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

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  But J was worried. Gertrude stayed in the hospital two days, and I kept rushing over only when I could for, of course, the biochemistry class (my second) started on the twenty-ninth, and whatever happened to Gertrude, the show must go on.

  My distraught alarm was such that on the obstetric floor the joke went around, "Gertrude did not have a miscarriage, but Isaac had five." Such delightful humor!

  At any rate, they wouldn't keep her any longer and swore to me that she would not have a miscarriage, so I brought her home on January 30.

  After that scare, we felt we had to take it easy, and the dictate-and-transcribe routine stopped and never restarted. Too bad! We had something good going there.

  The thing I remember most about that three-month period of dic-tate-and-transcribe was Gertrude coming in with one of the thin blue-green records and saying, "I can't transcribe this."

  "Why not?" I said.

  "Well, listen to it."

  I listened. It was a scene in which two characters were arguing and the argument grew steadily more heated. And as it grew more heated, so did my voice, until, at the peak, I was not dictating but snarling incoherently.

  I had to repeat the entire passage, making an effort to remain cool. I had never realized up to then how closely I mimicked the emotions of my characters.

  10

  All through this period—indeed, ever since the kidney-stone episode ten weeks before—I had been living with dull pains and uncomfortable urination, and had steadfastly refused any thought of going to the hospital and being probed or catheterized.

  Finally, on January 31, 1951, I felt the kind of pain that I could associate with only one thing. I grasped for the jar, which I was too lazy to use all the time, and urinated into it. The pain was like a hot spear being shoved through the urethra from the inside out. After I stopped hopping about and groaning I looked at the jar and there was the stone. It was a little over a quarter inch long and about an eighth of an inch wide, yellow-brown in color, and very jagged.

  I took it in to school. Dr. Walker said he had never seem so large a kidney stone passed (news I greeted without enthusiasm, since I saw no benefit to setting a world record in this regard). Dr. Derow analyzed it and said it was calcium oxalate dihydrate. This was good in one respect: It was a slow-growing variety of stone and was not likely to grow too large to be passed. It was bad in another respect: It was a jagged variety of stone and the most painful of the different kinds. 3

  11

  By this time, my expertise had reached the point where writing was virtually painless. On February 4, 1951, I began a story called "Nobody Here but—" and, without visible effort, I finished its 5,000 words in two days.

  I was hoping I might place it in some slick magazine. This was not an entirely new ambition of mine. It antedated even Heinlein's appearance in The Saturday Evening Post. When we were living in Wingate Hall, I had written a "mainstream" romantic short story I had intended for Collier's but had never managed to sell anywhere.

  "Flesh and Metal" was science fiction, but it had an element of romance, and I had vainly tried to sell it to the slicks before it went to Amazing. And now "Nobody Here but—" was submitted to the slicks, but uselessly.

  On February 8,1 received a request from a magazine that was not a pulp. It was The Writer, which, as its name implies, is an instructional

  3 And by now the American retreat in Korea had come to an end and we were beginning to jab northward again.

  and inspirational magazine for beginning writers, and which then paid $10 an article. What's more, it didn't want a story, but a nonfiction piece, only 2,000 words long, on science fiction.

  I obliged and took the article in on February 23, since The Writer had its offices in downtown Boston. That gave me the occasion to meet Abe Burack, the editor, loud-voiced, aggressive, very opinionated, full of advice on anything and everything—and very kindhearted.

  He took my article, which I called "Other Worlds to Conquer." It was the first nonfiction piece I ever did for a paying market—though not a very-much-paying market.

  Meanwhile, Greenberg, having done I, Robot, offered to do the various stories of the Foundation series in three volumes. I was more than willing. I was delighted. Little, Brown and Doubleday had turned them down 4 but, in my opinion, they deserved hard-cover publication just the same. They were the most ambitious stories I had ever done and the best received by the readers.

  By February 28, 1951, Marty sent Fred the first $100 installment of the advance for the first book, and Fred sent me my $90 cut. The first volume was to contain: "Foundation," "Bridle and Saddle," "Wedge," and "The Big and the Little." The second book would contain "Dead Hand" and "The Mule." The third book would contain "Now you See It-" and "-And Now You Don't."

  The second and third books would be 75,000 words apiece, which was fine. The first book, however, would be just under 60,000 words, which was a little short.

  Marty wasn't fazed. It seemed to him that, in any case, the series started too abruptly. He urged me to write a short introductory section that would serve as an easier beginning for the whole series.

  It was a good idea. I wrote an opening section called "The Psychohistorians," which was over 10,000 words long and which filled out the first book. Since it was written in March 1951, the very first section of the first of the three books was the last part of the series to be written—and it gave me the opportunity to introduce Hari Seldon in life. 5

  12

  At work I was growing grumpy. The fact that Gertrude had a child nearly halfway to birth strengthened my feeling that I needed more out

  4 The more fools, they.

  5 In that month, too, the Americans recaptured Seoul, and more or less reached the Thirty-eighth Parallel, which was the dividing line when the war had started nine months before. From then on the war settled down into a stalemate.

  of the job—a better title—a higher salary. The fact that we were still looking for apartments in a pretty steady way and were having no luck whatever disillusioned me with Boston. That and the knowledge that my writing was doing well made me the readier to consider giving up the job if I could not have my way.

