A number of the Blugerman family had gathered. Gertrude’s Aunt Sophie (Henry’s sister) came in from Detroit, and her Cousin Albert from Toronto. My mother and father also arrived, along with Stanley and Ruth.

  That afternoon, I drove back to Newton with both children, leaving Gertrude behind with her mother.

  26

  In January, I had received a request for a science-fiction story from Boys’ Life. They sent me the proof of an illustration and asked me to write the story around that. Poul Anderson was being asked to do a story from the same illustration.

  The job wasn’t easy since the illustration was not very representational. It showed a head and, above it, circles containing designs of one kind or another—very little more than doodles. I remembered my embarrassing failure at that sort of thing four years before in connection with “Eyes Do More Than See,” but took the chance, anyway.

  I wrote a two-thousand-word story that I called “The Proper Study,”160 and on February 23, 1968, I received word of acceptance. Poul’s story was also accepted, and both appeared in the September 1968 Boys’ Life.

  On Sunday, February 25, I finished Words from History and, on the same day, Gertrude returned from New York by air. She was bearing up well and so, apparently, was Mary.

  27

  I tried not to commit myself to speaking engagements in the winter months, unless they were so close to home that the weather made little difference or it were understood that in case of snow I could not come. What was dreadful in that case was when it threatened snow, but did not actually do so.

  That was the case on February 29, 1968, when I was scheduled to give a talk to Girl Scout leaders in a moderately distant suburb. Snow was predicted and the clouds were lowering, but by 4:20 p.m., at which time I could no longer delay my departure, it had not actually begun. I had no choice but to drive in.

  I wasn’t really sorry, for it was a pleasant occasion and the Girl Scout leaders proved a very indulgent audience even when, out of puckishness, I predicted the increasing necessity of sex education and the coming time when Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts would form a single organization, with one of the jobs of the leaders being that of regulating and channeling sexual experimentation. (Perhaps they didn’t take me seriously.)

  From the podium, I commanded a view of the windows and, about halfway through the talk, I could clearly see the snowflakes beginning to drift down, and memories of November 15 smote me sickeningly in the pit of my stomach.

  My impulse was to wind things up quickly and run for my car to make it home before it got too bad.

  Professionalism, however, reigned supreme, and my strong urge toward a premature ending kept me going longer than normal as a way of refusing to give in. I spoke for an hour and twenty minutes—then had dinner with the group.

  Virtue triumphed! Though I had to drive through the dark and the snow, I got home safely.

  27

  Guide to Shakespeare

  1

  With Words in History done, I needed another project, and one was ready to hand. It was impossible for me to do a guide to the Bible without thinking of what to do next in the same line. Well, what is the only literary production in the English language that can compare with the Bible? Correct!

  For several months I had been playing with the thought of doing a guide to Shakespeare along the lines of my guide to the Bible. I would devote a chapter to each play, telling the plot and quoting those passages that I wished to annotate.

  The trouble was that I didn’t quite have the nerve to suggest it to Larry. The Bible book had not, after all, been his idea, but had been something I had tried, unsuccessfully, to foist on Tom Sloane. Larry had taken it over because of his prejudice in my favor. That didn’t mean he would want to do another book of the same kind, and I hesitated to spoil our perfect relationship by putting him under the necessity of refusing an idea of mine.

  Yet it boiled up within me and, on March 1, 1968, I decided on a compromise. I would do one of the plays and bring it in as a sample. Larry could then have a better idea of what I intended than from my verbal description alone.

  I chose Richard II to begin with and began by quoting the opening line, “Old John of Gaunt, time-honored Duke of Lancaster.” Why “Gaunt”? For that matter, why “old”? The extreme age of John of Gaunt is stressed in the play, and the character playing him is always made up to look no and totters around in what seems the last stages of physical decay—but the real John of Gaunt died at the age of 59.

  It didn’t take me long to find out that Shakespeare was going to be even more fun than the Bible.

  2

  Robyn came to me on March 6 with a little fantasy she had written. I read it with amazement. It was very good considering that she was only thirteen. I typed it up for her, without making any changes except to straighten out the spelling, punctuation, and grammar, and it read even better.

  Even allowing for the prejudice of a doting father, I was convinced that I could not have done as well at thirteen. I sent it in to Ed Ferman, not thinking of it as a possible sale but only hoping that Robyn would be excited at getting a letter from an editor (and, of course, I asked him to write directly to her).

  Ed sent it back to Robyn in the course of time with a kind and encouraging letter, and he also wrote to me to say that if it had been available for the special Isaac Asimov issue he would indeed have run it as an added Asimovian item.

  After that I was in a quandary. I wanted very badly to encourage Robyn, because I honestly thought she had the potential of being a good writer. Yet how was I to encourage her without being counterproductive?

  I had some sober talks with her about the rewards and difficulties of a writer’s life. I discussed the special case of someone who was the child of a successful writer. On the one hand, doors would open that otherwise would not. On the other hand, there would be something to live up to that would represent a distorting pressure.

  Robyn, however, made it quite plain that her opinion of the writer’s life was based on mine, and that she thought it was a disease that, once it took hold, would drive everything else out.

