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

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  But I never finished it. It just didn't go and I gave it up. On March 5, I said in my diary, "It's hack! My heart isn't in it."

  The peculiar thing, though, is that I don't remember a thing about it. Not a thing. Indeed, until I began to go through my diary, word by word, for this autobigraphy, I would have sworn that in the course of the first decade of my professional writing career, I had never as much as dreamed of writing a novel, let alone that I'd begun one.

  The April 1941 Astonishing arrived on February 25, with my story "Twins." Pohl had changed the name to "Heredity," 10 and I've let that stand ever since. It made the cover; the second time I had managed this.

  I learned something from that story. Scott Feldman said he didn't like it. "Why not?" I asked, surprised, for he generally liked my stories.

  "You introduced two characters at the start," he said, "and you let them disappear."

  Lesson: Don't let sympathetic characters disappear without a good excuse made plain to the reader.

  12

  More important was that on March 20, the April 1941 Astounding came out with "Reason," 11 and the May 1941 issue, a month later, with "Liar!" 12 I don't know whether Campbell did this deliberately, but the presence of two robot stories, back to back, helped establish the series. (It was usually called the "positronic robot" series, because the electric currents in the brains were flows of positrons rather than electrons. I did that just to make the brains sound part of a futuristic tech-

  10 See The Early Asimov. » See I, Robot. 12 See I, Robot.

  nology, but some of the less sophisticated readers thought that this was based on sound science and would ask me to give them additional information on how it worked.)

  Even more important still was my visit to Campbell on March 17, 1941. I went to him with an idea for a story, as I usually did, but this time he turned it down impatiently. I don't imagine there was anything more wrong than usual with my idea, but Campbell had an idea of his own. I don't know if he was saving it specifically for me, or if I just happened to be the first author to walk in after the idea had occurred to him.

  He had come across a quotation from an eight-chapter work by Ralph Waldo Emerson called Nature. In the first chapter, Emerson said: "If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God. . . ."

  Campbell asked me to read it and said, "What do you think would happen, Asimov, if men were to see the stars for the first time in a thousand years?"

  I thought, and drew a blank. I said, "I don't know."

  Campbell said, "I think they would go mad. I want you to write a story about that."

  We talked about various things, thereafter, with Campbell seeming to circle the idea and occasionally asking me questions such as, "Why should the stars be invisible at other times?" and listened to me as I tried to improvise answers. Finally, he shooed me out with, "Go home and write the story." 13

  In my diary for that day I said, "I'll get started on it soon, as I think the idea is swell, and I even envisage making a lead novelette out of it; but I don't delude myself into thinking it will be an easy story to write. It will require hard work."

  On the evening of March 18, 1941,1 began the story.

  It was a crucial moment for me. I had, up to that moment, written thirty-one stories in not quite three years. Of these I had, as of that time, sold seventeen stories and had published fourteen, with a fifteenth about to come out.

  13 Here and elsewhere I have always spoken with complete candor about the role of others in the genesis and development of my stories—particularly Campbell's role. Nevertheless, I am a little sensitive when people overestimate the importance of such contributions. It is one thing to say, "I think people would go crazy if they see the stars for the first time in a thousand years. Go home and write the story." It is quite another to go home and actually write the story. Campbell might suggest but it was I who then had to go home and face the empty sheet of paper in the typewriter.

  Of those thirty-one stories, published and unpublished, sold and unsold, only three were what I would now consider as three stars or better on my old zero-to-five-star scale, and they were my three positronic robot stories: "Robbie," "Reason," and "Liar!"

  My status on that evening of March 18 was as nothing more than a steady and (perhaps) hopeful third-rater. What's more, that's all that I considered myself to be at that time. Nor did anyone else, as far as I know, seriously consider me, in early 1941, as a potential first-magnitude star in the science-fiction heavens—except, maybe, Campbell. The Golden Age was in full swing and it contained, already, such brilliant stars as Heinlein and Van Vogt and such scarcely lesser names as Hubbard, de Camp, del Rey, and Sturgeon. Surely no one could possibly have thought I would ever be considered comparable to these—except, maybe, Campbell.

  With that background, I put a piece of paper in the typewriter, typed the title, which Campbell and I had agreed should be "Nightfall," typed the Emerson quotation, then began the story.

  I remember that evening very well; my own room, just next to the living room, my desk facing the southern wall, with the bed behind me and to the right, the window on the other side of the bed, looking out westward on Windsor Place, with the candy store across the street.

  Did I have any notion that after thirty-one stories ranging from impossibly bad to mildly good, I was going to write the best science-fiction story of all time? How could I?

  Yet some people think exactly that of "Nightfall." Thirty years later, when a poll was conducted of the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America, "Nightfall" finished in first place by a healthy margin. Other polls, under other conditions, also put it in first place; and, if we restrict matters to just my own stories, there is almost a general consensus that it is certainly the best story I ever wrote.

