10

  The happiness of doing Quick and Easy Math made me want to do another book for Houghton Mifflin. Quick and Easy Math was, in essence, one of the Realm books (I might have called it Realm of Shortcuts, but that had seemed too flip.) It seemed natural to me, then, that I next do one of my Words books.

  It would have been logical to continue culling words from the Bible and, in fact, some time back, I had started the first draft of Words from Canaan, which was to deal with the books of Joshua and Judges. Unfortunately, Words in Genesis had done poorly and Words from the Exodus was doing even worse. Even I could recognize a lost cause, so I abandoned Words from Canaan and cast about for something else.

  If I couldn’t use biblical history, how about secular history? In particular, how about Greek history? That should be a juicy source, considering the dependence of the more learned portions of the English vocabulary on Greek.

  I began to buy history books with the thought that if Greek history proved suitable for my purposes, I could then move on to Roman history, medieval history, and so on.

  Once again, I checked with secondhand book stores on the possibility of getting a set of The Historians’ History of the World, and once again I failed. That, however, was not a fatal omission, and I started work on Words from Greek History on October 16. (I had also begun Volume 2 of Understanding Physics on October 14.)

  11

  It was time for the annual World Book Year Book meeting, and this time, at last, it was in New York.

  We all had our session together on October 24 and 25, and discussed possible leads for our respective stories—something that could easily have been done individually by telephone or by mail.

  It involved two fancy banquets, and at one of them, on the twenty-fifth, we had grouse at “Twenty-one.” I didn’t enjoy it particularly, for it was so gamy that it tasted decayed.

  New York was an ideal meeting place for me but not for anyone else and there was considerable dissatisfaction with having to junket in such an unjunketable area. Toward the end of the session, therefore, it was announced that in 1964 everyone would meet in Bermuda.

  “Everyone but me,” I said, emphatically, but no one paid any attention. The consensus seemed to be that, of course, I would go. Lots of money, lots of fun, nothing to do—how could I refuse?

  12

  I went to New York on November 20, since I had to serve on a panel on the future of space exploration and because afterward I had to give my talk to Mensa on the twenty-second.

  The panel was, in one respect, a harrowing experience. I had found out after I had accepted that another panelist would be Wernher von Braun, and I was not an admirer of Wernher von Braun. He had worked under Hitler and would have won the war for the Nazis if he could.

  I know, of course, that it might be said that he was just being patriotic or that he would have been thrown into a concentration camp if he had refused or that he had to work on rockets whatever the purpose—and for those reasons I was prepared to remain neutral where he was concerned. I did not have to be friendly.

  When we all got onto the platform, therefore, I studiously remained at the end opposite from that occupied by von Braun and did my best to be unaware of his existence.

  It didn’t help. The moderator, anxious to introduce everyone to everyone, brought von Braun to me and began performing the introduction. There were eight hundred people in the audience watching and I had two seconds to decide what to do. I couldn’t make a scene; he was holding out his hand.

  I had to take it and hold it as weakly and as briefly as possible—but I did shake hands. Ever since then, I have had the queasy feeling that I have shaken a hand that shook the hand of Adolf Hitler.

  The panel itself went by without incident. I spoke last and perforce went beyond the speculations of the others by speaking of the possibilities of interstellar travel.

  Afterward several people, including some panelists, met with the press. I was among them. In the fifteen minutes that followed, however, no reporter bothered to address a single question to me, since I was only a science-fiction writer.

  Then they took our names to make sure they were all spelled right. Finally, one reporter, addressing us en masse, asked, “Should any of you be referred to as ‘Doctor’?”

  I waited for someone else to speak, and when no one did, I said, dryly, “I have a Ph.D., so you can call me ‘Doctor.’ I’m the science-fiction writer.”

  13

  My rounds the next day and Friday morning passed without incident, and at noon on November 22, 1963, I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I remember I was standing at a small replica of the Parthenon, studying it and wondering if there were anything I could say about it in Words from Greek History that I had not said, when I heard someone behind me saying something about the President being shot.

  I turned and, ignoring the dictates of courtesy, I said quite rudely, “Hey, what the hell are you talking about?”

  He told me—and that’s how I found out that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.

  I left the museum at once and went back to my hotel room to do some thinking. Then I called up the person in charge of the Mensa meeting that night and said, “Have you heard what has happened in Dallas?”

  “Yes, I have. So shocking.”

  “I presume, then, that the meeting tonight has been called off.”

  “I’m afraid not. The invitations went out long ago and there’s no way we can call everyone and tell them not to come.”

  “But no one will come.”

  “Maybe not. But I hope you will—just in case.”

  “I can’t give a talk tonight.”

  “Then just sit with us. We’ll understand.”

  At 6 p.m., I met the Mensa people in charge at Luchow’s on Fourteenth Street (in the old Stuyvesant Town neighborhood of fifteen years before) and we had a rather somber meal. After that we went to the meeting hall and, to my vast astonishment, I found it choked to the rafters with an overflow crowd.