  I assured her earnestly that not all writers were like me; that it was possible to write and to live also. I said I wouldn’t press her or hound her, but if she should feel the urge to write, to do so, and I would help her all I could.

  She promised, but I can only suppose she never felt the urge. At least, she never came to me with another story. I have never ceased to regret this, and to wonder how I might have arranged things better.

  3

  The year 1968 was a presidential election year and I was heart and soul with Eugene McCarthy in his effort to replace President Johnson as Democratic candidate for that year. It didn’t seem possible to replace a sitting President, but I felt it was important to make a noise, if only to force Johnson, should he run and be re-elected, to bring the Vietnam War to an end. To that end, I contributed money to the McCarthy campaign and joined rallies on his behalf.

  In February, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launched the so-called Tet Offensive. Though it was beaten off, it startled and disheartened all Americans with its show of enemy vigor. It was clear that we had been lied to by the Administration and that, short of a nuclear bombardment, we would not win the war.

  On March 11, McCarthy won a surprisingly large percentage of the vote in the New Hampshire primary. I was delighted—and astonished. It hadn’t seemed to me possible that he would do so well.

  4

  On March 14, I had lunch with Larry in New York and gave him the manuscript of Twentieth Century Discovery, which Mac Talley had bounced earlier in the month.

  Naturally, I told Larry that Random House first, and then Weybright and Talley, had rejected it, and that this might be because of its intrinsic deficiencies. Larry simply smiled and said he would read it and judge for himself. Of course, he took it.161

  That same evening I taped a segment on “The Johnny Carson Show” in New York. I was on with Gore Vidal, who fascinated me. He seemed totally composed and self-assured, and spoke with the consummate ease of an actor.

  Johnny Carson, himself, however, I thought less of. He ignored me completely when he arrived before the show. Then, on greeting me on the air, he pronounced my first name “I-ZAK,” with equal emphasis on both syllables, instead of “I-zik,” with the first syllable accented. A minor sin, surely, but I was on network television and I think the least a host can do for his guest is to ascertain the correct pronunciation of his name.

  My impulse on being addressed, “How are you, I-ZAK?,” was to answer, “Fine, and how are you, JOE-NEE?” I lacked the nerve, however, and have regretted that ever since.

  5

  Some years earlier, Damon Knight had begun an organization termed the Science Fiction Writers of America, and usually abbreviated as SFWA. I joined as a matter of course.

  In 1965, SFWA began the custom of an annual award for stories in four classifications: novel, novella, novelette, and short story. The award was a transparent plastic parallelepiped with, inside, a rock and a swirl of grains designed to look like a spiral galaxy (or, in more old-fashioned nomenclature, a spiral nebula). The award was called the Nebula.

  On the evening of Saturday, March 16, 1968, I attended the Nebula awards banquet in New York and enjoyed it very much. It didn’t matter that I had nothing in nomination. As an elder statesman, I was treated with reverence even by my fellow writers (there were no fans at the SFWA functions). I didn’t at all mind being treated with reverence, and my only regret was that I had to leave by midnight, since I was planning to drive back to Newton the next day.

  6

  On March 21, 1968, I lectured in Kresge Hall at MIT under the same sponsorship for whom, over a decade in the past, I had talked for one hundred dollars. This time I charged them six hundred dollars. It was still less than half the fourteen hundred dollars that Wernher von Braun had charged on the previous occasion, but I was making progress.

  Nor did I allow my conscience to hurt me over the fact that the sponsors dined me well. Not only did I go to Locke-Ober’s cheerfully with them, but also I brought David and Robyn with me. I knew they were still getting a bargain.

  7

  On March 23, I completed my sample treatment of Richard II and mailed it in to Doubleday. I was crowding Larry a bit, considering how recently I had put Twentieth Century Discovery in his hands.

  It was clear I was suffering over Larry’s penchant for accepting everything of mine he could find and fearing he would get in trouble over it. Larry therefore assured me he could not actually accept anything. Everything went before an editorial board, so that responsibility was spread broadly.

  It made me feel much better.

  8

  We attended the showing of an old Clifford Odets play at Brandeis on March 31. It was set in Depression times and dealt with true love shattered by joblessness. Afterward, we were settling down for a discussion when someone rushed in with the news that in a television address, President Johnson had announced he would de-escalate the war and that he would not run for re-election.

  The Tet offensive and the Eugene McCarthy campaign had done their work.

  There was a loud roar of triumph from the audience (which was very largely of the liberal persuasion), and not the least of the shouters was I. I felt Johnson had brought his own political destruction on his own head by his dishonest handling of the Vietnam crisis. That we were about to change King Log for King Stork, I wasn’t smart enough to foresee.

  9

  On April 6, 1968, Carl Sagan and Linda were married, and Gertrude and I attended the wedding. I was a little more involved than I had expected to be. Carl and Linda were married by a rabbi (a little, I think, to Carl’s irritation, as it had been to mine under similar circumstances twenty-five years before), and the rabbi needed a formal witnessing of the marriage certificate. What’s more, he needed someone who knew his father’s Hebrew name, and not some Americanized version thereof.

