By air-mail, special-delivery letter, I returned an intransigent refusal.

  On October 2, Fisher called me and said, “Well, Asimov, just how much money do you want to go to Bermuda?”

  As far as I can recall, that was the only time anyone had ever supposed that I was playing games in order to gouge more money for myself. I paused for a few seconds to cool down and then said, quite calmly, I think, that no amount of money would get me to Bermuda and that if I were fired, that was it.

  He backed down a little, for by that late date they had no one to do the science article of the year—so I did it, without having any trouble over my not having attended the gathering. It was, however, the last article I did for the World Book Year Book. The association had lasted five years and I was out. The next year, they had Harrison Brown as my replacement, and I think the next annual junket was in Hawaii.

  I can honestly say I didn’t regret the end of the association at all. On several occasions I had been lured into doing things that went against my personal grain, and the lure had consisted of money. I didn’t admire myself for it and I was delighted to have temptation removed from my path.

  20

  I drove to Albany on October 8 in order to deliver a talk at the medical center there. I was asked to give a luncheon talk on nucleic acids, and I agreed. I knew how such luncheon talks went.

  After a morning of dull, learned talks, everyone brought their spouses to lunch. They then wanted an informal, good-natured talk that would give them a few laughs and that would not be over the heads of the spouses. I’d done it on a number of occasions and was not troubled at the thought of doing it again.

  I arrived early and was ushered into the room where the lectures were being given. They were deadly dull and formal, of course, and were delivered in rankly amateurish fashion, but I sat there as the rest did and avoided actually snoring. Occasionally, I looked surreptitiously at my watch to see how much more time it would be before I could eat, give my informal talk, pocket my fee, and leave.

  At noon, the talks were over (so I thought), and when the chairman arose, I thought it was to announce lunch. He announced me as the next speaker.

  I was confused. I got up and said in a low voice, “Aren’t we going to lunch?”

  “Yes,” he said, “as soon as you’re finished.”

  “But you asked me to give a luncheon talk.”

  “Yes, and your talk will be followed by a luncheon.”

  So there I was, unprepared, with an audience expecting a formal talk. I did my best to pump formality into my talk, but I was the only one on the program that morning to have no slides, no experimental results, nothing academic. (Years later, someone recalled that talk and said that I was the only person he had ever encountered who had tried to indicate the structure of the double helix by gestures.)

  It was not one of my happier speaking occasions.

  21

  From Albany I went to New York, where I brought in a large batch of my The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science revisions. They were greeted enthusiastically because the marginal notations were typewritten.

  Basic Books flattered me sufficiently on that point to get me to agree to do a book on the noble gases. These had just come into considerable prominence because Neil Bartlett of Canada had succeeded in forcing the heaviest of the stable noble gases, xenon, into molecular combination with fluorine—a feat most chemists assumed was impossible.

  On that same day, November 9, I had lunch with Walter Bradbury, and once again, as in the case of The Genetic Code, we discussed a possible book. In this case, he suggested I do a book on the neutrino, the no-mass, no-charge particle that after a quarter century of existence as a ghost particle required for theoretical reasons only had finally been detected in 1957.

  And so I added Harper’s to my list of prospective publishers.

  22

  On the way home to New York on the eleventh, I missed my turnoff in the Bronx, for the first time in all the years I had been driving between New York and Newton. My mind, I suppose, had been wandering, but I knew I had missed my turnoff when I found myself on the to-me-unknown streets of the Bronx.

  And on what day was it? The day of the fourth game of the World Series.

  And where did I find myself as I wandered the streets trying to get back to the highway?—Right outside Yankee Stadium.

  And when was this? Just as the game was getting ready to start and people by the thousands were converging on the gates.

  Talk about traffic jams!

  If I had to make an unprecedented driving blunder, why exactly there and exactly then? Obviously there is some guiding principle to the universe.

  23

  On October 23, 1964, I finally got my advance copy of Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. I had begun writing it three years before.

  24

  I voted for Johnson on November 3, 1964, and settled down to listen to the results on television. From the earliest reports, it was clear that Goldwater didn’t have a chance, and by 8:30 p.m. I stopped pretending that there was any doubt in the matter, recorded “Johnson landslide,” in my diary and stopped making notes.

  I was terribly gratified and terribly relieved. Now, I felt, we could wind down our Vietnam involvement.

  What I didn’t know was that Johnson had already adopted an attitude very much like the Goldwater position he decried during the campaign. The difference was that Goldwater was honest enough to state what he believed even though it would lose him the election, while Johnson faked his own views in order to win the election. In later years, I said bitterly, “Given my choice, I voted for Johnson over Goldwater, and what I got was both.”

  I never forgave Johnson.

  25

  The reorganization at New American Library was continuing. On November 19, 1964, I received a call from Tim Seldes. He was leaving Doubleday to take over as a vice president at NAL.

