Astounding

by Alec Nevala-Lee

  His stories for Unknown were much more diverting. The Ultimate Adventure had established the basic formula, which was driven by his fascination with the British explorer, spy, and scholar Sir Richard Francis Burton, who came closer than anyone else in history to his vision of himself, and whom he often mentioned by name. Campbell encouraged his strengths: “I’m convinced that you do like fantasy, enjoy it, and have a greater gift for fantasy than for almost any other type. . . . I’m reserving The Arabian Nights to you entirely.”

  There were occasional hints of things to come. Hubbard’s alter ego, René Lafayette, appeared in a pair of stories in the role of a psychiatrist. “One Was Stubborn” described a cult leader who plans to rule the world by convincing his followers that it exists only in the brain, vaguely anticipating its author’s later career, and in The Indigestible Triton, he echoed a growing interest of Campbell’s: “The fact that psychiatry has succeeded in healing but a small percentage of the known ills of mind rather indicates that the subject is not, as yet, ready for its place among the sciences.”

  At times Hubbard grew tired of Campbell. In an essay titled “How to Drive a Writer Crazy,” he listed the ways in which an editor could infuriate his authors: “When he starts to outline a story, immediately give him several stories just like it to read and tell him three other plots. . . . By showing his vast knowledge of a field, an editor can almost always frighten a writer into mental paralysis, especially on subjects where nothing is known anyway.” But they remained close. In 1939, the Campbells invited Hubbard to Thanksgiving, and he was fond of Doña, who “kept things smooth” at the house and could make him bray with laughter.

  Hubbard’s stories appealed to such fans as Asimov and Ray Bradbury, but most were forgettable. The exceptions were Death’s Deputy, perhaps his best story, which came out of conversations with Campbell about “a man who officiates, all unwillingly, for the god of destruction”; Final Blackout, the postnuclear war novel that had impressed Heinlein; and Fear, a work of straight horror that had been conceived over grilled steaks at the editor’s house. Bradbury called this last story a “landmark novel in my life,” and he was so taken by it that he privately recorded it as a play.

  These three novels, which came out within six months of one another, benefited from a slight degree of extra attention. Hubbard’s output was slowing, in part because he was seeking new outlets for his talents. Unlike Heinlein, he didn’t see the pulps as an educational tool—Campbell was still in charge, and the stories weren’t being read by the audience that he wanted to reach. Hubbard had a larger stage in mind, writing to the War Department on the day that hostilities broke out in Europe, “I wish to offer my services to the government in whatever capacity they might be of the greatest use.” The proposal went unacknowledged.

  He was longing to break out of his confines, and his attention turned to the Explorers Club, a society on East Seventieth Street founded to advance the cause of exploration. Hubbard, who wanted to be recognized as an explorer, was proposed for membership in December 1939, on the strength of his unremarkable excursions to the Caribbean and Puerto Rico. The following February he was accepted, and it remained a source of pride for the rest of his life.

  In 1940, he began preparing for an expedition on which he would fly the club’s flag for the first time, sailing the Magician, which he had bought with the advance from Buckskin Brigades, from Washington to Alaska. The voyage was supposedly intended to update navigational guides and test out new models of radio and camera gear, and Hubbard used it as an excuse to outfit his boat for free, writing letters to manufacturers on a special letterhead.

  It may also have been one last attempt to save his relationship with Polly. Around this time, Hubbard’s son, who was known as Nibs, was awakened one night by screaming. He was six years old. Peeking into his parents’ room, he saw his father seated on his mother in their bed with a twisted coat hanger in his hands. Nibs went back to sleep, and the next day, he found a bloodstained sheet in the trash. Hubbard later said that Polly had undergone “five abortions” during their marriage.

  In July, after submitting a few stories to Campbell and leaving their children with his aunt, Hubbard sailed out of Yukon Harbor with Polly, who was described in subsequent accounts of the voyage as “a deckhand.” On the second day their engine failed in a heavy fog, and it conked out again off the coast of British Columbia. At last, on August 30, they made it to Ketchikan, a fishing community on the Alaska Panhandle. Their crankshaft was broken. Hubbard wrote in his log, “I anchored and lashed up. The town, despite rain, was awake. Ketchikan we have won. We arrived in Alaska. And maybe tomorrow we will even go ashore.”

