by Isaac Asimov
David’s great hobby is to tape the television shows he likes and to build up an enormous library of such things. It seems to me to be rather a lonely life, but, like me, he seems to enjoy being alone and being thrust on his own resources. He doesn’t smoke, drink, take drugs, or present me with any problem other than that of supporting him, which is no trouble, and (if not exactly a pleasure) is my duty.
People sometimes assume that since I have a son and since I am so remarkable a person myself, my son must be remarkable as well. They ask me what he does, expecting me to say he is a nuclear physicist at the very least. My answer is invariably that he is a “gentleman of leisure.” If they inquire further, I tell them frankly that I support him and that he lives a quiet and blameless life.
If they act as though they seem to think I should be disappointed, I tell them (sometimes masking a little irritation) that my son lives his own life and doesn’t have to labor to cast glory on me. I can manufacture my own glory. My only wish for my son is that he be happy and I labor to make that possible. When I speak to him on the telephone, he always sounds happy, and I would rather have a happy gentleman of leisure as a son than a possibly unhappy nuclear physicist.
Robyn
I must admit that although I don’t like children, I find little girls far more tolerable than little boys. When Gertrude had David, I took it almost for granted that he would be my only child. After all, we had had so much trouble producing one child, it seemed unlikely that we would find it within ourselves to produce another, especially since by David’s birth Gertrude was thirty-four years old.
I had therefore hoped earnestly for a girl but I didn’t neglect David because he was a boy (I wouldn’t have dreamed of that). In fact, I remember that he was a bottle-fed baby, and since Gertrude was a sound sleeper and I was not, it was I who wakened each night at the slightest infant cry, and it was I who routinely warmed the bottle and fed him his formula in the small hours.
And, in 1954, to another bout of amazement, Gertrude was pregnant again and on February 19, 1955, had a girl we named Robyn Joan. The “y” in Robyn was at my insistence, for I didn’t want people to think she was a boy, and Joan was added as a very plain alternative in case when she grew up she decided she disliked Robyn. Fortunately, she did not. She took to Robyn as I had taken to Isaac, and any other name for her is inconceivable.
Robyn didn’t cry much; she was good-natured; she toilet-trained quickly; and in all ways she was satisfactory, except that she did have the habit of (once in a while) drinking her formula and then quietly giving it back to me all over my shirt.
Most of all, she grew into a beautiful, blond-haired, blue-eyed child. At seven, she looked precisely like the John Tenniel illustrations of Alice in Alice in Wonderland. This was so marked that when she walked into a new class at school, the teacher took one look at her and asked her to play Alice in the class play.
I was delighted and could never hug and kiss her enough and tell her how beautiful she was. Gertrude objected (thinking perhaps of her own childhood) and said I shouldn’t do that. “What if she grows up to be a plain woman?” she said.
I said stoutly, “She won’t. And even if she does, she’ll be beautiful in my eyes, and I want her always to know that.”
And, as it happened, she grew up to be extraordinarily beautiful in anyone’s eyes. She is five feet two inches tall, her mother’s height, and still has blond hair, though her eyes have darkened. More important than beautiful, she is a sweet girl, softhearted and loving, who returns her father’s affection in full.
On the negative side, she does have a sharp tongue (I can’t imagine where she gets it from) and I have to be careful with her, for she is perfectly capable of slashing me with a phrase. For instance, I liked to wear loud bow ties in the 1960s and Robyn had grown to be very conservative with respect to my clothing (not her own) and objected. One time, I rebelled and put on a tie with bright orange stripes and walked into the kitchen, where she was sitting, making every attempt to be brave about it.
She took one look at me, and said, “Very effective, Dad. Now if you’ll only paint your nose red—“
Also, it took her some years to adapt herself to my sense of humor. (She succeeded eventually and we enjoy ourselves enormously because we understand each other. “I’ve spent my whole life laughing,” she once said to a friend.)
The difference in Robyn’s appearance from that of either parent is so great (though blondness exists in my family) that more than one person has asked me if it was possible that there had been a mix-up in the hospital. To which my response is always to seize Robyn, squeeze the breath out of her, and say, “If so, it’s too late. I’m keeping this one.”
Robyn was born to have friends and get along with people. I used to say that if she curled up like a bowling ball and if I rolled her through a crowd of strangers, she would come through at the other end with five friends stuck to her. This social instinct has made her life relatively easy. Robyn has had two long-term relationships with young men I would refer to, dryly, as my “sins-in-law,” but as of this writing she is still single.
I have made it plain to her that she can have children if she wishes but she doesn’t need to feel impelled to have a child she doesn’t want just to give me a grandchild.
I have frequently expressed my absolute horror at the growing overpopulation of the earth, and Robyn shares my feelings. Neither of us feels that it will do humanity much good to bring additional children into the world merely because it is the thing to do. Therefore, Robyn feels no compulsion to have children, or I to have grandchildren.
Robyn attended Boston College, where she majored in psychology, then went on to get her master’s degree in social work at Boston University.
Robyn enjoys her last name, by the way. It pleases her to have people ask if she is related to me and she apparently takes pride in announcing that I am her father. It warms the cockles of my heart.