  I was appalled. Now I would be losing Tim, too, for he was much closer to me at Doubleday than he could possibly be at NAL.

  Besides, Doubleday had always struck me as a gentle, soft-sell sort of place, and having heard Mac Talley talk about what had gone on at NAL, I wasn’t sure that Tim would like the change. I couldn’t very well tell him not to take the job because he had already committed himself and because I didn’t know any facts, only guarded comments from Mac, which I might have misinterpreted.

  Nevertheless, I couldn’t conceal my worry, and I asked Tim several times if he were sure he knew what he was doing. I asked him please to keep his eyes open and stay on guard.

  He just laughed and told me to stop being a mother hen.

  But at least it made me feel still more secure about Understanding Physics, the last word of which was written on November 22, the first anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination.

  26

  Of course, new jobs were under way. I had started The Neutrino on November 26.

  I had also talked Austin Olney into letting me do a book on the slide rule. This was a throwback to my decades-long irritation at my old college professor, Gregory Razran for not having told me how the slide rule worked when I had asked him, and over the fact that at no time in my education had I ever been taught to use it.

  I made up my mind that others would not suffer so. I would teach them.

  27

  On November 24, I had agreed to talk at Columbia University the next March. Since I had left Columbia fifteen years before, I had returned only once or twice and it had become foreign territory to me. I was not foreign to the Columbia students, apparently.

  I was to talk to the chemistry students in particular, and the young man who invited me told me with great glee that various faculty members would come and, in particular, that John M. “Pop” Nelson would be there. Pop Nelson had taught me undergraduate organic chemistry a quarter century before, and it was his appearance that I had taken in vain in my picture of the murderer in The Death Dealers.

  What’s more, the student referred to Pop Nelson as “Cap Anson,” the name I had used in the book, and said that Nelson had read the book. I was horrified, and wrote to ask for assurance that Nelson had not been angered before I would agree to come.

  28

  Danny Asimov, my eldest nephew (by adoption), was going to MIT and, in fact, had had dinner with the family that autumn. He was a tall, gangly youth, quite good-looking, very bright, and highly talented in mathematics. He was grave and serious, however, and not much given to small talk.

  On November 25, I received a letter from Martin Gardner, telling me that a Daniel Asimov had written him to correct an error in Gardner’s long-running and popular column “Mathematical Games” in Scientific American. Gardner inquired if he were my son.

  I explained the relationship. This was my first direct contact with Gardner, whose books I admire inordinately. He is one of the small group of human beings (Sprague de Camp and Willy Ley are two others) who are utterly rational and who, surrounded by the wonders of science, have always been able to distinguish those wonders from the malodorous glitter of mysticism.

  29

  At about this time, Boston University expressed a wish to collect my papers. Dr. Howard Gotlieb, the head of special collections, wrote to ask me for them and I thought he was joking.

  To be sure, I had been giving copies of my foreign editions and some of my old manuscripts to the Newton Public Library as a way of getting them out of the house, but that was on my own initiative, and the library was humoring me. I couldn’t quite believe that someone would ask for them.

  Gotlieb assured me solemnly that he was serious, and so I dragged out what manuscripts and papers I had, together with some spare copies of various books in various editions, and took them down to the library. I explained that there would be more, but when I took down additional installments there still seemed to be a very small supply of material for someone who had been writing for a quarter of a century.

  “Is this all?” asked Gotlieb.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “But what have you done with all the rest?”

  “Lately, Eve been giving some of the stuff to the Newton Public Library, but mostly I’ve been burning them.”

  Gotlieb turned a pretty shade of mauve. “Burning them?”

  “You know, when they crowd up my filing cabinets, and I don’t need them anymore, I get rid of them. They’re just junk.”

  I then received an emotional lecture on the value of a writer’s papers to the cause of future research. I found I couldn’t believe it (I still don’t), but Gotlieb was such a decent and gentle guy (plump, round-faced, always smiling) that I didn’t have the heart to argue. I faithfully promised to bring in all material and not burn anything.

  It took a while, though, to educate me. At one time when I took in some manuscripts, Gotlieb looked over them and (I can swear) licked his lips. “Holographic corrections!” he said. “How valuable that makes this!”

  “What are holographic corrections?” I asked.

  “I mean you’ve made corrections in writing.”

  I laughed. “That’s nothing. I make many more corrections in first draft.”

  “Where’s the first draft?”

  “Oh, I tear up each page as I finish with it.”

  Gotlieb frowned fearfully. “Didn’t you promise to bring in everything?”

  “First drafts, too?” I said, thunderstruck.

  Then, on a still later visit, it turned out he wanted the fan mail also. He wanted everything.

  “You won’t have room,” I protested.

  “We’ll make room,” he answered firmly.

  So in all the years since then, I have been periodically flooding the Special Collections Division of Boston University Library with the most appalling collection of manuscripts in first and second draft, with galleys, page proofs, and a copy of every book in every edition; also with a copy of every magazine that contains an article of mine, with correspondence of all kinds, including fan mail, and, in fact, with anything that mentions my name.

