by Isaac Asimov
We went to my nose and throat man, Noel Cohen, on January 25, and he looked at my vocal cords and said, “It’s still slightly inflamed from the tube in the throat. Have you been singing? Shouting? Talking?”
I said, “Yes, yes, and yes.”
He said, “For two weeks, whisper.”
Those were a hard two weeks—but then the hoarseness was gone.
In addition, the little finger of my left hand was weak and wasn’t really under my control. Paul Esserman said there was probably some nerve damage as a result of the manhandling I had received and we just had to wait for it to heal.
“How long?” I asked indignantly. “It’s hard to say,” he said, “but we must be patient.” (Doctors are very patient with their patients’ troubles.)
It continued for two and a half months. It may sound like a little thing—what’s a little finger—but it interfered with my typing at either the typewriter or the word processor, and there were times when I called out to the Universe in impassioned terms, “Take back the bypass and give me my little finger.”
But it did heal, and by mid-March my hands were normal and I could type as well as I ever did—and I had no angina. (My poor father! There were no bypass operations in his day.)
Azazel
In the 1980s, I began yet a new series of short stories, one rather unlike any that had gone before. It came about this way—
In early 1980, I began to write the series of mystery stories for Gallery, and the first one was a mystery but it did not involve a murder (my mysteries rarely do). Rather, it was a story of a fantastic revenge.
My hero achieved his revenge on an extremely wealthy man by malting use of a demon only two centimeters tall who could only do small amounts of magic. What the demon did was to remove certain flecks of paint from extremely valuable paintings that the wealthy man owned. The flecks of paint were those that made up the signatures of Picasso and of others, leaving their paintings worthless. Gallery printed the story, which I called “Getting Even,” in its August 1980 issue. I liked the story so much that I tried to write the second story in the series about the little demon also. At this, how ever, the editor, Eric Protter, objected. One story about a demon, yes, but no more. So I filed the story away regretfully, because I liked that one too.
Then, after I had allowed it to remain in the drawer, eating its head off for over a year, it suddenly occurred to me that I might sell it elsewhere. I asked Protter and he said yes, provided I made some minor changes so that it would not look as though it was a part of the Gallery series.
I promptly invented another situation. There were only two characters, an unnamed narrator (who was transparently I) and a deadbeat named George, who always cadged a meal from me and then told a fantastic story about this small demon he could call up. The demon was named Azazel (a biblical name.) I submitted the story to F&SF and it appeared in the April 1982
issue under the title “One Night of Song.”
I proceeded to write others in the series, which became quite stylized. In every story, George tries to help out a friend by means of AzazePs powers, and in every story the help turns out to be a hin drance. The reader is, of course, supposed to guess what will go wrong before I reveal it, and in that sense there is a mystery aspect to it.
In addition, the stories are deliberately overwritten and there is an atmosphere of broad farce about them. The most ridiculous things are said with a straight face, and I get the chance to satirize many of the aspects of society that I think are worth satirizing. And the stories are
funny—in my estimation, at least. After I had published two Azazel stories in F&SF, Shawna McCarthy, who was by now editor of IASFM, objected. She said the stories ought to go into my own magazine. I said, “But, Shawna, the stories are fantasies. They involve a demon. F&SF publishes fantasies, but IASFM doesn’t.” Shawna said, “So make the demon an extraterrestrial being and give him advanced scientific powers rather than magic.” So I did. My story “To the Victor” appeared in the July 1982 IASFM and, thereafter, all my Azazel stories did. I get occasional letters from readers objecting to the stories on the ground that they are fluff, or frivolous, or insignificant, but I pay no attention to that at all, though I go out of my way to see that some such letters are printed in the magazine. My own attitude is that IASFM, under the direction of Shawna McCarthy and then Gardner Dozois, is a very serious magazine, printing stories of a high literary quality that often require considerable concentration if they are to be properly appreciated. An occasional Azazel story, which requires no concentration at all, but moves along merrily, is a welcome change, it seems to me.
Of course, there are people who insist I write them merely because they are so easy to write and that I’m just being lazy. The back of my hand to them if they think that light reading is easy to write. It takes quite a lot of art to be able to write artlessly, and if it were easy to write successfully funny stories, more of them would be written. By the time I had published seventeen of the Azazel stories, it seemed to me that it was time to put them out in book form and I brought the collection to Doubleday, where Jennifer Brehl had succeeded Kate Medina as my editor. Jennifer objected to Azazel as an extraterrestrial. She wanted him to be a demon. I said that was what he had been at first but my magazine had made me change that. Jennifer said, “Change it back. We want to be able to say this is your first book of fantasies.”
I saw the value of that and did as she asked. I also wrote a preliminary story describing how the narrator came to meet George. The book, under the title Azazel and with the subtitle Fantasy Stories, was published in 1988. I have written eight more Azazel stories since then, and, if I live long enough, I suppose there will eventually be a second collection.
