“Oh,” said she, “how many books have you written?”

  “One hundred and twenty-two,” I said, enunciating clearly.

  “Well,” said she, not in the least disconcerted, “you must be very hard to live with.”

  I left that lunch quite determined that I would not revise the article and that she could wait till hell froze over for it.

  When I came back to the Cromwell, however, there was a request in the mail from the Publishers-Hall newspaper syndicate asking me to do an article for them on a subject of my own choosing, but mentioning one or two newsworthy science topics.

  I fired back an answer at once, asking if I might do an article on guilt provokers, and describing the lunch I had just had.

  I got a phone call the very next day from Richard Sherry of the syndicate. “If you can make the article as funny as you made the letter,” he said, “let’s have it.”

  My depression and anger lifted at once at the thought I could get it all out of my system by writing about it (ah, the advantages of being a writer).

  I wrote the article, “Guilt,” at a sitting on May 31. I told not only the story of the lunch, but also a few others, including that of Carl Smith’s blaming me for my edematous neck. Then just to show that I sinned as well as having been sinned against, I told the story of our trip to Williamsburg when I accused Janet of bringing on the snowstorm by packing my boots. The article was accepted at once and appeared in numerous newspapers around the country in the following summer.

  So mollified was I at writing the article that I was able to revise the article for Harper’s Bazaar as requested, and it appeared in the August 1972 issue under the title of “No More Willing Baby Machines.”

  I am not planning to include “No More Willing Baby Machines” in any of my collections, but “Guilt” is another matter.

  After the appearance of Isaac Asimov’s Treasury of Humor, I planned a follow-up book containing additional jokes, plus a collection of my humorous articles. “Guilt” would surely be an item.

  I had mentioned this at Breadloaf the previous summer, and John Ciardi had suggested the title—Isaac Asimov Laughs Again. I eventually got a contract for it from Austin Olney and even got to work on it. Other work got in the way, though, and the book has been hanging fire for years.

  So has Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of War and Battle, which went into Coventry at about this time and never emerged. These are not phases of writer’s block, in any way. What happens is that I take on too many projects for even my workaholic capacity, and some items simply go to the wall. I know they’re there, though, and someday, if I live long enough . . .

  As far as my nonhumorous essays are concerned, I was having no problem. I was putting together another collection of those that appeared elsewhere than in F & SF and called it Today and Tomorrow and—.

  9

  Richard Hoagland, the young man I had met in Boston eight years before and who was then running a planetarium in Springfield, showed up, rather unexpectedly, on May 23. He had a new project under way. This was to arrange a cruise on the Queen Elizabeth 2 to Florida to witness the launching of Apollo 17 in December.

  Apollo 17 was to be the last manned trip to the Moon and the only night launch. I was intrigued, even though I shuddered at the thought of going as far afield as Florida. I promised to consider the possibility of going.

  It was a relief to turn from that to something more mundane. I wrote a fifth Black Widowers story, “Early Sunday Morning,”217 which eventually appeared in the March 1973 EQMM under the title “The Biological Clock.”

  On May 29, I finished The Shaping of North America.

  10

  I drove to Alfred University on June 3. This time I was to get an honorary degree. They had offered me a Doctor of Science but I pointed out that I already had two of those and asked, diffidently, if it were possible to get a Doctor of Letters instead. They agreed and I was delighted, since Litt.D. was by now far more appropriate a tribute to my life’s work than a Sc.D. was.

  I was not the commencement speaker, however; Rod Serling was. He was getting a degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

  11

  My first five F & SF collections were now out of print in hardcover, though each had a living soft-cover edition. Larry phoned to tell me that some firm wanted to put out limited editions of each of them for very limited money. This would, of course, tie up the books as far as other use was concerned.

  At lunch on June 6, I suggested an alternate scheme. Why not abstract from each of the books enough articles on a given topic to put out a new essay collection to be named Asimov on Astronomy, Asimov on Physics, and so on? I would supply each book with an Introduction, and index, and update each article where necessary.

  “Good,” said Larry, “and we can add illustrations, too, if you will write the captions.”

  I agreed.

  12

  The galleys of Asimov’s Annotated Don Juan had arrived and been taken care of, and I expected to see the book itself before long. I strongly suspected, though (despite Doubleday’s optimism), that the book would not do well and that, thereafter, I would not be able to stick them with a similar book. The thing to do was to stick them with one now, before the returns were in on the first.

  On June 14, 1972, therefore, I began Asimov’s Annotated Paradise Lost, and, in no time at all, I was lost in the pleasurable dissection of a great literary classic once more. And I persuaded Doubleday to go along with me on this.

  13

  The Gilbert and Sullivan Society for its June meeting was planning a rendition of Trial by Jury to be given in strictly amateur fashion by the members themselves—and guess who was going to be the Counsel for the Plaintiff?

  I had accepted lightly enough because I knew the Counsel’s solo, “With a Sense of Deep Emotion,” and, of course, I can sing quite adequately.

  When they gave me a copy of the music with my part underlined, however, I discovered to my horror that I had a number of minor things to sing that I knew nothing about, including my part in a very complicated sextette.

