“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 most 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 similar 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 Elderfield, 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.
I therefore reconsidered my refusal of the position at Boston University School of Medicine and wrote a letter to Professor Boyd, saying that perhaps I might be interested, after all.
On March 9, 1949, I traveled to Boston for the first time in my life (on a sleeper-but I didn’t sleep).I met Professor Burnham S. Walker, head of the department of biochemistry, the next day and he offered me a position on the faculty at five thousand per year. I saw no way out of my jobless dilemma but to accept.
Did I have to? Was there no chance that I might have made my living as a writer?
How could I honestly come to a decision that I could? In mid-1949, I had been writing for exactly eleven years. In all that time, my total earnings had come to $7,821.75, averaging a little over $710 per year, or $13.70 per week. In my better years, such as the seventh (mid-1944 to mid-1945, when I had sold four stories, including “The Mule”), I had earned $1,600, and in the tenth and eleventh together I had earned $3,300. It looked as though, even in good years, I could not count on much more than thirty dollars per week, and that just wasn’t enough.
Of course, now that I was going to be publishing a book-