On March 15, 1971, Janet and I attended a meeting of the society, which I enjoyed greatly even though I found myself in the humiliating position of being in the midst of fifty people, each one of whom knew their G & S better than I did. I put down ten dollars for membership at once.

  19

  Meanwhile, I had another science-fiction task on my hands. I had promised Bob Silverberg a story for his anthology of originals, and I had failed. At least I had written “The Gods Themselves” and it was not a short story, but a novelette doomed to grow to a novel. I had to write something else for Bob.

  I did. I wrote a sixty-seven-hundred-word short story entitled “Take a Match”201 and finished it on March 21. After a slight revision, he took it. It appeared in his anthology New Dimensions II, published by Doubleday in 1972.

  20

  There seemed no end to the odd tasks I could be talked into. The magazine Psychology Today was planning to do a college textbook on psychology with that same title. On March 18, 1971, they approached me with the suggestion that I join the team and provide each of over thirty chapters with little five-hundred-word Introductions. These might be science-fictional, philosophical, or historical items, provided they related to the subject matter of the chapters.

  It seemed just odd enough and crazy enough to be interesting, and I eventually agreed to tackle it.

  21

  I woke at 2 a.m. on March 19 with my old nemesis, a kidney stone. The pain mounted and reached agonizing proportions between 8 and 10 a.m. It then remained largely quiescent until 4 a.m. on the twenty-fourth, when I finally passed it after staying awake and drinking water all night. After my experience a year and a half before, I considered this a minor episode.

  During the quiescent period, Janet and I visited my mother at Long Beach on the twenty-first, then drove to nearby Woodmere, where Judy-Lynn’s family dwelt.

  There Judy-Lynn and Lester del Rey were getting married in a strict Jewish ceremony with Fred Pohl (whom Janet now met for the first time) as best man.202

  From this time on, Lester considered himself Jewish but always refused to admit he had converted. He had simply been accepted, he said, without himself having made a move.

  Ever since there has been a game between us that consists of my pointing out that he can’t be a Jew since he has never been circumcised and his insisting that the Bible, properly interpreted, forbids circumcision. We are not, however, allowed to play this game (and other similar ones) when Judy-Lynn and Janet are present because they claim that the endless squabbling is wearisome.

  Actually, it’s not squabbling, it’s just friendly banter, but it’s hard to convince anyone of that.

  22

  I finished the second revision of my Guide to Science on March 23 and promptly began a history of nuclear energy for the Atomic Energy Commission. It was eventually called Worlds Within Worlds.

  23

  On March 25, Janet and I drove to Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, in the south-central part of the state. When I unpacked in the motel, I was astonished to find rubber boots in my suitcase, the kind that came halfway to the knee. I hadn’t packed them.

  I said, “Where did these come from, Janet?”

  She said, a little embarrassed, “I packed them.”

  “What for?”

  “In case of snow.”

  I stared at her. We were planning to drive to Virginia the next day, after I had given an evening and a morning talk at Shippensburg State College. We would visit Williamsburg and then backtrack to Richmond, where I would give another talk at a Town Hall meeting.

  I said, “Snow? In Virginia? At the end of March?” I laughed heartily and Janet looked rather abashed.

  We were on our way the next day and as we crossed the Potomac River, the first snowflakes began to fall. As we made our way to Route 9; and headed down toward Williamsburg, the snowstorm grew thicker and heavier.

  I tried to joke about it for a while, but as the miles passed, my joking grew lamer and I fell silent. My silence turned into anger. Janet, watching me closely, decided it was perhaps unsafe to let me remain behind the wheel and begged me to let her drive. I did, and she drove the last hour through terrible weather.203

  We finally ended in Williamsburg where, apparently, it was the worst spring snowfall in twenty years. There were a good eight to nine inches of very wet snow on the ground, and when I opened the car door, it shoved the top of a snow-bank flat and a level surface of snow, drenched and saturated with ice water, revealed itself. It was impossible to step into.

  Janet was ready. Wordlessly, she reached behind and handed me the boots, which she had placed on the back seat, just in case. Wordlessly, but with steam emerging from each ear, I put them on.

  And then Janet found she simply could not maintain the silence. She said, in a small voice, “Aren’t you glad I brought them?”

  That did it. I turned on her, face contorted with fury, pointed a finger at her, and said, “Dam it, if you hadn’t packed them, it wouldn’t have snowed.”

  But she only laughed. I don’t think she believed in my calm and scientific appraisal as to the causes of snowstorms.

  It turned out surprisingly well, however; very well, in fact. The next morning dawned bright and mild. The snow was melting rapidly and the little green leaves were showing on the branches of trees between fluffy bits of snow. The going was sloppy but, with boots on, what cared I for that? In fact, the weather had kept the number of tourists down and we saw Williamsburg under ideal noncrowded conditions.

  In the afternoon, we drove to Richmond without any trouble, and I spoke to an estimated three thousand people—my largest audience by far up to that time. I began with, “I am delighted to be in Richmond, snow capital of the United States,” and had them all in a good humor at once.

