by Isaac Asimov
After that, I felt I was a true Irregular at last.
Still, I must admit (for in this autobiography I tell nothing but the truth) that I am not really a Holmes enthusiast. A couple of years ago, I wrote (by request) a critique of the Sherlock Holmes story “The Five Orange Pips” and pointed out the gaping holes in its logic, which led me to think Conan Doyle had written it while asleep.
One of the banquet rites is to give the six “canonical toasts” to certain definite characters in the stories. One year I was asked to toast Sherlock Holmes himself, and I did so with such flair that, thereafter, I was called on every year to give the closing talk of the occasion. I also took to writing sentimental verses about Sherlock Holmes and singing them to well-known tunes. I sang the first, to the tune of “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms,” on January 8, 1982.
Not everything was peachy keen at the BSI, however. For one thing, since Sherlock was a heavy smoker, the Irregulars felt it incumbent on themselves to smoke. The air was always heavy with it after the banquet, and it drove me mad. There had been considerable smoking at the Trap Door Spiders and at the Dutch Treat Club, but it had faded off, due in some part to my continual carping, but I could do nothing with the Irregulars.
I pointed out, sarcastically, that Holmes was also a cocaine addict. Should we join the drug culture too, then? That had no effect. I demanded, and got, a smoke-free table, but what good did that do when the effluvium from other tables three feet away filled the air? So I raged—but endured.
One reason I endured was that the fellow running the show was Julian Wolff, a physician and a Dutch Treater. He had retired early from medicine in order to devote himself entirely to Irregular activi ties. He was short, baby-faced, and exuded an air of love and inno cence. We all idolized him. It was he who invited me to speak at the banquet and who urged me to continue with my sentimental verses, and I couldn’t bear to resign from the BSI, for that would make him feel bad.
But time passes. In 1986 Julian resigned his post and died in 1990 at the age of eighty-four. Since the new head of festivities did not want me to entertain, I stopped attending the banquets.
The Gilbert & Sullivan Society
I have been a Gilbert & Sullivan enthusiast since the fourth grade, when I learned how to sing “When the Foeman Bares His Steel” from The Pirates of Penzance. I didn’t know it was Gilbert & Sullivan, of course, but I loved the song. I was a boy soprano then (with, I believe, a very sweet voice) and I loved to shrill out the soprano part: “Go, ye heroes, go to glory.”
I still have an attraction for soprano songs, by the way, though my soprano days ended nearly sixty years ago, and I am now a baritone (though I can sing tenor if I have to). Some years ago, I joined in a rendition of “God Save the Queen” with a group of other singers, and I couldn’t help but notice that the other baritones were not hitting the same notes I was. After it was over, I turned to my good friend Jocelyn Wilkes, a marvelous contralto, who is the best Katisha (in The Mikado) ever invented, and said, “I think I was singing the tenor part.”
“Not at all,” she said, with towering majesty. “You were singing the soprano part.” Well, those were the only notes I knew for the song. When I was in my teens I heard the Gilbert & Sullivan plays on radio station WNYC, and before I ever saw a Gilbert & Sullivan performance on the stage, I had learned most of the songs and sang them for my own amusement constantly. I also read the plays over and over and was passionate about them. At science fiction conventions, I used to sing songs from Gilbert &
Sullivan and, sometimes, other songs as well, along with Anne McCaffrey, a Junoesque science fiction writer with white hair who wrote best-selling fantasies. She had a great voice and completely outdid me, especially when it came time to hold a note. Of course, she never bothered to tell me she had had voice training in operatic singing.
At a convention in New York, soon after I returned to that city, I did my Gilbert & Sullivan singing stint, and someone asked me if I was a member of the Gilbert & Sullivan Society. I said I knew nothing about it. He told me where and when to go and I joined up at once.
