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

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  room, and I was waiting patiently when Evelyn came to me and said, "I think you'll have to leave now."

  I rose in alarm. "Have I done something?"

  "No," she said, "he's not well."

  It turned out that, partly as a result of his war experiences, he could not go out in the open and was confined by his own fears to his apartment. Nor could he speak for long to people he didn't know.

  I was horrified, expressed my sorrow, and turned to leave. As I reached the door, the telephone rang, and Evelyn answered.

  "It's for you," she said, and I turned back from the already opened door.

  "Who knows I'm here?" I said in astonishment, but it was Horace calling from the bedroom by means of his second phone. So I remained and sat in the living room, talking to Horace in the bedroom for about an hour.

  This was a pattern. Once Horace was on the phone, he wouldn't get off; it was the only way he could relate to other people without panic. It was all right at first, but there came a time when I dreaded a phone call from him and would invent all kinds of emergencies to get off.

  The next day, June 9, I visited Columbia. Tarpley had been mugged just two nights before, just off the Columbia campus. (The city was becoming steadily more dangerous.) His wallet had been taken and he had been sufficiently banged up to require stitches. He was going to be getting his Ph.D. in October.

  As for Elderfield's group, they had isolated the intermediate compound whose existence I had pinpointed and told me it was four times as effective as plasmochin—so I had done some good.

  Brad called me to tell me he liked the additional chapters of The Stars, like Dust—, and I felt expansive enough to take all the Bluger-mans to a shore dinner at Lundi's, where we wreaked havoc on the lobster, chicken, and steamed clams. The whole bill came to $24, but I had come a long way since $10 had scared me silly at Locke-Ober's.

  And on June 11, we were back in Somerville.

  In Somerville, Gertrude was still uncertain as to her next step with regard to the driving lessons. I suggested that she take it easy for a while and that I would take driving lessons. That would give us two chances, and if either of us made it, we could get a car. Then, too, she could wait till after I had taken my test, pass or fail, before she would have to decide whether to take the test herself or to take additional lessons. In all this I put on a show of confidence I did not feel.

  Beyond Campbell rg?

  On June 12, then, I took my first driving lesson and, as it happened, one of the first-year medical students, whom I had just finished teaching biochemistry, was making some odd change by teaching at a driving school and he was to teach me. This meant I could rely on patience and intelligence, and it eased my fears.

  He got me in the car and showed me how to turn on the engine after making sure the car was in neutral. Then he had me step on the clutch and put the car in reverse. Then he told me to let the clutch come up slowly and just let the car move a few feet and then step on the brake.

  I did as he said and as the car began to move, a very peculiar and utterly unforeseen thing happened to me: I found that I loved the sensation; that I felt in control. The next day, I was actually driving, shifting gears, and turning corners. I continued to love it. By the third day,

  1 was determined to buy a car as soon as possible.

  Why that should be I don't know, but I have loved to drive ever since. It is the only way in which I really enjoy getting from here to there (aside from walking).

  On June 17, we were shopping for a car and looking at Plymouths. Then we went to Durgin-Park for a farewell dinner with the Bersons, who had, by a pleasant coincidence, also spent 1949-50 in Boston. Now, however, Jerry Berson was getting a job at the University of Southern California, and he and Bella would be leaving soon. That was the worst of making friends in the academic world—all its members were peripatetic.

  Also present were Roger and Carolyn Newman, who were friends of the Bersons originally, and with whom we had often hobnobbed that first year in Boston. Roger was leaving, too, for Cal Tech. I remember Roger best for a lesson he taught me, perhaps inadvertently.

  My clipping service had been sending me all kinds of reviews of Pebble in the Sky, and I had bought a scrapbook and had been carefully pasting them up. On June 24, when the Newmans and Bersons were visiting our attic apartment, I brought out the book and went over the reviews very pridefully for them.

  During the course of that, I heard Roger say in a very low voice, to himself rather than to anyone else, "The old lady shows her medals." (That was, of course, the name of a play by James M. Barrie.)