  It dawned on me suddenly that the tragic event of the day had given people eight hours of shock and horror so that escape was necessary. It’s very likely that if Kennedy had not been assassinated that day, the audience would have been only half its size.

  I couldn’t very well refuse to speak.

  After I was introduced, I said, “Ladies and gentlemen, it had been my intention to give a lighthearted talk today, but under the circumstances, I think it will be impossible for me to be lighthearted. Please forgive me, then, if I am not at my best.”

  There was a clearly sympathetic murmur, so I took heart and launched into my “Forget It!” talk.

  My warning proved unnecessary. I had no sooner warmed up and heard my own voice in my ears (there are few sounds sweeter to almost anyone, I suppose) when the outside world drifted away and vanished. Indeed, it did so even more effectively than it would have done on an ordinary day, for the act of speaking served as a kind of opiate to deaden pain and distress. As I felt my misery leave, I grew actively happy.

  And so did the audience—for the same reason, I’m sure. After the first five minutes, I was animated and funny, and the audience responded eagerly, laughing up an enthusiastic storm.

  The talk was a huge success and left me with a bad case of aching conscience. Yet what could I have done?

  14

  I completed Words from Greek History on December 6, and handed the manuscript to Austin on December 10. It was longer than any of my other Words books, so I tried to steel myself against a request for cutting—and at home I charged ahead with Volume 2 of Understanding Physics.

  15

  My father was suffering from intestinal bleeding and was in a hospital for examination. I went to New York to see him, therefore, and visited him in the hospital on December 16. He seemed in fine shape, bright and active, though his hair (what there was of it) was now completely white. I amused him, and the other patients in the room, for several hours with funny stories from Greek history.

  Fortunately, the condition proved to be not serious. He was discharged and all was well when he celebrated his sixty-seventh birthday on the twenty-first.

  16

  As 1963 came to an end, I found I had once again, for the second year in a row, published six books:

  49. Words from the Exodus (Houghton Mifflin)

  50. The Genetic Code (Orion)

  51. The Human Body (Houghton Mifflin)

  52. Fifty Short Science-fiction Tales (Collier)

  53. View from a Height (Doubleday)

  54. The Kite That Won the Revolution (Houghton Mifflin)

  17

  On January 1, 1964, Bernie Pitt died of a heart attack at the age of forty-five. I did not know this at the time. I did not find out until three months later, when I came across a one-sentence obituary in Chemical & Engineering News. I called Ruth Pitt at once and, as in the case of Cyril Kornbluth six years before, I was distressed that I had not kept in closer touch.

  18

  I turned forty-four on January 2, 1964, but my birthday present came, unexpectedly, the day after. One of the bookstores I had been in touch with about finding The Historians’ History of the World actually sounded hopeful, so I called the Silvers to tell them that. After all, they, above all, knew how badly I wanted a set, and they would be glad.

  But Mary Silvers, who answered the phone, said, “Don’t get a set, Isaac! Rollo has been trying to get you one for a whole year and he’s succeeded. It’s on its way.”

  I couldn’t believe it and she had to work hard to convince me she was serious. But it was true; Rollo called me on the thirteenth to say he had the set for me. I drove down helter-skelter, and there it was, in perfect condition; and, in fact, the same edition I remembered reading in Philadelphia twenty years before.

  I hesitated. It was a complete set, and Rollo’s own edition had a volume missing. For a moment I felt that I ought to offer him the missing volume, but his edition was different in appearance and the added volume wouldn’t look good on the shelf—and all he wanted was the looks of the set, whereas I needed them for active reference.

  Yet that was just rationalization. The truth of the matter was that I was selfish beyond belief. Here was a man who had labored to give me something I very much wanted and who had ended by giving me something that was better than he himself had, yet I knew I didn’t want to let go of that volume. I didn’t even make the offer pro forma, and if he had asked for it, I would have tried to refuse.

  My conscience twinged sufficiently at this, however, to cause me to offer him untold sums for the set, but he would only accept (after considerable argument) exactly what he had himself paid—forty dollars. He wouldn’t take one cent more. And even with that additional evidence of good will and kindness, I still couldn’t force myself to offer him the volume.

  19

  The Historians’ History of the World came at just the right time, for Words from Greek History took an odd turn.

  On January 2, I had had a birthday lunch with Austin and he had asked me to take back the manuscript and cut it a bit. It was too long, he said. He also said, with some embarrassment, that he had made some suggestions—only suggestions, which I need not follow—as to which areas to cut.

  I took it back resignedly, for I had expected something like that. When I went over it at home and studied the passages that Austin was suggesting I cut, I seemed to see a pattern, however. I phoned him.

  “Austin,” I said, “you seem to be cutting out my sections on words.”

  “I guess so,” said Austin.

  “But you’re leaving the Greek history.”

