I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  I let him have the manuscript and that initiated a three-year period during which he acted as my agent.

  Walter I. Bradbury, the editor at Doubleday who was to be in charge of the new line, did see possibilities in the story and he asked me to expand it to 70,000 words. Later, he also gave me a check for $750, the first time in my life I had been paid for a piece of writing I had not yet done—with the promise of more when it was completed.

  I got to work with lightning speed, and on May 29, 1949, Bradbury phoned to tell me that Doubleday would accept and publish the novel, which, later on, I called Pebble in the Sky.

  I had sold my first novel, which marked an enormous advance in my literary career (though I did not quite realize it at the time). The only trouble was that I was suddenly faced with an embarras de richesse. Not only had I made a literary leap but I also had a job.

  Let me explain how that came about.

  I even more desperately needed a job. I had already been following leads out of town, even traveling to Baltimore with a fellow-student job seeker, looking for a position that would involve working on plant chemicals. My fellow student got the job (he knew something about

  New Job at Last

  I suppose that any writer, even one who has written very little, must get an occasional letter from a reader.

  I rather suspect that science fiction writers are particularly bombarded by such letters. For one thing, I think science fiction readers are more articulate and opinionated than are other types of readers. For another, the letters column in the science fiction magazines encouraged such letter writing.

  I loved the fan letters and tried to answer them all, and continued to do so for many years. As the number of letters increased, along with the number of my commitments, the time came when I had to grow selective, something that has never ceased to bother me. I cannot help but feel that anyone who takes the trouble to write to me deserves an answer, but time and strength are limited, unfortunately.

  Nor were the letters all merely from enthusiastic youngsters. Some of the letters came from weighty members of society. Thus, during my doctoral and postdoctoral years I was getting a number of letters from William C. Boyd, a professor of immunochemistry at the Boston Uni versity School of Medicine. He had been very impressed by my story “Nightfall” and had been a fan of mine ever since.

  I was very impressed by him. The correspondence between us flour ished, and when he came to New York every once in a while, he would find occasion to spend time with me.

  Naturally, in the course of our friendship, I told him of my job troubles and he wrote to tell me that there was an opening in the biochemistry department at his school in Boston and that he was willing to recommend me for the job.

  I desperately did not want to leave New York a second time, but I botany) and I (knowing nothing about botany) did not.

  I felt I had to investigate the new opportunity, and, with sinking heart, I took the train to Boston and walked into the office of Burn-ham S. Walker, head of the biochemistry department. I wasn’t impressed with the Boston University School of Medicine. It was small and seemed ramshackle. It was located in a slum area too.

  However, Walker seemed pleasant and the offer was that of an instructorship that would make me a member of an academic faculty. The salary attached would be $5,500 a year.

  What bothered me, however, was that I wouldn’t be working directly for the school. I would be working for Henry M. Lemon, a completely humorless individual, whom I was introduced to, and with whom I felt instantly uneasy. What’s more, I would be paid out of a grant, which meant I would have to live from year to year.

  I went home in a sad quandary, and as unhappy as I had been when I faced induction into the army. —But what was the use? I needed a job and no other was being offered to me. I therefore accepted the post at BUSM.

  And then, just a few weeks after I accepted the position, I sold that first novel to Doubleday. Instantly, I was tempted to seize upon that as an excuse to stay in New York. With the sale of the novel, I could count on some money and be able to stretch out additional time to find a job in the New York area. In fact, if the novel did well, I might not need a job at all.

  It was a temptation. I have heard often of young writers who sell a book, or sometimes just a magazine story, and at once give up their jobs to devote themselves to writing. And usually the tale goes on to tell of how they do not succeed in selling another item and must then try to get their jobs back or find others.

  I was sure of selling other things, of course, but I knew that I would not get enough money to support myself and a wife. Nor could I be sure that the novel would do anything for me. All I had gotten out of it, in total, was a $750 advance, and if it didn’t sell I might never see another penny. (If I had sold it to ASF I would have gotten $1,400 for it.)

  Furthermore, I had accepted the position in Boston, and if I now

  decided not to go there, I would, in a sense, be breaking my word, and I have a peculiar horror of doing that. So, much against my will, I went to Boston at the end of May, sorrowing, and took an equally unhappy Gertrude with me. We had been married almost seven years and there was no sign yet of the diamonds she was going to wear.

  This is one of the places where we can play the jolly but useless game of “what if?” What if I had not been offered the job in Boston? What if I had sold the book a few weeks earlier, before I had committed myself to Boston. In either case, I might well have remained in New York, gambling that the $750 and the prestige of a book would give me time to find a job closer to home. How can anyone tell what would have happened? My tendency is to look on the matter constructively and optimistically. In the end, I remained in active service at BUSM for nine years. In those nine years, I taught and lectured and branched out literarily in ways I might not have done otherwise. What’s more, I gained the cachet of the professorial title which established my bona fides as a science writer. Painful as the move was, then, it broadened my horizons and I am convinced it made me a better and more successful writer than I would otherwise have been, so it was important I go to Boston. And besides, doing so meant that I kept my word.

