In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

Bullen had worked out a system of consolidating the necessary tests on the materials he was working on into one large and rather impressive structure on his desk, with a little American flag surmounting the whole. All parts of it might be going at once with five different tests being conducted simultaneously.

  Therefore, when Bullen was away on vacation, his entire structure was carefully and lovingly pulled apart, every component of it washed, dried, and stacked neatly in his equipment drawer. We were all at work early on the day he came back so as to be there when he returned and caught sight of the neat flatness of his unoccupied desk surface.

  He walked in with his usual rapid stride, stopped short, and stared at his desk for a long time, while everyone held his breath and risked apoplexy. He then turned and stared at each of us in turn, without saying a word. He then went to his desk and, still without a word, began slowly and methodically to re-create his structure, complete to the flag.

  It spoiled every bit of our fun.

  Looking back on it now, it seems to me that Bullen was much put upon and that the rest of us were entirely wrong in baiting him.

  It doesn't seem to me that I ever took the lead in any of the jokes played at his expense, or even took any important part in them. There was no question, though, that as far as joking remarks and snappy repartee were concerned, I took the lead. And because I was an effervescent personality and therefore conspicuous, it was taken for granted by my superiors that I was the ringleader.

  I was lectured on occasion for being the source of turmoil in the lab and, at one time, I was sent in to the offices of Hardecker himself. It was for all the world like being sent to the principal's office—and it was the same as always. No one could complain about my work, which was top-grade. It was my "deportment" everyone objected to.

  On April 1, 1943, I was promoted from a Civil Service grade of Pi to one of P2. 2 It meant a salary increase, so that I moved from a salary of $2,600 per year to one of $3,200 per year. I welcomed that but it didn't seem like a vote of confidence to me.

  I couldn't help but get the feeling that the Navy Yard was patiently waiting for the war to end so that they might get rid of me. This did not hurt my feelings. The Navy Yard had to be aware—since I made no secret of it—that I was patiently waiting for the war to end so that I might return to my research.

  I didn't have to wait for the end of the war to return to my writing. On April 4, as I said earlier, I completed final copy of "Author! Author!," and on April 6, I mailed it to Campbell. It was the first time in the nearly five years since we had met that I did not take in a story personally.

  The fact of mailing did me no harm. On April 12, I received the news of an acceptance in the usual Campbell fashion—a check. What's more it was a check that included a bonus for the first time since "Nightfall," almost exactly two years before. At last, after nearly three years of trying, I had managed to place a story in Unknown.

  Since "Author! Author!," was twelve thousand words long, the check, including the $.oo25-a-word bonus, came to $150. By the standards of my new P2 rating, that represented 2V2 weeks' salary, and the story had taken considerably longer than 2Y2 weeks to write—but it had been pleasurable work.

  I was back in stride at last. On May 3, I began another story, science fiction this time, called "Death Sentence," about an experimental colony of robots on a distant planet—an experiment that got out of control and a planet that turned out to be (you guessed it) Earth.

  7

  My neglect of my teeth over the previous years, when I could not easily afford treatment, now came home to haunt me.

  During the spring of 1943, I visited the dentist regularly as he went to work on what were now twelve sets of cavities that existed in my teeth. Unfortunately, one tooth, the lower first molar on the right, was abscessed and too far gone.

  2 On that same day, Sidney Cohen completed medical school (somewhat accelerated as a result of the war) and became an interne. On that day, too, Fred Pohl was inducted into the Army.

  Once all the cavities were filled there was nothing left to do but to yank the abscessed tooth. I was in dreadful terror for I remembered the pulling of my baby tooth (without anesthetic).

  However, when the time came to pull the tooth, on October 18, anesthetic was used, and it came out smoothly. There was an unpleasant yanking and pulling sensation but no pain. To my surprise, there was no very great pain after the anesthesia wore off, either.

