate. At once she showed a new facet of her abilities, for she had the knack of recognizing a successful book and of wooing successful writers.

  In 1975, Lester joined her, becoming editor of fantasy books, while Judy-Lynn worked on science fiction. Together, they formed a remarkable team, and in 1977, Random House recognized the value of the team by establishing a new imprint, “Del Rey Books.” With that, die del Reys reached new heights, for they had books on the bestseller lists, in both hardcover and paperback, almost continuously.

  Judy-Lynn was undoubtedly the most successful and dominating force in science fiction since John Campbell was at his height, thirty-five years earlier. And when she dominated, it was with no light hand. I once brought in a set of page proofs of one of my books which I had proofread and which I wanted to give to Judy-Lynn. She was out, so I gave the material to a secretary.

  “And don’t lose it,” I admonished the secretary. “You know Judy-Lynn.” “Don’t worry,” said the secretary. “I know Judy-Lynn.” And I swear she trembled.

  Judy-Lynn had a direct effect on some of my science fiction. She once asked me why I didn’t write a story about a female robot. I thought that was an interesting idea, and when Ed Ferman (who had succeeded Avram Davidson as editor of F&SF) wanted a story for an anniversary issue of the magazine, I wrote “Feminine Intuition” for him. While it was still in press, Judy-Lynn said, “Did you ever write the story about the female robot?”

  I said, “Yes, Judy-Lynn. It will appear in F&SF.”

  “In F&SF!” she shrieked. “I wanted it for Galaxy.”

  I turned pale. “Did you?” I asked, in all innocence.

  She let me have it. Her invective is not in Harlan’s style, but she had more different ways of calling me an idiot than you could possibly imagine. Another time she said, “Why don’t you write about a robot who goes to work so he can save money with which to buy his freedom.”

  I laughed, and said, “Maybe,” and forgot about it.

  Then came the time when I wrote “The Bicentennial Man,” and some time afterward, while it was still in press with the ill-fated anthology that was never to be, Judy-Lynn asked me if I had thought further about a story about a robot buying his freedom.

  This time I froze in horror. That was the germ that had given rise to “The Bicentennial Man” and I forgot that it was she who had given me the idea. I tried to explain with more bumbles than you could believe possible, and she came at me with every intent (so it seemed to me) of killing me, screaming, “Again you gave my idea to someone else.” I ducked behind the furniture.

  She
seized hold of herself with difficulty. “You give me the carbon, Asimov, and you get that story back from that woman.” “How can I get it back, Judy-Lynn? Be reasonable. I’ve sold it already.” “That anthology,” said Judy-Lynn, “will never appear. You get that story back.”

  I gave her the carbon copy and the next morning she called me. “Asimov, I did my best not to like it, but I loved it. You get that story back.”

  Well, I got the story back and it was Judy-Lynn who published it in an anthology she edited and it won the Hugo and the Nebula.

  One reviewer said the following, “I read ‘The Bicentennial Man’ and for an hour I was back in the Golden Age.” Why can’t all reviewers see as clearly as this one did?

  It became customary for Janet and me to celebrate our birthday by taking Lester and Judy-Lynn out to dinner. We never missed, even in 1984, when I was only two days out of the hospital.

  She and Lester attended the big bash I threw on January 2, 1985, to celebrate my sixty-fifth “nonretirement” party. On September 18, 1985, she attended the publication party for my novel Robots and Fmpire, and on October 4, Judy-Lynn and Lester and Janet and I had our last meal together, with no thought of time’s winged chariot hurrying near.

  Judy-Lynn’s body betrayed her at last. On October 16, 1985, while she was at work, she suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. Despite speedy work at the hospital, she never emerged from her coma and she died on February 20, 1986, at the age of forty-three. She was a most remarkable woman, really she was. And quite often, Janet will fall into a reverie and say suddenly, “I miss Judy-Lynn.” So do I.

  He had to think about that. It’s much easier to find reasons to consider oneself superior than inferior. But one is just the mirror image of the other. The same line of argument that takes individual

  The Bible

  I have always been interested in the Bible, though I can’t recall ever having had any religious feelings even as a youngster. There’s a swing to biblical language that impresses the ear and the mind. I assume that the Bible is great literature in the original Hebrew or, in the case of the New Testament, Greek, but there is no question that the Authorized Version (that is, the King James Bible) is, along with the plays of William Shakespeare, the supreme achievement of English literature.

  I also take a kind of perverse pleasure in the thought that the most important and influential book ever written is the product of Jewish thought. (No, I don’t think it was written down at God’s dictation any more than the Iliad was.) I call it “perverse” because it is an instance of national pride which I don’t want to feel and which I fight against constantly. I refuse to consider myself to be anything more sharply denned than “human being,” and I feel that aside from overpopulation the most intractable problem we face in trying to avoid the destruction of civilization and humanity is the diabolical habit of people dividing themselves into tiny groups, with each group extolling itself and denouncing its neighbors.

  I remember once a fellow Jew remarking with satisfaction on the high percentage of Nobel Prize winners who were Jewish.

  I said, “Does that make you feel superior?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “What if I told you that sixty percent of the pornographers and eighty percent of the crooked Wall Street manipulators were Jewish?” He was startled. “Is that true?” “I don’t know. I made up the figures. But what if it were true?

  Would it make you feel inferior?”

  credit for the real or imaginary achievement of an artificially defined group can be used to justify the subjection and humiliation of individuals for the real or imagined delinquencies of the same group.