  Doubleday

  Pebble in the Sky was published on January 19, 1950, less than three weeks after my thirtieth birthday. I have remained with Doubleday ever since in perfect happiness. They have, as of this moment of writing, published 111 of my books, and on January 16, 1990 they seized the opportunity of celebrating both my seventieth birthday and the

  fortieth anniversary of the publication of Pebble in the Sky. A large

  cocktail party was planned for the restaurant Tavern on the Green and

  hundreds of people were invited.

  Came the day and I was hospitalized. But I could not disappoint all those people, so that afternoon I quietly sneaked out of the hospital. Janet pushed me in a wheelchair and my faithful internist, Dr. Paul R. Esserman, came along. The party went off very well, although I had to receive everyone in my wheelchair and make a speech from it as well. Then I sneaked back into the hospital, in the fond hope that no one had noticed my disappearance.

  Fat chance! It was an amused item in The New York Times the next morning and everyone knew. The nurses lectured me. Lester del Rey phoned me and called me names because he said I had risked my life.

  When I called Los Angeles on business, the first words of the young

  woman who answered me were: “Oh, you naughty boy—“

  Three days later there was the sixtieth anniversary of ASF and I had been slated to give a talk, and that time I did not dare try to get out, so I had to miss it. That was one of the times I was very sorry for myself. I felt as though I had betrayed John Campbell.

  People have often asked me why I stayed with Doubleday all these decades. The general feeling seems to be that once a writer becomes famous and a “hot property,” he should shop about among publishers, letting himself be bid for, and taking the highest offer. In this way, he becomes richer and richer—b
ut I can’t do that. Doubleday has been good to me and there is no way in which I can return evil for good. I have made a fetish of gratitude and loyalty all my life and I’ve never regretted the possible loss of money because of it. I would rather lose money than feel like an ingrate.

  I am told, “Well, of course, they treat you well, Isaac. Why shouldn’t they when you make so much money for them?”

  People who say that miss the whole point. I have to explain that when I submitted my first story and no one at Doubleday could possibly have known whether it would do well or not, or whether I would ever write another, they were very good to me then.

  The agent for goodness was my first Doubleday editor, Walter I. Bradbury (whom everyone called “Brad”). He was of middle height, just a shade plump, and looked very much (in my eyes) like the British actor Leo Genn. He was kind and gentle and he had a paternal, non-condescending air toward me that made me comfortable at a time when I was most uncertain of myself. He advised me gendy on my writing, helped me read my first set of galleys, was always willing to talk to me on the phone, even once when I called him at home in agitation over something or other and his child was ailing. He still spoke to me kindly and without haste. He was the third man, after Campbell and Dawson, to help me in my career for no other reason, apparently, than out of goodness of heart.

  But I’ll have to repeat a story in order to give you the full flavor of the man. Another publisher offered me a $2,000 advance for paperback rights to one of my early novels, The Currents of Space (Double-day, 1952). I was delighted, for the sum was a monstrously large one to me at the time. I said that Doubleday controlled the rights but that they would do what I said.

  I then phoned Bradbury to give him the news, and when there was a silence at the other end, my heart sank. I said, “Did I do something wrong?”

  Brad said, “Well, Bantam has just offered $3,000.” I was silent and Brad said, kindly, “Did you commit yourself, Isaac?” I said, “Well, I said Doubleday controlled the rights but yes, I did commit myself.”

  “In that case, we’ll take the $2,000.”

  I said, “Doubleday needn’t lose by it, Brad. Your half of $3,000 would have been $1,500. You can take that $1,500 out of the $2,000.

  I’ll be satisfied with the remaining $500.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Brad. “We’ll split half and half.”

  In other words, Brad (and Doubleday) were willing to give up $500

  merely to save my word of honor. It may not have been a large sum to them but that didn’t matter. My word means everything to me and to have Doubleday respect that meant that thereafter wild horses couldn’t have made me break faith with them, and I never did. (Of course, I also never again tried negotiating on a publisher’s behalf.) Money has, for a long time, ceased being an issue with me. I have enough. There are other things I want more and the chief of these is the gift of being able to write what I want to write in the way I want to write it, and do it with the comfortable certainty that it would be published. This Doubleday made possible for me quite early on.

  Thus when I brought in an enormous manuscript for Asimov’s Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan (Doubleday, 1988) without even warning them I was doing it, they published it without a murmur. They couldn’t possibly have anticipated doing better than breaking even on it, but they insisted on giving me a larger advance than I felt the book would be able to support. I said so strenuously, but they wouldn’t listen. They always give me larger advances than is safe, but somehow they always manage to make it back. (I don’t mean to be unfair to my other publishers. Quite a few are now ready to oblige me in any reasonable way, but Doubleday did it first and on the largest scale.)

