In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  "Break-in," I said.

  And it was. Three hundred dollars of cigars, cigarettes, and tobacco were gone, along with the radio, the electric clock, and sixty dollars in cash. Say four hundred dollars altogether, counting the damage to the door.

  Quite a bit for a family for which every five-dollar expenditure required a council meeting.

  The merchandise was replaced before the day was out, and the door was fixed and reinforced, too. By the end of the week we had a new radio and clock, and a burglar alarm was installed. After that, the whole process of closing and opening the store had one additional delight. My father would set the alarm, close the door, then open it to see if it was working. R-ring-g-g would go the alarm at 1:00 a.m.

  In the morning he would open the door and rush to insert the key

  and turn off the alarm, and in the interim, r-ring-g-g it would go at 6:00 a.m. No one ever complained as far as I know, but since I have always been a light sleeper anyway, I never missed them.

  It was the first ripoff we had ever suffered, and my father didn't stop talking about it for months. No matter how well things went in the store 4 and how favorable the balance was, he would say, "If we still had that four hundred dollars . . ."

  One of our customers walked in as the burglar alarm was being installed and said, "Aren't you locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen?" (The purpose of aphorisms is to keep fools who have memorized them from having nothing to say.)

  "We've bought another horse," I said, taking the chance that my father would scold me for talking back to a customer.

  Aunt Pauline and Cousin Martin were over that afternoon to commiserate. There was still a tenuous connection between the two branches of the family. Indeed, Cousin Martin dropped in periodically over the next few years, but my best memory of him is of that afternoon. We sat in the living room and talked Shakespeare— Hamlet, specifically. As I recall, I was made very uneasy by the fact that he seemed more familiar with the play than I was.

  4 They went pretty well at that. At least there was no need for me to get a summer job in 1937 or in 1938. My NYA job was enough and the store could handle the rest of the tuition and miscellaneous expenses in my junior and senior years.

  Astounding Science Fiction

  In the spring of 1938, Astounding Stories gained a new editor: F. Orlin Tremaine was out, and in his place was John Wood Campbell, Jr., who was then not quite twenty-eight, and who, through the early and mid-1930s, had made a name for himself as one of the greatest science-fiction writers of the period. Certainly he was one of my favorites.

  Campbell instantly began to remold the magazine closer to his (and, inadvertently, my) heart's desire. For one thing, he changed the title to Astounding Science Fiction, which, to me, was a promising sign of further improvement.

  The excitement of the change persuaded me to begin writing letters again. After all, I was carefully reviewing, recording, and tabulating the stories in every science-fiction magazine that came out, and it seemed silly not to let the magazines themselves, or Astounding at least, reap the benefit of my thoughts—and, through them, the world at large.

  I wrote a letter to Astounding, therefore, commenting on the stories, rating them, and, in general, taking on the airs of a critic.

  What's more, the editor printed the letter in the letter department of the December 193-7 i ssue > an d I had the extreme pleasure of seeing my name and address (as well as my immortal words) appearing in semimicroscopic print at the back of the magazine.

  After that, I wrote other letters and, indeed, began to write them monthly.

  One of the reasons for that, as it happened, was that the mechanics of the process had been simplified for me since by now I was a fast and proficient typist.

  Part of the credit belongs to my NYA work, which during my junior and senior years was for J. Bernhard Stern, a sociology professor, who used me as a kind of miscellaneous typist, working up passages from books, collecting statistics, and so on, all for a scholarly volume on which he was working.

  When my sister became a proficient typist through her studies at the business school, I had her test my speed, and it turned out I was typing at the rate of fifty words a minute. (Of course, I refused to de-

  duct for errors, since I was not a professional secretary and my work did not have to be letter perfect.)

  For years Astounding had been published regularly on the third Wednesday of each month—at least officially. Magazine deliveries took place on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that Astounding actually appeared at my father's store the day before the third Wednesday. Each month, on the day it came, I was there waiting for the bundle so that I could cut the bundle and extract the magazine at once.

  This was always to my father's great annoyance, since he had a definite procedure for handling the magazines, as he did for everything. He would cut the bundle, take all the magazines apart in neat little stacks, count them to make sure he had the right number of each, place each little stack in the right place in the newsstand, removing, as he did so, any previous issues of that sort left over. He put the previous issues in another place to stack up and return to the distributor. All this was simple, but it took time, and my father preferred to cut the bundle when things were slow in the store and not, as I invariably did, the instant they arrived. (He always liked it better when I had to be in school at the time the Astoundings arrived, and he always saved me my copy.)

  On Tuesday, May 10, 1938, the day I expected Astounding under the new second-Wednesday-of-the-month dispensation my father was particularly annoyed because, having cut the bundle, I didn't find any copies of my magazine. It had been cut for nothing, he complained.

  If he was annoyed, I was terrified. On May 11, my diary begins, "Another day has gone by, and no Astounding. I never realized before how much these science-fiction magazines mean to me."

