It was a beautiful day at Murphy's Park; hot and dry without being too hot; and with a cheerfully bright sun in a blue, blue sky. Even Mr. Sakkaro, though he inspected every quarter of the heavens with a careful eye and then stared piercingly at the barometer, seemed to have no fault to find. I
Lillian ushered the two boys to the amusement section and bought enough tickets to allow one ride for each on every variety of centrifugal thrill that the park offered.
“Please,” she had said to a protesting Mrs. Sakkaro, “let this be my treat. I'll let you have your turn next I time.”
When she returned, George was alone. “Where-” she began.
“Just down there at the refreshment stand. I told themI'd wait here for you and we would join them.” He sounded gloomy.
“Anything wrong?”
“No, not really, except that I think he must be independently wealthy.”
“What?”
“I don't know what he does for a living. I hinted-”
“Now who's curious?”
“I was doing it for you. He said he's just a student of human nature.”
“How philosophical. That would explain all those newspapers.”
“Yes, but with a handsome, wealthy man next door, it looks as though I'll have impossible standards set for me, too.”
“Don't be silly.”
“And he doesn't come from Arizona.”
“He doesn't?”
“I said I heard he was from Arizona. He looked so surprised, it was obvious he didn't. Then he laughed and asked if he had an Arizona accent.”
Lillian said thoughtfully, “He has some kind of accent, you know. There are lots of Spanish-ancestry people in the Southwest, so he could still be from Arizona. Sakkaro could be a Spanish name.”
“Sounds Japanese to me. -Come on, they're waving. Oh, good Lord, look what they've bought.”
The Sakkaros were each holding three sticks of cotton candy, huge swirls of pink foam consisting of threads of sugar dried out of frothy syrup that had been whipped about in a warm vessel. It melted sweetly in the mouth and left one feeling sticky.
The Sakkaros held one out to each Wright, and out of politeness the Wrights accepted.
They went down the midway, tried their hand at darts, at the kind of poker game where balls were rolled into holes, at knocking wooden cylinders off pedestals. They took pictures of themselves and recorded their voices and tested the strength of their handgrips.
Eventually they collected the youngsters, who had been reduced to a satisfactorily breathless state of roiled-up insides, and the Sakkaros ushered theirs off instantly to the refreshment stand. Tommie hinted the extent of his pleasure at the possible purchase of a hot-dog and George tossed him a quarter. He ran off, too.
“Frankly,” said George, “I prefer to stay here. If I see them biting away at another cotton candy stick I'll turn green and sicken on the spot. If they haven't had a dozen apiece, I'll eat a dozen myself.”
“I know, and they're buying a handful for the child now.”
“I offered to stand Sakkaro a hamburger and he just looked grim and shook his head. Not that a hamburger's much, but after enough cotton candy, it ought to be a feast.”
“I know. I offered her an orange drink and the way she jumped when she said no, you'd think I'd thrown it in her face. -Still, I suppose they've never been to a place like this before and they'll need time to adjust to the novelty. They'll fill up on cotton candy and then never eat it again for ten years.”
“Well, maybe.” They strolled toward the Sakkaros. “You know, Lil, it's clouding up.”
Mr. Sakkaro had the radio to his ear and was looking anxiously toward the west.
“Uh-oh,” said George, “he's seen it. One gets you fifty, he'll want to go home.”
All three Sakkaros were upon him, polite but insistent. They were sorry, they had had a wonderful time, a marvelous time, the Wrights would have to be their guests as soon as it could be managed, but now, really, they had to go home. It looked stormy. Mrs. Sakkaro wailed that all the forecasts had been for fair weather.
George tried to console them. “It's hard to predict a local thunderstorm, but even if it were to come, and it mightn't, it wouldn't last more than half an hour on the outside.”
At which comment, the Sakkaro youngster seemed on the verge of tears, and Mrs. Sakkaro's hand, holding a handkerchief, trembled visibly.
“Let's go home,” said George in resignation.
The drive back seemed to stretch interminably. There was no conversation to speak of. Mr. Sakkaro's radio was quite loud now as he switched from station to station, catching a weather report every time. They were mentioning “local thundershowers” now.
The Sakkaro youngster piped up that the barometer was falling, and Mrs. Sakkaro, chin in the palm of her hand, stared dolefully at the sky and asked if George could not drive faster, please.
“It does look rather threatening, doesn't it?” said Lillian in a polite attempt to share their guests' attitude. But then George heard her mutter, “Honestly!” under her breath.
A wind had sprung up, driving the dust of the weeks-dry road before it, when they entered the street on which they lived, and the leaves rustled ominously. Lightning flickered.
George said, “You'll be indoors in two minutes, friends. We'll make it.”
He pulled up at the gate that opened onto the Sakkaro's spacious front yard and got out of the car to open the back door. He thought he felt a drop. They were just in time.
The Sakkaros tumbled out, faces drawn with tension, muttering thanks, and started off toward their long front walk at a dead run.
“Honestly,” began Lillian, “you would think they were-”
The heavens opened and the rain came down in giant drops as though some celestial dam had suddenly burst. The top of their car was pounded with a hundred drum sticks, and halfway to their front door the Sakkaros stopped and looked despairingly upward.
Their faces blurred as the rain hit; blurred and shrank and ran together. All three shriveled, collapsing within their clothes, which sank down into three sticky-wet heaps.
And while the Wrights sat there, transfixed with horror, Lillian found herself unable to stop the completion of her remark: “-made of sugar and afraid they would melt. “
My book THE EARLY ASIMOV did sufficiently well for Doubleday to decide to do other, similar books by other writers who have been writing long enough to have had an early period of some worth. The next book in the series is THE EARLY DEL REY (Doubleday, 1975) by my good old friend Lester del Rey.
Lester doesn't have his book filled with autobiographical minutiae, as I do, but has meant his book to be a more sober device for describing his views on how to write science fiction.
I would cheerfully do the same except that I don't know how to write science fiction, or anything else. What I do, I do by blind instinct.
However, something does occasionally occur to me, and one little tiny rule comes up in connection with RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY. If you're going to write a story, avoid contemporary references. They date a story and they have no staying power. The story mentions Schoendienst as having been at bat during a baseball game. Well, who the heck was Schoendienst? Do you remember? Does the name have meaning to you a decade and a half later?
And if it does, is there any point in reminding the reader that the story is a decade and a half old? -Of course, I spend pages telling you how old my stories are and everything else about them, but that's different. You 're all friends of mine.
The drift to nonfiction continued. In the spring of 1959 Leon Svirsky of Basic Books, Inc., persuaded me to do a large book to be called THE INTELLIGENT MAN'S GUIDE TO SCIENCE, which was published in 1960. It was my first real success in the nonfiction field. It got numerous favorable reviews, and my annual income suddenly doubled.