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

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  I shrugged that off. After all, he had specifically ordered this story, and on two separate occasions he had read portions, approved them, and urged me to continue. Whatever the requirements for the future, therefore, he was committed to this story, in my opinion. My chief fear was that he was going to use the change in policy as a device to get me to accept a lower word-rate. I told him quite firmly that $.02 a word was the price agreed upon.

  Then, on September 25, I registered at Columbia University and began my thirteenth year as a student there. (Even during my years in the Navy Yard and the Army, I was kept on the Columbia books as a student in good standing.) Half my entire life, almost, had been spent at Columbia.

  Meanwhile, my parents moved upstairs into the renovated apartment, the downstairs apartment was cleaned up and readied for us, furniture began arriving from the various places at which we had ordered it, and finally, on September 29, 1947, we moved into 192 Windsor Place. Once again it was an easy job and a cheap one. It cost only $9.00. We had been in Dean Street just about thirteen months.

  The biggest pang was giving up the telephone. We had waited eleven months for it, but had had it only forty days. Now we would have to wait again. (Of course, we could always use my parents' phone in an emergency, but it was precisely that sort of entanglement I dreaded.)

  On October 1, I called Merwin to find out what progress had been made in connection with "Grow Old with Me" and, to my horror, he told me it might be rejected. "Cross your fingers," he said. I felt more like crossing his head with a brick.

  If that weren't enough to depress me, we had a feeling of letdown over the new apartment. It was large by our previous standard, of course, but it was also old-fashioned and gloomy. It was quite clear we would have to continue to search for new apartments and be prepared to move again.

  About the only bright spot was school. On the morning of September 27, a Saturday, I met with Dawson, taking advantage of the fact that there were no classes that day so that we could talk in private and at leisure.

  I spread out all the work I had done over the summer, the calculations, the equations, the theoretical explanations, and he seemed quite pleased.

  We were not totally isolated, for the telephone rang while I was there and Dawson said, in part, "Oh him! He's one of my best students. He's going places, that boy is. He'll be finished about the middle of the year."

  It was obvious he was speaking of me (actually, it was in connection with a possible job that, it turned out, I did not want). I discounted the compliments since he could scarcely say anything else with myself sitting right there. I was, however, delighted to know that he thought I would soon be completed.

  On October 5, I started writing up my dissertation. It would be a long job, I knew, since there were bound to be places where it would seem to me I needed more data, and then I would have to locate those data and pray everything turned out right.

  7 On October 15, after several fruitless calls to Merwin, I got him and he said that the story would need revision. I chased down to his office and asked for Leo Margulies, being unwilling any longer to deal with Merwin.

  Out came Merwin, to my annoyance. He told me what revision would be needed and, in brief, it meant throwing away the story, writing a much worse one—and with no guarantee of a sale then, either.

  For the first and only time in my life, I openly lost my temper with an editor. I snatched up the manuscript, said, "Go to hell," and stalked angrily out of the office.

  It was wrong of me to do that. An editor is entirely within his rights to reject a story, even a story he has ordered. I was not, however, able to think clearly at the time. Twice I had brought in what I had written for his opinions and suggestions—something I had never done for Campbell—and twice he had encouraged me to go ahead.

  Furthermore, I had spent the summer working on it and now I felt humiliated. For five years now, when I had worked on a story I would sell it, and Gertrude had come to take that for granted. This time I would have to come to her with a failure and a wasted writing-summer, and I hated that.

  I never submitted anything to Merwin again and, for a considerable time, thought of him only with anger.

  8

  Gertrude had just passed her thirtieth birthday and we still had no children. Recognizing the danger of increasing age in connection with childbirth, we had ceased taking precautions for the past couple of years, but there had been no result.

  One difficulty, of course, was that Gertrude's periods were irregular, so it was difficult to tell when she might be ovulating and even more difficult to tell if she had skipped a period.

  Of course, I didn't take the attitude that only women could possibly be responsible for any delay in having children, so I had myself examined and I was told I had a low sperm count. Between that and Gertrude's irregularity we realized, by the time we had moved into Windsor Place, that the chances for conception were lower than normal. The doctors we saw uniformly assured us that the chances were not zero and that we merely had to be patient, but as the months passed, we lost heart and gradually came to face the fact that we were quite likely to remain childless.

  9

  As I progressed on my dissertation, I went over it with Dawson, who insisted on considering each sentence at length and deciding how it could be made more accurate.

  It was a chore for me because I was used to writing quickly and to consider only my own judgment in such matters. However, I wasn't writing for an editor but for a committee of professors, and Professor Dawson knew better than I how to appease them. I therefore consistently followed his suggestions, although I moaned now and then.

  The greatest difficulty arose over my use of the constant M. I had introduced it at the appropriate time to indicate how the well-known chronometric equation, which had appeared in a number of papers emerging from Professor Dawson's group, could be corrected and, by use of it, made more nearly a straight-line function.

  After a while, Dawson put down his pen and said, "What is M?"

  I was surprised. "Why, you know what it is, Dr. Dawson. It's mixing time."

  "Why don't you say so?"

