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

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  Before the election, though, on October 27, 1944, he toured the Navy Yard. More excitement built up then than anything since Hedy Lamarr had done the same thing two years before. (Myself, I was more excited this time.)

  I was outside the building along with everyone else when the limousine passed and there was Roosevelt leaning out the window, with his big grin. Suddenly, I realized that the familiar face I had seen so often in newsreels, photographs, and cartoons actually existed and was actually affixed to a living person. I found myself going wild, jumping up and down, and screaming like a teen-age girl. I don't think I ever lost control so upon viewing anyone else in my life.

  It was the only time I ever saw F.D.R. in person.

  11

  When I stop to think that I spent years of my life in chemical laboratories, I have to realize that I ran the risk of accidents. I never worked with really dangerous materials, with tricky explosives, or with deadly poisons—but anything can be dangerous. There could always be explosions, fires, noxious vapors, corrosive chemicals.

  Naturally, I had stained my fingers and burned my clothes with acid, and I had cut myself on breaking glassware—but nothing serious ever happened to me in the lab.

  Once at Columbia, I remember, a reflux condensation got away from Lloyd Roth while I was standing by. It started bubbling madly and he did the only thing one could do. The first law is GET OUT. He turned off the flame and fled fleetly, and so did I—and then I ran back in to get my books. Nothing happened to me, but if it had, I would have deserved it.

  At other times, both in Columbia and in the Navy Yard, there were horror tales of explosions, of hot acid spraying, and so on. It was always on another floor, or when I wasn't there.

  One time and one time only did I come close to serious damage— and it was completely my fault. I had a device that determined carbon content in steel powders. It was a quartz tube within which one placed a small alumina boat containing the powdered unknown. The tube was, in turn, placed within a cylindrical electric furnace. A gentle stream of oxygen gas was sent through the tube and into a small U-tube containing a substance that absorbed carbon dioxide. The stream of oxygen combined with the carbon in the heated steel powder to form carbon dioxide, which was added to the absorbing substance as it passed through. By weighing the U-tube before and after, the quantity of car-

  bon dioxide, and hence the per cent of carbon in the original sample, could be determined.

  On October 5, 1944, a fellow labworker gave me a fluffy white powder and asked me to determine the carbon content. I hadn't the slightest idea as to how much carbon it contained. The thing to do was to start at the safe end—with a very small amount to begin with. If there was then too little carbon to measure, a larger sample could be worked with, and so on.

  I did no such thing. With criminal stupidity, I simply filled the boat. Now, if there were a lot of carbon in the sample—as there turned out to be—the combination with oxygen might be rapid enough to explode the substance.

  I turned on the electric furnace and stood there with my left hand on the quartz tube where it emerged from the furnace, testing to see if it were warming up—an indication that the furnace was working.

  At that point, Bernie Zitin's superior (hence my grandsuperior), J. Hartley Bowen, called, "Hey, Isaac, come here. I want to talk to you."

  Rather annoyed at being interrupted, I took my hand away from the quartz tube, took two steps toward Hartley—and at that point there was an explosion and the quartz tube was shattered. Had Hartley called me ten seconds later, my left hand might well have been shattered with it.

  It took me all day to recover. The realization of my incredible idiocy was even more bitter than the thought of what might have happened.

  Generally, though, I was careful to a fault. For instance, Navy officers have gold braid freely distributed over their uniforms and are very proud of it. This gold braid must be cleaned now and then, and the best way to do it is to brush it with a solution of potassium cyanide.

  Different members of the chemical laboratory would be more or less assigned the task at different times. Not me, however. I steadfastly and firmly refused to involve myself with potassium cyanide for anything as frivolous as cleaning gold braid. It was hinted to me several times that my refusal would make trouble for me. This was an idle threat, however. My eccentricities were such that all the trouble was already made.

  I recall another time when Bernie Zitin brought in a young man of perhaps eleven and told me he was the son of a top officer and would I give him some chemicals he wanted. That wasn't exactly legitimate, but I didn't see that as worth a big hassle.

