On October 17, Harry called me and talked me into agreeing to give a talk at Fall River, Massachusetts, on November 4 for $100. Actually, this wasn’t bad, for on October 19 I had to fulfill an engagement I had made to speak at Swampscott, Massachusetts, and they only paid me $25. Even with Harry’s cut, Fall River would pay me $70.

  On November 4, I went to Fall River and gave my talk to the Adams Club, a group of bankers, lawyers, and industrialists. I talked on the significance of Sputnik and it went over very well, all the more so since on the day before, the Soviets had put up Sputnik II.

  The club prided itself on its universalism, by the way. One of its officers told me proudly, “We include all religions in our membership—Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians. We even have a few Presbyterians.”

  And I kept on working. The break with science fiction was neither completely sudden nor entirely complete. I wrote an outline for a sixth Lucky Starr book, Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn, which I sent to Doubleday for its approval.

  11

  Occasionally, a ghost out of the past rises before you. On November 4, 1957, Morris Samberg visited unexpectedly just before lunch. He had been my best friend in junior high school, and I hadn’t seen him in twenty-two years. He was short, he looked old, his hair was graying and thinning. I thought uncomfortably that I must look old, too—and fat.

  12

  On November 10, 1957, I quickly dashed off a Gilbert and Sullivan parody called “The Up-to-date Sorcerer,” which was intended to be humorous. It was, in fact, my first successful humorous story (in my opinion). After some revision, I placed it with F & SF.

  Merely writing and selling the story was a relief to me. It was the first completed and sold piece of fiction since the rejection of Sit with Death (“The Ugly Little Boy” had been started earlier but I was still working on it), and this was another indication that, somehow, the heavens had not fallen.

  On November 12, as though to reinforce the turn of the tide, I received my regular paycheck with one seventh of the twenty-five hundred dollars added. Obviously, I was going to be given the money in seven equal installments through May. Keefer apparently expected me to stay that long but not (I was willing to bet) any longer.

  13

  I went by train to New York on November 13. When I visited Doubleday, Margaret Loesser agreed to send a contract for Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn.

  Brad was going to try an experiment. Since he did not expect Earth Is Room Enough to do well (collections of unrelated short stories don’t), he thought he would risk putting it out as a trade edition and as a Science Fiction Book Club selection simultaneously.

  Doubleday had been running the Science Fiction Book Club since 1952, and their own science-fiction books were often chosen as selections (though not invariably, for the book club was an independent unit). Its first selection had, in fact, been The Currents of Space.

  Generally, there was a wait of some time for the selection, since the book-club editions were lower priced and there was no use killing the sales of the higher-priced trade edition. There was no way of telling how much damage was really done, however, unless one took the chance of experimenting with some particular book and seeing how much the regular sales fell off with simultaneous book-club selection.

  The experiment was conducted on Earth Is Room Enough with, of course, my permission, for I was curious, too.

  To my surprise, and even more to Brad’s, Earth Is Room Enough sold as well in trade editions as my other books did, despite the simultaneous availability of the book-club edition.

  This led to a small difference of opinion at a meeting of writers soon after. Cyril Kornbluth attacked Doubleday bitterly, charging them with damaging authors’ sales by throwing books into the book-club hopper too soon. I never like to hear Doubleday criticized in my presence, so I rose to say that that could not be so, for Earth Is Room Enough was put into simultaneous book-club edition and sold the usual amount in trade. My statement was not persuasive; I was simply tabbed a company man.

  14

  Anticipating Keefer’s next move, I was still consulting various high officials in Boston University. Some of them seemed to think I didn’t have tenure. I was shown a book representing the constitution, so to speak, of the university, and it demonstrated that, indeed, I did not fulfill the requirements.

  I pointed out that the book was a 1957 edition. I pointed out that there was a 1955 edition that stated associate professorship to be sufficient for tenure if I had been on the faculty a certain length of time, and that under that rule I qualified for tenure. I said I would not allow any ex post facto ruling to stand.

  It turned out, however, to be impossible to get a copy of that 1955 edition—which alone convinced me that I was right. Had I been wrong, I was sure they would have produced it without trouble in order to prove I was.

  15

  We had been in the house for nearly two years, and the living room was still largely empty and lacked even a rug. Neither Gertrude nor I could decide on the furnishings, and we finally obtained a decorator who worked on the matter for months, and with whom we spent endless hours of uncertainty deciding on wallpaper, drapes, slipcovers, carpeting, and furniture.

  Eventually, it was done—though at considerable expense. I always thought that the interior decorator was more worn out over the whole thing than we were.

  16

  I finished “The Ugly Little Boy” on December 2, 1957, and sent it to Larry Shaw, who accepted it promptly. Unfortunately, what I didn’t know was that Infinity, which had been coming out for two years now, was on its last legs. They might accept a story, but they could not pay for it. I kept waiting uselessly; the check never came.

