I was afraid that this might seem didactic to some and condescending to others—but I was wrong. Judging by the letters I eventually received, knowing the pronunciation removed some 80 per cent of the terrors of a word, and knowing the derivation removed the other 20 per cent.

  It meant I could use the full vocabulary of the subject without ruining the readers’ enjoyment, when not using it would have ruined my own. I have followed this same practice, or modifications thereof, in other books and have never been sorry.

  9

  On May 30,1961, we visited the house of Rollo and Mary Silver in Brookline. Rollo was another one of the computer group at MIT, of medium height and with crisply curly hair that was receding at the temples. Mary was tall, with long hair and angular facial features, and had what I would later have thought of as a hippie approach to life. Other computer people were there—John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky and his wife, Gloria (a rather obese physician with a very attractive personality), and so on.

  What really attracted my attention was the house, though, which I was to visit many times in the future. It was an old mansion that seemed full of incredible quantities and varieties of whatnots, of strange books, odd devices, and queer things I couldn’t identify.

  The most exciting fact was that Rollo Silver had a copy of The Historian’s History of the World. I had read most of it during the Navy Yard days and I remembered that reading with pleasure and longing.

  I looked at Rollo’s set (not entirely complete, for one volume was missing) and realized that I was not as honest a man as I had always thought I was. If there had been ten thousand dollars in small unmarked bills on that shelf and if I knew I could get away with it without ever being detected, I would nevertheless have left it there without as much as a quiver of temptation—in accordance with my father’s teachings.

  But my father had only mentioned money. If I had thought I could steal that set of books without ever being detected, well, who knows . . .

  I did eventually (and rather falteringly) ask Rollo if he would sell it, and rather hinted that money was almost no object, but he was quite firm in his refusal.

  I then tried to get it elsewhere. I saw some volumes in a department store, for instance, being used for nothing more than as objects in bookcases to help pretty display rooms. I asked if they had a complete set, and the floorwalker didn’t know. I said that I would be glad to buy any volumes they had at any reasonable price and he said he would look into it for me, but despite several calls, I could never get them to fix a price.

  I called secondhand stores but none of them had it, and few of them had heard of it. I left orders all over the city, but no set ever turned up. It was all very disappointing, and every time I visited the Silvers I would wander over to that set and finger it.

  10

  June 3, 1961, was graduation day for the med school class of ’61, the last class I had taught as a fully salaried member of the faculty. There was a trace of sentiment in my wanting to attend that ceremony.

  It was not sentiment alone. John Jeppson was graduating, and I knew that his sister, Janet, would be attending. She had written to tell me so, and it seemed like an excellent opportunity to see her again.

  I went, and Janet was indeed there, together with her widowed mother, Rae K. Jeppson.109 John was there, of course, and his wife, Maureen, and her mother. I was delighted to meet them all and hopped around with even more than my accustomed ebullience. Janet said Maureen’s mother described me as an “overgrown puppy dog,” meaning it pleasantly, I think.

  I sat in the very last row with the Jeppson family, and afterward we all went to a restaurant for a celebration luncheon.

  11

  In the evening of that day I went to Cambridge to hear Linus Pauling speak. I managed to corner him at the reception and found that he had indeed recommended me to Svirsky as the man to write The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science110 (Svirsky had told me this was so, but I thought he might merely be trying to flatter me.) Pauling said he had a copy and his wife was reading it with pleasure.

  Since Linus Pauling was in the forefront of the movement for nuclear disarmament and peace, he was anathema to those who looked forward either grimly or joyously, to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and the speech was picketed by members of the John Birch Society.

  That was my only contact, however indirect, with that lunatic fringe group of the far right.

  12

  On June 6, 1961, I drove to New York to deliver the revised manuscript of The Search for the Elements to Svirsky.

  At that period I was writing articles for the Encyclopedia Americana. One of the results of that was that I received a complimentary copy of the 1961 edition of the Americana to add to my 1942 Britannica. This meant I could turn to the Americana for postwar developments, and that was welcome indeed.

  13

  On June 21, I began what I planned to be the fourth Realm book in math for Houghton Mifflin. Having done Numbers, Measure, and Algebra, it seemed logical to do Realm of Geometry. Logical or not, I quickly realized I didn’t want to. It would mean too much work with diagrams. I therefore dropped it at once, even though Houghton Mifflin had handed me a contract for it.

  To mask the disappointment, I began a Words book instead. This time I planned Words on the Map—designed to trace the origin of various geographical names.

  Instead of using a continuous account, as in Words of the Myths and Words in Genesis, I returned to the format of Words of Science and wrote Words on the Map as a collection of 250 one-page essays.

  I had a particularly unusual opportunity to work on it intensively, as Gertrude and both children took the bus to New York on Friday, June 23, and left me at home alone for the entire weekend. I spent just about the whole of Saturday and Sunday at the typewriter, doing seventy-two of the essays.

