I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  This is utterly and entirely different from forcing my impulse to educate on unwilling victims, and it is only that that I have chosen to give up—and it has made all the difference.

  Another unusual event in the course of my army stay was that 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.

  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.

  As it happened, I did not stay in the army for two years. Through a clerical error, Gertrude received a notice that her allotment as an army wife was being stopped because I had been discharged. I went at once to my captain with the letter. He considered the matter and said he wouldn’t concern himself with it but would send me back to Camp Lee to straighten the matter out. (He was probably glad to get rid of me.)

  As a result, I left for Camp Lee the day before the ship left Hawaii for Bikini. This meant that I never saw a nuclear bomb explosion close up. It also meant that, perhaps, I did not die of leukemia at a comparatively early age.

  Once back in Camp Lee, I began to pull the strings for a “research discharge” since I was now not doing anything in the army and since I would go back to scientific research if I was discharged. So they discharged me (and again might have been glad to get rid of me). I was out of the army on July 26, 1946, which was, as it happened, my fourth wedding anniversary. I had served eight months and twenty-six days.

  Games

  I mentioned in the previous section that I had played innumerable games of bridge with the “critically needed specialists” and that I was no good at it. I am simply no good at games generally.

  I am not talking about the. rough-and-tumble of street play, or the calisthenics of gym classes, or the organized efforts of sports requiring a quick eye and good reflexes, such as tennis and golf.

  My ignorance of all these things is pathetic.

  In 1989, I gave a talk at a high-powered country club and found myself among a group of the elite who had come there for their conference in order to have an opportunity to play tennis and golf in the off-hours. They had some objects on display that the competing players could win for excellence in their scores, and one object was utterly strange to me. I studied it carefully and finally said to a young man who looked as though he might answer a polite question, “Pardon me, what is this?”

  He stared at me a moment, and said, “A golf bag.”

  “Oh, is it?” I said, as naively as though I were only seven, instead of old enough to be the young man’s grandfather. “I’ve never seen one before.”

  I’m sure that that story spread and everyone must have wondered, in great alarm, why they had invited me to speak to them. However, I proved to them that you might not know what a golf bag was and still give a very good talk.

  Failure at physical sports has never bothered me. I even consoled myself in my younger and more foolish days with the thought that it was just a by-product of being “smart,” but as I grew older, I found that I was no good at competitive activities that involved the mind

  either. I was not only no good at bridge, I was no good at any card games, which has its advantages too, for it kept me from the folly of gambling.

  What bothered me, though, was my failure at chess. When I was quite young and had a checkerboard, but no chess pieces, I read books on the game and learned the various moves. I then cut out cardboard squares on which I drew the symbols for the various pieces, and tried to play games with myself. Eventually I managed to persuade my father to get me real chessmen. Then I taught my sister the moves and played the game with her. Both of us played very clumsily indeed.

  My brother, Stanley, who watched us play, learned the moves and, eventually, asked if he might play. Ever the indulgent older brother, I said, “Sure,” and prepared to beat the pants off him. The trouble was that in the first game he ever played he beat me.

  In the years that followed, I discovered that everyone beat me, regardless of race, color, or religion. I was simply the most appallingly bad chess player who ever lived, and, as time went on, I just stopped playing chess.

  My failure at chess was really distressing. It seemed completely at odds with my “smartness,” but I now know (or at least have been told) that great chess players achieve their results by years and years of studying chess games, by the memorization of large numbers of com plex “combinations.” They don’t see chess as a succession of moves but as a pattern. I know what that means, for I see an essay or a story as a pattern.

  But these talents are different. Kasparov sees a chess game as a pattern but an essay as a mere collection of words. I see an essay as a pattern and a chess game as a mere collection of moves. So he can play chess and I can write essays and not vice versa. That’s not enough, however. I never thought of comparing myself to grand masters of chess. What bothered me was my inability to beat anyone! The conclusion that I finally came to (right or wrong) was that I was unwilling to study the chessboard and weigh the conse quences of each possible move I might make. Even people who couldn’t see complex patterns might at least penetrate two or three moves ahead, but not I. I moved entirely on impulse, if not at ran dom, and could not make myself do anything else. That meant I would almost certainly lose.

  And again—why? To me, it seems obvious. I was spoiled by my ability to understand instantly, my ability to recall instantly. I expected to see things at once and I refused to accept a situation in which that was not possible. (Just as I refused to swot away and study in high school and college.)

  It is my good fortune that in both my writing and my speaking engagements I see patterns effortlessly and at once. If I had to think things through, I imagine I would have failed at both. (Andwouldn’t be at all surprised if my unwillingness to take time to think things through contributed to my failure as a scientist.)

  Acrophobia

  I do not take airplanes because of my acrophobia, and that is a legitimate excuse, as I shall soon explain. Nevertheless, I did fly in a plane once while I was at the NAES and once while I was in the army. I must explain the circumstances.

