I wrote “Ideas Die Hard,” therefore, in which I explained the uselessness of trying to reach the Moon, pointing out that when astronauts did get there they would find it a false front on some sort of movie set, designed to fool human beings for some reason. It was not meant seriously, of course, but in early 1957 there was already talk of launching satellites and of making serious efforts to reach the Moon—so I took the upside-down view, as in the case with “Everest.”42

  I sent it off to Horace on April i, and he was as good as his word. A postcard reached me on April 9, with the news of an acceptance.

  18

  In those days, I was also writing a series of short science articles for Science World, a Street & Smith publication that served as a science magazine for distribution to high schools. Campbell was involved as a consultant and it was through him that I came to the attention of Patricia Lauber, its pleasant and pretty editor.

  Some of the articles I wrote were simplified and shortened versions of those I wrote for Analog; some were new. They were very easy to write, and in doing them I learned one thing about nonfiction as compared to fiction:

  In fiction, every story has to be different, no matter what. Not so in nonfiction. I could write an article for the Journal of Chemical Education, expand and popularize it for Analog, shorten and simplify it for Science World. Though it remained essentially the same article, the changes were useful and did not represent “cheating,” since each article was aimed at a different audience and had to be tailored to suit.

  It also became apparent that I could write all these different nonfiction articles much more rapidly and with less mental turmoil than I could write fiction. Then, too, although a nonfiction article could be rejected, it simply was rejected. Never did I have the long, complicated arguments for revision that I received from Campbell, or the short, brutal ones that I received from Horace Gold. As a matter of fact, the percentage of rejections was less in the case of nonfiction.

  Insensibly, I found myself increasingly drawn to nonfiction.

  19

  I was working madly on the galleys of the third edition of Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Bill Boyd was always lackluster about such things and now had the duties of acting headship of the department to fill his time. Walker was away in Ashby and confined himself to remaining in touch by way of the mails.

  The lion’s share of the work of proofreading and indexing fell on me, which was another reason I knew that the third edition would be the last. I simply would do it no more.

  The galleys were finally mailed off on April 17, 1957.

  20

  On April 11, Horace Gold called me. Again, he needed a story. He had to have one. I explained that I could not write another story just now, for I was busy with galleys, and he said, rather impatiently, “Have someone else do the galleys.”

  “Impossible,” I said, with horror. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else.”

  That ended the conversation, and I walked to my desk to resume reading the galleys—and thought: What about a robot to read the galleys?

  The idea developed rapidly and I dropped a line to Horace, telling him I would do the story after all. The next day I started it, giving it the rather felicitous title (I thought) of “Galley Slave.”

  It turned out to be thirteen thousand words long, the longest positronic robot story I had done up to that time (excluding novels), and, in my opinion, the best up to that time. I mailed it to Horace on the eighteenth and he accepted it without trouble.

  21

  My office upstairs was beginning to look more like an office.

  We ordered bookcases, simple wooden ones 2½ feet high and 3 feet wide. They were unpainted, but we had them sanded, stained, and varnished, and the man we hired for the purpose did an excellent job.43

  I then lined my attic wall with them and had a place for my reference books, for my collection of my own books, and for the bound volumes of magazine pieces and paperbacks which, by mid-1957, already numbered twenty-seven.44

  I had a large filing cabinet at the head of the stairs leading to the two rooms in the attic and eventually I got a large desk with a smooth white top, plus a small filing cabinet with twenty drawers capable of holding typewriter-size paper, and there I could store manuscripts in progress.

  My office therefore gained as its core a U-shaped structure. My desk and my small filing cabinet made up the two arms of the U, and my typewriter on its special stand (with its two folding leaves in an outstretched position) formed the crossbar. My stenographer’s swivel chair, with me on it, sat within the U, facing the typewriter. On the walls around me was my library.

  This arrangement, which took its shape in the attic room in West Newton, has been with me ever since, surviving all later moves.

  I also found a way of avoiding the inevitable loss of time that comes with waiting for the mail. I discovered that if I drove down to the branch post office they would be glad to give me my mail. I could get it when the windows opened at 8:00 a.m., sort it quickly, discard the junk, and have the live material back at home and be at work on it by 8:30 a.m.

  At first I did it only occasionally, but soon it was a regular thing with me, and my car was on the road at five minutes to eight regardless of the weather. Once when the snow was so deep that there was no question of even getting the car out of the garage, I donned rubber boots and slogged to the post office.

  22

  On April 7, 1957, I became an uncle for the first time, when Marcia gave birth to a son, whom she named Larry.

  23

  On April 24, 1957, I made one of my periodic trips to New York, and I planned to stay in a hotel room. Staying at the Blugermans’, which I usually did even when I was in New York alone, saved money, but it was hard on Mary Blugerman, and it involved a tedious subway ride to Manhattan each morning and back to Brighton Beach each evening. And I had reached the point where I could easily afford a hotel room.