  I am a friendly person and I make friends of all my editors and publishers, simply because I can’t help it. Unless I am ill, or in a rage, or consumed by worry (all of which hardly ever happens), I am all smiles and jocularity and friendliness. And because I am, and because I never make trouble or get “prima-donnish,” my editors and publishers seem to like me, treating me as a friend. That also makes it difficult for me to walk away from Doubleday—how would I explain it to all my friends there?

  To tell you the truth. I like it. I like friendship and informality in my business relationships. (It may be bad business, but that’s the way I do it.)

  Thus, I once had lunch with about a dozen members of the Doubleday editorial staff, and the conversation turned on the iniquity of writers. (Had the lunchers been a group of writers, the conversation would have turned on the iniquity of editors and publishers, I’m sure —but I have never allowed myself this type of confrontational attitude.) In any case, at this luncheon, one editor said, passionately, “The only good writer is a dead writer,” and I laughed. No one at the table seemed aware of my presence. I was so firmly a member of the Doubleday family that they simply did not think of me as a writer.

  My attitude toward editors was, of course, strongly influenced by my early dealings with John Campbell. He was totally atypical of the breed, though I did not know that at the time. In the first place, he was a fixture. He remained editor of ASF for thirty-three years and there was never any question of replacing him. Only death removed him.

  Naturally, I thought that all editors were godlike, dominating fixtures, and it came as quite a shock to me when I found that editors frequently jumped from company to company.

  Thus, I lost Brad when he moved on to another company, and I was devastated. (He eventually returned to Doubleday.) Naturally, I was assigned another editor, and when he vanished, I received still another, and so on. Altogether I have had about nine editors at Doubleday, every last one of them a delight.

  Thus, Timothy Seldes succeeded Brad as my editor. He was tall, thin, and had a craggy face that was quite attractive and that seemed always to wear a half smile. He always affected gruffness and would address me as “Asimov” with a growl, but that didn’t fool me at all. In fact, he was so friendly I would bait him. Having carefully gotten him to admit that Gilbert Seldes, the writer, was his father, George Seldes, the writer, was his uncle, and Marian Seldes, the actress, was his sister, I said, with wide-eyed innocence, “How does it feel, Tim, to be the only member of the family without talent?”

  I was just getting even with him for introducing me to one distressing fact. He and I were having lunch, and when I came to the heavy door of the restaurant, I forced it open and held it for him to pass through. (I knew my place.) Timothy seized the door, however, and motioned me through.

  I protested, “You’re the editor, Tim. You go first.”

  “Not on your life,” said Tim. “My mother taught me I must always

  be respectful to my elders.”

  And it was borne in on me that I was indeed older than he was. The infant prodigy was now older than his editor. (At the present moment, he is older than the Pope and the President of the United States and he is two and a half times older than his present Doubleday editor.)

  My friendship with editors and my joy at dealing with them made it difficult for me to get an agent. When I started writing, of course, I had never even heard of agents. I dealt directly with Campbell because I couldn’t imagine any intermediary. Then, when I did hear of agents, it seemed to me it was unreasonable for me to give them 10 percent of my earnings when I was selling every story I was writing without them. (I had never heard of dickering for better terms, of subsidiary sales, and so on, which an agent could handle and I could not.) Of course, after Fred Pohl helped me sell my first novel I had no choice but to accept him as my agent. He ran the Dirk Wylie Literary Agency, named for another Futurian, who had, like Cyril Kornbluth, died young, and for three years he handled my novels. Fred was a very good agent, just as he was very good at whatever he turned his hand to, but the Dirk Wylie Literary Agency did not do well for some reason and in 1953 he gave it up. This created a problem for me and, for a time, relations between us were cool, but that blew over and we were eventually more friendly toward each other than ever.
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br />   Since then, in any case, I have had no literary agent, except for a couple of individual projects in which I couldn’t avoid one. I prefer it that way. I like to make my own sales, and have the publisher take care of the subsidiary sales. It saves me trouble.

  As a matter of fact, I have no help of any kind, no secretary, no typist, no manager. I am a one-man operation, working alone in my office, answering my own phone and my own mail.

  This surprises people too, but it is not really puzzling. My workload has increased so gradually that at no time was there the sudden jump that would have made me look for help. The situation is something like that described in the ancient Greek legend of Milo of Crotona, a celebrated weight lifter. He is supposed to have lifted a newborn calf and then continued to lift it each day as it grew until he was lifting a full-grown bull.

  I have rationalized the situation to my own satisfaction. If I had employees, I would have to have an office and I like working out of my apartment. Then too, if I had employees, I would have to give them instructions, keep an eye on them, go over what they did, point out their errors, grow exasperated, and so on. It would all slow me down and make me miserable.

  I prefer my life as it is.

  Gnome Press

  Doubleday did not publish everything I wrote in those early years. This became evident after it occurred to me that it was not absolutely necessary for me to write a new novel each year. Why could I not take advantage of work I already had done?