There was no place else for me to go. Heinlein had moved on to the slicks, but I knew I couldn't (or I thought I knew I couldn't).
Well, was it enough? Could I support myself writing?
No!
During my eleven years as a professional science-fiction writer who for seven years had been at the top of the tree, I had made a total of $7,593, or just about $700 a year. To be sure, I hadn't been a full-time writer at all, but my best year, 1944, had only brought in $1,100, and as
a full-time writer I would do well to double that, and $2,200 a year would not support me.
In fact, could I even double the rate at which I earned money if I spent full time at the typewriter? It wasn't writing time that was the bottleneck. You might remain at a typewriter hour after hour after hour, yet produce very little. What one needs is thinking time, and that can't be rushed. You have to think up your plots and your complications and your resolutions, so that most of your time is going to be spent thinking and not typing.
My very success with Campbell made it difficult, in a way, for me to take my writing career seriously. Might it not be that I was a one-editor writer? Perhaps I could only please Campbell and no one else. Worse yet, I always discussed my stories with Campbell, so there was a question in my mind as to how much of the success of my stories was mine and how much Campbell's.
The one story I had written in recent years that did not involve any discussions at all with Campbell had been "Grow Old with Me," and look at what had happened there.
What would happen to me, then, if something happened to Campbell? If he quit or were fired or died? Might it not be possible that I would then find suddenly that I was no writer at all?
Something like that almost happened on April 9, in fact. On that day I happened to call my mother to pass the time of day and was told that my father had heard on the radio that Street & Smith had suspended all its pulp magazines. For a short time, in my mind, Astounding was gone, Campbell was gone, and I wasn't a writer anymore.
Then I got the New York Times and found that Street & Smith had indeed suspended all its pulps, but that there had been one exception : Astounding would still continue to be published!
Still, the escape was a narrow one, and despite my recent sale of "—And Now You Don't" and the huge check it had brought in, I felt completely insecure as far as my writing career was concerned. There was no way I could see myself making a living at the typewriter in any way or under any circumstances—so I accepted the job at the Medical School.
And yet if Campbell represented a dead end to me, was there any way of branching out? If I couldn't follow Heinlein into the slicks, was there anyplace else I could forge a path for myself?
On March 21, 1949, I had attended a lecture given by Linus
Pauling. It was the best lecture I had ever heard. Even Gertrude, who was present, and who did not understand a word, enjoyed it. It was possible, then, to make science attractive to anyone.
Inspired by Pauling's speech, and remembering Jack Segal's remark months before about what a good explainer I was, I decided to write a piece of nonfiction. I called it "Detective Story for Non-chemists" (a title based on Tarpley's remark, once, that a good chemist had to have a detective instinct). It dealt with the manner in which chemists had worked out the chemical structure of the molecule of biotin, one of the B vitamins.
I finished it on April 3 and sent it to Campbell, for Astounding regularly published a nonfiction piece or two every issue. My thio-timoline article had been published under that heading, for instance. Campbell returned "Detective Story for Non-chemists" at once, however. It was far too straight, far too detailed, far too dull. I did not, however, forget it, or my general desire to write nonfiction.
On April 6, I began the revision of "Grow Old with Me." I note that in my diary of that day I had finally learned the correct quotation and called it "Grow Old Along with Me." That was the title I used thereafter and it cheered me to do so. I think I felt a sneaking suspicion that changing the title would break the jinx.
I worked on the story every day, and the revision and lengthening went rapidly.
And on April 14, the short version of my dissertation was completed and I was ready to send it off to the Journal of the American Chemical Society, which was the Astounding of the chemical journals.
Boston
On April 20, I went to Boston to look into the matter of housing—obviously the first hurdle to get over. Again I stayed at the Boyds' and that evening I met Fred Whipple, a Harvard astronomer, and his wife, Babbie. Fred was tall, slim, good-humored, and forty-two years old; Babbie was short, smiling, and pretty.
That evening, Bill broke the rather shocking news to me that he was planning to go to Cairo, Egypt, to take a civil-service position as a P7. It caught me by surprise and my spirits fell sharply. Bill was the only person in Boston I could count as a friend. With him gone I would be a stranger in a strange land. I might not have accepted the job if I had not had the comfortable feeling of at least one known quantity I could cling to.
Bill, perhaps sensing my distress, offered to take me along as a P6, but I wouldn't return to civil service even in New York, let alone in Cairo, so I refused. I returned by train on the night of April 21-22, stayed awake all night, and came home in complete panic. I didn't want to leave New York. I was afraid of the new and frightening city that Boston had suddenly become when I discovered Bill would not be there.
On returning home, I found that the May 1949 Astounding had come, with "Mother Earth" 1 in it, but that was scarcely compensation.
Sunday, May 8, 1949, was Mother's Day. It seemed inappropriate that I should wake at 5:00 a.m. with an acute and continuous abdominal cramp. I could not lie down or sit or stand. I could only walk back and forth, doubled up and groaning.
