Hubbard was not doing too well, either; he was jumpy, nervous, and unstable—everyone had noticed it. He had a tendency to fly off on obsessions that were not always very firmly grounded. He had become a “highmaintenance” friend, and it took hours of working with him to keep on an even keel—a situational problem, Heinlein was sure, and one he would recover from in time.8 The war had been hard on a lot of people—though comparisons with blinded and disabled veterans of the fighting always made him feel small. Hubbard was in the “wounded veteran” category and deserved all the patience Heinlein could muster.9 When John Arwine came through Los Angeles, demobilized, in November, Heinlein was glad to see him put heads together with Hubbard and come up with a project that would provide satisfying and important work for themselves:
John Arwine and Ron Hubbard have whipped up a plan to organize all the scientists for the purpose of channelizing some of the rational thought for this [atomic weapons] crisis. I think they can accomplish it. They have organized CalTech already.10
Heinlein’s writing business was already picking up. Just as he had expected, the first reprint request for one of his atomics stories came through in October 1945, less than two months after the bomb. Crown Publishers was bringing out an anthology with “Universe” and “Goldfish Bowl.” Edmund Fuller, Crown’s editor-in-chief, also wanted “Solution Unsatisfactory” and offered a half-cent a word—a very good price for a reprint. He was going to shoehorn it into the anthology over the objections of the editor—Groff Conklin—who was supersensitive, he said, on the subject of “anti-Soviet” propaganda (though he admired Heinlein’s other work).11 Well, for that matter, so was Heinlein. This choice for the anthology particularly pleased Heinlein because “Solution Unsatisfactory” had put a female physicist on display, and he lost no opportunity to remind people that this whole discipline had been kicked off by Dr. Lise Meitner—a woman who had been virtually written out of the histories of atomics and who was, really, the only completely indispensable mover and shaker in it.12
To his new agent Heinlein proposed three books, two of them postapocalyptic novels: Hour of the Knife, “a novel of how America cudgeled the rest of the world into accepting a world state,” and After Doomsday, a novel about the twenty-minute World War III. The third proposal was How to Be a Politician, and with 1946 being an election year, it ought to appeal to civicminded voters. For this, he reverted to a sentiment expressed early in the war to John W. Campbell:
It requires no special aptitude nor talent to be active in politics. Patience is the only requisite. Second, the things which may be learned by direct political activity are worth knowing, difficult to acquire secondhand, and almost a sine qua non in understanding the world around us.13
In December 1945, Heinlein also struck a deal with Hubbard about For Us, the Living, which had been packed away all during the war years. Hubbard would rewrite it, to turn it into a salable novel, and take top billing. He would have a free hand, so long as he didn’t denature the political and social evaluations in the book—and they would split the proceeds fifty-fifty.14 Almost immediately after they signed the contract, however, Hubbard gave up his space chez Heinlein and moved in with Jack Parsons. Nothing was ever done on For Us, the Living.
Jack Parsons rented out rooms in the large house in Pasadena he had inherited, seeking odd and eccentric characters of all kinds. This suited Hubbard’s needs, and he moved in. Parsons had assumed leadership of the Los Angeles chapter of Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), and he gave weekly presentations of the “Gnostic Mass” in the attic of his house.
The Gnostic Mass was a theatrical piece, rather than a true religious rite, suitable for introducing newcomers to the basic concepts of Crowley’s religion of Thelema.15 Heinlein himself had attended a performance, saving the program and a paperbound copy of Crowley’s Book of the Law for future reference.
Parsons found Hubbard “the most Thelemic person I have ever met.”16 Hubbard immediately became comfortable in Parsons’s eccentric ménage—and soon started an affair with Parsons’s live-in lover and magickal assistant, Sara “Betty” Northrup. Although testimony on the subject is divided,17 it appears that Parsons had little objection to make when Hubbard took over Betty’s affections; Betty’s affections were habitually strewn around pretty indiscriminately, and not just as a matter of adolescent friendliness—a fact Robert did not pick up on immediately, but Leslyn did:
…she even had Bob convinced that I was being catty until about seven other women whom he admires for their friendliness to other women told him the same things about the lovely Sarah (then known as Betty) … that I had been trying to get him to listen to.18
Instead, Parsons immediately threw himself into a magickal project to call down an elemental to take her place.