Fantastic Voyage II
Apparently, the long-term success of the movie Fantastic Voyage (which reappeared on television now and then) and of the novelization I had produced of it inspired some people to think of a sequel. They bought the name of the movie (but not the characters), they planned to get me to write Fantastic Voyage II, and then they’d make a movie out of it.
At the William Morris Literary Agency, which was handling the matter, there was a great deal of talk about having a blockbuster bestseller on our hands. I’m not totally immune to the thought of bestsellers, so I was tempted. I was also interested in the suggestion because I had never been satisfied with Fantastic Voyage itself, since it had been written from a movie script and was not truly the product of my own imagination. It seemed to me that I could write a much better book on the theme of miniaturized vessels in the human bloodstream if I could go my own way.
I was sent a suggested outline, which was completely unsuitable. It involved two vessels in the bloodstream, one American and one Soviet, and what followed was a kind of submicroscopic version of World War III. I wouldn’t write anything like that under any circumstances, and I knew they couldn’t make me do so. If it came to really writing the book, I would insist on full control of the contents, and if they refused to let me have that, I wouldn’t write the book.
After all, as I thought the matter through in cold blood, I began to wonder if they would really make a movie, or if they did, whether I would see a penny of the money it made. (Hollywood is notorious for “creative bookkeeping.” They can make many, many millions out of a movie but all of it is skimmed off to actors and direction and what is left, the “net profit,” out of which the writers are paid a percentage, usually turns out to be a “net loss.”)
So I simply put their suggested outline to one side, told them I would write my own book without reference to any suggestions of theirs, and told them further that I wanted the book published by Doubleday. If there was to be an auction (as they insisted, remarking that they would get a million dollars and more that way), then Doubleday would have to get a fair chance to bid on it. I was, after all, sure that Doubleday would not let it get away and would be the high bidder.
It didn’t work out that way. The agent called to tel
l me that New American Library was the high bidder. I was astonished, so I said, “Well, I’ll have to get Doubleday’s permission to publish it elsewhere.”
The agent said, “Are you contracted to write for them exclusively?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Asking their permission is just a matter of honor and ethics.” (I didn’t expect an agent to make sense out of that statement, but I had no intention of arguing about it.)
What I did not fully appreciate at the time was that Doubleday was going through a period of turmoil because of financial losses. Quite apart from that (which effectively took the minds of the editorial staff off matters of business), my editor, Kate Medina, was having a difficult first pregnancy, comparatively late in life, and was home in bed. Her assistant was out sick as well. There was no one I could speak to about the Fantastic Voyage II problem who might be expected to understand the situation. I did manage to reach a reliable editor finally —Lisa Drew—on September 11. She was holding the fort, and I asked her whether she thought I could do the book for New American Library. Caught by surprise, she said she had better speak to the top brass first.
The next day she called back to say that the top brass objected. (On September 18, however, she left Doubleday, to be followed by loss after loss among the editorial staff, to my great consternation.)
In any case, I was called in to see Sam Vaughan and Henry Reath, both of them at the top of the editorial division.
They told me that Doubleday did not want me to do a science fiction novel for someone else. I said, in confusion, that the agent had said that Doubleday had had a chance to bid on it and had bid low, and they said that, no, Doubleday had never been asked to bid on it.
I was utterly confused by this, and I went back to the agent, who said that he had approached Dell Books for a bid and Dell was a paperback house that was a subsidiary of Doubleday’s.
I objected. I said that when I said Doubleday ought to have a chance to bid, I meant Doubleday, not Dell. The agent said that from the corporate standpoint that was the same thing, but Sam Vaughan and Henry Reath insisted they had not known of Dell’s actions.
The endless telephone conversations on the matter got me more and more confused and I finally decided that I didn’t care about the rights and wrongs of the matter; I wasn’t going to try to sort out what had been said and done; I was going to stick to fundamentals.
Doubleday was my science fiction publisher. They had worked with me for thirty-four years and some ninety books, including two bestsellers, and I wasn’t going to double-cross them. So I told the agent on September 27, 1984, that I wouldn’t do Fantastic Voyage II.
By October 1, the agent and the movie people he represented were threatening to sue me for breach of contract. I responded with the statement that I had made it perfectly clear, in writing, that my agree ment was conditional on Doubleday having a fair chance to bid on the book and that that condition had not been met.
Nevertheless, I felt that I was going to be sued and that, even if I won the case, it would cost a mint in legal fees, in lost time, and in emotional turmoil. So I went to Doubleday again on October 5 (and it was at this time that Henry Reath shook his head and said, “Isaac, you need a keeper,” when he found out I had never read the contract with the movie people). I asked what was to be done and Henry said Doubleday would be my keeper, and that their legal staff would take care of everything and bear all the expenses. (Loyalty begets loyalty, in my opinion.)
What Doubleday did, I don’t know, but all talk of the lawsuit was dropped and the matter of Fantastic Voyage I/receded into limbo, to my vast relief.
I went on to finish Robots and Empire, which I was working on while the dispute was raging, and it was published in 1985. I then got to work on Foundation and Earth. And then, to my total surprise, Fantastic Voyage II was reborn. It came about thus—
After I had refused to work on the project, the would-be moviemakers turned to Philip Farmer, an excellent science fiction writer; in fact, a far more skillful writer than I am, if you ask me.
