While I was there, Horace showed me an advance copy of a science-fiction magazine called Imagination, in which I had never appeared and to which I had never submitted, even though some thirty issues had already been published.

  Imagination had a reviewer named Henry Bott, whom I had never met and of whom I knew nothing except for his reviews. Bott didn’t like my books. In fact, he hated them, and he seemed at a loss for words to explain how much he hated them and how little he thought of me as a writer.

  Some months before he had reviewed Second Foundation and had done it with sufficient snide cruelty to infuriate me. I do not, at any time, accept criticism of my stories with noticeable grace; but had I been a saint, his snottiness would have broken through the barriers.

  Nevertheless, I managed to suppress my anger. It seemed to me that what Bott disliked about Second Foundation was its Galactic Empire vistas, which were to be found in all my books up to that time except for I, Robot.

  Well, this was a legitimate dislike and there were others who disliked it, too, although others expressed themselves with far greater decency. Anthony Boucher, editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction, didn’t like the Foundation series, for instance, and the science-fiction writer George O. Smith, in his review of The Currents of Space, said, in urging me to adopt a narrower background, “Come back, Isaac, all is forgiven.”

  That was one reason I had written The Caves of Steel as I did. In The Caves of Steel I did not wander all over the Galaxy or across the generations. The Caves of Steel had only one arena of action, New York City, and that action covered a period of exactly sixty hours. It was an excellent example of a near-approach to the Aristotelian unities.

  It seemed to me that even Bott would like The Caves of Steel. That seemed all the more likely because ever since publication of the book the comments and reviews had been uniformly favorable.

  Well, then, when Horace handed me the new Imagination, it was to show me Bott’s review of The Caves of Steel. I could scarcely believe my eyes. It was even more violently and unnecessarily insulting than his review of Second Foundation had been. It was, in fact, a deliberate baiting of me. He even remarked that I had once again wandered all over the Galaxy, and that made it clear to me that he hadn’t bothered to waste his time reading the book—or even the flap copy.

  I was almost out of my mind with fury and for nights afterward I stayed awake writing letters in my mind to this Bott. It was all I could do to hold onto enough sanity to realize that it would be useless and even counterproductive to do so. The only sensible action was to ignore him as beneath contempt.

  As for Gold, he rejected “A Hundred Million Dreams at Once” the next day.

  5

  I had dinner with the Ballantines that next day, too. They were very kind to me, as they always were, but I got the impression they weren’t doing as well as they had hoped to be doing. I listened with sympathy, but couldn’t help think of the time, three years before, when Fred Pohl had tried to persuade me to ditch Doubleday for Ballantine.

  6

  I had by now published five articles in the Journal of Chemical Education. All were trivial, but amusing. The fifth was entitled “Potentialities of Protein Isomerism,” and it appeared in the March 1954 issue of the magazine. It dealt with the number of possible ways in which the amino acids in various protein molecules could be lined up. The possibilities were absolutely flabbergasting, since the 539 amino acids in the horse hemoglobin molecule could be arranged in a number of different ways equal to a 4 followed by 619 zeroes.

  It occurred to me that this was amazing enough to be of science-fictional interest, and, after all, the JCE did not pay for an article, while Astounding would.

  I therefore wrote up my protein isomerism article in an entirely different style and shape, made it 5,000 words long, entitled it “Hemoglobin and the Universe,” and sent it off to Campbell on July 19, 1954. He accepted it and paid me $150 for it.

  My thiotimoline articles were fiction pieces written in nonfiction style. “Hemoglobin and the Universe” was the first true nonfiction article I had ever sold to a science-fiction magazine.

  It excited me enormously. Writing nonfiction for the science-fiction audience meant I did not have to keep either my science or my vocabulary to the early teen-age level, as in The Chemicals of Life, nor did I have to adopt the stylized turgidity of a textbook. In “Hemoglobin and the Universe” I wrote about science in a friendly, bouncy way, and I could tell at once I had come home. That was the way I wanted to write nonfiction, and from then on I sought out every possible opportunity to do so. Not only friendly and bouncy but, even more so, personal.

  7

  Bott wasn’t the only source of overwhelming irritation for me at this time. On July 27, 1954, I picked up the August 1954 Popular Science because a neighbor had called it to my attention. It contained an article on science fiction by the well-known science writer John Lear.

  I read it with a certain amount of amused contempt, since Lear was apparently a holdover from the Gernsback era and wanted science-fiction stories to contain more didactic science.

  My amusement came to a sudden end when, to show how poor contemporary science-fiction stories were, he quoted a recent one-paragraph review of a science-fiction novel in the New York Times and said, “What can the author of this novel possibly know of the scientific method?”1

  Only a fool would judge the quality of a novel on the basis of a one-paragraph review, and I was quite ready to dismiss Lear as a fool and would have, except for the fact that the review happened to be of The Caves of Steel and it was me whom he was accusing of an ignorance of the scientific method.