  14

  On the evening of Friday the twenty-third, I attended the leave-taking party for Dean Soutter.

  Keefer was there and he went out of his way to greet me, crossing the room with a wide grin and congratulating me on the reception of The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science. I could detect no sarcasm in his words and there was nothing to do but to shake hands with him, smile, and acknowledge his words courteously.

  In a way, of course, it was a treaty of peace. Keefer could scarcely make it plainer that he considered himself to have been wrong in his attitude. My science writing did not disgrace the school, and my insistence on writing rather than research was for the good of the school. After that, though we never became friends, we were certainly no longer enemies.

  Henry Lemon, who was also there, and who may have taken his cue from Keefer, also congratulated me. That was a confession of error, too, in my eyes. In his case, though, it was the last time I spoke to him or even saw him, after twelve years of first uneasy and then hostile association. Later that year he left and took a post with the University of Nebraska School of Medicine.

  15

  It seemed to me that the reaction of Keefer and Lemon to The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science was the last bit of evidence I needed to show me that that book was my nonfictional equivalent of “Nightfall.”

  Just as “Nightfall” had led to my recognition as a major figure in the world of science fiction, so The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science led to my recognition as a major figure in the field of science writing. Professionally, I had finally gone over the top.111

  Acclaim for The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science was not universal, however. There had been an only lukewarm review in the New York Times, from a competing science writer who, I gathered, felt he could have done it better.

  There was also a savage article in the June 2, 1961, Science entitled “In Defense of Biology” by Barry Commoner, a plant physiologist who has since become very well known for his habit of blaming the ills of the world on everything but overpopulation.

  He was the retiring vice president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the article was a reprint of his farewell address. I glanced at the first few paragraphs and was wondering whether I ought to read it thoroughly, when I caught my own name in print.

  Naturally, I went back to the beginning and read the article with keen intensity. It turned out that Professor Commoner was tipping his lance in defense of biology against me and The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science.

  What he specifically objected to was a sentence that started Chapter 10. That sentence was: “Modern science has all but wiped out the borderline between life and nonlife.”

  To this, Professor Commoner took violent exception. He went on, immediately after quoting the sentence, to say:

  “Since biology is the science of life, any successful obliteration of the distinction between living things and other forms of matter ends forever the usefulness of biology as a separate science. If the foregoing sentence is even remotely correct, biology is not only under attack; it has been annihilated.”

  As it happened, the sentence to which Commoner objected was not mine. It had been inserted by Svirsky—but never mind. I had let it remain and it appeared over my name, so I was prepared to defend it.

  And why not? I had never in my life either before or since heard a more stupid argument advanced by anyone supposed to be a scientist.

  Imagine Copernicus to have advanced his theory that the planets, including Earth, all revolved about the Sun, so that Earth was as much a planet as Venus and Mars was. Suppose Copernicus had therefore said: “Modern science has all but wiped out the borderline between Earth and the other planets.”

  And suppose some geologist, instead of arguing the merits of the case, had chosen to attack Copernicus for threatening the existence of geology as a separate science, as though the advance of science must be stopped if it threatens to demolish the status of some scientist’s specialized preserve.

  Besides, it does not demolish the status of that preserve and does not affect what that scientist must view as his legal property rights. Even if Earth is but one more planet, geology remains a living science as the study of the particular planet, Earth. And even if life is but a specialized form of physics and chemistry, then biology remains a living science as the study of that particular form.

  To worry about names and divisions, when knowledge itself is universal, argues a parochial mind that is incapable of seeing past the end of the nose (or perhaps not quite to the end, if the nose is a majestic one).

  I defended my point of view in a brief, albeit caustic, letter, which Science was good enough to print. I did the same in far greater detail in an F & SF article named “Dethronement,” which I wrote on June 29, 1961, and which eventually appeared in the December 1961 F & SF.

  Getting my answers into print satisfied me, and I hold no further animus against Commoner, but I’m afraid I can never look upon him as a person of great intelligence.

  Since “Dethronement” was in the nature of a specific attack on a specific man I was not interested in having it appear beyond the occasion for it. It is, therefore, one of exactly seven of my F & SF essays that I have never allowed in any of my collections.

  16

  David went off to camp on July 2, an eight-week camp, and not simply a day camp. He was not quite ten and it was our first real separation. It was not to a completely strange place we took him, however, but to Camp Annisquam, where we had spent vacations of our own. It had been converted under the same ownership, to a boys’ camp, and we felt we could trust them to take care of David.

  We received a postcard from him on July 5, and that, I think, was the first piece of mail he had ever had occasion to author. According to my diary, it “sounded fine and natural.”

  17

  On July 6, 1961, I went to New York and stayed at the Stanhope Hotel, just across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was the first time I had stayed there, and I rather liked it because it gave me a chance to visit the museum. I stayed at the Stanhope frequently thereafter.

