first time such a category had been set up, nor has it been repeated since. The Foundation series was nominated, and I felt that was going to have to be glory enough for me, since I was sure that Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" would win.
It didn't. The Foundation series won, and the Hugo I received for it has been sitting on my bookcase in the livingroom ever since.
In among all this litany of success, both in money and in fame, there was one annoying side-effect. Readers couldn't help but notice that the books of the Foundation series covered only three hundred-plus years of the thousand-year hiatus between Empires. That meant the Foundation series "wasn't finished." I got innumerable letters from readers who asked me to finish it, from others who demanded I finish it, and still others who threatened dire vengeance if I didn't finish it. Worse yet, various editors at Doubleday over the years have pointed out that it might be wise to finish it.
It was flattering, of course, but irritating as well. Years had passed, then decades. Back in the 1940s, I had been in a Foundation-writing mood. Now I wasn't. Starting in the late 1950s, I had been in a more and more nonfiction-writing mood.
That didn't mean I was writing no fiction at all. In the 1960s and 1970s, in fact, I wrote two science-fiction novels and a mystery novel, to say nothing of well over a hundred short stories - but about eighty percent of what I wrote was nonfiction.
One of the most indefatigable nags in the matter of finishing the Foundation series was my good friend, the great science-fiction writer, Lester del Rey. He was constantly telling me I ought to finish the series and was just as constantly suggesting plot devices. He even told Larry Ashmead, then my editor at Doubleday, that if I refused to write more Foundation stories, he, Lester, would be willing to take on the task.
When Ashmead mentioned this to me in 1973, I began another Foundation novel out of sheer desperation. I called it "Lightning Rod" and managed to write fourteen pages before other tasks called me away. The fourteen pages were put away and additional years passed.
In January 1977, Cathleen Jordan, then my editor at Doubleday, suggested I do "an important book - a Foundation novel, perhaps." I said, "I'd rather do an autobiography," and I did - 640,000 words of it.
In January 1981, Doubleday apparently lost its temper. At least, Hugh O'Neill, then my editor there, said, "Betty Prashker wants to see you," and marched me into her office. She was then one of the senior editors, and a sweet and gentle person.
She wasted no time. "Isaac," she said, "you are going to write a novel for us and you are going to sign a contract to that effect."
"Betty," I said, "I am already working on a big science book for Doubleday and I have to revise the Biographical Encyclopedia for Doubleday and -"
"It can all wait," she said. "You are going to sign a contract to do a novel. What's more, we're going to give you a $50,000 advance."
That was a stunner. I don't like large advances. They put me under too great an obligation. My average advance is something like $3,000. Why not? It's all out of royalties.
I said, "That's way too much money, Betty."
"No, it isn't," she said.
"Doubleday will lose its shirt," I said.
"You keep telling us that all the time. It won't."
I said, desperately, "All right. Have the contract read that I don't get any money until I notify you in writing that I have begun the novel."
"Are you crazy?" she said. "You'll never start if that clause is in the contract. You get $25,000 on signing the contract, and $25,000 on delivering a completed manuscript."
"But suppose the novel is no good."
"Now you're being silly," she said, and she ended the conversation.
That night, Pat LoBrutto, the science-fiction editor at Doubleday called to express his pleasure. "And remember," he said, "that when we say 'novel' we mean 'science-fiction novel,' not anything else. And when we say 'science-fiction novel,' we mean 'Foundation novel' and not anything else."
On February 5, 1981, I signed the contract, and within the week, the Doubleday accounting system cranked out the check for $25,000.
I moaned that I was not my own master anymore and Hugh O'Neill said, cheerfully, "That's right, and from now on, we're going to call every other week and say, 'Where's the manuscript?'" (But they didn't. They