  It was the only tooth I have ever lost (so far) and at the moment of writing, I still have thirty-one teeth in my mouth, each firmly attached to its root. In the gap produced by the missing tooth is a bridge which, thank goodness, has never given me trouble. When I think that each parent reached middle age toothless or nearly toothless, I feel quite grateful to modern dentistry.

  8

  The alien status of the Blugermans was more and more disturbing as the war went on. There was no telling when visitors' visas would be suspended. More and more, it seemed advisable for them to return to Toronto and then re-enter the United States as full-fledged immigrants.

  The elder Blugermans, Henry and Mary, made the trip back in March 1943. Having gone through all the red tape, they re-entered the United States without trouble. There was every reason to think that Gertrude could do the same, especially since she was the wife of an American citizen. Nevertheless, I couldn't help frightening myself with visions of "something going wrong" and an enforced separation of indefinite duration.

  To prevent this we took all possible preliminary precautions. We set up everything in Toronto beforehand, so that Gertrude need merely show up there, sign papers, see some friends if she wished to, and come back. On June 5, 1943, we went to New York together and the next day I returned to Philadelphia alone, knowing that I would not see her for twelve days.

  While she was gone I tried to keep myself busy with letter writing, reading, even work on "Death Sentence." What I further decided to do was to suspend the shaving of my upper lip. It seemed to me that by the time I saw her again, I would have a distinct mustache and she could see what it was she had missed when she first met me. I anticipated having to shave it off quickly thereafter.

  This second attempt at facial hair was the occasion for another one of my cruel ripostes at work. There was a girl in the secretarial pool, one who was quite pretty, but dark and just a little on the hirsute side. By the third or fourth day of my nonshaving, it was pretty obvious that

  something was wrong with my upper lip—and she decided to be haughty about it.

  In a tone of voice that I could not help but take as a slur upon my virility, she said, contemptuously, "Are you trying to grow a mustache?"

  "Why not?" I said, eyeing her coldly, "youz managed."

  She burst into tears and didn't speak to me for many days. I should never have done it. What would I have lost if I had simply said, "Yes, I am." It's just that when the opponent's thrust comes, the parry and riposte come automatically and quite without conscious effort on my part.

  One of the paperbacks I bought during Gertrude's absence, by the way, was one called The Pocket Book of Science Fiction, just out. It was edited by fellow Futurian, Donald A. Wollheim (with acknowledgments to fellow Futurians John Michel and Robert W. Lowndes). It contained stories from the magazine, such as Stanley G. Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey," Robert Heinlein's "—And He Built a Crooked House," and Theodore Sturgeon's "Microcosmic God."

  As far as I know it was the first anthology of magazine science fiction.

  9

  Let me pause a moment to recall what has remained with me, ever since, as absolute idyllic periods. These were the Saturday evenings at Wingate Hall.

  They were the only evenings that were not followed by early-morning risings and when we could, consequently, stay up late.

  I worked out a ritual. After dinner, I went out and bought the early editions of the two Philadelphia Sunday papers I was not ashamed to read: the Inquirer and the Bulletin. When I brought them back, I placed th
em on the kitchen table, and Gertrude was not allowed to touch them. 3

  I showered, then made myself a hot chocolate in a large glass, hot and very rich, and placed a half pound of cookies next to it. Those cookies were of a particular type that I have never been able to dupli-

  3 There was a reason for that. When I read the Sunday paper, that paper, through long years of training in the candy store, ended as neatly folded as it had been when I started. Gertrude, on the other hand, like everyone else in the world, let the various parts drop here and there so that the papers were spread in spasms across the floor. I objected strenuously to this, but when she pointed out that I was no longer in the candy store and didn't have to sell the papers afterward, I saw her point and let her have her way. However, I arranged for that one evening to read them first myself, so that I could give them to her in perfect order and then allow her to do what she would.

  cate anywhere since and that I had bought at the same time I had bought the papers.