  I pretended I hadn't heard, closed the book as soon as I decently could, and put it away.

  From that day on, I have never showed my reviews to anyone nor, as far as is humanly possible, done anything that could be construed as showing my medals. 2 Thank you, Roger Newman, wherever you are.

  2 Of course, you might construe this autobiography as a case of showing my medals, but I'm doing my level best to show my boobie prizes as well.

  7

  On June 19, we put down a deposit of $25 on a new Plymouth that would cost us $1,650 altogether. I wasn't satisfied with just the driving lessons, either. I invited my fellow instructor, Fabian Lionetti (a quiet fellow with a permanently furrowed forehead and a somewhat hesitant manner of speaking), to dinner, after which he took me for a long drive in his car, describing what he was doing and why, and giving me numerous practical lessons on car maintenance and car expense. It was a little frightening, but I was unshaken. I had to have a car.

  8

  On June 23, I received the September 1950 issue of Weird Tales, with "Legal Rites" 3 as the lead story and on the cover. Weird Tales was a fantasy magazine, not science fiction, and it had made its first appearance even before Amazing had. Weird Tales had had a colorful history, but it had been going downhill for a long time and had not much longer to live. This was the only time I ever appeared in it and I am rather glad, for sentimental reasons, that I managed to make it before the magazine died.

  9

  On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces invaded South Korea, the United States sent troops into Korea, and the Korean War had begun. I feared a repetition of all the miseries of World War II, but the Korean War was a minor squabble in comparison, and since I was over thirty by now, there was never any question of my being drafted.

  Stanley was the one in danger now, for he would be twenty-one in a month and was just the right age. However, his eyes were worse than mine, and when he underwent his physical examination, they were listed as 20/600, which made him a 4F.

  10

  We went to New York on June 30 to attend a science-fiction conference. I showed up at 3:00 p.m. on July 1, just eleven years after the first convention I attended, but this time, of course, I was a big wheel.

  8 See The Early Asimov.

  Among those whom I now met for the first time were Poul Anderson, another one of Campbell's discoveries, whose first story was 'Tomorrow's Children" in the March 1947 Astounding; Jerome Bixby (then editor of Planet Stories); and Bea MahafTey (the editor of a new magazine, Other Worlds). Bea was a science-fiction editor who was not only a woman but also a young and beautiful woman at that.

  The next day was the big day of the conference, with many speakers. It was my turn at 4:10 p.m. I spoke to an audience of 150, the largest I had ever had. Gertrude was brought in (rather against her will) by Roz Wylie. Gertrude sat in the last row, in agony over my possible embarrassment, just as on our honeymoon when she had sat in the balcony while I was competing in the quiz. After I had spoken for a while, I noticed she had changed seats and was now in the front row; she had apparently stopped worrying.

  She had reason not to worry, I gave a very successful talk, without notes and without preparation of any kind. It was clear to me that I loved talking in general and that I loved the laughter and applause.

  In the euphoria that followed the talk, I let Brad buy me a drink. I also let Fred buy me a
drink. Then it was Brad's turn. Well, you're ahead of me. By banquet time I was drunk.

  After I had gotten distinctly drunk, I saw Sprague de Camp in the distance, felt overwhelmed with love, called out "Sprague," and ran for him. He looked horrified and left in a hurry. I think he was afraid I would hug him or something, and he may have been right.

  At the banquet, while I maintained an uneasy silence and tried to sober up, someone said, "Oh they're taking a picture of us" and so they were, one of those panoramic banquet views.

  "Where?" said I, swinging around in my chair and looking at the camera with a vague, drunken stare and the camera snapped. When the picture was developed, there was our table (in the background, fortunately) and there was I, clearly drunk, though too small to notice unless pointed out. 4

  The best part of the day to me, though, was listening to Lester del Rey's speech in which he lambasted dianetics very rationally and without stint. Campbell was not in the audience, I noted.