Heinlein did manage to write at least one piece of fiction in December 1945. In keeping with his resolve to explore new fields, it was a mystery story, of the hard-boiled variety—“rough stuff,” as he called it.19 Henry Kuttner had already struck a deal with Leslie Charteris to ghostwrite for The Saint’s Choice: Charteris would resell Kuttner’s stories as his own work, since his name commanded several times the rate Kuttner’s did. Cleve Cartmill and Roby Wentz were already working on Charteris’s editorial board, as was A. P. White,20 which made it virtually a West Coast operation. White suggested Heinlein try his hand at mystery,21 and Cleve Cartmill talked him into it.22
Charteris needed a great deal of new material, and the repairs to the house were eating a big hole in the Heinlein exchequer. Heinlein said he would come up with an outline for a mystery book and began casting around for a short story subject. He came up with a sexy “magic mirror” show he had seen at a Hollywood bar on Sunset and Gower before the war. Taking his cue undoubtedly from Jack Woodford’s advice, he started “They Do It with Mirrors” with a sex-angle hook: “I was there to see beautiful naked woman,” he started. “So was everybody else. It’s a common failing.”23
His typewriter was malfunctioning intermittently so Heinlein drafted much of the six-thousand-word story working longhand for the first time in years. He created a brand-new pseudonym for mystery writing—Simon York. Charteris bought the story for The Saint’s Choice.
In January 1946, he wrote another of his atomics articles, “America’s Maginot Line”—this time pointing out how inadequate conventional weapons were to address the strategic demands of atomic weaponry. Cal Laning said he had an “in” at the War Department, and Heinlein sent him “Men in the Moon” so he could walk it through the security-clearance process. Initially, Heinlein hadn’t wanted to get security clearance, distrusting the narrow selfinterest of the Navy’s bureaucracy. “America’s Maginot Line,” he knew, was certain to anger people in the military hierarchy: Heinlein was arguing that America’s arsenal of very expensive conventional weapons was no more effective against atomic weaponry delivered by missiles than France’s Maginot Line had been against Germany. Offense had so far outrun defense that trying to rely on conventional weaponry was virtually an invitation to a preemptive strike with atomic weapons.
I believe that present plans for national “defense” are not only useless and a waste of money but tend to lull the public into thinking that “older and wiser” heads have the situation under control … . Unless we abolish war (war, not the atom bomb!) by forming a world sovereign power, armed with the A-bomb and the latest gadgets and charged with enforcing disarmament with especial reference to atomics, I think a new war, resulting in the destruction and conquest of the United States, is inevitable.24
Moreover, the market was changing so rapidly that the normal delay could make these articles obsolete. But Laning argued that his contact might be able to shorten the delay from months to a matter of days.
Heinlein then finished “Pie from the Sky.” He had one or two more articles in him, but it was already becoming clear that events were changing so fast around him that the role he had originally conceived for himself, getting the Moon rocket p
roject going, was not going to materialize. Internationalization was their last, best hope. That was not likely, either:
I have strong and terrible forebodings. I see around me a nation hell-bent on new washing machines, Congress diddling around with mighty trifles, and the military engaged in a bureaucratic cat fight over consolidation while brasshats talk quite seriously of aircraft carriers, super-block-busters and such like obsolete junk … .25
In a similar vein, he confessed to Campbell: “Frankly, I’m scared—no longer on the thalamic level, but a cold apprehension of disaster on the cortical level.”26 But he had about reached the limit of what he could do with his existing resources. He decided to submit the articles for clearance—just to test the waters and see what the official attitude would be. He finished “Why Buy a Stone Ax?” on January 10 and sent it to Lurton Blassingame: “The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment.”27 Three days later he sent off “The Last Days of the United States.” And that would be the last of the atomics articles for a while.