  My terror, of course, was that Astounding might have ceased publication. On May 12, in desperation, I invested a nickel for a phone call to Street & Smith, Inc., the publishers of Astounding. I was solemnly assured by whoever it was at the other end that the magazine had not ceased publication. I decided it would probably arrive the next Tuesday, having returned to the older schedule.

  There was nothing to do but wait for Tuesday, which I did in a rather distraught way. It sounds silly to have taken on so about a magazine, but each person has his own standards of what, exactly, counts for much or little in his life. I would stand there behind the cash register, handing out packs of cigarettes, and making change, and I would find myself staring at the magazine rack at the other end of the store and

  deciding that as long as Astounding wasn't there in its accustomed place, life was not worth living.

  And on Tuesday May 17, Astounding didn't come.

  3

  I had spent days planning my course of procedure in this case. I picked up tips now and then, when delivering an order or calling someone to the phone, and I had been saving them of late, feeling that they were my money. I had enough to make the subway trip to Street & Smith, Inc., and to buy a copy of Astounding there if I wished.

  Choosing my mother as the softer touch in this case, I argued her into giving me permission to take off two hours that otherwise I would have to spend in the store—choosing two hours during my father's afternoon nap, so that I would not have to ask his permission as well. (Fortunately, it was finals week, and I had no classes to attend, merely exams to take.)

  Then off I went. I might have been over eighteen by now, but a sheltered life is a sheltered life. It was one of the first times I had ever taken a subway ride into Manhattan on my own, except to go to school. I was going to wander about streets I did not know in order to make my way into strange buildings and ask questions of strange people. It made me uneasy.

  I got there. It was not a really difficult task. The Street & Smith offices were at 79 Seventh Avenue, not far away from a subway station I passed through every day going to and from school. I placed my case b
efore the elevator man, who gave me directions, and on the fifth floor I met a Mr. Clifford, who explained to me that the publication date had been changed from the second Wednesday to the third Friday. When I craved certainty, he showed me a printed schedule, and there was Astounding listed under Friday, May 20. Assuming it would actually come Thursday, May 19, it meant I had two more days to wait.

  On Thursday, May 19, the June issue of Astounding came, and although it was raining that day, the sun shone brilliantly for me. It was the day of my chemistry finals, but I bothered with no last-minute studying. Until the moment I had to leave for school, I read the magazine. (It's all right. I did well in the exam.)

  4 The whole incident would be unimportant (even allowing for the nine days of anguish) were it not for consequences.

  I had not entirely forgotten "Cosmic Corkscrew/' which I had begun just a year before and which I had worked at in very desultory fashion for a few months. In the spring I had even taken the manuscript out of the drawer and thought about it, and, on occasion, had written a page or two, or had rewritten a passage.

  Now, however, after the incident with Astounding, I was galvanized into activity. In the first place, the days during which I had imagined the magazine to be lost forever had revealed to me the extent to which science fiction had seized upon me. It made me realize something that until then had been only subliminal—that one of my ambitions in life was to be a science-fiction writer.

  I did not want to be simply a writer, you understand. Nor was I interested in making money. Neither of these two items ever occurred to me. What I wanted was to write a science-fiction story and to have it appear in a science-fiction magazine. That would be to join the company of the demi gods whose names I knew and idolized: Jack Williamson, Nat Schachner, E. E. Smith, Edmond Hamilton, John W. Campbell, and all the rest.

  In the second place, my visit to Street & Smith had somehow reduced the great gulf that separated myself and the demi gods. Street & Smith, and therefore Astounding, had become attainable. It existed in a real building in real space, a building I could reach and enter and it contained people who would speak to me.

  In the third place, my junior year at college was completed and I would have more time on my hands.

  With all these factors meeting, I took "Cosmic Corkscrew" out of the drawer again, read it over, and determined to complete it.

  To do so, I had to overcome some obstacles. The January 1938 issue of Astounding contained a story called "Dead Knowledge" by Don A. Stuart that had a scene describing a mysteriously empty city, much like the mysteriously empty city I had begun writing about in my story half a year earlier. In addition, I had become aware that P. Schuyler Miller in his story "The Sands of Time," which appeared in the April 1937 Astounding just before I started "Cosmic Corkscrew," had involved a kind of helical structure of time.

  I was in two minds whether to continue the story or to abandon it and try something else. I thought about it for a while and then decided that the overlaps were unimportant. The story as a whole was quite different from either "Dead Knowledge" or "The Sands of Time," and so I moved forward.

  What's more, I continued to move forward even though the July issue of Astounding was again delayed. I did not go into a tailspin this

  time because an advertisement in Doc Savage, also published by Street & Smith, dealt with the July issue of Astounding, which it described as being "now on the stands," so I knew it would come eventually. In fact, I hastened my writing, so as to finish the story before I could possibly learn, for certain, that the magazine had died. In that case, I did not think I would be able to write at all.

