I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  dangerous. Several times I pointed out that it wasn’t the energy but the location that constituted the danger and she refused to see it.

  Of course, the reader might argue that I was as stubborn in my viewpoint as they were in theirs. Yes, indeed, but I was right and they were wrong and that made the difference.

  On another occasion, I remember, I was thinking of fractals. These are a set of curves with fascinating properties. They have fractional dimensions, so that a fractal curve can be neither one-dimensional nor two-dimensional but one-and-a-half-dimensional, which is why they are called fractals. Such curves can be infinite in complexity, so that every small part—no matter how small—is as complex as the whole thing.

  The theory of fractals was first developed in detail by a French-American mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot, whom I met on April 16, 1986, when he was being honored by the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. On that occasion, I was giving the main speech of the evening, but I had never been informed that it was a black-tie affair. As a result, I was the only male there not in a tuxedo—which didn’t bother me a bit. In any case, Heinz posed the following question one day at a meeting of the Reality Club: “Can science ever explain everything? And can we decide whether it can or not?”

  I spoke up at once and said, “I’m sure that science can’t ever explain everything and I can give you my reasons for that decision.” “Go on, Isaac,” said Heinz.

  I said, “I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties; that no matter how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with. That, I think, is the secret of the Universe.”

  Heinz looked thoughtful and said, “That’s interesting,” but no one else present said anything.

  On July 25, 1988, during the annual session at the Rensselaerville Institute, Mark Chartrand brought in a half-hour television tape showing a fractal. It started with a dark heart-shaped figure that had small subsidiary figures about it and, little by little, it grew larger on the screen. One subsidiary figure would slowly be centered and grow larger until it filled the screen and it could be seen that it was surrounded by subsidiary figures too, which when enlarged had still other subsidiary figures.

  The effect was that of slowly sinking into a complexity that never ceased being complex. It was absolutely hypnotic as I watched the endless unfolding. That, I thought, is what scientific discovery was like, an endless unfolding of deeper and deeper layers of complexity—

  forever.

  And I thought of Heinz and looked forward to telling him about the tape, if he didn’t already know about it.

  But I read no newspapers at Rensselaerville, I listened to no radio, and I watched no television. I didn’t know, therefore, that exactly twenty-four hours before I had watched the fractal tape, Heinz Pagels, attending a conference in Colorado, was preparing to come down from a mountain he had climbed. (He was an enthusiastic mountain climber.) He stepped on a loose rock, lost his balance, tumbled down the mountain, and was killed.

  I did not find out about it until I returned home and looked over the copies of the New York Times that I had missed. I yelled in shock and Janet came running in fright to see what had happened. Heinz was only forty-nine years old when he died.

  New Robot Novels

  Even before Foundation’s Edge was published, Doubleday was satisfied on the basis of advance sales and on the sale of foreign rights that it was going to be a big moneymaker. I wasn’t, simply because I couldn’t believe that one of my books could be a best-seller. Having 261 non-best-sellers in a row rather established the pattern, to my way of thinking.

  Doubleday, however, was sure enough of their ground to have Hugh O’Neill hand me a contract for another novel on May 18, 1982, a contract that offered me a substantially higher advance than that for Foundation’s Edge. What’s more, as soon as I signed the con

  tract, he gave me a check for the first half of the advance. I kept calm. I didn’t even think of beginning the new novel till Foundation’s Edge was published and I found out how well it would really do. I found out. When it hit the best-seller list, I realized I had no choice. I began the new novel on September 22, 1982.

  Nothing in the contract, or in any verbal communication from Doubleday, however, had said it must be another Foundation novel and I certainly didn’t want to do one. Instead, I thought of another series I had never finished. I had published the book version of The Caves of Steel m 1954, and its sequel, The Naked Sun, in 1957. In 1958, I had a contract for a third novel about Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw (the detective and his robot assistant), for my intention was to make another trilogy out of it. I began the third volume in 1958 and bogged down after I had done eight chapters. Nothing more would come and what I had written I felt was unsatisfactory. This was the book for which I tried to return the $2,000 advance Doubleday had paid me. They eventually transferred the advance to my first Doubleday nonfiction book, Life and Energy.

  Now, in 1982, twenty-four years after I had failed with the third book of the robot trilogy, my thoughts turned to it once more. If I could successfully add a fourth book to the Foundation saga, then surely I could successfully add a third book to the robot saga. What had stopped me in 1958 had been my intention to have a woman fall in love with a humaniform robot like R. Daneel Olivaw. I had seen no way in 1958 of being able to handle it, and as I wrote the eight chapters I grew more and more frightened of the necessity of describing the situation.

  The climate in 1982 had changed, however. Writers were more freely able to discuss sexual situations, and I had become a better writer. I didn’t go back to those lost eight chapters (as I had gone back to the fourteen pages of Foundation material). I just didn’t want them at all. I decided to start fresh.

