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

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  Campbell 1 was a large man, an opinionated man, who smoked and talked constantly, and who enjoyed, above anything else, the production of outrageous ideas, which he bounced off his listener and dared him to refute. And it was difficult to refute Campbell even when his ideas were absolutely and madly illogical. 2

  We talked for over an hour that first time, on June 21, 1938. He showed me forthcoming issues of the magazine (actual future issues in the paper flesh), and he, too, assured me the magazine would not die. I found there was a letter of mine in the July issue that was about to hit the stands and another in the August issue. He smiled when I pointed them out excitedly and said that he knew.

  Campbell told me about himself, and about his pen name—which occasioned me a little embarassment. It had been Campbell himself, under the Stuart pen name, who had written "Dead Knowledge," one of the two stories that overlapped "Cosmic Corkscrew," an overlapping I decided to ignore when I didn't know that Stuart and Campbell were the same person.

  I was too shamefaced (or cowardly) to say anything about that, but if I had, it wouldn't have mattered. Campbell never quibbled about minor overlappings as long as the stories and major ideas were different and valuable.

  1 In later years, much later years, I would sometimes address him as "John," but always uneasily. I never got over my early awe of him, and he was always "Mr. Campbell" when I addressed him and "Campbell" when I wrote of him. In this autobiography, I will speak of people as I addressed them in life—first names only when I actually used first names, last names when I used last names.

  2 And illogical they certainly seemed to be to me, for he was always an idiosyncratic conservative in his view on life, whereas I was an idiosyncratic liberal—and we never agreed on anything. Yet although he stood somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun in politics, he was, in person, as kind, generous, and decent a human being as I have ever met.

  Campbell, on that first day, told me that when he was seventeen, his father had sent in one of his manuscripts to Amazing Stories and that it would have been published had the magazine not lost the manuscript and had he himself not lacked a carbon copy. (I was behind him by a year in age, but at least I brought the story myself and, despite all my innocence of things literary, I had the good sense to make and keep a carbon.)

  Campbell promised to read my story that night and to send a letter, whether acceptance or rejection, the next day. He promised also that in case of rejection he would tell me what was wrong with the story so that I could improve.

  He lived up to both promises. Two days later, on June 23, the manuscript came back. It was a rejection.

  As my diary put it: "At 9:30 I received back 'Cosmic Corkscrew' with a polite letter of rejection. He didn't like the slow beginning, the suicide at the end."

  Campbell also didn't like the first-person narration and the stiff dialog. He pointed out that the length (nine thousand words) was inconvenient—too long for a short story, too short for a novelette. Magazines had to be put together like jigsaw puzzles, you see, and certain lengths for individual stories are more convenient than others.

  By that time, though, I was off and running. The joy of having spent an hour and more with Campbell, the thrill of talking face to face with an idol, had already filled me with the ambition to write another science-fiction story, one that was better than the first, so that I could have occasion to meet him again.

  In fact, by the time I returned to the store on the day of that visit, I had worked out another story in my mind, one I intended to call "Stowaway," and I waited only to hear from Campbell before starting it. His letter of rejection, when it arrived, was so cordial and helpful that it did not in the least dampen my spirits, either.

  Rather the reverse, for I began "Stowaway" as soon as the rejection came, being careful to use the third person, begin quickly, and make it the proper length—six thousand words.

  What happened to "Cosmic Corkscrew" after that I don't really know. I abandoned it and never submitted it anywhere else. I didn't actually tear it up and throw it away; it simply languished in some desk drawer until eventually I lost track of it. In any case, it no longer exists.

  This seems to be a source of discomfort for many of my readers.

  They seem to think that the first story I ever wrote for publication, however bad it might have been, was an important document. In fact, once I revealed that I had written eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College when I was eleven, there seems to have been a certain impatience with me on the part of some of my fans for not having carefully preserved that too.

  All I can say, Gentle Readers, is that I, too, am sorry. I, too, would be curious to see what those old productions looked like, and I have no doubt that I could get such things published as curiosities, but how could I tell it then? There was no way of my knowing in 1938, let alone 1931, that my first tries at scribbling might have historic interest some day.

  In fact, there are a number of stories that I wrote in the late 1930s and early 1940s that I never sold, and every one of them no longer exists. I swear to you, though, that however sad this makes completists, they represent no literary loss whatever. In fact, I suspect that in order to have truly served humanity, it is not so much that I should have saved those stories I lost, but that I should have lost some of the stories I saved and published.

  3

  On June 23, 1938 the July 1938 Astounding finally arrived, and I found it an anticlimax. I have this to say in my diary: "Somehow this business of contributing seems to have spoiled some of my joy in Astounding. When I read Astounding now, I'm consumed with jealousy. I think that even if one of my stories is ever accepted that I won't return to my old enjoyment. . . . However, maybe I'm unduly pessimistic."

  I wasn't. The loss was permanent. The bliss that the science-fiction magazine brought me, which had increased to an almost unbearable height after I had started keeping, saving, and cataloguing the magazines in 1937, 3 slowly faded, and never returned to that peak again.

