I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  When I was toastmaster, I usually handed out the Hugos and I used the Bob Hope technique of complaining that I didn’t get one. After all, “Nightfall,” my robot stories, and the Foundation stories were all done before there was such a thing as a Hugo.

  Of course, I eventually won Hugos, but I will leave that for later discussion.

  Anthony Boucher

  The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF) had begun publication in 1949. I was destined to be closely associated with it over a period of decades, but I had no inkling of this at the start. My early efforts to get a story into it were insufficient and I didn’t manage to break in until I wrote a story called “Flies,” which appeared in the June 1953 F&SF.

  The editor of F&SF was Anthony Boucher, first with J. Francis McComas and later alone. His real name was William Anthony Parker White. He was born in 1911 and he entered the science fiction scene with his fantasy “Snulbug” in the December 1941 Unknown. He also wrote mystery stories. One of these, Rockets to the Morgue (1942), was a roman a clef in which a number of science fiction authors, notably Heinlein, appeared in recognizable guises. There was a brief mention of me and my robot stories.

  During the early 1950s, there was a Big Three of magazine editors: John Campbell, Horace Gold, and Tony Boucher. They were distinguished from each other, for one thing, by the nature of their rejection letters to established authors.

  Campbell was ponderous and would send off single-spaced letters anywhere from two to seven pages long explaining why a particular story was unacceptable. It was often hard to tell what he was talking about. I once received a letter concerning a science essay I had submitted and that letter sounded like a rejection to me. I tried unsuccessfully to place the piece elsewhere until Campbell asked me impatiently what was holding up the revision. I went back to his letter, puzzled out what he had asked for, made the change, and sold him the piece.

  I have already written about Horace Gold and his vicious rejections, but I can add one more little story here. He once, to my face, told me that a story of mine was meretricious. (The word is from a Latin word meaning prostitute and Horace was implying that I was prostituting my talent by writing junk just in order to make money.)

  I controlled my annoyance and said innocently, “What was that word you used?” Horace, proud of his vocabulary and delighted to have (as he thought) caught me out, said haughtily, “Meretricious!”

  “And a Happy New Year to you,” I responded. It was a silly remark, but it soothed my feelings, especially since it clearly enraged Horace.

  Tony Boucher’s rejections, on the other hand, were so gende and so courteous that they could easily be mistaken for acceptances, except that the manuscript was returned. In the same bit of doggerel in which I satirized Horace’s rejections I also satirized Tony’s in a third verse. This went as follows:

  Dear Isaac, friend of mine,

  I thought your tale was fine.

  Just frightful-

  Ly delightful

  And with merits all a-shine.

  It meant a quite full

  Night, full,

  Friend, of tension

  Then relief

  And attended

  With full measure

  Of the pleasure

  Of suspended

  Disbelief.

  It is triteful,

  Almost spiteful

  To declare

  That some tiny faults are there.

  Nothing much,

  Perhaps a touch,

  And over such

  You shouldn’t pine.

  So let me say

  Without delay

  My pal, my friend

  Your story’s end

  Has left me gay

  And joyfully composed.

  P.S.

  Oh, yes,

  I must confess

  (With some distress)

  Your story is regretfully enclosed.

  If Tony had a fault, it was that he sometimes sat on manuscripts for an inordinate length of time. That editors sometimes do so is a common complaint among writers, but the delay is actually understandable. Editors, even of small science fiction magazines, get huge quantities of submissions, mostly from unknowns and beginners (the “slush pile”). Large slick magazines have “readers” whose sole job it is to glance through the manuscripts and quickly weed out the impossibles so that the editor need read only those few manuscripts that offer some distant hope of acceptance.

  At science fiction magazines, however, it is frequently the editor himself who must go through the slush pile. You can well imagine how the editorial gorge must rise after reading hundreds of impossible stories. There comes a point when the reading is actually painful and yet must be done on the off chance that somewhere in the slush pile is a budding Heinlein, but the editor is slow about it.

  Writers don’t always understand the physical and psychological difficulties of dealing with the slush pile. They sometimes don’t understand that the many, many rejections that are sent out to unknowns can’t, each one, have an accompanying letter that lovingly details the faults of the story. Sometimes, a true rejection would have to say, “You have no visible writing talent,” and editors are loath to say such things. So a form rejection slip is enclosed, bland and uninformative.

  I get letters in my capacity as figurehead editor of a magazine (I’ll

  get to that later) complaining that Campbell sent me long, helpful

  letters when I was a beginner. Why can’t I do that for other beginning

  writers?

  Well, for one thing, Campbell’s great mission in life was to send

  long letters (not always helpful) and it isn’t mine. For another, Campbell sent them only to writers that showed promise. The vast, vast majority got only form rejection slips from Campbell, just as they got them from any other editor.

  Beginning writers sometimes don’t even understand the necessity of sending a stamped self-addressed envelope in case of rejection. At the magazine, I once got a letter from an outraged beginner who asked if he weren’t worth a small amount of postage. I replied that he certainly was worth it but we had to return hundreds of manuscripts each week and the postage would mount up unbearably. It was far easier, I said, for each writer to bear his own cost of rejection than for the magazine to bear all. Of course, I got no answer.