  "What would you like, young man?" I asked.

  "Some potassium nitrate/' he said.

  "Okay/' I said, reaching for the reagent bottle. It was not very expensive. "What else?"

  "Charcoal."

  "Okay," I said. That was very cheap. I was about to ask what else he wanted when a suspicion jabbed me and I said, "Do you want sulfur, also?"

  "Yes," he said, astonished. "How did you know?"

  I took him by the hand and led him back to Zitin. "This young man," I said, "wishes to make some gunpowder in his home laboratory, and I will not give him the ingredients. Have someone else give it to him, if you want to." Someone did and, as far as I know, the young man did no damage with it, but the responsibility was not going to be mine.

  Once there was a much more humorous incident involving a petty misuse of laboratory time and equipment.

  A young lady from the secretarial pool, given to gaudy clothing and blessed with a gaudy figure to match—and therefore much superior, in her opinion, to the girls who worked in the chem lab in ill-fitting, acid-stained smocks—walked in with a piece of jewelry her boyfriend had given her. It was a bracelet of rubies set in gold, and she asked if it could be cleaned for her.

  One of the girls in the lab volunteered—mainly, I think, to get her hands on the magnificent object. Having admired it sufficiently, she doused it in ethyl acetate, a mild solvent that would serve to remove any greasy crud on the bracelet and leave the gold and rubies sparkling with delight.

  What happened was that all the gold dissolved and all the rubies softened and the poor technician dissolved in tears. She knew she couldn't pay for the valuable bracelet she had just ruined.

  I said, soothingly, "Don't feel bad. Everything is okay," and rushed off to get the gaudy secretary.

  The secretary viewed the bracelet with horror. "What have you done with it?" she screamed and the technician blanched.

  I said, "Don't yell at her. The metal is probably steel with gold paint over it and the rubies are plastic. Your boyfriend can replace it very easily for fifty cents and you can clean it with a soft handkerchief if you don't rub too hard."

  Off she went and the technician recovered very quickly. We never found out what the secretary did to her boyfriend.

  And then there was an accident that only I found humorous—and

  Aio In Memory Yet Green

  that, in truth, wasn't at all humorous, but very nearly tragic—but I couldn't help it.

  What happened was that Tom Walb, who was senior to me, was promoted to P3 and moved into more nearly executive quarters behind a desk.

  One time he came back into the lab—no longer with rolled-up sleeves and a dirty smock, but resplendent in a beautiful suit, tie, and collar. He told me he was going to help himself to some engine cleaner for some purpose he didn't explain.

  Engine cleaner is meant to dissolve the carbon crud around engines. It is nasty stuff—it smells bad and it is corrosive. He took one of my beakers from the tabletop, put it near a five-gallon aluminum container of the stuff, and picked up the container.

  "Gee, Tom," I said, mildly, "you shouldn't be taking samples of that stuff when you're dressed like that."

  Walb paused and said to me with what I thought was an offensive implication, "A person who uses the proper technique can work in a chem lab dressed in a tuxedo."<
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  I shriveled, of course, because everyone knew (and I most of all) that I didn't have the proper technique and that no one had smocks and rubber aprons so continually assaulted by chemicals as I had.

  Having put me neatly in my place, Walb then picked up the container and gave it a sharp, expertly twirled shake in order to set the fluid within it into a swirl so that it would be well mixed when he removed a hundred milliliters or so.

  What he didn't know and what I didn't know was that whoever had used that container last (and it wasn't I) had not really tightened the screw top, but had merely balanced it on the lip. That should not have been done, but, on the other hand, it was a matter that should have been checked. Well, Tom hadn't checked it, and when he swirled the container, a jet of the foul-smelling corrosive stuff shot out and drenched him.

  There was a loud outcry and he was dragged off immediately by a dozen hands and placed under a shower that we had available for just such occasions. Thanks to the instant action, he was not seriously damaged at all, but every item of clothing he was wearing, including his shoes, was unusable thereafter.