The Society has always been a great pleasure to me. There is first community singing from one of the plays and then a performance by one of the many amateur G & S groups in the metropolitan area, who do it for nothing as one more rehearsal before a completely sympathetic audience who can join in the choruses.
On rare occasions, I have sung Gilbert & Sullivan before the Society (and once or twice before a larger audience) and I have noticed a peculiar thing. I can step before a crowd of thousands of strangers, without a single note in my hand, and improvise a one-hour talk for which I expect to be paid thousands of dollars, and I do so without a qualm—indeed, without the ghost of a butterfly in my stomach. Get me, however, before fifty friends, who are not paying me anything (and are therefore not risking their money), who are ready to smile indulgently at any mistake I may make, and where I need only sing a song I know perfectly—and I die of apprehension.
Why? My guess is that the song must be perfect to the letter and note, while my talk, being improvised, can go any which way. Even if I goof in the process of talking, I know a hundred ways of covering it up so no one will notice, and I can’t do that when I’m singing a Gilbert & Sullivan song.
In short, the song isn’t mine and the speech is and that is the difference. It follows, then, that when I sing a comic song of my own creation, I am not nervous.
I am also not nervous when I read one of Gilbert’s Bab Ballads. Of course, I don’t memorize it; I read it from the book. There, the trick is to overact. That is, in my opinion, the best part of the plays. In the prose portions between the songs, overacting is the thing to do, at least in my opinion.
Janet has caught the Gilbert & Sullivan fever from me. Together we have now seen every one of the plays, even The Grand Duke, which is the last and least of them. The music to the first of them, Thespis, has
been lost, but we enjoyed a performance even of that, on July 10,
1987, with the company borrowing music from the other plays and
fitting it to the songs in Thespis. On November 19, 1989, we watched an Americanized version of H.M.S. Pinafore (called for the purpose U.S.S. Pinafore). All the songs could be made to fit with minor adaptations except for Sir Joseph Porter’s “When I was a lad I served a term.” The company turned to me for a completely different set of words, and I obliged.
The revised song was very funny, I thought, and judging by the audience’s reaction when it was sung, they thought so too. At the end of the performance, the spotlight was turned on my seat and I rose and took a bow. It was very gratifying.
And then, of course, I had the pleasure of doing Asimov’s Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan, which I mentioned earlier.
Other Clubs
The Trap Door Spiders, the Dutch Treat Club, the Gilbert & Sullivan Society, and even the Baker Street Irregulars were organizations I enjoyed and was glad to belong to, but I was acutely aware that my membership consumed a number of lunches and dinners and kept me away from my typewriter. It was not likely, therefore, that I would ever become a “joiner” and seek out other organizations. Unfortunately, one of the penalties of being a celebrity is that organizations come seeking him.
I found this out when I received a letter from the Explorers Club inviting me to join. I smiled at the thought, and shot back a letter at once telling them they had the wrong man. Not only had I never explored the Himalayas, I told them, but it was only with the utmost difficulty that I could be persuaded to go as far as Hoboken.
That didn’t disturb them a bit. They replied that I was a well-known explorer of the galaxy and places beyond, so that I was thoroughly qualified.
I am not proof against flattery, so I joined. However, it was a joining very largely in name only. Many talks on exploration are given at the sumptuous Explorers Club clubhouse, but I have only attended a very few of them. I just cannot afford the time.
I di
d, of course, attend a special Explorers Club get-together for new members on June 4, 1978, and met Charles Brush, an ardent mountain climber who had just begun to serve a term as president of the club. He drew me to one side and asked if I would emcee the next annual banquet of the Explorers Club. I agreed and for two years was master of ceremonies.
At the banquet the club generally serves unusual hors d’oeuvres (like rattlesnake), but I like to eat exotic things (also commonplace food as well). When “mountain oysters” turned out to be bull testicles, or something like that, I decided that even I had my limits.
