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

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  On balance, though, when the Thanksgiving season came about I had numerous reasons to give thanks, and it was fitting that Gertrude got a ten-pound turkey with which to celebrate a traditional Thanksgiving all by ourselves (plus David) for the first time.

  It turned out very well indeed, and Gertrude managed it just as well as ever her mother did. I told Gertrude so, too.

  5

  On December 27, 1952, I took the train to New York. (It seemed sensible not to take the car when there might be snow.)

  The next day was rather unusual. In the first place, after I had lunched at my parents', we all got into a car.

  The first unusual point was that my parents were going somewhere together with both their sons. It was a new life for them now that the candy store was gone. They were going to the movies together, to the library, to museums. They ate dinner out with Stanley and me.

  Second, it was Stanley's car we got into. He was twenty-three years old, could drive, and had a car of his own. I hadn't managed this until I had reached the age of thirty. But then, nine years made a difference. The society he lived in at twenty-three in the year 1952 was far different from the society I lived in at twenty-three in the year 1943.

  The third and most unusual point, however, was that Stanley was driving us to Nyack so that we could visit Uncle Joe and Aunt Pauline. I had not seen them for over fourteen years. After some conversation, we drove them to some point in the Bronx where they could catch the train to Mount Vernon.

  That is all I said in my diary and I remember hardly anything else on my own. Uncle Joe was very talkative, I remember, and rather quer-

  ulous. He had been to Israel and he hadn't liked the treatment he got there. I don't recall his showing any interest in either myself or Stanley.

  After Uncle Joe and Aunt Pauline got out of the car, I said, "Oh heck, I forgot to ask them about Cousin Martin."

  "It's a good thing you didn't," said my mother, censoriously. "He's dead."

  I was stunned into silence and my parents didn't say another word about it. Such was their marked reluctance to speak about it that I never got around to asking what happened, either then, or ever. When I thought of it, my parents weren't around to answer my questions; when they were around, I never thought of it.

  Stanley never found out either. I asked him recently and he didn't know. Marcia doesn't know, either.

  Nor, after that day, did I ever see Uncle Joe or Aunt Pauline again. I presume they are dead by now, but if they are I do not know when they died or under what circumstances.

  The year 1952 drew to a close and during its course I had published no less than four books, as many as I had in 1950 and 1951 put together. They were:

  5. David Starr: Space Ranger (Doubleday)

  6. Foundation and Empire (Gnome)

  7. The Currents of Space (Doubleday)

  8. Biochemistry and Human Metabolism (Williams & Wilkins)

  Biochemistry and Human Metabolism was a collaboration, of course, but even one third of that book was longer (and certainly harder work) than any of the other seven books on the list, so I had no compunction in listing it as among "my" books. And, of course, the fact that David Starr: Space Ranger was under a pseudonym made no difference as far as I was concerned.

  As for my writing earnings, the figure for 1952 reached an astonishing $8,550, nearly twice as much as the previous record year of 1950, and more than I had earned in all the years, put together, prior to the publication of Pebble in the Sky.

  What was more important was that it was half again my school earnings of $5,500. (I couldn't help but feel a distinct triumph over that stupid dentist at Breadloaf. Amazing how small irritations linger even after large misfortunes fade.)

  Just as my parents were now out from under, so also was I. I was out from under any feeling of financial dependence on my school position. I worried no further about how much they were paying me, and I could concentrate on more basic demands without worrying about being fired (and the main demand, of course, was to get out from under Lemon).

  Furthermore, with a total income of over $14,000 for the year 1952, I got out from under the specter of economic insecurity. I wasn't certain that life could go on without catastrophe—who could be?—but barring acts of God, there seemed no reason that my literary output and earnings could not continue at this high level and between that and my savings, which had now reached $16,000, I would certainly never be in want and I would always be able to support my wife and child.

  It was a good feeling—and none too soon, since I was about to turn thirty-three.

  7

  We spent New Year's Eve 1952-53 at the house of our friends Harold and Zelda Goodglass, making our way there through a sleet-storm. (I remember very few decent New Year's Eves, when it came to driving.)

  What I remember best about that particular New Year's Eve party was that one guest, a rather loud, opinionated fellow to whom I took an instant dislike (since Fm a rather loud, opinionated fellow myself), began to lecture me on science fiction.

  He was a recent convert and didn't really know much on the subject, but apparently he was overwhelmed at the imaginative character of it. He said to me, "Do you understand how much imagination you have to have to write science fiction? Can you grasp"—here he tapped his head as though urging me to think it through—"how creatively you have to think? Why, in order to write science fiction . . ."

  He went on and on. I kept a polite look of interest on my face, saying "My, my," and "Really," every once in a while, and my host and hostess had a hard job to maintain their composure. The others there didn't know me—except Gertrude, of course, and she was in the kitchen and had been since the fellow had started talking on the subject.

  She came out as he was at the peak of his peroration, listened a few moments in puzzlement, and said, "Why are you saying all this? My husband is Isaac Asimov."

  And then I laughed. I couldn't help it.

