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difficult to find. Some novels could be cut to fit, but not many novels were being written except those intended for serialization. The time for the publishing of original science-fiction novels had not yet arrived. The fan presses were being created in fact Thomas P. Hadley of Boston had announced the publication of E. E. "Doc" Smith's The Skylark of Space in the August 1946 issue of Astounding but they were mostly interested in putting the magazine serials (primarily those of Doc Smith, Jack Williamson, and Robert A. Heinlein) into more enduring form. Mainstream publishers were publishing anthologies of short fiction, such as Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas's Adventures in Time and Space and Groff Conklin's The Best of Science Fiction and their annual successors, and were beginning to show interest in reprinting serials of authors with broader appeal, such as A. E. van Vogt at Simon & Schuster. Robert A. Heinlein was getting the science-fiction juvenile started with Scribners' 1947 publication of Rocket Ship Galileo. But, with all the wealth of the untouched science-fiction magazines waiting to be mined for anthologies and novels, no one was actively seeking new novels.
Lead novels usually were written by authors such as Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, and Edmond Hamilton, and by Richard Shaver, Don Wilcox, and Chester S. Geier for the Amazing and Fantastic magazines, as a way of making a quick $400 to $800. Asimov was not averse to a quick $800. He also wanted to try other markets. If something happened to Campbell or to Astounding he might find himself unable to sell to anybody else. (Almost two years later, on April 9, 1949, Asimov's worst fears seemed to be realized when he read in the newspaper that Street & Smith had suspended all its pulp magazines, only to discover a day or two later that this did not include Astounding.) On June 2, then, Asimov began work on a story dealing with old age. He called it "Grow Old with Me," misquoting the opening line of Robert Browning's panegyric to old age in "Rabbi Ben Ezra":
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Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made. . . .
Asimov showed twelve thousand words of the story to Merwin on July 1 and was encouraged to finish it. He began rewriting on August 3 and completed the forty-eight-thousand-word novella on September 22. The next day he took it to Merwin's office. As Merwin took the manuscript he told Asimov that Margulies had decided the attempt to

 
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