  For a couple of months, I did my best to learn it. I visited Jocelyn Wilkes (a large soprano with a silver voice and a golden heart who could sing Katisha better than anyone in the world, I think), who tried to teach me the part, and I attended a rehearsal as well. Everyone else, however, knew every note, and when June 16, 1972, rolled around, I managed to get onto the stage in a kind of paralytic fit.

  I believe I sang my way through the operetta, but I have no memory of it whatever.

  It was the only time in my life I ever had stage fright.218

  14

  On June 19, I had lunch with President McGill of Columbia University at his request. I was delighted to agree, but I did make the condition that Professor Dawson be invited as well. He joined us and for two hours I rather gloried in the long way I had climbed since the days, thirty-five years before, when I had been a second-class student at the university.

  15

  For six weeks now, we had been living with the lump in Janet’s left breast. Both Paul Esserman and Carl Smith were cheerfully convinced that it was benign, but there was no way out but to go in and look at it. The operation was to take place in July, and I was desperate for activities that would keep her mind off the matter.

  I had, for instance, received an invitation to attend a seminar on the future of communications that was to be held at the Institute of Man and Science at Rensselaerville, New York. Ordinarily I would not have accepted, but it was a chance to get out into a rural atmosphere and divert Janet, so I agreed.

  On July 3, we drove there and found it to be a wonderful place, well beyond our expectations. It was countrified and Janet lost her fears for a while as we explored rural roads and waterfalls, listened to interesting talks, and met fascinating people.

  On the night of the third, a gentleman named Beardsley Graham delivered a talk on the future of television cassettes that was utterly stimulating. “In the future,” he said, “the book will not be a pile of grimy manuscript pages, but a neat television cassette, and men like Isaac Asimov will be out of business.”

  I was sitting in the front row, and I jumped, of course. Everyone laughed.

  On July 5, it turned out that the gentleman slated to give the evening talk was unavoidably delayed in London, and Duncan MacDonald219 asked if I would give the talk instead.

  “But I have nothing prepared,” I said.

  She said, “You don’t have to be prepared. We know you can improvise.”

  I can never resist flattery. That night I picked up Graham’s remark about television cassettes putting me out of business and gave a rousing impromptu defense of the book. It went over very well, and after we returned home, I incorporated the talk into my 171st F & SF essay. I called it “The Ancient and the Ultimate,”220 and it appeared in the January 1973 F & SF.

  Since I had also thought to bring the hand typewriter with me to Rensselaerville, I also improved each shining hour by writing my sixth Black Widowers tale, “The Obvious Factor,” and on returning home I wrote a seventh, “The Pointing Finger.”221 They appeared in the May 1973 and July 1973 issues, respectively, of EQMM.

  16

  Victor Serebriakoff, the founder and High Panjandrum of Mensa, was arriving in New York on one of his periodic visits to the United States, and I received an invitation from Margot Seitelman, the Executive Director of the New York section, to come and meet him. For three years now I had allowed my Mensa dues to lapse and I had assumed my association with the organization was over but, as it happened, I was curious to meet Victor.

  On July 12, Janet and I attended the meeting. Victor was short, plump, bearded, charming, and highly intelligent. He also had the ability to tell jokes in cockney, and that won him a secure niche in my heart.

  I met a number of other interesting Mensans, some of whom remembered my talk on the day of John Kennedy’s assassination nearly nine years before. In particular, there was Marvin Grossworth, taller, plumper, balder, and more bearded than Victor and just as intelligent and charming.

  Victor asked me why I had allowed my membership of Mensa to lapse, and when I found myself at a loss for words, he told me that I was once again a member and that if I would prefer not to pay my dues, he would pay them for me.

  Well, I couldn’t allow that, so I promptly said I would pay my own dues—and I was once again a Mensa member.

  Victor also urged me to visit Great Britain under Mensa auspices and give some talks. My aversion to travel had been growing steadily with the years and I was all set to refuse flatly and eternally, but Janet seemed to blossom at the thought of visiting Great Britain. I thought of the forthcoming hospitalization and rather gave the impression that I might go someday. This was taken by Victor to be a flat acceptance.

  17

  I had met Anita Summer, who was working for the Leonard Lyons column, because she was a science-fiction fan and we had both attended the same science-fiction convention. We got along well, and among the fringe benefits was an invitation she wangled for me to attend a cocktail party given in honor of the contestants in the Miss Universe competition.

  On July 17, then, I found myself wandering about delightedly among a number of tall and gorgeous women and was particularly taken with Miss Wales.

  Anita said to me, “Are you going to write a story about this, Isaac?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  I wasn’t serious, but as I thought about it, it seemed to me that I could. Four days later, I wrote my eighth Black Widowers story against the background of a “Miss Earth” contest, with a Miss Wales playing a key part. I called it “Miss What?,”222 but it eventually appeared in the September 1973 EQMM under the title of “A Warning to Miss Earth.”

  18

  Janet entered University Hospital (the same one in which I had had my thyroidectomy nearly half a year before) on July 23, and on July 25 underwent exploratory surgery.

