On January 13, quite suddenly, a week after the letter had come and fourteen months after my last-written story, the urge overwhelmed me. I sat down to write a fantasy called “ Author! Author!”
Quickly I found there was something lacking. It was the first time I had ever tried to write something for Campbell without conferences with him. I missed the inspiration that invariably came through talks with him; I missed his encouragement. In fact, I wasn’t sure that I could write at all without him. So the story limped and there were dry spells. I didn’t finish the first draft till March 5, and the final version wasn’t ready for mailing till April 4. 1943.
It had taken me nearly three months to write the story. To be sure, it was twelve thousand words long, but “Bridle and Saddle,” which was half again as long, had taken me only three weeks.
Perhaps if “ Author! Author!” had been rejected, it might have been a long time before I would have had the courage to try again. Fortunately, that was never put to the test. I mailed the story to Campbell on April 6, 1943 (the first time I ever mailed him a story instead of handing it to him), and on the twelfth the check of acceptance arrived. There was not even a revision requested, and what’s more, Campbell paid me a bonus for the first time since “Nightfall.” I received one and a quarter cents a word, or $150 in all. My sixth try at Unknown had succeeded.
It was the equivalent of three weeks’ pay at the N.A.E.S. for something that had taken me, off and on, three months. However, the three months’ work on” Author! Author!” had been of a totally different kind than the three weeks’ work at the N.A.E.S. would have been, and the receipt of the $150 check was infinitely more exciting than picking up a similar check, or even a larger one, earned in the course of a punch-the-time-clock job. (Yes, indeed, I punched a time clock at the N.A.E.S.)
As it happened, though, the happy excitement with which I greeted the sale was premature. I had scaled the heights of Unknown too late, and though I had the money, I didn’t have the magazine. Robert Heinlein brought me the sad news on August 2, less than four months after the sale.
Unknown had been having a difficult time of it. Sales weren’t high enough, and after its first two years of operation it had had to switch from monthly to bimonthly issues. Now the war had introduced a paper shortage and Street amp; Smith Publications decided to save what paper it could receive for the more successful Astounding and let Unknown go.
At the time I made my sale, there were only three more issues of Unknown fated to be issued and there was no room in any of them for” Author! Author!” The story remained in the vaults of Street amp; Smith indefinitely; a story sold, but not published; and the $150 check was deprived of most of its fun as a result.
There is, however, a happy ending. Twenty years later, Don Bensen of Pyramid Publications was publishing a paperback anthology of stories from Unknown, he asked me for an introduction. With glad nostalgia I complied, writing it on January 15, 1963, almost twenty years to the day after I had started writing the only story I ever sold to the magazine. In the course of the introduction, I referred to the sad story of my attempts to write for Unknown.
The 1960s were not the 1940s. In 1963, the mere mention of an existing Asimov story that had never been published produced excitement, and Bensen wrote to me within three days, asking to see the story. I dug out the manuscript (I saved them now, you see, even for twenty years) and sent it to him.
He asked permission to include it in a second anthology of Unknown stories (pointing out that it had been accepted by the magazine). I explained he would also need permission from Campbell and the publisher. They very kindly granted the permission, and in January 1964. twenty-one years after it was written, “ Author! Author!” was finally published and I finally-after a fashion, and glancingly-made Unknown.
Author! Author!
It occurred to Graham Dorn, and not for the first time, either, that there was one serious disadvantage in swearing you’ll go through fire and water for a girl, however beloved. Sometimes she takes you at your miserable word.
This is one way of saying that he had been waylaid, shanghaied and dragooned by his fiancee into speaking at her maiden aunt’s Literary Society. Don’t laugh! It’s not funny from the speaker’s rostrum. Some of the faces you have to look at!
To race through the details, Graham Dorn had been jerked onto a platform and forced upright. He had read a speech on “The Place of the Mystery Novel in American Literature” in an appalled tone. Not even the fact that his own eternally precious June had written it (part of the bribe to get him to speak in the first place) could mask the fact that it was essentially tripe.
And then when he was weltering, figuratively speaking, in his own mental gore, the harpies closed in, for lo, it was time for the informal discussion and assorted feminine gush.
—Oh, Mr. Dorn, do you work from inspiration? I mean, do you just sit down and then an idea strikes you-all at once? And you must sit up all night and drink black coffee to keep you awake till you get it down?
—Oh, yes. Certainly. (His working hours were two to four in the afternoon every other day, and he drank milk.)
—Oh, Mr. Dorn, you must do the most awful research to get all those bizarre murders. About how much must you do before you can write a story?
—About six months, usually. (The only reference books he ever used were a six-volume encyclopedia and year-before-last’s World Almanac.)
—Oh, Mr. Dom, did you make up your Reginald de Meister from a real character? You must have. He’s oh, so convincing in his every detail.
—He’s modeled after a very dear boyhood chum of mine. (Dom had never known anyone like de Meister. He lived in continual fear of meeting someone like him. He had even a cunningly fashioned ring containing a subtle Oriental poison for use just in case he did. So much for de Meister.)
Somewhere past the knot of women, June Billings sat in her seat and smiled with sickening and proprietary pride.
Graham passed a finger over his throat and went through the pantomime of choking to death as unobtrusively as possible. June smiled, nodded, threw him a delicate kiss, and did nothing.
Graham decided to pass a stern, lonely, woman-less life and to have nothing but villainesses in his stories forever after.
He was answering in monosyllables, alternating yesses and noes. Yes, he did take cocaine on occasion. He found it helped the creative urge. No, he didn’t think he could allow Hollywood to take over de Meister. He thought movies weren’t true expressions of real Art. Besides, they were just a passing fad. Yes, he would read Miss Crum’s manuscripts if she brought them. Only too glad to. Reading amateur manuscripts was such fun, and editors are really such brutes.
And then refreshments were announced, and there was a sudden vacuum. It took a split-second for Graham’s head to clear. The mass of femininity had coalesced into a single specimen. She was four feet ten and about eighty-five pounds in weight. Graham was six-two and two hundred ten worth of brawn. He could probably have handled her without difficulty, especially since both her arms were occupied with a pachyderm of a purse. Still, he felt a little delicate, to say nothing of queasy, about knocking her down. It didn’t seem quite the thing to do.
She was advancing, with admiration and fervor disgustingly clear in her eyes, and Graham felt the wall behind him. There was no doorway within armreach on either side.
“Oh, Mr. de Meister-do, do please let me call you Mr. de Meister. Your creation is so real to me, that I can’t think of you as simply Graham Dorn. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, no, of course not,” gargled Graham, as well as he could through thirty-two teeth simultaneously set on edge. “I often think of myself as Reginald in my more frivolous moments.”
“Thank you. You can have no idea, dear Mr. de Meister, how I have looked forward to meeting you. I have read all your works, and I think they are wonderful.”
“I’m glad you think so.” He went automatically into the modesty routine. “Really nothing, you know. Ha, ha, ha! Like to please the readers, but lots of room for improvement. Ha, ha, ha!”
“But you really are, you know.” This was said with intense earnestness. “I mean good, really good. I think it is wonderful to be an author like you. It must be almost like being God.”
Graham stared blankly. “Not to editors, sister.”
Sister didn’t get the whisper. She continued, “To be able to create living characters out of nothing; to unfold souls to all the world; to put thoughts into words; to build pictures and create worlds. I have often thought that an author was the most gloriously gifted person in creation. Better an inspired author starving in a garret than a king upon his throne. Don’t you think so?”
“Definitely,” lied Graham.
“What are the crass material goods of the world to the wonders of weaving emotions and deeds into a little world of its own?”