  I had eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge when I went to visit Campbell, and I had been ejected from Eden.

  Yet I can't very well complain. I might, with far greater justice, say that I had emerged from a chrysalis into a far better form and world, for if I left one Eden, I entered another, that of writing. And this Eden, in one shape or another, I have never left, nor has it ever palled on me.

  3 The absolute height came with the September 1937 Astounding, in which the first installment of E. E. Smith's "Galactic Patrol" appeared.

  A strange change came over my diary, too. Until the day I visited Campbell I filled every page (with very few exceptions) from top to bottom and left to right—leaving no margins—with microscopic writing. After that day, I rarely finished a page and I totally omitted the detailed baseball analyses, which I suddenly outgrew and to which I never returned. I wrote more briefly and succinctly, because I wanted to spend more time on writing "Stowaway" and the stories that followed.

  Almost at once, you see, I gathered that ideally all the writing I did should be for publication; that anything I had to write for personal reasons, whether diary or mail, would have to be brief. I have followed that principle ever since.

  4

  My letters to Astounding were bringing me into the wider world of science fiction in ways other than the fact that they probably got me an interview with Campbell. On June 27, 1938, for instance, I received a letter from R. R. Winterbotham, a minor science-fiction writer who lived in Salina, Kansas. He noted that I carefully rated all stories and asked if I might send him my rating for his.

  That was an embarrassing request, for I had eight of his stories in my files and I didn't like any of them very much. It rather spoiled the fun of publicly denouncing stories when I stopped to think that the writers were living people who would read the denunciation and be hurt. It also occurred to me that the time might come when readers might publicly say hurtful things about my stories, if I ever managed to get any published. Quite
suddenly, and even before I was actually published, I found myself viewing critics from the standpoint of the professional writer, and I decided that I didn't like them. I have never changed my mind concerning them since.

  I answered Winterbotham as politely and as kindly as I could, and this started a correspondence between us that lasted several years. 4

  The letter from Winterbotham served to put me to work on "Stowaway" with added ardor. It had taken me only five days to complete a first draft of the story, but I prepared a final copy in greater lei-

  4 In the years since those old times I have received letters from young fans eager to begin correspondences. I have never been able to do so, out of sheer lack of time One or two— only one or two, I am glad to say—have taken umbrage and have asked me sarcastically how I would have felt if my letters to the established authors of my day had been so callously rejected. All I can say is that I don't know how I would feel, since I never intruded upon them. In some cases, they (the authors) wrote to me and themselves started the correspondence, but I never suggested such a thing to them, let alone demanded it.

  sure and wasn't done till July 10. It dealt with an expedition to Callisto that encountered animals that killed by means of an intense magnetic field, animals that could be approached only by someone wearing a non-ferrous spacesuit.

  Where "Cosmic Corkscrew" had taken me thirteen months to complete, "Stowaway" had taken me only eighteen days. I found my speed—double quick. I wrote, you see, in the tradition of the pulps. Since the word rate was extremely low (one cent a word was tops in science fiction at the time) and a short story netted you only sixty-five dollars at most, and only half that usually, it was impossible to spend much time on any one story and still make even the most meager of livings.

  I wasn't planning to make a living at writing, of course, but I knew nothing else but the pulp tradition. A letter from Winterbotham on July 15, for instance, in response to my questions, assured me that he had received rejections, too (he enclosed two of them as samples) and said that he had written forty-three stories before he had gotten one accepted. He advised me not to spend too much time revising a story.

  I felt that to be good advice. From that day to this, almost everything I write goes through the typewriter just twice—first draft and final copy. If after two typings the result proves unsatisfactory, it has always seemed to me it is better abandoned. There is less trouble and trauma involved in writing a new piece than in trying to salvage an unsatisfactory old one—in my own case, at any rate. In the very few cases that I tried salvaging, it never did either myself or the story any good.

  5

  On Monday, July 18, 1938, I traveled to Campbell's office a second time. Now I had "Stowaway." Once again I stayed with him for over an hour, and this time he actually gave me a copy of the August issue of Astounding, which I thus had, without charge, three days before I would have had it on the newsstand. I asked him, rather diffidently, if he minded my bringing in my stories personally, and he said it would be perfectly all right "provided you don't come on make-up day."

  Naturally, I asked when make-up day was, but he wouldn't tell me. Perhaps he wanted to leave matters open to refuse me for any reason by pretending it was make-up day.

  I was quite certain that "Stowaway" would be rejected, but by the time I got home I had my next story all plotted in mind. It was to be "Marooned off Vesta" and, I said in my diary, "I will try to inject a bit of humor in this one and lay off the heavy drama."

  That, incidentally, was the marvel of Campbell. It didn't matter that he rejected you. There was an enthusiasm about him and an all-encompassing friendliness that was contagious. I always left him eager to write further.

  I have written of Campbell in other books and therefore I have received numerous letters from youngsters in their teens who ask me to remember what Campbell did for me and asking me, therefore, to do the same for them. It is a reasonable request for, having benefited from Campbell's bounty, it is only fair and just that I pay it back—not to lim, since I cannot, but to other youngsters coming after me in my footsteps.

