I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  In 1960, he was working as an assistant to Richard K. Winslow, who succeeded Timothy Seldes as my editor at Doubleday. I was busy writing a book called Life and Energy, which was published by Dou bleday in 1962. Since I couldn’t get Doubleday to take back the $2,000 they had advanced for the third robot novel in 1958 that I never wrote, I persuaded them to transfer it to Life and Energy, and got rid of the obligation in that way.

  Larry Ashmead, who is a scientist (his degree is in geology), went over the manuscript of Life and Energy, and suggested a number of corrections. After he sent back the corrected manuscript for me to deal with, Dick Winslow learned of what he had done and, knowing of writers’ peculiarities, was uneasy over my reaction.

  However, though I have many peculiarities, they are not the ones other writers usually have. My next time at Doubleday, I handed in the corrected manuscript and asked who had done the corrections. Larry said he had (possibly steeling himself for a writer’s tantrum).

  I said, “Thank you, Mr. Ashmead. They were very good corrections and I’m glad you made them.”

  I had no way of knowing that when Dick left Doubleday, Larry would succeed him as my editor and that from the moment I had thanked him he was determinedly pro-Asimov. I just work on the principle that of all the virtues gratitude (next to honesty) is the greatest, and that has helped me on numerous occasions in my life.

  After the medical school lacked me out and my time became completely my own I made it a practice to visit New York once a month regularly. I always followed the same regimen. I would come in on Thursday, spend the rest of the day and all of Friday on editorial rounds, relax on Saturday, and return by Sunday noon. And when I came in on Thursday, the first thing I would do after dropping off my baggage in the hotel room and washing up was to chase out to Doubleday and have lunch with Larry at Peacock Alley. (This has always been my favorite restaurant.)

  When, in 1970,1 returned to New York, I worried a little about my relationship with Doubleday. While I was in Boston, I bothered Doubleday only once a month, which was tolerable. While in New York, might I not be tempted to bother them day in and day out till they kicked me out of the building?

  Not at all. The monthly luncheon with Larry continued, and it was made quite clear that I could drop in at any time in between, though you can bet I was careful not to spoil matters by overexploiting the privilege. In recent years I have settled down a regular visit to Double-day of perhaps half an hour’s duration every Tuesday, though under later editors, lunch is rarely involved. Doubleday is used to my weekly appearance and on the rare occasions when I can’t come there is the invariable complaint that “it didn’t feel like Tuesday.”

  My favorite luncheon-story-with-Larry is the following:

  After the usual fine Peacock Alley meal was finished, the maitre d’

  (who knew us well, of course) brought around the elaborate dessert sampler. I had already helped myself to the excellent cookies that were routinely placed on the table with the coffee, so, mindful of my weight problem, I got a very small and relatively harmless dessert.

  Whereupon Larry said, “Come on, Isaac, that’s not enough. Take something else in addition. It’s on Doubleday.” (Larry is short, good-looking, and, at that time at least, slender enough, though not exactly thin.)

  “Go ahead, Dr. Asimov,” chimed in the maitre d’. “Have something else.”

  I said, feebly, “Janet wouldn’t like it if I had two desserts.”

  And Larry said, “She’ll never know.”

  I am nothing if not weak. I took a second dessert.

  When I got home, there was Janet waiting for me at the door with a severe no-nonsense look on her face. “What is this,” she demanded, “about two desserts?”

  Kindly old Larry had phoned her with the news as soon as I had left him. I forgave him because I loved him and therefore classified his vile deed under the heading of “practical joke.”

  Larry, by the way, whenever anyone asked him to suggest a writer to do some difficult task, invariably suggested me. And since I hated, as a matter of principle, ever to refuse him, I found myself in some uncomfortable situations at times. I had to write an article on sex in space for Sexology, for instance.

