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

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  January 2, 1946, saw me twenty-six years old—the same twenty-sixth birthday I had groped for as a goal of safety through the first two

  6 The last item was not important. Someone was always suing someone in fandom, and $25,000 was a nice round figure. My impression was that it was usually settled out of court for $2.50.

  thirds of 1945. It was here at last, and I was two months deep in the Army.

  H

  Any attempt to put through a discharge application could not be hurried. For one thing, I was told it would take at least six weeks to get action on it, during which time I would be stuck wherever I was at the time of initiation. I didn't want to be stuck in a basic-training unit, so it made sense to wait until after basic training and see what my permanent assignment would be.

  Meanwhile, I was sufficiently elated at even the possibility of discharge at any time earlier than the two years to which I had considered myself doomed that the possibility of writing a science-fiction story arose. (My short sessions with Schneeman and Pohl over the Christmas furlough had helped put me into the mood.)

  At the base library, the librarian was pleasant enough and told me I could use the typewriter any time she was around. On January 6, 1946, therefore, I began the robot story I had discussed with Campbell, the last time I had seen him—the one about the human-appearing robot. I called it "Evidence."

  I found to my great pleasure that I could write just as quickly and easily in a camp library as at home. I even persuaded the librarian to lock me in the library during the lunch hour on January 13, and while I was in the locked building I managed to type up seven pages.

  On January 17, my seventy-eighth day in the Army, I completed basic training. I don't know that it did me any good whatever, though it did cost me eighteen pounds that I could well afford to lose—even though I ate as much as I could all through that period. In fact, while I was in the Army I grew thin again for the first time since I had been married.

  I was not smart enough to stick to it afterward.

  After that there was nothing to do but wait for shipping orders to our permanent assignment.

  I whiled away the time in January, seeing the camp psychiatrist, a Lieutenant George Kriegman. I had seen him first one time when I was more than usually depressed at the stupidity of life in the Army, and when my sergeant asked if I wanted to see the psychiatrist, my first impulse to deny it indignantly was drowned out by my prudent realization that if I went to see the psychiatrist I would miss out on a march. I thought I could bear to miss the march.

  After that, I found I could miss out on a great many things I felt

  no dire necessity to experience if I visited Kriegman. I even enjoyed talking to him. There weren't many people I could talk to in the Army on an equal eye-to-eye level. Kriegman, however, was delightful. The various noncoms who worked under him were also pleasant, intelligent people, particularly Jerome Himelhoch, who had been in Fort Meade the day my 160 AGCT score had been evaluated, and who may even have been the person who interviewed me that day.

  When I talked to Kriegman it became an interesting game. I would try to get Kriegman to accept my own point of view of the situation—and I never could. He was very skilled at his work and he generally forced me out of any position I tried to occupy.

  I think he felt he was psychoanalyzing me, something I wasn't the least interested in having him do. What I was doing was missing as much basic training as I could.

  It momentarily stopped being a game, though, when he told me he had put a hold on me, making it impossible for me to move out of Camp Lee until he was through with me.

  I went into instant panic. "Come on, Doc. I don't want that. Don't freeze me. There's nothing wrong with me."

  And he unfroze me at once.

  Our shipping orders came through on January 24. We were going to be shipping out on the twenty-ninth, and my hope was, of course, that wherever we went, it would be closer to New York than Camp Lee was. Meanwhile, we got a weekend furlough.

  For the third time, on January 25, I went through the torture of Petersburg to New York (this time I took a bus from Petersburg to Richmond), and then, on the twenty-seventh, the reverse torture of New York to Petersburg. I thought, with satisfaction, that this would be the last time I would make that particular trip.

  I was quite wrong. On the morning of the twenty-ninth, groups of soldiers got into buses and were taken off here and there and everywhere (exactly where no one would say). Then I and only two others got into a bus and were taken no farther than another part of the camp! Our permanent assignment was right there with the Quartermaster Board at Camp Lee.

  I was demolished with horror, but I thought about it and recovered. I might be no nearer New York and Gertrude, but I was no farther either and I might easily have been shipped to Dayton, as Mel Roberts had been (I learned from his letters), or even farther. 7

  7 On the other hand, if I had been stationed a thousand miles or more from home, I would undoubtedly have used planes on furloughs and might not have developed my present reluctance to travel by air.

  Then too, now that I was in Camp Lee on a permanent basis and not with a basic-training unit, I could move onward with my request for discharge.

  When the new captain talked to me in order to decide what work I was to be assigned to, I spoke of my research at Columbia and said I wanted a discharge. He sent me on to a Major Connor, and I repeated this.

  When the others at the Quartermaster Board asked me what it was all about, I told them all I was asking for a discharge. It seemed to awe them. I became a conspicuous character at once and the general consensus was that I had plenty of "moxie." 8

  I next tried to see the inspector general but got only as far as a sergeant in his entourage. He said I had better be at my permanent assignment for a month before applying for discharge and also said, in what seemed to me to be a threatening manner, that I could be shipped anywhere to do anything. I put that down to bluff, but it did make me feel rather uneasy.