  I began, therefore, to put the pressure on Dr. Walker for an assistant professorship. Dr. Walker said he was willing and that I deserved it. However, Fabian Lionetti had been hired only a month after me and he did not want to promote just one of us; he wanted to promote both, and until his budget was in a position to let him do so, he wouldn't promote either.

  I chafed considerably at this.

  I also chafed at working under Henry Lemon. I found his solemnity wearisome and I could not share his perpetual concern about grants. I wanted my salary to come out of the school's pocket so that I wouldn't have to worry about grants.

  Lemon was also keen on publicity, which was a matter of lesser importance to me. On March 20, 1951, for instance, he came into my lab to tell me that a Boston Globe reporter would be around to interview us in connection with the opening of the annual cancer drive, and I said, "I'm afraid I'm leaving for New York tomorrow, Dr. Lemon."

  He was clearly angry, but I went anyway.

  Lemon was a social conservative, and I wasn't. I came in one hot summer day, for instance, in my usual summer attire—that is, sport shirt and slacks. He drew me to one side and told me that it would look better for a faculty man to wear a tie and jacket. I told him I didn't plan to wear a tie and jacket in hot weather unless and until they air-conditioned the building—and I stuck to my costume.

  To him, my writing science fiction was like my wearing a sport shirt. It wasn't done, and it bothered him. In fact, he began worrying that his grants might suffer if the science referees in Washington began to realize that his right-hand man wrote science fiction.

  All in all, I grew restless at the realization that my salary rested in the hands of a man who disapproved of me. More and more it became one of my ambitions to get rid of Lemon as the source of my income— and I suspect it came to be
one of Lemon's ambitions, more and more, to get rid of me altogether.

  *3

  I did go to New York on March 21, 1951, and the next day I had lunch with Howard Browne, who was now editing Amazing. He was a large, jovial fellow who had had the intention of making it a quality

  magazine and had bought stories at $.05 a word for that purpose, including my "Flesh and Metal/' until the publishers had pulled the rug out from under him by flinching at the thought of putting out all the money that would be required.

  So "Flesh and Metal" came out in the April 1951 Amazing, which looked much as that magazine always had. However, Browne had changed the title to "Satisfaction Guaranteed," 6 a change that was much for the better.

  The next day I had lunch with Bradbury and Pohl, and a new project came up. Television was here to stay; that was clear. 7 Why not take advantage of it, then? Radio had its successful long-running series, "The Lone Ranger," so why not a "Space Ranger" modeled very closely upon that? If I were to write a juvenile science-fiction novel featuring a Space Ranger, we could get a long-term television series out of it that would coin millions for all concerned—including the author, the agent, and the publisher of the novel on which it was based.

  This, of course, assumed that television would be like radio, full of fixed, long-running series. None of us dreamed that for some reason, perhaps because the addition of the sense of vision enormously hastened a sense of satiation, television series would very rarely last more than two or three years. We also didn't know that a juvenile television series to be called "Rocky Jones: Space Ranger" was already in the works.

  None of these things bothered me. I had no more future vision than anyone else. I assumed, too, that the series would be indefinite in duration and would make millions. What bothered me, though, was that all the television I had seen (except for Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca) was uniformly awful. What good would millions of dollars do me if I were ashamed of its source?

  I explained this and Brad at once said, "Use a pseudonym."

  That was a relief. I agreed to write a pseudonymous novel.

  There was a Hydra Club meeting the next day. I met Fritz Leiber there for the first time—tall, handsome; in fact, with almost theatrical good looks. Harry Harrison and Evelyn (whom I had kissed last New Year's Eve) had split up, but not as a result of the kiss, as I had fearfully thought for a moment. Apparently, she had grown interested in Lester del Rey.

  6 See Earth Is Room Enough (Doubleday, 1957).

  7 The Blugermans had a television set now, and when we were staying at their apartment, we watched it as much as we could.

  Waltham

  After we got back from New York, things began looking up. The obstetrician finally detected signs of life, and for that matter, so did Gertrude.

  Then, on March 28, 1951, we finally found the apartment we were looking for. It was in Waltham, about nine miles due west of the Medical School and near a public transportation line, though not a fearfully convenient one. (Still, we now had a car.)

  It was a four-room apartment, with two bedrooms—one of which I could use as a study until we had to convert it into a nursery. It had a beautiful kitchen, a pleasant hall, adequate closet space, and most of all, it was the top floor of a two-story house so that it had four-way ventilation—even a small veranda. The rent was $100 a month, which we could swing on my school salary alone, and with the writing earnings added, there would be no trouble.

  Two days later we closed the deal, and for once I was certain we were doing the right thing.

  At least I knew we were right as far as the apartment was concerned. I wasn't at all sure I should stay on the job. It would have been nice to get some commitment of advancement before I took a new and more expensive apartment, but the developing fetus wouldn't wait, so neither could I.

