18

  A new streetcar line had opened that connected West Newton with the center of Boston, and I took advantage of it to take David into town and to a children’s movie to celebrate his eighth birthday on August 20, 1959.

  A much more anxious time came two days later when at 3 p.m. Robbie disappeared again, as she had done nearly two years before. We ran about the neighborhood distraught, calling for her, and then despairingly decided to call the police. We were certain we couldn’t be lucky twice and that this time she had had an accident, been kidnapped, been . . . The mind dared not venture further.

  We went back into the house to make the call and it occurred to me to look into her room—and, by heaven, she was in her bed, sleeping. Apparently she had felt like taking a nap and didn’t bother telling us about it.

  We had to celebrate, and the next day we took advantage of a pleasant Sunday to drive to Sturbridge, Massachusetts, some forty-five miles away, and spend five hours amid a reconstruction of colonial buildings. It was our first time there and we enjoyed it.

  19

  Poul Anderson and his wife, Karen, visited us on August 28. Poul is a rather tall, lean individual, with a shock of curly hair and a baby face. He is slow of speech and has a slight stammer, but those are as nothing compared to his singing voice—or, rather, the total absence thereof. Poul is very fond of singing folk songs, and the sound of his doing so will wrench the heart of any music lover—indeed, the heart of anyone with ears, and will almost instill hatred of the otherwise thoroughly lovable Poul.

  Karen appeared to be the dominant one of the pair; as intelligent as he, with readier speech, a more aggressive spirit, and a tendency to embonpoint.

  We took them out for a Chinese dinner and came back for hours of conversation. I remember two things best.

  First, Pool tried to get me to pronounce his first name in Danish fashion (it was the Danish version of Paul). Despite endless repetitions I never got the vowel sound quite right.

  Second was my comment that I tried to keep my library small; that an out-of-date book, or one I never used, simply consumed space I needed for other things; that there were times when an empty space was the most valuable item on the bookshelves.

  Poul turned to Karen and said, “Listen to this man. He speaks pearls.”

  I wish it were easy to stick to this view, however. No matter how I try, books keep adding themselves to my library—and throwing away a book, or just giving it away, is so hard. After all, when I think of the long years in which I never so much as had a book . . .

  Of course, you mustn’t think that these books that I might keep or might throw away were great and beloved works of literature. My library was a working library, and consisted entirely of reference books. A surprising number of them consisted of books I received in the mail from fans, or from friends, or from publishers seeking quotes.

  Not all these were worth keeping from a strictly utilitarian standpoint, but when a book—any book—comes inscribed to me personally, discarding it is an extremely difficult thing to do.

  Some books that I bought, I periodically replaced with later editions—Webster’s Biographical Dictionary, Webster’s Geographical Dictionary, foreign-language dictionaries, World Almanacs and others of its kind, Bartlett’s Quotations, even entire encyclopedias.

  And some books were particular favorites of mine and used constantly. There was Langer’s Encyclopedia of World History, for instance, and Glasstone’s Sourcebook on Atomic Energy.

  20

  On August 31, Janet Jeppson visited the med school to see her brother who was married and whose wife, Maureen, had just had a daughter named Patti. Janet had written she was coming, so I dropped in at a laboratory in which her brother, John, was working in order to say hello. It was the first time I consciously met her brother who, except for his lighter coloring, was remarkably like my brother-in-law, John. This other John was also good-looking, quiet-spoken, and rather introverted.

  21

  I had not attended a World Science Fiction convention since the fourteenth in New York three years earlier. The fifteenth had been in London and the sixteenth in Los Angeles, and both had been out of the question.

  The seventeenth World Science Fiction convention, in 1959, was, however, slated for Detroit, and I was tempted. I had made it to Cleveland four years before, so why not Detroit? I wouldn’t drive it, of course; I would take the train. So there I was in a roomette on Friday, September 4, 1959, on a 2 p.m. train that would have me in Detroit the next morning.

  I suppose it’s impossible not to have a little fantasy about finding a pretty girl in the roomette across the way and having a very pleasant conversation with who knows what added features (anything is possible in fantasies).

  And that’s what happened. When I settled down in my roomette who should be in the roomette across the way but a pretty girl. She smiled at me and I smiled back and we had a very pleasant conversation much of the way to Detroit. There were, however, no added features, because she was a nun. So much for fantasies.

  As though to make up for it, almost the first thing I encountered at the convention was a fan I had never met before, a woman named Djinn Faine. She was 21 years old, 5 feet, 10 inches tall, 157 pounds in weight, and I believe her measurements were 40–25–40.

  Someone (it may have been Bob Bloch,88 but I honestly don’t remember) warned me as soon as I showed up that there was a plan to bring me face to face with a spectacular woman in order to watch me faint dead away. (There was a rumor that had arisen, somehow, that I was extraordinarily susceptible to feminine beauty.)

  I arranged to be introduced to her privately and asked permission to carry out a plan of my own. She was amused and agreed. Later on, when the wiseguys deliberately brought me face to face with her, I walked up coolly, put my right arm about her waist, my left behind her shoulder blades, bent her back, and kissed her soundly. I then walked off, dusting my hands and stifling a yawn. That is a bright moment in my memory.

