He said, “Well, I’m just beginning about the square root of two. Tell me, do they ever find an exact solution for it?”

  23

  On September 17, George O. Smith called unexpectedly, and then dropped in during the evening in the usual thy-house-is-my-house camaraderie of the science-fiction brotherhood. I was glad to see him, because the year before he had had a rather bad heart attack and it was good to see him up and about.

  I knew that George liked to bend an elbow, so it was my plan to take him to a bar where he could have a beer or two (or whatever he wanted) and we could talk.

  Since I have never voluntarily walked into a bar except when someone led the way, I didn’t know exactly where in my neighborhood there were bars, but I somehow felt confident there would be one every ten yards. (All us nondrinkers are sure the world is a den of iniquity designed for drunkards.)

  No such thing! I had a devil of a time finding a bar, and when I did, it seemed like such a raffish and low dive that I sat there with the greatest of unease and discomfort. George felt quite at home, however, and did not seem to think the surroundings were in any way unusual.

  24

  I went to New York by train on September 26, for the purpose of eventually being driven up to Scarsdale by Hal Cantor to the palatial home of Lew Schwartz, the publisher of Abelard-Schuman. Lew was quite fat, somehow the epitome of the comfortably successful Jewish businessman, but surprisingly erudite. He had the brain of an intellectual in the body of a corporation executive. I met his charming wife, Frances, for the first time on this occasion.

  We were edging toward the period when sex could be spoken of with more and more abandon, and someone asked the company generally if they knew what troilism was.

  I said, “Sure—sex with three people participating.”

  The questioner looked disappointed and said, “Ah, but do you know the derivation of the word?”

  I thought I might as well be polite and let him have a turn, so I said, “What?”

  “Well,” he said, “in Troilus and Cressida, Troilus watched Cressida making out with Diomed.”

  “In the first place,” I said, “he didn’t watch with any pleasure; he was brokenhearted, and he certainly didn’t participate. In the second place, Ulysses was also there watching, which would make it a foursome. And in the third place, it is much simpler to suppose that ‘troilism’ is derived from the French word trois, meaning ‘three.’ ”

  This was an example of reversion to type. When I was young, I used to show off in that snotty fashion all the time. Since the war I had stopped doing it, which I think was the chief reason I changed from a disliked youngster to a well-regarded fellow of mature years. But even now, sometimes—I forget.

  Family about 1963, I think. From left, me, Robyn, Gertrude, David.

  Robyn as a pre-teener.

  My Greenough Street office.

  I’m holding David, who is about thirteen years old here (1964). The other two boys are fans.

  Harlan Ellison and I in Cleveland in 1966. Photo by Jay K. Klein.

  Cleveland in 1966. I’m between Gertrude and Sprague de Camp. Photo by Jay K. Klein.

  Cover of the special Isaac Asimov issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1966.

  Arthur C. Clarke, Barbara Silverberg, and I sometime in the 1960s. Photo by Jay K. Klein

  In 1969, picking up my mail in the Newtonville post office (posed for a newspaper story). My sideburns are just beginning to lengthen. Photo by Gilbert E. Friedberg.

  At my parents’ golden wedding anniversary celebration in 1968. I’m standing between Stanley and his son Danny; sitting, from left, are Marcia, Mamma, Pappa, and Gertrude. The ones I don’t know are Stanley’s relatives by marriage.

  My mother and father. I believe this was taken at their golden wedding anniversary celebration in 1968 when my mother was seventy-two, my father seventy-one.

  At the golden wedding anniversary celebration, Mamma and Pappa with the six grandchildren: on top, Robyn, Larry (Marcia’s), and David; on bottom, Nanette and Eric (Stanley’s), and Richard (Marcia’s).

  12

  Guide to Science

  1

  The time had come when I had to tape the first of the shows I was to do for WGBH under ACS sponsorship. Except that it cemented my friendship with Arthur Obermayer, it was nearly a total loss. I found I didn’t like TV work, and I have never changed my mind since.

  I went to WGBH on September 30, 1959, for the first time and spent six hours doing the first show. Since the show was only half an hour long, that was my introduction to the fact that the length of a performance and the length of the work were two entirely different things. Part of the extra time arose from the fact that the show had to be rehearsed first and then done in earnest, and that was the most bothersome thing of all. A rehearsal makes the real thing seem repetitious and dull.

  2

  By October 2, I could no longer postpone work on the science-overview book I had promised Leon Svirsky of Basic Books. I had signed the contract 2½ months before; I had received and banked the fifteen-hundred-dollar advance; I was even beginning to feel guilty enough over the matter to lose sleep.

  That day, therefore, I began the book. I kept referring to it in my diary as Guide to Science, but in the contract it was called The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science. Leon Svirsky admitted that in naming it he had in mind George Bernard Shaw’s book The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism.

  I objected to the name. I said that it would smack of elitism and condescension and would uselessly curtail the readership. Why not call it Everyone’s Guide to Science?

