It seemed like a timely idea,74 but the story bounced around a few times until Blassingame offered it to Galaxy in October 1951. Gold wanted it—but he asked for so many and so substantial revisions that it would have essentially required Heinlein to write a new story (the happy ending Gold wanted was particularly problematical). Heinlein told him “no” on the revisions, adding privately to Blassingame: “Gold is such a fusser and tinkerer that I believe that sales to him are worth while only on a take-it-or-leave-it-basis—and I think he will buy on that basis.”75 And if not … Street & Smith had just changed its policy to buy only serial rights. Campbell was an editor he knew he could work with.
By October 1951, the first two installments of The Puppet Masters were out. Heinlein was appalled at how much editorial fiddling Gold had done with it—he had gone through the manuscript like a steamroller: “Gold turns out to be a copy messer-upper; there is hardly a paragraph which he has not ‘improved’—and I am fit to be tied.”76 Heinlein was particularly agitated about the wholesale destruction of his carefully built-up prosodic effects. He didn’t have high style going for him, he wrote to Gold; all he had to give the consumer was his “voice,” his effects, “as calculated as a whore’s sighs—and it is my whole stock in trade.”
A word misused on p. 10 and again on 73 does not have its intended effect until it is again used on p. 213—and then damn it! somebody comes along with a blue pencil and takes it out as unnecessary on 10! It was unnecessary on 10, but it wasn’t 10 I was shooting at; it was 213.… I am aiming at certain built-up emotional effects and I don’t want the style to be noticed as such.77
Gold acknowledged that his editing was obtrusive here. Perhaps he was distracted by Galaxy’s change of ownership over the summer—in any case it wouldn’t happen again. He restored the language for the third installment—thereby, of course, compounding the mess.78
Now that the foreword to the Doubleday anthology (Tomorrow, the Stars)79 was turned in and “Year of the Jackpot” was sold, Heinlein had a little time. Ben Babb had come up with an angle that might rescue their Abbott and Costello treatment, reslanting it to the new comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. It wouldn’t require any substantial commitment of time; Heinlein took a few days off and went to Denver to record a radio program at the KOA radio station for the kids’ book review show Dalgliesh had recommended to him, Carnival of Books.80 Its host, Miss Ruth Harshaw, had arranged for four boys to talk about his latest juvenile. The boys made a fine panel, and the experience was undoubtedly enhanced when Miss Harshaw said her favorite was Red Planet.81 Thereafter he made opportunities to appear on Carnival of Books whenever he could manage it.
A TV adaptation of “Ordeal in Space” (Heinlein’s Future History story about an agoraphobe who cures himself by rescuing a kitten on a ledge) aired on CBS’s Out There program on November 4, 1951.82 The adaptation was made by “Edward Waldo,” which might have been a pseudonym of Theodore “Ted” Sturgeon, whose family name (and his birth name) was Waldo. Rod Steiger appeared in this episode. Over the summer of 1951, just before the Green Hills of Earth books arrived on Heinlein’s doorstep, Sturgeon was involved in setting up a “writers cooperative,” Tomorrow Is Yours, Inc., to provide content for a television series under development.83 The producer wanted the best of science fiction, and Heinlein was one of the first fourteen writer-members Sturgeon asked to participate. Heinlein looked over Sturgeon’s prospectus and noticed some flaws in the setup. He did not think the contract was salvageable and wrote a detailed analysis—and then a shorter, “fluff” letter to let Sturgeon down easy that he wasn’t going to be participating. He gave both letters to his agent and let him make the decision which to send.84 Blassingame opted to send the longer letter, on the theory that Sturgeon could get some practical use out of the analysis.85
Heinlein was writing a new story, about using psychics—telepaths, clairvoyants, telekinetics—as weapons of war, but it got away from him. He finally wrestled “Nightmare Race” to a close at 14,000 words and struggled to cut it to a more saleable length.86 In a month he went from 56 pages to 34, to 31 and finally to 28 pages, changing the title to “Project Nightmare”—and the first editor who saw it (Knox Burger at Collier’s) said it was frantic and read as if it had been cut too much.87 (Also, the war scare with the Soviet Union was passé.) None of the slicks, then none of the reputable magazines would take it. In 1951 Heinlein was still laboring under the impression that science-fiction magazines would not be interested in material written for a general audience.88 The story was never offered to Campbell, for example—who in any case did not develop an interest in psionics until years later. Howard Browne purchased it for Fantastic, the new sister magazine for Amazing, but Fantastic ceased publication and it wound up at Amazing, where it was published in the April–May 1953 combined issue.89