There are other organizations too that, one way or another, have laid their traps for me. Many of the members of the Dutch Treat Club are members of the Players Club, and some have urged me to join. I wasn’t really enthusiastic. It’s way downtown and I didn’t see myself as likely to attend its functions very often—and its dues were very high. Nevertheless, I didn’t quite have the face to offend my friends by refusing to allow my name to be put in nomination.
You can imagine my relief when the Players Club blackballed me. Apparently, one of the votes belonged to a smoker who knew of my extreme antismoking attitude, and he wouldn’t have me.
And another friend decided he would get me into the very prestigious Century Club. I wasn’t eager since I’m not the Century Club type, really. (I’m just a boy from the slums who views this whole business of being rich and famous with the deepest suspicion.) He insisted, though, and I relied on a blackball. It never came. I’m now a member but almost never take any advantage of my membership.
would be all right. He also said there were two subjects I could not discuss—politics and death. The essays for American Way were easy to do and a great deal of fun, and when the magazine went semimonthly, I did two essays a
American Way
Now let’s get back, once again, to my writing.
I enjoy writing essays, and I particularly enjoy writing a column, for then I know that I can write an essay at regular intervals. My most successful column is, of course, that for F&SF, which has been going on, now, for thirty-two years.
It’s not the only one. I wrote a column for Science Digest till it changed editors. I wrote a fiction column for Gallery till it changed publishers. I wrote a series of short science columns for Sciquest, a small chemistry magazine intended for high school students, till it ceased publication in 1982, and so on.
One particular column, which I enjoyed very much and which was quite successful during its lifetime, was circulated on airplanes, of all places.
Most airlines have in-flight magazines to be given to airline passengers free of charge as a way of occupying their time, I suppose. American Airlines had an especially glossy magazine called American Way. In 1974, the editor of American Way, John Minahan, wanted to institute a science column and he asked Larry Ashmead to recommend someone to write it. Well, asking Larry to recommend someone for anything gets only one answer: “Isaac Asimov is the man for you.”
Actually, I had published an item or two in the magazine, so the editor knew me and approached me at once. It was only a matter of 750 words every month and I jumped at the chance to write a science column for a broadly general audience. Of course, my sense of ethics made it necessary for me to tell him that I never flew in airplanes, but John said that, provided I didn’t mention that fact in my column, that
month and was even asked to make them slightiy longer. I was told that the essays were very popular and that the page opposite their invariable position in the magazine commanded a premium price for advertising (so they said). Certainly, it was clear from the letters I received that many people read the column who did not usually read my other writing.
In nearly fourteen years I wrote just over 200 essays for American Way, surviving many changes of editor, but then, in October 1987, there was one too many of those changes. The new one decided to do over the entire magazine and I found myself out on my ear.
This would have been dreadful for me but, by the greatest good fortune, the people at the Los Angeles Times Syndicate had, on May 21, 1986, become aware of me and, feeling the need for a science column, asked me to do one for them. I began to do essays for the Syndicate that were similar to those for American Way, except that I do one each week, and I am as happy as a lark.
In one way, the Syndicate articles are different. Since, in this case, I am writing for newspapers, it is nice to be topical. I therefore save clippings from newspapers and magazines on such recent scientific advances that I find colorful and interesting. At first, I did have a nervous feeling that I wouldn’t find an appropriate topical subject each week, but the situation turned out to be quite the reverse. I have to choose among them.
I stay away from medical advances, though. That is the one branch of science that the newspapers cover thoroughly and there is no use my joining the cacophonous chorus. I would rather write about supernovae, electrons, artificial sweeteners, and endangered species.
I don’t allow my various essays to die after their evanescent appearance in a magazine or newspaper. My American Way articles have appeared in two collections published by Houghton Mifflin: Change (1981) and The Dangers of Intelligence (1986). My Syndicate columns have been collected in Frontiers, published by Dutton in 1990, with Frontiers II due in 1993.