  I am ashamed to say that I was not involved in this rescue effort. I was quite helpless with laughter. It is a terrible thing to admit, for Walb might have damaged himself seriously and permanently, but it struck me as such a remarkable example of pride followed immediately

  by a fall that I could not help myself. If a gun had been aimed at me with a promise to shoot if I laughed, I could not have kept from laughing.

  12

  Fan letters from real scientists were not a totally unknown quantity. On October 21, 1944, for instance, I was very impressed (my diary for that day is full of underlinings) to receive a letter from William C. Boyd, Ph.D., an associate professor of biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine. He was not writing about any of my recent stories at all, but about "Nightfall," which had been published three years before.

  Apparently it had stayed with him, and now he was writing to tell me it was the best story Astounding had ever printed and that it was a classic. He was the very first person ever to tell me this.

  I answered the letter, of course, and a sparse exchange of letters with him continued over the next few years.

  *3

  On November 1, 1944, I started another positronic robot story, one I called "Escape." It was my first such story in a year and a quarter, and the previous one, "Catch That Rabbit," was perhaps the weakest in the series. Certainly it did badly in the readers' column and finished last in Astounding 's "Analytical Laboratory" (which tabulated reader reactions).

  I decided I had to try again. I couldn't let the positronic robot series end on that low note.

  The new story occupied me for the rest of the year, largely because a new and monumentally silly project had caught me up. In the outside world, the Soviets were at the eastern border of Germany, the British and the Americans at the western border; and in the Pacific, the American forces were back in the Philippines. It was clear that the war was in its last stages, with our enemies facing utter defeat, and I began to view the war as a matter of history.

  And why shouldn't I write that history? (It was the first time I ever had the impulse to write anything but science fiction since I had begun "Cosmic Corkscrew.")

  My manner of gathering material was to read every book on the war and on the decade preceding it, and to copy out of each book every

  passage that might be of interest. (I remembered the work I did for Professor Stern when I was an NYA worker in 1938 and 1939.) It was fascinating—but time-consuming (it got in the way of everything) and useless.

  It was worse than useless, for it slowed my real writing, my science fiction.

  H

  On November 7, 1944, I voted in a presidential election for the first time in my life. I voted for Roosevelt, of course, and assuming the worst, I felt Roosevelt would get 311 electoral votes to 220 for Dewey. Once the reports started coming in, however, Roosevelt ran consistently ahead of my estimate and by 10:00 p.m. it was all over as far as I was concerned.

  Roosevelt ended with 432 electoral votes to Dewey's 99. It had been the smallest of his four victories, but only by Roosevelt standards was it anything less than completely satisfactory.

  J 5

  Jack Williamson, the science-fiction writer who had been the first to welcome me to the ranks, showed up at the Navy Yard in a sergeant's uniform, and on Saturday, December 2, 1944, Gertrude and I attended a dinner that, in theory, he was hosting. Actually, Bob Heinlein arranged it—he knowing the city better.

  In addition to ourselves, Jack, and the Heinleins, there were present the de Camps, L. Ron Hubbard, and a friend of the Heinleins named Firn—nine people altogether. According to my diary, "we had a swell steak and potatoes dinner that must have set Jack back $25."

  Afterward, we went to Finis' place, and the party didn't break up till 2 :oo a.m.

  Gertrude was wearing a costume that was very unusual for her—a low-cut dress. She was magnificently built for such dresses and I always urged her to wear them if for no other reason than that I myself enjoyed them. Generally, however, she was far too modest for this and wouldn't. On this occasion, even though I had ardently approved her choice, she kept unobtrusively hiking up the neckline. It didn't help, of course, and Hubbard and Heinlein swarmed all over her. I used this as proof of the effectiveness of the dress, but no use—she wouldn't wear it again.

