It's Been a Good Life

by Isaac Asimov

  And that's the way it was. On September 19, the Navy Yard announced that Jewish employees would be allowed to take off Yom Kippur with pay, and without having to work Christmas-and because of Heinlein's encounter with me, I had ended up volunteering to work on Yom Kippur.

  On Monday, September 21, 1942, I was therefore the only Jewish employee at the Navy Yard (I believe) to show up at work. It was no great hardship, but I must admit that I resented Heinlein's having put me on the spot. He meant well, I'm sure, and we stayed good friends, but I have never been able to erase the memory of his having backed me into a corner.

  [Games in the Navy Yard's cafeteria] What irritated me most was (a) the food and (b) Heinlein's patriotic refusal to recognize that anything prepared for noble war workers could possibly be inedible. When ... I spoke eloquently of cardboard potatoes and wilted lettuce and middle-aged roast beef, Heinlein passed a ukase to the effect that from then on anyone who complained about the food would have to put a nickel in the kitty. (When enough had accumulated, I think he was going to buy a war bond.)

  I objected bitterly for I knew it was aimed at me. I said, "Well, then, suppose I figure out a way of complaining about the food that isn't complaining. Will you call it off?"

  "Yes," he said.

  After that, I had a mission in luncheon life that took my mind off the food, at least. I was going to find a way of complaining that couldn't be objected to. My best solo attempt, I think, was one time when I pretended to be sawing away ineffectually at a dead slab of haddock and asked with an innocent air of curiosity. "Is there such a thing as tough fish?"

  "That will be five cents, Isaac," said Heinlein.

  "It's only a point of information, Bob."

  "That will be five cents, Isaac. The implication is clear."

  Since Bob was judge, jury, and executioner, that was that.

  But then someone new joined the table who did not know the game that was going on. He took one mouthful of some ham that had been pickled in formaldehyde and said, "Boy, this food is awful."

  Whereupon I rose to my feet, lifted one arm dramatically, and said, "Gentlemen, I disagree with every word my friend here has said, but I will defend with my life his right to say it."

  And the game of fine came to an end.

  [On September 25, 1943 The Soviets announced that they had recaptured Smolensk and Roslavl, and on September 27, among the many places recorded in the Soviet war communique as having been recaptured was Petrovichi-or at least the ground on which Petrovichi had stood-after it had remained twenty-six months in German hands.

  Bob Heinlein shook my hand and solemnly congratulated me.

  The siege of Leningrad was lifted that January [1944]. My Uncle Boris had survived the nine-hundred-day ordeal and was among those who were taken eastward for recovery and rehabilitation. He sent letters to my parents, who responded with packages containing food and other useful items.

  [February 1944-having to write a Navy Yard report on seamsealing compounds] The chief problem for me, I knew, would be the actual writing of the report. Writing was not a simple procedure in the Navy Yard, even for an illiterate-let alone someone like myself who was an expert at writing and would therefore violate all official illiteracy rules.

  Early in my Navy Yard career, I had been asked to write a letter and it was promptly brought back to me. It was not written in Navy style.

  "What is Navy style?" I asked, blankly.

  They took me to a large filing cabinet containing all kinds of letters written in a formal, convoluted fashion. There had to be a heading of a certain kind, and then an "in re" with a coded letter-number entry. Each paragraph had to be numbered. Every sentence had to be in the passive.

  The safest thing, they said, would be to find some paragraph in some previous letter that was approximately what I wanted to say and then make use of it with minimum changes.

  I could see the purpose of that. Clear, literate writers could be trusted to use their ingenuity-but what of the average employee? By using fixed paragraphs, no idiot (however deeply immersed in idiocy) could go far wrong. It was like painting with numbers. It was a little hard on the few literates in the place, but that is a small price to pay for the privilege of avoiding rapid and total collapse, so I learned how to write Navy style.

  Specifications had to be written Navy style also. Every paragraph had to be numbered; so did every subparagraph and every subsub- paragraph. The main paragraphs were listed as I, II, III, and so on. If anything under a particular paragraph had to be enumerated it was A, B, C.... If A included enumerated items it was 1, 2, 3.... Under any of these was a, b, c .... and under these (1), (2), (3) .... and so on.

  Furthermore, if in any one sentence you have to refer to another sentence, you located the referred sentence in its position in the specification, as, for instance, II, C, 3, a, (1).

  Generally, there weren't too many indentations, or too many references back and forth, and the specifications, while rather tortuous, could be understood-given several hours of close study.

  When it finally came my time to prepare the specification of the seam-sealing compounds, a certain Puckishness overtook me. Writing with absolute clarity, I nevertheless managed to break everything down into enumerations, getting all the way down to [(1)] and even [(a)]. [These brackets are Isaac's.] I further managed in almost every sentence to refer to some other sentence for which I duly listed a complete identification.

