Amazing Stories, in those days, printed little autobiographical squibs written by the authors of the stories in the issue. I had performed that service for Amazing at the editor's request and it appeared on page 126 of the magazine. It is my first autobiographical essay in print and attempts to be lighthearted. 5 One paragraph reads:
"There are more stories on the way, some in a state of partial completion now, and I hope and hope again that this first story does not prove to be a flash in the pan. If it does, it won't be because I didn't try."
I didn't have to worry. It wasn't a flash in the pan.
7
When I took the revised "Ad Astra" to Campbell on January 24, he was kind enough to tell me that one of his correspondents had told him that "Marooned off Vesta" was the best story in its issue.
Then, too, on January 30, 1939, I received a postcard from Jack Williamson, one of my science-fiction idols. He was the writer who had written "Legion of Space," which was one of the best science-fiction thrillers I had ever read up to that time. The postcard read:
6 The attempt was a miserable one. When I reread it, many years later, I found it exquisitely embarrassing.
" 'Marooned off Vesta' is a nice yarn. Welcome to the ranks." Years later, when Jack and I were talking at a convention, I reminded him of his kindness to a mere beginner, and he didn't remember sending the card. I did, though, on his behalf, and in time I managed to express my gratitude in a useful way.
When the mail came the next day, on January 31, I was upstairs. My father called me down yelling, "Isaac, a check! A check!"
That was how I discovered the system used by Campbell in accepting stories. Though his rejections were usually accompanied by long and useful letters, his acceptances consisted of a check only, without a single accompanying word. It was his feeling that the check was eloquent enough. In this case it was for $69, since the story was 6,900 words long and Astounding, like Amazing, paid $.01 a word in those days.
It was my good fortune that I began trying to sell science fiction at a time when new magazines were being issued. One of the new magazines was entitled simply Science Fiction, and it was edited by Charles D. Hornig, who had previously been editor of Wonder Stories. The first issue of this magazine reached the stands on January 12, 1939, and on January 19 I sent them "Ring Around the Sun" for their consideration. The consideration was good, for on February 4 I received an acceptance —the second in five days.
Science Fiction paid only $.005 a word and, moreover, paid on publication rather than on acceptance. (A magazine that is sufficiently shaky financially never knows if it will be around for publication, so why throw away money?) That didn't matter, however. I was counting acceptances, not dollars.
I had reached the point now where I attracted the attention of a would-be agent. It was Fred Pohl, who was only nineteen himself, but who had a great deal of self-confidence (deservedly so, for he was, and is, one of the most intelligent people I have ever met). He offered to help me sell my stories and to rewrite my rejects, the proceeds of which, if they sold thereafter, would be split sixty-forty in his favor. I refused at once, and firmly. I said, in my diary, "I don't need any help, and I flatter myself I can do my own writing."
I then proceeded to write an eleventh story, 'The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use," which I did not submit to Campbell. Either I did not wish to push him too hard immediately after I had made a sale to him, or I suspected the story wasn't good enough for him and didn't want to spoil the impression "Ad Astra" had made. In either case (and I don't really remember the motive), I decided to try it on Amazing
first. It was also a $.01 market after all, and I owed them another chance now that I had made my Campbell sale.
I mailed "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" to Amazing on February 6, and on February 20 I got an acceptance, the third in three weeks. This time there was a check with it for $64.
I must have thought I had now gotten the range, but somehow that's not the way it works. Having reached some sort of peak of delight, I promptly descended into a slough of despond. On February 21, I visited Campbell, submitted a new story, "The Decline and Fall," and it was back in my lap on February 25, just as though "Ad Astra" had never happened. On the last day of the month, I received a rejection for "The Weapon" from Thrilling Wonder.
The May 1939 Amazing appeared on the newsstands on March 10, and I was rather flabbergasted to find it contained "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use." 6 It had appeared only six weeks after acceptance.
That rather took the bloom off the acceptance, however. I didn't have to be particularly experienced to realize that they had a hole in that issue that had to be filled right away with a story of the proper length, and my story may have been of the right length rather than of the right quality.
It was a rotten story, as Fred Pohl carefully, and convincingly, pointed out to me. (I was rather impressed that Fred could see what was wrong with it, and I grew considerably closer to him than to any of the other Futurians.)
I am even more impressed, in hindsight, that Fred was able to make me sit still for criticism where others (always excluding Campbell) could not. But then, Fred spoke quietly, unemotionally, and briefly, and confined himself to purely technical advice that I invariably found helpful. I don't know how he knew so much about the nuts and bolts of writing. He was almost exactly my age and intelligence, but I guess he had given the matter of writing a lot more thought than I ever had—and had read widely in contemporary literature.
Amazing at that time tended heavily toward adventure and action, and disapproved of too much scientific exposition in the course of the story. I, of course, even then was writing the kind of science fiction that involved scientific extrapolation that was specifically described.
What Raymond Palmer did in this case was to omit some of my scientific discussion and to place in footnotes a condensed version of passages that he could not omit without damaging the plot. This was an extraordinarily inept device, at which I chafed at the time. I took
6 See The Early Asimov.
the only retaliation available to me. I placed Amazing at the bottom of the list as far as the order in which to submit stories was concerned.