  Slowly I read the comics of both papers, while dipping the cookies in the hot chocolate and polishing off the entire half pound, and then drinking the unsopped-up remainder of the hot chocolate. (This goes a long way toward explaining my slow but steady rise in weight.)

  I then gave Gertrude the comics, transferred to the living-room couch, and read all the war news and commentary in the rest of the papers.

  All this worked best in the winter, when I would go out for the paper of a frosty evening and then be delighted to return to a warm apartment. Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home to" was popular in the winter of 1942-43, and I would hum it as I was going for the papers and cookies, and look forward to returning to apartment and wife. To this day, when I sing that song (especially the line "Under stars chilled by the winter") I find myself back on Spruce Street, going for the papers, and then I remember what I call "my Saturday nights" and I ache with nostalgia.

  I suppose they're not what the average person would think of as good "Saturday nights," but those were mine.

  10

  On June 10, 1943, Gertrude reached Toronto and sent me a postcard from there, as I had asked her to do. On June 15, she left and reentered the United States as a full-fledged immigrant entitled to begin to make moves toward American citizenship.

  On June 18, she was back in New York and there I met her again. She had cut off much of her hair (to my slight distress—for I like long hair on a girl). She affected horror at the unexpected sight of my mustache, crowding into a comer with her hands over her eyes, but I jollied her into letting me leave it on for a while.

  On June 20, I went back to Philadelphia with my immigrant wife, and on the twenty-seventh, I decided I'd had enough of my mustache, and while Gertrude was still asleep I shaved it off. She didn't notice it was gone until I pointed it out.

  Back to Writing

  I completed "Death Sentence" on June 27, in the midst of a searing heat wave that made life virtually unbearable in the apartment. It was only seven thousand words long and had taken eight weeks to write.

  I mailed the story to Campbell on June 30, and I received a check for $90 on July tt. It was $.0125 again, but it turned out that it wasn't a bonus. Astounding had simply raised its rates, for it needed stories badly. Too many of Campbell's reliables were off in the Army, or in civilian war work, and were not writing.

  I welcomed the check and realized that it had been a mistake to spend over a year not writing. I would need every bit of income I could get to tide us over the period after the war when I would have to return to my unpaid doctoral work.

  And for a while, I thought that that "period after the war" might not be so far removed.

  On July 5, Germany had begun her third summer offensive in the Soviet Union. This time it was on a very restricted front in the middle of the line. The Soviets stopped it cold, and thereafter there were no more great, successful Nazi offensives. History had finally passed them by.

  On July 10, Allied forces based in North Africa invaded Sicily and, for the first time since the fall of Greece, British forces were back on the Continent. American forces, accompanying them, were there for the first time. I thought all this heralded speedy collapse of the Axis powers. As far as Italy was concerned I was right—but Germany held out with disappointing tenacity.

  I arranged to be in New York the weekend of our first anniversary and to stay over through Monday, July 26. Not only was it our anniversary, but also John Blugerman was about to be inducted into the Army, and Gertrude wanted to have time with him. (He was six years her junior, she remembered him as a delightful baby, and there was a strong

  bond of affection between them. It wasn't surprising. As an adult, he was intelligent and very good-looking. It always seemed to me he looked a great deal like Cary Grant, and with Gertrude looking like Olivia de Havilland, they made a remarkable brother-and-sister team.)

  On the evening of Sunday the twenty-fifth, John, Gertrude, and I walked the length of the boardwalk at Coney Island.

  It became a custom with us, and for a number of years there was always at least one summer walk on the boardwalk, often with John. It was another piece of idyllicism. We sauntered, we weren't going anywhere, we could walk a couple of miles without crossing streets or encountering vehicles, we could buy foolish things to eat or play useless games. (I never went on the roller coaster again, however.)

  Each year, though, we watched Coney Island decay a bit more.