  At the NAES, I was working on “dye markers,” which pilots who were ditched in the ocean could use to color the water about them and make themselves more easily visible to searching planes above. (I loved working on that because it clearly contributed to the welfare of our fighting men and excused my not being among them—at least, a little.)

  The usual way of testing various dye markers was to go up in an airplane and study their comparative visibilities. I, however, had worked out a test that, I thought, would do the job without the expense of a plane flight. In order to make sure that my test was suitable, however, I would have to compare its results with those given by air surveillance. If both gave the same results, well—

  Such was my enthusiasm over this (and I believe it was the last spark of true enthusiasm I felt for actual scientific research) that I actually asked to go up in an airplane to observe the dye markers. I went up in a small two-engine NAES plane, piloted by one of the NAES officers. In my interest in watching for the tiny green smears on the water, I forgot my acrophobia and did not go into panic. I was even planning to go up again, but my superiors wanted to know if I could guarantee results.

  I said, “Of course not. If I could, I wouldn’t have to go up in the plane.” So,
with incredible stupidity, they canceled my flights. My second time in a plane was on my return from Hawaii. I had asked for the first available sea transportation to San Francisco, which meant six days on the ocean. I preferred that to a plane flight. In the army, however, “sea transportation” means a plane. I protested vehemently, but the sergeant in charge of me simply ordered me onto the plane, and I had no choice but to board it. It took off instantly and propelled me through the night for twelve hours till we reached San Francisco. It all happened so quickly, and left me in such a state of uncertainty and confusion, that I had no time to panic. Neither trip sold me on airplanes. To be sure, they had little chance to do so. The first was a small plane not in the least meant for civilian transportation, and the second was an eviscerated DC-3 in which all the passengers had to sleep, or try to sleep, on the curved wooden floor. What if I took a modern plane, with comfortable seats, stewardesses bringing food, movies to watch, and so on? What, indeed? I’ll never know, for there is no chance I’ll ever talk myself into trying a flight (unless Janet or Robyn were far away and needed me desperately and quicldy). What’s more, there is always the extraordinary publicity and macabre detail with which every airplane crash is greeted, and with each grisly incident, my firm intention never to fly is strengthened.

  But do I really have acrophobia, or is that just an excuse to avoid airplanes? As Lester del Rey once implied, am I a coward rather than an acrophobe?

  Believe me, I’m an acrophobe. I first became truly aware of it the very first time I put it to a true test. When I visited the New York World’s Fair in 1939, with my chem-lab ladylove, it occurred to me to ride on a roller coaster. From what I had seen of it in movies, it seemed to me that my date would scream and would cling to me, something which, I thought, would be delightful.

  The instant the roller coaster topped the first and highest rise and began to swoop downward, I reacted like an acrophobe. I screamed in terror and I hung on desperately to my date, who sat there stolid and unmoved. I got out of the roller coaster half dead, and if I had been older and had had a less youthful heart, I am certain it would have killed me.

  I don’t think that that experience caused the acrophobia. I think I was an acrophobe all along but till then I had had no occasion to be high up and in a position to fear falling. I wonder if I was actually born with the phobia, if it is part of my genetic makeup. I wonder if such things have even been studied.

  After I came to know I was an acrophobe, I studiously avoided anything that might activate the sensation. Only once was I cajoled into violating this sensible precaution.

  In December 1982, a large menorah, thirty feet high, was set up at Chanukah time in Columbus Circle, within walking distance of my apartment. A rabbi phoned me to ask me to light some of the lamps with a blowtorch on a certain day, give a short speech, and repeat a short prayer after him. I had no desire at all to do this but I am reluctant to behave in such a manner as to seem to have no Jewish feelings at all.

  “How do I get up there?” I asked. “With a cherry picker,” he said, referring to those buckets in which men are lifted to work on trees. “I can’t do that,” I said. “I’m an acrophobe. I have a morbid fear of heights.” “Nonsense,” he said. “I’ll be going up in a cherry picker too, and remember, the higher up you go, the closer you are to God.”

  That was nonsense, if you like. Even if God existed, he would not exist in some region “up there.” He would be immanent in all creation. But I let myself be talked into it. Looking back on it, I can’t believe I was so incredibly stupid—but I was.

  On the evening in question I walked to Columbus Circle, along with Janet and her niece, Patti. Janet was furious with me for agreeing, partly because it meant participating in a religious rite and partly out of her fear of my acrophobia. As for myself, I thought, “It’s mind over matter. I shall simply ignore the fact that I’ll be moving up in the air.”

