I was tempted for a while to begin a new numbering in this autobiography and to include the second edition of the text so that I would have four books in 1954 and fourteen altogether by the end of the year. However, the numbering system has already been fixed in print in a number of places and I can’t upset it now without confusion—so let it go.

  My school earnings in 1954 reached a record high of $6,000, but my writing earnings also reached a record high of $11,500. I was making almost twice as much writing as teaching, and my total income was $17,500. It seemed more than ever important to me to raise our financial sights in our house-hunting and to be prepared to shell out more money, and I persuaded Gertrude to consider houses that were being offered for sale at as much as $30,000.

  25

  On January 2, 1955, I was thirty-five years old, and that was a rather sad birthday for me. I woke to realize that I was now old enough to qualify for the presidency (were I but native-born). If three score and ten is considered the traditional stretch of the human lifespan, then my life was half over.

  Gertrude had insisted we invite Ted and Marilyn Kalin for dinner that night, and I had agreed. They had been friends of ours for years. Ted was a handsome young man, quick-witted and good-humored, and Marilyn was a little on the silent side but very good-looking. We both liked them both.

  However, they were not as timebound as I was, and when they called at 8 p.m. to tell us their car wouldn’t start and for me to come over and get them, I was a little annoyed.

  I said to Gertrude, with my hand over the mouthpiece, “Let’s call it off. I hate that sort of slipshoddery.”

  Gertrude, however, insisted quite firmly that I go get them. I was surprised because it was very cold and the streets were not in good condition and she wasn’t the kind to send me out in bad weather. Sure enough, when I tried to start the car, it wouldn’t, so I came up and said, “Oh, the hell with it.”

  But Gertrude, still oddly insistent, asked our landlord (who sold second-hand cars, as I recall) to start it and he managed to succeed in doing so. Off I went to the Kalins’ with poor grace. When I got there, the Kalins weren’t ready and I grew sarcastic in my comments. Ted got annoyed in his turn, but kept insisting there were things they had to do. Then there was a phone call they had to make and then they were ready to go.

  By the time I brought them back I was in good humor again, and as we walked up the back stairs, I was telling them in a loud voice about l’affaire Bott. Then I opened the door and fell silent, for the apartment was full of people.

  Gertrude had arranged a surprise birthday party.

  Many people believed that I wasn’t really surprised.

  “Oh, yes, he was,” said Ted. “He was all ready to knock me down when I kept delaying things in order to make sure all the guests arrived before he came back.”

  “And he never had an inkling?”

  “Of course not,” said Gertrude. “I sent him out to do the shopping for this party and he came back with three of everything and never suspected.”

  “Didn’t he say anything?”

  “Sure,” said Gertrude. “He said, ‘What are you doing? Buying up stuff for a party?’ ”

  “Then he had to suspect.”

  “No, he didn’t,” said Gertrude. “I said, ‘No, there’s no party,’ and he just looked confused and went off to write something.”

  “Even though his birthday was coming?”

  “Oh, well,” said Gertrude, “that would mean he would have to put two and two together, and unless he’s at his typewriter, he never can.”

  I listened to this whole conversation, which was carried on as though I weren’t there. Everyone was quite convinced I was stupid, and there was a gallon or two of condescending laughter from all sides.

  I would have liked to protest, but everything Gertrude said was absolutely true, and what the heck, I never pretended to worldly wisdom. Besides, it’s more fun to be surprised, so who needs worldly wisdom? I just shut up, sat back, and enjoyed the party.

  26

  It was about this time that, through the good offices of Abe Burack, editor of The Writer, I met Ben Benson. He was about ten years older than I was and had been badly wounded in World War II. While he was recovering (he had never entirely recovered and was still somewhat disabled), Abe Burack encouraged him to try his hand at writing, and he had done very well.

  He wrote murder mysteries—police procedurals, to be exact—involving the Massachusetts State Police. I took to reading his books after I had met him and I enjoyed them.

  We got along well. He teased me good-naturedly about the steadiness of my output. He also urged me to get an agent. He pushed pretty hard, but I was impervious.

  He (like Heinlein) was particularly pleased with his own agent and pushed him particularly. The only hard-and-fast example, however, of what his agent could do was the fact that he got twenty-four free copies of his novels for distribution, instead of the twelve I got.

  I couldn’t see very much advantage in twelve extra copies that I could buy at author’s discount if I simply had to have them, and I was also unshaken by his point that agents could squeeze publishers harder and more effectively than authors could. My point was that I suspected publishers to be like cats: They purred when they were stroked and scratched when they were squeezed.

  I intended to continue stroking, and I did, and I think I was right.

  Certainly, my writing continued to move smoothly. I managed to sell “The Last Trump,” after six rejections, to a relatively new magazine, Fantastic Universe (edited by my old friend Hans Santesson) on January 10, 1955, and on January 18, I got the February 1955 Astounding with “Hemoglobin and the Universe”7 in it.