  The result was that no one on earth could have plunged into it and come out unscathed. Brain coagulation would have set in by page 2.

  Solemnly, I handed in the specification. I had done nothing wrong, so I could not be scolded or disciplined. All they could do would be to come back with some embarrassment and ask for simplification-and, of course, the joke would be over and I would simplify. I just hoped that none of my supervisors would require hospitalization. I didn't really intend things to go that far.

  But the joke was on me. My supervisors were wreathed in smiles at this product of the satirist's art. They took it straight and swallowed it whole.... Years later, I was told that that specification was still preserved (under nitrogen, do you suppose'?) and handed out to new employees as an example of how specifications ought to be written.

  I worried, sometimes, in looking back on it, just how much, in my eagerness to play a harmless little joke, I had set back the war effort.

  I was tiring of the Foundation series ... I wanted a chance to make use of the other writing I was doing the Navy style-which, unless I exorcised it somehow, might well corrode my vitals.

  When I handed in "Dead Hand" [the fifth Foundation story], I suggested to Campbell that I do a short story I planned to call "Blind Alley," in which I made use of my Navy Yard experience. The story was to involve red tape, and part of it was to be told in the form of letters between bureaucrats in the Navy style, with the thesis being that it protected against stupidity but could not protect against ingenuityif there was enough of that.

  Campbell laughed and agreed, and on September 2, I began it. It was set in the Foundation universe, at the height of the Galactic Empire, before the fall of that Empire and the beginning of the Foundation. I did that because it was easier to do than to make up a completely new background.

  It was the one story written in the Foundation universe (whether part of the Foundation series or not) in which there were extraterrestrial intelligences. In all the other stories, a purely human Galaxy is described, with no other intelligent beings present and with no unusual or monstrous animals either.

  The device of an all-human Galaxy had apparently never been used before. Stories of interstellar travel prior to the Foundation, notably those of E. E. Smith and by Campbell himself, had always presupposed numerous intelligences and had used these intelligences as devices wherewith to drive the plot.

  The multi-intelligence Galaxy is, to my way of thinking, more probable than the all-human one. However, I was concentrating on political and social forces in the Foundation s
eries and I would have complicated these unbearably if I had introduced other intelligences. Even more important, it was my fixed intention not to allow Campbell to foist upon me his notions of the superiority and inferiority of races, and the surest way of doing that was to have an all-human Galaxy.

  In "Blind Alley" the plot, as it worked itself out in my head, was to have a clever bureaucrat use Navy style to help save an extraterrestrial intelligence that would otherwise be destroyed. I knew that Campbell would interpret this as a superior humanity helping an inferior race and he would have no objection to it, and as long as he didn't interfere to introduce a heavy-handed indication of this interpretation, I would be satisfied. I mailed the story to him on October 10, and a check for $148.75 was in my hands on October 20 [1944].

  [Lots of war news in his diary and his full autobiography] On the January 8 visit, we discussed the next Foundation story, and Campbell said he wanted to upset the Seldon Plan, which was the connecting backbone of the series. I was horrified. No, I said, no, no, no. But Campbell said, Yes, yes, yes, yes, and I knew I wasn't going to sell him a no, no.

  I made up my mind, rather sulkily ... to follow orders, but to get my own back by making the new Foundation story the longest and biggest and widest yet. On January 26, 1945, then, I began "The Mule."

  On that day, I had been married two and a half years, and that may have influenced me, for the heroine, Bayta, was modeled on Gertrude-certainly in appearance. Toran, her husband, was modeled on myself, though his appearance wasn't described as similar to mine.

  Bayta was, of course, the key to the whole story and was the person who defeated the Mule at the end, while Toran was definitely subsidiary and bumbled about in Bayta's wake. I suppose that was the way I viewed the family situation. I was clever academically and I had writing talent. For the rest, I never felt that I was particularly bright in anything that had to do with ordinary living and with human interrelationships.

  As for the Mule himself, his personal appearance was based on my friend Leonard Meisel, who by then was the only person at the Navy Yard with whom I could completely relax.

  I worked rapidly, more rapidly than I had at any other time during the war. To be sure, the story took me some three and a half months to complete, but it ended being fifty thousand words long, approaching novel length. It was the very first story I had ever written that was so long, that had so intricate a plot, and that had so lengthy a cast of characters. And with Gertrude to inspire me, I think that Bayta was the first successful, well-rounded female character I ever had in any of my stories. (I loved Susan Calvin of the robot stories passionately, but she could scarcely be considered well-rounded.)

  It helped the progress of the writing that news in the world outside looked so good. With the new year, the Soviets opened another offensive in the East and swooped into Germany proper. By the time I was working on "The Mule," the Soviet Army was within striking distance of Berlin, and I felt that every day I was taking a giant stride toward New York and my return to research.

