P. Krum, 'Journal of Chemical Solubilities, 29, 818-819 (1946), 'A Device for the Quantitative Measurement of Thiotimoline Solubility Speed.'
A. Roundin, B. Lev, and Y. J. Prutt, Proceedings of the Society of Plant Chemistry, 80, 11-18 (1930), 'Natural Products isolated from shrubs of the genus Rosacea.'
Tiotimolin kak Ispitatel Marksciiskoy dilektiki B. Kreschia-tika, Journal Naouki i Sovetskoy Ticorii Vol. 11, No. 3.
Philossophia Neopredelennosti i Tiotimolin, Molvinski Pog-ost i Z. Brikalo. Mir i Kultura Vol. 2, No. 31.
When Campbell took the piece, I made one cautious stipulation. I knew it would appear in the spring and I knew that in the spring I would come up for my “oral examinations”-the last hurdle on the path to my Ph.D. I didn’t want any austere member of the examining board to decide I was making fun of chemical research and to be sufficiently offended to vote against me on the grounds that I wasn’t temperamentally suited to the high honor of the doctorate. -So I asked Campbell to run it under a pseudonym.
When the magazine with the article finally reached the newsstands, in mid-February 1948, I was appalled to discover that Campbell had utterly forgotten the matter of the pseudonym. The article appeared under my own name and I was scheduled to have my orals within three months. My nervousness was increased when, almost at once, copies of the magazine began circulating in the chemistry department.
On May 20, 1948, I had my orals. The examining board had seen the article. After I had been on the grill for an hour and twenty minutes, the last question (asked by Professor Ralph S. Halford) was, “Mr. Asimov, tell us something about the thermodynamic properties of the compound thiotimoline.”
I broke into hysterical laughter out of sheer relief, for it struck me instantly that they wouldn’t play good-natured jokes with me (Professor Halford sounded jovial and everyone else was smiling) if they were going to Hunk me. I was led out, still laughing, and after a twenty-minute wait, the examiners emerged, shook my hand, and said, “Congratulations, Dr. Asimov.”
My fellow students insisted on forcing five Manhattans down my throat that afternoon and, since I am a teetotaler under normal conditions and have no tolerance for alcohol, I was royally drunk at once. It took them three hours to sober me up.
After the official ceremonies, on June I, 1948, I was Isaac Asimov, Ph.D.
As it turned out, Campbell’s non-use of a pseudonym (and I bet he did it deliberately, because he was smarter than I was) was a lucky break indeed. Not only did the examining board not take it amiss, but the article became, in a minor way, famous, and I with it.
Although “Thiotimoline” appeared in Astounding, as did all my stories of the time, it received circulation far outside the ordinary science fiction world. It passed from chemist to chemist, by way of the magazine itself, or by reprints in small trade journals, or by copies pirated and mimeographed, even by word of mouth. People who had never heard of me at all as a science fiction writer, heard of thiotimoline. It was the very first time my fame transcended the field.
What’s more, although “Thiotimoline” was essentially a work of fantasy, the form was that of non-fiction. Viewed from that standpoint, “Thiotimoline” was the first piece of non-fiction I had ever published professionally-the harbinger of a vast amount to come.
But what amused me most was that a surprising number of readers actually took the article seriously. I was told that in the weeks after its appearance the librarians at the New York Public Library were driven out of their minds by hordes of eager youngsters who demanded to see copies of the fake journals I had used as pseudo references.
But back to the summer of 1947-
Over a period of five years I had sold fourteen stories, every one of them to Campbell. This didn’t mean that he was the only editor in the field, at all. Almost all the magazines that had been published before the war still existed (although only Astounding was really doing well) and would have welcomed submissions from me. Had Campbell rejected any of the stories I had submitted to him, I would certainly have tried one of those other magazines.-but he didn’t, so I didn’t.
The magazine Startling Stories, in which I had published “Christmas on Ganymede” five and a half years before, published a forty thousand-word “short novel” in each issue. It wasn’t easy to get a publishable story of that length every month though, especially since Startling’s rate was only half that of Astounding.
Sometimes it was necessary, therefore, for the editor of the magazine, who at that time was Sam Merwin, Jr., to canvass those authors known to be capable of turning out such a story. About the time I was doing “Thiotimoline,” Merwin approached me with a suggestion that I write a lead short novel.
Startling, he explained, had always published stories with the accent on adventure, but, in imitation of Astounding’s success, he had persuaded the publisher to try the experiment of publishing stories with a heavier accent on science. Would I consider, then, doing a lead for Startling?
I was terribly flattered. Also, as I said earlier, I was nervous about having become a one-editor author and would have welcomed a chance to prove to myself that I could write beyond Campbell’s protective shadow. I agreed, therefore, and a good part of the summer of 1947 (when I wasn’t engaged in preparing my experimental data for the upcoming Ph.D. dissertation) was spent in preparing a story I called “Grow Old with Me.” [This was inspired by Robert Browning’s poem Rabbi Ben Ezra and was a misquotation-which shows you the level of my culture. The first line of the poem is “Grow old along with me.”]
By August 3 I had completed first draft. On August 26, I had the first part of it in final copy and submitted that to Merwin. He approved. On September 23 the entire story was submitted and I had no doubt, whatever, of its acceptance. On October 15, 1947, however, Merwin told me that, alas, Startling had decided not to go for heavy science, after all, but for adventure, and that “Grow Old with Me” would have to be completely rewritten with no guarantee of acceptance after that.
I suppose it is an indication of how things had advanced when I tell you it was the first time that I did not accept a request for revision philosophically. Quite otherwise! It had been five years and more since even Campbell had rejected one of my stories; how, then, dare a comparative nonentity like Merwin do so? Particularly since he had approached me for the story?
I made no effort to hide my annoyance. In fact, I seized the manuscript and stalked out of the office, and in an obvious rage. [Years afterward, as a result of the subsequent history of that story, Merwin took to apologizing for that rejection every time he met me-but he didn’t have to, and I kept telling him so. He was editor, and he was completely within his rights to reject the story, and I was being pettily temperamental to be angry about it. I have made every effort, since, to avoid evident anger at any rejection, however unjustified it might seem at the time, and I think I have succeeded.] I submitted the story to Campbell, giving him a full account of events. -I have always made it a practice to tell any editor to whom I submit a story of any rejection it has previously received. There is no necessity to do this; it is not, as far as I know, an ethical requirement for a writer. I just do it, and it has not, again as far as I know, ever cost me an acceptance.
As it happened, Campbell rejected the story, but not, I’m sure, because it had been somewhere else first. He told me enough things wrong with the story to make me feel that perhaps Merwin had not been so arbitrary in rejecting it. I thrust the story in the drawer in disgust and thought no more about it for nearly two years.