Ginny noted thoughtfully that he had spent more time on those two stories—“The Year of the Jackpot” and “Project Nightmare”—than he had on any of his books and earned only a fraction as much.90 Heinlein realized she was right and took the conclusion as his own:
… purely from the standpoint of economics a novel with a slow, steady sale is more rewarding in the long run than a large number of short stories later gathered as a book. On the other hand, literary reputation is more enhanced by short stories widely anthologized. But the collection [Opus] #87 [Green Hills of Earth] cumulatively represents more than two years of hard work while this one novel [Between Planets] represents less than 2 months work. I have concluded that I need novels to eat on and shorts for display purposes.91
For nearly a year they had been “eating on” the royalties from Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. That November, the Kellogg’s company held an executive conference at the nearby Broadmoor resort:
… Kenyon & Eckhardt, the adv agency which has Space Cadet from Rockhill Radio, is presenting a supercolossal (!) spread of the TV show, etc., to them. I am helping out with exhibits and some sort of a talk. An odd sort of a clambake but I will do my best to be helpful.92
It would also be a chance to see special screenings of some Tom Corbett episodes on kinescope. He saw nothing that caused him to change his position.
Neither did the news about L. Ron Hubbard. The rumor mill was starting up again: Heinlein heard, for example, that Hubbard was paralyzed and hiding out somewhere in the Midwest. “I doubt very much the rumor about Ron being paralyzed,” he wrote to Robert Cornog. “I have heard from him a few times. He is living in Wichita and—by his statement—is doing some flying.”93 In fact, their mutual friend John Arwine had had a long, rambling phone call from Hubbard recently.94
And while the initial organization was imploding, Dianetics “auditing” was taking over science-fiction fandom, as a parlor game played like one of the old “Freuding” parties of the 1920s.95
Heinlein had no time to investigate or play parlor games with his head: By November 1951 it was time to start his annual boys’ book for Scribner, and he didn’t have even the glimmering of an idea. Heinlein asked Ginny what he should write about.
“Why don’t you write about a pair of mischievous twins,” she suggested, “always getting into trouble”96 (Ginny had always been fascinated by twins). Robert S. Richardson had written recently, wanting to see more of a minor character in Red Planet—the boy student-businessman at the school. Heinlein combined the two ideas and split the Red Planet boy into twins. He started on the story that would become The Rolling Stones, giving it a light, realistic treatment like a Post story—or a series of Post stories—following a middle-class (well, upper-middle-class) family on their grand tour of the Solar System.
Since he worked until very late at night, and Ginny got up very early, Heinlein had developed the habit of leaving the pages he had just finished on the kitchen counter for her before going to bed. Once Ginny had her OJ starter, she read the new pages, and later, Heinlein would collect any notes she had made for him.
Ginny was finally beginning to be comfortable in w
hat she saw as her role in Robert’s process. She could give him a place to start, and that was what he mainly needed. Heinlein was more emphatic: He told her she had given him his “finish” as a professional writer, her marginal notes on his draft always carefully pinpointing stylistic or grammatical awkwardnesses, or lack of clarity in his expression.97 Heinlein formed a habit of asking her before each writing session what he ought to write about next—and almost always she would be able to come up with an idea he could use.
The book was turning into a comedy—not the kind of thing he felt most comfortable with—so he had to work hard on his family of seven intelligent, engaging people.98 His characters and situations came from many different sources: Having the boys sell bicycles in space was his own idea,99 as was the alien species of affectionate pets—flat cats, based on Ellis Butler Parker’s comic short story “Pigs Is Pigs.”100
Ginny dreamed up the red-headed twins; I provided the other characters; we both provided incident. I did not need to draw on the Gilbreths; I am one of seven children. Dr. Stone combined my mother and her father, an M.D. As to the baby who plays chess well at four, that’s myself in that aspect—my Grandfather, Dr. Lyle, was my playmate at that age; I played a better game of chess then than I do now. Children’s minds are just as competent as adults for abstract reasoning and they have less to distract them—the world has not yet crowded in.