  But let’s get back to my interest in the Bible. I had already written two small books for Houghton Mifflin that testified to this. They were Words in Genesis (1962) and Words from the Exodus (1963). In these books, I quoted passages from the Bible (from Genesis in the first book and from Exodus through Deuteronomy in the second) and pointed out how biblical references entered the English language. It was my intention to work through the entire Bible in this fashion, but the books didn’t do well—so I turned to other things.

  However, the hankering to write on the Bible remained and I had a chance to express this to Doubleday. T. O’Conor Sloane, the editor of Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, was astonished at how well it did (and so was I). He said to me, in 1965, “Isaac, are there any other big books you can write?”

  I said, “How about a book on the Bible?” Sloane, a good Catholic, distrusted my religious views or lack of them and he asked, suspiciously, “What kind of a book?”

  “Nothing about religion or theology,” I said. “What do I know about that? I was thinking of a book that would explain the terms and allusions in the Bible to a modern audience.”

  He was unenthusiastic, but I went home and began work at once. When I had done a number of pages, I gave a copy to Sloane. A few days later, I had lunch with him and Larry Ashmead. Sloane continued to be unenthusiastic. I was downcast, but after lunch good old loyal Larry told me that if Sloane turned down the book, he (Larry) would be glad to edit it. I cheered up and went back to work.

  In the end, Sloane did refuse to do it and Larry did take it over.

  We had title trouble over the book. My own working title was It’s Mentioned in the Bible. Doubleday felt that to be too bland, sosuggested The Intelligent Man’s Guide to the Bible, to make it match my Guide to Science. However, that was felt to be confusing since the two books were in two different publishing houses. I then suggested Everyman’s Guide to the Bible, but that was turned down also. The salesmen, aware of the success of the Biographical Encyclopedia, attributed that to the use of my name and insisted die book be called Asimov’s Guide to the Bible and so it was.

  It was such a long book that Doubleday decided to publish it in two volumes, since it lent itself easily to division. The first volume, dealing with the Old Testament, came out in 1968, die second, dealing with the New Testament and the Apocrypha, came out in 1969.

  My father received the first volume in Florida. (I always gave him a copy of every book I wrote, and he would show it to everyone he knew but would not allow them to touch the books. They had to look at it while he held it. He must have made himself, and me, so unpopular.)

  He telephoned me to tell me he had read only seven pages and had then closed the book because it didn’t reflect the Orthodox viewpoint. This was the period, remember, when he had returned to Orthodoxy so he could have something to do. I felt bad about that, because it was the clearest evidence of his backsliding, and I disapproved.

  Hundredth Book

  As the 1960s approached their end, it was clear that I was closing in on my hundredth book. On September 26, 1968, I had lunch with Austin and he asked me if I had some special plan for the hundredth book. I didn’t, so they urged me to think of one and told me I must let Houghton Mifflin do it.

  It occurred to me tliat the best way of memorializing the event would be to prepare a book in which I would present excerpts from the first hundred books. I would divide them into chapters that would take different parts of my range (science fiction, mysteries, straight science in various branches, the Bible, and so on) and I would call the book Opus 100.

  Houghton Mifflin was enthusiastic, so I prepared the book and it was published in 1969. My smiling face was on the cover, and on either side of it was a pile of my books put together in a deliberately miscellaneous way.

  On October 16, 1969, Houghton Mifflin hosted a cocktail party in honor of the publication of the book. One always reads in books and sees in movies how cocktail parties are put on to celebrate book publications and in my younger days I assumed that that was a necessary accompaniment of all publications. However, this was the first cocktail party thrown in honor of one of my books, and I had to write a hundred to get it. I’m not sure what that signifies.

  Death

  a) Henry Blugermcm— Until 1968,1 did not experience de
ath in my immediate family. Death did strike elsewhere. I had an uncle, an aunt, and a cousin of my own age who had all died, but we were never close, so unclose in fact that I do not even know when any of them died or what the circumstances may have been. There were deaths in the science fiction family too, like Cyril Kornbluth and Henry Kuttner.

  But then, in 1968, Gertrude’s father, Henry, was failing rapidly. He had lung cancer. He had never smoked, but the dust in the paper-box factory in which he worked for many years may have been a factor. In any case, he was hospitalized. While in New York, I had visited Henry in the hospital on February 17 and it was clear that his mind was beginning to wander.

  Gertrude was going to go to New York to see him once I got back, but on the evening of the eighteenth we got the news that he had died. He was seventy-three years old. Gertrude was, of course, desolate, partly because her loved father had died and partiy because she had not managed to get in to see him before he died. Naturally, she was going to go to New York for the funeral. And, naturally, the children and I would have to go. This put me into a quandary. I have a horror of funerals, not only because I dislike anything unpleasant but also because I detect a tang of hypocrisy to the whole thing. As soon as someone dies, he or she becomes transformed into a miracle of angelic behavior and personality which in life was never true, and everyone puts on an attitude of deep sorrow which, in truth, he or she might not feel.

  I attended a church ceremony after the death of someone I knew only casually because I felt I ought to, and I watched the widow, all in black, totter down the aisle, face blubbered with tears, while two strong sons supported her on either side. I was astonished, for I knew (and most of the people there may have known) that she and her dead husband were in the midst of messy and hate-filled divorce negotiations when he died.

  I suppose that doesn’t matter, though. In many cultures, screaming and wailing are de rigueur at a funeral and professional screamers and wailers are hired to add to the din.