  When the train pulled in to Grand Central, I happily walked to the Hotel Biltmore, just across the street, where the Fourteenth World Science Fiction convention had been held a half year before, and blithely asked for a room. I was told there were no rooms available, and I could hardly believe it. It had never occurred to me that hotels might be filled. I thought hotels had an endless supply of rooms, the way drugstores had endless supplies of toothpaste.

  Feeling foolish and most unwilling to drag out to Brighton Beach, I had a brilliant idea. I lugged my suitcase to Doubleday, walked in, and said I needed a hotel room and could they find me one?

  By heaven, they did. They got me a very pleasant room at the Hotel Westbury, on Sixty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue.

  From then on, I frequently (and, finally, always) got a hotel room when I came to New York alone. After this, however, I knew enough to make a reservation in advance.

  My first task after getting my room at the Westbury was to visit Marty Greenberg who gave me, as usual, a check for fifty dollars, with instructions to wait a week before cashing it. He then took me out to Hempstead to look at the new house he was having built for himself and his family. I couldn’t help but contrast the exuberant descriptions of the luxury he was planning, with his request that I not cash his rotten fifty-dollar check. I will not deny I felt resentful—yet what was there to be done?

  At Infinity, Larry Shaw showed me an advance copy of a review by Damon Knight of The Naked Sun. Damon said, “As science fiction it is thin, as a murder mystery it is farfetched, but as a love story it is wonderful.” He further went on to ask rhetorically, why, if I could write like this, I bothered to write science fiction.

  I wrote a letter to Infinity to the effect that I loved science fiction and would always write science fiction out of that love, regardless of how well my talents might suit me for other media.

  Yet it was during this trip that I undertook, for the first time, to do a piece of major fiction that was not science fiction.

  So far, I had written science-fiction mysteries, and I had also written one short story, “What’s in a Name?,” that was a “straight” mystery, but only minimally removed from science fiction.

  Now Isabelle Taylor of the Crime Club, Doubleday’s mystery-fiction outlet, asked me to do a mystery novel. I was tempted and agreed. Bradbury said I could do it in place of another Lucky Starr book, and I set about writing the first couple of chapters for Isabelle. She could then judge from that whether to give me a contract or not.

  24

  I had finished The World of Carbon, but Lillian McClintock thought it was far too long and could not be published at any price that was suitable for a juvenile.

  I was ready for her, since I knew for myself that it was too long. I pointed out that the first half could be printed as The World of Carbon and the second half as The World of Nitrogen. Very little would be required to heal over the split by writing an ending for the first book and a beginning for the second.

  Lillian agreed, and I was satisfied. Already I was rather proud of the number of my books, and any legitimate device that would fairly increase the number pleased me. To have two books in place of one seemed great.

  25

  We continued to fix up my attic office.

  On May 11, 1957, we ordered an air conditioner, a large one fit to do a heavy job, and it was installed on the twenty-third. It meant that from now on my attic would be suitable for work in the summer. It worked well and I never again had to hide in the basement to do my work.

  A purchase of lesser moment was that of a record player and the beginning of a collection of records. I imagined I could type and play records as “background music.” Though I stubbornly refused to admit it, it never worked. If I typed, I didn’t hear the music. If I wanted to hear the music, I would have to stop typing. Usually I typed.

  And on May 13, fifteen months after I had moved into the house, I paid the last installment on the mortgage and owned the house free and clear. Our savings at the time stood at about thirty thousand dollars, or five thousand dollars less than before we had bought the house, but it was clear that the value of the house much more than made up the difference.

  26

  On May 14, Super-Science Fiction, a new magazine, accepted my story “The Gentle Vultures,” which, at their request, I had written for them the week before at my usual fee of four cents a word.

  I began my murder mystery, too. My first title was Sit with Death. After I had written two chapters, I sent it off to Isabelle Taylor and began a new science-fiction story, whose genesis was as follows:

  During the course of the science-fiction convention the year before, I had been regaling a group of people at lunch with various funny stories of things that had happened to me in the course of my visits to New York in recent rears, and I would say, to account for the fact that I wasn’t my usual sober and steady self, “Of course, I was in New York without Gertrude.”

  Bob Mills, who was at the table, said, “Why don’t you write a story called ‘I’m in New York Without Gertrude’?”

  “Gertrude wouldn’t consider that funny,” I said.

  Mills gestured impatiently. “Don’t be so literal. Entitle it “I’m in Marsport Without Hilda.”‘

  I laughed and forgot it as a trivial joke.

  On April 25, 1957, I was lunching with Larry Shaw and mentioned, apropos of whatever the conversational topic was, that I had written every kind of science-fiction story imaginable.

  Larry said, “You’ve never written a science-fiction sex story.”

  I said, testily, “That’s because I choose not to, that’s all.”

  Larry said, “Some people think you don’t know how.”

  I have always been a sitting duck for statements like that. I made up my mind to write a science-fiction sex story, and Mills’ old title “I’m in Marsport Without Hilda” occurred to me.