Hazel combined my Aunt Bam, an old heller who died at 99 and was forever traveling, and my Aunt Anna, a professor of history, who is still living at 78, having retired at 76. She’s tough and she’s brilliant and she has a whim of iron.”101
Roger Stone, paterfamilias, sounds like Heinlein again, in his “Daddy” persona from the Puddin’ stories, who played straight man for everyone else.
He finished the draft of The Rolling Stones a couple of days before Christmas and found that his usual “tightening-up” edit—striking unnecessary phrases, surplus adjectives, and so forth—was almost not needed this time. The draft manuscript was so clean that, except for a few pages, it would not even have to be retyped.
There were several minor matters that needed attention before the end of the year. The payout from Destination Moon was nearly two months overdue. Unless one of the story sales came through, he would not have enough cash to pay his taxes. He might have to mortgage the house—a very unpleasant prospect, since it was essentially borrowing to pay current expenses. But he considered it because he was “anxious to get off the hook as soon as may be; I don’t like to owe money—it makes me feel mildly dishonest.”102
And there was another thing: Over the last few months, he had developed twinges and pains in his gut and his bottom. His health was otherwise good, but he feared this might be cancer. Exploratory surgery was scheduled at a cancer clinic early in January. He sent the Rolling Stones manuscript to Blassingame on December 31, 1951, and went into the hospital on New Year’s Day 1952. His surgery was the next day.
6
REALITY BITES
Publishers normally forward mail they receive for an author, to protect privacy: Instead, Shasta gave out Heinlein’s home address to a fan. This was not the kind of thing he wanted to have to deal with while weak from surgery (not cancer, thankfully, but a late complication from the botched hemorrhoid-correction surgery he had in Philadelphia during the war).
But news on other fronts was good: Fred Pohl wrote, wanting a “light story”—“Beyond Doubt”—to counterbalance a “fairly ponderous” anthology he was assembling, Beyond the End of Time (Perma books, 1952).1 Heinlein contacted Elma Wentz, his coauthor: Pohl could use Heinlein’s own name, but Elma Wentz (now LeCron) used “Miller” as her pseudonym.
Galaxy rejected The Rolling Stones for serial publication; Campbell rejected it, saying he expected more “philosophical” material from Heinlein. Alice Dalgliesh’s reaction, however, was enthusiastic:
You are a wonder! All morning I’ve been hanging breathless on the pages of Rolling Stones and laughing out loud as I read, too. When I came to where Dr. Stone is transferred from one ship to another I practically collapsed. And the flat cats! How do you do it[?]2
That was encouraging: If the Scribner contract and advance came through early enough, he might be able to keep the IRS wolf away from the door. He could only sit up to work for about an hour a day—and he was fuzzy all the time with the drugs they were giving him.3 Nevertheless, he sold a TV option for “Let There Be Light” to Teo Savory Productions a week into 1952 and entered negotiations with Ely Landau, Inc., for an original screenplay based on Between Planets, to be the pilot M.O.W.4 for a series. Landau probably thought Heinlein was naïve: He offered him “hack’s rates” for the original work they wanted, Heinlein told Blassingame.5
The Destination Moon payouts continued to be late. Blassingame contacted United Artists, the picture’s distributor, directly. They acknowledged the existence of “deferments” still to be paid to van Ronkel and Heinlein, plus Chesley Bonestell and Pal himself, but claimed that there were huge amounts to be paid preferentially to someone called “Motion Picture Capital Corporation” before any payments would be made on the deferments. They would not say how much the picture had taken in, or how much they were holding undisbursed.