  The star of the evening was Ron Hubbard. Heinlein, de Camp, and I were each prima donna-ish and each liked to hog the conversation and was not overwhelmed with delight at failing to do so—ordinarily. On this occasion, however, we all sat as quietly as pussycats and listened to Hubbard. He told tales with perfect aplomb and in complete paragraphs. He sang songs to a guitar, including, as I recall, "Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest" and "I Learned About Women from Her."

  In after years, Hubbard became world famous for reasons far removed from science fiction and guitar plunking, but whatever he does, I remember him only for that evening.

  Toward the end of the year, the Germans began an offensive that came to be known as "the Battle of the Bulge."

  The news media went into a flap but I couldn't for the life of me see any importance to the German offensive. There were casualties, of course, and that was too bad, but the offensive could have no strategic value at all, and I said so loudly at the time. The Germans were far too beaten to do any more than make some local advances, and consume their last dregs in doing so. Even if, very unaccountably, the British and the r Americans had to fall back many miles, there were still the Soviets on the eastern borders of Germany.

  It was a case of everyone suddenly thinking that the Germany of 1941 still existed, and it didn't. There was, of course, talk of secret weapons, but I knew that it was the atom bomb that would be such a weapon and I was quite certain that the United States would get it first —but of that I said nothing.

  By the end of the year it did, in fact, appear that Germany's last gamble had failed. I was able to end that year's diary with the satisfaction that 1944 na< ^ b een a decent year all told and "let us hope that 1945 brings us back to New York." I was beginning to look forward with burnished hope to a return to research.

  Even in writing, I was back in high gear. I had only sold four stories, but all of them were at the new high rates of $.015 or even $.0175 a word, and two of them had been very long. The result was that my 1944 wr i tm g earnings stood at $1,108.75, for a new record. Add to this my Navy Yard earnings and my total income for the year topped $4,300. It was the dreams of Croesus realized.

  Our bank account now stood at over $2,000, and I felt that, one way or another, I could see my way through research.

  l 7

  At 1 :oo a.m. on the night of January 1-2, 1945, Gertrude woke me to sing "Happy Birthday." It was pleasant, but nevertheless the year didn't begin well.

  For one thing, I was twenty-five—"a quarter of a century," I noted mournfully in my diary. There's
nothing so wrong about being twenty-five, and it is certainly better than never making it—but a child prodigy takes getting older worse than others do.

  There was always something spectacular about my being younger than others of my achievement, but I was slowly coming to the realization that I wasn't going to stay younger than others forever. A number of people at the Navy Yard, for instance, were younger than I was yet were on a level with me.

  In fact, some of the younger employees were going to pass me and attain P3 ratings, and it was quite clear throughout 1944 that there would be no promotion for me. Quite apart from my general effervescence and eccentricity, there was my penchant for talking back to my superiors.

  Then, too, wherever I have been, I have always managed to offend some one particular person mortally and to induce a "get Asimov" syndrome in him. I never cared really, for the person I offended was very likely to be stupid, humorless, or unpleasant (or all three), and offending him earned me kudos in heaven. Nevertheless, they could, and sometimes did, sprinkle sand into the gearbox of my progress.

  At the Navy Yard, the person I had chief trouble with was one Lieutenant Commander Mason, whom I found utterly exasperating. I presume he had finished grade school, but he never betrayed the fact in anything he said. He thought it the height of wit to allude to my Russian birth, and when I lost my temper and told him off harshly on the matter (in public) he managed to scrape together enough mentality to keep that in mind. Before long, through the workings of the revered principle of seniority, whereby an old jackass is considered more worthy of reverence than a young lion, he attained a high enough position at the Navy Yard to make it possible for him to veto a promotion of me even if anyone beneath him were mad enough to suggest one.

  Then too, I was very depressed over "Escape." As the new year dawned, it had been sitting with Campbell for nearly three weeks, and he simply never waited that long to announce a result. By January 5, 1945, I was desperate enough to call Campbell long distance (long distance!) just to make sure he had received it. Campbell wasn't in, but Katherine Tarrant assured me it had been received and bought.