Shortly thereafter it was time for me to go home, and I left.
According to my diary, "I had a simply marvelous time."
The next Futurian meeting, on July 4, had many outsiders as guests, since there were a number still in town though the convention had ended. It was the chance for the exiles to have a microconvention of their own. I met David A. Kyle for the first time at that meeting.
3
I was almost out of my teens at this point but I had not yet had what might be called a "date." I had not formally taken a girl anywhere at my expense. There's no puzzle to this. I had no money, I had no time. I knew no girls.
Nevertheless, I was attracted to girls; I was not unconscious of their existence. One thing I could do was to write letters. I could always wangle the necessary stamps.
As a result of my letters to Astounding, I got an occasional letter from other readers, and when the letters came from girls, I always answered with particular interest. Correspondences arose with several of them from distant cities, including one girl named Mary Byers. The letters were perfectly pure, of course—on both sides—but I found it interesting just the same.
Then, on July 7, 1939, at about 1:00 p.m., the store phone rang and it was for me. I didn't get many phone calls, so my first reaction, when I answered, was one of apprehension. It turned out to be Miss Byers, who was visiting New York, was in a hotel room in Manhattan, and who said she would like to see me.
I was anxious to see her, and I said I would try, but I had no hope of being released from the store for this purpose. My mother, to be sure, was horrified, but my father, out of some obscure feeling (perhaps ) that we-men-must-stick-together, was on my side. I went.
I spent an hour and a half with Miss Byers in her hotel room talking. We did nothing more, and, for my part, it never occurred to me that anything more was conceivable. I liked it, however. I said in my diary, "I would have liked to spend much more time with her." It wasn't quite a date in the usual meaning of the word, but it was the closest approach yet.
Afterward I received a letter from her saying that everything she had said to me was strictly confidential. I kept it so, and now I have no choice but to continue to do so, for I transferred nothing of what she said to my diary, and none of it remains in my memory.
4
The excitement of the convention lingered, but could not obscure the fact that July was a disastrous month. Even Pohl's intervention could not alter the continuing flood of rejections. I submitted two stories to Campbell and both were rejected, while Amazing also rejected one.
Then, quite unexpectedly, I had bad news from Columbia. On July 13, I got a letter informing me that my application for graduate work in chemistry was turned down. I had not conceived such a thing was possible.
The catch was that I had not fulfilled my undergraduate requirements. As a premed student with a chemistry major, all I needed was inorganic chemistry, qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis, and organic chemistry. All these I had had and in all these I had done quite well. As an undergraduate student aiming for graduate work in chemistry, however, I needed all those courses plus physical chemistry. Since I hadn't taken physical chemistry, I was out.
I went to Columbia the next day to see Professor Mary Caldwell, the graduate adviser. She was a sweet and gentle person who suggested that I might take a regular graduate course, including physical chemistry, but without credit. Then, if I did well enough, the school might let
me enter, retroactively, so to speak, and give me credit for what I had already taken.
It was a gamble, of course. It would mean that if I didn't do well enough to suit the department, I could just be kicked out without credit and all my time and tuition would be wasted. I favored taking the gamble, but my father, unusually cautious on my behalf (perhaps my failure at medical school had cured him of expecting too much of me), suggested that I spend a year simply on physical chemistry and then apply again.
I decided to let the decision rest till September when the time came to register.
5
If July were bad, August was worse.
Two months had passed since the third version of "Pilgrimage" had been rejected. Campbell had told me to wait several months, and two months might be called "several."
I got to work, therefore, on a fourth version on August 1, and by this time the story, which got longer with each revision, was 18,000 words long. It was done in a week, and I took it in to Campbell on August 8. This time Campbell hesitated over it for an entire month, and I eventually found out why. He was waiting for a story by Robert Heinlein. He had to know what it would be like before he could make a decision.
Heinlein's story was a short novel entitled If This Goes On—and it had a religious theme. "Pilgrimage" also had a religious theme, which had been inserted in an earlier version at Campbell's suggestion. Campbell felt he could not use two stories in rapid succession each with a religious theme. When Heinlein's story came in, it proved a good one, and "Pilgrimage" therefore came back on September 6, and this time it was rejected permanently. Nor did Campbell give me a song and dance; he explained exactly why he had rejected it.
I didn't blame Campbell. I accepted the fact that Heinlein was a better writer than I was and I could scarcely expect an editor who could only use one story to accept the worse and reject the better—but it didn't make me happy.
As though it weren't enough that my writing was at low ebb and that I had added failure at graduate school to failure at medical school, there was catastrophe in the great world outside. All summer long, Europe had been going through a mounting crisis over Hitler's designs on Danzig and Poland. I spent hours every day listening to the latest
bulletins on the radio (and recording them in my diary), alternating in dread of another bloodless victory for Hitler, and in dread of another world war.
