I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  And, of course, it never occurred to me to get a word processor.

  What! Abandon my faithful typewriter? My curious obsession with the notion of loyalty extends, you see, to inanimate objects. I couldn’t bring myself to buy a small calculator because it would mean betraying my slide rule. Then, when I started getting such calculators in the mail from people who wanted to give me one for some reason I couldn’t fathom, I tried not to use them. When the convenience of their use forced itself on my stubborn self (especially for addition and subtraction, which slide rules don’t handle), I nevertheless kept my two slide rules and I feel very guilty every time I look at them.

  I heard many stories about people getting word processors and then never using their typewriters again. I simply wasn’t going to do that to my typewriter, so I hardened my heart against the growing clamor all about me to the effect that I must get a word processor. My brother, Stan, kept up a steady drumbeat to that effect and used my resistance, I’m sure, for any number of “my stupid brother Isaac” jokes at work.

  Finally, in the spring of 1981, a computer magazine (of a kind that had been springing up in uncounted numbers at that time) asked me to do an article on my experiences with my word processor. They naturally assumed I had one, of course, on the same basis that they would naturally assume I was breathing.

  I told them I didn’t have one and couldn’t write the essay. Do you think that saved me? Not at all. The astonished and even outraged editorial staff of the magazine promptly arranged to have a word processor delivered to me. It arrived on May 6, 1981.

  I was appalled and did my best to pretend it wasn’t there, even though it sat in the middle of my library, well packaged in several boxes. On May 12, 1981, however, two young men arrived from Radio Shack and set it up for me, while I wrung my hands in despair. It was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model II Micro-Computer with a daisywheel printer and a Scripsit program.

  In time to come, people would ask me on what basis I had selected this particular word processor, assuming that a person of my overwhelming intelligence would have spent several months weighing the pros and cons of all the varieties that existed and carefully selected the best.

  My answer would always be: “Well, this is the one that was given me. Are there other kinds?”

  And everyone would then rush off to tell “my stupid friend, Isaac” stories.

  The people who set it up showed me how to work it and gave me two volumes of instructions, each one large, heavy, and written in the most opaque possible style. (People who write instruction manuals always assume, it seems to me, that you already know the subject they’re trying to explain.)

  The instruction didn’t take and the manual didn’t help. I am hopelessly inept with machinery and nothing I did would make the word processor work. The young men returned on June 4 and gave me a repeat of the instructions and that didn’t take either. By June 12, I had had the word processor a full month and I still couldn’t make it work the way I wanted it to. By June 14,1 decided to ask Radio Shack to remove the device and I sat down to give it one last chance.

  · And it worked like a charm. I suppose it sensed my decision and was frightened; it didn’t want to be returned. From then on, I’ve been able to use the word processor and I do use it constandy.

  However, I use it for only one job and no more—the preparation of manuscripts. I had the Radio Shack people adjust it so that it gave me the margins I wanted, and the double spacing I wanted, and everything else that I wanted. I haven’t the faintest idea of how any of these things can be changed. I couldn’t make it single space, or adjust the margins, for instance, so I don’t use it for anything but manuscripts.

  I don’t know how to repaginate either. That means that when I write something on the word processor, I give each page the minor editing it needs (correcting spelling and punctuation and occasionally adding, subtracting, or shifting a word) and then go on to the next. And once I have gone on to the next, the page before becomes virtually unalterable. Fortunately, since I have never been much of a reviser, this doesn’t bother me.

  The main thing is that I haven’t abandoned my good old typewriter. I use it for correspondence, for my card catalogues, for everything but manuscripts. And even in the case of manuscripts, the typewriter has not fallen completely into disuse. Short pieces of up to 2,000 words or so, I do direcdy on the word processor, I admit. In the case of anything longer, however, I write the first draft on my typewriter and then transfer it into the word processor, doing the necessary minor editing, page by page.

  Good old Stan finds this intolerable. “Why do you do that?” he demands. “You have to type everything twice.”

  I try to explain to him that with long pieces I want the comfort of a pile of yellow paper, the same pile of first draft I’ve been accustomed to for decades and decades. If I want to check something I said earlier in a novel, for instance (what color hair did I say my hero had?), I would much rather flip the yellow pages than begin a mad search from floppy disk to floppy disk.

  But if I do the first draft of my books on the typewriter, what’s the use of a word processor?

  In the first place, in the old days, having done a final draft, there was still the necessity of last-minute changes. A word would have to be added or deleted by pen and ink. In addition, there were typos I had to correct. With the word processor, no more pen-and-ink changes.

  All changes are introduced electrostatically on the screen. That means I hand in cleaner copy. Is this important? I think so. Manual corrections make the manuscript look messy. That isn’t fatal. My editors will stand a little messiness from me, but with everyone handing in clean copy that has been corrected invisibly on the screen, I’m afraid my messiness would stand out and give editors the subliminal notion that my writing is poor simply because it is messy. My word processor prevents that from happening. I hand in clean copy like everyone else. Radio Shack had let me have the word processor on approval for the remainder of 1981, with payment by installments afterward. As soon as I got it to work, however, I decided to keep it and I phoned Radio Shack and asked for the total cost of everything so that I could make out the check and get it over with. They said, “Wait. Don’t make out the check. How would you like to be a spokesman for us? If you do it, you can keep the machine, and we’ll pay you a monthly stipend.”

