Well, I’m not actually a superman, so I must admit that if I return to something after weeks or months have passed, I am forced to glance over what I’ve already written. In fact, I’ve learned to make simple outlines in telegraphic language of what I have done in particularly complicated books, if I have reason to think I may be leaving it for an extended period. Then, when I return, I look over the outline and start right in.

  As for what I intend to do later on, that offers no problem, since I always make that up as I go along.

  This absence-and-return works only for nonfiction, by the way. There are tighter constraints on fiction. If I stay away from a piece of fiction too long, and allow too many of the strands in it to become hazy in my mind, it would be better to start all over. For that reason, I generally work on fiction in a pretty steady fashion, trying not to allow too much in the way of gaps.

  21

  On April 18, 1960, I made the rounds of certain households to collect money or pledges for the Combined Jewish Appeal. This was at the request of a neighbor who sometimes drove me to the train station when I went to New York, so I hated to refuse.

  I found it utterly humiliating. No matter how I told myself that it was not for myself I was asking money, but for a charity, I felt as though I were a beggar. Then, too, since I was not active in the Jewish social life of the neighborhood and was never seen in any temple, I was a stranger to those I called on and I sensed a certain suspicion, on their part, of my bona fides, and that was embarrassing, too.

  I had to work several evenings before the job was completed, and then I told my neighbor I wouldn’t do it again. And I never have, not only for the Combined Jewish Appeal but also for any charity. I realize that someone has to, and that it is a noble deed, but I’ll have to seek nobility in other directions.

  22

  I drove the family to New York on April 20, and the next morning I took the final chapters of The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science to Svirsky. There remained only a couple of appendices to be done. Harry Stubbs, incidentally, went over the chapters of the book to backstop me, and I couldn’t possibly think of a better person for the job. No one else I know has his wide-ranging knowledge combined with his willingness to put himself out for a friend.

  We got back to Newton on the twenty-fourth and found a letter waiting for me that brought me news of the Picks. It had been at the Picks’ that I had been eating dinner four years earlier when I first got the news that Gertrude had found the West Newton house. Gerard and Helena had moved to Los Angeles a couple of years before, and now I found that Helena had been killed in Los Angeles in an automobile accident on February 14, and Gerard Pick had been hospitalized for two months thereafter. It was the first friend I had lost in an automobile accident; not the last.

  23

  I had to visit Harry Stubbs periodically to deliver chapters for his consideration and to pick up those he had gone over and annotated. On May 2, 1960, when I visited him, it somehow came up in the conversation that I had never looked through a telescope.

  “Doesn’t that bother you?” he asked, astonished.

  “No,” I said, philosophically, “what’s the difference? I’ve seen photographs of the various astronomical objects, and I have it all in my mind’s eye.”

  But Harry wouldn’t have it so. He taught general science at Milton Academy and he had a small observatory there with a couple of telescopes in it. It was a clear evening and he got me into his automobile and drove me to the observatory. He was insistent on having the author of “Nightfall” look through a telescope at least once in his life.

  He focused on a comet, which looked like a dim, tiny patch of fuzz, utterly unspectacular, and on a star cluster, which looked like a collection of glitter.

  Then he focused on the Moon, and it was then I made what I consider one of my all-time silly remarks. I looked into the eyepiece, looked at Harry in amazement, and said, “My goodness, it does have craters.”

  On May 4, the last bit of The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science was done, just about one year after Svirsky had suggested the task and just seven months and two days after I had begun. Considering the length and the complexity of the subject material, I couldn’t help but think I had done a remarkable job.

  13

  Back with Doubleday

  1

  I was at Basic Books on May 18, 1960, discussing the matter of illustrations for The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science and not doing a very good job of it. While I was there, a letter came in from George W. Beadle, the great geneticist, expressing strong approval of the book. That was very flattering indeed.

  That did not mollify me entirely, for Svirsky had already suggested that someone like Beadle write an Introduction for the book. I did not want it. I may have written Introductions to scores of other people’s books, but I have my own peculiar pride. I don’t want other people writing Introductions for me.

  Svirsky, however, of all the editors I have ever had, was least concerned with my feelings for the books I have written, and in the end he had his way. Of all my books, The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science is the only one with an Introduction by someone else, and that someone else was Beadle.

  It was a very elegant and kind Introduction, indeed, and I am grateful to Beadle for that—but that doesn’t matter. I didn’t want an Introduction, and I wince every time I see it.

  While at Basic Books, I picked up the first batch of galleys of the book, by the way, and from then on more galleys came in periodically.

  I got to work on the galleys as soon as I got home and before long found, to my horror and disgust, that when Svirsky said he had decided not to cut the book, he meant that he would not cut it 50 per cent to a one-volume work. What he did do, on the other hand, was to cut it 30 per cent.

  Nor was it cleverly done. To me, it seemed a hack job.