  3

  On July 26, I visited Campbell. I couldn't very well be in New York on a Monday and not visit him. I had a third Foundation story in mind, one I planned to call "The Big and the Little." It was to deal with the manner in which the Foundation extended its grip on neighboring regions of space by making use of trade, selling little gimcracks that the large kingdoms found, after a while, they could not do without —so that they passed into economic servitude.

  Campbell was willing but he badly needed short stories, so he asked me if I would do a positronic robot story first. I agreed and after I got back, I started one on July 29. I called it "Catch That Rabbit."

  By now I had twenty-seven stories in print (not counting that pseudonymous "The Weapon," which I had already forgotten), and that meant that I had twenty-seven magazines filling up a shelf in the bookcase.

  That, in turn, meant that room was taken up and, in small apartments, room is precious. Besides, the magazines were getting beaten up, just through reference.

  I remembered one thing I had seen in Sprague de Camp's home when I had visited it: a set of three volumes of his own stories. He had taken them out of the magazines as "tear sheets" and had them bound. Why not? It was a neat and compact way of keeping one's stories particularly safe.

  I consulted John Clark and found the name of a binder willing to do the work. On August 1, I carefully demolished the twenty-four magazines that were of normal pulp size and withdrew my stories. By August 30,1943,1 had the volume. It cost me five dollars.

  I still have that volume. I used it in preparing those books that were collections of my early stories. I used it again in connection with The Early Asimov and with this book. It was the first of a long line, 1 but it is the first volume that I value the most.

  Sprague's volumes had been an elegant off-white in color, but my first volume was a kind of drab green. I had asked for green, but I had had a livelier shade in mind. Perhaps that drab green was all that was available in the war years. In any case, I kept that rotten color ever since for the sake of uniformity.

  I was terribly annoyed that the three stories in the large-size As-toundings— "Runaround," "Foundation," and "Bridle and Saddle"— could not be bound with the rest, and eventually I had to have them bound into a second, very slim volume by themselves.

  It wasn't even that Astounding's large size (SVz by 11V2 inches) was successful. It wasn't. It didn't get the advertising that was hoped for; its new place on the newsstands didn't help sales; and the wartime restrictions on paper were making that size impossible, an
yway. After sixteen large-size issues, Astounding returned to its pulp size (7 by 9V2 inches) with the May 1943 i ssue - What's more, as Campbell told me on my July 26 visit, even that could not be maintained. Soon the magazine size would have to be reduced further, to "digest size" (5V2 by 8 inches), which, ever after, was to be standard for all science-fiction magazines except for an occasional maverick.

  One thing Campbell didn't bother to tell me on that visit was that the paper shortage meant that Unknown would have to cease publication. Its circulation was simply not high enough and, if it were eliminated, the paper allotted could be switched over to Astounding, which could then continue publication as long as things grew no worse.

  I got the news from Bob Heinlein on August 2, and it was a terrible blow. It meant that "Author! Author!" would not see print after all. My sixth attempt to appear in the magazine, which I thought had succeeded, had been a failure like the rest. Heinlein's news was that Unknown had folded "for the duration" but, as I said in my diary, "I interpret that as forever," and I was right.

  It was a very fortunate thing that I had already written and sold "Death Sentence," as the disappointment of having tried so hard to make Unknown, of having made it at last, and then of not having made it after all might otherwise have set back my writing drive indefinitely.

  1 1 now have over 230 such volumes—though I was too lavish with what I had bound. I could have made do with a third, or even a quarter the number if I had been more intelligently selective. Some, in fact, which contained only foreign translations, I have given to charity.

  4

  We had a one-week vacation coming to us in 1943. We had had one in 1942 and had used it to get married and have a honeymoon. For 1943, we could just have a vacation. Originally we planned the vacation for July, but John Blugerman's induction made it necessary to postpone it till August.

  We might have gone back to Allaben Acres, but it was too far away. What we needed was a place fairly close that we could reach by public transportation, one that was reasonably priced, in the mountains, and on a lake. Eventually we chose a place called Hilltop Lodge, basing our choice entirely on the resort's own description of itself.