"Asimov, Isaac - The Early Asimov - Volume 01" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

The story I began to compose for the purpose, the first story
I ever wrote with a view to becoming a "writer," was en-
titled "Cosmic Corkscrew."

In it I viewed time as a helix (that is, something like a bed-
spring). Someone could cut across from one turn directly to
the next, thus moving into the future by some exact interval
but being incapable of traveling one day less into the future.
My protagonist made the cut across time and found the Earth
deserted. All animal life was gone; yet there was every sign
that life had existed until very shortly before—and no indica-
tion at all of what had brought about the disappearance. It
was told in the first person from a lunatic asylum, because the
narrator had, of course, been placed in a madhouse after he
returned and tried to tell his tale.

I wrote only a few pages in 1937, then lost interest. The
mere fact that I had publication in mind must have paralyzed
me. As long as something I wrote was intended for my own
eyes only, I could be carefree enough. The thought of possible
other readers weighed down heavily upon my every word.
—So I abandoned it.

Then, in May 1938, the most important magazine in the
field. Astounding Science Fiction, changed its publication
schedule from the third Wednesday of the month to the fourth
Friday. When the June issue did not arrive on its accustomed
day, I went into a decline.

By May 17, I could stand it no more and took the subway
to 79 Seventh Avenue, where the publishing house. Street &
Smith Publications, Inc., was then located. There, an official
of the firm informed me of the changed schedule, and on
May 19, the June issue arrived. -

The near brush with doom, and the ecstatic relief that fol-
lowed, reactivated my desire to write and publish. I returned
to "Cosmic Corkscrew" and by June 19 it was finished.

I told this story in some detail in an article entitled "Portrait
of the Writer as a Boy," which was included as Chapter 17 of
my book of essays Science, Numbers and 1 (Doubleday, 1968).
In it, relying on memory alone, I said that I had called Street &
Smith on the phone. When I went back to my diary to check
actual dates for this book, I was astonished to discover that I
had actually made the subway trip—an utterly daring venture
for me in those days, and a measure of my desperation.

The next question was what to do with it. I had absolutely
no idea what one did with a manuscript intended for pub-