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

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  Once the mailman reached and delivered mail at the house across the street, just before the point at which he crossed to deliver the mail for 174 Windsor Place, he always took out our mail and held it in his hand. A large manila envelope meant a rejection, of course. The lack of such an envelope meant, conceivably, a letter of acceptance or a check —or nothing at all.

  Eventually, the mailman caught on to what I was waiting for and would call out as he crossed the street, "Nothing today, Isaac," or "Bad news, I think, Isaac."

  It spoiled my fun, rather, and I longed to be able to tell him to say nothing and let me find out for myself, but I was always afraid of irritating a mailman in any way. I didn't want him refusing to deliver my mail.

  5 The old Wonder Stories had changed owners and title with the August 1936 issue.

  "Stowaway" bounced back from Thrilling Wonder on August 9, and in due course from Amazing as well, and I retired it for the nonce.

  The stowaway of the title, by the way, was named Stanley. I suppose it was only natural that I use my brother's name. He turned nine years old on July 25, just a week after I submitted the story for the first time, and was now almost as old as I was when he had been born.

  There were no girls in "Stowaway," any more than there had been in "Cosmic Corkscrew" or than there were in the new story "Marooned off Vesta" that I was writing. But then, women were very much an unknown quantity for me. I had made eyes at Mazie in Decatur Street, but that had been a very minor thing, and since we had come to Windsor Place there wasn't even that.

  Boys High and Columbia were entirely masculine so that I didn't even encounter women my own age at school. In 1938, when I was writing my first stories, I had yet to have a formal date with a girl. In short, the circumstances of my life were such that it never occurred to me to put a feminine character in my stories.

  When I first explained this in The Early Asimov, it elicited irate letters from a few of the more advanced feminists among my women readers who would not accept my youthful ignorance as an excuse for ignoring women in my stories.

  And I ignored them not only in my earliest stories but to some extent even later on. I eventually had dates, and I eventually learned about women, but the early imprinting had its effect. To this very day, the romantic element in my stories tends to be minor and the sexual element virtually nil.

  7

  On July 30, 1938, only eight days after Campbell's second rejection, I had finished my third story, "Marooned off Vesta." I had no intention, however, of taking that down to Campbell at once. For one thing, I did not want to bother him too much, and once a month, I felt, was all I could inflict on him without wearing him out. Second, I was not sure it was a wise thing to let him know how quickly I had written the story. Perhaps he would feel I ought to have taken more pains.

  I decided, therefore, to wait several weeks—but without any intention of wasting my time. I could always write additional stories.

  Except that I couldn't. My old second-hand Underwood No. 5, which had given me good service for three years, was breaking down, and on August 2 it was clear that it would have to be repaired.

  ly father's passport picture, 1922, I link, at the age of twenty-five.

  My mother's passport picture, 1922, at the age of twenty-six.

  Me in 1934, I think, at the age of fourteen, standing outside the candy store on Decatur Street.

  My father in 1915, at the age of eight with a full head of hair. Unbelievabl

  tanley, at the age of three (1932), outside the Essex Street store. Behind him is the icebox which my father pounded ice and salt to keep the ice cream cold.

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  June 16, J 940. Cyril Kornbluth at left, I at right.

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  September 13, 1940, me and my mustache, at the age of twenty, superimposed onaj. of Marcia's diary.

  Thursday, November 1, 1945

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  Two pages from my diary:

  Thursday, November 1, J945,

  tfie cfoy I entered the Army;

  and Thursday, May 20,1948,

  the day I became Isaac Asimov, PhD.

  Thursday, May 20, 1948

  141 st Day—225 days to follow

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  My parents and I

  in Prospect Park in 1941.

  I am twenty-one, my father is forty-four

  my mother forty-five.

  Ordinarily, my father would have seen to it that it was repaired, but he reasoned that the repair would be expensive, that the machine would break down again for an additional expensive repair and that it might, therefore, represent long-term economy to invest in a new machine. Second, the mere fact that I had written and submitted two stories had made me, in my father's eyes, a literary man, and the rejections had not tarnished that image. As a literary man, he felt I deserved the best.

  On August 4, therefore, we went to the Boro Hall section of Brooklyn, where the borough's largest department stores are to be found, and there we spent four hours comparison shopping before we bought a late-model Smith-Corona portable typewriter, the first new typewriter I ever owned.

  It cost sixty dollars, though from that sum we can deduct seventeen dollars as a trade-in for the Underwood. In other words, after three years of use, we got back seven dollars more on the old typewriter than we had spent for it, which, of course, made us feel good.

  My father felt so good about it, in fact, that he was willing to have lunch in a cafeteria on the way home. I carefully recorded what we bought and the price thereof, for we did not often eat out. I had a salami on roll for ten cents and my father had whole wheat bread and baked beans for fifteen cents.