  Now I was really surprised. "But Dr. Dawson, if I say so now, I kill the suspense." I couldn't believe that I had to explain this.

  "Isaac," he said, "I hate to break the news to you, but you're not writing one of your science-fiction stories."

  I was horrified. "You mean I have to define M?"

  "The instant you first use it."

  I did so, though I muttered something about "ruining the whole thing."

  It really did spoil my fun and erased any pleasure I could have had in the dissertation. Nor did it really help. Once it was all done and under consideration, one professor was reported to have said, "It reads like a mystery story." And he didn't say it with approval.

  10

  Our application to Stuyvesant Town, which we had assumed to be dead, suddenly came to life. We had scarcely been in Windsor Place a month when a representative of the development came to investigate us and to ask the same questions we had answered at the time of our first application. Then he left. Nothing had really happened, but it was clear that there were possibilities.

  My parents became aware of this and were, of course, furious that we would even dream of leaving.

  I was rather bitter. Had this happened two months before, had we known that our chances at Stuyvesant Town still existed, we would surely have stayed in Dean Street and been spared parental complications.

  The move from Dean Street had entailed another disappointment.

  On November 8 2 I received a postcard from Fred Pohl concerning a new organization.

  It seemed that the old Futurians had been revived in a new incarnation. It was called the "Hydra Club" now, precisely because like the old Hydra of the myths, there was a new head growing where the old had been cut off.

  Pohl, in his card, invited me to a meeting. He and Lowndes would be there, as well as Lester del Rey and Theodore Sturgeon
. Where the old Futurian Club had been a fan organization, the Hydra Club would be an organization of professional writers and editors. (It could have the same membership, however, since so many of the Futurians had graduated, by now, from fans to professionals.)

  The only trouble was that the invitation was for the seventh, and there had been a delay because the card had gone to Dean Street first. I missed the meeting and was sorry. (Pohl announced, by the way, that he had been divorced a second time.)

  I did attend a Phi Lambda Upsilon smoker on the fourteenth, however. Dawson played the piano and we all sang, with my own voice not the quietest, as you may well imagine.

  11

  My employment fiasco at the ACS convention two months before was a little eased when an industrial firm finally did ask to interview me through Columbia. I suspect they were not after me specifically, but were going through the list of Columbia soon-to-be graduates.

  I spent forty-five minutes with a representative of Carbide and Carbon on November 19, but I wasn't stirred. Their research laboratories were in West Virginia, and I had no intention of going to West Virginia.

  12

  On November 21, 1947, I finally had a chance to attend a meeting of the Hydra Club.

  It was held at the home of Judy Merril down in Greenwich Village and it was there I got to meet her for the first time. Judy was twenty-four at the time, a striking-looking girl, and a quick-witted one who was into women's lib decades ahead of her time. She was the kind of girl who, when her rear end was patted by a man, patted the rear end of the patter.

  2 On this day, an abdominal pain of Marcia's was diagnosed as appendicitis, and the appendix was removed before nightfall.

  A number of the old Futurians were there, and there was also a young woman who told me she was a Lesbian. She was the first Lesbian I encountered with the knowledge that that was what she was. I was astonished to see that she looked just like an ordinary woman—I don't know what I expected she would look like.

  The young woman may, of course, have been pulling my leg, for I suspect she could see from my reactions to what she said that I was not your cool and suave man-about-town. Her tales instantly became lurid as she described her bisexuality and her orgies and I sat there with my eyes like saucers.

  *3

  On December 16, I got the January 1948 Astounding, which had "Now You See It—" 3 as the cover story. Since the writing of "The Mule," I had been turning out few stories and therefore publishing few. My writing career seemed to be creaking to a halt, and I somehow accepted that as a sign that my chemical career was picking up speed.

  Unfortunately, my chemical career was not picking up speed in any visible way. Representatives of other industrial firms interviewed me after Carbide and Carbon had, but all of them, without exception, showed a monumental lack of interest. There was every sign that I might reach my degree with empty hands and become a supereducated member of the unemployed.

  Industry, however, isn't the only possible source of work. There is also the academic world. I was told that Erwin Brand, a biochemist at Physicians and Surgeons, needed an assistant, so I went up to see him on December 18.

  He was a little gnomelike creature, who spoke with machine-gun rapidity between puffs at a cigarette. He chain-smoked. Each cigarette burned down until what was left was virtually invisible between his fingers, and then it grew to full size miraculously. I never quite caught him replacing or lighting a cigarette. He talked without a break for the entire 2 l A hours I was with him.

  He didn't exactly offer me the job and I didn't exactly ask for it. In fact, I had the queasy feeling it would be a desperate mistake to take a job with him. He was a prima donna and the trouble was that I was one, too, and there cannot be two on the same project. If I were going

  3 See Second Foundation (Gnome, 1952, later Doubleday), where it appears as Part I—"Search by the Mule."

  to work for someone it would have to be for a gentle soul with infinite patience and a wide tolerance, like Dawson.

  I did ask about the salary out of curiosity. I suggested $4,000 per year and he countered with $3,600. In Navy Yard terms, I was asking for a P3 and he was offering a P2—so that 2V2 more years had passed and I still wasn't getting a promotion.