  I had even less luck with Sit with Death, which I had now renamed A Whiff of Death. I sent it to several publishers of mystery novels, such as Harper and William Morrow, and it kept coming back. Apparently, Doubleday’s decision as to its unworthiness was part of a general notion.

  That bothered me, for I was convinced the murder mystery was a good one. Of course, the setting of a graduate chemistry department was an esoteric one,64 but that should have been a point in the book’s favor.

  I discovered, eventually, that the chief flaw in the book from the standpoint of the publishers was the inadequacy of the motive for the murder. It involved a Ph.D. student faking results, and that seemed a tiny sin to most editorial readers.

  When I gave fellow professors an inkling of the plot, however, they shuddered and turned away from me, obviously suspecting some deep-seated perverse element in my nature even to imagine so heinous a crime. Too little for one group of people, too much for another!

  Oh well, the February 1958 If appeared with “The Feeling of Power,”65 and the February 1958 F & SF had my poem “I Just Make Them Up, See!,”66 which they had rushed into print quickly. The February 1958 Future had a short cautionary tale of mine called “Silly Asses,”67 and the March 1958 Venture had my second science column.

  On December 14, 1957, I began Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn.

  8

  Job at Stake

  1

  What I was waiting for was another confrontation with Keefer—the third round. He had asked to see me. On December 18 I went to his office, and Sinex was there.

  I did not make a record of the proceedings. In my diary I merely say, “I spoke fluently, forcibly, and eloquently,” but it has only been a matter of decades since then. There’s no danger of my having forgotten the details. Essentially, here’s how it went:

  Keefer said that the school was dissatisfied (meaning he was dissatisfied, of course, and even more so, I suspect, that Lemon was dissatisfied) with the fact that I had given up my research to turn to science writing, and that I seemed unwilling to alter this phase of my activities.

  I said, “Dr. Keefer, I was hired to teach, and I do teach, and I think that teaching is the most important, and the primary task of a professor at a School of Medicine. I had this out with Dean Faulkner two years ago and he ended by agreeing with me. This is the ninth year in which I have carried a full teaching load. I have told Dr. Soutter and I am telling you now that I am the best teacher in the school, and I do not shirk my duties in that respect at all.

  “As for what I do when I do not teach, that is entirely my business. The school has a right to ask that what I do be scholarly in nature and that it redound to the credit of the school. I would fulfill these requirements by doing research, and I would fulfill them equally well by science writing, providing my talent in other directions were equal.

  “However,” I went on, “as a researcher, I can do a creditable job, but I am merely adequate—no more. As a science writer, on the other hand, I am one of the best in the world, and I intend to become the best. I am perhaps B− as a researcher, but I am A+ as a science writer.

  “The school can well afford to have on its faculty the best science writer in the world. Much publicity will accrue to the school, and all of it will be good. And” (but here I had a hard job to control my anger and speak distinctly) “if there is one thing that Boston University School of Medicine does not need, it is one more merely adequate researcher.”

  Both Keefer and Sinex stirred at this. They knew that what I was saying was true—that Boston University School of Medicine did not exactly shine like a beacon in the research heavens. Still, to have me say so, however indirectly, was a clear stab in the rear end for them. I didn’t expect to endear myself to them with that statement, but I didn’t intend to win out through endearment. I intended to win out by force of being in the right.

  Keefer said, after a pause, speaking as softly and icily as ever, “Nevertheless, the school cannot afford to pay a science writer.”

  “Then don’t pay me,” I said promptly. “You don’t think I need your sixty-five hundred dollars a year, do you? However, if I don’t get paid, I don’t teach, and you lose your best teacher. There are others here who get two or three times what I do and don’t teach one half or one third as well. If you feel you can afford them and not me, you will have to live with that as an example of the worth of your administrative judgment.”

  “Very well,” he said, “I think I can live with it. I will arrange to have your appointment ended as of June 30.”

  “No, sir,” I said, hotly, “you will not. I said you needn’t pay me, and I won’t take any money from you after June 30. However, my appointment I keep, because I have tenure.”

  “That is a mistake. You do not have tenure.”

  “You are mistaken, I do. By the rules in force in 1955, when I was promoted to associate professor, that rank automatically entailed tenure. Show me the book of rules for that year and I’ll show you the paragraph. And I assure you that if you try to fire me, I will carry it to higher and higher authorities endlessly.”

  That was where we stood when I left.

  I was more isolated than ever now, for the news was out that I was fired and was going to make a fuss over it, and everyone was anxious to stand out of the line of the cannonade. Sinex went out of his way to cajole Boyd, who let himself be cajoled, and I had only Elizabeth Moyer to depend on. I took to finding occasion to visit her office nearly every day.

  There was now nothing to do but wait. I knew that I could not save my salary, but I didn’t particularly want to. Losing the salary meant being relieved of all school duties and that, in turn, meant writing more and earning more so that my financial situation would actually be improved by the loss (or so I told myself).

