Isaac Asimov: The Early Asimov. Volume 3

'Well, for two decades now, the bacteriologists and physiologists of Earth have studied various forms of Outer World life - the only portion of the Pacific Project that has been truly secret - and the transplanted Terrestrian life is akeady beginning to show certain changes on the subcellular level. Even among the humans,

'And here is the irony. The Outer Worlders, by their rigid racism and unbending genetic policies are consistently eliminating from among themselves any children that show signs of adapting themselves to their respective planets in any way that departs from the norm. They are maintaining - they must maintain as a result of their own thought-processes - an artificial criterion of "healthy" humanity, which is based on Terrestrian chemistry and not their own.

'But now that Earth has been cut off from them; now that not even a trickle of Terrestrian soil and life will reach them, change will be piled on change. Sicknesses will come, mortality will increase, child abnormalities will become more frequent -'

'And then?' asked Keilin, suddenly caught up.

'And then? Well, they are physical scientists - leaving such inferior sciences as biology to us. And they cannot abandon their sensation of superiority and their arbitrary standard of human perfection. They will never detect the change till it is too late to fight it. Not all mutations are clearly visible, and there will be an increasing revolt against the mores of those stiff Outer World societies. There will be a century of increasing physical and social turmoil which will prevent any interference on their part with us.

'We will have a century of rebuilding and revitalization, and at the end of it, we shall face an outer Galaxy which will either be dying or changed. In the first case, we will build a second Terrestrian Empire, more wisely and with greater knowledge than we did the first; one based on a strong and modernized Earth.

'In the second case, we will face perhaps ten, twenty, or even all fifty Outer Worlds, each with a slightly different variety of Man. Fifty humanoid species, no longer united against us, each increasingly adapted to its own planet, each with a sufficient tendency toward atavism to love Earth, to regard it as the great and original Mother.

'And racism will be dead, for variety will then be the great fact of Humanity, and not uniformity. Each type of Man will have a world of its own, for which no other world could quite substitute, and on which no other type could live quite as well. And other worlds can be settled to breed still newer varieties, until out of the grand intellectual mixture, Mother Earth will finally have given birth not to merely a Terrestrian, but to a Galactic Empire.'

Keilin said, fascinated, 'You foresee all this so certainly.'

'Nothing is truly certain; but the best minds on Earth agree on this. There may be unforeseen stumbling blocks on the way, but to remove those will be the adventure of our great-grandchildren. Of our adventure, one phase has been successfully concluded; and another phase is beginning. Join us, Keilin.'

Slowly, Keilin began to think that perhaps Moreno was not a monster after all -

What interests me roost about 'Mother Earth' is that it seems to show clear premonitions of the novels Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, which I was to write in the 1950s.

One thing about the story that I can't explain is the fact that I have two characters in it, one of whom is named Moreno and one Moreanu. I haven't the slightest idea why I used such similiar names. There was no significance in it, I assure you, only carelessness. There was also a Maynard.

Somehow, in reading and rereading the manuscript, the sloppiness of the situation never struck me. It did, however, just as soon as I saw the story in print. Why Campbell didn't notice and make me change the names, I haven't the faintest idea.

I had no sooner sold 'Mother Earth' than I began a new 'Foundation' story entitled '… And Now You Don't.' It was to be the last. Like The Mule,' it was fifty thousand words long, and I didn't finish it till March 29, 1949. I submitted it to Campbell the next day and he took it at once. At two cents a word, it netted me a check for one thousand dollars, the first four-figure check I ever received.

It appeared as a three-part serial in the November 1949, December 1949 and January 1950 issues of Astounding, and it made up the final two thirds of my book Second Foundation.

By then, though, a great change was coming over the field of science fiction. The atom bomb had altered science fiction from a disregarded field of crazy stories into a literature of dreadful perception. Slowly, it was mounting in readership and esteem. New magazines were about to come into being, and the large publishing houses were about to consider putting out regular lines of hardback science fiction novels (hitherto the domain of small specialty houses no more affluent than the magazines and no more hopeful as a source of income).

The matter of hardback novels was of particular interest to Doubleday amp; Company, Inc. (though, of course, I didn't know it at the time). On February 5, 1949, while I was working on the last of the 'Foundation' stories, I attended a meeting of the Hydra Club - a group of science fiction professionals who lived in New York. There I met a Doubleday editor, Walter I. Bradbury, for the first time. It was he who was trying to build up a science fiction line for Doubleday, and he expressed some interest in The Mule.'

I paid little attention to this, however. The thought of publishing a book, a real book, as opposed to magazine stories, was so outlandish that I simply couldn't cram it into my head.

But Fred Pohl could. He had been in the Army, serving in Italy and rising to the rank of sergeant. After discharge, he became an agent again. I had indignantly told him the story of Merwin's rejection of 'Grow Old with Me,' so when Bradbury continued searching, Pohl suggested to him that he look at that story of mine.

Bradbury was interested and, after considerable trouble, Pohl managed to pry the story out of me. ('It's no good,' I kept saying - having never really recovered from the double rejection.)

But on March 24, 1949, I received the word that Bradbury wanted 'Grow Old with Me' if I would expand it to seventy thousand words. What's more, he paid me a $250 option, which I could keep even if the revision was unsatisfactory. That was the first time anyone had paid me anything in advance, and I was flabbergasted.

On April 6, I began the revision, and on May 25, 1949, I finished it and retitled it Pebble in the Sky. On May 29, Doubleday accepted it, and I had to grasp the fact that I was going to have a book published.

But even as I struggled with that, another change was taking place simultaneously.

There was still the matter of a job. All the time I was working for Professor Elderfleld, I was still searching for one that I could take after that temporary position reached its natural end in May 1949. I was having no success at all.

But then, on January 13, 1949, Professor William C. Boyd of Boston University School of Medicine was visiting New York, and we met.

Professor Boyd was a science fiction reader of long standing and had liked my stories. For a couple of years we had been corresponding and we had grown quite friendly. Now he told me that there was an opening in the biochemistry department at his school and would I be interested? I was interested, of course, but Boston is twice as far from New York as Philadelphia is, and I hated to leave New York again.

I refused the offer, but not very hard.

And I continued to look for a job, and I continued to fail.