  The trouble is I cannot do that either. I am not Campbell. In some ways, I have passed beyond him, but in the essential characteristics that made him my literary father, I am but a pygmy to him. I don't have his ability to bestow enthusiasm and self-confidence; I don't have his endless fertility of mind. Most of all, I don't have his capacity to help others along miles of successful pathways while remaining behind himself.

  In other words, he was the quintessential editor, who fertilized and nourished a whole generation of writers, and I am only a writer, completely wrapped up in myself. Campbell could point out what was wrong with a story and describe precisely what ought to be done to correct it. I can't even do that for my own stories, which, if they are wrong, must remain wrong forever if the correction is to come out of my mind alone. How much less, then, can I talk intelligently about someone else's stories.

  In the case of "Stowaway," Campbell was slower than he had been before. When Wednesday's mail did not bring rejection, I was upset. I was afraid Campbell had decided it wasn't worth reading; or, having read it, that it wasn't worth returning.

  On July 22, however, back it came after four days. I said in my diary concerning the letter that accompanied it:

  ". . . it was the nicest possible rejection you could imagine. Indeed, the next best thing to an acceptance. He told me the idea was good and the plot passable. The dialog and handling, he continued, were neither stiff or wooden (this was rather a delightful surprise to me) and that there was no one particular fault but merely a general air of amateurishness, constraint, forcing. The story did not go smoothly. This, he said, I would grow out of as soon as I had had sufficient experience. He assured me that I would probably be able to sell my stories but it meant perhaps a year's work and a dozen stories before I could click. . . ."

  It is no wonder that such a "rejection" letter kept me hotly charged with enormous enthusiasm to write. It merely sped me further on my way with "Marooned off Vesta," which dealt with three men on a wrecked spaceship and the manner in which an improvised rocket-drive was set up to bring them to the nearest asteroid.

  Many years later I asked Campbell (with whom I had, by then, grown to be on the closest of terms) why he had bothered with me at all, since the first story was surely utterly impossible.

  "Yes, it was impossible," he said frankly, for he never flattered. "On the other hand, I saw something in you. You were eager and listened and I knew you wouldn't quit no matter how many rejections I handed you. As long as you were willing to work hard at improving, I was willing to work with you."

  That was Campbell. I wasn't the only writer, whether newcomer or old-timer, he was to work with in this fashion. Patiently, and out of his own enormous vitality and talent, he built up a stable of the best science-fiction writers the world had, till then, ever seen.

  Even today, it is almost inevitable that anyone, listing those science-fiction writers who are the most respected in the field will mention (in alphabetical order, so that we can avoid invidious distinctions and yet keep me first) Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein. All three of us (still alive, still active) were Campbell discoveries. Others, either discovered by him or developed by him after their discovery, include Poul Anderson, Hal Clement, L. Sprague de Camp, Lester del Rey, L. Ron Hubbard, Theodore Sturgeon, A. E. van Vogt, and many others. The one great writer who made it in the early 1940s and was not a Campbell discovery was Ray Bradbury.

  Nor would Campbell ever accept credit; at least, not from me. There were times, years later, when I would try to express my gratitude to him and to tell him that but for him I would never have become what I was.

  And he would shake his head violently and say, "You're all wrong, Asimov. I helped hundreds of writers exactly as I helped you. Why aren't they all Isaac Asimovs?"

  But it was he who was wrong. I'm sure he helped hundreds of writers but not quite in the way he helped
me. I can't help but think I was "teacher's pet." Perhaps it was because I came in each time I had a story. Perhaps because I listened closely and tried so hard to follow his suggestions. I don't know. Once he praised me for always putting in my own interpretations into the story.

  He said, "If I give a story idea to a writer and get it back exactly as I told it to him, I don't waste any more story ideas on him. I want it to

  grow and develop inside him. I want more back than I give. Fm selfish that way."

  If I gave back more than I received from him, that was just my incapacity at following suggestions. I did my best to make it exactly what he wanted, imagining that was the way I'd sell him. If I had been a cleverer writer, then, more adept at controlling what I wrote, I might not have made it—at least not with Campbell.

  For "Stowaway," unlike the case of "Cosmic Corkscrew," rejection did not mean oblivion. On August 3, 1938, I worked up the nerve to visit the offices of Thrilling Wonder Stories. 6 These were located at 22 East 48th Street in Manhattan and was the only other science-fiction magazine I could reach. (The editorial offices of Amazing Stories were then located in Chicago.)

  I left "Stowaway" with the receptionist, therefore, along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope. That was what I had expected to have had to do in Campbell's case that first time, but he had spoiled me now. I left the offices of Thrilling Wonder rather peeved with the editor.

  From mid-July 1938 onward, by the way, I began to live for the mail (something I still do), since from that time on I almost always had something out, something that would bring me back either a rejected manuscript or a check.

  Mornings, therefore, if I weren't at school, I would sit outside the store and wait for the mailman. (My return address was always the store, never the house we happened to live in.)