Tim asked me whether he was to send the request to Gnome Press or give it to me.

  I sighed and said, “I’ll take it, but I’ll just turn it down.”

  “Turn it down? Why?”

  “Because I don’t get money for my Gnome Press books. I haven’t for years.”

  Tim looked surprised. “Does Gnome Press send you statements?” “Erratically. Every couple of years I get one that I don’t trust.”

  “In that case, Isaac, they’ve broken their contract. Get the books back from them.”

  “I can’t do that, Tim. I’d have to sue and I can’t sue Marty.”

  “You don’t have to sue. If you’ll agree to let Doubleday publish the books, we’ll have our lawyers lean on Gnome Press.”

  “In that case,” I said, “lean away.”

  And lean they did.

  On August 18, 1961, I had lunch with Tim Seldes and Marty Greenberg. Marty was willing to give up the books in return for various minor financial items.

  Tim Seldes wanted to make no concessions since Marty didn’t really have any further rights to the books if we were willing to press our charge of contract violations. But that would take time and it seemed to me that the books were the thing. I wanted nothing held up for a couple of thousand dollars even if I had to pay them out of my own pocket.

  So I said to Tim, in a private conversation afterward, “Take the books and run, Tim.”

  He did, and he wouldn’t hear of my paying anything. From that time on, Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, and I, Robot were Doubleday volumes.

  I was dreadfully grateful to Tim and also dreadfully nervous.

  I said, “The cream has been taken off the book sales, Tim. You won’t sell many now and I’m afraid Doubleday won’t get back its investment. Please let me pay.”

  “Stop worrying, Isaac,” said Tim. “We’re going to make a lot of money out of these books.”

  How he could tell, I don’t know, but they proved the best moneymakers of any of my books.

  Sometimes I stop to think of the money Marty could have made if he had made a real attempt to sell them, and had given me regular statements and paid me on time, so that I would write still more books for him. Other authors got their books away from him eventually, and almost each one of those books were classics in the field. Marty had been sitting on a gold mine and had not been aware of it. He went for the short-term pin money.

  23

  David’s tenth birthday, on August 20, 1961, took place while he was still in camp. We called to make sure that they would observe it and have a birthday celebration for him. On August 27, his stint at the camp was over and we brought him home. He seemed in perfect health and spirits.

  24

  Not so Robyn a few days later, on September 1. Neighbors were enclosing a veranda and where eventually a thick, non-shattering pane of glass was to go, a thin and murderous pane of glass had been inserted. Robyn, of course, promptly decided to put her arm through it. We managed to get her to Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and eight stitches were required.

  To this day it is difficult for me to think of it without writhing in sympathy pains. I am subject to them and when Robyn later discovered this, she thought it very peculiar and would show me off to her friends. She would wait till she decided I was unsuspecting and then she would come up with some miserable little friend of hers and suddenly produce the arm where the thin white scars and the needle marks are, to this day, faintly visible, and say, “Daddy, do you remember the time . . .”

  And as soon as my face twists in agony and I begin to gasp, she turns to her friend and says, “See!”

  Robyn knows the entire list of my eccentricities.

  25

  Oh well, down one day and up the next. The day after the stitches, the Abelard-Schuman statement arrived and, along with it, a check for fifty-six hundred dollars. That was the largest single check I ever received, larger even than any of my Doubleday statements. It was rather stupefying.

  It brought my 1961 earnings to the neighborhood of the thirty-four thousand dollars I had set myself as a goal, since that had been my total earnings, writing and teaching, in the record year of 1958. Since there were still four months left to the year, I was bound to surpass the record by several thousand, so I knew I was going over the top, financially as well as professionally, in 1961.

  It was about time. An overnight success I certainly was not. I had labored at my writing for twenty-three years and it was only now that I could think of myself as having made it, as being well-to-do.

  Let me tell you I was delighted, and I worked happily on The Human Body over the Labor Day weekend.

  26

  The Human Body dealt with anatomy and physiology, subjects I had never taken in school. That raises a question I am often asked: “How can you write on subjects concerning which you are ignorant?”

  I manage. There are encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, textbooks, learned magazines, all sorts of reference materials—and I consult them.

  Yet if I get my material out of other books—what do I contribute?

  I remember once, when I was doing Words of Science, I was typing at school with Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary before me. Matthew Derow, of the Department of Microbiology, came up behind me, watched as I leafed through the Unabridged, and finally said, “You’re just copying the stuff out of the dictionary.”

  I said, “You’re right. If you like, I’ll give you the dictionary and you write the book. It’s just copying, and then you can get the royalties.”

  He didn’t take me up on it.

  What I contribute to my books are (1) ease and clarity of style, (2) sensible and logical order of presentation, and (3) apt and original metaphors, analogies, and conclusions.

  You don’t copy any of that out of books, however many references are open before you as you type.

  I am sometimes also asked, in connection with my books, whether I interview experts or solicit expert readings of my manuscripts.