  27

  Now that The End of Eternity was in press, I rather regretted that the day of easy books seemed to be over. After all, the four Gnome Press books I, Robot and the three Foundation books, did not have to be written; they had been written years before. They only had to be put together and smoothed out a little.

  Was there any way I could put together more?

  Not in the same way. I, Robot consisted of nine connected stories; and the Foundation books consisted of nine connected stories. I had no more connected stories.

  I could, of course, put together unconnected stories; simply have a book of short pieces. Such collections, I had been told, were death at the box office, and didn’t sell. Still, there was no charge for asking, so I asked Brad on January 16.

  Rather to my surprise, Brad agreed to take the chance. I had proposed that I put together my stories “The Martian Way,” “The Deep,” “Youth,” and “Sucker Bait” in a book to be called The Martian Way and Other Stories, and Brad was willing to have that done.

  My Doubleday books were obviously continuing to sell well enough to make even a collection of unconnected short stories look palatable if my name were on them.

  It made me regret that I had not held back on my robot stories and Foundation stories until now, because it was clear to me that if I had asked in 1955 instead of in 1950, Brad would have been delighted to do I, Robot and the three Foundation books. Then I would not have to be waiting while Marty Greenberg slowly dribbled out money in twenty-five-dollar amounts.

  But then, one has no chart to the future. You must make your decisions on the spot as best you can.

  28

  There was an administrative blow at the medical school. Dean Faulkner resigned as of the end of the school year. Walker was dourly depressed over it, predicting that either Keefer or some Keefer satellite would be the new dean.

  I had no cause for delight, either. My few contacts with Dean Faulkner had been happy ones. He knew my peculiarities and didn’t seem to mind much. I was wary of Keefer, and if it turned out to be someone from the outside, who could tell how palatable (or unpalatable) I might be to him.

  And yet I didn’t see that a new dean could do me much harm. I felt I could depend on Walker to stand between me and the storm, if only to protect the third edition of the textbook.

  2

  Robyn

  1

  During the early morning hours of February 17, 1955, Gertrude decided she might be going into labor soon. There was no point in taking chances, so I had her in Beth Israel Hospital by 1 p.m., where her obstetrician this time was a Dr. Factor.

  Mary Blugerman, my mother-in-law, got the news and took the 1 p.m. train, arriving at our apartment at 6 p.m.

  I visited Gertrude during the evening visiting hours and found time hanging heavily on her hands. I wasn’t exactly relaxed either, but I had always wanted to have a daughter, and since we already had a son, the need for a daughter seemed desperate. I said, “It’s got to be a girl. If it isn’t a girl, don’t come home.”

  She smiled wanly.

  I visited her again on the eighteenth, but there was no sign of labor. Then, at 5 a.m. on the morning of February 19, 1955, Factor called me. When the labor did come, it was hard but quick, and the result was a girl. I rushed in with Mary, and later in the evening, Henry arrived, and I took him in, too.

  When I finally saw Gertrude, she was not exactly happy. The labor had come so fast that there had been no time to anesthetize her.

  The new baby weighed only four pounds fourteen ounces, but she was perfectly shaped.

  The question was what to name her. I had suggested Amy or Alice because I liked both names, but Gertrude and Mary voted them down.

  Gertrude spent some time going through a book of names and came up with Robin. I pointed out that it was an epicene name, used for boys as well as girls, so Gertrude suggested spelling it differently.

  “Robinne?” I said, and spelled it. Gertrude shook her head. That would invariably be accented on the second syllable, and I agreed.

  “Robyn?” I asked. “With a ‘y’?”

  And Robyn it was. It did occur to us that she might not like the name Robyn if she turned out to be an unrobinlike girl, so we decided to give her as plain a middle name as possible so that she might always turn to that. Her name therefore became Robyn Joan Asimov—but it turned out all right. She loved Robyn and has used it all her life.

  I call her Robbie, and some people suggest that I named her after the robot in the first of my positronic robot stories, but no such thing! That is simply a coincidence. Her friends, I believe, call her Rob.

  2

  Gertrude had a semiprivate room at the hospital, and in the other bed was a pleasant woman who had also had a daughter on February 19. Hers had been by Caesarian birth, and Gertrude warned me not to make her laugh, because laughing would contract the muscles of her abdomen and cause her pain.

  I did my best, but I’m only human. I said to her, “Do you know why they call it a Caesarian birth?”

  She said innocently, “No?” (Actually, it’s so called because Julius Caesar was supposed to have been born in that fashion.)

  And I said, making cutting gestures with my fingers, “Because they cut you with seezairs.”

  And she said, “Ha, ha—ouch—ha, ha—ouch—ha, ha—ouch—”.

  3

  As Robyn was born, Thrilling Wonder Stories died. The two are not comparable, of course, but I felt a twinge when I got the news from my friend Sprague de Camp on February 23 that the last issue of the magazine was on the stands.

  Thrilling Wonder was the descendant of Wonder Stories, which was, in turn, the descendant of Science Wonder Stories, which, twenty-six years before, was the magazine that my father gave me permission to read—and that started me on my science-fiction career.