As I look back on those days of the late 1930s, it is clear to me now that science fiction was approaching a fork in the line of its progress. Science-fiction pulp, which I had been reading with such love and avidity, was declining, and a new generation of writers was arising, writers who had some feeling for science.
Amazing was still slanted toward mad professors with beautiful daughters, toward malevolent monsters and hectic action, and it would even continue to have some commercial success with it.
Campbell, however, was pushing for quieter, more thoughtful stories, in which the science was realistic, and in which scientists, inventors, and engineers talked and acted like recognizable human beings. That was the direction of progress, and it was the one in which I tended of my own accord to move. Since that was also the direction in which Campbell drew me, my progress was rapid.
Thanks to Campbell, science fiction was entering what has ever since been called its "Golden Age," and thanks to the accident of my being there at the right time—and in the right place—and with the right impulses—I was able to become part of it.
8
On March 4, 1939, I began my most ambitious writing project up to that time. It was a novelette named "Pilgrimage" that was planned to be longer than "Cosmic Corkscrew." It was my first attempt to write "future history"—that is, to do a tale about a far future time written as though it were a historical novel. It was also my first attempt to write a story on a galactic scale.
I was very excited while working at it and felt somehow that it was an "epic." (Winterbotham, however, was rather dubious when I described my planned treatment of it in a letter to him.) Although it was 12,600 words long, I had it finished rather quickly and took it to Campbell on March 21.
It was back in three days with a comment to the effect that "You
have a basic idea that might be made into an interesting yarn, but as it is, it is not strong enough."
But things had changed. For one thing, I was no longer accepting rejections as a matter of course. Since I had revised "Ad Astra" and made it acceptable, why could I not do the same for "Pilgrimage?" Of course, it had been Campbell who had suggested the revision in the for-
mer case, and it would have to be I who would do it in the latter case-but that is what I did.
On March 27,1 visited Campbell on my way back from school and managed to extort from him an agreement to have me revise the story in such a way as to emphasize those parts he favored. The story involved an Earth that was under the heel of reptilian invaders from outer space. Earthmen occupied parts of the Galaxy but they could not be roused to try to rescue the home planet. 7
For one thing, Campbell wanted me to add a religious angle—to have human beings travel to Earth as Moslems make pilgrimages to Mecca, so as to make my title, which had no religious connotation to begin with, particularly apt. It may even have been my title that had given him this idea. 8
The second version of "Pilgrimage" was submitted on April 25, and I thought, based on my experience with "Ad Astra," that a revision had to be accepted. No, it didn't.
Campbell wouldn't take it, but this time he asked for a further revision. I tried again and the third version was submitted on May 9 and rejected on May 17. Campbell admitted that there was still the possibility of saving it, but, after three tries, he said I should put it to one side for some months and then look at it from a fresh viewpoint.
I had never before worked so hard on a story, and I was dreadfully disappointed—but there was nothing I could do.
I had grown a little nervous by now as to the fate of "Ad Astra." I had heard at one of the Futurian meetings that fellow fan Milton A. Rothman of Philadelphia had sold two stories to Campbell and that they would appear under the pseudonym of "Lee Gregor."
The reason for the pseudonym, it appeared, was Campbell's gentle suggestion that Anglo-Saxon names would go down better with the readers.
In this he was completely wrong, of course; what he really meant was that Anglo-Saxon names would go down better with Campbell.
I knew that "Ad Astra" would soon be coming out and I wondered if Campbell might suggest a pseudonym for me. I was prepared to refuse, completely and unequivocally, even if it cost me sales to him.
7 The reluctance of the human planets to oppose an occupying aggressor was clearly influenced by the situation in Europe where, even as I wrote the story, Hitler occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in direct and brutal defiance of the Munich pact.
8 While there on that day, by the way, I met, for the first time, fellow writer Horace L. Gold. He had written "A Matter of Form," which had appeared in the December 1938 Astounding and which had been an excellent story. It was one of the fringe benefits of my visits to Campbell that others visited him and that I met some of the most important names in science fiction in this way, now and then.
However, he never did. Perhaps because my first sale was to Amazing, which didn't care, and because my name had already appeared, as such, on a Table of Contents, the issue did not arise.
If that were so, it is a good thing my first sale was to Amazing. I am sure I would not have knuckled under in this matter, but I was thankful I did not have to go through the meat grinder.
College Graduation
The period of useless revisions of "Pilgrimage" was a depressing time for a number of reasons. Rejections of my stories were coming from every magazine once again; and from every medical school I was once again being rejected as a candidate. And then, on April 20, 1939, Sidney Cohen was accepted into Long Island University Medical School.
Sidney's acceptance was a blow. It wounded my self-esteem and temporarily ground me under a rankling sense of injustice. He had made it and I hadn't and yet all through college it seemed to me I had been doing better than he had.
If he had gotten into a school outside New York City, I could have told myself that I would have made it too, if I had applied in the boondocks. The fact was that we had both applied to this particular school, we had both been interviewed—yet he had been taken, and I had not been, though his marks were, on the whole, lower than mine.
