Marc paused. Then, suspiciously, “Why are you offering to do this?”

  I said, “Because Ted Sturgeon is an old friend.”

  In my innocence I thought this was an unanswerable argument, but Marc said, “You’re a peculiar writer. You come right over here.”

  So I did, and there were quite a few people waiting for me. I felt surrounded.

  Marc said, “Why are you trying to get out of the contract, Isaac?”

  “I’m not trying to get out of the contract, Marc. It’s just that Ted would like to do it and he’ll do a marvelous job.”

  Marc said, “We need a scientist for this. You were the only person ever considered for the job. You didn’t beat out anyone because if you didn’t do it we were going to drop the project.”

  It was the argument on their side that was unanswerable. I said, chastened, “I’ll do the book.”

  Then I had to call up Bob Mills to tell him what Marc had said and to ask him to call Ted and explain to him, as diplomatically as he could, that Asimov might promise but he couldn’t deliver.

  On May 26, Bantam concluded the final details with Twentieth Century, which was doing the motion picture, and on May 31, I began work on the novelization.

  One problem that arose in connection with Fantastic Voyage involved a hard-cover edition. Bantam Books owned the rights to a paperback edition only, and novelizations of movie scripts invariably came out in paperback only as throwaway publicity devices for the movie.

  This, however, was precisely what I didn’t want. It would be humiliating to have one of my books so subservient to a movie. I had therefore told Bantam Books that there would have to be a hard-cover edition. Bantam warned me that a hard-cover edition would have to be negotiated with the Hollywood owners of the screenplay and that there was nothing in the contract compelling them to give me any part of the royalties.

  At that moment, I didn’t care. I said, even if the hard-cover earned me not a penny, there had to be a hard-cover edition. So Bantam Books said they were sure Grosset & Dunlap would do such a hard-cover edition and I said that would be fine.

  Then, on June 2, Marcia Nassiter called me and said that Grosset & Dunlap would not do a hard-cover edition.

  By that time, though, I was making extremely good progress on Fantastic Voyage, and it was clear to me that with the movie script to guide me, completing the novelization would be a snap. I didn’t want to drop the project, therefore. Instead, we would simply have to find some other hard-cover publisher.

  17

  Meanwhile, I was also working on another revision of Inside the Atom for Abelard-Schuman. This time I made the revision a thoroughgoing one and was primed for the task by my work on the third volume of Understanding Physics and on The Neutrino. I finished that job on June 3.

  Having done that, I returned to my book on the Romans, which I had allowed to hang fire while engaged in other jobs.

  18

  Other projects were arising. The Atomic Energy Commission put out small pamphlets on various aspects of nuclear energy for distribution to the public, without charge. It was an educational service on the part of the government.

  I was asked to do one such pamphlet on the genetic effects of radiation. I knew something about the subject but was afraid that I didn’t know enough to put something out under the official aegis of the AEC. I explained this but the AEC at once told me that the eminent geneticist, Theodosius Dobzhansky, was going to be part of the project and that he would backstop me. They went on to say that Dobzhansky had suggested my name because he thought I was the best science writer in the world, bar none.

  I wasn’t proof against that kind of flattery, and with Dobzhansky helping out, I couldn’t go wrong. Besides, it was only to be ten thousand words long or so, and it would be a public service.

  I had lunch with Dobzhansky at Rockefeller University on May 14, and it scarcely needed any urging from him to get me to agree. I said I would start as soon as I had a chance.

  In another direction, the magazine Science Digest had a column called “Please Explain,” in which some question in science was answered in five hundred words. Apparently they fanned the job out, and in May they asked me to do one.

  Apparently I gave satisfaction, for they asked me to do another and then another and then still another. Finally, without my ever having agreed to it, I found that I was running the column. Eventually, the title of the column was changed to “Isaac Asimov Explains.”

  19

  The hard-cover edition for Fantastic Voyage continued to elude me.

  I was somehow confident that Doubleday would do it if I asked them to, but Larry Ashmead regretfully told me it was impossible. The paperback rights were gone, which meant an important source of revenue was eliminated. Second, Doubleday would have to deal with the Hollywood people rather than with me, and they didn’t want to do that.

  Marcia Nassiter told me that W. W. Norton might be willing to do the hard-cover edition, but that fell through, too. I began to feel as I had in the days, three years before, when I was trying, and failing, to get a hard-cover edition for The Genetic Code.

  About the only way I could cheer myself up was to work hard on my book on the Romans whenever my discontent with the Fantastic Voyage situation prevented me from actually working on that book.

  I was being cautious with Roman history, by the way. I hadn’t gotten far along before I saw there was no way to hold that history down to some length Austin would be willing to accept, and I didn’t want to end up doing any cutting, as I had in the case of The Greeks. (I hate having to cut books; I don’t mind making them longer.)

  For that reason I decided to write only half of Roman history and call the book The Roman Republic. Then, at some future time, I would write the other half and call it The Roman Empire. Each book, I figured, would be seventy thousand words long or so, and that would be fine. In this way, I would slip a two-volume history right past Austin.

