Asimov found the time. He and Davis worked out a formula for the author to lend his name and picture to the magazine cover and to become the editorial director. Asimov writes the editorials and some of the fiction, answers readers' letters and helps with the story selection. George Scithers, the editor, has a major role in deciding the magazine's contents. _Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine_ began as a quarterly and if all goes well, will soon become a monthly. Some of its contributors are writers in their 20s who are publishing their first stories. Containing many illustrations and almost no advertising, the 200-page magazine is available at numerous Westside newsstands for $1. Born in Russia and raised in Brooklyn, Asimov graduated from college and published his first short story while in his teens. For many years, he taught biochemistry at Boston University. In 1970, he returned to New York and settled on the West Side. He is married to a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who practices under her maiden name of Dr. Janet Jeppson; her office is on the opposite end of the apartment. She too is a writer, having published a science fiction novel and some stories. "The West Side, as far as I'm concerned, has more good restaurants than any other place on earth, though I have not been to Paris," says Asimov, who hates flying. He made a trip to Europe last year on the Queen Elizabeth II -- and came back on the return voyage. "It wasn't a vacation," he says. "I gave two talks each way and I wrote a book." The IRS, he says, cannot believe that he doesn't take vacations. "In the last seven years," he testifies, there has been only one time -- two days in June of 1975 -- that I went on a trip and didn't do a talk. And even then, I took some paper with me and worked on a murder mystery. You see, a vacation is doing what you want to do and to stop doing what you have to do. .. But I like what I, so I'm on vacation 365 days a year." Asimov's biggest writing project these days is his massive autobiography, which he expects to finish by the end of the year. "It will probably be in two volumes," says Asimov, grinning, "which is unreasonable, considering that I have led a very quiet life and not much has happened to me." * * * ISAAC ASIMOV: LITERARY WORKAHOLIC from _The Westsider_, 12-1-77 Morning has come to the West side. In a penthouse high above 66th Street, a middle-aged man enters his study, pulled down the shades and fills the room with artificial light. Reference books at his elbow, he sits down at his electric typewriter and begins to tap out sentences at the rate of 90 words per minute. Fourteen hours later, his day's work complete, Dr. Isaac Asimov turns off the machine.