  The new typewriter was delivered on August 10, while I was in the cemetery reading the new issue of Amazing. It was there to gladden my heart when I returned and, of course, the old Underwood was gone.

  The fact that the new typewriter was a portable meant that I didn't have to keep it permanently on the desk, but could stow it in its case and place it on the floor and out of the way when it was not in use. The fact that it was new meant that the key action was very easy and that typing could be faster and yet less tiring. The disadvantage of a portable, of course, was that it was light enough to slide across the desk as I typed and I had to find a piece of sponge rubber to place it on.

  8

  With the new typewriter, I quickly completed two additional stories, my fourth and fifth, "This Irrational Planet" and "Ring Around the Sun." With "Marooned off Vesta" that meant I had three stores set for submission.

  Of the three, I felt "This Irrational Planet" to be the weakest, so I did not submit it to Campbell. I submitted it directly to Thrilling

  Wonder Stories on August 26, 1938, and it was not rejected till September 24. Campbell had spoiled me, and the four-week intervals between submission and rejection appalled me. I even called during that interval to make an indignant inquiry—not knowing that a mere four-week wait was brief indeed for anyone but Campbell.

  But at least the rejection, when it came, was typewritten and was not a printed form. What's more, it contained the sentence, 'Try us again, won't you?" That encouraged me. Perhaps I had underestimated the story. Buoyantly I tried Campbell, and he rejected it in six days. Five other magaz
ines rejected it afterward. I never did sell it, and "This Irrational Planet" is also nonexistent now. I don't even remember the plot, except that I'm pretty certain that the planet of the title was Earth itself. The only other information I have about it is that it was quite short, only three thousand words long. 6

  The other two stories written in the same month were reserved for a better fate, but it didn't seem so at first.

  On August 23, I visited Campbell on the third of what I was determined to turn into a monthly trip, but this time I was disappointed. Campbell was on vacation. It had never occurred to me that people take vacations (it still doesn't), and it had never occurred to me to call first and find if he were in and could see me before making the trip. With phone calls a nickel apiece it wasn't the sort of thing I would think of.

  Rather dashed, I tried to hand the manuscripts to the receptionist, but she urged me to try again the following week. On August 30, therefore, I came back. He was out to lunch (I didn't think that people take lunches either—and still don't) but I waited, and when he arrived we went down to his office together for our third interview. I gave him both stories and he pointed to a pile of manuscripts that had accumulated during his vacation.

  "I've got to skim over these," he said, "and put aside the hopeless ones for rejection."

  "Is that personal?" I asked, timorously.

  "No," he said, "I don't consider you hopeless."

  But, on the other hand, he didn't consider me very hopeful either. At least, both stories were back in my hands on September 8 with a very brief letter indeed. I told myself that the postvacation pileup made it impossible for him to write at his usual length, but I was badly shaken.

  6 Those stories of mine that I never sold and that no longer exist were all short. They total just about fifty thousand words. Since I have published an estimated total of a little over three million words of fiction, the lost works amount to less than 2 per cent of the whole.

  The very next day I shipped off "Marooned off Vesta," which I felt to be the better of the two, to Amazing Stories, and for a period of six weeks it seemed to have vanished. As for "Ring Around the Sun" I mailed that to Thrilling Wonder Stories on September 28, and it was back on October 4.

  By that time, I had completed another story, my sixth, "The Weapon," which I submitted to Campbell at our fourth meeting, on September 28, and which came back on October 4.

  By October 21, 1938, then, I had completed six stories, five of which I had submitted to Campbell and which he had rejected. The stories had piled up four other rejections among themselves, so that the box score was six stories, nine rejections, no sales.

  I might have been dejected by this were it not for my monthly trips to Campbell.

  The Futurians

  In that same fateful summer of 1938, an event took place that led to my entry into science-fiction fandom.

  For nine years I had been reading science fiction, following it faithfully, and of late performing my own peculiar statistical analysis of it. I knew that there were other readers, because I read their letters in the magazines, but I knew no other readers personally.

  What I did not know was that here and there, groups of science-fiction readers were forming clubs of one sort or another and even publishing little periodicals (usually on primitive mimeograph devices) called "fan magazines," or "fanzines" for short. In May 1934, Wonder Stories even sponsored a national organization called "The Science Fiction League." I read about it in the magazine but that seemed to exist in another dimension as far as I was concerned.

  Then, on August 2, 1938, I received a postcard from Jack Rubin-son, who had been at Boys High with me and who had been in my graduating class. He too was a science-fiction reader. He had read my letters in Astounding, and he wanted to begin a correspondence.

  I was willing, and on September 6, he sent me a large envelope containing the first fanzines I ever saw. My judgment, according to my diary, was that they were "fairly interesting."

  With very few exceptions, that is all fanzines can possibly be, even for dedicated science-fiction fanatics. Most of them are written indifferently well and are extremely ingrown. They are house organs essentially, the house consisting of ten or fifteen fans. If you weren't one of those ten or fifteen, most of a particular fanzine will seem to you to be written in some strange foreign language.