  (Of course, he still didn’t know I was writing even the first of those volumes, for I had promised not to present him with any more histories till we saw how The Greeks fared.)

  20

  In New York, I had lunch with Dick DeHaan, Pat van Doren, and Arthur Rosenthal of Basic Books on July 16, 1965. Arthur Rosenthal, the publisher, was a tall man with a large and majestic nose. I took a liking to him at once.

  Dick DeHaan had spent considerable time urging me not to do the index to the revised edition of The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science.

  “Why should you do it?” he said. “Your time is valuable and should be spent in writing, not in nitpicking index cards. Besides, we’ll have a specialist do it who can do a much better job than you can.”

  I tried to explain that I liked indexing, but he kept saying that no writer could approach his own book with sufficient detachment to do a good index. In the end, much against my will, and despite my experience with A Short History of Biology, I reluctantly let myself be argued into having someone else do the index.

  Later in the meal, Martin Gardner joined us. He had just done The Ambidextrous Universe for Basic Books, a book that worked its way up to the overthrow of the law of conservation of parity in a steady and systematic way. I had read the book, and loved it, and had, indeed, modeled the development of my own book The Neutrino as closely after Gardner as I could.

  This was the first time I had met him in person. He was a white-haired, pink-skinned, soft-voiced fellow of medium height and as delightful to talk to as he was to read—not so much for any sparkling wit as for the cool rationality of his point of view and for his utter intellectual integrity.

  I tried to explain to him what his books meant to me, and how closely I tried to model my own style on his.

  “That’s strange,” he said, gravely, “I try to model my style on yours.”

  Later in the luncheon, Martin said to me, “Isaac, if you want real fun, pick some book you really like and know, and annotate it.”

  He himself had put out annotations of Alice in Wonderland, of The Ancient Mariner, and so on. I had all these annotations and had enjoyed them enormously.

  What chiefly pleased me about the remark, however, was that I had anticipated him. Only that morning I had had a longish session with Tom Sloane.

  Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology was doing far better than he (or I) had anticipated, and he was urging me to do another “big book.”

  I had thought rapidly, for I wanted to nail Tom down while he was in the mood. I thought of my aborted biblical series for Houghton Mifflin; of Words in Genesis, Words from the Exodus, and the never-completed Words from Canaan.

  Why not start all over, on the adult level, and do a guide to the Bible as I had done a guide to science, touching only on the nontheological aspects? I suggested that to Tom in general terms.

  “Why not a book on the Bible, Tom?” I said.

  “What kind of book?” Tom had asked, cautiously.

  “I’m not sure. Let me think about it.” I was unwilling to specify before giving Tom a chance to get used to the general idea.

  But Martin’s suggestion rang a responsive answering chord within me. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but what I was planning was a sort of annotation of the Bible. If I could make that work, I would annotate other books.

  21

  I finished Fantastic Voyage on July 23, 1965. The job had taken not quite two months. I finished The Roman Republic on July 28.

  I still had no hard-cover publisher for the former, but Marc Jaffe told me, when I called him on the twenty-seventh, that he had happened to have lunch with Austin Olney, who had sounded interested in the book. This rather astonished me, since Houghton Mifflin had never published a single book of science fiction, so that I had not even considered them as a possibility. If Austin were interested, however . . .

  I at once took in a carbon for him to read.137

  On August 2, I went to see Austin. The ostensible reason for the visit was to look at the final illustrations to the slide-rule book, but I disposed of that quickly and then said, “How is The Greeks doing?” (It had been at the bookstores for about two months.)

  “Pretty well,” said Austin. “The reviews seem satisfactory and the sales are fine.”

  “Remember that you said I shouldn’t submit a history of the Romans until we found out how The Greeks was doing? Does this mean that I can start work on the Romans now if I want to?”

  “Yes,” said Austin, heartily, “you can begin any time.”

  “And bring it in whenever I’m finished.”

  “Whenever you’re finished.”

  “Good,” I said, and got my briefcase, which I had surreptitiously placed just outside the door when I entered lest its bulk raise suspicions. “I’ve just finished it. Here it is!” and I handed him the manuscript of The Roman Republic.

  He stared at it with astonishment and I said, defensively, “You said not to submit a book on the Romans till we saw how The Greeks did. You didn’t say I couldn’t write it.”

  He burst out laughing and I was home safe. In fact, I took advantage of his good humor to ask how he liked Fantastic Voyage.

  He admitted he liked it very much but he wasn’t sure whether Houghton Mifflin could promote it effectively since they had never done any science fiction.

  I took a chance. I had to have a hard-cover edition and so I had to try the hard sell. I said, “Nothing to it, Austin. Just make sure that my name is printed clearly on the cover and that’s all the promotion you’ll need.”

  “It’s not that easy, Isaac. We can’t count on a paperback sale because Bantam has it already and as soon as the paperback comes out there’ll be no hard-cover sales at all.”