  All of it has their storage vault under severe internal pressure, and the explosion, when it comes someday, will probably wreck a half-mile stretch of Commonwealth Avenue, but my conscience is clear. I’ve warned them.

  For the first few years, everything I handed in was submitted to an official appraiser who, at the end of the year, would send me a detailed and itemized list of everything and included the estimated value of that year’s submissions so I could take an income-tax deduction. The value came to roughly three thousand dollars, which appalled me because I didn’t think any of the items were worth anything at all—but I took the deduction.

  When laws were passed forbidding such deductions (thanks to the abuse of those laws by politicians) and I could no longer make them, I was relieved.

  30

  I took in the very last of Understanding Physics to NAL on December 3, 1964. It had taken me 1¾ years to write the three volumes.

  Then, on December 17, I completed the revision of The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science. It had taken me only four months of actual work, thanks to my years of careful marginal annotation of the first edition.

  Also on December 17, I received a letter from Brad telling me that he was leaving Harper’s and returning to Doubleday—once again shortly after I had agreed to do a book for him.

  I wondered what would now happen to The Neutrino, but my uncertainty was quickly settled. Harper gave Brad permission to take The Neutrino with him, and I was delighted. It would mean one more book for Doubleday.

  Although Brad continued to interest himself in The Neutrino, he would not be dealing with me directly. Replacing Tim Seldes as my editor was Larry Ashmead, whose acquaintance I had first made 3½ years before.

  Then Larry had sent me a letter suggesting corrections in Life and Energy, and I had thanked him. Now he was my editor and quite convinced that I could do no wrong. My relationship with him soon grew so warm that I felt even more relaxed and comfortable with him than I ever had with Brad and Tim.

  22

  Fantastic Voyage I

  1

  I had seven books published in 1964, a more copious list than in any year since the record-breaking eight of 1960. They were:

  55. The Human Brain (Houghton Mifflin)

  56. A Short History of Biology (Doubleday)

  57. Quick and Easy Math (Houghton Mifflin)

  58. Adding a Dimension (Doubleday)

  59. Planets for Man (Random House)

  60. The Rest of the Robots (Doubleday)

  61. Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (Doubleday)

  The Rest of the Robots was my first book of fiction since Nine Tomorrows five years before. To be sure, it was not new material but was a reprint of two earlier novels, plus eight stories that had not appeared in any of my previous books.

  I hesitated over whether the eight stories, making up only one quarter of the book, were enough to warrant my counting The Rest of the Robots as a new book and giving it a number. I ended by giving myself the benefit of the doubt.

  Just the same, I do not always give myself the benefit of every doubt in what must seem like my mad determination to add to the numbers of my books. In 1961, Doubleday had put out Pebble in the Sky, The Stars, Like Dust, and The Currents of Space in a single omnibus volume entitled Triangle. Here, though, I did not contribute a single new word and I did not list it as a book of mine nor give it a number.

  2

  On January 2, 1965, I was forty-five years old and I celebrated the day most inappropriately with a bout of intestinal flu.

  3

  I was in New York on January 11 and had lunch with Tim Seldes and Wendy Weil, and about midway through the meal Tim said to me, “Well, Asimov, what are you doing these days at Doubleday, now that I’m not there to keep you out of mischief?”

  I told him enthusiastically about doing The Neutrino for Brad, and having it end at Doubleday.

  “What is a neutrino, anyway?” said Tim.

  So I told him. It took quite a while and, at the end of the meal, Wendy said, “You know, Isaac, during the first half of the meal you did nothing but flirt with me, and then Tim asked you about the neutrino and after that you never even glanced in my direction. It was as though I didn’t exist.”

  I said, “But Wendy, first things first.”

  I said it as though I were joking, but I was quite serious. I may be the epitome of dirty-old-manhood, but get me started explaining something and women vanish from my ken.

  The next day I had a far less satisfactory luncheon. Leo Rosten (the author of the Hyman Kaplan stories which, in my youth, I had much admired) had written to suggest a lunch, since he wanted to discuss something with me. I had eagerly accepted.

  The lunch took place on January 12, 1965, and I had the rather dubious pleasure of listening to Rosten ramble on in a disconnected fashion for some two hours. He never got to any point that I thought might be worth a discussion with me, and after a while I came to the conclusion that there was no point. What he had in his mind when he asked for the luncheon I have no idea. He never got in touch with me again, and I certainly didn’t get in touch with him.

  4

  On January 18, I received a panic call from a member of the Tufts Medical School faculty. They had begun a lecture series, and the first lecture of the series was to be held the next night. The speaker was a physician from Labrador and they had just received the news that, as a result of some serious and unexpected problem, he couldn’t make it. Could I fill in? They knew it was terribly short notice, but please . . .