  That particular piece got me an interview with Dr. Ruth on her popular answer-and-question show involving sex. I had to discuss sex in space with her. I didn’t mind, for she was a clever and cute little woman. I watched a taping of the interview and her last remark to me was: “I hope you come to see me again, Dr. Asimov.” My reply, as the sound faded, was: “What do you have in mind, Dr. Ruth?”

  But editors are all editorially mortal and on October 24, 1975, Larry phoned me to say he was taking a job with Simon & Schuster, presumably at a higher salary. I was the first one he told, for he didn’t want me to hear it in any other way. It was an awful moment. I sat in my chair staring at nothing for an hour.

  Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Doubleday got me another highly satisfactory editor, Cathleen Jordan, and I did get to see Larry every once in a while, for no publisher is a stranger to me. He is now at Harper’s and I have just written a book for Harper’s.

  Overweight

  Since, in the previous section, I mentioned my “weight problem,” I had better say something about an embarrassing but significant matter.

  The Asimovs are prone to overweight. My father, slim as a youth, weighed 220 pounds when he was in his early forties and was quite obese. (My mother also gained weight with age, but to a lesser extent.)

  But the Asimovs have another ability. If they lose, they lose. I have known a number of obese people who, by dint of strenuous dieting, lose fifty pounds or more, become slim—then allow all the weight to be regained. To me this is such a tragedy. One must work so hard, so grimly, giving up the pleasure of food, in order to become comparatively thin and better-looking, and then—gain it all back? It doesn’t bear thinking of.

  When my father developed angina pectoris in 1938 at the age of forty-two and was ordered by the doctors to lose weight, he did. He went down fairly rapidly to 160 and stayed at that weight for the remaining thirty years of his life. He would not have had those thirty years otherwise.

  As for myself, I was a skinny boy. I weighed 153 pounds in college and I never gained weight no matter what I ate. That was because I really didn’t eat much (I almost never ate breakfast, for instance), but I didn’t realize that.

  Once I got married to Gertrude and had a chance to eat cooking that was better than my mother’s, I ate freely, always assuming that I would not gain, and in a matter of a few months, I had gained thirty pounds. By 1964, when I was forty-four, I weighed 210 pounds. I was just my father’s height and only ten pounds under his maximum.

  I grew frightened. I was already two years past the point where my father had developed angina. To be sure, I had escaped and seemed in perfect health, but how long could I get away with it? My fear accelerated when the actor Peter Sellers, who was not fat, had a well-publi

  cized heart attack.

  I began to lose weight by cutting my food intake, and little by little I declined, first to 180, then, some years later, to 160. My weight is now a steady 155, about what it was when I married Gertrude—but the damage had been done.

  More Conventions

  After I met Janet, conventions had more meaning to me. In 1959, I traveled to Detroit by train to attend the World Convention there. It was only a few months after the mystery writers banquet, yet I remember being very dissatisfied with the fact I was there alone. After ali, Janet was a science fiction fan in her own right. If she had also attended the convention, we could have had meals together, and attended talks together. She could listen to me give a talk and check out her brother’s insistence that I was a great lecturer.

  However, she wasn’t there. What I remember most clearly about the Detroit convention was that one time I stayed up virtually ali night, laughing and kidding with other writers. (This vvas the only time I ever did that.) When I
finally got to my room, dawn was well advanced and I felt it was useless to go to sleep, so I just washed up and went down to breakfast. Early breakfast is almost unheard of at the conventions, for the nightly dissipation is such that only a few can shake off their swinish

  slumber before 10 A.M. and most sleep tili noon. So I walked into an empty dining room—or, at least, almost empty, for there were John Campbell and his (second) wife, Peg, at breakfast. They led orderly lives as (almost always) I did.

  “Well,” said Peg, with approval, “F m glad that someone goes to bed at a decent time and can have early breakfast with us.” And I said, with completely straight-faced and unashamed hypocrisy, “I try to live right, Peg.”