  I started it on May 20, and it was my intention either to give it to Ted Sturgeon for any revision he cared to make in it and subsequent publication under his name (he had written some very skillful science-fiction sex stories), or I would publish it under a pseudonym. I was determined to keep my own name free of unnecessarily sex-riddled material.

  When I finished it and reread it, however, I found I liked it so much, and thought the sex to be so clever and, essentially, inoffensive, that I sent it in to Mills under my own name on June 5, and he bought it at once.

  27

  Isabelle Taylor agreed, on May 29, to a contract on the basis of the sample chapters I had sent her, asking for certain changes that I agreed to make, and we were in business.

  28

  On June 2, 1957, I walked into David’s room and said, “Goodness, David, you must be gaining weight. Your face looks wider.”

  Actually, it was his jaws that seemed wider. I touched one of the swellings curiously, and he said, “Ouch.”

  I tumbled back against the wall and said, “Oh, boy, you’ve got mumps.” And so he had.

  I woke up Gertrude and said, “Gertrude, you’re going to have to take care of David. He’s got the mumps and I’ve never had it.”

  I knew what happened to male adults who contracted mumps. The result is, frequently, infected, inflamed, and swollen testicles, and that is no joke indeed. Sometimes the result was sterility. Sprague de Camp had had mumps as an adult, and his story was horrifying.

  Of course, I didn’t worry about being left sterile, since I had all the children I intended ever to have—but that doesn’t matter. I wanted my testicles left in pristine condition.

  I called my mother to check with her, and she agreed that while Stanley had had the mumps, when he was seven or eight years old, I myself had never had it.

  So Gertrude loyally took charge of David and I maintained myself at the opposite end of the house as much as I could. By June 10, David was well enough to go to school, but on that day, Gertrude herself came down with the mumps. She hadn’t told me that she had never had it either. And on June 11, Robyn decided it was lonely out there in Healthyland, and she displayed swollen jaws as well.

  I was now the sole survivor, so to speak, and I could avoid my fate no longer. I had to bid my testicles a fond farewell and get to work. While I fed and cared for the two women, I kept surreptitiously feeling my cheeks for the first signs of telltale pain, but nothing ever happened.

  It occurred to me, then, that when Stanley got the mumps as a little boy, we were sleeping in the same room. I hadn’t gotten the mumps then, at least visibly, but I must have caught a subclinical case that was not intense enough to bother me but was enough to give me immunity.

  Robyn improved quickly, but on June 13, Gertrude’s mumps passed through a serious stage. In fact, she had mumps encephalitis, which made her delirious, and I had to set up a cot in the living room, keep her there, and sit by her side. The worst of it didn’t last long, and mumps encephalitis is benign and never does damage (measles encephalitis, on the other hand, is dangerous and can kill), but it was all very frightening. By June 15 she was clearly improving, and in a few more days we were all well again, with myself the only one to have escaped entirely.

  6

  New Department Head

  1

  While the mumps was ravaging our household, a crucial change was taking place at school. A new head of the department had been appointed.

  It wasn’t Bill Boyd. Bill had applied for the post and was eager to have it as a climax to his distinguished career. His hopes were low because he was convinced Keefer wouldn’t consider it for a moment, but Bill gave it the old college try just the same. He went to see Lemon, who was the head of the committee in charge of finding a new head.

  According to the story Bill told me later, Lemon advanced some trivial reasons arguing against Bill’s candidacy; then Lemon paused and said, “And then there’s Asimov!”

  Bill understood him to mean that since Bill Boyd was a friend of Isaac Asimov, he would not, as head of the department, consent to the firing of said Isaac Asimov. What Lemon wanted was some head of the department who would be indifferent to my fate and who would cooperate in the extermination; at least that was how Bill judged the situation.

  Bill didn’t say anything, however, till he was certain he had been rejected. On June 7, 1957, he was called into Keefer’s office and was told that one F. Marrott Sinex was to be the new department head.

  Bill came out very depressed, and now he told me that he expected me to be fired once the new head took over. I laughed scornfully and said that I didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure that Bill’s assessment of the situation was accurate. It might just be his own gloom over his failure speaking. But even if he were correct, that made no difference. I was quite determined not to be fired.

  I neither needed, nor even particularly wanted, the job, but I did enjoy the professorial title, and I certainly wasn’t going to allow myself to be pushed out in a disgraceful way.

  On June 18, Sinex visited the department for the first time, and I was on hand. I received calls, not only from Bill Boyd, but from many others as well, warning me he would be in. Apparently the whole school was aware that there was going to be a move to fire me, and the whole school was waiting to see my reaction. If they thought I was going to avoid the encounter, they were quite wrong. I made sure I was there.

  I met Sinex. He was a young man, only thirty-three at the time, so that he was four years younger than I was. He had a nervous smile, a loud voice, expressed himself rather disjointedly, and broke out into stentorian laughter at odd moments.45

  He seemed amiable enough at the moment. In my diary I said, “I suspend judgment.” I didn’t have to suspend it for long.