Herbert Cohen is a real treasure of The Rockefeller University. A part-time engineer in the laboratory of Dr. Brian Chait, Herb is a true gentleman, with a discreet manner that brings joy and warmth. Looking at the practical aspects, where would we be without Herb’s jokes, singing, advice that puts one’s life in perspective, and yes, the doughnuts? This article introduces a minuscule fraction of Herb’s life and accomplishments, which led to the fulfillment of a dream, the publication of a science fiction novel.

Herb is a true New Yorker. He has lived here all his life, 78 years, loving the artistic West Side where he resides, and enjoying the theater and the movies. An engineer for over fifty years, he retired after working with the Rockefeller electronics group and then joined Dr. Brian Chait at the laboratory of mass spectrometry.

His recent novel, The Cube Root of Time, tells the story of Ira Lowenstein, a physicist who has discovered a way to travel in time. A tumultuous chain of events follow the discovery: undesired time leaps, lethal ancient infections, CIA and FBI chases, all wrapped around the personal dream of Ira—to travel to the 1940s New York and understand his father’s disappearance. Recounted from the perspective of the CIA agent that should have never discovered this case, the story of traveling back in time to the days of youth is touching at a very personal level, fulfilling a universal dream that, as Herb says, “is built into our genes.”

A recent discussion with Herb about the process of arriving at the publication of the book gives glimpses into not only the steps required for the publication of a novel, but also into the life of a man who has rich memories and experiences to narrate and put into written words. The discussion that I had with Herb follows, let the story be told in his own words.

NS: What is the path that led an engineer at The Rockefeller University to the publication of a novel?

Herb: At a certain point in my life, when I was starting to view retirement as a realistic thing (when you are young it is in the never never), interesting things happen to you psychologically because all your life you are bound by ambition and work, and these become your parameters. As you reach retirement, many things open up to you. Some people get depressed because there’s no activity, no motivation. Now, I have time to do all those things that I never had time for, or didn’t think that I had the ability to do, or thought that the old market wouldn’t pay. You invest something and get something back. One of the things that I wanted to do was to write. I took some writing courses as a very young guy in New York, but writing takes ten to fifteen years to pay off, and I was eighteen years old and I had to make a living. So, I sort of forgot it.

NS: I read some of your short stories prior to the novel. How did you start writing?

Herb: When I first arrived at Rockefeller University, I used to get to the electronic shop at 8 in the morning, and I sat there and typed for two beautiful hours, because nobody came before 10 a.m. I had two beautiful hours just to type by myself. I realized that I had no experience in writing a novel, and that maybe it’s better to start writing short stories. About a year after I started to send some short stories out, one got published by a little tiny magazine in Virginia. This was [published] for free. Another year went by and I finally sold a story for 100 dollars. This was in about 1992-1993. I had about ten stories published in various magazines, three in national mystery magazines. That is where I started.

NS: How did the story of the novel come to life?

Herb: Everybody creates stories in their head. It is universal. They vary from form to form. What people do with their dream is reedit them constantly as they think about them. Daydreams are movies that have only one viewer. I had this daydream about time travel. Everybody wants to go back to their youth and redo the whole thing over again. It is a universal concept. I think it is built into our genes. As I reached retirement, the dream became pretty vital.

NS: You mentioned a while ago how you missed the old New York and how this played a big role in the chapter describing New York City in the 1940s. Are there other memories that either helped make the story or build a character?

Herb: I don’t think that any of the characters were based on people that I knew as a young man. A lot of them were conglomerates of things. I knew a lot of young kids who were technical whiz kids and went to Brooklyn Tech, and Lowenstein is a composite of a lot of those kids. In a sense, I felt that he was the weaker character in the book, because he was more of a caricature than a character. Some of the other characters had more rounded personalities. I remember a review of one of Jean Auel’s books, The Clan of the Cave Bear. One of the reviewers said about the hero that “I’ve never seen a cave man who was a Cary Grant type before,” and I felt that Lowenstein was too much of a hero, and not enough flaws.

NS: Is it the perspective of a writer looking at his hero?

Herb: You see the hero that you want to be. Maybe it was not a mistake because the character worked for the story.