  I was too fresh from my anger over Bott to be willing to take this lying down. I went home and wrote a letter to Lear in care of Popular Science. It was angry and insulting and, after I read it, I tore it up. I often do this when I am impelled by emotion to write an angry and insulting letter. I write it to get it out of my system, place it in an envelope, and put a stamp on it to show that I am seriously intending to mail it. I then tear it up and write a far milder and more reasonable letter.

  This time, in the case of Lear, it didn’t work. Having written the letter and torn it up, I found that when I wrote the second it was even angrier and more insulting than the first. I therefore gave up and mailed the second letter.

  I did not get an answer.

  I eventually visited the offices of Popular Science during a New York visit in order to find out if the letter had indeed been forwarded, and I told the editor, Volta Toney, exactly what I thought of the article. I did it very eloquently, too. Mr. Torrey was conciliatory and assured me he had forwarded the letter.

  But I never got an answer.

  To this day I have never met John Lear. I have read his science writing on occasion and always admire it. He knows science and he can write about science (what’s true is true), but I still long to tell him to his face that he is a jackass.

  8

  Since “The Evitable Conflict,” I had not written a positronic robot short story, just as since “—And Now You Don’t” I had not written a Foundation story. It was as though the publication of I, Robot and the Foundation books had frozen both series and had brought them to an end.

  In the case of the Foundation series, that was so, but not in the case of the positronic robots. There, the logjam broke on July 18, 1954, after a five-year hiatus, and I began “Risk,” a positronic robot story that was the sequel of “Little Lost Robot.” “Risk” dealt with the discovery of a method of interstellar travel and was the only robot story I ever wrote in which no robot has a speaking part.

  I mailed it to Campbell on August 3, and he wanted a fairly extensive revision, with which request I complied, so that I eventually sold it to him on September 13.

  Since then I have continued to write robot stories now and then. In fact, of all my science-fiction shorts, I enjoy my robot stories most. I almost feel as though I have the patent on the robots. When other writers produce robot stories in which the robots follow the Three Laws (though no one is allowed to quote them except myself), I feel benign about it. When, however, some other writer dares have his robots defy and disobey the Three Laws, I can’t help but feel it is a case of patent infringement.

  9

  At just about this time, I wrote my most important scientific paper, one that, all by itself, justifies my scientific career.

  Despite my sale of “Hemoglobin and the Universe,” I did not totally abandon the JCE, for which I wrote another small paper, entitled “The Radioactivity of the Human Body.”

  In it, I discussed the radioactive atoms that occurred naturally in the human body and pointed out that by far the most important of these and the one that was absolutely bound to have crucial effects upon the body was carbon-14.

  As far as I knew at the time, this was the first occasion on which anyone had pointed out the importance of carbon-14 in this respect. It was an original idea of mine, although I believe Willard Libby, the Nobel Prize-winning specialist in carbon-14, may have had the idea at the same time.

  I sent off the article on August 13, 1954, and it was published in the February 1955 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education.

  Nearly four years later, Linus Pauling published a paper in the November 14, 1958, Science that discussed the dangers of carbon-14 in a careful and systematic way.

  I’m sure Pauling’s article played its part in the eventual agreement on the part of the three chief nuclear powers to suspend atmospheric testing, for Pauling was one of the most prominent and influential critics of such tests, and he used the production of carbon-14 in such tests as one of its chief long-term dangers.

  I do not in any way want to dispute priorities with Pauling. I merely had an idea, which I did not develop. Pauling developed it thoroughly on the basis of the work done by Libby.

  Still, I did work up the courage to send Pauling a reprint of my JCE article by way of a mutual friend, carefully stating that I was not disputing priorities.

  Pauling was kind enough to send me the following letter, dated February 11, 1959:

  Dear Professor Asimov:

  I am pleased that Mr. William Kaufmann should have sent on to me the copy of your carbon-14 paper that appeared in the Journal of Chemical Education four years ago. I now remember that I had read that paper when it appeared (I always read the Journal of Chemical Education) but I had forgotten about it, except that without doubt the principal argument remained in my mind. I am sorry that I did not mention it in the carbon-14 paper that I published recently, a copy of which is enclosed.

  Sincerely yours,

  s/ Linus Pauling /s

  I don’t want to arrogate to myself too much importance, of course, but I think it is fair to say that I may indeed have influenced Professor Pauling, and that through him I therefore played a very small part in bringing about the nuclear-test ban—and I’m delighted.

  10

  In August, I received an invitation to write an article for Peon, a fan magazine. I receive invitations of this sort often; so does every other science-fiction writer. Fan magazines are produced by eager fans and exist, literally, in the hundreds. All but a very few are evanescent and exist only a few issues before the time and the costs become insupportable.

  I have no theoretical objection to writing an occasional piece for love, but I have always steered clear of the fan magazines. There are so many that to write for one will mark you down as a target for the others and you will be nibbled to death.

