I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  We saw the Cathedral of Notre Dame, museums, ate at several excellent restaurants, and, in short, squeezed as much out of thirty-six hours as we could, but I saw no skin shows and Janet did no shopping. And, as I said, we caught the ship.

  Before leaving the subject of my travels, I would like to add a few sidelights.

  My liking for a place with four seasons was proven to me on one of our Caribbean trips that took place in February. The heat down there at a time when I should have been experiencing cold I found most enervating. As we bore northward through the Atlantic, I exulted as the temperature dropped, though everyone else groaned. I looked forward to setting foot on the New York City docks with the temperature well below freezing. —Not a chance! We happened to come back on a February day when the temperature was 60 F. Words cannot describe my annoyance.

  Our last trip on the QE2, in July 1981, was the first time the QE2 had reached Quebec, so there were thousands of people lined up along the river for miles to see us pull in and then, again, pull out. When we pulled out, a fleet of small ships accompanied us quite a distance down the broad St. Lawrence River, like minnows in the wake of a whale, a most unusual sight indeed.

  One of the annoyances of ocean travel is, of course, the necessity of having one’s baggage pored over by customs inspectors on one’s return. Janet and I are not much on foreign purchases. We don’t buy liquor, of course, so that the low prices are no inducement to us and that eliminates one great source of customs. Nor do we feel it necessary to shop for bales and bales of clothing and gimcracks that we don’t need or can get at home. Usually we show up with a few paper back books and, occasionally, a sweater or a scarf. We invariably fall below the minimum allowed. One inspector, looking at our list, said, “Ah, the last of the big-time spenders.”

  A last word—

  I am frequently asked, when the subject of my travels comes up, whether I have ever visited Israel.

  No, I haven’t. Getting to Israel without flying would be too com plicated a matter. I would have to go by ship and train and I am certain that to try to do so would take up far more time than I could afford and be far more complex than I could endure. The assumption, however, is that if I don’t go, or can’t go, then, because I am Jewish, I must be heartbroken, for I must want to visit Israel. —But I don’t.

  I am not, in actual fact, a Zionist. I don’t think that Jews have some sort of ancestral right to take over a land because their ancestors lived there 1,900 years ago. (That land of reasoning would force us to hand over North and South America to the Native Americans and Australia and New Zealand to the Aborigines and Maoris.) Nor do I consider to be legally valid the biblical promises by God that the land of Canaan would belong to the Children of Israel forever. (Especially since the Bible was written by the Children of Israel.)

  When Israel was first founded in 1948 and all my Jewish friends were jubilant, I was the skeleton at the feast. I said, “We are building ourselves a ghetto. We will be surrounded by tens of millions of Muslims who will never forgive, never forget, and never go away.”

  I was right, especially when it soon turned out that the Arabs were sitting on most of the world’s oil supply, so that the nations of the world, being pro-oil of necessity, found it politic to become pro-Arab. (Had this matter of oil reserves been known earlier, I’m convinced that Israel would not have been established in the first place.)

  But don’t the Jews deserve a homeland? Actually, I feel that no human group deserves a “homeland” in the usual sense of the word.

  The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own “national security” to be paramount above all other considerations.

  I am all for cultural diversity and would be willing to see each recognizable group value its cultural heritage. I am a New York patriot, for instance, and if I lived in Los Angeles, I would love to get together with other New York expatriates and sing “Give My Regards to Broadway.”

  This sort of thing, however, should remain cultural and benign. I’m against it if it means that each group despises others and lusts to wipe them out. I’m against arming each little self-defined group with weapons with which to enforce its own prides and prejudices.

  The Earth faces environmental problems right now that threaten the imminent destruction of civilization and the end of the planet as a livable world. Humanity cannot afford to waste its financial and emotional resources on endless, meaningless quarrels between each group

  and all others. There must be a sense of globalism in which the world unites to solve the real problems that face all groups alike. Can that be done? The question is equivalent to: Can humanity survive?

  I am not a Zionist, then, because I don’t believe in nations, and because Zionism merely sets up one more nation to trouble the world. It sets up one more nation to have “rights” and “demands” and “national security” and to feel it must guard itself against its neighbors.

  There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don’t come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.

  Martin Harry Greenberg

  Sometime in 1972, I received a letter from a Martin Greenberg in Florida. He was doing an anthology and wanted to use two stories of mine. The matter seemed so routine and unimportant to me at the time that I didn’t mention it in my diary, and so I don’t know on exactly what day the letter was received. That is too bad, for it was the beginning of an extraordinarily close friendship.

  I couldn’t have foreseen that at the time, of course, not only because I can’t look into the future but because I immediately thought of a disturbing possibility. It was Martin Greenberg who had owned Gnome Press and who had, a quarter century earlier, been the first to

  publish I, Robot and the three books of the Foundation series. He had also, as a matter of fact, published several anthologies, and stories of mine had been reprinted in two of them. My relationship with Martin Greenberg had not been a happy one and I was in no mood to reinstate it.