  The first of the two I never do. I consider it time-wasteful. Experts tend to maunder, hedge, and evade points. Besides which, there is invariably social interaction, which is totally wasteful as far as writing a book is concerned. I prefer to read in a few hours a book that an expert spent a few years writing (and would take a few years to explain, if I spoke to him).

  Sometimes I do get expert readings, if I have a friend I can trust on the subject. Thus I had Harry Stubbs read The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science for me, and I asked Elizabeth Moyer to go over The Human Body.

  In The Human Body, for instance, I had carelessly placed the spleen on the wrong side, and Elizabeth corrected that, of course, with great glee (along with a few other lesser points). She never let me forget it, either. Whenever she was feeling in exceptional spirits she would ask me to locate the spleen for her, and then tell anyone who was around that I had located it on the wrong side of the body in my book on anatomy.

  I remember going to the Anatomy Department to pick up the manuscript after she was through with it, and another member of the department, John Ifft, asked me curiously if I were writing a book on anatomy. “Yes,” I said, and he made no answer.

  When I was leaving, however, I heard him say in a low voice that was undoubtedly not meant for my ears, “I’d bet he’d resent it if I wrote a book on biochemistry.”

  Svirsky, with his usual ability to disregard my feelings, sent each chapter of The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science to a different expert, without consulting me. I got some help in this way, but also a certain amount of annoyance.

  In one chapter I discussed the matter of overpopulation and hoisted my usual warning signals of alarm. The “expert” who read that particular chapter actually had the incredible audacity-cum-ignorance to write in the margin, “I’d say this was God’s problem, wouldn’t you?”

  It was the work of a moment to write underneath, “God helps those who help themselves” and to place an enormous STET over the entire passage. I was particularly watchful, come galleys time, to make sure the passage remained, too.

  27

  On September 7, 1961, in New York, Gertrude and I met with the Conrads (of our recent Birchtoft trip) and ate smorgasbord at the Stockholm Restaurant.

  It is never wise for me to dine buffet style, for I invariably overeat. Never, though, did I overeat so badly as on that evening.

  By the time I had had my helpings, and seconds, and thirds, and fourths, and had tried enough of each item to have stuffed an anaconda, I finally got down to an excellent chocolate layer cake and found, halfway through, that I could eat no more.

  I stared numbly at the half I could not eat (never before or since have I been unable to eat cake) and my distress became so apparent that we all had to pay up and leave and then had to walk up and down the street until it seemed safe to do anything else.

  If I have to pick one meal when I was at my most gluttonous, that was it. I don’t enter this as an item of pride. I was, and still am, bitterly ashamed of that incident. Nevertheless, although I’m as careful as I can be in this autobiography to spare the feelings of others, I’m not here to spare my own.

  And in any case, I learned a lesson. My weight at this time was 210 pounds. It was my peak. I didn’t lose for quite a while, but I gained no more.

  The next day I had a relatively abstemious lunch with Mac Talley, who had obtained tickets to Camelot for that night for Gertrude and myself.

  28

  I was in New York again on September 20, and again I had lunch with Mac Talley.

  He now had the idea that I write an entire Asimov Science Shelf, introducing each of the various sciences in detail. He kept telling me that I was now in my forties and that was probably my peak productive decade and I should engage in a large project.

  That made a rather depressing bit of sense to me. There was no way of seeing life as a whole without understanding that somewhere there was going to be a peak followed by a decline. And for the peak to come in the forties seemed reasonable.

  I agreed to tackle the job and tried to reconcile myself to the downward slide that would soon be coming. It would be another and less happy version of the “over the top” I was experiencing in 1961.

  16

  Far over the Top

  1

  Tim Seldes had by now come to take the place, to some extent, that Brad had earlier had, and that, still earlier, Campbell had had. I suppose it must have been Campbell’s imprinting in the first place, but I have the tendency to look upon editors as security figures and of having one editor as security-figure-in-chief.

  Age had nothing to do with it. As I recall, Tim had, at one time, held a door open for me to pass through, and I shrank back. It seemed an inversion of values. The man of lesser importance held the door for the man of greater importance, and no one could possibly have been raised (professionally) by Campbell without having it firmly fixed in his head that the editor was more important than the writer.

  So I said, “Don’t hold the door for me, Tim. I’m not that important.”

  And he said, “Don’t give yourself airs of humility, Asimov. My mother always taught me to hold the door open for older men.”

  I walked on through, but that was a horrible moment. I was older than my editor.

  What further depths of degradation loomed ahead of the infant prodigy I once was. If I lived long enough I would become older than the President of the United States someday; older than the Pope; older than anyone.

  Of course, I was only old in years, and I have never allowed myself to lose the innocent depravity of childhood.

  Timothy was on the phone once when his secretary was out. When his other phone rang, Tim paused long enough to put his hand over the mouthpiece of the one he was talking into and said, “Make yourself useful, Asimov. Pick up that phone and keep it occupied till I can get to it.”

  So I picked up the phone and engaged in a very pleasant conversation with the person at the other end. It gradually grew more and more personal with regard to Tim himself. I was enjoying myself telling funny stories about Tim, who naturally grew more and more restless.

  Finally, putting his hand over the mouthpiece again, he said, “Who the hell are you talking to, Asimov?”