  “Not so, Austin,” I said. “That may be the common wisdom of the literary marketplace, but it doesn’t work with my books. My hard-covers sell at an unbroken rate, whether soft-cover editions are available or not.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely. I had a book called I, Robot published fifteen years ago. It has appeared in several paperback editions over the past ten years. To this day, I, Robot is selling briskly in hard-cover edition.”138

  “Really?”

  “A minimum of two thousand copies a year. How many copies would you want to sell of Fantastic Voyage in hard-cover?”

  “At least five thousand,” said Austin.

  “I promise you it will sell at least eight thousand.”

  Austin was clearly impressed, and by August 9 he had agreed, probably with some qualms, to do the book.

  And at home I began work on the Bible book. My working title was It’s Mentioned in the Bible, and I stopped at virtually every proper name to talk about its significance. I remember having a wonderful time speculating on the location of the Garden of Eden and on the significance of its four rivers.

  22

  As long as I didn’t have a hard-cover haven for Fantastic Voyage, the fact that I would get no money for it didn’t matter. Once the haven was found, however, I found myself resenting the fact that the Hollywood people owned the book in toto and were entitled to all royalties on the hard-cover. The Science Fiction Book Club (a Doubleday division that did not confine itself to Doubleday books) wanted to use the book, and all its royalties in that edition would go to the Hollywood people, too.

  I decided this shouldn’t be. Fantastic Voyage would be the first novelization of a movie in history (as far as I knew) that would appear in hard-cover, and that was entirely due to me. Houghton Mifflin wouldn’t have taken the chance on anyone else. Why should I not get something? I therefore asked Austin to put some pressure on the Hollywood people to reserve some fraction of the royalties for me.

  23

  There was another American Chemical Society meeting coming up in September. This time it would be in Atlantic City—a place much easier to reach than Detroit had been. I was asked to give a talk that would be part of a symposium on “Atmospheres in Space Cabins and Enclosed Environments.”

  It was the work of a moment for me to reply that I knew nothing about the subject, and the work of another moment for them to reply and assure me that they understood this but that they wanted me to give the last talk of the session, a speculative and entertaining one on future developments in the field.

  Somehow it is always taken for granted that however little I may know about a given field, I can always speculate learnedly and fruitfully on future developments in that field.

  Since I hate to disillusion people too much on the subject of my universal knowledge, I usually allow myself to be flattered into something on the second push, and I did in this case.

  Again, as on the occasion of my talk on “Enzymes and Metaphor,” six years before, I would have to write my speech, for it would be slated for eventual publication. On August 17, 1965, I wrote what I called “There’s No Place Like Spome.”

  Spome was my abbreviated form of “space home,” and I spoke, of course, of large, artificial starships that were self-contained worlds—an anticipation, in a fumbling sort of way, of Gerard O’Neill’s concept of space settlements some nine years later.

  24

  Even while I was writing the speech, Wendy Weil called in some agitation. “Do you remember warning Tim Seldes against joining New American Library, Isaac?”

  “I warned him to exercise caution,” I said.

  “Did you know anything you didn’t tell him?”

  “I knew that Mac Talley had to leave, but Tim knew that, too. I was afraid that they were the kind of firm that might do it again, that’s all.”

  “Well, they did. They’ve just fired Tim.”

  Tim Seldes had been on the job for only nine months.

  25

  Ed Burlingame was no longer with New American Library. He had taken a job as editor-in-chief of a small publishing firm called Walker & Company. It was a family-run concern under Samuel and Beth Walker.

  I visited the place for the first time on August 26, 1965, in order to see Ed, and he and I went out to lunch. Sam Walker joined us—tall, dark, good-looking, and genial. (I didn’t get to meet his wife, Beth, until some later occasion. She was a tall, blond beauty, very outgoing and bouncy and with a most infectious laugh.)

  Gertrude, who was with me in New York this time and was out shopping, had called me just before lunch, and I urged her to join us. She did, and this was one of the few occasions when I took her on my rounds with me. She visited Doubleday and Bantam after lunch.

  Naturally, the lunch with Burlingame and Walker was not entirely for the purpose of stuffing calories into me. They wanted a book. Burlingame suggested a book on quasars, the mysterious, far-distant, starlike objects that were very compact, a light-year or less in diameter, yet that shone with a hundred times the brilliance of a galaxy.

  Burlingame spoke of a “little book” on the subject. I explained, however, that in order to do a sensible book on quasars—or at least in order for me to do a sensible book on quasars—I would have to explain a number of things first, and it would end up as a big book.

  I did this in order to avoid committing myself to doing any book at all, but Ed blocked me off neatly. “Do it your way, Isaac,” he said, “and let the book find its natural length.”

  I said I’d think about it, but I knew they were going to land me. (I think I’m the most easily landed writer in the world. I spent too many years trying to storm the gates of the literary fortress to be able to resist entering when the portcullis is up and I am being waved inside to the blare of trumpets.)

  Indeed, even as I hung back coyly, it occurred to me that I had all the material in my ill-fated A Short History of Astronomy at my disposal. That book had been gathering dust for a year, and it was time to cannibalize it.