  The question was: Would my appointment be renewed without salary? If it was, I remained an associate professor, perhaps indefinitely, and I would have won. If it wasn’t—well, I didn’t like to think of what I would then be forced to do. I had made threats in the heat of anger that I couldn’t walk away from without humiliation.

  2

  The year 1957, ending in a blaze of unprecedented fireworks for me, was nevertheless a highly satisfactory one from the literary standpoint. In that year I had published five books, a record number. They were:

  20. The Naked Sun (Doubleday)

  21. Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (Doubleday)

  22. Building Blocks of the Universe (Abelard-Schuman)

  23. Earth Is Room Enough (Doubleday)

  24. Only a Trillion (Abelard-Schuman)

  Only a Trillion was my collection of nonfiction essays, taken mostly from Astounding.

  Actually, I ought to have included the third edition of Biochemistry and Human Metabolism as a sixth book, but I did not, and that’s the way it stands.

  As to my writing earnings (counting the portion of the money paid me out of my grant for the writing I was doing on The Living River), those came to just a hair over sixteen thousand dollars. That was some six hundred dollars less than the previous year’s record mark, but in 1957 I had made no magazine sale comparable to that of The Naked Sun. That I could manage to hold nearly even despite that absence was a remarkably good sign and it bolstered my self-confidence for the fight ahead with Keefer.

  My school earnings of sixty-five hundred dollars were far less in amount, for the sixth successive year, than my writing earnings were, and that, too, was a source of self-confidence. My total income in 1957, as in 1956, came to over twenty-three thousand dollars.

  3

  My thirty-eighth birthday, on January 2, 1958, passed almost unnoticed. What I did notice was that, literarily, things continued to look well as the new year opened—and that was important to me at this time.

  On December 26, 1957, I had had lunch at Locke-Ober’s with Austin Olney of Houghton Mifflin. Austin asked me to do a juvenile science book on mathematics, and I agreed at once. I had no contract with Abelard-Schuman that forbade me to publish science books for other firms and, as I explained before, I was disenchanted with Abelard-Schuman.

  However, I still remembered my article “Names! Names! Names!,” which Abelard-Schuman had rejected for use in Only a Trillion. They could scarcely object if I used the article they rejected as the basis for a book with another firm. Serve them right, in fact.

  I therefore pointed out to Austin that while I would do the book on math, I would also like to do a book on the derivation of scientific words, including the names of the elements, and he agreed. Now I had two new books in prospect, for a new publisher—and one in Boston, too, whom I could see with no trouble any time I wanted to, and with a new editor, who impressed me as one of the nicest persons I had ever met.

  I started work on the derivation book, which I called Words of Science at once, and by year’s end I had a sample batch of ten derivations, which I sent to Austin for consideration.

  By January 24, 1958, it was official. I called Austin and he told me that a contract for Words of Science was in the works and would be reaching me soon.

  Meanwhile, on January 12, 1958, I had driven to New York and the next day delivered what I had done of The Living River to Abelard-Schuman.

  I also delivered nine stories to Brad, with the idea of preparing another collection, to be called Nine Tomorrows. In view of how well I had done with Earth Is Room Enough, he was amenable—another book in view and one that cost me no trouble.

  And on January 23, 1958, my first Doubleday statement of the year had come in, and it was for forty-eight hundred dollars, a new record for a single check—three quarters as large, in itself, as my entire annual salary from the school.

  It all bucked me up tremendously, and my air at school was one of complete calm and self-confidence.

  In fact, I began to be told by those of my fellow faculty members who stopped to talk to me if they thought there was no one around to see them, that they admired me greatly for the fight I was putting up. Some of them actually said that if Keefer got away with it in my case, none of the rest of them would be safe, so that it was important for me to make the fight on their behalf as well as on my own.

  I might have asked them, then, why they did not back me up openly and noisily in that case. I knew the answer, though. They had wives, they had children—

  So when one of them made some whispered comment on how brave I was, I said,

  “Brave? I’m not brave. There’s just nothing they can do to me no matter how I fight them. I’ve got academic freedom. Do you know what the proper definition of academic freedom is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s two words long. Academic freedom is ‘outside income.’ When a professor has an adequate outside income, he can tell the administration to go to hell, and that’s what I’m doing. But there’s no bravery to it.”

  Despite that, my reputation for “guts” grew, and I began to be conscious of admiration, from a distance.

  I was satisfied. Public opinion was building up in my favor, and I felt that Keefer would have trouble handling it, even if it showed itself only cautiously.

  4

  In the course of my January visit to New York, by the way, I did something I had been dreaming of for sixteen years. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, which my father had bought just before I left for Philadelphia, was still in the parental apartment, and of course he never had occasion to use it.

  I said, “Well then, Pappa, I have a house now and I have room for it. Let me have it and I’ll pay you for it.”