  I had been asked to make Foundation’s Edge longer than my early novels, which had been 70,000 words apiece, except for The Gods Themselves, which was 90,000 words. For that reason I had made Foundation’s Edge 140,000 words long. I assumed that my instructions held for later novels and it was my intention to make the third novel 140,000 words long too—that is, as long as the first two robot novels put together. This would give me more room in which to describe the minutiae of the new societies I would deal with, and more leisure to work out complexities of plot.

  I called the new novel The World of the Dawn, because the chief setting was on a planet named Aurora, who was the Roman goddess of the dawn. However, Doubleday again had the final word. A robot novel would have to have the word “robot” in the title, they said. The novel was therefore named The Robots of Dawn, which turned out to be even more suitable.

  I enjoyed writing the new novel considerably more than I had enjoyed writing Foundation’s Edge. Partly this was because, with an actual best-seller under my belt, I had more confidence this time around. Then, too, The Robots of Dawn, like the first two robot novels, was essentially a murder mystery and I am particularly comfortable with mysteries.

  I finished the novel on March 28, 1983, and by that time Foundation’s Edge had done so well, and The Robots of Dawn was so well liked by the Doubleday editors, that I resigned myself totally to the writing of novels.

  As a matter of fact, The Robots of Dawn also made the best-seller lists, but for fewer weeks than did Foundation’s Edge, even though the former was, in my opinion, the better book. There were possibly two reasons for this that had nothing to do with the relative qualities of the two books. For one thing, Foundation’s Edge had been the beneficiary of the long wait for another Foundation book. The wait for a third robot book had been neither as long nor as intense. Second, a lot depends on the nature of other books being published at the same time. Foundation’s Edge came out when there was a relative dearth of popular books, while The Robots of Dawn faced stronger competition.

  Since I had to follow with another novel, my pleasure with The Robots of Dawn led me to write a fourth robot novel. In the fourth book, Elijah Baley would be dead, but I had al
ready decided that the robot, Daneel Olivaw, was the real hero of the series, and he would continue to function.

  Still, the fact that my robots were becoming increasingly advanced with each robot book, made it seem stranger and stranger that there were no robots in my Foundation series.

  Carefully, I worked out a reason for it and, in doing so, I could see that it was going to be necessary to tie my robot novels and my Foundation novels together into a single series. I intended to begin that process with the upcoming fourth robot novel, and to give a hint of my intention I was going to call it Robots and Empire.

  I discussed this with Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey, because Random House had absorbed Fawcett and taken over my paperback fiction. They were, in particular, doing the paperback editions of my new novels of the 1980s and I felt they ought to know. To my surprise and considerable chagrin, the del Reys argued strongly against my plan to fuse the two series into one. They said the readers would prefer to have the two separate and, it seemed to me, they were determined not to publish the paperback versions if I carried through my plan.

  I stumbled away very dispirited and explained the situation to Kate Medina. (Hugh O’Neill had taken a position with Times Books, and Kate, whom I had known for years, had now become my editor.)

  She said, “What is it you want to do, Isaac?”

  I said miserably, “I want to tie the series together.”

  “You’re the writer. Do it.”

  “You don’t understand, Kate. If I do it, the del Reys probably won’t buy the paperback rights.”

  Kate said, “That’s not your concern. You write what you want, and it will be Doubleday’s job to sell the paperback rights; if not to the del Reys, then to someone else.”

  (So you see how easy it is to be loyal to Doubleday. After all, they’re loyal to me!)

  I went ahead and wrote Robots and Empire and clearly began the process of fusing the two series. And, in the end, virtue triumphed, for the del Reys did buy the paperback rights even so. There was a publication party for the book on September 18, 1985, and Judy-Lynn del Rey attended in fine spirits and never said a word of disapproval for what I had done. (As it happened, it was the last time I was to see her alive—how good it is that we can’t see the future.)

  Incidentally, though Foundation’s Edge was published in 1982 and The Robots of Dawn in 1983, Robots and Empire was not published till 1985. The reason for the year’s delay I will explain later.

  Robots and Empire did very well and it made the Publishers Weekly best-seller list, as did the two earlier novels, but it did not make the New York Times best-seller list. This was important because the paperback sales allowed bonuses of additional money if the book stayed for a certain length of time on the best-seller list, and only the New York Times list counted.

  I was very crestfallen as a result; not for the loss of the bonus but for what I thought might be my loss of status in Doubleday’s eyes. I went to Kate and told her that perhaps I ought not to write any more novels since I didn’t make the Times best-seller list.

  And Kate said, “Don’t worry about that. If the book didn’t make the list, that’s our fault, not yours. You just write your novels and let us take care of everything else.”

  So I returned to the Foundation series and wrote Foundation and Earth, which was a sequel to Foundation’s Edge, and the fifth book of the series. It was published in 1986, and it did make the best-seller list, not only in Publishers Weekly but in the New York Times as well.

  Robyn Again

  As I said before, the breakup of my first marriage did not destroy, or in any way weaken, the close affection between Robyn and me. Robyn graduated from Boston College, having majored in psychol ogy, on May 22, 1978. She then took graduate courses at Boston University, and on May 17, 1981, obtained her master’s degree in social work.