And, of course, as we all know, Hitler sent his army into Poland on September 1, 1939, and World War II began.
As of that fateful September 1, I had, in fifteen months, written seventeen stories, sold four, and had three published. It was now over half a year since I had made a sale, and Pohl gave up on me. His labors had netted exactly nothing for me, and therefore for him, and he ceased as my agent. It was a completely friendly separation—no hard feelings at all.
And then, on September 2, in between all the war bulletins, I got word of a sale at last. It was only to Science Fiction, so it was only $.005 a word, and payment on publication, so heaven only knew when I'd get the money. I still hadn't been paid for "Ring Around the Sun," and that had been bought in February.
It didn't matter, however. A sale was a sale. I needed the psychological lift, all the more so since the early news of the war was of steady German victories. The story they bought, by the way, was "Ammonium/' one of my worst, in my own opinion.
The progress of the war made it almost impossible for me to write. I spent too much time with my ear against the radio and my heart in my boots. I managed to write an eighteenth story, "The Brothers," but it was rejected all around, even by the most piddling magazines. And then for three more months, I wrote nothing at all, the longest hiatus since my first visit to Campbell a year and a quarter before.
It was not only the war that occupied my thoughts; it was also the developments at Columbia.
Entering Graduate School
Toward the end of September, I was going to have to register if I intended to do graduate work, and on Monday, September 25, 1939, I spent some time at Columbia getting the details. I had decided that my father's idea was perhaps the practical route. I would take just physical chemistry (3 points), plus the attendant laboratory course if I had to (2 more points). The cost would come to $67.50 for the semester, and I would be able to swing that—and lose it, if needs must.
The next day, the twenty-sixth, I went down to register. I waited two hours to get into the chemistry office in order to fill out the forms. Dr. Caldwell was there, and with her was Professor Harold Clayton Ur
ey, a Nobel laureate, the head of the department, and, of course, its most eminent member.
I gave him my name. He shuffled the papers and said, "What are you doing here? You're not accepted into graduate school."
I explained that I needed physical chemistry to meet the requirements and that I wanted permission to take that alone. He snapped at me, 'Take it in Extension," and motioned me out.
I left gloomily. Sitting on the bench outside was a man in his late twenties, with an oval face and a high forehead, waiting his turn. (His name, I later discovered, was Lloyd Roth.)
"What happened?" he said, surprised at my short stay.
"I got kicked out," I said.
"What are you going to do?"
"Figure out something and come back."
I studied the Graduate School bulletin and discovered that there was something called an "unclassified graduate student" defined as "one with a bachelor's degree but without all the prerequisites." It went on to say that "normally" he would be allowed full graduate standing as soon as he filled out all the prerequisites.
Very well. I had to go home now, but the next day I planned to go back, demand to be made an "unclassified graduate student" and, if they refused, demand to know the grounds.
I was back the next morning and walked in when it was my turn.
Urey looked up and scowled. "What are you doing here, Asimov?" he said gruffly. "We sent you away yesterday."
I said, working up what courage I could muster, "I've come back to register as an unclassified graduate student."
"What!" he said, looking surprised.
I showed him the passage in the bulletin. "I've got the marks," I said. "I've got my bachelor's degree. I'm willing to take the missing prerequisite at my own risk. I've got the money to pay for it." (My father had given me a blank check.) "On what grounds would you exclude me?"
Urey thought a while and said that the department's decision was against me, that's all. However, if it would satisfy me, he would put up to the entire committee the specific question as to whether I could take physical chemistry only. I was to come back at 4:00 p.m.
I left, quite in despair, for I felt that was just Urey's way of shifting responsibility. The committee wouldn't go against him, and if they refused to give a reason, how could I force them to?
Lloyd Roth was, by coincidence, outside again.
"What happened?" he said.
"I got kicked out again."
"What are you going to do?"
"Figure out something and come back."
I made the rounds of various professors, who were sympathetic, but unanimous in their profession of helplessness. One was a Professor Crist, who said there was no hope and that I had better apply for graduate work at New York University or Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He explained that the requirements had been changed this year and that I would have had no trouble last year.
I shook my head and said that I was being excluded on a technicality and that I would not give up on Columbia unless bodily thrown out. And then I muttered, "I miss everything by one year."
I don't know what the devil I could have meant by that. If anything, I gained by one year. One year later and I wouldn't have made it into the United States; one year sooner and Campbell would not have been editor when I submitted my first story to Astounding. It was just an exclamation of silly self-pity, but it seemed to affect Crist.
Nor do I know what made me so stubborn about Columbia. I had been there four years and they hadn't treated me so well that I should want to stay. For my purposes, New York University or Brooklyn Poly would have done just as well. It was, perhaps, my failure to get into medical school. I was determined not to face my father with a second failure, and I dug in my heels.