Laning’s confidence in his inside man was well placed: even though the clearances for “Men in the Moon” (written in September 1945) did not come through until June, the January 1946 articles, with the help of Laning’s contact, were cleared in January 1946. “Your services in re clearance invaluable,” he wrote Laning:
I am no nearer publication than I was; it appears almost impossible for a person without an established reputation to get such things published. Nevertheless, they remain on the market and my conscience is easy for having tried.28
Writing these articles had been a chore—and probably a useless chore. Heinlein never felt as comfortable doing persuasive articles as he did writing fiction. “It has not been easy,” he told John Campbell, “roughly ten times as time consuming as writing fiction.”29 But some of the pressure to get things moving was starting to come off since Jerry Voorhis had introduced an internationalization bill into the House; Heinlein and his friends would no longer have to beat the bushes themselves to drum up support. Heinlein thought he might be able to let up on the world-saving writing for a while.
In addition to the writing, his political work was ramping up. He helped found Americans for Democratic Action, for the explicit purpose of getting communists out of the Democratic Party. It was a futile gesture: the very first meeting was targeted for CP takeover. He later concluded that he could have figured it out even sooner if he had not been away from the players and the game for such a long time.30
This was very frustrating to him. “I dislike to see communism being made a political issue in the United States,” he told Fritz Lang,
because it is a false issue which plays directly into the hands of the most reactionary elements in the country … . Communists never manage to elect communists … but they have great luck in electing guys like Bilbo.31 The activities of the American communists are the greatest single asset of the black reactionaries in this country.32
Heinlein’s self-education was continuing, too. Bob Cornog had settled in Hawthorne to work for Northrop Aircraft, and the advanced ideas Cornog was tossing off were dazzling—orbital rockets, robotic navigation by the stars, nuclear-powered rockets and aircraft jamming guided-missile controls, which Cornog called “the Heinlein effect” and incorporated into Northrop reports on guided-missile research. Cornog suggested the need for a space station above the Heaviside layer, since radar had a hard time “seeing” missiles coming in vertically. Heinlein had suggested a geostationary orbit that would always stay over one spot on the planet, but Cornog was holding out for a lower orbit.33
Early in February 1946, the Navy bounced a radar signal off the Moon, and Laning reported that the Navy bureaucracy was actually apportioning real money for rocket research.34 Gleefully, Heinlein suggested propaganda bits that could be turned to the Navy’s use for lining up even the most conservative Admirals behind the space navy concept. He recycled Dr. Robert Goddard’s carbon-black idea one more time and gave it a twist to prang the conservative generals:
Imagine waking up some morning to find that Stalin has announced that a party has landed on the Moon and has claimed the Moon—and that the autonomous socialist soviet republic of Luna (six men, two women, all Russian scientists or technicians) has petitioned the USSR for membership and the Grand Soviet Council has been graciously pleased to act favorably! Then suggest that the Russians, with their great fondness for gargantuan poster display, might decide to put a hammer-and-sickle on the face of the Moon—an easy job to do with a jeep rocket and a few tons of lampblack, crop-dusting style, on that airless planet where even finely dispersed pigment settles straight to the ground and stays put. I should think that while an admiral is thinking about that horrid prospect—a hammer-and-sickle he can stare at from his front porch; a USSR base which looks at him—would be just the time to get a favorable endorsement out of him for rocket money.35
Their early effort was beginning to pay off; things were in good hands and progressing. That would clear his desk somewhat. “I am probably one of the most confused men in the United States,” he told Willy Ley: “By nature I am a man with a one tack [sic] mind. I can handle a large number of details if directed toward one objective—but plural objectives throw me into a neurosis of frustration.”36 With the reduction of his objectives to something more manageable, his new agent, Lurton Blassingame, wanted him to get back to writing fiction.