  It turned out that I knew my father’s Hebrew name, so there I was witnessing the document as Isaac ben Judah, son of Judah ben Aaron.

  In his little sermon, the rabbi spoke of the beginning of the universe, but put a religious cast upon it. Carl told me afterward that he had been hoping to get some mention of the big bang, and was disappointed that he had not.

  At the reception afterward, I was happy indeed, for the hors d’oeuvres and cake were excellent. What I remember best, however, did not make me happy. I met Carl’s parents, and his mother said to me, calmly, “And how are your grandchildren, Dr. Asimov?”

  What did she mean, my grandchildren? I knew perfectly well that I was old enough to have grandchildren. At forty-eight, I could easily have had a twenty-five-year-old daughter who might just as easily have had a five-year-old child. Just the same, I didn’t have any grandchildren, and she might just as easily have sneaked up on it by first asking if I had children, then how old they were, and then, if it seemed likely, whether I had grandchildren.

  I said, freezingly, “I am not a grandfather.”

  Mrs. Sagan said, “There’s nothing wrong with being a grandfather.”

  “Undoubtedly. I just happen not to be one.”

  “Mr. Sagan and I have never been so happy as since we’ve had grandchildren.”

  “Look, be delirious with happiness for all I care, but I am not a grandfather.”

  Despairing of the effects of pure logic, I was looking about for something hard and heavy to reinforce the point I was making, but Gertrude pulled me away.

  10

  Esquire asked me for a science-fiction story (I was quite accustomed, by now, to getting requests from miscellaneous places), and on April 16 I wrote a four-thousand-word story called “The Holmes-Ginsbook Device.”162

  I wrote it as a satire on The Double Helix, which James Watson had published not long before, and which, despite its difficult scientific subject (the working out of the structure of DNA), turned out to be a best seller. The reviews, which stressed and greatly exaggerated the notion that it spoke of scientific connivery and sexual adventure, undoubtedly contributed. If so, the readers must have been heavily disappointed.

  In any case, in “The Holmes-Ginsbook Device” I stressed the connivery and sex in an indirect fashion and thought I had achieved something screamingly funny. I was dreadfully disappointed, therefore, when Esquire rejected it.

  There was no use sending it to Analog, for I couldn’t believe for a moment that Campbell would consider using anything that treated sex as lightheartedly as “The Holmes-Ginsbook Device” did. (It was the first ribald story I had written since “I’m in Marsport Without Hilda,” eleven years before.)

  I sent it therefore to Galaxy, where Fred Pohl finally wrote to tell me that I had overdone the humor and suggested I cut it in half. He said he hoped I wouldn’t take the Harlan Ellison attitude that no word of my precious prose must be touched.

  I replied that I wasn’t in the least like Harlan in this respect. But since the story was intended to be a satire of a specific book, I did not want the point eviscerated by cutting. However, I said, I recognized the value of Fred’s comments and agreed that the story, as it stood, was not publishable in Galaxy, so why didn’t he send it back, with no hard feelings on either side.

  I thought no one could possibly be more agreeable and sweet than I was, but Fred Pohl wrote that I did sound like Harlan and that he would take the story as it was.

  It finally appeared in the December 1968 If, and was another of the stories in which the public did not agree with my own jubilant estimate. As in the case of “Strikebreaker” I had thought it would be hailed with enthusiasm. It wasn’t. It went unmentioned and unnoticed.

  11

  On April 18, I was staying at Howard Johnson’s at Eighth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street, on the occasion of one of my New York visits. I was walking briskly toward the hotel when I was attracted by the movie stills in front of a pornographic movie house. Hard-core pornography was flaunting itself openly (a far cry from the days, thirty years before, when LaGuardia had closed down the comparatively innocent burlesque houses), but I was not used to it. In fact, they embarrassed me.

  On this occasion, it suddenly occurred to me that I was alone, that I was adult, that it was legal to show these films and see them, and that there could be no reasonable objection to my looking at the stills. So I did, and very carefully, too, but I must admit I got very little out of them.163

  My long study of the stills must have given someone wrong ideas as to my intentions and needs, however, for as I turned away a young girl of, I should judge, no more than nineteen, and quite pretty, rushed toward me, saying, “Hello-o-o-o. How are you?”

  My first thought was that it was someone I had met at one of the numerous conventions I attend. The pattern is plain and I had been subjected to it before. I meet a young girl, whom I hug and kiss and make eyes at, and she naturally expects me to remember her forever (even though, from my own point of view, it is merely suave behavior in public). Naturally, I would wound such a young woman’s feelings deeply if I admitted I didn’t know her from Jezebel, and I didn’t want to do that.

  So I grinned and said, “I’m fine. Well, well, what are you doing here?” I felt that as the conversation progressed, I would figure out where I had met her and get a dim idea as to who she was.

  She seized my hand and said, “Come, I will show you a nice thing,” and tugged at me.

  I followed in confusion and it was not until she led me into a hallway and placed my hand on her abdomen that I realized that, at the age of forty-eight, I was being accosted by a prostitute for the first time in my life. (I’m only brilliant; I never said I had good sense.)