  Still, a quarter century had passed, and neither Martin nor Greenberg was an uncommon name. Besides, the letter had been addressed “Dear Dr. Asimov” and surely the previous Martin Greenberg would have begun with a “Dear Isaac.”

  So in my reply I asked, “Are you the Martin Greenberg who—?”

  He wasn’t. The gentleman from Florida was Martin Harry Greenberg, and he had been born in 1941, so that he had only been nine years old when 7, Robot was published. I promptly gave him permission to anthologize my stories and the exchange of letters established friendly relations between us. This is not surprising, since, as I soon found out, Marty (which is how I always refer to him now) is as congenitally friendly a person as I am.

  I was not the only one to fuss over Marty’s name. It was a stumbling block to his entry into the science fiction world, although he didn’t realize it at first. There were, after all, a number of people whose relationship with the first Martin Greenberg had been unsatisfactory.

  David Kyle, for instance, had been a partner with the first Martin Greenberg in the management of Gnome Press, and Dave felt he had been ill used. So strongly did he feel this that when he had occasion to visit Marty for the first time, and thinking (as I had) that he might conceivably be the first Greenberg, he arrived with the intention of punching him in the jaw. And to make the punch more authoritative, he carried a roll of quarters in his fist.

  Lester del Rey, I understand, warned Marty that he would be well advised to change his name, but I felt that was going unnecessarily far. My advice was that he simply use his middle name, Harry, in connection with his science fiction work, and this he did.

  The whole matter became moot with time, however, for Marty has become so famous in science fiction circles that the name Martin Greenberg now applies only to him. The first person of that name is completely obscured and I doubt that any person who lacks my pat
riarchal age and tenacious memory remembers him.

  Even I, who, for some years, addressed all my letters to Marty “Dear Marty, the Other,” eventually gave up that habit and “Dear Marty” is now sufficient.

  Shortly after I made his epistolary acquaintance, Marty moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin, which was the hometown of his wife, Sally. There he obtained a position on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, where he is now a professor of political science and where he teaches science fiction in addition.

  He is highly thought of by the college administration, is popular with the student body, and is in all respects an academic success, and yet (as in my case) it was in his avocation that he proceeded to find his real fame. His childhood love of science fiction grew with the years and there are very few people now who can match his knowledge of the field. (He knows much more about it than I do, for instance.)

  Marty is a tall fellow and he is large besides. In 1989 (partly as a result of the gentle, but steady nagging of Janet and myself) he undertook a slimming program that shaved sixty pounds off him, but no one would, even now, speak of him as slim.

  He is genial, friendly, hardworking, and is utterly to be trusted. I know him well and am absolutely convinced that it is impossible to be more honest and truthful than he is. As I shall explain, there are occasions when he must handle sums of money, part of which is mine, and my part is duly and quickly paid over. For a while, Marty insisted on accompanying each check with a detailed accounting, but I couldn’t bear to see him waste his time on such nonsense and I finally persuaded him (with a great deal of trouble) to send me the checks bare, so to speak. I needed no accounting—at least not from him.

  It works the other way around too. On rare occasions, I must send him some money. At first, Marty would send me a painstaking account of how the money had to be distributed and to whom, but I managed to persuade him that it was sufficient merely to let me know how large a check I should write out and that I would take the accounting for granted. —And no, in all our relationship, I haven’t worried for one second that I was being cheated, either coming or going. I might as well worry that the dawn won’t break tomorrow.

  Marty’s wife, Sally, a schoolteacher, had two daughters by a previous marriage. Marty loved her dearly and raised the two daughters as though they were his own. Sally was a quiet self-contained person who, like me, hated to leave home. It was for her sake that Marty transplanted himself to Green Bay.

  He usually traveled without her, at her choice, so, since I don’t travel either, I had the chance to meet her on only one occasion. This was in July 1982, when Marty and Sally accompanied us on a Bermuda cruise. They were marvelous company for us.

  However, Sally died of kidney cancer on June 10, 1984, at the age of forty-seven, and for a time Marty was inconsolable. At that time, I got into the habit of phoning him frequently to make sure he was getting along and to give him a chance to spend fifteen to thirty minutes at idle chatter that would, at least temporarily, get him out of any blue funk he might find himself in. The habit grew and eventually I was phoning him every night, and I still do, except when physical circumstances make it impossible (which isn’t often).

  Since Marty travels freely, he comes to New York on fairly numerous occasions, and when he does, we almost always get together and go out for a meal.

  On January 2, 1985, I turned sixty-five and celebrated a “nonretirement birthday party,” at which I asked everyone not to bring presents but to oblige me by not smoking. We invited over a hundred people to an elaborate Chinese meal (at a good restaurant, for I never entertain at home). We deliberately invited people mainly from the metropolitan area, but Marty came in from Green Bay specially for the occasion.