I went down to the chemistry office at 4:00 p.m. and the committee was indeed meeting. There were Urey and Caldwell and three other members of the department, including Crist. I had not known that Crist was a member of the committee, and obviously that had to work in my favor, for I had inadvertently impressed him both by my determination and my pathos. I wish I could say that I had done this through shrewd and clever policy, but the fact is it was entirely accidental.
I felt I had Crist and Caldwell on my side. I would have to win one other—assuming they would dare vote against Urey, and I had given up on Urey.
One of the committee members said, "Aren't you a premed, Asimov?"
"I was," I said, "but chemistry has always been my choice in case I didn't get into medical school. I didn't try very hard to get into medical school; I only applied to five places."
"And if you take graduate chemistry courses, is that just a way of marking time till you apply for medical school again?"
(Aha, that was what they were holding against me.)
I said, as firmly and as bluntly as I could, "No, sir. I'm in chemistry permanently."
(That was a white lie. I suspected I would have to apply to medical school again to satisfy my father, but I had no doubt that I would be rejected again. I was quite positive it was chemistry for good.)
There was a bit more quizzing and then I was sent out while they considered my case. I think that by now Lloyd Roth was haunting the place just to see what happened to me.
"What happened?" he said.
"They're thinking."
"What happens if they decide against you?"
"Figure out something and come back."
(Actually, I was running out of hope, but I had to keep up my spirits somehow. Roth sat down to wait with me.)
I was called in and Urey said, "All right, Asimov, we're giving you your chance."
Then he explained the terms. It was rather like Dr. Caldwell's suggestion of two months before, and I suspect it was she who had pushed for it.
The terms weren't easy. I wouldn't be allowed to take physical chemistry alone; nor could I fill the term out with peripheral courses, spending money but marking time and allowing myself to concentrate on the essential topic. I would have to take a full collection of graduate courses, along with physical chemistry, and with every course but physi-
cal chemistry having physical chemistry as a prerequisite. That meant that all my professors in the other courses would lecture on the assumption that the students (including myself) already knew physical chemistry.
Furthermore, I would be on probation only, and if, at the end of the year, I was not up to snuff, I would be kicked out without credits. In other words, if I then wanted to apply to another school to continue graduate work, I would have to start all over, for Columbia would not provide the necessary transcript to show that I had taken certain graduate courses and completed them satisfactorily.
What is more, by "up to snuff" they did not mean merely passing my courses. I would have to maintain a B average.
"Now, what about it, Asimov?" said Urey.
Looking back on it, I am quite sure that they deliberately presented me with an impossible hurdle in order to have me back down and get rid of me that way. As it happened, though, I cared nothing for conditions. My aim at the moment was to get in and wipe out the medical school failure. If there were difficulties afterward, that would be-afterward.
"Til do it, sir," I said. "The conditions are fair and I thank you for the chance." (If I were going to do it, I might as well do it with style.)
I came out and Lloyd Roth was waiting.
"What happened?" he said.
"I'm in," I said.
In later years, Roth told me he dined out on that story for months.
On Thursday, September 28, I registered—as a graduate student on probation. I began my fifth year at Columbia and was still a second-class citizen there—first Seth Low, then university undergraduate, now probation.
Attending Columbia on the graduate level was different, in some ways, from the situation in my undergraduate years. I was now confined almost entirely to a single building, Havemeyer Hall, and its annex, Chandler. In a smaller volume of space and with a smaller student body involved,
I grew to know my peers a little better. There was some camaraderie—but only some.
I was still commuting, after all. I still saw my fellow students only in class. There was no social interaction.
Columbia was still nothing more than high school had been to me. In fact, simply because never in my school career had I ever lived on campus and because never had school been a social as well as an educa-
tional unit, I lost the major chance of intimate relationship with people of my own age level on a large scale.
Without my even being aware of it, this threw me steadily on my own resources and prepared me for the nature of my career.
My friendship with Sidney had not ended. On June 29, for instance, he and I had gone to the World's Fair together. It had opened shortly before with its Trylon and Perisphere, and with its General Motors exhibit, which showed clover-leaved highways that seemed like science fiction then and are so taken for granted now.
On September 30 he visited my home, and we were almost on equal terms again, he in medical school and I in graduate school. He brought his microscope and I spent some pleasant moments looking through it at slides he had also brought.
The microscope had cost him $160, and his books were expensive, too; one of them—just one—cost $18. Add to that $610 in tuition fees and it struck me quite forcibly that I had had a narrow escape. If I had gotten into medical school there would have been no way in the world I could have met the expenses.
3
One of my courses, by the way, was synthetic organic chemistry, which was taught by Professor Robert C. Elderfield, thirty-five years old at the time. A brilliant chemist and a good lecturer, he brought out the worst in me, nevertheless.
In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954 Page 31