  I did hang around her, however, whenever I could, though a fat lot of good that did me. The line was incredibly long and, as nearly as I could tell, Djinn was equally pleasant and equally unattainable to all.

  Harlan Ellison, who was still quite thin, and shorter than he seems to be now (no elevator shoes, perhaps), came up to her to ask for a dance and said, with a humility I have never heard from him, either before or since, “I suppose you wouldn’t be interested in dancing with a little vonts like me.”89

  “I would be glad to dance with you,” said Djinn, with perfect courtesy, and off they went, dancing delightfully.

  For all I know this was the occasion that inspired the undoubtedly apocryphal story that Harlan once went up to a gorgeously stacked woman and said, in his customary direct manner, “What would you say to a little f———?”

  And the woman looked down at him and said, “I would say, ‘Hello, little f———?’ ”

  Also dancing court on Djinn was Gordon Dickson. Gordie is a large fellow who, in person, seems rather bumbling, as though he were forever trying to gather his wits together and was in a constant state of mild befuddlement over their refusal to stay together once gathered. This, of course, is pure illusion, for if you listen quietly you find he is making perfect sense, and his writing, at least, is sharply incisive.

  Gordie is still another one of those singers with whom science fiction is cursed. Like Sprague de Camp and Poul Anderson, Gordie Dickson has a singing voice of which any walrus would be proud.

  On this occasion, though, Gordie wasn’t relying on his singing voice but, I presume, on his masculine charm. (I suppose he has it; I’m no judge of such things.) He was clearly making every effort to ensnare the young woman. He was, in fact, so assiduous and so friendly that I assumed he was not only a long-time friend but that he was also on intimate terms with her. Naturally, I backed off. I love Gordie like a brother and he’s also bigger than I am.

  I thought I had guessed right when, not long after the convention, he married Djinn. But then I learned that their first meeting had been at the convention and that he had known her no longer than I had. Oh well, he was a bachelor and I was a married man.

  One of the devices used to raise money at the convention was to raffle off an hour of time with a celebrity-writer, and I agreed to let myself be put up for auction. I was won by a young woman for seventeen dollars, which was very flattering. Her name was Mary Martin (no, not the Mary Martin), a dainty Dresden china figurine of a woman, a divorcee and a physician.

  I led her up to my room with everyone shouting after me that I was compelled by the terms of the auction to do whatever she demanded that wasn’t unprofessional or disgraceful. (No one added “illicit.”)

  What she demanded, however, was an hour of conversation, and that is exactly what she got, with herself in one chair and myself in another at a respectful distance. I had a lot of innocent conversation at that convention.

  What with one thing and another I was up all Saturday night at that convention, and since I’m an early-morning person, I saw no point in going to bed when I finally got to my room. I just showered and went to breakfast.

  Breakfast is always a deserted meal at science-fiction conventions as far as the writers are concerned—or most of them, anyway—since they’re all sunk in swinish slumber after a night of drunken debauchery. Well, I had debauched with the best of them, as far as laughing and singing and joking were concerned, but I hadn’t done any drinking, so I was clear-eyed and happy as I advanced toward my eventual toast and eggs and bacon.

  And who should I see as I entered the coffee room but John and Peg Campbell. We gave each other the big hello and I joined them.

  “I am glad to see,” said Peg, austerely, “that at least one other person keeps sensible hours.”

  “I always do, Peg,” I said.

  I toastmastered the banquet on Sunday, September 6, and, as I recall, I spent part of the time making Willy Ley jokes.

  Willy Ley, at the time, and for years afterward, wrote a monthly science column for Galaxy, as I did for F & SF.90

  I said, for instance, “I happened to refer yesterday to Willy as the second-best science writer in science fiction, and I was told that that was a terribly rude comment to make under the circumstances and that I ought to apologize. Well, Willy, I don’t understand what the circumstances are that made it rude, but I’ll be glad to apologize right now and in public. Willy, I’m sorry you’re the second-best science writer in science fiction.”

  I also told a couple of stories that I borrowed from Randall Garrett and that may quite possibly have been true.

  In one, Randall said, “Tell me, Willy, do you prefer to be called Willy or Veelee?”

  And Willy, in his thick Teutonic accent (which some people said he practiced before the minor so that he would never lose it), answered, “Veelee oder Veelee, id mages no diwerenz.”

  In the other, Randall came up to Willy, who was sitting relaxed, with a cigar in his mouth. Randall looked sadly at Willy’s majestic corporation (for he was no longer the slim youth he had been when I had met him—and neither was I), tapped it lightly, and said, “Willy, Willy, you ought to diet.”

  And Willy looked down upon his abdomen indulgently and said, “All righd. Vot color?”

  Finally I made up a story. The night before, I said, Willy had spent hour upon hour sweet-talking the girls. (That part was true. He spoke to them most earnestly indeed, and since I had better things to do than watch him all night, heaven only knows where it all ended—though somebody told me afterward he guessed the answer to the question “Willy Ley?” was in the affirmative.)