  However, once I got into the cherry picker and felt myself move upward, it was at once apparent that the phobia would not be conquered by mind alone. I collapsed to the bottom of the cherry picker, and my clutching fingers, white with pressure and clinging to the lip

  of the picker, was all anyone could see. I was suffering from bouts of angina pectoris at the time and, usually, it manifested itself only when I was walking. For the first time it hit me when I wasn’t moving, clamping down hard on my chest.

  All I could think of was the possibility of a fatal heart attack and I thought, “If I die now, Janet will kill me.” But I got up to the menorah, still alive, and managed with the greatest of difficulty to light the necessary number of lights with the blowtorch. (I had never before held a blowtorch in my hands and learning how to control its flame while I was in the grip of my phobia was difficult indeed.)

  I gave a speech that lasted a few minutes, though I haven’t the foggiest notion of what I said, and then, pretty much in agony, I repeated the Hebrew syllables the rabbi intoned. (He was not phobic.)

  Finally, finally, we began to descend and I thought thankfully that with every foot downward I was getting farther from God and nearer the blessed ground.

  My troubles were not over. When we were back at ground level, I found I was suffering from nervous paralysis, I could not move my legs and had to be lifted out of the cherry picker. I stood upright, and with Janet supporting me on one side and Patti on the other, I managed to shuffle. As they walked me home, my leg muscles slowly returned to normal.

  I winced over what Janet would say to me, for she maintained an ominous silence while we walked home (as my mother used to do when she was contemplating the spanking I was going to get once I was safely in the apartment). To avert that, I said, pathetically, “I was afraid if I had a heart attack and died that you would kill me, Janet.”

  And she said, “No, but I would have killed that rabbi.”

  Once I had a chance to observe a non-acrophobe in action and I still can’t believe it. There was a weak spot in the wall of our apartment house, and during gusty storms, the wind would blow water right through the wall into the apartment. On December 17, 1986, a man was on a scaffolding suspended from the roof to gouge out the bricks and look for the weak spot. The scaffolding seemed a frail structure and it was thirty-three stories above the ground.

  I wondered at his nonchalance, and with my stomach twisting, I asked him if he minded being up in the air like that. He looked down, then up at me, and said, “No.”

  He found a piece of metal in the wall that obviously represented the weak spot, and as he tried to wrench it away, it came with a sudden yielding. As the workman staggered back, I reacted like an acrophobe, emitting an unearthly scream. He was stopped by the back of the scaffolding, looked a little perturbed for a moment, and then went back to putting new bricks into the portion of the wall he had excavated.

  That’s what it’s like, not being an acrophobe.

  Claustrophilia

  While I’m at my phobic peculiarities, I might as well mention a very mild condition that I also suffer from. It is claustrophilia, or a liking for enclosed places.

  Let me tell you how I became consciously aware of the condition. Every once in a while I would go to a department store with Gertrude. (I hate shopping and can’t be trusted to buy my own clothes in a sensible manner, so that Gertrude had to come with me to supervise, and once she was there, she would shop for herself too.)

  As we wandered through the store, I would look at the displays about me and find myself particularly interested in the furniture displays. The stores would set up sample bedrooms or living rooms and show the furniture properly placed within it. I found those rooms extraordinarily attractive, warm, and friendly. I seemed to prefer them to die ordinary rooms that existed in my apartment or in those of my friends.

  But why? The rooms I lived in were adequately furnished and not essentially different from the model rooms in the department store. I puzzled over the matter and, one day, studying one of the model rooms with my usual desire to live
in it, I finally saw the difference.

  The model room had no windows. It existed only under warm, artificial light. There was no intrusion of harsh sunlight.

  Suddenly, I understood a few things about myself I had earlier simply taken for granted. In one of the candy stores we owned, we had an apartment on the floor above. There was also a little room in the back of the store equipped with a stove and other kitchen utilities, for when we bought the store, it had also served as a primitive luncheonette. My parents put an end to that, but I frequently had lunch in that little room.

  I much preferred this little room to the kitchen upstairs. Once I learned about my claustrophilia, I remembered that the little room had had no window and that I had sat there eating lunch, even in the blaze of noon, by the light of an electric bulb.

  The subways in those days had newsstands which sold newspapers and magazines and candies. At night, the wooden sides were folded in and locked, and the whole thing resembled a closed box till it was opened for business before the morning rush hour.

  I used to have a yearning to own such a newsstand, and I fantasized that when it was closed, I would remain inside with an electric light going. I would then have a chance to read, in strict isolation and enclosure, the magazines I liked, while hearing the occasional rumble of a subway train. (Such mundane problems as how I would manage to visit the bathroom in the middle of the night never occurred to me.)

  My claustrophilia is not extreme. While I prefer enclosed places, I can get along very well in sunlit rooms and in the open. I don’t have any touch of agoraphobia (the morbid fear of open places), though I would rather walk the canyons of Manhattan with tall buildings hemming me in than in Central Park, which is open.