  That sounded good to me and I remained a spokesman for several years. It meant that every once in a while I had to submit to a daylong photo session and the photographs were used in advertisements for Radio Shack products. That made me a little uncomfortable, but my machine worked perfectly, so I felt I was recommending something worthwhile.

  Eventually, though, the Radio Shack people decided to do all their advertising work in Texas, where they were based, and, of course, they understood that I wouldn’t go to Texas, so they didn’t ask me to do anything more and just sent me my monthly stipend. After a while, though, I couldn’t endure being paid for nothing, so I told them they would have to either arrange to have me do something or stop the stipend. They stopped the stipend after November 1987.

  The first book I turned out by way of the word processor was Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos. That was my 252nd book, and I now have 451. If I count the books now in press, this means that in the nine years I have so far had the word processor, I have put just over 200 books through its vitals, and, in addition, I may have written some 200 short pieces that have not yet found their way into one of those books. All told, I may have, as a rough estimate, put 10 to 11 million words through the instrument.

  And in all that time, it has given me virtually no trouble. On two occasions, to be sure, my keyboard had to go in for rewiring or oiling, but since I was careful enough to get a second keyboard, I can always use one when the other is being worked on, so I don’t lose a moment. On January 13, 1988, an enthusiastic repairman replaced the TV tube, but I doubted that that was actually necessary.

  On March 29, 1982, the machine wouldn’t start at all. I cal
led in the Radio Shack people and the man who arrived the next day studied the situation, then turned on the wall switch that I had casually turned off and forgotten. I don’t think this counts as trouble the machine gave me.

  You would think that now that I have a word processor and have caught up with modern times, people would leave me alone, but they don’t. As computers go, my nine-year-old Radio Shack word processor is now medieval. In fact, the Radio Shack people don’t make it anymore.

  Apparently, I am supposed to keep up with the times and buy new machines at every improvement. But I won’t give in. I’m not going to switch word processors just so I can keep up with the times. I’m loyal to the one I have. It does everything I want it to do and a new one would just mean going through purgatory learning a new set of reflexes.

  So what I tell everyone is this: “When my present word processor breaks down, I’ll get a more advanced model.” Fortunately, it doesn’t break down.

  Police

  I have never been in serious trouble with the law. In forty years of driving, of course, I’ve managed to get two tickets for illegal parking and two or three tickets for speeding, but I don’t think that’s bad.

  My worst traffic violation took place on the Massachusetts Turnpike, where I was stopped for speeding and, to my horror, it turned out that my driver’s license had expired. The trooper who stopped me pointed this out severely, but he did not (as I had half-expected) drag me off to jail. He simply told me to let Janet drive and that I was not to touch the wheel till I got the license renewed.

  What had happened was that in 1975 I had moved from the hotel apartment I had had after I had returned to New York, to the large apartment Janet and I have occupied ever since. The move was only six blocks and our mail continued to arrive through the same post office. Nevertheless, when the new driver’s license came for me, addressed to the old place, the post office, which sends me fifty items a day on the average to the new place, sent it back with an “address unknown” on it. After I got home from my misadventurous trip, I went down town to get a new license, and later on discussed the matter with the post office.

  In 1982,1 was returning from a trip feeling rather ill. I got into my apartment elevator and there was a woman puffing at her cigarette, with a “No Smoking” sign staring her in the face. I pointed to the sign and asked her to stop and she puffed smoke in my face.

  Whereupon I made as though to flick the cigarette from her fingers and she promptly let out a shriek and attacked me. Janet, knowing that I was ill, pushed in front of me and warded her off. Inside half an hour, there were two policemen and a policewoman at my door because the smoker had reported herself as having been assaulted. I explained the situation and they left.

  In February 1983, I was served with a summons and found I was being sued for half a million dollars. It’s the only time in my life I was ever sued. More amused than frightened, I called my lawyers, Donald Laventhall and Robert Zicldin, and they got me out of it unharmed.

  Although Don and Bob are my lawyers, I give them very little work to do, and since I can’t maintain a business relationship with anyone for long, they have become my friends. I brought Bob Zicldin, who lives in the city just a few blocks from me, to the Trap Door Spiders as a guest on two occasions, and he was so effectively entertaining that he was voted in as a member on November 21, 1986. He has become one of our most enthusiastic members too.

  Bob taught me the facts of life in connection with this aborted lawsuit. He said, “She had no case and she knew it, and so did her lawyer, but they felt they could get nuisance money out of you. Anyone will do that if they recognize you, so be careful. Avoid any wrangles, because you’re a celebrity.”

  It’s hard keeping that in mind, but in our litigious society, I suppose I have no choice.