  On this occasion, though, the offer came when I was still experiencing mental agonies over Bott’s review of The Caves of Steel. I realized I could not write an angry letter to a reviewer without being marked as a sorehead, but Peon, it seemed to me, would be just the solution. It had a circulation that was surely less than a hundred, so only a handful of people would see what I would write, and yet I would safely get the poison out of my system.

  I therefore wrote an article on Bott, without naming him. It was a very reasonable article in my opinion (I have just this moment reread it to make sure), and I did not answer in kind. I merely asked for fair reviewing that did not involve personal invective, unfair statements, and clear evidence that the critic had not read the book. In particular, I objected to Bott’s statement that I “was neither a writer nor a storyteller”; that was ridiculous.

  Yet it proved to be a terrible mistake, for which my ignorance was responsible.

  Though I had been an almost lifelong reader of science fiction, though I had written letters to magazines, though I had even involved myself with the Futurians, I had never really immersed myself in what was called “fandom.”

  I had no experience whatever with the ferocious single-mindedness with which that handful of people lived their science fiction. They interpreted literally the catch phrase among us that “Fandom is a way of life.”

  Whatever such enthusiasts could earn in their work they invested in their collections, or in their fan magazines. Their time was entirely devoted to their correspondence and to their meetings. Often, in fact, their fan activities crowded out the basis on which it was all founded—for they were so busy being fans of science fiction, they lacked the time to read science fiction.

  Fans knew each other, loved each other, hated each other, quarreled with each other, formed cliques and threatened lawsuits, and, in short, formed a small subculture to which everything else in the world seemed alien and of no account.

  News spread through the world of fandom at the speed of light, even though it might never so much as touch the world outside. Any controversy involving science fiction or the fan world elicited a joyful response at once as a vast number of fans (well, dozens anyway) plunged into the fray—on either side, it didn’t matter which.

  And there I was, foolishly unaware of what I was doing in writing my article. Peon might be only a fan magazine, but it was, at the time, one of the more important ones, and its readership included many active fans and writers. No one had any trouble in understanding who it was I was talking about, even though I called him only “The Nameless One.” Imagination got a copy of the fan magazine, of course, and I imagine a number of readers sent theirs along, for fear the editor, William Hamling, would not see it, and out of a sheer pleasure in making mischief.

  So while I sat at home, pleased with what I had written, pleased I had gotten rid of my bile in a gentlemanly way and that I was no longer staying up part of each night fuming, editorial artillery was being cranked up and trained on me.

  11

  On August 20, 1954, David was three years old and it looked as though that would be his last birthday as an only child. He was playing outdoors on his own, could ride a tricycle with skill, and had a fairly large vocabulary beginning with a firm, loud, “No!”

  12

  As far as my writing was concerned at this time, I was deep in the novel version of “The End of Eternity” (which, in its original novelette form, had been rejected everywhere).

  Lillian McClintock of Abelard-Schuman proved she was indeed interested in my books by going back to Henry Schuman’s original idea of a popular version of William Boyd’s Genetics and the Races of Man. She suggested that I write it but that it appear as a Boyd and Asimov collaboration. I agreed, got Bill’s permission, and, on August 17, 1954, began it.

  I called it Genes and Races at first, a clear shortening of Boyd’s title, but eventually Lyle Boyd, Bill’s wife, suggested Races and People, and that proved the title finally adopted.

  On August 28, I received the October 1954 F & SF containing “The Foundation of S.F. Success.”2

  13

  Gertrude’s pregnancy was continuing, but was occupying our attention far less than it did the first time. Not only was the second pregnancy automatically less suspenseful than the first, but the real agony came in house-hunting. We were getting nowhere. We had an upper limit that we were willing to spend on a house, and for that money we couldn’t get anything that would suit us.

  I wanted to raise our financial sights based on the notion that my writing earnings would continue high, but Gertrude was generally more cautious than I (or less grandiose), and for a while we continued to hope we could find what we wanted at eighteen thousand dollars.

  On August 31, Gertrude awoke with cramps, and while we were worrying about a possible miscarriage, Hurricane Carol hit. Those were the days before weather satellites, and the weather bureau never had anything but the most general notions as to the existence and whereabouts of hurricanes, depending largely on reports from ships that were caught in them (and ships did their best not to be caught in them).

  As a result, no one was prepared, and if they had been, it would have made very little difference.

  Down went the trees, taking the power lines with them, and our electricity went off at noon. Under the stress of the emergency, Gertrude’s cramps ceased at once.

  The loss of power was exciting at first, simply because it was so different. In some ways it wasn’t bad. It was still late summer, so we required no heat. David was no longer a baby and could do with makeshift meals, and the new baby was still safely in the womb.

  However, we lived in an all-electric house and without power, there were no lights, no cooking facilities, and no hot water—and the power stayed off for five days!

  The whole thing quickly lost the charm of novelty when I found I had to take cold sponge baths in the morning, that I could not watch television, that I had to play cards by candlelight, that I had to either eat out in restaurants that had gas stoves, or eat cold food at home. Fortunately, my typewriter was not electrified, so that I could still work on The End of Eternity in the daytime hours at least.