  I know perfectly well that my reputation for simpering and bashful modesty is nonexistent, and that I am widely known as a man who thinks well of himself. Please believe me, then, when I tell you that I don't consider "Nightfall" the best science-fiction short story ever written. In fact, I don't even consider it the best I've ever written. I've written at least three shorts (probably more) that I consider better than "Nightfall." 14

  But I was in happy ignorance that the story I was now writing was in any way different from those I had been writing all along. I was sur-

  14 It is not my intention to keep you on tenterhooks. My own three favorite short stories are, in order: (1) "The Last Question," (2) "The Bicentennial Man," and (3) "The Ugly Little Boy." They will all be dealt with, in due course, in the second volume of this autobiography.

  prised and pleased, though, by the fact that, despite my initial apprehension, the story moved easily. By March 20, I had nearly 5,000 words done and I said in my diary, "This is absolutely unprecedented. It is absolutely impossible that this keep up. I never had anything write itself so easily." By April 8, I had finished. 15

  On April 9, I took it in to Campbell. It was 13,300 words long and, except for "Pilgrimage," which, in the course of its many revisions, had reached a total of 18,000 words, it was the longest story I had yet written.

  Two days later I got a note from Campbell saying that he planned to take "Nightfall" but wanted a few minor changes made. I rushed over to his office and we discussed the changes—which didn't seem too difficult. Mostly it was a case of speeding the beginning.

  While there, Campbell, who, among his several hobbies, was an amateur photographer, took three pictures of me. He showed them to me eventually and, while I don't possess a copy of them, I remember them. They showed me as bony-faced, for I was still gaunt at that time, certainly weighing not more than 135 pounds, with a thick mustache and with a pimple at the end of my nose. In later years, Campbell would whip out the picture and show it to people who knew me, well—as a plump, clean-shaven, and pimple-free fellow—and say, "Who's this?" They never had the slightest idea.

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p; By the eighteenth, I brought in the revised version and Campbell said he would take it home to read. Willy Ley was visiting him, he said, and Willy would read it, too. That didn't bother me. I had been attending the monthly war games regularly now and Willy Ley was an old friend whose taste in science fiction I trusted.

  On April 24, the acceptance came through. It was the fifth story I had sold to Campbell, and the first of novelette length. What's more, Cambell had awarded it a bonus. He paid $.01 a word plus $.0025 a word bonus, for a total of $i66. 16 It was by far the largest payment I had yet received for a single story.

  15 Events in the outer world were growing grimmer, however. To be sure, the Greeks had been humiliating Mussolini's bumbling army and driven the Italian troops far back into Albania. As I was finishing "Nightfall," however, the Germans had unleashed another lightning attack, this time against Yugoslavia and Greece, and it was clear almost at once that it would be yet another great victory for the Nazis and that for the second time in twelve months a British army would be driven off the European Continent.

  16 He didn't tell me he was paying me a bonus. I found myself staring at a check that was for the wrong amount and in my favor. Very regretfully, I called Campbell to tell him he had overpaid me and that's when I found out about the bonus. The deciding factor had been Willy's report. He had said to Campbell after he read it, "From what you told me about the story, I knew it would be good, but I didn't know it would be this good."

  Master of Arts

  The spring of 1941 was decision time at school. I could put off my try at the Qualifying Exams no longer.

  On Saturday, April 26, with the sale of "Nightfall" a glowing and fresh memory, I took my first set of Qualifyings. These were three tests, each two hours long, with hour-and-a-half intermissions between. There was to be a similar ordeal on the next Saturday and then again on the Saturday after that. It was absolutely backbreaking!

  I staggered out of the first of the initial triplet of tests, the one on physical chemistry, with the cold grip of disaster clutching my heart. In my diary I said I was "scarcely more than a quarter alive until I found all the rest in similar states of utter incapacitude." In fact, it gradually turned out that I had gotten several things right that I had no earthly business to get right.

  The next two tests, one on inorganic chemistry and one on organic chemistry, were easier, though in each case I missed something I should not have missed. As I said petulantly in connection with the organic test, "I couldn't synthesize beta-naphthylamine to save my life"—and, of course, when I looked it up, it proved to be an easy task and something I should have known.

  On May 3, the first test was on advanced physical chemistry, dealing with quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and atomic and molecular spectra. It was a total loss, for I had never studied these subjects and I had to hand in a virtually blank answer book. (That isn't as bad as it sounds. No one is expected to have a grasp on all the subjects covered and it would be a prodigy indeed who would not hand in blank answer books in several of the tests.)

  The second test that day was on thermodynamics and kinetics, but I could only tackle the former. On the third part, which dealt with advanced inorganic, I managed to do respectably well, I thought.

  On May 10 came the last trio of tests—two on advanced organic chemistry and a third on food chemistry. I did what I could.

  On May 17, I took my language examination. A chemist has to read several foreign languages if he is to keep up with the chemical lit-

  erature, and mine were French and German. This subsidiary exam was relatively easy.

  On May 22, the results came through. I did well enough to get my master's degree so that as of the following graduation, I was Isaac Asimov, B.S., M.A. (and still only twenty-one). I did not, however, get a score that was high enough to permit me to go on for my research toward my Ph.D.