  On the contrary, said Svirsky, every man considers himself intelligent, whether he is or not, and the title, appealing to snobbism, would help the sales.

  What I did not foresee was that in years to come I would be asked, with emotions grading from mild amusement to intense hostility, by increasingly self-aware feminists, why the book was restricted to males. Why not The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Science?

  The truth is that in 1959 neither Svirsky nor I thought of this simple piece of justice. The title was simply part of the taken-for-granted male chauvinism of the English language. I had to get out of it in later years by smiling as ingratiatingly as I could and saying that the “intelligent man” of the title referred to the writer and not to the reader.

  By the time I had begun The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science, I had written a nonfiction book on astronomy, one on mathematics, and one on the derivation of scientific terms, so I was branching out vigorously. In the Guide, however, I was being asked to take almost all of science as my field of review.

  It was not something to be done lightly, and I didn’t take it lightly. I worked hard to make the progression a sensible one. I began with the universe as a whole and worked inward in narrowing circles till I was inside the brain at the end.

  The plan for the Guide made it natural to present the subject in historical perspective, and I found I liked doing so.

  First, it gave me a chance to present a logical unfolding of a field of knowledge, to make an exciting story out of it, with the scientist as hero and with ignorance as the villain.

  Second, it made it easier for me. There is no subject so difficult and arcane that it isn’t comparatively simple in its beginnings, when scientists were largely ignorant of it. I could always follow the subject up to the point where my own understanding failed—and get at least something out of it both for my readers and myself.

  It was my chosen method of attack thereafter. In dealing with any difficult subject, I always began at the beginning and didn’t care how long it took me to get to the subject in its present complexity.

  3

  On October 10, I drove the family to New York, and we used the new Connecticut Turnpike for the first time.

  At his invitation, I visited Mac Talley at his Park Avenue apartment that afternoon and was impressed by its splendor.

  It turned out he had an excellent idea—he wanted me to write two books, one on the human body and the other on the human brain, and he suggested we call them exactly that: The Human Body and The Human Brain. I agreed readily.

  The next day, Gertrude and I visited Bob and Barbara Silverberg in their apartment on West End Avenue. I was impressed by its splendor, also.

  Bob was fifteen years younger than I was, and he had only been publishing science fiction for five years or so, but he was extraordinarily prolific and successful. He was far more prolific than I was, and my status at the end of my first five years of writing was as nothing compared to his.

  He seemed to have worked out a perfect life for himself. He planned to have no children, and Barbara, an engineer and a devoted wife, had a job that kept her out of the apartment much of the time. The large apartment was therefore almost entirely his, and he had it filled with books and with magazines and, in short, it was thoroughly organized to revolve about his profession. And Barbara, in her spare time, acted as his secretary, proofreader, and so on.

  I could not stop myself from feeling envy—at least for a while. And then I reflected that since Bob always seemed to be more or less unhappy, I had better not waste my time wishing I were in his place.

  We went on to spend the evening with Stanley and Ruth in Greenwich Village. Stanley, by now past his thirtieth birthday, was also, by now, distinctly balding. I pointed out the approaching desertification of his scalp in kindly fashion, just in case he hadn’t noticed, and also managed to mention the odd fact that against all precedent among the Asimov males I was keeping my hair, all of it. He, in just as kindly a fashion, mused on the fact that I would soon turn forty—something that was indeed looming most unpleasantly on the horizon.92

  It was on that occasion, by the way, that Stan said to me, after a period of general conversation, “I notice, Isaac, that when the conversation does not concern you directly, your eyes glaze over, but that you snap to attention the moment your name is mentioned.”

  On another and later occasion, Stan said to me, “Isaac, you’re honest, reliable, industrious, capable, intelligent, and ambitious. You have all the unlovable virtues.”

  The truth is, of course, that Stan is exactly the same way, but there’s no denying he has always been more lovable than I have been.

  4

  When I received the Russian edition of The World of Carbon some months before, I had written to the Soviet firm that had published it. The gist of the letter was that I knew that there was no international agreement requiring that they pay me for publishing the book or any book of mine, but that on the basis of simple justice between honest men, ought I not be paid? Surely honesty is not something that must wait for regulation by law.

  I did not expect an answer, but I got one. My thesis was accepted wholeheartedly. Records were kept with meticulous honesty, the Russian publisher told me, and any time I was in the U.S.S.R., they would be delighted to see me, at which time all accumulated royalties would be paid me.

  Fair enough, but I did not travel, and I doubted that I would ever again be in the Soviet Union.

  However, Bill Boyd had been invited by the Soviets themselves to come to the U.S.S.R. to lecture on blood groups. He was going, and he intended to visit that very publishing house and collect his royalties. I promptly wrote a home-made power of attorney, giving him the right to collect my royalties as well.