  In the audience, and coming up to see me afterward, was George Kriegman, the psychiatrist at Camp Lee, twenty-five years before, now long in private practice. Also there was Phyllis Roberts, who had taken phase rule with me in graduate school thirty years before, and now long a divorced woman.

  We got home on March 28, and found Satan in perfect shape, having been fed by a neighbor. Satan was delighted to see us, meowed at us constantly (either scolding us for leaving or telling us how glad he was to see us, we couldn’t tell which), and followed us around faithfully the whole day.

  24

  The Nebula Award banquet on April 3 had Marvin Minsky as a guest speaker and Lester del Rey as the master of ceremonies.

  I was asked, once again, to hand out awards, the Nebulas this time, and I made a giant-sized blooper. In one of the categories, top votes were for “No Award,” which meant that no one got the Nebula that year in that category. For some reason I cannot understand, I ignored that and read out the name of the top author—who was only in second place, and did not qualify.

  The mistake was corrected, but the author whose name I read out was devastatingly disappointed and I was just as devastatingly embarrassed. My desire to hand out awards was effectively quenched. I have been called on to do so on occasion since, but I have never again minded having someone else picked for the purpose.

  25

  Ralph Daigh, editor-in-chief of Fawcett Publications, called me and invited me to lunch on April 6. I agreed, of course, even though I knew he would undoubtedly ask me for a book that would be difficult or impossible to do in view of the state of my commitments.

  On the fifth, however, he called to change the arrangements and asked if I would go Dutch treat with him. I was astonished but I said, “Certainly, Mr. Daigh.”

  On the sixth, I showed up at the Regency Hotel at the agreed-upon time and met Ralph in the lobby. He took me into a back room where there were people lined up to pay for tickets. I reached for my wallet and Ralph waved it away. “You’re my guest,” he said, impatiently.

  Now I was doubly astonished. I said, “I thought you said we were going Dutch treat.”

  Ralph looked chagrined. “Have you been thinking for twenty-four hours that I’d invited you to lunch and wouldn’t pay for you? You’re my guest. It’s the name of the organization I was mentioning; this is the Dutch Treat Club.”

  That was my introduction to the club that is for men in any aspect of the communications profession. It meets every Tuesday for lunch at the Regency. Each lunch features an entertainer and speaker, and although everything seems unhurried and is invariably pleasant, the sessions last only from noon to 2 p.m.

  After the lunch was over, Ralph promptly nominated me for membership and I was voted in at once. It was the second stag organization of which I had become a member.

  26

  Lester del Rey celebrated his conversion (or acceptance) into Judaism by setting up an elaborate seder, which Janet and I attended, along with the Silverbergs and Lester’s ex-mother-in-law.

  It was Janet’s first seder. She found the intricate ceremonial confusing, but the Passover food was, as always, absorbing—and I absorbed it thoroughly.

  Lester did the cooking. He is undoubtedly the best male cook in science fiction, and I imagine he himself would insist he was the best cook without any qualification of gender required.

  27

  On April 12, I finished Worlds Within Worlds. It was another one of those books that got away from me. The AEC wanted it to be ten thousand words long, which was the appropriate size for one of their pamphlets, such as The Genetic Effects of Radiation.

  It turned out to be thirty thousand words long, however, so I split it up into three parts, and sent each off separately. The AEC agreed to publish it as three pamphlets. No sooner was that done than John Sullivan of the AEC persuaded me to promise a half-size pamphlet of five thousand words, one that was to be called, eventually, Electricity and Man.

  John Sullivan and I had established friendly relations and we had had lunch several times when he was in New York, or I in Washington. One of the reasons for the friendliness was that he, too, was trying to get a divorce and was running into the same problems and unhappiness that I was.

  The first time I heard that, I looked curiously at him and said, “Aren’t you of Irish descent?”

  “Yes, of course. With a name like Sullivan, what else?”

  “But are you Catholic?” (Walter Sullivan of the New York Times wasn’t.)

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Then how can you be getting a divorce? Isn’t divorce forbidden by the Catholic Church?”

  Sullivan smiled. “There’s a loophole. Haven’t you heard of the loophole?”

  “No,” I said, firmly. “I don’t know of any loophole.”

  “I’m a bad Catholic,” said Sullivan.

  28

  Janet and I attended the Lunacon, and on the evening of April 16 we spent hours in Campbell’s room, along with Judy-Lynn. We spent more time with Campbell on the next day and then said good-bye cheerfully. Janet found him exasperating—but fascinating.

  29

  I sometimes consent to take part in a book-and-author luncheon. I generally don’t enjoy them because I’m usually only one of three or more authors and invariably (it seems to me) the least well-known to the general audience.

  There was one coming up on April 22, 1971, however, that I couldn’t refuse because it was being sponsored by Newsday and because Stanley himself asked me to do it. I agreed, but I said he would have to send a limousine to Long Beach to pick up my mother for the occasion. Stanley said, “Why not? She’s my mother, too.”

  I was there on April 22, but without Janet, who had to remain with her patients. My mother was there and sat in state at a table with Stanley, Ruth, and Larry Ashmead. Speaking ahead of me were Barbara Tuchman, who had written a series of popular histories, and Stephen Birmingham, who had written Our Crowd, about the rich German Jews of New York.

  I was definitely low man in that combination. Birmingham, in particular, wowed the crowd, which consisted, I should say, very largely (perhaps 80 per cent) of middle-aged Jewish women. As usual, I thought glumly that I would be unable to follow the Birmingham talk with any degree of success unless I worked up a smash opening.

  I rose at last (the final speaker) and said, “I don’t have the advantages of Stephen Birmingham in addressing this audience, because I have never written anything that had any connection with Jewish tradition, Jewish history, or Jewish life. However, I have an advantage over Stephen that makes up for everything else. I have a Jewish mother, who is sitting in the audience now. Mamma, stand up and take a bow.”

  My mother promptly did this and accepted the round of applause very graciously—and I knew that I had my audience where I wanted them.

  I then said, “My brother is also here, at the table with my mother. He’s Stan Asimov and he’s assistant publisher of Newsday.

  “Of course, I wouldn’t say that my mother plays favorites, for how can a Jewish mother play favorites?” (Knowing laughter from the audience.) “Still, I am the first-born, and you know what that means. For instance, when this shindig was being prepared, my mother said to me, ‘Isaac, will it be possible for me to sit with you?’

  “I said, ‘No, Mamma, I’ll be on the dais. You’ll sit with Stanley.’ “And my mother said, ‘Stanley who?’ “

  That, as you can imagine, got me home safe, for it got right in among the ribs of the women in the audience. It helped that my mother rose to her feet, completely outraged (need I say the story was a complete fiction?), and shook her fist at me.

  Afterward, I signed a satisfactory number of books. Someone even went over to my mother and asked for her signature on the book, also, and she signed with no trace of embarrassment.

  When Stanley got back to his office that afternoon, he found his name covered over with a sign reading, “Stanley who.”

  30

  Beth Walker kept hounding me over my silly remark about The Sensuous Dirty Old Man and finally got it through my head that she was serious. She really wanted the book.

  “It would just be a gag book,” I said, weakly. “It won’t really be pornographic.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “And it can’t be a long book, because the gag wouldn’t support a long book.”

  “I know,” she said.

  So I had to do it. I spent just one weekend on it, April 24 to 26, working in Janet’s apartment and trying not to let her see what I was doing. (I was afraid she would be outraged and horrified.)

  It was only sixteen thousand words long, and at that, longer than I thought it would be. When I was finished with it, it seemed so funny to me and so inoffensive (since it was just my general level of flirtatiousness put on paper) that I let Janet read it and she, too, thought it funny and inoffensive.

  I took it in to Walker on April 26, and they approved it as well and rushed it through with amazing celerity. I had an advance copy of the book in my hands on June 2, just thirty-seven days after I had brought in the manuscript and only eighty-one days after I had used the phrase at the March 12 lunch.

  What made the book particularly important to me was that it was the first book I had had published that was written after I had come to New York.

  Having finished The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, I returned to More Words of Science, which had been lying dormant for a while.

  33

  The Gods Themselves

  1

  May 1 had come to have a particular meaning to me since it had been on May 1, 1959, that Janet and I had met at the Mystery Writers’ of America award dinner and had begun to correspond.

  In a way, it was our anniversary, and we celebrated by visiting the Silverbergs in their rambling mansion up in the Bronx, and having dinner there. Then, late at night, we watched Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in Maytime on television. (Janet is an Eddy-MacDonald fan; I prefer Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.)

  2

  On May 2, I finally got started on the second part of The Gods Themselves.

  Larry had shown the first part to a paperback house and they had expressed interest, but had said, “Will Asimov be putting some sex into the book?”

  Larry said, firmly, “No!”

  When Larry told me this I instantly felt contrary enough to want to put sex into the book. I rarely had sex in my stories and I rarely had extraterrestrial creatures in them, either, and I knew there were not lacking those who thought that I did not include them because I lacked the imagination for it.

  I determined, therefore, to work up the best extraterrestrials that had ever been seen for the second part of my novel. There were not to be just human beings with antennae or pointed ears, but utterly inhuman objects in every way. And I determined to give them three sexes and to have that entire section of The Gods Themselves revolve about sex—their sex.

  That is exactly what I did, and I began to feel myself moved by the story I was writing.

  I would have gotten along faster, had I not also felt the urge to write a new history, my tenth. This one took up where The Dark Ages left off and continued the history of France through the Hundred Years’ War. It was eventually called The Shaping of France.

  3

  I attended the Dutch Treat Club banquet on May 6. This was an annual affair, with tuxedos required. Anything with tuxedos turns me off, but Larry Ashmead was going and so was Ferris Mack (Tom Sloane’s boss), and I felt it would be necessary to go.