NS: Which are your favorite parts of the book?

Herb: There are several. One of the sections I liked was flying from Washington to New York and back, which described the changes in the topography, the changes in population density, what the area was like in the 1944 or 1945, when America was still an agricultural country. It hadn’t yet peaked as an industrial nation, and a lot of the road building hadn’t even started yet. I remember taking a trip from New York to Stony Point on Long Island in 1944, and the roads going out to the island went through potato fields—truck farms and potato fields were all you saw as soon as you left the city.

Another section I liked is in the second chapter, where there’s this dossier of Lowenstein, and [CIA] memos are flying around. I had to figure out a language and abbreviations that they [the CIA] would use. It was a lot of fun creating an in-house language that would be used by the CIA.

NS: Did you need to do a lot of research?

Herb: No, not in that section. You make it up as you go along, because nobody knows what the CIA does, or we’re not supposed to.

NS: In science, we let the results lead the way, so, we follow one line, but get off on a tangent frequently. How much freedom do you have in following a plot when writing a novel?

Herb: You usually write an outline, a synopsis that can be loose, and then you start introducing the characters. Occasionally, a character would revolt and, all of a sudden, it is doing things that you don’t think it should do. If the writing is good, and you’re into the flow, in the zone, the characters will take off. For a short period of time these things may happen, but you have to conform to your plot line. I am plot-oriented rather than character-oriented. I prefer a tight plot line and that restricts me in how much I allow characters to move around on their own. I basically like to work the plot first.

NS: Do you think that working at Rockefeller in a scientific environment helped you in the process of writing a science fiction novel?

Herb: Oh, yes. One of the lovely things is that I was able to work here. I had time to write in the mornings. Since the book is partly about biology, I had the best biologists in the world here. That was kind of neat.

NS: How did you come up with the title, The Cube Root of Time?

Herb: The original title was supposed to be Quantum Leap, but all of a sudden, a TV show came that was called Quantum Leap. The next one I thought of was The Cube Root of Time. I had a whole list of titles. You want to indicate the story. In a sense, it’s a cliché, and you look for something that is not a cliché.

NS: Writing a novel is a big investment in time. My friend Francisco, a passionate marathon runner, said that it is almost depressing when a marathon is over, because the motivation disappears. What is the feeling after the publication of a novel: a dream come true, but also a little sadness?

Herb: I started the book, it took about three years to finish, and then many, many years to get it published. It is like postpartum depression. Once it is done you get depressed. Motivation disappears, and without motivation you start to feel depressed. I worked on short stories, and I started another novel, which has been going on for many years, but a lot of effort went into getting this published.

NS: It seems that the book could be easily transformed in a movie. It is very visual when you read it. Did you think about the possibility of a movie?

Herb: I tend to think in terms of movies, so it has the movie tempo. I’ll tell you a funny story that happened this weekend. I went to see a friend of mine, and I promised her a copy of the book; she’s never read it. I’m walking up Broadway, and who comes out of the Beacon Theater, but Ron Howard, the director. I’m thinking that this is exactly the guy I would like to direct this movie, good action director. I’m walking and thinking “say something funny, and hand him the book.” He is coming towards me, and I’m thinking again “say something and give him the book,” and he is coming closer and closer, and I am walking towards him, and he’s closer, and I am thinking “too late to say anything, just give him the book,” and I walked right past him. I couldn’t. It is kind of cute. In fact, I wrote that little incident in a letter to the Metropolitan Diary section of The New York Times. Many years ago, I used to do that about something that happened. My wife does it all the time.

NS: It is a wonderful accomplishment to write a novel. What is your advice to those who might contemplate the idea of writing a novel?

Herb: A lot of people would like to do it but are afraid; they’re sure that somebody will laugh…that great fear for all of us. It doesn’t matter what the subject is. It can be completely beyond your experience, which is the case for science fiction. You have to have that voltage, the enthusiasm that pressures to continue, to have the obsession that drives the thing forward.

If you get the chance this holiday season to enjoy a science fiction novel, then do pick up the one written by one of our own. The Cube Root of Time, by Herbert Cohen, is available on Amazon.