  They were stranded there for months. Hubbard didn’t have the money to fix the Magician, so he wrote letters instead to his friends, including Campbell, and mailed film and navigational notes to the Hydrographic Office in Washington, D.C. He befriended the owner of the local radio station, where he became a regular presence on the air, sharing tall tales of his adventures. One was an encounter with a swimming brown bear that he had allegedly lassoed at sea—it clawed its way on board, forcing Hubbard to flee into the cabin, and after the boat beached itself, it devoured the salmon in the hold and lumbered off.

  As soon as the boat was repaired, they left Ketchikan, returning home shortly before Christmas. Hubbard, characteristically, spun it into the sort of colorful story that made him seem larger than life. Campbell ran an update on his travels in Unknown, stating that the author had suffered “a slight case of shipwreck,” and he wrote to Swisher, “Ron, I think, is in for some kidding when he comes east again.” On his return to New York, he got a phone call that began, “Cap’n, do you like to wrassle with bears?” And at the next war game, Clark, Pratt, and de Camp sang a satirical song in his honor—but it was the kind of affectionate ribbing that he enjoyed.

  Hubbard went back to work. A few stories had appeared in his absence, notably the metafictional Typewriter in the Sky, and he connected with writers, including Pohl, whom he struck as a flamboyant character who seized the attention of everyone within earshot. Other distractions were less welcome. His most serious affair in New York had been with a woman named Helen, who cheated on him as well. When he found out about it, shortly after his return from Alaska, he almost took violent action: “I waited on the stairway with a gun, just for a moment. Then I said they are flies. I realized who and what I was and left.”

  In any case, his mind was elsewhere. Hubbard was convinced that the Japanese would attack sooner or later, and he still hoped to get into the Navy, soliciting recommendations from anyone he could find. When a state representative gave him a blank page of stationery and told him to write it himself, he obliged with a letter that began, “This will introduce one of the most brilliant men I have ever known.” Campbell wrote on his behalf to Commander Lucius C. Dunn, noting that Hubbard produced good stories on deadline and concluding, “In personal relationships, I have the highest opinion of him as a thoroughly American gentleman.”

  When Hubbard took the medical exam for the Naval Reserve, however, he failed it—his eyes, which had kept him out of Annapolis, were just as bad as before. Shortly thereafter, President Roosevelt declared a state of national emergency in response to the rise of the Nazis, and the results of the vision test were waived. Hubbard was commissioned as a lieutenant, junior grade, in July 1941. On a visit to Campbell’s office, he ran into Doña, who described him as delighted by his blue-and-gold uniform: “He was very beautiful and pleased with L. Ron.”

  Hubbard joined a public relations division in New York, where he worked on recruiting and pitched ideas for magazine articles, none of which was published. After a short trip to the Hydrographic Office in Washington, D.C., to annotate his pictures from Alaska, he returned to the city, where he began training at the headquarters of the Third Naval District. From there, he expected to head to the Philippines, where he would be ready for the war that he knew was coming.

  BY THE TIME HUBBARD RETU
RNED FROM ALASKA, THERE WAS NO DOUBT THAT HE RANKED AMONG the most valued authors in Campbell’s circle. The editor wrote to Heinlein, “There are about five consistent, adult-material science fiction writers in the business: de Camp, Heinlein, Hubbard, van Vogt, and, if he’ll only work at it a little, del Rey.” Asimov’s name was notably absent, and Campbell’s attitude toward his most junior writer was summed up in the faint praise he offered in the magazine: “Asimov is one of those authors who has to work long and hard to get his story, but is apt to have something worthwhile when he comes up for air.”

