I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  Hal attends almost every science fiction convention of any size, and is beloved by the fans. It is one of my regrets that since I have left Boston I rarely see him.

  Ben Bova

  head of hair now. He has a keen sense of humor and we love swapping jokes. He is the source of some of my good ones.

  He didn’t start publishing till 1959, but he has been producing steadily ever since. He is another one of those science fiction writers who are quite at home in the writing of nonfiction.

  Ben’s big chance came in 1971, when, after Campbell’s death, he was hired as editor of ASF. Filling Campbell’s shoes was an enormous task, but Ben did it most creditably for seven years. He then became editor at Omni, a new slick magazine. Still later, he was involved with societies that were interested in space exploration and, indeed, Ben has written excellent books on the subject.

  After his first marriage broke up Ben (who is of Italian descent) confessed to me that he thought he was in love with “a nice Jewish girl.” In mock alarm, I offered to stake him to some money so that he could quickly leave town, but he really was in love. He married Barbara, a vivacious and attractive brunette, for whom it was also a second marriage, and they have been happy ever since.

  Ben has always been a very good friend of mine. When I was incapacitated for a time in 1977 I asked him to substitute for me in certain talks that I was unable to give. I had no qualms about that because I had heard him speak and I knew him to be very good. He obliged me and, in doing so, asked that the payment for the talks be sent to me. I was horrified and you can bet that I told him quite flatly that any checks made out to me would be instantly torn up. But that’s the kind of fellow he is.

  I have many other close friends, and I shall never cease marveling over my good fortune in meeting so many wonderful people in the course of my life.

  The other prominent science fiction writer I met in Boston was Benjamin William Bova, who is universally known as Ben Bova. He was born in 1932, wore a crew cut when I first met him, but has a normal

  rectly, for I don’t intend to go back to the story to check on this) was interrupted. Before it could come to a natural conclusion, I’d be off in another direction, which was again interrupted. This lent a breakneck

  Over My Head

  I don’t want to give the impression that my writing is of uniform quality. We all have our bad days and our good days. I have turned out science fiction stories, even late in the game, that I refer to, in an embarrassed way, as “minor Asimov.” I like to think, though, that (except for some of my very early stories) even minor Asimov is not very bad.

  On the other hand, I occasionally write better than I ordinarily do. I call it “writing over my head,” and when I reread one of these stories or passages, I find it hard to believe that I wrote it, and I wish ardently that I could write like that all the time.

  Others might call it “being on a roll.” Everything seems to break right, as with a baseball player who one day hits four home runs in a single game and may never again hit even two in one game.

  When I was handing out Hugos in Pittsburgh in 1960, one of the winners was “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes, which I had loved. It was surely one of the best science fiction stories ever written, and as I announced the winner, I grew very eloquent over its excellence. “How did Dan do it?” I demanded of the world. “How did Dan do it?”

  At which I felt a tug on my jacket and there was Daniel Keyes waiting for his Hugo. “Listen, Isaac,” he said, “if you find out how I did it, let me know. I want to do it again.”

  I suppose I was writing over my head when I wrote “Nightfall.” It couldn’t get all the praise it did if it weren’t better than my usual, though frankly I don’t see it. I reread it once, years ago, just to see if I could tell what all the fuss was about. Perhaps it was because the structure of the story was unusual. Every scene (if I remember corand breathless pace to the story. I stated at the start of the story that there would be a catastrophe in four hours. The four hours passed in a wild toboggan slide, and there was indeed a catastrophe.

  It may be, then, that the story was written in such a way as to raise the suspense to a steadily higher pitch until it exploded. If so, I swear to you that I had no conscious plan for doing that. It was not deliberate. I did not know enough back in 1940 to do such a thing deliberately. I was just writing over my head.

  In my favorite of the stories I’ve written, “The Last Question,” it is not the writing that is over my head. It is the idea and the manner in which I constructed the climax. For years, people have phoned me to ask about a story they had read, whose name they had forgotten, and concerning whose authorship they were uncertain, though it might have been me. They could identify the story by the last sentence, however, and they wanted to know where they could find it for rereading. The story in question was always “The Last Question.”

  My second favorite is “The Bicentennial Man,” which appeared in an anthology of original stories in 1976. Here at last, it is the writing. I reread it recently and marveled at how much better it was than the general run of my writing.

  My third favorite, “The Ugly Little Boy,” is unusual in the same way. My stories tend to be cerebral and unemotional. How is it possible, then, that I could make up a story that builds up emotion to the point where, at the end, the reader can’t help but cry? I cry every time I reread it, but, of course, I weep easily. However, I once told the plot of the story to an audience that fell absolutely silent as I talked because tears trickling down cheeks make no noise.

  When Robyn was twelve or thirteen, I gave her the story to read and she came out of her room periodically to assure me she was greatly enjoying the story. Then, for a long while, I did not hear from her. Finally she came out, her face red and swollen and her bloodshot eyes staring at me accusingly. “You didn’t tell me, it was a sad story,” she said.