Blassingame reminded Heinlein of the old request for a juvenile from Westminster. Heinlein was still dubious: the publisher wanted a short-term future set in a small town, which seemed unrealistically claustrophobic to him. Also, Heinlein had disliked having to work within the conventional taboos of writing for the pulps: writing for children would have even more, and more restrictive, taboos.
He had other possibilities if he wanted to take them: John Campbell wrote asking for more stories from the Mañana Literary Society.37 Heinlein wrote back, telling him about the book proposals he had on the fire, and other projects he was fiddling with in the back of his mind.38 The “Risling story”39 was starting to take shape for him, to wind up the Future History. He might fill in the gaps one day, but there was a catch to working with (or for) Campbell: Street & Smith was still buying only “all rights,” and Heinlein would no longer sell anything but first American serial rights. In fact, he wanted a general release of everything of his that Street & Smith held and let Campbell have it with both barrels, calling him on Street & Smith’s inconsistency.40
Campbell’s boss, Henry Ralston, accidentally saw the letter and objected to some of Heinlein’s intemperate language, which forced Heinlein to assemble all the exchanges he and Campbell had had on the subject over the last six years. Ralston’s impression of Street & Smith’s policies with regard to rights didn’t match up to the actual behavior of the company executives—though Heinlein did apologize for the intemperate tone of the letter. He had to draft the letter three times because just recounting the history factually made Campbell look inconsistent and careless, and he wanted to avoid putting Campbell under the hammer.41
Ralston replied after three weeks, with a blanket no—no bulk transfers of groups of stories, and no release of rights “for publication in the so-called pocket-book style of publication.”42 Since Heinlein was unable to guarantee that Street & Smith would release the properties, that letter virtually killed his chances of negotiating deals for radio or motion pictures. “I can’t do business with no authority to negotiate and no knowledge of exactly what S&S will approve.”
In Hollywood stories are submitted simultaneously and you conduct a Dutch auction. I suppose Ralston knows that—he should—in any case I called his attention to the special circumstances and asked for a specific answer, but he ignored the matter. I’d be a fathead to go to all that expense [of special prep] on a story, only to find that S&S would not release. Ralston’s fine, paternalistic policy simply means that I can’t possibly sell to the movies the stories I’ve written for [Astounding].
43
He hadn’t mentioned the boys’ book to Campbell, perhaps because any book pitched to fifteen-year-olds would probably be too young for Astounding ’s audience, which seemed to be made up of established professionals, if Campbell’s reader polls could be trusted.
That February, Heinlein’s old boss at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, John Kean, sent him an inflammatory newspaper clipping: an article bylined Alfred M. Klein had appeared in The Philadelphia Record on January 20 portraying Heinlein’s work at the Naval Aircraft Factory, along with that of Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp, as a silly and expensive blue-sky wartime boondoggle by the Navy Department, who had set them up in a laboratory. Campbell was quoted as supporting the idea of such a blue-sky project—and then he went on to puff his own (Astounding’s) role in technological prediction, citing his efforts to get Cleve Cartmill’s story “Deadline” published against the opposition of the FBI. Campbell had been the self-aggrandizing subject of New Yorker articles in August 1945—so John Campbell and his silver tongue saved the Allied war effort all by himself.
Heinlein found Campbell’s statements highly inappropriate. “It tended to produce in me an explosion—which I restrained as I have had too many personal beefs lately, anent getting the house back, etc., and other grief.”44 Sprague de Camp was ready to sue the Record—and Heinlein took the question to his local lawyer, who thought they might have a grounds for an action in libel. If de Camp brought suit locally, Heinlein would support it.45 As to Campbell: “I am honestly fond of John; he has many virtues as well as faults and I will make every effort to avoid parting brass rags with him, even though I hardly expect to sell to him again.”46
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Page 48