  On September 12 came the next step. I received a card from Rubinson telling me of the club he belonged to—the Greater New York Science Fiction Club, which met periodically in Queens.

  My heart yearned for it and I replied at once, begging him to tell me when the next meeting of the club would take place, so that I could attend and join. I intended to do this despite the fact, as I said in my diary, that it would mean "double carfare."

  I got my invitation to attend a meeting. The invitation arrived on

  September 15, 1938, but in between something had happened at that club that I knew nothing of. Let me explain.

  Though science-fiction clubs were small, they were contentious. The membership tended to consist of intelligent, articulate, argumentative, short-tempered, and opinionated young men (plus a few women) who got into tremendous power struggles.

  You might wonder how power struggles can possibly arise in small clubs devoted to something as arcane as science fiction, and I wonder, too—but it happens. There are arguments over what happened to the thirty-five cents in the treasury, who is to run the fanzine, and other equally momentous problems. I believe there were even arguments as to how best to "control fandom" or, on a lesser scale, the world.

  When the arguments overflowed the possibilities of word-of-mouth, letters flew from fanzine to fanzine—long, articulate, venomous, libelous letters, which often degenerated into threats of lawsuit that never materialized (largely because no lawsuit could ever result in substantial damages when no one being sued was worth more than $1.65, clothes, pocket change, blood chemicals, and all).

  Naturally, it didn't take a club long to split up into two clubs, with each then proceeding to put out competing fanzines. The main task of each fanzine was to vilify the other group with an intensity and a linguistic fluency that Hitler might have studied with profit.

  This may sound as though I'm exaggerating but, honestly, I'm not. If anything, I lack the words (competent writer though I am) to describe the intensity of the tempests brewed in the microscopic teapots of science-fiction fandom.

  Let me refer you instead to something else. Back in 1954, Sam Moskowitz, one of the most active of the fans of the 1930s (and a dear friend of mine for many years), recalled those days and wrote a book the subtitle of which was A History of Science-fiction Fandom. It dealt with the period from 1935 to 1938 chiefly, and yet Sam found enough to say to fill a closely printed book of 250 pages.

  In that book, endlessly and (forgive me, Sam) unreadably detailed, are all the feuds and quarrels of the period among people known only to themselves, over issues unexplainable to others. The title Sam gave the book, without any intent of satire at all, I believe, was The Immortal Storm.

  Science-fiction writer L. Sprague de Camp (another dear friend of mine) has, in this connection, developed a theory of human contentiousness that I rather like. He points out that in the long history of human groups in the food-hunting stage, a multiplying tribe was always in danger. A group of fifty could not cover any more ground than a

  group of twenty-five could, and would not find any more food. Therefore, the fifty might starve where the twenty-five would not.

  If the fifty were full of loving kindness and brotherly affection and could not bear to break up, they would be in serious trouble. If they were contentious individuals who tended to split up, each smaller group, staking out a territory of its own, might survive. Hence contentiousness had survival value and flourished, and still exists among mankind despite the fact that ever since agriculture became the most important activity of man, co-operation, and not contentiousness, has been required.

  Sprague says
that if the contentiousness of small groups is to be studied seriously, no better start could be made than to read and study (however painful that might be) The Immortal Storm.

  And yet let me emphasize that, despite the contentiousness, the fans learned to love each other somehow and friendships were formed that not all the vicissitudes of the decades could break. There is, to a science-fiction fan, no stronger bond that can exist than that which is covered by the phrase "fellow fan."

  The Greater New York Science Fiction Club, concerning which Rubinson had written me, was suffering from this contentiousness. There was one faction, led by a fan named Will Sykora, along with James Taurasi and Sam Moskowitz himself, that wished to confine the activities of the club to science fiction, without any admixture of politics.

  Another group, one to which Rubinson apparently belonged, felt that the world situation was such that it made no sense to imagine science fiction as existing in a vacuum; it could not remain above the strife.

  Remember that 1938 was a hectic and fearful year in Europe. In March, Hitler had taken over Austria without a fight (and Austrian Jews entered the hell of Nazi oppression). In the months following, Hitler, facing a fearful and hesitant France and Great Britain, demanded the border sections of Czechoslovakia (the "Sudetenland") that were populated by German-speaking individuals.

  By September the demand had brought Europe to the brink of war. Peace was saved only by the craven surrender of Great Britain and France to Germany at Munich. Helpless Czechoslovakia was dismembered and handed over to a brutal enemy by her "friends" and "allies."

  As payment, Hitler postponed his war for not quite a year and then fought it under conditions much more favorable for himself.

  With that in mind, the group to which Rubinson belonged wanted to use science fiction as a way of fighting fascism, and it was almost impossible to do this in those days without making use of Marxian rhetoric, so that these activists were accused of being Communists by the opposition.