  In any case, I said he spent hour after hour and that I came up to him at last (this part is the lie) and said to him, “Willy, Willy, you’ll pay for this in the morning.”

  And Willy looked surprised and said, “Vy? Nobody is charging.”

  Each time I told a Willy Ley story, I looked down the head table toward where Willy was sitting to make sure that he wasn’t showing signs of anger. Since the line of notables were shaking in uniform laughter, I kept going. It was only after it was all over that I found out I had been looking down the line in the wrong direction. Oh well, Willy was a teddy bear who never grew angry at anything or anyone.

  I met Avram Davidson for the first time toward the end of the convention. He had a full beard, a keen intelligence, and was a practicing Orthodox Jew. I didn’t meet many.

  “Next year in Pittsburgh,” I said to him, raising an imaginary glass of wine, for that was where the convention was scheduled to be held.

  “Next year in Pittsburgh,” he echoed, automatically, and looked chagrined at once at having been lured into a semimockery of the sacred “Next year in Jerusalem,” which is part of the Passover Seder tradition.

  Earlier, during a discussion in which he had stressed his orthodoxy just a little too hard for my comfort, I said, when asked my stand on the matter, “I’m an atheist.”

  “Yes,” said Avram, without batting an eye, “but what kind of atheist? A Baptist atheist, a Hindu atheist? A Seventh-day Adventist atheist?”

  I got the idea. “A Jewish atheist,” I said, “which means I have to fight the irrational elements in Judaism particularly.”

  It may seem to you, by the way, when you read my descriptions of my stays at conventions that they consist entirely of idle chatter. That is not so, of course; they are considerably more than infantile fun and games.

  Science-fiction conventions have a serious purpose, one that is primarily aimed at the science-fiction reader who is given his chance to participate in a subculture that is important to him. That is why the conventions shift their site from year to year. This gives the average fan of a particular region, one who has perhaps little in the way of pocket money, a chance to attend, now and then, without having to travel far.

  Most of the fans attending are young people, many of them in their teens. It is a great opportunity for them to meet those writers who are, in their eyes, legendary heroes.

  There are celebrity introductions for the readers, and autographing sessions. There are fans who cart in a pile of books taller than themselves in order to get each one signed. If, for some reason, there are fans without books to sign, there is invariably the huckster room, where books and magazines (both new and secondhand) are sold in incredible profusion.

  In one way, autographing became an increasing problem for me, since it supplied me with more and more work; partly because the number of my books was increasing steadily, and partly because those books were individually popular. In another sense they were not a problem, because I loved autographing. Some writers cut down on their labors by refusing to sign anything but hard-cover books, but I have never refused anything and will sign torn scraps of paper, too, if that is asked of me.91

  When I am feeling particularly suave during the autographing sessions, which is almost all the time, I kiss each young woman who wants an autograph and have found, to my delight, that they tend to cooperate enthusiastically in that particular activity.

  The conventions include talks and panel discussions on every aspect of the writer’s/artist’s/editor’s/agent’s life; on the problems of writing and of publishing; and on all the fringe areas, too; from Hollywood to comic books. Readers are fascinated by this, since so many of them are aspiring writers.

  Every talk, every discussion is thrown open to questions from the floor, which would continue (sometimes with articulate hostility) to the end of time if the question period were not arbitrarily cut off.

  Yes, indeed, there are serious aspects of conventions, but the serious parts and the laughter, too, inevitably come to an end eventually.

  I finally caught the 7:30 p.m. train Monday evening. I had no nun to talk to on the way back but I did have George Scithers, an active science-fiction fan, who was also returning from the convention by train. (He got off at Worcester, Massachusetts.)

  It was my first extended time with him. He was an electrical engineer, an Army officer, and a good and patient listener (something I always find soothing).

  I was back in Newton the next day and found Gertrude and the kids waiting for me at the station.

  22

  An advance copy of Realm of Numbers reached me on September 16. What I remember best about the book, though, is that shortly before it appeared, Houghton Mifflin had sent me a proof of the cover.

  It was the first time any publisher had ever shown me a cover before actual publication. I thought it was a waste of time for I have no artistic taste, and if they expect a reasoned opinion on a book jacket, they are bound to be disappointed.

  This time, though, I called Austin.

  “Austin,” I said, “I have the cover to Realm of Numbers.”

  “And do you like it?” asked Austin eagerly.

  “Yes, I do, Austin—except for one thing.”

  “Oh?” said Austin, and the temperature of the conversation suddenly dropped to subzero levels, “and what is that?”

  I knew what was going through his mind. I was going to be a difficult author, with ideas of my own as to color and balance and all that sort of stuff, and he was going to have to have a fight with and displease either me or his art director or both.

  “Well,” I said, “you’ve misspelled my name.”

  And again the atmosphere of the conversation took a right-about turn.

  “Oh my God,” said Austin, for my first name was spelled Issac on the cover. Houghton Mifflin had to run a little black band over my name and then print it again, spelled correctly, on the band.

  The other thing I remember about that book was that my father read it (he read a number of my books). When he was partway through, he said to me, during one of our phone conversations, that he was enjoying the suspense.

  “Suspense?” I said, astonished. “What suspense?”