  The month of April ended with the Germans in collapse, with the Soviets in Berlin, and with Adolf Hitler a suicide. In the first week of May, in which I excitedly waited for the end of the war in Europe and the end of the long nightmare of Nazism ... the only black spot was that Roosevelt had not survived a little longer to see the end of Hitler.

  I kept racing ahead in the last stages of "The Mule." It was almost as though the Mule's ambitions were collapsing in time to Hitler's. (The Mule was in no way a Hitlerian character, however. The story line worked out as it did, in fact, precisely because the Mule was not a complete villain.)

  On May 8, 1945, the war in Europe was over.... For me, on a much smaller scale, the month had its victory, too. I finished "The Mule" on May 15, brought it to Campbell on May 21, and received the acceptance on May 29 in the form of a check for $875-50,000 words at $.0175 per word.

  It was an incredible sum. That one check was only a little less than I had made in the first three years after my first visit to Campbell. It represented a quarter of my annual salary at the Navy Yard. Yet my comment in the diary was, "Falls flat somehow, however. Guess I'm so sure of sales these days, the thrill is gone."

  Certain success evicts one from the paradise of winning against the odds.

  On July 27, I received a new classification from the draft board1 AB. The added B was a bow of recognition to my nearsightedness, but it meant nothing. Anyone in 1 AB was draft material, and I still had five months to go to the safety of my twenty-sixth birthday. So I requested a hearing with the local draft board, which was granted and set for August 7. 1 made ready to leave on the afternoon of the sixth.

  We were getting ready to go, and I remember exactly what happened.

  I was reading a copy of Will Durant's Caesar and Christ, the third volume of his history of civilization, and Gertrude was ironing some clothes.

  The radio stopped its regular programming for an emergency bulletin: The United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

  I was not surprised, mind you. I had known it was in the works since 1941. Therefore my original comment was not one of shock or awe or horror or anything like that.

  Besides, something else was on my mind. Therefore, my first words when I heard the dramatic announcement were a thoughtful, "Hmm, I wonder how that will affect my draft status?" . . .

  On August 14, Japan surrendered, and draft quotas were cut at once, and I felt myself hoping a bit.... Just as soon as I knew I would not be drafted, I would ... return to Columbia.

  Twelve.

  POSTWAR,

  AND THE ARMY

  On September 7, 1945 ... my draft board greetings had come.... It did not escape my notice that if, in the third grade, I had kept my mouth shut and let my mother's lie stand, and had not insisted on a change in my birth date, then September 7, 1945, would have been my twenty-sixth birthday and I could not have been drafted. As it was, I was four months short of my twenty-sixth birthday.

  It also did not escape my notice that the war was over, that millions of Americans had been drafted over the past few years and had had to face bombs and bullets while I had been safe at home; that many thousands of them had been wounded or killed while I had been safe at home; and that now I would be going off to face no more danger than the ordinary risks of ordinary life.

  I was aware of all this and I did my best not to view the event as more tragic than it was. The fact remained, however, that I didn't want to go into the army; I wanted to go back to Columbia. And I didn't want to leave Gertrude; I wanted to stay with her. So I felt terrible.

  [But he was drafted.]

  [After months of being a poor soldier but not being reprimanded] a friendly lieutenant told me that the commanding officer, before basic had begun, had gone over the soldiers with his subordinates and had said concerning me, something as follows:

  "Now this guy Asimov you might as well leave alone. He's got a 160 AGCT score and they ain't going to use him anywhere except behind a desk so don't waste time on him. He's the kind of stupe that's okay on those shit tests, but he don't know his right foot from his left and there ain't no use trying to teach him because he ain't got any sense. I been watching and I can see that."

  After that I was ignored by every officer and noncom in the place.

  When I found this out, I was indignant beyond words. Not, you understand, that I quarreled with the commanding officer's opinion of me, which I thought was accurate enough and a credit to his perspicacity. What graveled me was that no one was kind enough to whisper the news to me so that I could relax. I would gladly have agreed to have continued to do my best to make beds, clean rifles, and march, but why should I not have done it with a song in my heart? ...

  I did manage to write one story while I was in the army. During basic training, I persuaded the librarian to lock me in the library when it closed for lunch and to allow me to use the typewriter. After a few sessions, I had completed a robot story, which I mailed to Campbell
. It was called "Evidence" and it appeared in the September 1946 ASF [Astounding Science Fiction 1.

  The interesting thing about the story is that when I reread it recently because it was appearing in a collection and I had to check it for typographical errors, I realized that it was the first story I wrote that sounded as though I might have written it forty years later.

  The worst of the pulpishness was suddenly gone and from "Evidence" onward I wrote much more rationally (at least so it seems to me). Why my writing should have suddenly matured while I was in the army, I don't know. I have brooded about it but have no answer....

  After I got back from any 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 a 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?"

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