  5

  I finished "Cosmic Corkscrew" on June 19, 1938. It was actually the first piece of fiction I had ever completed with a view to possible publication. The next question was what to do with it. I hadn't the faintest idea as to how one went about submitting a story to a magazine. Nowadays, there are many youngsters who don't know, and all of them (it sometimes seems to me) write to me for advice. I wasn't even smart enough at that time to write to anyone for advice.

  I knew I might mail it, but even if I could figure out what I was supposed to say in the letter, there was a problem. As I said in my diary, "If I mail it, it will cost a mint of money as the damn thing weighs four ounces."

  Mail was three cents an ounce in those days, so that the "mint of money" came to twelve cents.

  We counted the pennies in those days. Just a few days earlier my father had refused to have a plumber fix a leaking gas pipe because the job would cost three dollars and he went shopping for a more reasonable plumber.

  Again, through sharp bargaining, my father managed to get someone to agree to fix a fountain pen for thirty-four cents, this to include the cost of mailing it to us, thus saving ten cents in subway fare. It was only after he returned and he had explained that he managed this low price by leaving out a new clip for an additional twenty-five cents that he found out he had made a mistake. I told him, rather forcefully, that a fountain pen was useless without a clip, and he called up to have that added to the tab.

  None of this, at the time, seemed to represent the cruelty of poverty to us. We were used to it. We were aware at all times of the exact amount of money we had in our pockets, right down to the penny, and every outgo, however small, was carefully considered.

  It did not escape me that a round-trip subway fare would cost me ten cents, or two cents less than to mail the story. Furthermore, the subway fare would enable me to check once again on the lateness of Astounding.

  On June 21, with the July issue still not at the store, I discussed the matter with my father.

  I had till then kept the matter of my writing entirely to myself. I had viewed it as merely a hobby, a way of spending my time doing something interesting. It was for my own amusement only. I had told Emmanuel Bershadsky about The Greenville Chums at College seven years before, but I can't remember ever telling anyone else about anything I was writing. I certainly didn't tell my parents, and I don't think they were really aware that I was writing.

  I had the instinctive feeling even then that I would not welcome criticism. Even when I came to my father with this purely tactical problem of how to submit a story, I did not offer to let him read it. Nor did he ask to read it; but if he had done so, I would have refused. (I haven't changed since those days. I still don't discuss my stories when they are in the process of being written, and I still don't welcome criticism.)

  Of course, as to such collateral matters as submitting a story, I was willing, even eager, to seek advice, and my father's suggestion was that I not only make the trip by subway, but also that I hand the manuscript to Mr. Campbell himself.

  The thought was a frightening one. It became even more frightening when my father further suggested that necessary preliminaries included a shave and my best suit. That meant I would have to take additional time, but the day was already wearing on, and I didn't have very much time. I had to be back for the afternoon newspaper delivery, just in case the delivery boy didn't show up.

  I compromised. I shaved, but did not bother changing suits, and off I went.

  I was convinced that for daring to ask to see the editor of Astounding Science Fiction I would be thrown out of the building bodily, and that my manuscript would be torn up and thrown out after me in a shower of confetti. My father, however, who had lofty notions, was convinced that a writer (by which he meant any one with a manuscript) would be treated with the respect due an intellectual. He had no fears in the matter, for had he himself not braved the Soviet bureaucracy? Maybe so, but it was I who had to brave Street & Smith.

  I put off the crisis by stopping in to see Mr. Clifford again, and he explained that the new publication date was the fourth Friday every month.

  There was now no excuse to delay any further. I went into the main building and asked to see the editor. The girl behind the desk spoke briefly into the phone and said, "Mr. Campbell will see you."

  I was astonished. I had ask
ed to see him only because my father had told me to, but I was convinced that this was just my father's lack of sophistication. I assumed I would be asked to leave the manuscript with the receptionist, and this I was prepared to do.

  What I did not know was that Campbell's invitation was what would have happened in many cases of this sort. John Campbell was a most unusual fellow who loved to talk and who would seize almost anyone as an audience. Furthermore, and this may have been a crucial point, he knew me from my recent letters—my name was familiar to him—and that meant he certainly wouldn't turn me away.

  What if I hadn't written those letters? What if I didn't live on the subway line? What if I lived—I wouldn't say in Nebraska—but in Westchester, Jersey City, Staten Island; anywhere that made Campbell reachable only by spending more than ten cents in fares?

  In that case I would not have traveled to Street & Smith, but would have mailed the story. Or if I had gone there, without having written letters to the magazine, he might conceivably not have seen me after all. And without personal contact, everything might have been different.

  But it wasn't different; it was the way it was. The receptionist directed me through a large, loftlike room filled with huge rolls of paper and enormous piles of magazines and permeated with the heavenly smell of pulp.

  And there, in a small room on the other side, was Mr. Campbell.

  John Campbell

  John Campbell was not quite twenty-eight years old at the time I first met him. Under his own name, and under his pen name of Don A. Stuart, he was one of the most famous and highly regarded authors of science fiction, but he was about to bury his writing reputation forever under the far greater renown he was to gain as editor.