  4

  Gertrude came home on the twenty-fourth, but Robyn, who had still not reached the five-pound mark, remained at the hospital till March 5. On that day, we went to the hospital, got her, and drove her home through a sleet storm, safely.

  Before I brought her home, I rearranged my writing office. David’s room was what I had originally used as my office on moving into the Waltham apartment. After it had been turned over to David, I had used the bedroom, but now Robyn would be moving into that. I therefore moved my desk and filing cabinet into the central hall that surrounded the staircase.

  It was a tight fit and totally inadequate, but it would have to do. The trouble was that despite the fact that we had looked for a house pretty steadily for some eight months, we had not found one, and now, with a brand-new baby, we weren’t going to have a chance to look for one in the immediate future. We were stuck with the apartment for a while and we were going to be crowded.

  Once Robyn came back to the house, it was once again formula time and diaper time and night-feeding time. The second time around lacked the excitement of novelty.

  Mary left on March 6, and my mother arrived on the seventh. What with the help of the mothers and our own greater experience, we needed no nurse this time. On the eleventh, my mother left and we were finally on our own.

  5

  On March 6, 1955, the New York Post reprinted my story “Flies.” It was the first time a piece of fiction of mine had appeared in a newspaper.

  In a newspaper, it was more accessible to the general public than in a magazine, and some people who had only heard that I was a writer received their first actual evidence of the matter on this occasion.

  An elderly neighbor of Gertrude’s mother greeted the event with great excitement. “I saw your story in the New York Post” she said to me when she saw me on one of my visits to New York. “What an achievement! How much did you get for it?”

  “Twenty-five dollars,” I said.

  “Twenty-five dollars! That’s peanuts!” she said, and turned away in contempt.

  It is easy, apparently, to find out the precise value of an achievement: You just determine how much money it has brought in.

  6

  On March 20, 1955, Robyn was a month old. She weighed over seven pounds now and we were no longer afraid she would break if we lifted her. She was a more eager feeder than David had been, but also threw up more readily. She would give us no warning, nor show any sign of distress; she just opened her mouth and gave it back.

  David was as interested in his little sister as you would expect, and seemed delighted with her. He showed no signs of jealousy then or ever. He could speak fluently now (though it had seemed to us for a while he was slow in starting). On April 10, I took him for a long walk and finally he said, “I am very tired.”

  I picked him up and he said, “This is much easier. God bless you.”

  As for myself, I was so pleased to have a girl, and yet unexpected complications showed up. Whereas I had always been ready to undiaper, clean, and rediaper David, I found myself oddly hesitant in Robyn’s case and would find ways of wishing the job on Gertrude whenever I could.

  Robyn had a birthmark, a strawberry mark on one buttock. When we took her from the hospital, a nurse pointed it out and assured us it would be neither dangerous nor troublesome and would probably respond to treatment.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “In its location, no one will ever see it but we three and her numerous boyfriends.”

  The nurse was shocked and said I shouldn’t talk about the poor little thing that way.

  We kept watching the mark and it grew larger as she did, but eventually, on her pediatrician’s advice (Dr. Joseph Lewis), we had it subjected to X-ray treatment on May 23. One treatment was enough. The strawberry mark faded steadily and was finally merely a slightly raised bit of surface that was completely unnoticeable.

  7

  The June 1955 Fantastic Universe arrived on April 6, with “The Last Trump.”8

  More important was my progress in nonfiction. The success of “Hemoglobin and the Universe” and “The Sound of Panting” had made it seem logical to me to write nonfiction articles for Astounding periodically. I did one, for instance, on paper chromatography, which was not an easy subject to handle for a general audience (though the Astounding audience was by no means entirely general).

  I called the article “Victory on Paper,” and on April 6, Campbell took it and paid four cents a word, just as he would have for a story.

  To be sure, the time spent on writing a nonfiction article could not be spent on writing a story, so that my nonfiction had to appear at the expense of my fiction. This did not bother me, however. In the first place, nonfiction pieces went much faster than fiction, so that not as much time was lost as one might think. Another and much more important justification for my switch in emphasis was that I wanted to. I simply loved writing articles and books on science.

  In fact, having completed Races and People, I was now working on another book for the same young audience. It was on nuclear physics this time and I called it Inside the Atom.

  The May 1955 Astounding contained my story “Risk,”9 and the June 1955 Astounding contained my article “The Sound of Panting.”10

  8

  On April 16, after having made a routine visit to New York, I brought back both Henry and my father. It was my father’s first chance to see Robyn, and the grandparents took turns in holding her. My father was fifty-eight years old and Henry fifty-nine, and in each case Robyn was the second grandchild and the first granddaughter.

  Robyn cried more than David used to at an equivalent age, but on the other hand, she slept through the night at an earlier stage, and that was very welcome to us. What’s more, Robyn showed no signs of the milk allergy that had plagued David when he was two months old, and we were thankful for that also.

  9

  Advance copies of The Martian Way and Other Stories reached me on May 12. On the spine of the book, my name was spelled Isaac Azimov.