  It was a good thing he did too, for he had known a young woman named Rosalind in very casual fashion, and he seized the occasion of his being in New York to arrange a date with her. One thing led to another, rapidly. I met Rosalind on May 24, 1985, when the four of us had dinner. I approved heartily, and on August 28, 1985, they were married. It seems to me to be a second happy marriage for Marty, and it gives me a warm feeling to know that I was the occasion for it, however indirectly.

  Rosalind Greenberg is a very pretty woman, just as genial and friendly as Marty is. She is also tall and large, with a tendency toward overweight. She is an ardent horsewoman and has recently even bought a share of a horse. I view that with extreme concern, for my taste in animals runs exclusively to cats, but Marty is considerably more permissive than I am. Perhaps he may enjoy having a horse-inlaw, so to speak.

  In July 1986, Marty and Rosalind came to the Rensselaerville Institute and had such a good time, and were so liked by everyone, that I was sure they would become regulars—but something even happier intervened. On July 1, 1987, just before the next Rensselaerville session, Rosalind gave birth to a girl, who they named Madeline, and they have not been able to join us at the seminar since.

  Marty was forty-six at this time and it was his first biological child.

  It is not hard to tell, even on the telephone, how wildly devoted he is to his daughter. From the photographs he strews about, to say nothing of what I hear of Madeline on the telephone, she is clearly the kind of little girl who is just made to wind herself about her father’s heart. (I have a very good knowledge of daughters who have that ability.)

  But it’s time to get to Marty’s professional connection with me. Marty is an anthologist. His encyclopedic knowledge of science fiction, and of other types of genre fiction, too, has enabled him to prepare many anthologies in science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, Western, and other fields. Since that first letter of his to me, he has published nearly four hundred anthologies, and there is no question that he is far and away the most prolific and, in addition, the best anthologist the world has ever seen.

  He has the knack of thinking up useful “theme” anthologies—that is, collections of stories that cluster about some particular subject. What’s more, he has the ability to persuade editors and publishers to do these anthologies. What is still more, he has the industry required to obtain permissions, negotiate contracts, take care of all payments, and disperse them to co-editors and to authors.

  In all of this, Marty usually works with co-editors, who are always writers in the field of the anthology, who have names that are valuable on the book covers, but who don’t have the time, the energy, or the inclination, or all three, to do the scut work involved.

  I’m a natural for this sort of thing, and Marty and I have co-edited over a hundred anthologies.

  Marty is under the impression that it is my name that has gained him entrance into publishers’ offices and that it is to me that he owes the fact that his income is steadily rising from year to year, but that’s just his nonsense. For one thing, he has also co-edited anthologies with Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, and Bill Pronzini, and any one of them could have given him the step-up.

  He only needed the help of a companion name at the very start anyway. In a very short time, he became a power of his own. He has been guest of honor at various conventions, has received numerous awards, and finds an instant welcome in the offices of every publisher in the country.

  I have told him quite firmly that if I were to retire from the anthology business, he could go right on without a hitch or a hiccup. On the other hand, if he retired, I would be stopped cold. I could not possibly do more than a very occasional anthology without him. Nor would I be likely to work with anyone else, for there is no one else I would trust to display the industry, the reliability, die competence, and the absolute trustworthiness that Marty does.

  (Marty has, on some occasions, said that he considers me a surrogate father, especially after his own father died a few years ago at the age of eighty-six. It’s not too grotesque a thought. Marty is twenty-one years younger than I am, and I must admit that I feel somewhat as though he is my son.)

  Sometimes Marty and I work alone, but usually we add a third party. The third party we work with m
ost frequently is Charles E. Waugh, who is a professor of psychology at a university in Maine. (It is odd that we three co-editors of dozens of science fiction anthologies should all be professors.) Charles is a tall, shy fellow, whom I have met only rarely. He is almost painfully polite and I can’t get him to call me Isaac. He has a charming wife who is crazy about teddy bears and they have a daughter of beauty-contest caliber, whom they have never let me meet.

  Here’s the way things work with us. Charles has a knowledge of science fiction that is as encyclopedic as Marty’s. Together they select stories for a particular anthology and prepare xeroxes. All the stories are sent to me and I read them over carefully, since I have veto rights and any story I don’t like is instantly eliminated. I must admit, though, that I am chary of making use of that veto. I might not like a story and yet it might be well written, and I must place the writing above my own tastes.

  I then write a more or less elaborate introduction to the anthology and, very often, headnotes for each story. Marty takes care of all the financial and legal details, as I’ve said before.

  We split the editors’ share into equal halves if Marty and I alone are involved, and into equal thirds if Charles is also involved. I consider it all to be an admirable division of labor.

  Though the anthologies do not take as much time as the average book I write myself, they do take some time. They take more time, in fact, than many of my smaller children’s books. So I add them to my list of books, but I am also honest about it. If it is appropriate to do so, I say, “I have published 451 books, of which 116 are anthologies of other people’s stories.”