  We were not certain when she would go under the knife, and she promised to call me before she let them roll her away. At 3:00 PM. she called me, and at three-twenty I was in her room with a copy of Wodehouse’s Cocktail Time and settled down to wait.

  I expected her to be back at 5:00 p.m. with the good news of something benign. By 5:15 p.m. I was frowning, and by 6:00 p.m. I was downright anxious. I could get no news out of anyone except that she was still in the operating room.

  Anxiety grew, hope dwindled. Chancy arrived at 7:30 p.m., and by then I had run out of hope altogether. I knew what had happened, and I finally forced a resident to tell me the truth. There was a small malignancy, and Carl Smith, a determined cutter, was performing a radical mastectomy of the left breast. I was shattered and depended heavily on Chaucy for support.

  Doctors and nurses begged me, then ordered me, to go home, but of course I refused, even though Chaucy had to leave eventually. I would not leave without seeing Janet, I said. It was nearly 1:00 a.m. before they went down to get her, and I insisted on going with them.

  Janet was only woozily awake, just barely alert, but she knew what had happened. “I’m sorry,” she said—apologizing to me.

  After that, they virtually kicked me out bodily. I made my way home, oppressed and stunned, and well aware that with the passing of midnight it was my thirtieth wedding anniversary.

  19

  I spent the next thirty-six hours in heavy dependence on Chaucy, on Larry, and on the del Reys. When I arrived at the hospital on the twenty-seventh, I found Janet in tears and despair. The sedation had worn off sufficiently to let her know that she would have only one breast as long as she lived, unless she lost that one, too; that she was forty-five years old and, in her own eyes, plain; that she had no legal hold on me; and that I would now, as soon as was convenient, take myself off and find a younger, prettier, two-breasted woman.

  I tried feverishly to tell her that this wasn’t so; that I was with her come what may; that she hadn’t abandoned me because of my thyroid, and that I wouldn’t abandon her because of her breast; that what pleased me in her was beyond the reach of the surgeon’s knife. It didn’t help. She was in no mood to listen to such things.

  So I stood up, rather desperately, pointed my finger at her, and said, “Listen! What’s all the fuss about? If you were a showgirl, I could see where taking off the left breast would be tragic. You would be all unbalanced, and you would fall over to the right side. In your case, with your tiny breasts, who cares? In a year, I’ll be looking at you and squinting my eyes and saying, ‘Which breast did the surgeon remove?’ ”

  To my relief, she burst into laughter. Indeed, when Carl Smith came to examine her, she told him what I had said and he burst into laughter, too.

  I can’t take credit for adopting the right therapy. Gallows humor comes naturally to me (the “doctor, doctor, cut my throat” bit). As it happened, Janet’s profession made that kind of cruel medical humor seem natural to her. Besides, no amount of sincere profession of love on my part would convince her; but joking about it did. If the missing breast meant so little to me that I could joke about it, then perhaps she could rely on me.

  Thereafter, I kept up a determined cheerfulness each day when I visited her and never referred to the operation in anything but a joking way. In no time she was on her feet, visiting other patients in the ward to cheer them up.

  Meanwhile, I called Carl one evening and received a detailed account of what Janet’s chest would look like so that when I saw it I would not wince. Janet knew that I was queasy and would neither look at nor listen to anything that was medically gruesome. One wince from me, therefore, would undo everything. It was a long time before she could let me see her bare chest thereafter, but when the time came that I insisted she do so, I was old stoneface himself, perfectly calm.

  20

  I kept myself frenetically busy while Janet was in the hospital. I agreed to do two more of the How Did We Find Out About———? series for Walker, and while Janet was away I went rapidly through How Did We Find Out About Numbers? and took it in.

  Janet was kept busy, too, by the constant stream of people who came to visit her. Even Austin Olney came in from Boston just to see her.

  21

  Janet’s forty-sixth birthday came on August 6 and found her still in the hospital. Chaucy and Les arrived with a cake and we made as merry as we could, but merriment is naturally limited for a newly breastless woman.

  Janet was herself surprised at still being in the hospital and tackled Carl on the matter. He hesitated and finally admitted that she could go home, but that he had to protect her. “You know what Isaac is like,” he said.

  It turned out that he was still thinking about my edematized neck, brought on (he firmly believed) by my own animal lust. He was apparently convinced that I was some kind of sex maniac and would damage Janet.

  Janet reassured him that I was a pussycat, and he reluctantly consented to let her go home. On the seventh, I spent hours getting the apartment into shape for her, changing the sheets on the beds, running clothes through the laundry in the basement, and so on. Any competent housekeeper could have translated my three hours of hard labor into thirty minutes.

  On August 8, I brought Janet back home after sixteen days in the hospital.

  22

  The next day, Robyn (rather unexpectedly) arrived and met Janet for the first time, at last. I was a little fearful of how it would go, for Janet was terribly apprehensive of meeting with a daughter’s disapproval of the woman-who-stole-her-Daddy and of the effect of that disapproval on a doting father. She was also very aware of how unattractive she must seem with her arm in a sling and herself so altogether an invalid.