  Austin said, “I thought the Greek history was more interesting than the words.”

  “That makes it sound, Austin, as though you want me to write a history of Greece; a straight history.”

  “Well—” said Austin.

  I wouldn’t let him finish. “I’ll be glad to do it,” and I hung up, quickly.

  It was exactly what I wanted to do, and I didn’t mind canceling Words from Greek History and starting over. In fact, it wouldn’t even be a matter of canceling, for I could cannibalize a great deal of the earlier book. And now The Historians’ History of the World would be a great reference.

  The only thing was I couldn’t start it right away. The second volume of Understanding Physics was consuming a great deal of my time, and I had also started A Short History of Chemistry. This latter book was modeled on the earlier A Short History of Biology, and, like the former book, could be gotten out of the Biographical Encyclopedia without much trouble.

  20

  On January 15, 1964, I traveled to Northampton, Massachusetts, to give three talks over a two-day period at Smith College. Smith was, of course, a famous girls’ school, and when invited I said, jokingly, “You’ll put me up in the girls’ dormitory, of course.”

  “Of course,” they said.

  “I was only joking,” I said.

  “Well, we’re not. You’ll be in the girls’ dormitory.”

  I thought about that quite a bit. I knew that sexual standards were relaxing in the colleges, but somehow I didn’t think they had relaxed quite as much as all that. I girded myself for anything that might happen.

  I was given a two-room suite in the girls’ dormitory, but it was off in a corner, with a private entrance to the street, and no other entrance at all. So much for my fantasies.

  Another thing I remember about the trip was talking to some of the girls. One of them said she was married.

  “A little early, wasn’t it?” I said, for she was only nineteen.

  “I bad to get out of the girls’ dormitory somehow,” she said.

  “If only I could get in,” I said, thinking of that private entrance.

  “You wouldn’t like it,” she said, positively. “You may think you would, but after a while, sitting in the cafeteria and hearing nothing but high, shrill voices, like a bunch of twittering canaries, you’d begin to feel as though you’d go out of your mind if you didn’t hear a baritone once in a while.”

  And I suddenly became aware of the canary sound of all the girls around us and got the horrid feeling that she might be right.

  I think I could have endured it for a while, though—long enough, you understand.

  21

  When I got home on the seventeenth, I found the page proofs of A Short History of Biology waiting for me. Along with it was an index!

  That came as a shock to me. I always did my own indexes, but it had not occurred to me to make that plain to Natural History Press.

  Of course, it meant a saving of time, so I looked over the index, which had, presumably, been professionally prepared, to see if I could learn lessons in technique. I quickly found that the only lesson I could learn would be on the method of preparing a thoroughly inadequate index. Half the names in the book were not included. A number of subjects were not mentioned.

  It was insupportable.

  I prepared my own index as quickly as I could, but when I took it in I was told it was too late to make the substitution. I discoursed lengthily and feelingly on the general subject of stupidity and they apologized, but the book was published with the useless index, and once again I had a book I didn’t enjoy.

  It added just one more time-wasting task to the list. I had to see to it that no publisher, either through ignorance or through forgetfulness, ever allowed a “professional” to prepare my indexes.

  22

  Playboy wanted me to do a science-fiction story. Where payment was concerned, Playboy was The Saturday Evening Post of the 1960s. For a 1,000-word short-short, they would pay $750.

  Their proposition was that I write the story about an illustration they were sending me. The illustration consisted of a dim photograph of a clay head, without ears, and with the other features labeled in block letters. That was all. What’s more, two other authors (I think one was Fred Pohl) were asked to write stories based on the same photo.

  On January 20, I wrote the story, which was eventually called “Eyes Do More Than See,” and sent it off. It came back on January 28, to my discomfiture. A. J. Budrys was at that time fiction-editor for Playboy, and he wanted a little more emotion in the story. I made the necessary changes and sent it off on February 3, and it was rejected a second time, and this time for good!

  What made it particularly harrowing was that the other two stories were accepted by Playboy and, when they roped in a hurry-up substitute for me, his story was accepted also. In other words, out of four stories written around the photograph, three were accepted and only mine was rejected—and twice, at that.

  I had not experienced such a humiliation in my science-fiction writing since I had stalked out of Sam Merwin’s office with “Grow Old With Me” sixteen years before.

  A little bruised, I sent “Eyes Do More Than See” to F & SF, which accepted it promptly. To be sure, the payment was now only $25, but I honestly didn’t mind that. I had enough money; what I wanted was an acceptance. “Eyes Do More Than See” appeared finally in the April 1965 F & SF.131

  23

  If the “Eyes Do More Than See” affair was a humiliation, I had the chance to gain a little exaltation elsewhere. The book editor of the New York Herald Tribune wanted me to review the new third edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia. He said he could think of no one else with a knowledge broad enough to make a fair assessment. Well, that alone would have been enough to put a shy grin on my face, and it drove me to make a special effort.