  I attended both graduation ceremonies. I managed the bachelor’s ceremony in such a way that I avoided meeting Gertrude. This was done by the simple expedient of my attending the ceremony itself, while Gertrude attended a reception afterward.

  When it came to the master’s degree, neither Gertrude nor I were willing to miss the ceremony, and, with much misgiving, Robyn asked each of us to attend and to endure each other. I must admit I was apprehensive, but perhaps because neither of us wished to make

  Robyn unhappy on a propitious occasion, it worked out. I even invited Gertrude to have lunch with me, just the two of us, and it was reasonably pleasant. She had lost weight and had, I believe, even given up smoking. She had just had her sixty-fourth birthday the day before, but she was still attractive and looked much younger than her age. It was the first time I had seen her since the divorce.

  Eventually, Robyn found that she didn’t want social work as her full-time career. She was faced so constantly with the unhappiness and misery of the people she was trying to care for, and her warm heart drew her into such empathic misery, that it depressed her. And as the Reagan administration continued to transfer funds from hospitals and other much-needed social institutions into the pockets of arms manufacturers and politicians, working conditions grew steadily worse.

  Robyn decided she wanted to move to Manhattan and find a job there, in the hurly-burly of the most unusual metropolis in the world. I was against it. I love Manhattan and would not live anywhere else, unless I was forced to do so at gunpoint. Nor do I have any fears for myself despite the general impression that New York City is particularly prone to street crime. Neither Janet nor I have suffered any violence so far. Still, I must admit that I was uneasy at the thought of Robyn living in Manhattan. Yet, if that was what she wanted, the decision was hers.

  I continue to follow my practice of noninterference with Robyn, although she lives in the same city. I don’t even demand that she see me very often. I do talk to her on the phone quite frequently, but (deliberately) irregularly. I don’t want her to feel tied down and, in fact, one of my great worries is that when it comes time for me to die, she will have trouble reconciling herself to that great and inevitable fact, despite my attempt to limit my intrusiveness into her life.

  I would prefer to have her even less firmly tied to me, though that would be at considerable discomfort to myself, if that would lessen her pain when I—most unwillingly—desert her.

  I’m also worried about Janet for the same reason, needless to say. Janet and I have been inseparable since I came to New York in 1970. From the way she hovers over me, from her frightened reaction to my every cough and sniff, I can imagine her reaction when I—most unwillingly—desert her.

  But what can I do? (I can hear Janet and Robyn say, in chorus, “Live forever! That’s what you can do!”) —Well, I’ll try, but I must admit that one gradually loses confidence in being able to do so as one grows older and sicker.

  Triple Bypass

  Six years had passed since my heart attack, and I had been living a normal life, just as before. My schedule was full of out-of-town lectures, business lunches and dinners, interviews and social engagements. In those six years, I had published about ninety books, including two novels that made the best-seller lists.

  Why didn’t I take it easier? Surely, a heart attack is a legitimate excuse to slow down.

  First, I didn’t want to. I dreaded slowing down.

  Second, I’m a denier. I had known some hypochondriacs who enjoyed ill health, who insisted on it, who abandoned any doctor who told them nothing was wrong with them, who used the ill health to garner pity and to force others into the position of servants. I was determined not to be like that. I treated any kind of illness as an insult to my masculinity, and so I was a denier—I denied it ever happened. I insist that I am well when I am obviously not well, and if I am forced into illness despite everything I can say or do, I retreat into sullen silence, until I recover—when I promptly deny I was ever sick. As you see, then, my heart attack was a source of serious embarrassment to me and I pretended, as far as I could, that it had never happened and that I could live an uncari
ng normal life.

  Third, I was in a hurry, for despite everything I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that I was mortal; in fact, a lot more mortal than I had felt earlier. When I was young, I looked forward to living till the science fictional year of 2000; in other words, till I was eighty years old. I took it for granted I would make it.

  But when both my parents died in their seventies and I had my first operation on a cancerous thyroid, I had to admit that eighty was perhaps unrealistic and that perhaps it was safer to hope I lived to be seventy. Then, with a heart attack at fifty-seven, I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have to be satisfied with sixty. There was therefore an urge to speed up rather than slow down, in order that I might get as much work done as possible before I was forced—most unwillingly —to abandon my typewriter.

  So put all that together and you can see that my years after the heart attack had to be crammed as tightly with work as I could manage.

  But despite all denials, I had one heritage of the heart attack that I could not ignore. That was my angina. It wasn’t very bothersome, but if I walked too far, or too quickly, or up an incline, the pain clamped down upon my chest and I was forced to wait in order to let that pain subside. I raged against that evidence of old age and mortality, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  For years, however, it remained a minor irritation, since I could avoid it by simply walking at a moderate pace and counting on a natural pause at red lights (so that I could pretend I wasn’t forced to stop for internal reasons).

  The trouble was that the situation grew slowly worse and finally in 1983 it reached a point where it couldn’t be ignored. I could no longer deny very effectively. My coronary arteries were becoming narrower with accumulating plaque and my heart was being more and more starved for oxygen. —And yet I couldn’t bring myself to mention the matter in my diary; I couldn’t make myself put the truth down in writing.