My failure couldn't even be blamed, conveniently, on my Jewishness. Sidney was as Jewish as I was, and had a quintessentially Jewish name.
I dreaded telling my parents, but I had to. They would have found out soon enough. They knew Sidney, knew he was applying, and were keen to know how he made out. When I told them the news, my father turned grim and angry, and my mother burst into tears.
My parents, I suppose, had been betrayed by me. There was no gentler way of putting it. In my thirteen-year school career I had consistently been "smart"; I had been at the top or near the top of the heap all through; and somehow it had all been a fraud. I hadn't made it.
Nor was there anything I could do. I couldn't console them by telling them I didn't want to go to medical school. They wouldn't have really believed me; they would have considered it sour grapes. If I had managed to convince them, they would have accepted that as another betrayal, for they would say that because I didn't want to go, I had so behaved at the interviews as to be certain of rejection.
It took me awhile to get over my envy of Sidney—not envy of
medical school, which I didn't want, but envy at his being successful and I a failure in something we had both tried for.
But I got over it. A little painful (and embarrassing) thought about the matter and I could see that Long Island University knew what it was doing. Sidney had made a good impression on them and I had not. Sidney was always quiet, grave, dignified; and I, no matter how I tried, was loud, grinning, frenetic.
Besides, what right had I to be envious? Was Sidney envious of my having sold science-fiction stories to magazines? He had never showed any envy but had been unselfishly delighted at my success.
Then, too, the consequence showed the decision to have been a good one. Sidney did very well in medical school, and I (I am convinced) would have done poorly. I might never have finished, which would have been a much more horrible failure, and even if I had doggedly driven myself to graduate, I am quite certain I would always have been unhappy and that I would have been a lousy doctor.
I have no way of proving that this is not a matter of sour grapes, but I honestly feel this to be a truthful and considered judgment. As it was, I was forced by circumstance into a path much more appropriate for myself; and painful though the forcing was, I survived.
As though to emphasize my failure, by the way, on April 27 I received a registered letter from Albany to the effect that enough vacancies had opened to allow me to receive what was left of a state scholarship. Since 3V2 years of the 4 had passed, only $50 was left for me.
In place of medical school, in other words, I had wangled the tail end of a scholarship. My father was openly contemptuous and I felt more ashamed than before.
But fifty dollars is twice twenty-five. I accepted it.
Nor was there anything in my writing career to counterbalance this spring of my discontent. My work on "Pilgrimage" had filled the better part of three months to no effect, and a couple of my older stories had collected a rejection each.
I had tried to reach Hornig of Science Fiction, and he had written to say that he was attending a meeting of the Queens Science Fiction League on May 7, and if I were to attend also, we might meet. This was the organization I might have joined the previous September, had I not been headed off by the Futurian splitaway.
I attended and met Hornig for the first time. 1 He was dark-complexioned, needed a shave, and was a fellow sufferer of acne. I seized the occasion to hand him two stories, "The Decline and Fall" and "Knossos in Its Glory."
I also met Eric Frank Russell, an English writer whose novel Sinister Barriers had been featured in the first issue of a new magazine, Unknown Fantasy Fiction. That first issue had appeared
on February 1, 1939. It was a sister magazine to Astounding and was also edited by Campbell.
Unknown was a magazine the like of which had never appeared before. It contained adult fantasy, some humorous, some terrifying, all well written and most thought-provoking. Campbell had conceived of it precisely as a vehicle for Sinister Barriers, which he bought for the excellent story it was, even though he felt that it did not quite come under the classification of science fiction.
Russell was tall, long-faced, somewhat withdrawn, and I found myself rather abashed in his presence.
Otto Binder was there, too. He was the active half of a team that included his brother, Earl. They wrote under the pseudonym of Eando (E. and O.) Binder. In the late 1930s he was the most prolific of the science-fiction writers, but he rarely appeared in Astounding. He was about ten years older than I was, frank, boyish, and genial. In the January 1939 Amazing, he had published "I, Robot," a short story about a sympathetic and noble robot that had made a great impression on me.
I was most excited, though, at meeting Jack Williamson for the first time. He was stoop-shouldered, very quiet, and, apparently, shy, but it was clear he had a golden heart.
It was an exciting day—the first I spent with fellow writers as well as with fellow fans. And I was treated as a writer rather than as a fan. The Sykora group ignored my association with the Futurians and did not order me out—as they might have done were I simply a fan.
But exciting or not, Hornig bounced the two stories at once: I got them back on May 9. And, of course, Campbell bounced "Pilgrimage" for the third time and ordered me to put it aside "a couple of months."
1 In The Early Asimov I say, concerning Hornig, "I have never, to my knowledge, met him." This was wrong. In preparing The Early Asimov I went through my diary rather sketchily, searching only for literary information. For this book, my autobiography, I have carefully read every word of every page of my diary (and this was a job I found often difficult and often embarrassing), and I have caught myself in a few earlier mistakes—such as this one. There is one whopper of a mistake yet to come.
In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954 Page 29