  I was very fond of Tony Boucher, as everyone was, but the only time I had a chance to socialize with him considerably was at the 1955 convention, where he was toastmaster. He saddened us all by dying in 1968 when he was only fifty-seven years old. He was succeeded in the editorial post by his managing editor, Robert Park Mills, about whom I will have more to say later.

  Randall Garrett

  I had met Randall Garrett on earlier occasions, but I got to know him really well at the Cleveland convention. During the days we spent there we were boon companions.

  He was seven years younger than I was, a bit taller, and (as I was) markedly overweight. He and I were equally convivial, noisy, and extroverted. The difference was that he was quite a heavy drinker and I didn’t drink at all, but when we were together and in full shriek, no one could tell the difference. We were so much alike in appearance and behavior that once when the two of us were on the platform at a

  science fiction convention, the deadly-tongued Harlan Ellison called out, “There they are: Tweedledum and Tweedledee.” And I called back, “Come stand between us, Harlan, and be the hyphen.”

  I knew Randall as Randy, but late in life he insisted on Randall and I’ll adhere to his wishes. Randall was an incredibly prolific writer of short stories in the 1950s, simply pouring them out, under a variety of pseudonyms, though few were of much distinction.

  He was quick-witted and fearsomely intelligent. He wrote excellent comic verse, infinitely better than anything I could turn out. He could sing Gilbert and Sullivan songs better than I could. He could turn out virtually lifelike clay figurines of the characters in the “Pogo” comic strip.<
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  He was, of all the people I’ve met, probably the most perfect example of the supertalented person who simply wasted his talents. Partly, this was because of his drinking, I think, and partly because the talents were in so many directions that he had trouble making up his mind which track to follow.

  A woman editor once said to me, “I can’t stand Randall. He’s loud, raucous, and flirts insistently with women.”

  I said, in embarrassment, “But that describes me!”

  And she said, “Not quite! You can turn it off.”

  A true puritan does not have to choose a course of action. He remains sober, grave, and disapproving of hilarity at all times. An alcoholic doesn’t have to choose either. He is always hilarious, noisy, and foolish. I, however, have to make a choice—hilarious or grave—to fit the occasion.

  Randall’s inability to “turn it off was bad for him. It kept him from being taken with the seriousness he deserved.

  Eventually, he moved to California and I lost touch with him. However, there was one last contact. In December 1978, I was in California. (It sounds unbelievable, but I will get to this later.) On December 12, I gave a talk in San Jose and Randall was in the audience.

  I was speaking to a group of doctors and lawyers on the future of medicine and had much to say about clones. (It’s important to realize, though I did not make a point of it in my talk, that a clone of a particular human being is the same sex as that human being. Of course, a male has an X and Y chromosome, while a female has two X chromosomes. If, therefore, the Y chromosome of the male clone could be changed to X, it would become a female.)

  After I had been talking about clones for a while, Randall came quietly to the podium and placed a piece of paper before me. I read it while continuing to talk (not as easy as you might think) and could tell at once that it was a piece of comic verse about clones, designed to be sung to the tune of “Home on the Range.” I therefore sang it at the close of the talk and it elicited a storm of applause.

  I eventually wrote four more stanzas to the song and have sung what I have called “The Clone Song” innumerable times to innumerable gatherings. I have written a number of pieces of comic verse to one tune or another, but none have been as popular as “The Clone Song.” This is not surprising, since the conception was Randall’s, not mine. Here are the words to “The Clone Song,” if you’re curious:

  (1) Oh, give me a clone

  Of my own flesh and bone

  With its Y chromosome changed to X

  And after it’s grown

  Then my own little clone

  Will be of the opposite sex.

  (Chorus) Clone, clone of my own

  With its Y chromosome changed to X

  And when I’m alone

  With my own little clone

  We will both think of nothing but sex.

  (2) Oh, give me a clone

  Is my sorrowful moan,

  A clone that is wholly my own.

  And if she’s X-X

  And the feminine sex

  Oh, what fun we will have when we’re prone.

  (3) My heart’s not of stone,

  As I’ve frequently shown

  When alone with my own little X

  And after we’ve dined,

  I am sure we will find

  Better incest than Oedipus Rex.

  (4) Why should such sex vex

  Or disturb or perplex

  Or induce a disparaging tone?

  After all, don’t you see

  Since we’re both of us me

  When we’re having sex, I’m alone.

  (5) And after I’m done

  She will still have her fun

  For I’ll clone myself twice ere I die.

  And this time without fail

  They’ll be both of them male

  And they’ll each ravage her by and by.

  Some years after this last encounter, Randall was struck down by some form of meningitis that burned out his mind. After lingering in this mindless state for some years he died in December 1987 at the age of sixty.