However, once when I mentioned the warm affection she had for me, the woman I was speaking to said (perhaps a little cynically), “Look, if you have a well-off father who dotes on you, what’s not to love?”
That bothered me a bit, but I am close enough to Robyn to be able to ask her difficult questions and rely on a truthful answer. I said to her, therefore, “Robyn, would you love me if I were poor?”
She answered without hesitation. “Of course. You’d still be crazy, wouldn’t you?”
And that satisfied me. It was clear that she valued spending her life laughing and considered that more important than any money I might have.
Off the Cuff
By the summer of 1950,1 had given a number of successful talks, but always to a professional audience and always well prepared. But then I was asked to speak at a science fiction convention on the subject of robots. I agreed but balked at spending the time required to prepare the talk. It seemed to me that the subject was so familiar to me as to require no preparation.
Gertrude, who knew I hadn’t prepared any talk, sat in the last row for fear that I would mess things up. She wanted to be in a position to escape quietly if I did.
I began to talk, and found that even without preparation, each sentence led naturally to another. A little to my surprise and a great deal to my pleasure, I discovered that the audience invariably laughed when I wanted them to laugh. Even more to my pleasure, I found that Gertrude had suddenly gained confidence and changed her seat to one in the front row.
This talk was another turning point, for I found I could speak easily and, as it eventually turned out, on any subject, and do so off the cuff and without preparation. From then on, except for my school lectures, I never prepared a talk. Never!
In one case, I wrote out a talk that was scheduled to be published,
but in that case I delivered it without once looking at the written page. Generally, if it is important for a talk of mine to be published, they must tape it and then type it up from the tape.
Another turning point came not
long afterward when I gave a talk to a PTA group in a southern suburb of Boston at the request of a fellow faculty member. To my surprise, I was paid $10 for it. I tried not to take it, feeling I couldn’t accept money just for talking, but they insisted.
I grew more willing to charge for my labors as time went on and my speaking fees have steadily risen. Once I spoke at MIT for $100 and over dinner found out that they had paid Wernher von Braun $ 1,400 for a talk some weeks previously.
I asked, with a frown, “Was he fourteen times better than I was?”
“Oh, no,” they answered artlessly. “You were much better.”
That was the last time I offered to speak for as little as $100, you can well imagine. Eventually, I received as much as $20,000 for an hour’s talk. This may seem exorbitant (it does to me), but the money is delivered with smiles and expressions of gratitude, and that goes far to soothe my overtender conscience.
Why? One reason is precisely that my talks are off the cuff. A speech that is carefully written in literary English, and is then read, is not delivered in spoken English (spoken English and written English are two different languages, believe it or not) and sounds unnatural. Be sides, in reading it, the turning of the pages and the occasional stum bling over words adds an artificial note. Memorizing a speech may remove some of the artificiality, but it is hard work, and the result is still in unnatural written English.
If you speak off the cuff, however, you can speak colloquially, and you can easily shift moods and emotions to suit the reaction of the audience.
Continued success at anything tends to breed arrogance, if you are not careful, and every once in a while I am tripped into arrogance over my ability to give talks. Thus, I am frequently on a platform with two or three other speakers and, in such a case, I always suggest that I speak last. If anyone asks why, I answer truthfully (but with the sound of arrogance), “Because I am an impossible act to follow.” Usually, I go on to prove that, but every once in a while, a fellow who speaks before me is so good that I have to stretch myself to the limit to surpass him, and, every once in a long while, I wonder uneas ily if I have been successful.
On one occasion, for instance, the speaker before me lectured on Kissinger and the doctrine of the balance of power. It was an impor tant topic and was delivered with such smoothness and aplomb that my heart sank into the cellar. I would never surpass that. I tried, of course, but I felt that I had fallen short.
At the reception afterward, someone said to me, “I greatly enjoyed your excellent talk, Dr. Asimov.”
Glumly, I answered, “I’m afraid that the talk on Kissinger was much better.”
“Oh, no,” said the other. “I heard him speak on Kissinger before and this was the same speech, word for word. I’ve heard you speak before too, but your talks are always different.” That’s another point. If you go to all the trouble of memorizing a long and complicated speech, you can’t waste it by using it on only one occasion. You must use it over and over again, and heaven help those who find themselves sitting through it a second time.
Off the cuff, on the other hand, allows infinite impromptu variations, and although I have undoubtedly given a couple of thousand talks in my lifetime, no two of them have ever been exactly alike.
Incidentally, such is the fame of my talks (thanks to word of mouth from gratified listeners) that I am forever being invited to give talks in every state of the Union, to say nothing of other countries (even as far away as Iran and Japan). My aversion to travel, however, allows me to talk only fairly close to home. If that were not so, I could make a good living out of talks alone, and see the world in addition.
But I’m not sorry. My vocation is writing, not talking. There are any number of funny stories that involve my talks and I can’t resist telling a few. Many involve the introductions I receive.
When someone gives a talk, it is incumbent on someone else to introduce him. There is a risk in this, for unless the introduction is short and matter-of-fact, there can be trouble. A long, dull introduction cools the audience. A witty introduction, long or short, casts the speaker into the shade.