  The fellow was furious, naturally. He never said another word to me for the duration and he probably stopped reading science fiction after that.

  8

  January 2, 1953, saw me thirty-three years old, and I had a pleasant birthday present. Fred sent along a Doubleday contract for The Caves of Steel, a contract which called for a $1,000 advance.

  Still, if Doubleday's stock was going up with me, Campbell's was going down. Now that he had broken with dianetics, he grew increasingly interested in parapsychology or, as it is also called, psionics, or, simply, psi. Increasingly, the stories in Astounding involved telepathy, precognition, and other wild talents.

  It bothered me that Campbell's predilections should be so reflected in the magazine. It bothered me that I should see so many of his editorial comments so quickly translated into stories by over-cooperative authors. What's more, Campbell's editorials, which had grown to be four thousand to six thousand words long in each issue, began to infuriate me with their ultraconservative and antiscientific standpoint.

  I was having a stronger and stronger impulse to stay away from him, but the ties of love, and the memory of all he had done for me, kept me from ever breaking with him. On my visit to New York toward the end of 1952, Campbell talked to me about a story idea he was thinking of. It was about someone who could levitate (a wild talent, see) but could not get anyone to believe him. Campbell wanted to call it "Upsy-daisy."

  I hesitated, decided I could do it my way, and wrote it during the first half of January. I called it "Belief." I mailed it off to Campbell on January 12 and when I hadn't heard from him in ten days, I called and found there was a three-page letter on its way to me. As might have been predicted, I didn't have enough psi in the story; I had made it too rational.

  I changed it as much as I could bring myself to, but not as much as Campbell would have liked and, in the end, he took it.

  While I was waiting to hear from Campbell, I wrote another fantasy intended for Howard Browne's high-rate-paying magazine. I called it "Kid Stuff" and had it finished on
January 25.

  9 My interest in writing nonfiction was increasing. The writing of the textbook had inspired my thinking on various interesting subjects of

  trivial importance. For instance, how much of the various radioactive isotopes had disappeared in the course of the Earth's existence? It was simple to calculate, but it was the sort of thing people didn't do, since it wasn't important enough.

  However, The Journal of Chemical Education, which was intended for chemistry students and their teachers, did sometimes print articles of this sort. Why not try them then?

  I wrote an article called "Naturally Occurring Radioisotopes," and on January 23 mailed it off to the JCE. It was a very short article and the JCE took it and ran it in their August 1953 issue. It filled only one of their pages.

  It wasn't much of an achievement and it didn't involve any research work. However, it appeared in a learned journal so it counted as a "paper" and I welcomed "papers" of any kind, however brief, nonresearch, and trivial they might be. After all, it was clear to me by then that I would publish very few research papers, and probably no research papers of importance. I made up my mind, therefore, to do more short pieces for the JCE.

  10

  Science fiction was becoming important enough to have books written about it. One of the first of these was Sprague de Camp's Science Fiction Handbook, slated to be published in 1953 by Hermitage House. Sprague sent me the manuscript on January 27, 1953, and of course it was a marvelous book. It contained an excellent short history of science fiction and had much to say about the current writers in the field, all of whom were described in Sprague's gentle and courteous style.

  He included a brief biography of me, which contained no mistakes, and in it he had this to say: "Asimov is a stoutish, youngish-looking man with wavy brown hair, blue eyes, and a bouncing, jovial, effervescent manner, much esteemed among his friends for his generous warmhearted nature. Extremely sociable, articulate, and witty, he is a perfect toastmaster."

  Well, I could argue with that, but I certainly don't intend to. I'm convinced that Sprague's insistence on my "generous warm-hearted nature" dates back to the time I let him use my badge at the Navy Yard.

  He also said, "Asimov writes a brisk, smooth, straightforward style with keen logic and human understanding." I don't intend to quarrel with that, either.

  Later in the book he said, "Simak's stories may be compared with

  Asimov's," which is perceptive of Sprague, since I consciously tried to imitate Cliff's style.

  The sudden interest in science fiction in book form did not involve only myself, of course. Sprague too, was putting out hard-cover novels and collections as I was. One of them was The Continent Makers, a collection of Sprague's short stories published by Twayne Press (with which Ciardi was connected) in 1953. My copy arrived on February 2, 1953. Sprague had asked me to write an Introduction for it and I did. I called it "In re Sprague" and I was at least as complimentary to him as he was to me. We always had a real love feast going—but then we each meant it.

  "In re Sprague" was the first Introduction I ever wrote to someone else's book 3 and it received no credit—my name was neither on the book jacket nor on the title page. This was silly of the publishers. Either my name was worth something and should have been advertised to help sell the book, or it wasn't and they shouldn't have bothered with the Introduction. This sort of thing never happened again.

  11

  My father's retirement didn't remain absolute. After a couple of months with nothing to do, he got himself a part-time job at a brokerage firm in Wall Street, sorting mail, handling supplies, and so on.

  "Part-time?" I said.

  "Yes," he said. "It's only forty hours a week."

  Well, to an ex-candy-store keeper, that's part-time.