Gradually Blassingame got the full picture: Heinlein and van Ronkel had made their deal with Pal for 10 percent of the producer’s net, and Pal had pledged the entire producer’s share to cover the financing. When The Great Rupert bombed, it took down the Destination Moon profits: Everything went to Rathvon, to pay back Rupert’s losses. Lou Schor, their agent on the deal, wrote that he didn’t think they would ever see any money out of Pal and Rathvon unless they sued. It was questionable under current law whether Pal had the right to dispose of the part of the producer’s share he had already pledged to Heinlein and van Ronkel, and that was the question that might be brought before a court—a prospect of which Heinlein said “I view coldly, having never gotten anything but headaches and lawyer’s bills out of law suits.”6 The most they might be able to achieve would be to drive Pal into bankruptcy. Reluctantly, Heinlein wrote Blassingame that he could not see making a trip to New York if United Artists was not going to pay out—which meant he would not be able to proceed against Shasta.7
Even if he got none of the film’s profits, he had gotten his house-building started on the script proceeds, and he had achieved enough, very minor, celebrity out of the deal to be an annoyance.
Leslyn was writing another spate of poison-pen letters this year. This new series of letters was so over-the-top nuts that anyone who looked at them would conclude she was insane: “The accusations and insinuations about me in the letters … are somewhat less lurid than those she has sent to other friends of mine,” he told Lurton Blassingame, who had already received two such poison-pen letters by February of 1952.
Ginny and I are accused of having attempted to murder her, I am accused of exploits that would have kept Casanova busy several life times, I am held responsible (with a threatened suit for $14,500) for her “loss of earning power” from ’48 to date, I am alleged to have obtained “radiating atomic material” from “two little German prisoners of war” which I then am alleged to have used in several different foul and dastardly fashions, all mutually contradictory.…
The only thing that really worries me—and this scares the hell out of me—is that someday she might get out of bed, hop a bus, and show up here.8
He consulted a lawyer and was advised his best course was “to sweat it out and ignore it.”9
Otherwise, Heinlein’s slight degree of fame outside the book field kept other offers coming in. The station manager for KVOR Radio in Denver wrote asking him to be on Edward R. Murrow’s “This I Believe” radio program. Murrow had become a popular and recognizable radio newsman during World War II, and Heinlein knew of his reputation as a patriot. This was a nationally syndicated show, with slots assigned to CBS’s regional affiliates. Heinlein was one of Denver’s nominees.10
“I’m flatter
ed,” he told Irving Pichel the following day, “but am thinking of turning it down; I don’t relish getting on a national hook-up and doing an emotional strip-tease. Furthermore such things take me away from my regular work by distracting my mind, sometimes for days, from story.”11 Blassingame talked him into it, though: It would be good exposure. Heinlein would have until May to figure out what he wanted to say—in three and a half minutes, tops.
He had better keep a grip on his credo: Erle Korshak had dropped by Blassingame’s office early in February (while Blassingame was out with influenza), to inform him that Shasta had retained the Authors Guild’s lawyer to sue Heinlein, if need be, to get him cooperating again. Actually, Blassingame said, they were fishing for a buy-out offer for Heinlein’s contract. Adding insult to injury, Blassingame discovered that Shasta had sold the Australian rights of “Life-Line” for just $10!12 As much scam and scandal as Blassingame had seen in his long career as an agent, this was beyond even his experience.13
In February 1952, Charles Scribner died following a heart attack, and Dalgliesh wrote saying that young Charles Scribner would take over the management of the firm. She asked Heinlein to change the name of a slightly unsavory character in The Rolling Stones (his current book), “Old Charlie.” Exasperated, he refused the change, telling Blassingame it illustrated “how far afield she has gone to find trouble” and added “How silly can one get?”14
With the major manuscripts out of the way and his health on the mend, Robert could relax and enjoy life once again—and there was a great deal to enjoy in their “scissorbill town,” as Heinlein sometimes referred to Colorado Springs.15 The weather turned warm and mild in February, and the Heinleins installed a tightwire in the backyard, eighteen inches off the ground, and practiced wire-walking. Ginny could make it all the way across; Robert usually fell off two-thirds of the way.16 They talked about politics in a desultory way with friends and acquaintances.17 This was an election year, and none of the candidates looked very promising. Eisenhower might be the best of the lot—Heinlein had become quite disillusioned with the Truman administration.18 He was rooting, instead, for the “Double Deal Party.”19
Robert A. Heinlein, In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2 Page 9