  Horace Gold called me the next day and talked me into promising to do another story for him. On the train back, on July 4, I started one that I called "Potent Stuff," using nothing more than pen and ink.

  4 A year later, Life did an article on science fiction in which this banquet picture was featured. How embarrassing that the only time my face ever appeared in Life it was a drunken face.

  11

  On July 6, I had my last driving lesson, and on July 7, I took my driving test. I thought I did very well, but the testers are in a position that appeals to all the latent sadism in one. The people taking the test are invariably frightened, tense, and pitifully anxious to please. Naturally, any person with talents sufficiently small to make it necessary for him to make a living testing drivers can't resist that.

  I drove about quite a bit, following all orders and making no mistakes that I could see except for beginning to drive into a one-way street the wrong way when the tester deliberately ordered me to do so. He stopped me, of course, and told me roughly that I shouldn't follow illegal orders. He was quite right in that.

  At the end, he asked me the ethnic nature of my name, and I said, "Russian." "Were you born there?" he wanted to know, and I said, "Yes," wondering if he were going to have the nerve to refuse me a license on that ground. After all, the North Koreans were still advancing quite rapidly into South Korea and it was doubtful, as yet, if the American forces pouring into the country could stop them. If the Soviets chose to join the North Koreans, World War III was around the corner.

  But the tester just said, "Well, I hope the Russians drive tanks the way you drive this automobile."

  So I managed a smile that served to convince the idiot I was congratulating him on the subtlety and sophistication of his sense of humor, and he passed me.

  I had my first driver's license!

  It meant that Gertrude could relax. Since I had a license, and since I liked to drive, I could drive for both until she felt like taking lessons again.

  What I didn't have, though, was a car. I was still waiting for it to arrive at the dealers from whom we were purchasing it, and the dealer was talking dolefully about delays because of the war in Korea.

  While waiting, I mailed off "Potent Stuff" to Horace Gold, and Gertrude finally decided where we would go for a vacation that year. It would be to Camp Annisquam, on the seashore, this time—at Cape Ann in Massachusetts, to be specific. Two weeks again and this time it would be in the shank of the season—last week of July and first week of August.

  We began packing on July 22 (our first anniversary in the Somer-ville apartment), and on that day my very first Doubleday statement

  and royalty check arrived. Such statements have been a semi-annual feature of my life ever since.

  12

  The two weeks at Annisquam were highly successful. We met nice people, saw pleasant shows, took various ocean and land trips to Gloucester, Rockport, Marblehead, Wingershaek Beach, and so on.

  What I remember most clearly, though, was my co-operation with the waiters who were trying to write parodies of the songs in popular musicals; parodies that would have local significance.

  They were having trouble, and knowing me to be a writer, they asked my advice. I looked over what they had done and said, "No, no, you've got to match the original lyrics, syllable by syllable, stress by stress, and rhyme by rhyme, or the music won't fit and the whole thing won't sound clever. For heaven's sake, don't try to improve on Cole Porter."

  "What do you mean?" they asked humbly.

  'Til show you," I said. "You're working with Kiss Me, Kate, so let's start with 'Wunderbar: "

  After a while, I wrote:

  Annisquam, Annisquam We've taken ocean trips But when the sea ain't calm Take the train to Annisquam.

  "Sing it!" I said.

  They did and they were delighted with the way in which the syllables slid into the music.

  They insisted I go on to the other songs and contented themselves with observation. I worked away matching syllables and keeping all the internal rhymes. I said, for instance, "Such tender slips make slender tips increase," and "Could she fill with prattle still the cattle boat to Salem," and, "We broke all the laws upon the shores of Wingershaek."

  Then I had to attend all the rehearsals to make sure that they sang the songs correctly, and I took the lead baritone part myself. What it amounted to was that I spent a major part of the vacation indoors working.

  Gertrude pointed out the folly of paying premium vacation rates and then spending the time working for the management.