  I consulted Professor Caldwell the next day and she said it would be perfectly possible for me to continue my studies and take a second whack at the Qualifyings. She assured me I had done quite well the first time and there was no reason why I couldn't go over the top the second.

  It meant I was back on probation, darn it. My friends in graduate school had, for the most part, passed the Qualifying at some point and were now ensconced in laboratories, working for this professor or that, and doing their doctoral research. I was not.

  I was doomed to continue studying for another semester, perhaps two, and then I would have to try again and, perhaps, end up with nothing more than the M.A. after all, despite the added expense.

  Of course, if I passed the second time, there was no loss at all, for the courses I would have taken, I would have had to take in any case, and with them all behind me, I could then concentrate on research alone.

  But would I pass the second time, no matter what mark I got? I had the feeling, justified or not, that in granting a student permission to go on for his doctorate, the marks he got on his Qualifyings were only one factor. The other was whether he had the "personality," or "temperament," or whatever, to do the research.

  Elderfield was on the committee that judged the results of the Qualifyings and he and I had been at loggerheads for two years. I was sure he believed I wasn't Ph.D. material, whatever my marks might have been, and I was sure he had convinced the rest of the board to that effect, and would do the same the next time I took the test. 1

  I didn't think Elderfield was a minority of one in this. I didn't think he had to overcome a solid phalanx of pro-Asimov sentiment. For

  1 1 must stress the fact that I had no evidence to this effect, in any way whatever, and may well have been doing Elderfield a great injustice. I am not, however, reporting the facts, of which I knew nothing, but my feelings and suspicions of the time, for as much or as little as they were worth.

  one thing, I suspected he had the department head, Professor Urey, on his side.

  Urey might well remember my annoying persistence a year and a half before that brought me into the graduate department rather against his will. If he didn't, I thought somberly, he was sure to remember a much more recent incident in which I had spoken up in the wrong way and at the wrong time. It came about, thusly:

  In one of my talks with Campbell, he had told me of the discovery of uranium fission and of the obvious conclusion that a chain reaction could be set up, that energy could be delivered at such a rate as to produce an unprecedentedly cataclysmic explosion. He was very convincing because he was very right. Enough had come out about fission for any intelligent person, knowledgeable in atomic physics, to deduce it before scientists had self-censored themselves into silence.

  Campbell even told me that Columbia had a cubic foot of uranium they were experimenting with. I grew uneasy and said I was nervous about working at Columbia under those conditions.

  "Why?" said he. "Do you think you would be any safer in Brooklyn if that uranium exploded?" (Actually, he was in error here. The kind of uranium that Columbia was working with could not have exploded.)

  This was the first hint I had of an atomic bomb and what it could do, and this was in February 1941. I promptly incorporated what I had learned about it in my story "Super-Neutron."

  During the following spring, Urey, in the thermodynamics course I was taking under him, decided to moan about the fact that he was doing nothing toward the war effort. (The United States was not yet at war, but it was gradually mobilizing its scientific talent for the war that was sure to come.) Urey pointed out that other chemists in the department were taking over important projects and he—just an ivory-tower nuclear chemist—was doing nothing.

  Why Urey should have gone through this hypocritical rigmarole, I don't know, for, of course, he was deeply engaged in the most important war project of all—the gathering work on the atomic bomb. Perhaps he was trying to cast a primitive smoke screen over his work, or perhaps he was getting some sort of perverse pleasure in thinking to himself, "Oh if they only knew."

  But I knew, of course,
so I listened in astonishment and said, "But Professor Urey, what are you talking about? What about the cubic foot of uranium in Pupin? Isn't that your field?"

  The most astonishing thing happened. Urey turned a bright, bright red, and a spasm of anger crossed his face.

  "Some people talk too much/' he muttered, and suddenly, very loudly, changed the subject.

  As to the people who talked too much, I don't know if he meant me or himself—but by Heaven, I was innocent. How should I have known?

  Nevertheless, it was clear to me that if Urey had not exactly loved me before, he could not have any excess of affection for me after I had so effectively embarrassed him before the class. I got a B in the course, but I was sure he was ready to agree I was not Ph.D. material.

  In any case, I knew for certain what was happening after Urey's gaffe. Probably the rest of the class did, too. They may have forgotten the incident, but I never did, and I was prepared for the big event when it finally happened. But I never breathed a word about the matter thereafter to anyone at any time! I had read enough thrillers to know what might happen to me if I did.

  With my opinion of the attitudes of Elderfield and Urey, I faced a second try at the Qualifyings without much hope, and the master's degree they had given me seemed like a mere booby prize and worthless. When commencement ceremonies came, therefore, I once again refused to show up and receive my degree in full formality. They mailed it to me and, like my bachelor's diploma, my master's diploma went the way of all paper. I don't know what happened to it or where it is. I never valued it.

  3

  Life went on, however. On May 18, I saw my first opera— La Traviata— and duly recorded that the tenor who sang Alfredo had a voice that was weak and timid, but that he was the son of the conductor, which apparently counterbalanced that. 2