  Now that was writing over my head.

  I’m not going to try to tell you that every story I wrote was great. I would be hard put to find another one to compare with “The Bicentennial Man” and “The Ugly Little Boy.” However, the biggest and most effective over-my-head writing I ever produced was not in a short story but in a section of a novel.

  The novel in question was The Gods Themselves (Doubleday, 1972). It was in three parts, and the second part dealt with aliens in another universe. I’ll risk being accused of a “colossal ego” again by giving you my opinion that they were the best aliens ever described in science fiction, and also the best writing I ever did, or am likely to do. I received plenty of confirmation of this from my readers.

  One more word on the subject—

  It is much harder to write over your head in nonfiction than in fiction. The closest I ever came to such a thing, in my opinion, was in an essay entitled “A Sacred Poet” in the September 1987 F&SF. Ordinarily, in such essays, I discuss some scientific subject, but I was moved in another direction this time. I had had a set-to with someone I considered a narrow-minded scholar and, as a result, I decided to write an essay on poetry.

  I wasn’t such a fool as to think I could write anything about the literary quality of poetry. I just wanted to write about poems that moved people and affected their actions. I began with Oliver Wendell Holmes, for instance, and his poem “Old Ironsides,” which elicited a howl of public protest against scrapping the ship, one that has kept it in existence right down to this very day.

  I was afraid I would get cold letters that would say, in effect, “Stick to science, Asimov. You’re an ignoramus in the humanities.” Not so! I got an outpouring of letters, more than for any other essay I had ever written, and every last one approved of the essay. There was not even one dissenting vote.

  Farewell to Science Fiction

  I have been spending a long time on the 1950s, the decade of my greatest science fictional triumphs. It is strange, therefore, that as the 1950s ended, I should also end most of my involvement with the field.

  After “
The Ugly Little Boy,” I seem to have simply dried up, at least partially. I have said that science fiction writers were sometimes written out. It usually takes ten years, in my opinion. In my case, it took twenty. But why? I have wondered about that frequently.

  In the first place, I had moved away from Campbell and his peculiar ideas. I also moved away from Horace Gold, and F&SF was not a reliable market for me. I had even grown tired of writing novels. In 1958,1 started a third robot novel and bogged down quite early and couldn’t make myself continue. It took me years to persuade Double-day to take back the $2,000 advance they had given me.

  In the second place, even as I was writing “The Ugly Little Boy,” the Soviet Union sent up the first artificial satellite and the United States went into a panic, feeling it would be left behind in the technology race. It seemed to me that it was necessary for me to write science books for the general public and help educate Americans.

  So you must understand I did not suffer from writer’s block. I merely switched the main focus of my endeavors. I worked as hard as ever, kept the same long hours I always did, but for some twenty years I wrote nonfiction rather than fiction. I did this not without some worry. Aware that my chief source of income was my fiction, I anticipated a sharp decrease in annual income just when I no longer had a base salary from the school to fall back on. I tried to tell myself that writing nonfiction was the patriotic thing to do and one must be willing to suffer in a patriotic cause, but, in all honesty, that did not make me feel much better.

  However, things did not work out as I expected. In the first place, writing nonfiction was much easier and much more fun than writing fiction, so it was precisely the thing I ought to have done in switching from part-time to full-time writing. If I had tried to write fiction full-time, I would undoubtedly have broken down.

  Then, too, just as I began to think I ought to write on science for the general public, the publishers began to think they ought to publish such books. The result was that they took everything I could write even when I wrote at my fastest. My income did not go down, but rose rapidly.

  Was I astonished? Yes, indeed.

  But life was not all roses. The same thing happened to science fiction after I had left it that had happened to chemistry while I was spending years at the NAES and in the army. A revolution took place.

  Science fiction, after all, has its fashions as everything else does. In the first dozen years of magazine science fiction, it was extremely action-oriented. Many science fiction stories were essentially Westerns set on Mars, so to speak, and were written by authors who knew little or nothing about science.

  Beginning in 1938, Campbell changed everything. He insisted on having characters who were real scientists and engineers and who talked as such people naturally would. Stories became idea-oriented and puzzle-oriented and I was particularly good at that.

  Even more than Heinlein (who was a law unto himself) I think that I epitomized what it was that Campbell wanted. The robot stories and, even more so, the Foundation stories were his babies, and during the 1940s and 1950s science fiction writers, whether consciously or unconsciously, tried to follow my lead.

  But then came the 1960s, and again there was a radical change. A new breed of science fiction writers came into being. Television had killed the general magazines that had been heavy with fiction. The new writers had lost their natural market and turned to science fiction because it had survived television. They brought to science fiction something called “the New Wave.” Stories rich in emotion and stylistic experimentation began to appear, as did mood pieces and stories that were downright surrealistic and obscure.

  In a word, science fiction became completely “non-Asimovian” and I was glad that instinct had caused me to leave the field. Far better to leave voluntarily than to be cast out as obsolescent.