  I tried to explain to her that the shoe was on the other foot; that I was enjoying myself and that I would have been dreadfully unhappy if

  I had not been permitted to do this. I would rather have written the parodies than do any of the vacation things that everyone else was doing. (When it was all over, the owners of the resort gave me a twenty-dollar rebate for my help, but I just turned it over to the waiters.)

  On July 26, Gertrude and I celebrated our eighth anniversary, and since we had made no secret that it was coming, the Annisquam management brought out a cake. Someone yelled "Speech!" and everyone was thunderstruck and perhaps a little chagrined when I promptly got up and made one. Apparently, it was customary to shout "Speech!" and equally customary for the honored couple to be entirely too bashful to oblige.

  *3

  By the time we got back to Boston, the situation in Korea was at its lowest ebb. The Americans had been forced into the southeastern corner of the country, around the port of Pusan.

  What selfishly struck me as more important, however, was that the dealer had my car. I spent all of August 7 having them put in various accessories that I wanted and signing up for insurance. On August 8, 1950, at the age of thirty, I owned my first car.

  Combine that with the fact that writing earnings kept pouring in, and I was a happy man. My share of the Unicorn Mystery publication of Pebble in the Sky came in, together with news of further anthologi-zations of this story and that. There was also a report of the sale of second serial rights to Pebble in the Sky. (I didn't even know what that meant till it was explained to me. It turned out to mean magazine publication after the book appearance. First serial rights involves magazine publication before book appearance.)

  On Wednesday, August 9, I drove my car to work for the first time and hardly got lost, just a little bit on the way back. On Friday, I tanked up with gasoline for the first time. It cost nearly 27 cents a gallon, and I was appalled at the expense. I was also aware, for the first time, of the dreadful conditions of the streets. Every bang and rattle the potholes imposed on my car were so many stabs to my vitals.

  The real test came on August 12, when, at the Boyds' invitation, we drove to their summer place. It took us 4V4 hours to get there, driving very slowly, and 3V2 hours to get back, driving more quickly. We traveled 176 miles round-trip to stay with the Boyds about three hours,

  but we weren't there to visit but to have me practice driving, and that practice I had. Des
pite all my driving lessons, it was only when I returned from the Boyds that I felt I could drive. 5

  After that, I returned the car to the dealer to hold it for me for the rest of the month because I was going to the Breadloaf Writers Conference and didn't yet dare to drive there.

  M

  The Breadloaf Writers Conference was held in conjunction with Middlebury College, in Middlebury, Vermont. It was the oldest and most prestigious of the writers' conferences and was held every year in the last half of August.

  It was run at that time by Theodore Morrison of Harvard, but among the important men of the faculty was Fletcher Pratt, and it was he who had urged me to attend.

  I arrived in Breadloaf on August 16, 1950, without Gertrude, who chose to go to New York and stay with her parents. Pratt was there, of course. Also William Sloane, a publisher who had authored two well-thought-of science-fiction novels, and Catherine Drinker Bowen, a popular historian.

  Present in addition was John Ciardi, tall, slim, with a shock of dark hair and an incredibly majestic nose that would have made it possible for him play Cyrano without makeup. He had a beautiful bass voice that was delightful to listen to. He was a poet and when he lectured on poetry there was no use in his trying to distinguish between good poetry and bad poetry. When he read poetry, it all sounded good.

  The bookstore contained copies of books by the various faculty members, and that meant it contained copies of Pebble in the Sky.

  It was at Breadloaf, I think (though just possibly at Annisquam, three weeks earlier), that someone came to me, shook my hand vigorously, and said, "Congratulations."

  "On what?" I said.

  "On keeping your name. It takes courage to insist on being called Tsaac'"

  "Not at all," I said, offended. "I like the name."

  And every time after that, this man who loved my bravery called me nothing but "Zack," a nickname I despised.

  While at Breadloaf, I got a call from Fred Pohl, who told me that