He wrote a novel and sent them the manuscript, but they didn’t like it and New American Library didn’t like it either. The moviemakers turned to Scott Meredith, perhaps the outstanding literary agent in the world, whom I had known well when I was twenty and he was seventeen. They wanted Scott to get me to reconsider doing the novel. If anyone else had asked me, I would have returned a flat refusal, but an old friend is an old friend, so I temporized and asked to see Phil’s manuscript, so I could see what not to do.
Scott sent me a copy of the manuscript and I read it. It was not a science fiction novel of the kind that I would want to do, or that I was capable of doing, but it was, in my opinion, terrific. What’s more, it stuck tightly to the outline they had once sent me. It dealt with World War III in the bloodstream, and it was full of action and excitement.
I called up the Scott Meredith people and told them that everyone was crazy. They had asked for a particular novel and Farmer had supplied them with the very thing they wanted. There was nothing wrong with it. Why didn’t they accept the manuscript, get someone to publish it, and make a movie out of it?
No, no, no, no. They wouldn’t hear of it. They wanted me to write the novel. So I carefully made conditions I felt they would reject.
1.
They would have to pay Phil Farmer whatever they would have paid him for an accepted novel, for under no circumstances would I undercut a fellow writer.
2.
They would have to understand that the novel I wrote would be completely different in plot from what Phil had written (so that he could sell his manuscript elsewhere if he wished) and would in no way match the outline they had once sent me.
3.
The hardcover would have to be published by Doubleday.
By that time, Doubleday had changed completely. Betty Prashker, Kate Medina, Sam Vaughan, and Henry Reath had all left, and Dick Malina, whom I had never met, was in Henry Reath’s place. On January 27, 1986, Scott Meredith and Dick Malina hammered out the necessary arrangements and New American Library was persuaded to let go of the book.
After that I had to write it, so I began on February 1, 1986. It had similarities to Fantastic Voyage, but was longer, more detailed, more scientific, with better characterization—superior in every way, in my opinion. I was very pleased with it, and Doubleday published it in 1987. (By die time the book was published, Dick Malina had left and Nancy Evans replaced him—but none of these repeated changes affected my writing or my relationship with Doubleday as a corporate entity.)
I feel that Fantastic Voyage II did not do as well as it might have because I pictured a future in which the Soviet Union and the United States were cautious friends. It dealt not with competing submarines in the bloodstream, but with one submarine, with my American hero cooperating (not entirely voluntarily) with four Soviet crew members.
I suppose the story would have been more acceptable if it were a straight matter of Soviet bashing and if the wicked Commies were defeated and slaughtered, but I’m not much good at war stories.
Of course, three years after I wrote it, I grinned wryly as the cold war ended and the United States and the Soviet Union looked as though they were trying to head for greater friendship. Everyone in the United States kept saying, “Who would have thought it?” Well, I had thought it, and Fantastic Voyage II turned out to be prescient in that respect. Just the same, it was never made into a movie. The moviemakers should have done as I said, and should have worked with Phil Farmer’s novel.
get one out there for me. There were some hard words from the person about the limousine not having waited for me.
When the limousine came, I got in, while the driver went into the
Limousines
When I had lived in New York as a poor young man, the subway or the streetcar was my preferred means of transportation. Fares were only a nickel. Taxis, though more convenient, were financially out of reach.
When I returned to New
York in a condition of middle-aged affluence, I used taxis as my preferred means of transportation. This was not only a matter of convenience. The subways and buses, having increased their charge from 5 cents to (eventually) $1.15, had naturally increased the dirt and danger in proportion.
The next step upward was the limousine, but I hesitated to make use of them. The trouble was that I am not a limousine person. I feel out of place in one. It is the transportation equivalent of the tuxedo, in which I also feel out of place.
Yet circumstances conspired to make me a limousine person, at least a little bit. As I grew older and more famous and as my reluctance to travel grew ever more pronounced, I was more and more frequently offered limousine transportation as an added inducement. It is hard to turn that down, so Janet and I have become used to getting into a limousine and being driven—sometimes for many miles, once over the distance from New York City to Niagara Falls. (Naturally, we always specify a careful, nonsmoking driver.)
Only once did I have real trouble with a limousine and that was on November 4, 1984.1 had been driven about fifty miles upstate to give a talk, which proved very successful. There was a reception afterward and then I was ready to be driven home, but there was no limousine. The person in charge of the talk had to call the limousine people to
building and (I found out later) exchanged more hard words with the person in charge. I waited patiently in the limousine for about ten minutes before he came out, and when he was driving me home, he was clearly in a bad mood because (I found out later) the person in charge had refused to pay in advance.
Apparently, the driver brooded about that and, when we had gotten halfway home, he stopped the limousine at a roadside phone and, excusing himself, got out to phone his boss. He got back in and began moving the limousine in a way that roused my instant suspicion.