  I also thought, ruefully, that if I should wish to return to the field, I couldn’t. It had passed beyond me, just as chemistry had passed beyond me with the advent of resonance and quantum mechanics.

  The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

  An odd thing transpired, however. Even though I was not writing science fiction in the 1960s, I remained one of the Big Three, partly because my novels continued to sell and partly because I appeared in anthologies. The most important reason, however, involved a decision I made that I hoped would achieve a certain purpose and that, for a wonder, did indeed achieve it. (My gunnery is not usually so accurate.)

  It came about through the help of Robert Park Mills, who was first managing editor of F&SF and then, beginning in September 1968, editor, succeeding Tony Boucher. Bob Mills was tall and gangly with prominent angles to his jaw that stuck out on either side just under his ears. He was another of these slow-speaking, soft-voiced fellows. He was born in 1920 and, like Fred Pohl, was within a couple of weeks of my age.

  In 1957, a sister magazine of F&SF came into being. It was called Venture Science Fiction and Bob Mills was made its editor. Anxious to try something new, he asked if I would be willing to write a regular science column for Venture.

  I had been continuing to write occasional nonfiction pieces for ASF, but these were not entirely satisfactory. I did not really have a free hand with Campbell, who had definite notions of the kind of article he wanted and would now and then turn down my suggestions.

  What Venture offered was not only a regular column but a free hand. As long as I met the deadline, I could write on any subject I wished in any way I wanted. That was exactly the sort of tiling I was after and, since I had no fears of failing to meet the deadline, I accepted with a whoop of delight.

  I prompdy wrote an essay for die January 1958 Venture, its seventh issue. Three more essays appeared in the eighth, ninth, and tendi issues of the magazine, but with the tenth issue the magazine ceased publication. My days as a science columnist had ended so quicldy (and just as I was getting into the swing of it) that I was chagrined.

  On August 12, 1958, however, I had lunch with Bob Mills. He had just succeeded to the editorship of F&SF and he suggested that I continue my science column for that magazine—obviously a much more stable outlet than Venture had been.

  I was overjoyed. I had just come to the decision that I was not going to be writing science fiction, but I didn’t want to leave the field. By writing a science column for F&SF I would be appearing every month in one of the major science fiction magazines and my name would be kept before the science fiction public.

  Of course, I agreed, for the terms were the same. As long as I met the deadline, I would have a completely free hand.

  The magazine and I both held to the agreement. My first column appeared in the November 1958 issue of F&SF and, from that time to the present moment, almost thirty-two years later, I have never failed to meet the deadline, and have never failed to have an essay in every single issue, whatever the vicissitudes of life held for me. And Bob Mills and the succeeding editors kept to the agreement also. They never suggested a topic, never rejected an essay, and carefully sent me galleys of each so I could make sure that everything was exactly as I wanted it to be.

  My F&SF essays have never palled on me and they have remained my favorite of all the writing I do (despite the fact that they also represent the lowest word-rate payment). Though I have now written 375 of these essays of 4,000 words or so apiece (1,500,000 words), I never run out of ideas or enthusiasm.

  What’s more, these essays have done exactly what I wanted them to do. They have kept my name before the science fiction public and assured, more than anything else, that I would remain one of the Big Three. (It’s also true that the twenty-year gap was not entirely devoid of science fiction, as I shall explain in due course.)

  Bob Mills and I always maintained a pleasant relationship. In my essays I referred to him frequently as the “Kindly Editor.” In fact, he became known by that sobriquet to the fans generally. When he retired as editor in 1962 and was replaced by Avram Davidson, almost the first thing Avram did was to let me know that
he didn’t wish to be called the “Kindly Editor.”

  There was no danger of that. Avram was a class-A writer, but he was a cantankerous individual I would never think of as “kindly.”

  Bob became an agent for some twenty years, and then, in the mid1980s, he retired and went to California. He died, rather unexpectedly, in 1986 at the age of sixty-six.

  Janet

  All through the 1950s, filled as the decade was with science fiction triumphs and medical school disasters, I was also leading a private life. The children were growing up, and Gertrude and I were growing older—and unhappier with each other.

  I don’t suppose marriages turn sour in a moment. You don’t fall off a precipice. It’s just that annoyances multiply, frictions come slowly to seem irreconcilable, forgiveness comes more reluctantly and with worse grace. And then, one day, you’re shaking your head with the knowledge that the marriage isn’t working.

  I don’t know when that happened to me—probably about 1956 after I had been married for fourteen years. Gertrude had talked about divorce earlier, but it was about then that I began to consider it. It did not seem possible, for there was no tradition of divorce in my family. My mother and father remained married for fifty years. It was a stormy marriage at times but there was no whisper of divorce. Such a thing would have been incredibly unthinkable.

  The thought of divorce would have horrified me even if only Gertrude were involved, but it was worse than that. There were also David and Robyn. Even if I could bring myself to divorce Gertrude, I could not possibly leave two little children in the lurch no matter what my personal unhappiness. So I sighed, and made up my mind to stay married till the children grew up—and, who knows, by then things might even have improved.