  On March 30, I mentioned the possibility of a raise in pay to Lemon and he looked at me blankly as though he had never heard the phrase before and wondered what it meant.

  On April 5,1 sought a conference with Dr. Walker (who had been away from school for some time because his mother-in-law had died) and, for the first time, explained that I wanted to be a full member of the faculty with my salary coming from school funds and not from Dr. Lemon's grant. After that, more or less by coincidence, Lemon saw Walker and explained how unsatisfactory I was. Of course, the news of that got to me and raised my anger several notches.

  On April 9, Walker and Lemon had a conference with Dean Faulkner and it was decided that I would not get a professorship, though I would get a raise.

  I was dissatisfied with that and decided that if I could not alter their minds, I would quit. I had put down my deposit on the Waltham apartment, but that didn't bother me. Unemployment would not mean starvation. Thanks to our careful saving ways, we now had nearly $10,000 in the bank, and I was convinced my writing could carry me for quite a while.

  After all, my third book, The Stars y like Dust—, had been published, and my fourth book, Foundation, on which Gertrude was busily working, would be out in the fall. Two more books based on the Foundation series were also slated for publication. What was most important was that on April 4, Brad called me to tell me that on the basis of what he had seen of my new novel, The Currents of Space, he.was sending me a full contract. He was now sufficiently confident in my ability to be able to skip the "option" stage.

  With all that, the specter of unemployment was no longer a terrifying one. The days of 1947 through 1949 were gone and, I strongly suspected, were never going to return.

  Besides, I had another trump card. There was the textbook, on which we were making great progress. I was carrying my full share of the load and I had the feeling that Walker would not lightly let me resign, since I intended to make it quite clear, if push came to shove, that I would not contribute further to the book if I did, and would withdraw what I had already written.

  By mid-April, I could feel occasional thumpings when I placed my hand on the maternal abdomen. And as for the other variety of children, the May 1951 Galaxy appeared with "Hostess." 1

  I was also engaged, at this time, in doing what I could to further Stanley's career. He would be graduating from New York University in a few months and he had determined on a journalism career. I consulted Dawson on the possibility of helping Stanley get into Columbia School of Journalism. Dawson met Stanley and called me on April 6 to tell me that it had been very pleasant meeting "another Asimov" and that he would do what he could.

  Stanley did go to Columbia School of Journalism the following September and, though to this day I tease him by telling him I got him

  1 See Nightfall and Other Stories, in which I restored the story to its original version. To be sure, Horace had changed my heroine's name, Vera, to Rose, because Vera was the name of the publisher of the magazine. I thought that a silly delicacy, but let that change stand.

  in, there is no question but that he did it on his own qualifications and would have done it just as easily if I had not existed. 2

  3

  On May 1, 1951, we underwent our ninth move as a married couple in almost nine years of marriage. We moved out of the attic apartment after having lived there i34 years, a longer period than in any place since Wingate Hall. Our new address was 265 Lowell Street, in Waltham.

  A new refrigerator, which we had bought for $270 ten days before, was there waiting for us, and two days after we moved in, a telephone was installed. It was not a dial phone so that we had to dicker with an operator—the one and only time this has happened to me. It was a party line and we shared the phone with another customer.

  The irritations of a party line almost negated the value of a telephone. There were the telephone rings that disturbed you but were for the other guy. There were the telephone calls that could not be made because the other party was engaged in an interminable conversation. There were the important calls you were making that were interrupted by the other person's trivial needs. Bah!

  But there was nothing we could
do about it except to go about our business. By May 7, Gertrude and I, between us, had copied over the early Foundation stories, smoothed out the transitions, and made some minor changes. The manuscript was ready to be handed to Marty on our next trip to New York.

  4

  As the year heated up, we found that the Waltham apartment was not exactly a cool one, either. It was on the top floor, after all. It was, however, an improvement on Somerville. On May 15, the temperature in the open shade went to 89. In Somerville that would have meant an inside temperature of near 100. In the new apartment, the temperature was only 83. The next day (Gertrude's birthday) it was 91 outside and 85 indoors.

  There was also the advantage of the veranda, which had a waist-

  2 On April 11, President Truman fired General MacArthur. At the time this made Truman a villain to almost the entire country, though it made him a hero to me, but there is no question that the hindsight of history is on my side and would agree that MacArthur's insubordination was a danger to the country and could not be endured.

  high wall and a roof, but was not screened. Gertrude could, and did, make up a cot there, and on hot nights she would sleep there while I slept indoors.

  5

  The June 1951 Astounding arrived and had "Breeds There a Man?" 3 in it. I was very pleased. It had been exactly one year since I had last had a story in Astounding, and in that interval, I had had two shorts, a novelette, and a three-part serial in Galaxy. Six of the first eight issues of this new magazine had had something by me in it, and I felt like a traitor. With "Breeds There a Man?" I felt better, and I made up my mind to offer "The Currents of Space" to Campbell for serialization.

  It was about now, too, that Life came out with an article on science fiction and ran the banquet photograph of the July 1950 convention at which Brad and Fred had lured me into drinking. I got a copy at work and there I was, far in the background and not very recognizable, but clearly drunk.