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Tuesday January 7, 1997

`Father of the pill' giving birth to genre of science-in-fiction

LESLEY PEARL
Bulletin Staff

Carl Djerassi's press agent dubbed him a "real scientist." Precise. Emphatic. A man who does not have much time to wax philosophic with a young reporter who hadn't yet read his new book -- which, to date, has only been published in German.

My enthusiasm for interviewing the chemist-inventor, father of the birth-control pill, drained when his gruff voice sounded over the phone. It was clear Djerassi had other things to do besides stare out the window at the winter rain and speak to a reporter. And I had no idea how to talk religion, specifically Judaism, with a scientist.

I remembered a friend's advice: "There's only one way to deal with a bully. Bully him back." And I did. Almost instantly the icy chill in his voice melted and the dark, deep-set eyes I'd seen in pictures spoke to me, though I could not see them. The poet emerged.

"Nothing seems to be more different from science than writing fiction. It's the only time you are permitted to make up things," said Djerassi, a spry 73.

This Vienna-born Stanford University professor -- a Sephardic Jew who directed the synthesis of the first oral contraceptive for women in 1951 at the age of 28 -- likes to pretend. He's creative.

And sort of funny. Arguably one of the finest thinkers in the world, Djerassi uses language that is remarkably simple. He peppers his polite speech and level cadence with descriptions of the view from his 15th-floor home on San Francisco's Russian Hill -- and with the occasional four-letter word.

A meticulous scientist and lover of language, Djerassi -- who will speak Thursday, Jan. 16 at Temple Beth Sholom in San Leandro and Thursday, Jan. 23 at the Mechanics' Institute Library in San Francisco -- leads a life dictated by an almost-unnerving determination and perfectionism that has afforded him renown cutting across two disciplines.

At 15, as a recently arrived immigrant, Djerassi wrote Eleanor Roosevelt an appeal for a college scholarship and received not only a reply, but also a full ride. Nearly 60 years later he boasts 12 honorary doctorate degrees and 15 international science prizes, including Israel's Wolf Prize for chemistry and an induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

But Djerassi doesn't want to discuss all that, nor does he want to discuss the impact he's had on contraception and the sexual revolution.

"Read it. It's in my books," he said, listing the titles of his autobiographical works: "Steroids Made It Possible" and "The Pill, Pygmy Chimps and Degas' Horse."

Instead, Djerassi wants to talk about science-in-fiction. ("Very different from science fiction," he explained.)

And, if pressed, he will say a bit about Judaism, which "only becomes an issue as one gets older and more reflective," he said. "I'm pretty typical of my generation -- not denying but never volunteering either.

"I find now that when I go to Germany, I flaunt being a Jew. I'm not religious. But I used to say my name was Bulgarian. Now I tell everyone it's Sephardic Jewish."

Djerassi's fiction, first published in 1988, follows a similar evolutionary path. The first three novels merely contain Jewish names.

"Perhaps it's not a coincidence that all the male heroes are Jews. They are Jews like me: namely, authentic Jews in terms of their father and mother, but secular," he said.

None of the female characters is Jewish. Neither is Djerassi's wife, noted biographer, poet and critic Diane Middlebrook, nor his two ex-wives.

However, in his most recent novel, "Menachem's Seed" (to be released in English later this year), Djerassi ponders how a non-Jewish woman who impregnates herself with an Israeli's sperm can ensure her child will be born Jewish.

"I used to use Jewish names because I was one. My mixing of Jewish themes is much more deliberate now," Djerassi said.

Djerassi interviewed four rabbis to discuss the unorthodox question he poses in "Menachem's Seed." However, the story's strength is as a novel of science-in-fiction.

Unlike science fiction, "where everything is made up and inconceivable," science-in-fiction contains "normal people who could exist. Everything is plausible," he said.

It's plausible even for a woman to save her lover's condom, freeze its contents and later impregnate herself with them. It's plausible if the author is intimately acquainted with the process of cryopreservation of sperm -- which Djerassi is.

Djerassi's choice to write science-in-fiction rather than some other genre (he has published a collection of short stories and another of poems) stems from "the gulf between science and the literate world, [which] gets wider and deeper. It's a major problem.

"I want to bridge it by telling more about the unintelligible language of scientists," he said. "What we do: I want to tell how we do it."

Nonetheless, Djerassi still relishes the opportunity to "lead one more intellectual life.

"Scientific writing is clearly defined. You never use first person singular. Style accounts for little," he said. "Style accounts for an enormous amount in fiction. It can mask the lack of plot, even. But lousy science described eloquently is still a bad paper."

He points to his second novel, "The Bourbaki Gambit," as the ultimate in rebellion against his training.

"It's written entirely in the first person singular," Djerassi said. "I think it's a response to the repression of never saying `I' in the past."

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