"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 left me strictly alone, and never even asked for a progress report.)

Nearly four months passed while I took care of a vast number of things I had to do, but about the end of May, I picked up my own copy of The Foundation Trilogy and began reading.

I had to. For one thing, I hadn't read the Trilogy in thirty years and while I remembered the general plot, I did not remember the details. Besides, before beginning a new Foundation novel I had to immerse myself in the style and atmosphere of the series.