  I didn’t think they would honor it, but they did. After some hesitation, they handed him the equivalent, in rubles, of three hundred dollars. Boyd could not, of course, take the cash out of the country, so he bought various things with the money: a billfold, opera glasses, a Spanish pin, three vodka glasses, a set of twelve rather beautiful gold-plated spoons, and so on, all of which he delivered to us on October 27, 1959.

  What pleased me most was that he brought me a Soviet watch. It had clear numerals, a sweep red-tipped second hand, a loud tick (when a Soviet individual wears a watch, he wants people to know it, I presume), and it kept accurate time. Everyone warned me that a Soviet watch would break down quickly, but in all the years since it has required nothing more than periodic cleaning.

  In later years, when more of my books appeared in the Soviet Union and when it didn’t seem likely I was going to have a convenient intermediary going there, I wrote to the publishing firm again. I explained that I was not a traveler and that I was not likely to be picking up my royalties. I asked if they could suggest some useful way of spending the money within the Soviet Union that would serve the cause of world peace and brotherhood. They wrote back that I might consider reinvesting the money in the publishing house itself, since its chief function was to publish books on science for the general public.

  I could find no quarrel with this, and I granted them permission to use my money in this fashion. I assume they are doing so to this day.

  5

  On November 6, 1959, we obtained a new bed for David, and Robyn inherited his old one. We gave away her crib, and it meant that for the first time in over eight years there was no crib in our place.

  We were fresh out of babies, which somehow seemed to imply creeping old age. Everything, if looked at improperly, can be interpreted as a sign of aging.

  6

  On November 10, I drove four hundred miles to Ithaca, New York, taking nearly eight hours to make the trip, and that night I gave my five-hundred-dollar talk. It was the largest fee, by far, that I had ever received up to that point, but I didn’t actually receive it. They told me they would mail it to me (and so they did, of course).

  I suppose there is sense to that. A school like Cornell has to make sure a speaker arrives and gives the talk before they dare set the ponderous machinery into action that serves to eviscerate a check from the bowels of a bureaucracy. Just the same, when I got better known, and could make my own rules, I insisted on checks being ready for immediate delivery after the speech.

  On the eleventh I drove to New York and took in the first few sample chapters of The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science. I knew that I wasn’t following Svirsky’s directions. He had wanted an overview of twentieth-century science, starting sharply with 1901.

  Twentieth-century science rests, however, on a foundation of nineteenth-century science, which rests on a foundation of eighteenth-century science, and so on. While early science can be gone through fairly quickly, I nevertheless divided the book into large areas of knowledge and tended to start each chapter with the Greeks or, at the very least, with Galileo.

  I wasn’t worried about that. I had reached the pitch of self-assurance where I told myself that Svirsky could like it or lump it.

  7

  Once I got home, I took a break and did a third in the thiotimoline series, which I had started eleven years before. This was “Thiotimoline and the Space Age.” I wrote it on November 14 and sent it off to Campbell at once.

  After that, I returned to The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science and raced ahead, full speed. I had no trouble with the book at all. I would frequently have days in which I would write six thousand to ten thousand words without any sense of strain. I couldn’t have done this without an electric typewriter, of course.

  8

  On December 10, we invested in an item of interior decoration on our own. We bought a piano for eight hundred dollars, and two days later it was delivered and set up for use. For the first time in my life, I had a musical instrument of my own at hand.

  I couldn’t play a piano, of course. I quickly taught myself to read music, based on what I remembered of “music appreciation” in the fourth grade, and learned how to tap out any tune in any key with one finger, if I had the music before me. I could never go past the one-finger stage, however. I was no Leonard Meisel, the piano-playing friend of my youth.

  Gertrude had had piano lessons when she was young and had learned how to play even though she claimed she had no natural ear for music. On occasion she did play and I would listen with ravished enjoyment, but I always had to do so secretly. As soon as Gertrude caught me listening, she would become self-conscious and would have to stop.

  The chief reason for buying the piano, however, was with the hope that David, or Robyn, or conceivably both, would turn out to have musical talent, or at least musical interest. After all, one needn’t have to play well to find piano-playing relaxing.

  Unfortunately, it turned out that neither child could manage the piano. We tried them on other instruments, too. We tried David on the trombone and Robyn on the flute and we persevered through the horrid noises that resulted with remarkable tolerance, but nothing struck a spark. Since I was certainly unmusical and since Gertrude claimed that she was unmusical, too, we could scarcely blame the kids.

  9

  On December 14, I did the third of the ACS television talks on WGBH, and that was the only one I enjoyed. In the first place, I had no guest, which meant that for that one time I was responsible for myself only. In the second place, through some incredibly lucky mix-up, the studio in which I was supposed to rehearse was taken up by some glee club that refused to vacate until they got all their notes properly sour.

  When the time came to go on, therefore, I had to go on without rehearsal, and the point was that the program was live. I felt triumphant. The camera started rolling and I began: