I did have the rather silly notion that perhaps the story was taken because of sympathy for poor Isaac (silly, because that’s not how editors’ minds work), but later on, Allen J. Hubin bought it for his collection Best Detective Stories of the Year, 1973, and he didn’t know I had written it in the hospital. So I relaxed.

  22

  At 10:20 p.m. on the night of February 14, I was persuaded, over my objections, to take a sleeping pill, since the operation was scheduled for the following morning. I said I would sleep fine without one and that I had never taken one, but the nurse was following the rules, and down it went.

  I was up at 5:00 a.m. even so. I shaved, cleaned my teeth, showered, and so on, and I remember taking a long look at my smooth and unmarked throat, knowing that I would never see it unmarked again.

  At 6:00 a.m., the nurse came in to give me injections.

  “What’s that?” I said, suspiciously.

  “Just tranquilizers,” she said, “to keep you calm.”

  “I’m perfectly calm,” I said. “Take them away.”

  She didn’t listen, either. She jabbed me.

  By 7:00 a.m. the injections had removed all my cares and woe and I was hilarious. I am always hilarious when I have no cares and woe.

  They came to get me and insisted I be wheeled through the corridors in a cart even though I assured them I could walk perfectly well. While they wheeled me, I felt happy enough to sing Villon’s rallying cry against Burgundy from The Vagabond King and did so in a loud and resonant baritone.

  I heard one nurse say to another, “Have you ever come across this reaction to medication?”

  In the operating room at 8:00 a.m., I watched with happy interest as they placed intravenous tubes in the veins of my left hand (something that, without tranquilizers, would have horrified me). Then in came Carl Smith, with a green smock and a green mask, and his eyes twinkling with the joy all surgeons feel at the prospect of cutting into quivering, living flesh.

  “Carl,” I shouted, “Come here.”

  Then I intoned:

  Doctor, doctor, in your green coat,

  Doctor, doctor, cut my throat.

  And when you’ve finished, doctor, then,

  ‘Won’t you sew it up again.

  By then a desperate anesthesiologist was through and I was told to count backward from one hundred. I don’t think I got past ninety-four. One of the residents told me afterward that my last words were “Doctor, help me.”

  Carl Smith told me afterward that it was a terrible thing for me to have recited that doggerel to him, for he stood there with his knife at my throat, trying to stop laughing, so that he could cut with a steady hand.

  He said, “You were depending on my steady hand. Why did you try to make me laugh?”

  Could I explain I would do anything for a laugh?

  What I did not properly appreciate at the time (thank goodness) was that the recurrent laryngeal nerve might be involved; that if so, it would have to be excised and that I would be hoarse for the rest of my life, and my lecture career would be ended; that Carl was the kind of surgeon who would excise it remorselessly at the least suspicion of cancer.

  The resident told me that the operation, a simple one, proceeded in an atmosphere of conversations and relaxation until Carl began to examine the recurrent laryngeal nerve millimeter by millimeter and then “you could hear a pin drop.”

  I was on the operating table for four hours, since the thyroid had to be checked for the nature of the growth. It was malignant; I had a papillary carcinoma. Out came the entire right half of my thyroid, but the recurrent laryngeal nerve was in perfect shape and stayed in.

  I came to in the recovery room without any of the “Where am I?” bit. I knew exactly where I was and what had happened, and my first words were, “Are my parathyroids safe?” (These are small glands near the thyroid, which I didn’t want to lose since they are more nearly vital to life than the thyroid is.)

  Back in the hospital room, Janet was waiting for me in the greatest tension and ran to meet the cart that was carrying me. She had already been told that I was fine. She stayed with me for a while and I said to her, woozily, “I’m not sure I’m all right, Janet. I don’t feel like doing any typing.” (The next day, though, I managed.)

  At 5:00 p.m. of the operation day of February 15, George Michaels, who happened to be in New York, came to visit. He had news of the separation suit. The day before (on February 14, 1972—which, by an uncomfortable coincidence, was the thirtieth anniversary of the blind date on which I had met Gertrude) the judge had handed down his decision.

  And so, on February 14, 1972, nineteen months after I had left West Newton, I was legally separated. By the law of New York State, one year after that I could qualify for divorce.

  23

  February 19, 1972, was Robyn’s seventeenth birthday, and again I was unable to see her. This time I couldn’t even talk to her on the phone, for my throat hurt and I was under orders to speak as little as possible. Stanley undertook to call her on my behalf.

  That same day, Carl Smith removed the fifteen stitches he had made to close the incision, and admired the scar greatly. (Surgeons always admire their own scars just as writers admire their own books.)

  I left the hospital at 2:00 p.m. on the nineteenth, seven days to the hour after I had entered.

  Just before leaving I sneezed and there was a period of horrible pain in my throat. With the wisdom of hindsight I later realized that the sneeze had disrupted some internal tissue and had caused my throat tissues to fill with fluid so that it swelled up as though I had a giant goiter. It was not a serious situation and slowly, over the weeks, the swelling went down. I thought at first it was a natural consequence of the operation.

  On February 20, I actually went to the Cromwell over Janet’s protests. I just couldn’t survive without looking at my mail, and by the twenty-third, I was putting in a full day of work and completed the last of the little Introductions for the chapters in the textbook Psychology Today.

  24

  At this time I had my two Selectric typewriters both in use, one at the Cromwell and one in Janet’s apartment. This meant that if either one of them broke down, I could not work unless I shifted my base of operations. I therefore ordered a third Selectric so that I could have a backup at the Cromwell, where I did about 80 per cent of my work, and it arrived soon after my operation.

  Eventually, I got a fourth Selectric so that I could have a backup in Janet’s apartment as well.

  Janet also had an electric typewriter of her own, and we had the small hand-typewriter I used in the hospital.

  This meant we owned six typewriters altogether, which makes perfect sense as I’ve described it, though most people seem to think it an odd situation.

  25

  On February 25, I visited Carl Smith’s office for my first postoperation examination. He seemed staggered at the edematous swelling of my throat. “What have you done to my scar?” he demanded.

  I tried to explain about the last-minute sneeze, but he wouldn’t accept that. He said, “Have you been straining yourself? I told you not to strain yourself.”

  “I haven’t been straining myself,” I said, indignantly, “I’ve been very relaxed.”

  “Have you had sex?”

  “Of course I’ve had sex.”

  “Aha! I told you not to strain yourself.”

  “Sex is no strain. For you, maybe, Carl; but not for me.”

  26

  Millicent Selsam of Walker & Company came up with an excellent idea for a series of small books for the grade-school audience. They would be on science history and would have titles that would go How Did We Find Out About———?

  I seized upon the idea eagerly. They would not have the artificiality of the ABC series, and science history had become a specialty of mine. Millie suggested How Did We Find Out the Earth Is Round? and How Did We Find Out About Electricity? as two possible titles for such books, and I agreed to do both.

  I got to work on them soon after getting out of the hospital, and by March 6 they were both completed.

  I was also working on a new history book for Houghton Mifflin. This one was my first to deal with modern history and covered the period of exploration and colonization of North America. I called it The Shaping of North America and it carried the history forward to 1763, when the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War and left Great Britain supreme on the northern half of the continent.

  27

  On March 2, Robyn called and I spoke to her for the first time since my operation. She was taking a course in science fiction at her high school, and one of the books she was studying was Foundation.

  28

  I had not missed any speaking engagements as a result of my operation, except for a book-and-author luncheon that had been scheduled for the very day of the operation and that I was to have done without pay.

  The first paid speech to come up was at Drew University in New Jersey, where I was supposed to talk on both March 3 and 4. Both Carl and Paul recommended that I cancel. If I overstrained my voice, they said, I might lose it altogether and not be back to normal for a year.

  I stubbornly insisted on going, however. I could not bear to cancel. I promised I would whisper into the microphone.

  I really meant to. I explained the situation to the audience, and I did actually begin in a whisper. On each occasion, though, I quickly forgot and, within five minutes, was talking in my ordinary energetic fashion. Fortunately, I didn’t lose my voice.

  The last echo of my operation came on March 9, when I completed my 166th F & SF essay. It dealt with the thyroid gland and I called it “Doctor, Doctor, Cut My Throat.”214 It appeared in the August 1972 F & SF.

  35

  Janet’s Breast

  1

  On March 13, 1972, I began the fourth Black Widower story, which I called “Go, Little Book,”215 and took it in the next day to the delight of Eleanor and Connie, who made a big fuss over me. It appeared in the December 1972 EQMM under the title of “The Matchbook Collector.”

  2

  Rae Jeppson visited Janet’s apartment on March 18 and by a very fortunate coincidence I had only the day before received advance copies of my new F & SF collection, The Left Hand of the Electron, which I had dedicated to Rae. She was, of course, very pleased.

  As for Asimov’s Guide to Science, advance copies of which reached me on April 5, that was dedicated to Janet in large print—the first of my books to be dedicated to her. And that was appropriate, for it had been her eloquent encouragement in her letters, twelve years before, that had emboldened me to agree to do the first edition of the book.

  3

  Harry Harrison had undertaken to put together an anthology of original stories to be called Astounding and to serve as a memorial to John Campbell. The idea was that a number of authors were to write new stories of the type they had written for him.

  Harry approached me on the matter, and I said I would write one more thiotimoline piece. On March 21, I did, “Thiotimoline to the Stars,”216 and it appeared in the anthology.

  4

  Gertrude wanted to discuss our financial situation with me.

  I drove to Boston on April 6, and after lunch with Austin and Mary K., went to West Newton and, for the first time in twenty-one months, walked into the house I had bought sixteen years before.

  I saw Robyn’s room, which had been remodeled since I had left, and I was able to greet Satan who, of course, stared at me suspiciously. There was no sign of any memory at all.