After twenty minutes of this, we were on the point of calling a doctor, since both Gertrude and I were suspecting acute appendicitis, when the pain started easing up, then went away. It left me with a feeling of relief and, almost, euphoria, for there is nothing like the absence of pain, after pain.
1 See The Early Asimov.
It did not recur, and so we did not take up the matter with a doctor. Gertrude and I both still lived with the notion that one didn't see a doctor if one didn't have to.
It was too bad. Had I known what was wrong, I might have been spared future discomfort.
3
On May 10, I gave my first lecture for a general audience. It was for Pauline Bloom, of the old Brooklyn Authors Club. She had a writing class and wanted me to talk on science fiction and fantasy. The audience consisted of about thirty people, mostly middle-aged women, and I doubt that any of them knew anything at all about science fiction or fantasy. My diary states, "I did very nicely" but gives no details and I remember nothing about it.
But it was another quiet beginning for a facet of my life.
4
On May 12, I went to Boston for a third time and, for the first time, Gertrude accompanied me. We tried to find living quarters, but returned on the fifteenth, having spent $76 and gained nothing.
But then, on May 17, we received a letter from Lemon, who told us that a two-room apartment, with kitchenette and bath, completely furnished, and redecorated only half a year before, would be available half a block from the school from June 1 to September 1 at $60 a month. I sent off an acceptance, sight unseen. How bad could it be after all? Certainly the location was convenient, and we would have three months to find something better.
May 20 was the anniversary of my successful Doctor's Orals, and "a lot of good it's done me" was the gloomy comment in my diary. The next day, however, I completed the revision of "Grow Old Along with Me." It had taken me 6V2 weeks. On May 22, Pohl dropped around to pick up the new manuscript and deliver it to Doubleday.
5
On May 29, 1949, Bradbury called and got Gertrude on the phone. He told her that Doubleday was taking the revised "Grow Old Along with Me" and it would be out as a book the
next January. Gertrude called me with the news, for I was at Windsor Place at the time.
I was delighted. It seemed a happy send-off.
But it was difficult to be altogether happy. I was leaving Columbia at last nearly fourteen years after I had first entered it, and although I had longed often enough to be through with it, now that I was really going to leave, it was hard to forget that I had spent half my life associated with it. Then, too, I was leaving New York City for the second time, nearly three years after having gotten out of the Army and returned, and this time it was not "for the duration"; it might be for all my life.
I remember I met old Professor Thomas on the Columbia campus on Friday, May 27, my last full day on campus. He was getting on in years now and walked with a cane.
I said to him, "Well, Professor Thomas, I'm leaving Columbia today after fourteen years."
I thought that the least he could do would be to break into tears, but he only banged his cane against the brick walk and said, "About time! About time!" turned, and tramped off.
Morris Kupchan, my predecessor on Elderfield's projects, was working in Boston now. He drove us to Boston on May 31, and there we saw what we had sublet at 42 Worcester Square in Boston. It was unbelievably horrible. The furniture was old and unpleasant; the shower was a tin stall, where, we found, the water was bound to turn cold or hot depending on which taps were being opened or closed elsewhere in the building. There was no refrigerator and we would have to eat out. (There was the school cafeteria, fortunately, which was cheap, but had no other merit.)
It was our seventh move since marriage, and it was clear that our very first order of business would be to arrange an eighth move.
On June 1, 1949, I showed up at the Medical School and spent my first day at the job. It wasn't encouraging. I discovered that Bill Boyd, a full professor, was making $6,000. I seemed, financially, to be already near the top for an academic job. I doubted if I would ever make, even in a good writing year, as much as $10,000.
Oh well—so I would never be rich. My salary would do for a childless couple, especially since my savings had been slowly accumulating as a result of cautious and frugal living in the past and now stood at $6,200.
If, that is, the job continued. The trouble was it lacked security. My salary did not come out of Boston University funds. It was out of funds from government grants obtained by Lemon, and each year those
grants would have to be renewed or I would face the sudden kickout, as had been the case with Elderfield earlier in the year.
Gertrude was very aware of this and downcast over it. I tried to assure her that the grants would surely be renewed, but she said, "It will always be a matter of tension while we wait," and of course, that was true.
But we had to carry on, and apartment hunting was the order of the day. A solid week's search netted us something in Somerville, the town just north of Cambridge, which, in turn, was just across the Charles River, to the north of Boston.
It was in a pleasant neighborhood, on a busline that would take me to the elevated that would in turn take me to the school. (This was important, for we had no car and had to depend on mass transportation.) It was also near a shopping center and had a roomy and pleasant kitchen. The other three rooms were small and it was in an attic, two flights up. We beat the rent down from $85 a month to $75, and then put down a $10 deposit. We paid the first month's rent on June 20, and here we were with an apartment at 762 Broadway in Somerville, while still paying rent at Stuyvesant Town.
The pain of double rent was soothed a bit by the fact that on the same day I got the balance of the advance of "Grow Old Along with Me"—$315 after Pohl had taken his share.
