Solution Unsatisfactory

FOREWORD

I had always planned to quit the writing business as soon as that mortgage was paid off. I had never had any literary ambitions, no training for it, no interest in it — backed into it by accident and stuck with it to pay off debt, I being always firmly resolved to quit the silly business once I had my chart squared away.

At a meeting of the Mariana Literary Society — an amorphous disorganization having as its avowed purpose "to permit young writers to talk out their stories to each other in order to get them off their minds and thereby save themselves the trouble of writing them down" — at a gathering of this noble group I was expounding my determination to retire from writing once my bills were paid — in a few weeks, during 1940, if the tripe continued to sell.

William A. P. White ("Anthony Boucher") gave me a sour look. "Do you know any retired writers?"

"How could I? All the writers I've ever met are in this room."

"Irrelevant. You know retired school teachers, retired naval officers, retired policemen, retired farmers. Why don't you know at least one retired writer?"

"What are you driving at?"

"Robert, there are no retired writers. There are writers who have stopped selling… but they have not stopped writing."

I pooh-poohed Bill's remarks — possibly what he said applied to writers in general… but I wasn't really a writer; I was just a chap who needed money and happened to discover that pulp writing offered an easy way to grab some without stealing and without honest work. ("Honest work" — a euphemism for underpaid bodily exertion, done standing up or on your knees, often in bad weather or other nasty circumstances, and frequently involving shovels, picks, hoes, assembly lines, tractors, and unsympathetic supervisors. It has never appealed to me.Sitting at a typewriter in a nice warm room, with no boss, cannot possibly be described as "honest work.")

"Blowups Happen" sold and I gave a mortgage-burning party. But I did not quit writing at once (24 Feb. 1940) because, while I had the Old Man of the Sea (that damned mortgage) off my back, there were still some other items. I needed a new car; the house needed paint and some repairs; I wanted to make a trip to New York; and it would not hurt to have a couple of hundred extra in the bank as a cushion — and I had a dozen-odd stories in file, planned and ready to write.

So I wrote Magic, Incorporated and started east on the proceeds, and wrote "They" and Sixth Column while I was on that trip. The latter was the only story of mine ever influenced to any marked degree by John W. Campbell, Jr. He had in file an unsold story he had written some years earlier. JWCdid not show me his manuscript; instead he told me the story line orally and stated that, if I would write it, he would buy it.

He needed a serial; I needed an automobile. I took the brass check.

Writing Sixth Column was a job I sweated over. I had to reslant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line. And I didn't really believe the pseudoscientific rationale of Campbell's three spectra — so I worked especially hard to make it sound realistic.

It worked out all right. The check for the serial, plus 35¢ in cash, bought me that new car… and the book editions continue to sell and sell and sell, and have earned more than forty times as much as I was paid for the serial. So it was a financial success… but I do not consider it to be an artistic success.

While I was back east I told Campbell of my plans to quit writing later that year. He was not pleased as I was then his largest supplier of copy. I finally said, "John, I am not going to write any more stories against deadlines. But I do have a few more stories on tap that I could write. I'll send you a story from time to time… until the daycomes when you bounce one. At that point we're through. Now that I know you personally, having a story rejected by you would be too traumatic."

So I went back to California and sold him "Crooked House" and "Logic of Empire and "Universe" and "Solution Unsatisfactory" and "Methuselah's Children" and "By His Bootstraps" and "Common Sense" and "Goldfish Bowl" and Beyond "This Horizon" and "Waldo" and "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" — which brings us smack up against World War II.

Campbell did bounce one of the above (and I shan't say which one) and I promptly retired — put in a new irrigation system — built a garden terrace — resumed serious photography, etc. This went on for about a month when I found that I was beginning to be vaguely ill: poor appetite, loss of weight, insomnia, jittery, absent-minded — much like the early symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis, and I thought, "Damn it, am I going to have still a third attack?"

Campbell dropped me a note and asked why he hadn't heard from me — I reminded him of our conversation months past: He had rejected one of my stories and that marked my retirement from an occupation that I had never planned to pursue permanently.

He wrote back and asked for another look at the story he had bounced. I sent it to him, he returned it promptly with the recommendation that I take out this comma, speed up the 1st half of page umpteen, delete that adjective — fiddle changes that Katie Tarrant would have done if told to.

I sat down at my typewriter to make the suggested changes… and suddenly realized that I felt good for the first time in weeks.

Bill "Tony Boucher" White had been dead right. Once you get the monkey on your back there is no cure short of the grave. I can leave the typewriter alone for weeks, even months, by going to sea. I can hold off for any necessary time if I am strenuously engaged in some other full-time,worthwhile occupation such as a construction job, a political campaign, or (damn it!) recovering from illness.

But if I simply loaf for more than two or three days, that monkey starts niggling at me. Then nothing short of a few thousand words will soothe my nerves. And as I get older the attacks get worse; it is beginning to take 300,000 words and up to produce that feeling of warm satiation. At that I don't have it in its most virulent form; two of my colleagues are reliably reported not to have missed their daily fix in more than forty years.

The best that can be said for "Solution Unsatisfactory" is that the solution is still unsatisfactory and the dangers are greater than ever. There is little satisfaction in having called the turn forty years ago; being a real-life Cassandra is not happy-making.