  After I got back from my fourth weekend pass on February 4, I was given a temporary assignment as a typist in the orderly room.

  I discovered that being a typist was equivalent to being an aristocrat. You wore regular uniform at all times (never fatigues) and you never pulled KP. After this, I did everything I could to get a typist's position.

  The best trick, when in a new place, was to walk into the orderly room and say to the master sergeant as politely as possible, "Sarge, could I possibly use the typewriter for just a little while to type a letter to my wife?"

  Naturally, I wouldn't ask this unless I saw the orderly room was empty and the typewriter unused. Writing letters to a wife was a noble occupation for a soldier, and a master sergeant was not likely to discourage that. He would therefore say (with what is for a master sergeant the quintessence of courtly politeness), "Go ahead, soldier, but get your ass in gear and make it snappy."

  I would then sit down, make sure the sergeant was not particularly occupied, and would begin typing with machine-gun rapidity. I would not get far before a fat forefinger would tap my shoulder. "Hey, soldier, how would you like to be a typist?"

  8 What is courage, I wonder? Every one of those other fellows was less afraid of heights than I was, less afraid of guns, less afraid of rowdy scuffling—but none of them ever dared say a word to an officer.

  There were never enough soldier typists to meet the demand, and none who could type as quickly as I could or (as the first sergeants quickly discovered) were as reliable as I was.

  That first day as a typist, on February 4, I spent time typing out my request for discharge. I was sufficiently cautious about it to consult Kriegman on the matter. He suggested I put the request through.

  But then as the days passed, and I received no permanent assignment, the rumor began to spread that I, and all the other fellows who were in similar state, were being saved for some very special test having to do with atomic bombs, either out in Nevada or somewhere in the Pacific.r />
  I refused to believe it but, playing it safe, I marched straight to Kriegman and told him that I was now ready to be frozen. I found to my dismay that since I was out of basic training I was no longer under his jurisdiction and could not be frozen. I had outsmarted myself.

  After hesitating a moment, however, I decided that I would not let myself be browbeaten by rumors. On February 11, I made it definite, handing in my request for discharge under Rule 363, which allowed the discharge of those engaged in scientific research.

  Even in the midst of my preoccupation with assignments and discharges, there were whiffs of an earlier day.

  I got a letter from Sprague de Camp on February 6, telling me that the January 20 issue of the Philadelphia Record had a front-page article about Heinlein, de Camp, and me at the Navy Yard. He was terribly indignant about it and the clipping he sent me showed clearly why he should be. The reporter made fun of us as blue-sky thinkers who never came up with anything and, of course, the fact that we were science-fiction writers struck him as ipso facto hilarious.

  All the facts were wrong and Sprague sent me a copy of the letter he had written demanding an apology. I replied with a soothing letter to the effect that probably no apology would be forthcoming but what was the difference? All publicity is good publicity.

  What's more, another science-fiction anthology had come out. This second one was much more elaborate than Wollheim's paperback anthology had been. The new anthology was the first in hard-cover. It was The Best of Science Fiction y edited by Groff Conklin, someone of whom, up to that time, I had never heard.

  It was an anthology of particular interest to me in that it con-

  tained a story of mine, "Blind Alley/' This was the first of my stories ever to be anthologized.

  On February 25, I found a letter from Campbell, enclosing a check for $42.50 as payment for the use of the story in that anthology. The payment was actually made to Astounding, which owned all rights to the story. There was no legal requirement that Astounding pass on any part of that check to the author. Campbell, however, insisted that every penny be passed on to the authors, and he had his way. 9

  It was the first indication I ever had that a story could make any money in addition to the initial payment from the magazine. It was also the first bit of money from my writing that I had made while I was in the Army.

  *7

  Meanwhile I actually went to a USO dance in Richmond on the night of February 9, 1946.

  I danced with a very pretty girl and made a date with her for the next day. I stayed in Richmond overnight and then had the date with her. I know exactly what I had in mind and I might have carried it through. I think she was willing.

  But I couldn't! After I got to her place and after I'd been there a while and made some tentative advances, I suddenly said I had to go back to camp. She looked shocked and let me go.

  I did go straight back to camp rather hang-dog and ashamed of myself for humiliating the girl and humiliating myself—but I couldn't help it. I hadn't gone to bed with anyone but Gertrude in my whole life, and the thought of doing so was unbearable. (I went through my entire Army career without any extramarital ventures.)

  As it turned out, my attack of fidelity turned out to be a lucky break. No sooner had I reached camp than the weather turned very bad. Had I stayed in Richmond for most of the tenth and then tried to get back to camp overnight, I would have been unable to make it by roll call on the morning of the eleventh, and I would have been AWOL. What would have followed, I don't know.

  I overheard a lieutenant, the next day, being chewed out by the captain for having arrived late and thus being technically AWOL.

