Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, and Robert Heinlein at the Philadelphia Navy Yard: In 1942 three of the country's leading SF writers – Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and L. Sprague De Camp – all started working together at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The US had just entered WW II, and everyone wanted to contribute. Heinlein and De Camp were too old and too unfit to fight, and Asimov hated the getting-shot-and-dying part, but they still wanted to chip in. They were three of the most imaginative people in the country, so what did the Navy actually have them doing?

On any reasonably sunny day, the pool would by then be echoing with the names of well-known people being called to the phone, as well as with the names of unknown people being called to the phone by themselves in the forlorn hope that one day this would help them become well known, too. From his vantage in front of his cabana, Irving could not only watch the parade go by but get the parade to sit down with him and play cards. from The Man Who Spent Forty-two Years at the Beverly Hills Hotel Pool [The New Yorker, 1993; ungated]

Irving Link, 90210 [LA Times, 1996] Irving Link obituary [Legacy, 2007] The Beverly Hills Hotel [Wikipedia]