  Asimov bore only a passing resemblance to many of the authors developed by Campbell, who felt that most writers didn’t “work their way up,” and he didn’t see himself as a competent man. He just wanted to be in the magazine—but even that often seemed out of reach. After “Trends,” the editor bounced his next two stories, holding on to the second, “Pilgrimage,” for a whole month. Asimov later learned that Campbell had been waiting on Heinlein’s “If This Goes On—,” because he didn’t want to publish two works with religious themes too closely together, and when one turned out to be a masterpiece, he sent the other back.

  After another round of rejections, Asimov wrote nothing for three months, depressed by the war and by troubles at school. In July 1939, Columbia had turned down his application for graduate study, which lacked a required course in physical chemistry. When he tried to sign up anyway, the department head, the Nobel laureate Harold Urey, almost threw him out of the building. Asimov finally found a loophole that allowed him to register, and he quietly applied to medical schools on the side, although he had doubts about whether he even wanted to become a doctor.

  He remained close to the Futurians, but their lives were diverging. Most of his friends were unemployed and trying unsuccessfully to break into the magazines, and several had moved into an apartment on Bedford Avenue that became known as the Ivory Tower. The Futurians also began hanging around the candy store, and his mother grew fond of Pohl, who encouraged Asimov by buying some of the stories that Campbell had rejected.

  In December, Asimov came up with a premise in which Earth, after developing spaceflight, is approached for membership in the Galactic Federation but refuses. Unexpectedly, Campbell loved it. His casual assumption that Europeans had an advantage over other races led to stories in which humans were shown to be superior to aliens, and Asimov’s idea fit perfectly into that theme.

  On January 4, 1940, Asimov delivered “Homo Sol.” At the office, he met three writers for the first time—Sturgeon, Willy Ley, and Hubbard. He was surprised by Hubbard’s impressive appearance. Most of Hubbard’s fiction was about small, weak men, and Asimov blurted out, “You don’t look at all like your stories.”

  Hubbard seemed amused by the younger author. “Why? How are my stories?”

  “Oh, they’re great,” Asimov said. Everybody laughed as he awkwardly clarified that he didn’t mean that Hubbard wasn’t great, too, and he left feeling embarrassed by the encounter.

  Campbell eventually took “Homo Sol,” but Asimov had trouble following up. A sequel lacked the theme of human excellence, and the editor didn’t buy it. In a letter to the magazine, Asimov wrote, “I can detect that fiendish look that comes over editor Campbell’s face when about to give me his opinion of the tripe I cook and call—heh, heh—stories.” Yet it clearly bothered him. When Campbell spoke highly of another writer’s work, Asimov’s face fell, prompting the editor to say gently, “Do you think, Asimov, that because I like his stories, I like yours any less?”

  Asimov was also displeased by the version of “Homo Sol” that appeared in the magazine. Campbell had inserted a new speech and an ending that he didn’t like, and Asimov had reluctantly added a section that contrasted the differing reactions of Africans, Asians, and Europeans, in a sign of the editor’s interest in mass psychology. It was a theme that was figuring prominently in Astounding. In his note for “If This Goes On—,” Campbell had written:

  Robert Heinlein . . . presents a civilization in which mob psychology and propaganda have become sciences. They aren’t, yet. . . . Psychology isn’t a science, so long as a trained psychologist does—and must—say “there’s no telling how an individual man will react to a given stimulus.” Properly developed, psychology could determine that.

  Campbell—who consulted a psychologist about his recurrent panic attacks—was eager to explore the subject. Developments in atomic energy had made it impossible to write about the invention of nuclear power ever again, and a new kind of discovery story was needed. Pulling back from galactic expanses, he focused on the mind and on society, and readers noticed. Toward the end of 1940, a fan named Lynn Bridges wrote in a prescient letter:

  The Astounding Science Fiction of the past year has brought forth a new type of story, best described, perhaps, as “sociological” science fiction. . . . Both Asimov [in “Homo Sol”] and Heinlein treat psychology as an exact science, usable in formulas, certain in results. I feel called upon to protest. Its very nature prevents psychology from achieving the exactness of mathematics.

