The Growth of Chapters

Society chapters began forming as early as 1967, with the earliest being the chapters in Minneapolis and Los Angeles. In the following years, chapters began appearing in other U.S. cities as well as in Canada and Europe, many of which planned and organized exceptional programs. The vitality of the newly organized Washington, D.C., chapter, for instance, made me more enthusiastic about developing the Society’s chapters, and I wished the Society had a chapter in New York City, which dominates America’s business, arts, and communications and hosts the United Nations. I needed to go to New York on Society business occasionally, and I also had personal reasons to visit the city since I had grown up in Manhattan and still had many friends there.

But I did nothing about establishing a chapter in New York until I got a call from Joel Brink, a young woman who lived in the Bronx. Joel had attended our 1971 conference, and while there had broken off her engagement to a Unitarian minister. She did not explain how or why her engagement had broken up, but she seemed to feel that if the Society could not supply her with a new fiancé, we might at least establish a New York chapter to provide social activities for the New York members.

I agreed to help, and on my next trip to New York I met with Joel and Brian Quickstad, whom we had been listing as the Society’s coordinator in New York City. Quickstad had done little to organize a chapter, and I figured he needed a push. Joel was just the sort of person to do the pushing.

Brian arranged for a meeting of the New York City members at the Mercer Arts Center in lower Manhattan, a part of the city I had not seen since my teenage years when I worked as a trucker’s helper delivering bolts of cloth to garment factories in the area. To speak at the meeting, I recruited Julius Stulman, a lumber magnate who had become one of the Society’s few financial contributors. I also spoke at the meeting — mainly to make it clear that we at headquarters could not help them. They had to help themselves if their chapter was to succeed. The New York City chapter was duly launched with Quickstad as president and Joel Brink as one of three vice presidents, and the chapter began holding regular meetings with impressive speakers.

Attending these meetings was a lecture agent named Patricia Hederman, one of whose clients was Isaac Asimov, a science and science-fiction writer whom I had long admired. Patricia persuaded Isaac to speak to the New York chapter, so I made a special trip to New York to hear him.

Pat Hederman arranged a private dinner with Asimov before he made his speech to the chapter, and on the evening of the meeting, she and I, plus Joel, taxied over to his apartment building to fetch him. While Pat went upstairs, Joel and I waited in the taxi, and I had a minute to think about what I would say to the famous writer. I knew that he had written a lot of books but wasn’t sure how many, so I put the question to him the moment he got in the cab.

“Two hundred forty-one with eight more in press!” Asimov responded without the slightest hesitation. I was even more impressed than I expected to be, not just with the total, but with his precision in keeping score.

At dinner, Isaac proudly showed the three of us his business card proving that he was a professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He said he kept his academic standing by giving the introductory lecture for the biochemistry students every year. “The kids don’t know it,” he confided, “but that’s the best lecture they’re going to get!” (Isaac did not suffer from false modesty.)

He also confided how he was able to write so many books: “Most writers like to get ideas for books and they like to have them published, but they don’t like what comes in between. I like what comes in between.”

After dinner, the four of us went to the chapter meeting where Asimov gave a splendid lecture on “How Predictive Is Science Fiction?” His answer: “Not very.” In most cases, he told us, science fiction is a humble follower of science fact. Scientists constantly discover things beyond the imagination of the writers, and what the fiction writers do say is mostly wrong.

That was the beginning of my friendship with Asimov. Years later, at the Society’s 1986 conference, I had the pleasure of presenting him with the Society’s Distinguished Service Award. After his death, his widow, Janet, became a life member of the Society.

Asimov was only one of the distinguished speakers who addressed the New York chapter, but after operating successfully for a number of years, the chapter faltered and collapsed, then revived and collapsed again.

The ups and downs of our chapters frustrated me enormously. Chapters can provide magnificent experiences for our members, but they depend on good leadership at the local level. There must be at least one person who is really dedicated to sustaining a chapter if it is to survive and prosper. Previous experience is unnecessary if a person is dedicated and has reasonably good judgment.

Despite the many problems that chapters often pose, they can achieve wonders in providing personal experiences with other futurists, including some of the world’s most fascinating people.