  The lieutenant tried to explain that weather conditions made it impossible to get back in time, and he was told that, as an officer, he should have used his ingenuity and figured out a way. Of course, I

  9 In later years, I (and authors generally) were intelligent enough to sell only first serial rights to magazines. Subsidiary sales then involved money that went to the author as a matter of right and not as largesse from the magazine publishers.

  wasn't an officer, but I daresay they would have found a different argu-

  ment to use on me.

  18

  On February 17, I finished the first draft of "Evidence" and was very pleased with it, but the next day came news that was like an entirely new draft—one that was worse than the original.

  It came about this way:

  As of early 1946, only three atom bombs had been dropped. The first was at Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July 1945, and that was merely to see if it worked at all. The second and third were on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan, in August 1945, and those were dropped in anger and ended the war.

  Now it was time to explode an atom bomb in such a way that its effects could be carefully studied. This was slated to happen at Bikini, an atoll in the Pacific. 10 The experiment was named "Operation Crossroads," I suppose because the atomic bomb placed humanity on a crossroads to death and destruction or to life and prosperity, depending on how nuclear energy was used.

  Operation Crossroads was primarily a Navy operation, but the Army wanted part of it. It was their intention, therefore, to expose Army issue—food, clothing, and so on—on board various ships at various distances from the center of explosion 11 and have them all examined afterward by army personnel for radioactivity or other damage.

  Including among the Army personnel were to be a number of "crit-ically needed specialists" designed to lend flavor and importance to the Army's role, and I was to be one of those critically needed specialists. For this I had my AGCT score to thank.

  If I had been less cautious; if I had applied for discharge while still in basic training; if I had accepted Kriegman's move to freeze me then —there would have been no way of including me in the project. And my discharge might have gone through.

  As it was, we would still be assigned to Camp Lee, but as part of the new project we would be "attached" to Operation Crossroads. Such attachment would put us in limbo. We couldn't be promoted by the organization to which we were merely "attached," but could only be promoted after we had returned to our regular assignment. What was much more to the point, anyone who had a request for discharge in the

  10 The atoll gave its name, thereafter, to a very brief woman's bathing suit that presumably acted upon the male psyche with all the effect of an atomic bomb.

  11 These were old ships being left there with no human beings aboard, I believe.

  works would find that it could not be acted on until he was unattached and returned to his regularly assigned post.

  There were a variety of colorful Army expressions to describe what had happened to me, of which the mildest was that I was "screwed, blued, and tattooed."

  And not so much by the Army, as by myself. Had I not insisted on having my third-grade teacher record my true birthday, I would not have been drafted in the first place; had I not insisted on not being frozen by Kriegman when I might have been, I would not have been attached to Operation Crossroads.

  Oh well.

  I had one more furlough to New York, my fifth, over the Washington's Birthday weekend, and broke the news to everyone there.

  It was a very sad time for me. I had been in the Army nearly four months, but in that time I had gone home and seen Gertrude five times for a total furlough time of more than two weeks. I saw her roughly one sixth of the time. But now . . .

  We had been told that we would be shipped out to the mid-Pacific for 180 days—half a year—and it was obvious that in all that time I would not be able to see Gertrude and very likely not even hear her voice on the telephone. In fact, I didn't even have faith in the 180-day period; it was quite likely that Army-type delays would stretch matters out longer still.

  Hawaii

  We went through the routine of various immunization shots, physical inspections, clothing shakedowns. I got to know some of the other critically needed specialists, and since misery loves company, we beca
me desperately friendly.

  The most intelligent and articulate one of them was Edwin C. James; but others included Stanley W. Dylewski, a charming, lively fellow, who, I suspected, was an effective ladies' man; Edwin T. Upton, a rather quiet fellow with a red birthmark on his face; Robert F. Credo, who had a wife who knew a senator; John L. Laudenberg, the youngest of us; and Sherwood W. Cross, who had a lovably rough-hewn face.

  I was the oldest of the group, by the way, since only those under twenty-six had been drafted in the last year and I had been grabbed so close to my twenty-sixth birthday. It marked the official end of my career as child prodigy. (Some of the younger soldiers called me 'Top," to my enormous indignation.)

  On March 1, 1946 (the day I began my fifth month in the Army), I phoned Gertrude so that I might hear her voice one more time and then, on March 2, we took off. After i6V2 weeks at Camp Lee, I said good-bye to it. Under many circumstances I would have said good-bye without regret, but not this time. Even Camp Lee was preferable to Bikini.

  The first leg of our journey was by train—four days—to San Francisco. In a way, that trip was my happiest time in the Army. There was nothing to do, so we seven critically needed specialists clung together like a band of brothers and, for the most part, played bridge. The love and friendship among us; the hypnotism over endless hands of bridge; 1 the bitching over common grievances made everything so warm that I almost didn't miss Gertrude.

  Ed James, in particular, urged me to follow his philosophy of: F-it!

  1 Dylewski swore that we had played so many hands that they were beginning to repeat themselves, but I calculated the total number of possible bridge hands and proved there were enough different hands to keep us busy for countless trillions of years without much chance of repetition.

  He would say, "What are you worried about?"