RAH, letter to Miss Hewey (otherwise unidentified), 12/13/71.
J. Hartley Bowen, Jr., “Recalling Robert Anson Heinlein,” Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo 260.
RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 07/18/42.
Catherine Crook de Camp, “The Robert A. Heinlein I Knew,” Locus (July 1988), 38.
Catherine Crook de Camp, Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo.
de Camp, Time and Chance, 177.
Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, 392–94.
Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, 392.
J. Hartley Bowen, Jr., “Recalling Robert Anson Heinlein,” Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo, 258.
Virginia Heinlein, IM with author, 02/25/02.
Virginia Heinlein, e-mail to author, 09/12/02.
Bill Corson, postcard to RAH, 09/28/42.
Virginia Heinlein, e-mail to author, 09/12/02.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 11/22/42.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 11/22/42.
Forrest J. Ackerman, interview by Robert James, Ph.D., 06/09/2000.
Forrest J. Ackerman, interview by Robert James, Ph.D., 06/09/2000.
Forrest J. Ackerman, interview by Robert James, Ph.D., 06/09/2000.
John W. Campbell, Jr., letter to RAH, 10/09/42.
Rocket to the Morgue was published in 1942 as by White’s standard mystery pseudonym “H. H. Holmes.” White created the “Anthony Boucher” pseudonym when Heinlein persuaded him to begin writing fantasy and science fiction. Over the years, White abandoned the Holmes pseudonym and moved everything over to the Boucher pseudonym, so that when Rocket to the Morgue was reprinted, starting in the 1970s, it was as by “Anthony Boucher.”
John W. Campbell, Jr., letter to RAH, 10/09/42.
RAH, letter to Phyllis and William A. P. White, 12/06/42.
Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by Leon Stover, Tape 2, Side A (October 1988).
Anecdote recounted to the author by Rusty Hevelin, 09/01/2002.
Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers: A Survey of Moral Want and a Philosophical Discourse Suitable Only for the Strong; A Study of American Types and ArcheTypes … as Well as Certain Homely Hints for the Care of the Human Soul (New York: Rinehart and Company, 1942), 18.
John W. Campbell, Jr., letter to RAH, 02/02/43; see also RAH’s undated, handwritten summary of negotiations with Street & Smith in the Campbell-Heinlein correspondence file, compiled sometime in, probably, 1948.
RAH, letter to Henry Ralston, 01/28/46.
RAH’s liner notes for Leonard Nimoy’s recording of “The Green Hills of Earth” and “Gentlemen, Be Seated” (New York: Caedmon Audio, 1976).
John W. Campbell, Jr., letter to RAH, 01/06/43.
Orders dated 06/13/43 in RAH’s “Wartime” file, RAH personal papers, RAH Archive, UCSC.
Doña Campbell, letter addressed “Dear Heinleins,” 05/10/43.
Bill Corson, letter to RAH, 02/06[?]/44 (the letter itself is undated, and the postmark is blurred).
RAH, letter to Bill Corson, 02/05/44.
Bill Corson, letter to RAH, 02/06/44.
L. Sprague and Catherine de Camp, letter to Robert and Leslyn Heinlein, 08/13/46.
Bill Corson, letter to Leslyn Heinlein, 10/06/43.
RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 10/17/43.
RAH, letter to E. J. “Ted” Carnell, 12/31/43.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 01/08/44.
RAH, letter to Garth Danielson, 08/25/76.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 01/08/44.
Robert James, Ph.D., citing e-mail interview with Peter Wygle, September 2000, in “Regarding Leslyn,” The Heinlein Journal, No. 9 (July 2001).
Robert James, Ph.D., e-mail interview with Colin Hubbard, June 29, 2001.
RAH, letter to H. L. Gold, 10/27/52.
RAH, letter to E. J. “Ted” Carnell, 12/31/43.
RAH, letter to E. J. “Ted” Carnell, 12/31/43.
Bill Corson, postcard to RAH, 12/17/43.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 09/03/44.
RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 11/19/44.
RAH, letter to Bill Corson, 02/05/44.
RAH, letter to Bill Corson, 02/05/44.
24. Keeping On—(pages 324–337)
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 01/08/44.
Bill Corson, postcard to Leslyn Heinlein, 02/23/44.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 01/08/44.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 01/08/44.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 01/08/44.
RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 02/04/44.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 04/15/44.
RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 10/17/43.
RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 10/17/43, mentions the query about a review for Rockets: A Prelude to Space Travel had been done by postcard (not preserved) “some time ago.” There are a multiplicity of completely different titles given for this 1944 book. The Prelude to Space Travel title was the one by which Heinlein reviewed the book for Astounding. It might have been a pre-publication title, later changed. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Willy Ley Collection’s chronology (available online at http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/arch/findaids/ley/ley_frames.html) carries the 1944 title as simply Rockets (but this is the title of a 1965 book). The 1944 Viking Press publication was actually titled Rockets: The Future of Travel Beyond the Stratosphere. This same book was revised and reissued in 1947 as Rockets and Space Travel and again in 1952 as Rockets, Missiles and Space Travel (all by Viking).
RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 02/04/44.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 05/25/45.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 05/20/45.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 04/15/44.
RAH, letter to Susie Clifton, 11/06/46. Helen Gahagan Douglas (1900–80), wife of actor and political activist Melvyn Douglas, was herself a Broadway actress who gave up acting after a single Hollywood role in She (1935), for a career in politics. In 1944 she was the second woman, and the first woman Democrat, elected to Congress. Her political career ended in her 1950 Senate campaign against fellow representative Richard M. Nixon. It was Gahagan Douglas who coined the “Tricky Dick” name for Nixon.
Helen Gahagan Douglas, letter to RAH, 12/17/46.
RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 01/08/46.
RAH, “Agape and Eros: The Art of Theodore Sturgeon,” dated September 1985. Published as an introduction to the posthumous publication of Theodore Sturgeon’s Godbody. Based on passing comments in other places, the project was probably writing technical documentation for radar, the great Allied secret weapon of World War II.
RAH naval jacket, attachment to Memo from R. J. H. Conn, Director NAES, to Personnel Relations Officer NAES Subj: Release of R. A. Heinlein for employment by UCDWR, RAH Archive, UCSC.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 09/03/44.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 09/03/44.
Bill Corson, letter to RAH, undated but most likely summer of 1944.
Heinlein rarely wrote anything at all about this aspect of his marriages, but Leslyn was not so discreet: in later years, she talked in vitriolic terms about Robert’s sexual behavior—omitting hers entirely.
Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, 488.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 01/08/44.
Virginia Heinlein, letter to author, 12/11/99.
Virginia Heinlein, letter to Leon Stover, 03/29/89.
Presumably George Harris, Jr., a lieutenant jg at the time they skated together in Philadelphia. See, for example, “C. C. Hoffner And Miss Waring Win Ice Dance Event,” Lake Placid News (August 24, 1945), 1.
“It was Ian Hay [pseud. of John Hay Beith], I believe, who first discovered that any military administration is divided into three departments—the Fairy Godmother Department, the Practical Joke Department, and the Surprise Party Department. By preparing for Come-What-May I may circumvent and discourage the latter two and be turned over to the benevolence of the first. But I am not optimistic; the resourcefulness of the two larger departments can hardly be measured.” RAH,
letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 09/14/40. He is referring to Ian Hay’s The First Hundred Thousand (1916).
Virginia Heinlein, letter to Leon Stover, 04/08/89.
Virginia Heinlein, letter to author, 12/11/99.
Bill Patterson, “Virginia Heinlein Biographical Sketch,” The Heinlein Journal, No. 13 (July 2003), 4.
RAH, letter to T. B. Buell, 10/03/74.
Virginia Heinlein, letter to author, 11/07/99.
See, for example, RAH’s letter to Mauricio Nayberg, 07/07/58.
Bill Patterson, “Virginia Heinlein Biographical Sketch,” The Heinlein Journal, No. 13 (July 2003), 5.
Virginia Gerstenfeld, letter to Leslyn and Robert Heinlein, dated “October something, 1945.”
RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 01/04/42.
Undated note written by Virginia Gerstenfeld Heinlein for a visit by the author in 2000 or 2001, found among her papers after her death.
See, for example, RAH’s letter to John Arwine, 09/15/45.
RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 11/26/50.
Draft letter, RAH to Greg Benford, 11/08/73.
Heinlein expressed this sentiment in a number of letters. As an example, see RAH’s letter to Hermann Deutsch, 02/27/57.
RAH dated this to November 1944 in his letter to Ted Carnell, 05/13/45.
Virginia Heinlein, letter to author, 03/04/2000.
See, for example, RAH’s letter to Rex Heinlein (his brother), 09/04/64.
Virginia Heinlein, letter to Leon Stover, 04/23/89.
The language used in Laning’s Navy Cross citation, sent to Heinlein and preserved in the RAH Archive, U.C. Santa Cruz.
Cal Laning, letter to RAH, 01/15/44.
See, for example, Cal Laning’s letter to RAH, 01/15/44.
Quoted in Virginia Heinlein, letter to Bett and Steve Corland, 05/15/75.
RAH, letter to T. B. Buell, 10/03/74, p. 35. Heinlein did not specify the nature of the project, except to say that it involved new kinds of weapons gadgetry, a subject in which Admiral King had an ongoing interest.
I have not been able to identify the office(s) involved in this request or the exact relationships among them. The terms used here are as Heinlein used them.
RAH, letter to E. J. “Ted” Carnell, 10/08/44.
There is no documentation as to the extent and longevity of this project, but Heinlein was still soliciting input on the kamikaze problem in July 1945, and it may be presumed to have gone on for the entire time he remained in Philadelphia—i.e., “for the duration.”
RAH, letter to T. B. Buell, 10/03/74.
Heinlein’s “Eros and Agape” introduction to Theodore Sturgeon’s posthumous novel, Godbody, says Hubbard was then on limited duty at Princeton, “attending military governor’s school.” Russell Miller’s Bare-Faced Messiah says that Hubbard applied for the Navy School of Military Government at Princeton on September 22, 1944, and that he joined the kamikaze think tank on October 4, 1944.