  Apparently, Svirsky had for many years been an editor at Scientific American, and he had gotten into the habit of cutting away the fat from the writings of scientists who knew their subjects but who were relatively innocent of writing ability. That might be an appropriate thing to do, but when he tried to do the same thing on my own close-knit writing, he produced galleys that bled at a hundred joints.

  I did what I could, reinserting information whose omission made passages senseless or, even worse, flatly wrong, and I tried to strike out all the infelicities he inserted and put back all the felicities he deleted. I also called him on the phone periodically and told him what I thought of his editing. I must emphasize that at no time did he ever consult me before using his blue pencil.

  No matter how hard I worked, I never managed to put enough of my material back in or take enough of his material back out, and I could see, despairingly, that after all my hard work, I was going to end with a two-volume boxed book of 280,000 words that was going to make an elegant appearance, but of which I would be ashamed.

  I knew that even if the book were to prove to be a success, that wouldn’t help. I would still be ashamed of it.94

  2

  I spent June 10, 1960, with John Campbell and Peg. It was not as it had been a dozen years ago. I now saw him rarely, and I wrote for him rarely.

  My monthly articles for F & SF by no means tied me down to that magazine exclusively, not even as far as articles were concerned, so I did turn out an occasional article for Campbell, more to have something in Astounding for old times’ sake than for any other reason.

  Thus the May 1960 Astounding had a biological article by me, “March of the Phyla,” and another, a sequel, “Beyond the Phyla,” in the just-out, July 1960 issue. Both dealt with evolution. He had just bought “The Matter of Space” from me, an astronomical article, which was to appear in the September 1960 issue, and as for “Thiotimoline and the Space Age,”95 which he had bought some time before, that would appear in the October 1960 issue.

  These were exceptions, however. The fact is, I rarely had Campbell in mind anymore. I had changed. He had changed. Even Astounding had changed, or at least its name had.

  Campbell had always felt that the use of Astounding as the name for the magazine was undignified, and had originated merely in imitation of Amazing, the first magazine in the field. When he had first become editor twenty-two years before, it had been his intention to change the name to the respectable and well-defined Science Fiction. Columbia Publications had beaten him to the punch with that title, however, and he could do no more than change the earlier name of Astounding Stories to Astounding Science Fiction.

  Now he was making the change to Analog Science Fact-Science Fiction, but was doing so gradually. All through 1960, Astounding was fading on the cover and Analog kept coming forward, until finally the magazine was known as Analog, and is so known to this day.

  Many fans objected, I among them. In fact, I have never quite managed to forgive Campbell for the change. He had complicated reasons for choosing Analog as the name, none of which was convincing to me, except for the trivial one that it would keep unchanged the common abbreviation of ASF for the magazine. And he gave up a name of memories and tradition.

  Then, too, he continued to have his odd enthusiasms. Succeeding to the Hieronymus machine, which I had encountered in his basement three years earlier, was the Dean drive. This was a mechanical device whereby rotary motion could (supposedly) be converted into one-way-directional motion.

  If this worked, then, instead of the expensive and wasteful rocket exhaust driving a spaceship in accordance with Newton’s third law of motion, a turning wheel on board the ship, turned by any convenient form of energy, could push the ship upward against gravity and through space.

  Delightful—except that the Dean drive violated the law of conservation of momentum and the law of conservation of angular momentum, and if it worked I didn’t think that physicists would be able to put the broken pieces of the universe back together again.

  I met Mr. Dean, the inventor, on that day, June 10, and he seemed like a very pleasant fellow—but pleasant is not enough. I have never heard, in all the time since, of anyone making the Dean drive work, or of anyone believing it would work whose expertise in such matters I would trust.

  3

  Walter Bradbury had left Doubleday and had moved on to the firm of Henry Holt.

  That hit me very hard, and his departure accentuated the guilt I was feeling at having abandoned Doubleday myself. It had been over two years since I had taken in my last book for Doubleday, Nine Tomorrows. Nothing since then; not a word.

  Brad had not been interested in my nonfiction, but Brad was gone. Tim Seldes, relatively unsophisticated, might be imposed on.

  “Suppose, Tim,” I said, eagerly, “I write a nonfiction book for you. You see, I don’t write much fiction these days, but I can easily write nonfiction.”

  Tim said, “It’s possible. I’ll tell you what. Richard Winslow is our science-book editor, so after we’ve both had our vacations, let’s all three of us get together and discuss this.”

  I agreed and hoped for the best.

  Meanwhile, at home, I continued to work rapidly on the galleys of The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science, setting up index cards as I went.

  4

  On July 1, 1960, I received a statement from the nearly forgotten Marty Greenberg. No check; just a statement.

  As was usual in these cases, I couldn’t believe he had sold so few books and that he owed me so little money—but I just filed it. I had given up on the four Gnome Press books.

  5

  I was at this time engaged in the revision of one of my popular science books. It was the first time any of them had needed revision. Several new elements had been prepared in the laboratory, and it seemed a good occasion to update Building Blocks of the Universe, which had been published three years earlier.