  My father held onto the job for quite a while, though I always wondered how he managed to avoid being fired. Not a pencil or a paper clip moved, I was given to understand, without his permission, and I could imagine he needed closely reasoned excuses before he released anything.

  Eventually, he learned to type up material, turning out perfect copy, provided (1) there was no hurry, and (2) the material handed him had no mistakes in spelling or punctuation. If there were such mistakes he carefully duplicated them.

  12

  Browne rejected "Kid Stuff," but Horace Gold took it for a new fantasy sister-magazine of Galaxy, which he called Beyond.

  3 It wasn't the last. Indeed, I have by now written so many that I honestly think it is possible that if all of them were counted it might turn out I have written more introductions to other people's books than anyone else in history.

  New magazines continued to pop up. Even Hugo Gernsback put out a new magazine called Science Fiction Plus in February 1953. It was in the old large size, as though it were still the 1920s, and the stories read as though they were still in the 1920s, too. Sam Moskowitz did the real editing and it only lasted seven issues.

  That's no disgrace, however. Beyond was a good magazine and it only lasted ten issues.

  J 3

  By the beginning of 1953, I had been an assistant professor for a year, but I was becoming impatient again. No move had been made to get me out from under Lemon. Part of my salary was still coming from Lemon's grant, and I could stand it no more.

  Pretty soon, Lemon would be negotiating another renewal of his grant, and I was through. I told Walker on February 18, 1953, that I was not going to allow my name to go on it. The school would have to find my salary or this would be my last year on the job. (With the coming of the new year of 1953, by the way, I had been working longer at the Medical School than I had at the Navy Yard.)

  Again, Walker went to see Dean Faulkner, and this time Walker emerged with the news that I would be on full school salary as of July 1, but the final thousand would have to be covered by my taking over a course in chemistry given to student nurses. It was a course that used to be given by Mrs. Walker, but she had to stay home more and more with an ailing father.

  I thought I would rather take the salary cut and be given three months off instead of one month, but Walker wouldn't hear of that. He needed someone to replace his wife in that course.

  So I agreed, with considerable foreboding, and told myself that it was worth it to get out from under a yearly renewable grant.

  "Sally" 4 appeared in the May-June 1953 Fantastic, an advance copy of which reached me on February 26. Fantastic was still looking expensive and beautiful.

  In the June 1953 F 6 SF f "Flies" 5 appeared, and a few months later, "Kid Stuff" 6 appeared in the September 1953 Beyond, the second issue of that magazine.

  4 See Nightfall and Other Stories.

  5 See Nightfall and Other Stories.

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

  *5

  David was 1V2 years old on February 20, 1953. He didn't talk much but he understood everything we said and he had a will of his own. When I took him out in order to have him walk under his own steam, it always ended in my having to carry him, for never, under his own steam, would he walk home. Nor, if he sensed that I would find it convenient for him to walk left, would he walk in any other direction but right.

  By the time he was nineteen months old, he grew interested in television and learned to manipulate the controls. He was fascinated by the knobs that caused the picture to roll or to tear (or both, for that matter). He quickly learned, however, that this caused alarm and despondency in the breast of his parents, who then removed him from contact with the set. As a result, he sometimes quickly readjusted the set to produce a perfect picture when he heard loud cries of anguish in his rear.

  The three of us visited New York on May 21, 1953, in order that I might attend a local New York science-fiction convention the next day. I met Robert Sheckley and A. J. Budrys for the first time on this occasion.

  Fred Pohl was more and more closely involved with Ballantine Books at this time. This was a firm that was under the egis of Ian and Betty Ballanti
ne, an extraordinarily attractive, clever, and inventive couple who had great plans indeed. Their intention was to publish books simultaneously in hard- and soft-cover under such conditions that the writer would make far more money than under the older systems.

  Fred told me he was going to have all his writers work with Ballantine Books and urged me to agree to do so.

  I said, miserably, "But I can't, Fred. Doubleday is doing my books, and I can't leave them."

  Fred thought I could, since I would make far more money with Ballantine.

  I thought about it some more and said, with a kind of wan hope, "Well, if Doubleday rejects a book or if it cheats me somehow, I can make the change. But how can I do it if they don't give me cause?"

  "If they don't pay you enough money, then that's cause," said Fred.

  I remember sitting there in his office quite a while, thinking about

  that. It would be great to make a lot of money with my writing, and I would feel silly if all the other writers went on to make a lot of money and left me behind. 7

  But then I thought of Brad taking my first book, and going over the galleys with me, and working with me to cure me of overwriting, and of being always kind and helpful, and I had to picture myself saying, "Sorry, Brad, you've been outbid."

  So I finally said, "I can't do it, Fred. I'm sorry."

  I left, more miserable than you could imagine, for I knew that from a business standpoint I had done the wrong thing.

  And yet—though Ballantine Books flourished, it never quite fulfilled that initial hope of making all its writers rich. Doubleday, on the other hand, stayed with me and continued to help me and be kind to me, and do for me every bit, and more, of what I had imagined Ballantine might do for me, and so I had turned out to have made a very clever business decision after all.