  I came back to Columbia quite depressed and Dawson comforted me, telling me I wasn't to take that job and he would be sure to find me a better one. (Poor fellow. He couldn't invent a job where none existed, but then I didn't really expect him to find me one.)

  Roy Machlowitz came to see us every time he was in New York, it seemed to me. He was in town for ten days over the Christmas season of 1947 and he called up to arrange a trip to some museum. The date set was December 26, 1947.

  The forecast on Christmas night was for "light snow" the next day, and I was at once dubious. I don't believe "light snow" forecasts.

  When I woke on the morning of the twenty-sixth, there was six inches down and it was still snowing. It was all I needed to see. I called up Roy and canceled the museum bit. Unbelievably, he argued with me. I was adamant. I know a major snowstorm when I see one, and neither Machlowitz nor the Weather Bureau could argue me out of it.

  So we stayed home and, on and off, watched the snow pile up to a record one-day fall of twenty-six inchesl* It stopped the city cold.

  As I think back on it, I am amazed at how little it affected us. It was the Christmas season, so I didn't have to go in to school. There was no work that had to be done there anyway, and it was best for me to be at home working on my dissertation, which I had been doing for a couple of months now and which was going along swimmingly.

  We had no automobile so we didn't have to worry about digging it out. We had no children so we didn't have to worry about milk supplies or anything like that. For that matter, we had plenty of canned food in the house and all was well.

  It was, in fact, a rather pleasant day for us as we watched the blanket of snow come down, turning the city quiet and peaceful and clean and white. It was a day on which even the candy store could have been closed. I don't think that ever again was I in a position to watch a

  4 The Weather Bureau managed to stay two inches ahead of the fall all day long, promising an end that never seemed to come.

  major snowstorm without having to be concerned and worried in a dozen different ways.

  15

  The year that ended in snow was a rather icy one from the standpoint of my writing career. I had sold three stories in 1947 as compared with two the year before, and one of my 1947 sales had been quite a long one. Nevertheless, there had been no anthology sales, no Orson Welles money (no "subsidiary sales," in short), and the disappointment of "Grow Old with Me." I ended the year with $710, just a hair under the 1946 mark.

  I had entered Columbia University as a freshman at fifteen. I celebrated my twenty-eighth birthday on January 2, 1948, and I was still at Columbia.

  Later that month—on the fifteenth, to be exact—I picked up a little gray female kitten, three months old. I hadn't had a cat since my single days and I wasn't sure how Gertrude would feel about it. I was delighted to discover that she was as fond of cats as I was.

  I tried to call it "Smoky," but Gertrude called it "Putchikl," a kind of Yiddish distortion of "Pussy," and Putchikl it became.

  It was a sweet and gentle little cat. We kept its box down in the cellar and it went down there when nature called. We kept it in the cellar (which connected directly with our apartment) when we wanted it out of the way, but if at any time we opened the door and called "Putchikl!" it came running upstairs with some of the sound effects of a team of galloping horses.

  In the warm weather, we let it stay in the backyard sometimes, but it quickly learned how to open the window screen from the outside and make its way inside. This could be disconcerting, for when we had it outside overnight it would make its way in at dawn and get into bed with us.

  If it merely cuddled down somewhere against our bodies that would have been all right. We wouldn't have minded.
Sometimes, though, for some cat reason of its own, it would decide to gaze earnestly into our faces (usually Gertrude's) and wait for us to wake up. The effect of opening one's eyes blearily and finding the whole field of view from end to end filled with a cat's face is a startling one.

  Since we fed Putchild well, it never developed the need to behave as a predator. Once (on May 3, 1948, actually) a little mouse appeared in the kitchen and Gertrude, becoming aware of it, left in a hurry and closed the door. She consulted me, but I was a broken reed. I couldn't imagine what one did to get rid of a mouse, except, perhaps speak crossly to it.

  Then Gertrude said, "Putchikl! Of course!" We opened the cellar door and Putchikl came bounding up in great delight. She was snatched up and shoved through the kitchen door, which we opened for the purpose, then closed behind her. We then both listened for the sound of shrieks and screams and tearing flesh and crunching bones. Nothing!

  Finally, not knowing what could possibly have happened, we opened the kitchen door a crack and peeked in. There was the mouse sitting in the middle of the floor, clearly the unconcerned ruler of the room, and there, on a chair and looking very uneasy, was Putchikl.

  Gertrude said, "Oh hell!," got a broom, and disposed of the mouse herself. She was very angry with Putchikl for the rest of the day.

  Doctor of Philosophy

  My dissertation was coming along slowly but steadily. I kept thinking of new ways of describing the manner in which the enzyme lost its activity as it worked, and every once in a while I had to run more tests under new conditions to test this facet or other.

  It was the job situation that upset me and I grew more and more uneasy as the weeks passed.

  Then, on January 20, 1948, a new opening arrived from a totally unexpected direction: Elderfield approached me. Elderfield!

  For over eight years I had considered him the leading anti-Asimovian in the department, the one who above anyone else was convinced that I was not doctoral material. Yet without warning he offered me a postdoctoral position as his assistant.