  The oddest contact I had with the police, however, came on October 7, 1989. It was a quiet Saturday evening, and we were both watching television. Janet was watching Star Trek in her office, and I was watching a Kate <& Allie rerun in the living room, when the doorbell rang.

  No one from outside can come to our door without being announced, so I assumed it was either some building employee or a neighbor. I went to die door (Janet refuses to be disturbed during Star Trek) and called out, “Who is it?”

  There was no answer, so I looked through the peephole and, behold, I saw police uniforms. I opened the door hastily and there were four policemen and a policewoman there.

  I said blankly, “What’s the matter, Officers?”

  The one in die lead said, “We have a report of a domestic quarrel here.” “Here?” I said. “You must have the wrong apartment.” “No,” he said. “We were given the apartment number and the

  name.” He pointed to where our names were on the door. “Our information is that you’re holding a knife to your wife’s throat.” Laurence Olivier could not possibly have faked the look of honest surprise on my face. I said, “Me? Her throat?”

  Then I realized that Janet was still firmly in her office with the door shut, and I knew I had better produce an unharmed wife or they would think that she was lying a battered corpse behind the closed door.

  I yelled, “Janet! Come here!”

  It took three shouts (as the police grew increasingly suspicious) before a rebellious Janet could be induced to abandon her show and emerge. She saw the police and was alarmed at once.

  I told her what the police had said, and if anyone could act more astonished than I had been, it was Janet.

  After the police realized it was a false alarm and left, Janet and I discussed the possibilities. Who had reported such a ridiculous thing? The obvious answer was that a fan of mine, a little the worse for drink perhaps, had thought this would be a funny practical joke, but very

  few fans would be so well acquainted with my address and apartment number.

  Then I remembered that there was someone who had been harassing Janet with phone calls. (Her maiden, and professional, name is in the phone book.)

  We called the police. Which name had been given them? Sure enough, it was Janet’s.

  Within a week, I had written a Black Widower story based on the incident. It was entitled “Police at the Door,” and it was published in the June 1990 EQMM.

  Heinz Pagels

  I had lunch with Heinz Pagels on April 12, 1982, and got to know him. He was a tall man with a high forehead and a shock of prematurely white hair that contrasted oddly with his youthful face. He looked even younger than his forty-two years. Soon to be head of the New York Academy of Sciences, he was a brilliant physicist. He wrote several books on quantum mechanics, including The Cosmic Code, which I read with a great deal of pleasure.

  Heinz Pagels was, in my opinion, the brightest of the shining lights who assembled at the Hugh Downs dinners. He also ran the Reality Club, a group of brilliant minds who gathered at roughly monthly intervals at various places in Manhattan to listen to talks on the borderlands of scholarship and to discuss what they heard. I was invited to join, but I have not attended regularly. There were some interesting moments at the few sessions I did attend. For one thing, I gave a talk of my own to the Reality Club on May 7, 1987. I talked about science fiction, of course.

  Then, on November 5, 1987, Alan Guth gave a fascinating talk on the subject of the “inflationary Universe,” a theory he was the first to advance.

  Some time before, I had heard of the inflationary-Universe theory for the first time from Heinz, who explained to me that the Universe might possibly have started as a sub-subatomic particle that represented merely a quantum fluctuation in an infinite sea of “false vacuum.”

  I was fascinated because years before anyone had suggested such a thing I had written an essay entitled “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover” (F&SF, September 1966), in which I stated my own belief as to the beginning, and the rule I advanced was “In the beginning there was Nothing,” and called it Asimov’s First Rule of Cosmology.

  It was just an intuitional leap, but I’
m fond of my scientific intuition, and this incident pleased me.

  I remember some arguments too. One speaker, on February 5, 1987, had spoken of the early Christian church on the basis of some narrow view of his own in which Jesus played the role of magician. Apropos of something he said, I pointed out that the true founder of Christianity was St. Paul, and that without him Christianity might have lived and died as an obscure Jewish sect.

  He did not see my point and talked about prosperous Christian communities that St. Paul had never visited. I tried to explain that all those communities were overwhelmed by what the later church considered heresy and, eventually, by Islam, and that it was the regions in which St. Paul was missionary where the mainstream of Christianity survived and flourished.

  I tried to quote Horace, who said, “Brave men have lived before Agamemnon, but all are overwhelmed in eternal night . . . because they lack a sacred poet.” I tried to explain that St. Paul played Homer to Jesus’ Agamemnon, but I could never make my point before he interrupted me to repeat his own view. I wouldn’t have minded if he had listened to me and then refuted me, but he never listened, and Heinz had to stop me because he noticed I was growing angrier and he was afraid I might explode and hurt the invited guest’s feelings.

  On another occasion I was trying to explain that carbon 14 was more dangerous to the body than potassium 40, because carbon 14 was sure to be found even in the very genes, where every breakdown meant, without exception, a mutation, whereas potassium 40 was not present in the genes and therefore did not necessarily cause mutations.

  The Nobel Laureate Rosalyn Yalow kept objecting that potassium 40 produced more energy in breaking down and was therefore more