  It wasn’t hard to do, since my practice in those days was to keep up a running updating of my books by marginal notations. I had developed that habit in the days of the biochemistry textbook. When the request for a revision came, on July 2, it was only a matter of a few days to send off a letter detailing all the changes that had to be made. My editors were always gratifyingly astonished at my speed, but it was actually very easy to do.

  As the number of my books increased, however, it became more and more difficult to keep each one up to date. I became more and more likely to prefer to write a new book on another aspect of the subject, which could then be made to incorporate the latest findings I knew about.

  6

  The year 1960 was, of course, a presidential election year, and John F. Kennedy had been running hard for the Democratic nomination, with Hubert Humphrey as his chief opponent. I was in a quandary. I liked Humphrey and I thought he would make a good President. However, I also liked Kennedy, and I thought it was important that the United States get over its foolish reluctance to have a Catholic in the White House. (Also, I remembered my 1952 prediction that Kennedy would be the next President after Eisenhower “if only he weren’t a Catholic.”)

  On the night of July 13–14, Kennedy was nominated, and eventually it turned out that the Republicans nominated Nixon. That made the choice an easy one for me. I would, in any case, have supported any reasonable Democrat against any reasonable Republican, but if Nixon were the Republican, then I would have voted for Satan if he were willing to call himself a Democrat.

  In fact, I spent three agonized months fearing that Kennedy’s Catholicism and Eisenhower’s influence96 would put Nixon in the White House.

  7

  July 26, 1960, was our eighteenth anniversary, and we prepared to celebrate the occasion by visiting Gertrude’s parents in the Catskills. They were in a cabin in Livingston Manor, and we were going to join them the next day, in some neighboring cabin.

  On the twenty-seventh, we drove there, and the omens were good. Instead of leaving in the sunshine and arriving in the rain, as it seemed to us we always did, we left in rain and arrived as it began to clear. Mary and Henry were waiting for us and we all dined on lobster tails.

  The cabins were not far from the resort where my own parents were staying, and on the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth we paid them brief visits. John Blugerman arrived on Sunday, the thirty-first, to complete the Blugerman reunion.

  The vacation seemed to me to be rather dull since we were not at an actual resort where there were other people and the usual activities. The one advantage was that I didn’t have to stay there continually. Since Gertrude was, essentially, with her family, I would not be leaving her deserted and alone if I took off for New York, and I was anxious to see Tim Seldes and follow up on our conversation concerning a possible nonfiction book.

  My opportunity came on Sunday, August 7, when John Blugerman, who had been joined by his girlfriend, drove back to New York with her. They took me along as passenger and I registered at the Westbury.

  I spent most of the next day at Basic Books, going over the galleys that had accumulated in my absence and collecting page proofs, which I would have to take back to Newton so that I might complete the index.

  8

  On August 9, 1960, I finally had my luncheon with Tim Seldes and Dick Winslow. (I met Dick for the first time now, tall, slow-spoken, usually smiling.)

  I wanted that nonfiction assignment and I was anxious to please. Therefore, when Tim and Dick took me to a French restaurant and began by ordering a drink for themselves I was determined, this time, not to cast a pall on the proceedings by announcing that I did not drink. Boldly, I ordered a vodka sour.

  Then when, in due course, they ordered a second drink, I, even more boldly, ordered another vodka sour. By the time I finished the second vodka sour, I was, of course, drunk—or at least sufficiently sozzled for Tim to notice.

  So when Dick innocently said to Tim, “Shall we have another drink?” and I said at once (determined to drink them under the table, if I had to) “Sure thing,” and then cried out, “Waiter! Waiter!” Tim spoke hurriedly in French to the waiter when he arrived.

  The waiter leaned over me solicitously and said, “Would ze zhentleman like some bread and buttair?”

  I repelled the offer with scorn and tried to demand my third drink, but the waiter turned deaf and handed out the menus, on which I focused my eyes with badly hidden difficulty, and we all ordered. (At subsequent lunches with me, Tim never drank for fear of setting me a bad example.)

  However, it all worked out well. Richard Winslow was delighted (or said he was) at the chance of editing a nonfiction book of mine, and we agreed it would be a biochemistry book for adults. Thus began my second career with Doubleday—one that involved adult nonfiction.

  I came out of the lunch in high spirits and, still not entirely recovered from my drinking bout, threw myself into a taxi, directed him to my next destination and said, with great satisfaction, “Just had a swell lunch with two editors.”

  The cab driver (very experienced at detecting drunks, I suppose) stopped the cab, turned to me, and said, “Did they buy you drinks?”

  “Yes, indeed,” I said.

  “You didn’t sign anything, did you?”

  I reassured him, but was very touched at his concern for me and astonished at his insight into the nefarious habits of editors, so I doubled the tip I would ordinarily have given him when I stepped out.

  That evening I caught a bus back to Livingston Manor, and the next day, August 10, we all drove back to West Newton.

  9