  I took the whole family to dinner, and that evening and the next morning Gertrude and I talked about the situation, but there was no meeting of minds.

  I had promised that when I was in town, I would stop off at Newton High School and talk to Robyn’s science-fiction class. I imagined I was to talk informally and at my leisure with a small class in a small classroom. When I showed up at the high school, however, I found the entire student body in the auditorium.

  It was rank exploitation, and Robyn was as surprised as I was. She, too, had thought that only her class was involved. What could I do? For Robyn’s sake, I went through with it, and even smiled.

  5

  On April 16, we drove to Rochester to see the planetarium version of “The Last Question.” I was astonished at my own reaction to it. Though I knew the story (of course) and though the narration and dialog suffered by not being handled by professional actors, the effect built and pyramided.

  I didn’t write the story with clever attention to technique; my stories work themselves out with no conscious interference from me. Just the same, the six episodes of the story were successively briefer, more sweeping, and more chilling, just as though I had deliberately planned them that way for effect. Then the final episode slows and waits—and the planetarium dome grew dark and stayed dark for over two minutes while the last paragraphs of the story were recited in a quiet increase of tension, and the audience was absolutely silent.

  Even I, who knew what was coming, waited, scarcely able to breathe, and for the others the final, sudden creation of the universe must have done everything but stop the heart.

  It was a terrific show; in fact, it was that show that finally convinced me that “The Last Question” was the best story I had ever done and (my private conviction) the best science-fiction story anyone had ever done.

  We then went on to Cleveland, where I talked at Case Western Reserve and where I got a standing ovation, but there was something better than that:

  In the hotel restaurant, Janet said, “There’s a woman there who looks just like Julie Newmar.”

  I refused to believe her. I had seen Julie Newmar in the musical show Li’l Abner where she played Stupefyin’ Jones and where she stupefied me. I used to watch her play Catwoman on the “Batman” show, and while Batman was immune to her blandishments, I wasn’t.

  Then we read in the paper that Julie Newmar was in a play that was opening in Cleveland (it flopped). Janet really had seen her.

  The next day, April 19, we encountered her again, and this time I took my courage in both hands and addressed her. It was easier than I could possibly have expected. She was a very nice woman, unaffected and natural. She turned out to be a science-fiction fan and seemed to be as much gratified at finding herself in my presence as I was at finding myself in hers.

  On April 20, we were at Chillicothe, Ohio, to see the Great Serpent Mound, which delighted Janet, and then it was back to Columbus for a talk at Ohio State University on the twenty-first. We were invited to a student dinner where everyone sat on the floor, pulled pieces of boiled chicken out of a huge pot, and a number of people smoked marijuana.

  I exclude Janet and myself. We were offered drags as the joints made the circuit but we turned them down politely. It was the first time I had ever been part of a group whom I knew to be smoking pot, and I felt uncomfortable.

  6

  I drove out to Long Beach on April 25, picked up my mother, and took her to the Long Beach Library.

  The librarian there, finding that my mother lived in a hotel in Long Beach, was assiduous in his attentions to her and, of course, I had to talk at the library when he asked me to, if only to give my mother one more time in the limelight.

  My poor mother enjoyed herself extremely and was very sad when it was time for me to leave. She was afraid each time I left that it would be the last time she would see me—and so was I, for she was clearly growing feebler. (I never told her about my operation.)

  7

  Then in May, it was Janet’s turn. She detected a lump in her left breast, and somehow the light began to go out of life. A lump in the thyroid is one thing; the thyroid can be removed in whole or in part and, except for a thyroid pill every so often, life goes on unchanged in appearance and in fact.

  A lump in the breast can be quite another thing. Even if life goes on, it can be at a terrible price.

  Naturally, we tried to assume that it was only a cyst, only something benign, and we did our best to live normal lives while checking the matter out. On May 14, for instance, we drove to Westchester and took Rae to lunch in order to celebrate Mother’s Day, and we gave her no cause to suppose we were uneasy.

  We awaited further investigation—and decision.

  8

  The previous March I had written a piece on my views on feminism for Harper’s Bazaar. It sat on the editor’s desk for two months before I was finally invited to lunch to discuss revisions.

  On May 15, I was at the restaurant at precisely noon, that being the time of meeting. The editor was late, of course, but I’m quite used to that, and it didn’t bother me. At 12:16 p.m. she showed up and I expected the usual apology, which I was prepared to brush aside genially.

  This editor was of sterner stuff. She strode in, favored me with a displeased look, and said, “Well, you’re early, aren’t you?”

  I stiffened and decided we would have trouble coming to an agreement on the revision.

  Later, she asked me why I wrote science fiction, and before I could give her any of my usual, and very cogent, reasons, she decided to answer her own questions by saying, “I suppose you write science fiction because you don’t have the courage to face the real world.”

  I told her through teeth I labored to ungrit that I faced the real world very well indeed and wrote books in many fields other than science fiction.