  The next year, 1960, the convention was in Pittsburgh and again I felt I could go. What’s more, this time I persuaded Janet that she ought to go also, so she did. That made Pittsburgh very successful indeed. What I remember particularly about that convention are these events:

  Early on, Theodore Cogswell, a science fiction writer who had the faculty of charming the girls, took Janet by the arm and led her away. There was no reason he shouldn’t. Janet clidn’t belong to me and I was a married man anyway. The odd thing is that I felt a pang of jealousy, an emotion to which I had always considered mvself immune. Fortunately, Janet čame back in a few minutes.

  I introduced Janet to John Campbell, who, once he learned that Janet was a psychiatrist, characteristically undertook to lecture her on psychiatry and (also characteristically) got evervthing wrong. (In this connection, I once had lunch with George Gaylord Simp son, the great vertebrate paleontologist of Harvard University. He was a science fiction fan and wanted to know what John Campbell was like. “George,” I said, “if you ever meet a fellow who, on finding out you are a vertebrate paleontologist, tells you ali about vertebrate pale ontolog, gets it ali wrong, and never gives you a chance to get in a word edgewise, you have met John Campbell.”) At one dinner, I of course invited Janet to be my guest, and Judith Merril (an advance women’s rights advocate even in those days) asked me if I had paid for Janet’s meal. (Of course, I had, but if Judith were a true vvomen’s libber, she’d have wanted Janet to pay for herself, wouldn’t she?)

  In any case, I put on an innocent look and said, “No, Judy, I didn’t pay for her. Should I have?”

  And she said. “I knew it. You dumb jerk, you invited her, didn’t you?”

  “Gee,” I said, took the necessary money out of my wallet, and walked over toward Janet as though I meant to offer it to her.

  Outraged, Judy overtook me and slapped me so that my head rang. It’s the only time a woman ever slapped me and T was just having my little joke.

  Guide to Science

  In my first two years as a full-time writer, I continued my practice of writing primarily for teenagers. There were several reasons for this.

  1.

  I honestly thought teenagers most needed an introduction in science (and, for that matter, in the humanities). Once they were out of their teens, it might be too late to affect them much.

  2.

  Writing for young people meant I could best indulge in the informal writing that I considered my forte.

  3.

  The writing I had done for adults—those blasted textbooks—had traumatized me in that respect.

  But then, on May 13, 1959 (two weeks after I had met Janet), I heard from Leon Svirsky, an editor at Basic Books. He was a little fellow with a prominent nose who wanted me to write a summary of twentieth-century science for adults. I was flattered to be asked to do so, since I supposed (quite rightly) that my reputation as a science writer was beginning to outpace my position as a science fiction writer.

  I must admit here to a bit of unnecessary snobbery. I did have some fears that my career as a science writer might be aborted by publishers who would dismiss me as “just a science fiction writer.” This was unnecessary because the problem never arose. My reputation as both kept rising and one never interfered with the other. My Ph.D. and my professorial position may have helped and I have always been glad I fought to keep the latter title.

  The result is that I have never found it necessary to hide my science fiction. When asked by people who don’t know me just exactly what it is that I write, I answer, “All sorts of things, but I am best known for my science fiction.”

  Yet flattered though I might be at Svirsky’s proposal, I was a bit frightened. He came to Boston to see me and left a contract to read over and, if I approved, to sign.

  For days I was in a state of dire uncertainty. I wanted to sign and yet I was afraid to sign and I wavered painfully. It was all too much for me, but I remembered my new friend, Janet Jeppson, with whom I had already exchanged pleasant letters. I wrote to her, unburdening myself, expressing all my desires, doubts, and fears.

  I did not actually ask for advice since I have always had a reluctance to load anyone else with responsibility for my decisions, but in this case I did not have to ask. She replied that of course I could do it, and I must do it. I could not turn down a challenge like that and expect to rise in my profession.