  I said, “Your sister, Marion. She says you were that way when you were little, too.”

  “Oh God,” said Tim, tragically. He shouted into his phone, “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” Then he wrested my phone from me and said, “Can’t I trust you at all?”

  His sister is, of course, an accomplished actress, and I said to Tim once, “Say, Tim, isn’t your father Gilbert Seldes, the writer?”

  “Yes,” said Tim.

  “And isn’t your uncle George Seldes, the writer?”

  “Yes,” said Tim, growing a little suspicious.

  “And isn’t your sister Marion Seldes, the actress?”

  “Yes,” said Tim, now quite uneasy.

  “Well, tell me, Tim,” I said, innocently, “how does it feel to be the only member in the family not to have talent?”

  Then I quickly put his secretary between us, as I knew he wouldn’t hit her.

  His secretary was Wendy Weil, and in a long series of editors’ secretaries, she stands out in my mind. She was (and is, of course) six feet tall, very intelligent, and very sweet. Her figure is not a lush one, but if it were she would have been unsafe to allow in public. Men would have had to wear dark glasses to look at her.

  She had a tendency toward a permanent slight stoop, partly because she had so often to talk to other women, all of whom were considerably shorter than she.

  I noticed her once talking to another young woman who was a full twelve inches shorter than herself, and both were wearing rather similar costumes.

  I came up and said, cheerfully, “Girls, you look like two separate species—you know, the Greater Rose-breasted Nuthatch and the Lesser Rose-breasted Nuthatch.”

  The short girl laughed, but Wendy only sighed. I suspect being the Greater Rose-breasted Nuthatch had its problems and that part of her tendency to stoop was to give the impression she was only five feet, eleven inches tall in order not to frighten away too many men.

  She didn’t frighten me, of course, which must have puzzled her, for she topped me by a good three inches. We were walking along the corridor at Doubleday, with myself being terribly gallant, when she said, “Doesn’t it bother you that I’m taller than you, Isaac?”

  I shrugged. “Only standing up,” I said. “If we lie flat on our backs, I’m taller.” Since I said that in my ordinary speaking voice, it was overheard, and the remark was repeated from end to end of Doubleday, and outside it as well, for all I know.

  Wendy, of course, blushed. She was only twenty-one in 1961, and she turned a pretty pink at slight provocation, a sight that Tim was cruel enough to enjoy. At least, he never stepped in to protect her from my innocently depraved remarks.

  “There is something,” I once said to Tim, “so enticing and exotic about a Gentile girl.”

  “Like whom?” said Tim, setting up a land mine of his own.

  “Like Wendy,” I said, waving my arm at her with a grand gesture.

  “Who,” said Tim, with every evidence of satisfaction, “is Jewish.” “Jewish?” I said, stupefied.

  “As the day is long.”

  “You mean my unattainable ideal is Jewish?” and I stared at Wendy open-mouthed.

  I think Wendy dined out on that story for years, and she would remind me of it periodically. It seemed to make up for a lot.

  Wendy did teach me an important lesson, though.

  I always call my New York editors collect; or I did, in those days. I suppose everyone has some sort of chintzy little habit, and that was mine. I could never bring myself to make a long-distance call at my own expense.

  I once called Tim because I happened to know it was his birthday, and I wanted to wish him a happy birthday.

  Wendy answered, accepted the call on Tim’s behalf, and said he’d be with me in a second.

  “It’s not important, Wendy,” I said, cheerfully. “Don’t bother him. I just wanted to wish him a happy birthday.”

  “You called him collect,” said Wendy, scandalized, “to wish him a happy birthday?”

  I could hear Tim in the background saying, “Who is it?” and Wendy said, “Isaac is calling you collect to wish you a happy birthday.”

  I heard him say, in the distance, “For God’s sake, don’t embarrass him.” Then he got on the phone and talked pleasantly and amicably to me.

  Of course I wasn’t calling Tim collect. I was calling Doubleday collect. Even so, I had been brought face to face with my own cheapness and I was embarrassed, so the next time I saw Tim in New York, I apologized.

  And he said, “Listen, Asimov” (he always called me by my last name in a sort of mock-hectoring manner), “we have authors who come in drunk and have to be dried out. We have authors who come in crying because they have writers’ block and we have to soothe them. We have authors who are out of plots and we have to supply one. We have authors who have agents who drive us up the wall. We have authors who can’t write very well so that we have to spend weeks editing their books into something readable. You don’t give us any of those troubles. All you want to do is kiss the girls and make collect calls. You’re welcome to that, Asimov.”

  Just the same, from that moment on, I began to wean myself away from collect calls and, eventually, I never called a friend or an editor113 collect again.

  2

  I had a tendency to turn to my editors for advice outside the field of writing, too.

  For instance, I never knew what to do with money except to put it in the bank. Neither my parents nor anyone I knew in my younger years had so much money as to make a bank account an embarrassment. By now, however, I had some seventy thousand dollars in the bank, and all it was doing was making me a few thousand dollars in interest per year, most of which was taxed away by the government.