Walter Bradbury, by the way, wrote to ask me for a different title for the book, since Grow Old Along with Me did not sound like science fiction, and, indeed, carried romantic implications. He was quite right. On the twenty-fifth, I decided to change the title to Pebble in the Sky.
We got a welcome break over the Fourth of July weekend, when the Boyds, who had not yet left for Egypt, took us out to their summer place in New Hampshire. It was in beautiful countryside, 3^2 hours northwest of Boston, and far away from everything. There was a sense of complete isolation (no neighbors in sight, no telephone) that made all trouble seem to disappear. The Boyds said that they considered it their true home.
They called it "Kasr ed-Dam," which was Arabic for "House of Blood." There was nothing ghoulish about that. It was just that blood groups were Bill's specialty and that both he and Lyle had traveled much in the Middle East and had studied the blood groups of mummies, for instance.
The one difficulty as far as we were concerned was that the house
was so isolated that it had neither electricity nor plumbing. In the twilight, kerosene lamps were lit. The light was unsatisfactory, though we could play bridge by it. On the other hand, we couldn't really drain the kerosene reserves by keeping them burning very long, which meant going to bed unusually early even though it was near the summer solstice and the day stayed fairly bright till past 8:00 p.m.
The absence of plumbing was worse. There was an outhouse, which could be reached by going through the woodshed. I objected seriously to the smell and to the flies, but over a four-day period there was no way in which I could avoid resorting to it a number of times.
The first morning I wandered vaguely about looking for a shower, and it slowly dawned on me that there wasn't one. I put the problem to the Boyds, who seemed a little surprised that it should concern me. I had to settle for sponging myself with lukewarm water in the woodshed, which was better than nothing but which left me unsatisfied.
Even considering the lack of these creature comforts, we had a wonderful time, however, and we loved Bill and Lyle. It made it all the worse to go back to the nitty-gritty of life and to think that they would be leaving soon for Egypt.
I talked to him about that in among the four-day glut of conversation in which we all wallowed delightedly. Drawing from my experience at the Navy Yard, I drew a dark picture of what he would find civil service to be. As a matter of fact, I made it rather worse than it was because I hoped he would change his mind. He didn't; he was determined to go.
Over the years, I discovered that Bill was a disappointed man. He had been an undergraduate at Harvard, and he longed to be on the Harvard faculty. His best friends (Whipple, for instance) were on the Harvard faculty and he held to them tightly as though he hoped this would make him one, too, vicariously.
Although he was world famous as a blood immunochemist, it bothered him to be at Boston University. During the war, he had switched to Harvard to work on some blood-fractionation project but had not gotten along with the head of that project (an overbearing tyrant, from all accounts), and Bill had had to come back to Boston University, something he apparently considered a defeat.
Now he was leaving again in search of greatness, and nothing I said was going to keep him home.
8
The movers picked up our furniture in Stuyvesant Town on July 20 and it was good-bye to Manhattan, exactly one year after we had
signed the lease and become Manhattanites. We moved the furniture into the Somerville apartment on July 22, and four days later we celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary.
But if it was off with the old, it was also on with the new. On July 27, I met Harry Stubbs for the first time. He wrote science fiction under the name of Hal Clement, and then and ever has proved a wonderful person—quiet and kind. I've never known him to lose his temper or to say an ungentle word.
On July 29, we left the sublet after a two-month stay and completed our eighth move. It cost us just $100. Naturally, it was once again a super heat wave, with temperatures topping 95 day after day.
But then, at least we had a telephone installed at once—our third. From that day to this I have never been without a phone.
In Boston, I felt as much an exile at first as I had felt in Philadelphia. Boston, however, was a livelier city than Philadelphia
had been, and my surroundings were academic rather than bureaucratic, which meant they were more stimulating.
As time went on, I rapidly grew to like Boston and New England generally. I found a liberal newspaper, the Boston Globe, and I discovered there was no shortage of eating places or science-fiction fans. Eventually, when mobility increased, I discovered that the New England countryside was delightful.
PART VI
Two Careers; but Where Next?
Somerville
The Somerville apartment was about six miles north of the Medical School, but the commuting didn't bother me, even though it meant both bus and elevated. A New Yorker is used to that.
What was really bad was the heat. The house was poorly insulated and the apartment was, literally, a converted attic. It grew hot on hot days, really hot, and was up to ten degrees warmer than it was in the shade under a tree, for instance. You can imagine what it was like on August 10, when the temperature in the shade hit 101.
What's more, there was no shower, and we had to take baths. After a while, though, I discovered this was no great sacrifice. I found that a warm bath in the morning, or a cool bath in the evening, was wonderfully relaxing, and I enjoyed reading while soaking. The problem then became one of not soaking the book if I dozed off, or of dipping my nostrils below the water level and waking up strangling.
But then, Somerville was an improvement on Worcester Square, and summer was half over by the time we got in.
What's more, we could at least miss some of what was left of the summer by going off to some resort. Again working through advertisements, we chose a place called "Birchtoft" in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, about sixty miles northwest of Boston. It was the first time we ever planned a two-week vacation.
In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954 Page 69