On the whole, I would prefer no introduction at all. I would like to walk out onto an empty stage at the time my talk is slated to start, advance to the podium, and say, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am Isaac Asimov”—and then begin the talk. That is all the introduction I want and need but it has never yet happened. There is always someone who wants his moment in the sun.
In 1971,1 spoke at Penn State University, where my science fiction friend Phil Klass was teaching. He was tabbed to introduce me and my heart sank. I remembered Phil’s speeches at science fiction gatherings. He was a funny, funny man, so I hoped his introduction would be short and matter-of-fact.
It wasn’t. Phil spoke brilliantly for fifteen long minutes, giving a ridiculously exaggerated description of my character and ability that had the audience convulsed. I sank lower and lower in my seat. He was speaking for nothing, and I was speaking for $1,000. He was delighting the audience and I would be a sorry anticlimax.
Finally, when I had begun to contemplate sure disaster, Phil came to his concluding sentence. “But don’t let me give you the idea that Asimov can do anything. For instance, he never sang in Kigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera.”
There was a loud burst of laughter and I leaned over toward Janet and muttered grimly (as Thomas Henry Huxley had once said regarding Samuel Wilberforce at the great evolution debate), “The Lord has delivered him into my hands.”
I walked out on the stage to the podium, faced the audience, waited for the applause to die down, and then stood there for about fifteen seconds of silence. I stared solemnly at the audience and let them wonder what was going on.
And at the precise moment when puzzlement had mounted to the requisite pitch, I burst out, without warning, and in as ringing a tenor as I could manage: “Bella figlia deU’amore”—the opening bars of the famous Quartet from Rigoletto, and the very epitome of all operatic pieces.
The audience collapsed in delight and I had them in the palm of my hand. (A speaker has to know how to do these things.) Another bit of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat came on March 21, 1958, when I spoke at Swarthmore College near Philadel phia. I arrived the night before and the president of the school warned me I would be speaking at the convocation at eight o’clock the next morning. Student attendance was compulsory at this one function and many students resented that.
“It may be,” said the president, “that a number of students will ostentatiously read newspapers during your talk. This will not be to show any displeasure toward you personally, but only to register their disapproval of the convocation as an institution.” “Never fear,” I said, with a wave of my hand, “no one will read a newspaper while I am speaking.”
However, that night Philadelphia experienced the worst slush storm it had had in a hundred years. (This was the storm, by the way, that killed Cyril Kornbluth.) The slush stood two feet deep—wet, clinging, heavy slush that destroyed many gardens and damaged many trees.
I watched the students walking toward the convocation hall the next morning, struggling through the deep slush in boots, and thought in alarm that if they resisted convocation under ordinary conditions, how they were going to resent this one! I was going to have an ice-cold audience, figuratively as well as literally.
What to do? I seized upon the date and began my talk with “Gentlemen, I come to you on the day of the vernal equinox, when the storms and shocks of our winter of discontent have departed the scene, and the buds of spring tremble on the brink of appearance; when the harsh winds moderate into gentle sweetness—“
I kept at it, growing wilder and wilder in my encomiums, while keeping a look of holy rapture on my face, and the audience began to chuckle and then to guffaw. When I felt I had warmed them up sufficiently, I launched into my talk and no one read a newspaper.
Once I averted a much more serious catastrophe by sheer luck. I was speaking in Ohio in the 196
0s for no more than $250 in order that I might get a plaque from some organization interested in communications. I was going to give them what I called my “Mendel talk,” various versions of which I had given here and there with great success. It was about Gregor Mendel, who had discovered the laws of heredity, but, through a failure of communication, these laws remained unknown to science for thirty-three years.
Here I got another long and witty introduction, and I sat in the huge dining room waiting, with increasing depression, for the introducer to sit down, and aware of how I would have to stretch myself to avoid anticlimax. The fellow at my right whispered to me during the introduction, “We’re all waiting eagerly for your speech, Dr. Asimov.”
I felt depressed enough to reply, “How do you know I’ll be any good?” “Because I’ve heard you before at the Gordon Research Conference. You gave a talk on Mendel.” I sat bolt upright. “On Mendel? Was anyone else in this place present at the conference?” “Almost all of us,” he said. I had five minutes to organize a different talk. I managed, but every
time I think of how close I came to giving a talk to an audience that had already heard it in essence, I break into a cold sweat.
Another time the person introducing me asked permission to read from the correspondence that had preceded our agreement on terms. I didn’t remember what I had said in those letters, but I knew I never wrote anything that was actionable, so I said, “Sure! Go ahead!”
He went on to read the letters, and it turned out that I had been adamant in demanding three times the fee he had offered on the ground that I was three times as good as anyone else. That meant I had to get up before an audience badly cooled down by the fact that I had gouged their organization out of lots of money, and prove to them that I was three times as good as anyone else. It was a hard job, but I succeeded.
The worst introduction I ever received was in Pittsburgh. It’s the only one I look back on with anger rather than with amusement. I was on the platform waiting for the proceedings to begin and the self-important woman running the show stood in front of the podium, directing people to seats in a shrill, monotonous voice.