  She was perfectly right, so I signed. That advice was the first of a countless number of examples of kindness and good sense that Janet has shown me.

  I tore into the book with a fury and in a period of eight months had written and put into final form half a million words—remarkable even for me. The book was published by Basic Books in 1960 under the title of The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science.

  I objected to the title on the ground that “man” seemed unduly restrictive. I wanted women to read the book too and would have preferred The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Science. Svirsky would have none of it. He was intent on imitating the title of George Bernard Shaw’s book The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. Naturally, there were protests from women and all I could do was smile wryly and say, “by ‘intelligent man’ I am referring to the writer, not the reader.”

  The book did far better than I expected, or, for that matter, than Basic Books expected. It came out in a two-volume boxed set and was snapped up. George Gaylord Simpson gave it the best review of any I have ever received. He called me a “natural wonder and a national resource”—a phrase you won’t blame me for remembering.

  My first royalty check for the book was for $23,000, the largest check I had ever received up to that time, and my income suddenly doubled. (In a way, that saddened me, for I thought it was a one-time blip that would never repeat and that my 1962 income would reach a

  peak I would never again attain. —But that proved not to be so. In fact, I never had an annual income as low as 1962’s thereafter.)

  Frankly, I found it unbelievable. Four years after having been kicked out of school, my income had risen to ten times what my school salary had been. It was about this time that one of my friends at the school told me earnestly that he had good reason to think that, if I played my cards properly, I could be reinstated to an active teaching position at the school, and with a salary. I smiled and said, “Too late, I’m afraid. I couldn’t afford it.”

  Even so, I had not broken off all connection with the school. After all, I was still an associate professor. I gave an occasional lecture, usually the very first lecture of the semester. Since biochemistry was a first-semester subject and given in the morning, my lecture was the very first the med students heard. It was a professional-quality lecture they heard, and it was also the last of that sort they were going to hear. I was once incautious enough to say so out loud, and a student, to my infinite embarrassment, promptly repeated that to the new dean, who was on the scene. The dean sighed and said, “He’s probably right.”

  I might mention some side issues raised by The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science. At the start, Svirsky had asked me to read over the contract and this was more than I could do. I have had many hundreds of contracts to sign and I have never really read one. I have glanced through them to see if the advance was as promised but that was usually
as much as I could manage. The rest was just too dull to endure and I wasn’t going to read through many hundreds of them.

  This is considered very eccentric of me.

  At one time, the president of Doubleday was discussing with me a dispute I was having with some movie people. He asked me what the contract had said with respect to a particular point. I said, “I don’t know, Henry. I just signed it. I never read it.”

  He looked at me with a mixture of amusement and incredulity and said, “Isaac, you need a keeper.” Then he added, “But don’t worry, Doubleday will be your keeper.”

  Actually, my not reading contracts is not as crazy as it sounds.

  After all, most contracts are standard, and if the publisher is a reputable one and if the writer is not interested in stipulating special clauses (which I never do, because I ask only that I be permitted to write in peace and that I be rejection-free), there is no danger in signing them unread. I believe, quite firmly, that my editors are not out to cheat me but to make money along with me.

  Then, too, I judge matters by results. If the royalties seem adequate and if the publisher is cooperative, then I am satisfied. And if I think that a publisher is playing fast and loose with me, the response is automatic. I would not audit his books. I would not sue. I would simply give him no more books. This happened in a very few cases.

  Another point is that though The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science was a great financial and critical success, I was not happy with the book. That is not a strong enough statement. I was bitterly unhappy with the book.

  The trouble was Leon Svirsky himself. He was a nice fellow, but he turned out to be an editorial villain—one of the very few I have en countered. He had worked for years as an editor at Scientific Ameri can and was used to receiving important scientific essays from scien tists reporting upon their research. Unfortunately, the scientists responsible for the essays could rarely write their way out of a paper bag and it was Svirsky’s job to cut, prune, and wrench their essays into shape.