  Harlan Ellison

  The most colorful character I ever met at science fiction conventions in the 1950s was Harlan Ellison, who was barely out of his teens at the time. He claims he is five feet four inches tall, but it doesn’t really matter. In talent, energy, and courage he is eight feet tall.

  He was born in 1934 and had a miserable youth. Being always small and being always enormously intelligent, he found that he could easily flay the dimwits by whom he was surrounded. But he could only do so in words, and the dimwits could use their fists. He spent his childhood (as Woody Allen once said of himself) being beaten up by everyone regardless of race, color, or religion.

  This embittered him and did not teach him to keep his mouth shut. Instead, as he grew older, he made it his business to learn all the different arts of self-defense, and the time came when it was absolutely dangerous for some big hulk to attack him, for Harlan would lay him out without trouble. (I admire this greatly, for when I was scapegoated for similar reasons, I only studied the various arts of running and hiding. However, I must admit I was never as orally poisonous as he was, so I was scapegoated in minor fashion compared to his ordeal.)

  Harlan uses his gifts for colorful and variegated invective on those who irritate him—intrusive fans, obdurate editors, callous publishers, offensive strangers. Little real harm is done, but it is particularly hard on editors who are young women, who have not been hardened to auctorial peculiarities. He can reduce them to tears in three minutes. The result is that many editorial staffs and many Hollywood people too (for Harlan is not just a science fiction writer—he is a writer in the fullest sense of the word) are reluctant to deal with him. What’s more, he is so colorful and his personality sticks out so far in all directions that many people take pleasure in saying malicious things about him.

  This is too bad, for two reasons. In the first place, he is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am. It is simply terrible that he should be constantly embroiled and enmeshed in matters which really have nothing to do with his writing and which slow him down tragically.

  Second, Harlan is not the kind of person he seems to be. He takes a perverse pleasure in showing the worst side of himself, but if you ignore that and work your way past his porcupine spines (even though it leaves you bleeding), you will find underneath a warm, loving guy who would give you the blood out of his veins if he thought that would help.

  I have a fairly good gift for invective myself and I am the only person I know who could stand up to him on a public platform for more than half a minute without being eradicated. (I think I can last as long as five minutes.)

  I enjoy a public set-to with him, as I enjoy it with Lester del Rey and Arthur Clarke. It’s a game with us. In private, though, there is never a cross word between Harlan and me, and if I tell you he is warm and loving, pay no mind to anything else you’ve heard. I know better and I am right.

  One last word. Harlan has incredible charm and I have no idea how many tall, beautiful women he has been involved with. He has been married five times altogether. The first four marriages were brief and disastrous, but his fifth, with a sweet young woman named Susan, seems stable and Harlan seems mellowed. I hope so. He deserves far more in the way of happiness than he has had hitherto.

  Hal Clement

  When I moved from New York to Boston, I left behind me (so it seemed to my saddened self) the world of science fiction. This was not so, as it turned out. Boston was a lively center of science fiction fandom, and MIT, in particular, was littered with enthusiasts. That school has one of the great collections of old science fiction magazines, for instance, and every year they would set up a picnic in the hills south of Boston. I always attended and sometimes was even persuaded to accompany the students on a hike to the top of the hill. It was easier to persuade me to eat my fill of all the comestibles they brought along—such a mix of poisonous fa
st foods as would warm the cockles of any heart.

  There was also a Boston science fiction club, which eventually set up semiannual conventions called “Boskones.” This was a word out of E. E. Smith’s famous story “Galactic Patrol,” a four-part serial which began in the September 1937 ASF and which, when I first read it, I thought was the best thing ever written (though it didn’t stand up when I reread it as an adult). It was also a form of “Boscon,” standing for “Boston Convention.” Eventually, the Boskones, in size and elaboration, were second only to the World Science Fiction Convention.

  At the Boston science fiction club, I met Hal Clement, whose real name is Harry Clement Stubbs. Born in 1922, he has spent his adult life teaching science at Milton Academy, and since he wished to keep his writing career separate, he dropped his last name and used a familiar form of his first. He has not been a prolific writer, but his stories are always characterized by a rigid adherence to scientific fact and legitimate scientific speculation.

  Hal Clement has a blunt-featured face and is quiet and soft-spoken. He is a gentle man. On occasion, he has pointed out errors in my science essays, but does so with such kindness and even diffidence that it would be impossible to be annoyed over it, even if I were the sort of person who got annoyed at being corrected. And any time he corrected me, I took it seriously, for he was always right.

  At the 1956 World Convention in New York, Hal and I shared a room. (Sprague de Camp used our room as a kind of safety-deposit vault for his liquor supply, in order to keep it from being guzzled by science fiction’s more notorious alcoholics. He knew, of course, that in our room it would not be touched.)

  Hal was the ideal roommate, for he did not snore. (I was once forced to room with a thunderous snorer and I wouldn’t repeat that experience for quite a lot of money. Janet says I snore but that she doesn’t mind it because then she knows I’m alive. When I sleep quietly, as I often do, she gets nervous and makes sure I’m breathing.)