Heinlein’s impression of Hubbard’s war service, derived largely from contemporaneous conversations among his circle, is given in the introduction to Godbody:
The first weekend Sturgeon was there he slept on the hall rug, a choice spot, while both L. Ron Hubbard and George O. Smith were in the overflow who had to walk down the street. In retrospect that seems like a wrong decision; Hubbard should not have been asked to walk, as both of his feet had been broken (drumhead-type injury) when his last ship was bombed. Ron had had a busy war—sunk four times and wounded again and again—and at that time was on limited duty at Princeton, attending military governor’s school.
Russell Miller’s Bare-Faced Messiah, the first debunking biography of Hubbard, was issued in 1987, the same year this statement was written, though according to Virginia Heinlein, Robert never saw it. Miller gives a great deal of information about Hubbard’s war service, presumably from official sources (Miller was a journalist), but its detail is not sufficient to confirm Heinlein’s impression.
There are three biographical books about L. Ron Hubbard publicly available, all highly antagonistic. A detailed biography is in process, supported by the Church of Scientology, but to date there exists no objective, critical biography of Hubbard.
George Scithers retold this remark in 2001 at the Millennium Philcon Heinlein Panel; see also Virginia Heinlein, letter to Leon Stover, 03/28/89; see also Leon Stover, letter to Virginia Heinlein, 04/01/89.
For many decades, a rumor has circulated to the effect that Hubbard had “bet” Heinlein that he could make more money by founding a religion than by writing or any other legitimate means, but this rumor is entirely groundless. The very most that may have happened is that the subject of the secular power of religions in America came up in conversation (it was a matter Heinlein had dealt with in several important prewar stories, and it would have been unusual for the subject not to have come up in extended conversations with a colleague, under the circumstances)—and Heinlein may have pointed out that churches in this country are provided with an unusual degree of legal protection. This idea may have lodged under Hubbard’s skin and emerged more than ten years later, as Hubbard did casually mention his long friendship with Heinlein on several occasions.
RAH, letter to T. B. Buell, 10/03/73, p. 35.
25. Stabilizing, Somewhat (pages 338–351)
Leslyn (Heinlein) Mocabee to Frederik Pohl, 05/08/53.
RAH, letter to Ted and Irene Carnell, 10/08/44.
RAH, letter to L. Ron Hubbard, 04/24/75.
RAH, letter to Arthur C. Clarke, 10/22/69.
RAH, letter to Cal Laning, dated “Spring 1945” (possibly never sent).
Henry Kuttner, letter to RAH, 09/20/44.
Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, 416.
Henry Kuttner, letter to RAH, 02/08/45.
RAH, letter to John Arwine, 02/25/45.
Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by Leon Stover (October 1988), Tape 1, Side A; see also Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by author, Third Series, Tape B, Side A (March 27, 2001).
RAH, letter to Algis Budrys, 09/06/61.
RAH, letter to Sam Moskowitz, 01/25/61.
Heinlein did not record the date of this doctor’s visit, but in the Moskowitz letter he dates it to “early 1945”—February, possibly, or early March.
RAH, letter to Sam Moskowitz, 01/25/61.
RAH, letter to T. B. Buell, 10/03/74, p. 48.
RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 01/19/46.
See, for example, President Harry Truman, letter to Professor James L. Cate, 01/12/53.
Cal Laning, letter to RAH, 01/14/45. Both Laning and Heinlein spelled Laning’s wife’s name both as Micky and Mickey. I have not attempted to regularize their variant usages.
RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 01/28/45.
Ted Carnell, letter to Leslyn and Robert Heinlein, 06/12/45.
Leslyn Heinlein, letter to Cal Laning, 03/30/46. Swanson is not further identified. Leslyn cannot mean H. N. Swanson, who functioned for a short time as Heinlein’s Hollywood agent in 1940 and 1941: “Swanie,” who represented F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Pearl S. Buck, and Raymond Chandler, among others, died in 1991, aged with the century, ninety-one years old.
Calendar leaf for 02/24/45, with penciled notation in RAH’s hand, in “Miscellaneous” file of RAH’s personal papers, RAH Archive, UCSC.
Leslyn Heinlein, letter to Cal Laning, 05/24/45.
RAH, letter to The Saturday Evening Post, 10/25/46.
RAH, liner notes for Nimoy’s recording of “The Green Hills of Earth.”
RAH, liner notes for Nimoy’s recording of “The Green Hills of Earth.”
L. Ron Hubbard’s complex relationship with Jack Parsons is covered in most of the biographical writings about either of the men. Russell Miller’s treatment of the Parsons-Hubbard matter in Bare-Faced Messiah, for a long time the only commonly available writing on the subject, is badly flawed by a lack of understanding of the material—the case also with George Pendle’s recent biography of Parsons, Strange Angel, wh
ich does the rocketry material brilliantly but the magic and science-fiction fandom much less well. There are several sources available for the story, which I have cross-correlated to weigh the versions of the tale.
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Page 73