  I had lunch the next day with T. O’Conor Sloane III, a Doubleday editor whom I had not met before but whose name was not unfamiliar to me. He was the grandson and namesake of the man who had been editor of Amazing from 1929 to 1938.

  Tom Sloane was interested in adding to a series of books of short biographies he was doing. Specifically, he wanted me to do a book of short biographies of 250 important scientists. It was something along the line of the series I had done for Eric Berger three years before but was to be much more extensive and was to be for adults.

  The notion fascinated me and I agreed to do it.

  18

  On July 20, 1961, I obtained, for the first time, stationery that had my name and address imprinted on it. I’ve never been without such stationery since.

  There was some uncertainty over the exact form of the letterhead. Should there be a Ph.D. after the name? Should there be raised lettering?

  I held out for the plainest block printing available and with my name in lonely grandeur, making use of no title whatever. My point of view was that this was reverse pride. My name needed no adornment; it was enough in itself. I have held to that view ever since.

  19

  We took advantage of David’s absence at camp to take a week off ourselves. We went to Birchtoft in New Hampshire on Sunday, July 23; we had been there a couple of times. This time we took Robyn with us.

  Robyn, now six years old, was on her best behavior. She was unbelievably cute, with her blond hair in two pigtails, and was self-consciously adorable. She was the hit of the camp.112

  It wasn’t a bad time for us, either. One high point was a hayride on the evening of the twenty-fourth, during which I overcame, with difficulty, my fear that the horses might run away with us. (They were two old nags who had long ago lost any capacity—let alone will—to gallop.) We engaged in community singing and I sang “If I Love You” with great éclat. I was in good baritone voice that evening and made the best of it. (I prefer my tenor voice myself, but my baritone is more impressive.)

  We met a couple named Lucille and Matey Conrad, who were extremely compatible. Since they were at our table, we had an uproariously noisy time. In fact, when we went to see Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple at a neighboring playhouse, the real high point was the drive there and back. I was at the wheel, but the hilarity in the car, particularly coming back, was so great that I was physically helpless half the time, and how I maneuvered the car over the country roads without killing everyone I can’t imagine.

  The twenty-sixth was, of course, our nineteenth wedding anniversary, and everyone made a fuss over it.

  On Saturday night, there was a dance, with Robyn joining in and dancing very solemnly with a number of grown-ups, and the next day we left regretfully. It was the best vacation we had had since Chester’s Zunbarg thirteen years before.

  On the way home, we stopped off at Camp Annisquam and saw David for the first time in four weeks. He was delighted to see us and, of course, wanted to come home with us (par for the course in such cases), but we had to do the hardhearted thing and leave him there for four more weeks.

  20

  Still another new project turned up on August 8, 1961, when Roy Fisher of the World Book Encyclopedia visited me. The World Book people were going to start a yearbook and they wanted to have a staff of experts, each of whom was to review the year in their field. I, of course, was to review the year in science.

  Each annual article was to be two thousand words long (or a little over that), and the pay was to be two thousand dollars. Payment of nearly a dollar a word was so stupendous a notion that I could think of no way of refusing.

  I did, however, enter a firm caveat. I explained that I did not fly and that I did not like to travel; for instance, I wouldn’t go to Chicago, where the World Book home office was located. What’s more, I wouldn’t do reportorial writing; I wouldn’t interview; I wouldn’t quote. All I did was to interpret results and explain concepts.

  Fisher said he understood and that was all acceptable, so I was satisfied.

  21

  The next day, August 9, I took in Words on the Map to Houghton Mifflin, and, encouraged by Robyn’s behavior at Birchtoft, I took her with me. We all ate at Marliave’s, an Italian restaurant, and Robyn did not disappoint me. She was quite the little lady.

  Soon afterward, there was another family meal. Stan and Ruth arrived with their children on August 15, and we all ate at Novak’s, a central-European restaurant in Brookline that was one of our favorites. If the Olympian gods could have tasted their sauerbraten, they would have given up their ambrosia.

  I remember once taking a guest to Novak’s and then insisting that I do the ordering. A beautiful plate of sauerbraten and potato pancakes (with red cabbage on the side) was eventually placed before each of us.

  I expected one taste and a cry of sudden ecstasy but, no, all I received was animated talk while first one mouthful and then another slid down the gullet. I was dreadfully disappointed for a few minutes, but then the guest skidded to a dead halt, stared at the plate and cried out, “What am I eating?” And from then on, there was delight.

  Stan and Ruth liked it, too.

  22

  On one of my earlier visits to New York, Tim Seldes had told me that Doubleday had gotten a request for the Portuguese rights to the Foundation books. It wasn’t surprising. By now, it was the general impression that Doubleday did all my science fiction. Gnome Press was so moribund, by this time, that no one thought of it in connection with anything.