  Bridges went on to express concern that a true science of psychology would mark an end to human progress, to which Campbell replied, “Psychology could improve a lot, though, without becoming dangerously oppressive!”

  “Homo Sol” was an early example of Campbell’s fondness for incorporating gratuitous psychological elements into stories, and Asimov smarted under it. Campbell had also added a few lines on Earth’s ability to make war, giving it a militaristic tone that Asimov thought was poorly timed. The whole experience left a bad taste in his mouth, and he decided to avoid aliens entirely—a choice that would have important consequences for his career.

  Later that summer, Asimov went to the beach for the first time, and he was about to reach a milestone as a writer as well. “Robbie,” which Pohl had bought for Super Science Stories, was his personal favorite of all his works, and he realized that writing about robots would neatly sidestep the problem of humans and aliens. Recalling Campbell’s interest in religious themes, he pitched a story about a robot who refused to believe that he had been created by human beings. Campbell was enthusiastic, and as Asimov left, the editor said, “Remember, I want to see that story.”

  Asimov felt the pressure, and it took him four tries to find the right opening. When he confessed his problems, Campbell offered some useful advice: “Asimov, when you have trouble with the beginning of the story, that is because you are starting in the wrong place, and almost certainly too soon. Pick out a later point in the story and begin again.” It was a rule that the editor had learned firsthand—Campbell had ruthlessly cut the original openings from many of his own stories—and it did the trick. When Asimov submitted “Reason,” with a pair of characters inspired by Campbell’s Penton and Blake, he received an acceptance check within a week.

  Another turning point was just around the corner. On December 23, Asimov proposed a sequel about a robot that could read minds. Campbell liked it, and after they had tossed the idea back and forth, the editor said, “Look, Asimov, in working this out, you have to realize that there are three rules that robots have to follow. In the first place, they can’t do any harm to human beings; in the second place, they have to obey orders without doing harm; in the third, they have to protect themselves, without doing harm or proving disobedient.”

  The result, after some refinement, would become known as Three Laws of Robotics, and their impact would be felt endlessly in Asimov’s fiction, in stories by other writers, and in the fields of robotics—a word that Asimov coined without realizing it—and artificial intelligence. When Asimov later tried to give credit to Campbell, the editor replied, “No, Asimov, I picked them out of your stories and your discussions. You didn’t state them explicitly, but they were there.” Asimov thought that he was just being polite, and in fact, only a rudimentary version of the First Law was visible in any of the earlier stories.

  They also reflected Campbell’s fascination with the mi
nd. The editor later wrote that the laws were “the basic desires of a small child,” and they foreshadowed his subsequent efforts to define the rules of human behavior. Asimov—who compared them to the principles of “a good many of the world’s ethical systems”—was interested in this problem as well. In his story “The Imaginary,” he evoked the equations of a “mathematical psychology,” and he expressed hope in a letter to the magazine that it might result in fewer Hitlers and more Einsteins. Campbell responded, “Psychology isn’t an exact science—but it can be.”

  Asimov’s robot stories “Reason” and “Liar!”—the latter of which featured the debut of the robopsychologist Dr. Susan Calvin—appeared in successive issues, establishing the series in the eyes of readers. Campbell cautioned him against becoming tied down to a formula, however, and when Asimov came to visit on March 17, 1941, the editor wanted to discuss an idea of his own. Campbell read him a line from an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!”

  He set the book aside. “What do you think would happen, Asimov, if men were to see the stars for the first time in a thousand years?”

  Asimov—who never read the essay himself and tried unsuccessfully to find it later—replied lamely, “I don’t know.”

  “I think they would go mad,” Campbell said. “I want you to write a story about that.”

  It was the second plot that the editor had pitched on the theme of men going mad, after “Blowups Happen,” and it emerged directly from his interest in psychology. Campbell had never entrusted him with an idea before—Asimov wasn’t sure if the editor had been saving it for him in particular, or if he just happened to be the first author who came into the office that day—and it felt like a test. For now, they brainstormed reasons why the stars might not be visible at other times, and the editor closed by saying, “Go home and write the story.”