Rensselaerville Institute
Left to myself, I would never take a vacation, but I am not left to myself. There are wives, and they do want vacations. When I was married to Gertrude, we would go off to some resort in the summer for a week, occasionally for two. Generally, my pleasures in such things were erratic. If there happened to be present some person or persons who were as frenetic as I could be, and whom Gertrude could like, all went well, even hysterically well. Otherwise, it would be ratiier dull.
Somehow it was different with Janet. If she were with me, I found (to my amazement, at first) that it didn’t matter who else was with us or not with us. It was perfectly possible to be uninvolved with anyone else whatever, and simply wander about on our own—just the two of us—and that would be fine.
Janet was so easy to please, she took pleasure in such simple things, such obvious delight just in being with me, even when things went wrong, that I totally lost that old nervousness that came of being with someone who was always on the point of being displeased and turning everything sour. Vacations became delightful, even though I still had to be sparing as to their number and their length, for even under the best of circumstances, the call of my typewriter was supreme.
I found this out in the early summer of 1972, the apprehensive time when we were waiting for Janet’s breast biopsy to see whether it would have to come off or not. I received an invitation to go to the Institute of Man and Science for a conference on the future of communications. (That institute, by the way, has since been renamed the Rensselaerville Institute and I now think of it only in that way.)
No money was involved and, ordinarily, I would have turned it down without a second thought. This time, though, I thought carefully. The site was at Rensselaerville, a small village in upstate New York near Schenectady. The Institute was described to me as a very rustic place, and although I am a creature of the city canyons, I knew that Janet loved the country. She was facing an ordeal—even, possibly, the loss of a breast—and I was extremely anxious that she have a few pleasurable days now, in case the worst was to come. I therefore agreed to be there.
We spent the Independence Day weekend there and it was a good thing I did it, for three weeks later Janet’s breast was removed and I would never have forgiven myself if I had deprived her of that weekend.
The place was rustic and beautiful, and Janet was delighted with it. It was set in a large tract of rolling green hills and wooded areas, with a lake drained by a stream that passed down spectacular falls.
The buildings that housed the conference were, however, modern and fitted with pleasant conveniences, including even air conditioning. There was a good restaurant in the area, and there were
chipmunks, rabbits, and other creatures to be seen, and this, too, Janet found enchanting. I congratulated myself a thousand times that I had decided to come.
Janet and I asked for separate (but adjoining) rooms in the interest of propriety, for we were not yet married. That, however, proved to be very uncomfortable. Separating at night was simply painful and this was the last time we ever did that. After that, we threw propriety out the window. Why not? Within a year and a half, we were married anyway.
Of course, we had to attend the business end of the conference too, and one talk we particularly enjoyed involved a demonstration of a television cassette that required two large bulky objects to make it work. (This was 1972, remember.) Such cassettes, said the speaker, were the wave of the future, and would replace books, so that people like Isaac Asimov (and he smiled at where I sat in the front row) would starve to death. At this, the audience, faced with the possibility of my famishing, was convulsed with laughter.
As it happened, a major speech was scheduled for the following evening, but the gentleman who was to give it was delayed in Great
Britain and could not arrive to give his speech. I was asked to throw myself into the breach. I protested that I had nothing prepared and was told, “Come, Isaac, it is well known that you don’t need preparation.”
Since I’m a complete sucker for flattery, I agreed to do it. In my talk, I took up the subject of TV cassettes and pointed out how bulky and inconvenient the equipment was but insisted (quite correctly) that it would be rapidly simplified. I then speculated on how far it could be simplified—made small and portable, self-con tained, with no energy source, and with controls that could start it and stop it or move it back and forth with litrie more than a mental effort, and so on. And, behold, I pointed out, this was a book. I also pointed out that television yielded so much information that the viewer became a passive receptacle, whereas a book gave so little that the reader had to be an active participant, his imagination supplying all the imagery, sound, and special effects. This participation, I said, gave so much pleasure that television could not serve as a decent substitute.