Robert A. Heinlein, In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2

by William H. Patterson, Jr.

  After the Las Vegas trip, Blassingame found a suitable lawyer to institute Heinlein’s plagiarism suit against the producers of The Brain Eaters: Harold A. Fendler, Esq., of the Fendler & Lerner Beverly Hills law firm, wrote to Blassingame on April 24, 1959, that they had seen The Brain Eaters in the company of Ned Brown, still Heinlein’s Hollywood agent. “We were all of the unanimous opinion that a copyright infringement exists and that suit should be filed,” Fendler told Blassingame.62

  While waiting for the Pine-Key notes on his draft script, Heinlein did some professional writing for Ginny: Their one year of Russian class was coming to an end. But one year of Russian language study is not enough to become proficient. Russian is very difficult to learn as a second language, with verbs that change roots in the middle of conjugations, and—never mind the jawbreaking consonant clusters!—sounds that don’t exist in English. Ginny asked Robert to write up a petition to the University to provide an extra year of instruction. It was successful. She also hired a tutor—an elderly (female) White Russian refugee—and continued with additional lessons daily.

  When the tutor found out who Robert was, she told him she was sure she had read “The Man Who Sold the Moon” in Russian.63 The Soviet Union did not subscribe to any international copyright convention and it might well be that they pirated his stuff ad lib. He would have to look into that when he got to Moscow. The Russians had a reputation of paying up when caught with their hand in the till—so long as it was paid and used locally.64

  In June, Heinlein assembled another short-story collection for Gnome, of more-or-less fantasy stories, The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.65 Both Menace from Earth and Unpleasant Profession were better printed and bound, and both sold promptly to paperback houses, which was getting to be where the money was, though with some unusual contract provisions: Menace was brought out in several different versions, with differing numbers of the stories in the various paperback issues, and Unpleasant Profession became part of a series of “number times something” paperback titles Gold Medal was bringing out. His became 6xH for “Six times Heinlein.” And with “The Menace from Earth” and “All You Zombies—” in print he was more or less up to date, (“Zombies” had just been published in F&SF, in April 1959) all his stories collected between boards, except for three very early stories that he hadn’t been able to do anything with over the years. The SF market was in the worst slump since the war.

  In mid-June, Heinlein made a trip to Kansas City for a niece’s wedding and took the opportunity to visit the family homesteads and stomping grounds. The house on Cleveland his family had lived in before 1920 was vacant and about to be torn down. The other sites—churches and schools—were a little older, a little more worn, but still going. Someone had torn out the maple tree they had planted at the house on 36th Street. And of course he saw Swope Park. He even chartered an airplane (for the munificent sum of $24.00) and flew to see his grandfather’s house in Butler.

  Swope Park must have brought back memories—perhaps of playing Tarzan in the nude there, at age five, and that may have led to recalling his adult fling, now nearly thirty years ago, with naturism. In June he began contacting some of the nudist/dude ranches around the country. He got back in touch with the Garrisons, who had founded an unlanded nudist association in Denver that Robert and his then-wife Leslyn had joined when he was hospitalized at Fitzsimmons in 1933 and 1934. Heinlein had put them into The Door into Summer. The Garrisons remembered him, of course, but had sold the Colorado Sunshine Club to the members the year before. It was called Mountain Air Ranch now.

  Robert and Ginny made a reservation at the Lazy Bears Dude Ranch in Kemmling, Colorado, for two weeks in the middle of July and bought association memberships. They added subscription memberships to the national nudist organization, the American Sunbathing Association.

  Things had loosened up a bit in the last twenty-five years, but it was still in 1959 necessary to be discreet. These resorts did not want to get a reputation as catering to roues and libertines and so discouraged singletons of either sex—but particularly men without their wives. Ginny knew Robert would be looking up these places whenever he traveled, and she was studying hard at Russian and couldn’t always get away. She wrote a handwritten blanket permission Robert could show the owners of these colonies and ranches, if she wasn’t with him:

  I am aware of and fully approve of my husband’s nudist activities.

  Virginia Heinlein66

  Ginny accompanied him for the first weekend of their nude dude ranch mini-vacation. Robert rode and swam, lifted weights and bounced on a trampoline “in a gingerly middle-aged fashion” and even helped out with the ranch chores, digging postholes and so forth. He got a fine overall tan—and a “fancy collection of saddle sores”—and enjoyed himself immensely.67

  Ginny never really became comfortable in skin with strangers (around the house was another matter).68 Nor did she find the experience particularly congenial: “I did not like such places, or the people I met there,” she later said succinctly.69 One weekend was enough for her. When she took her planned break for her Russian language class, she stayed in Colorado Springs and used the vacation from the vacation to study a little harder, to be prepared for their trip to the Soviet Union, less than a year away.

  Swicegood and Doherty had been congratulating themselves on their good fortune in getting a story from Heinlein for Crater Base One. He was far ahead of them, Swicegood told him.70 But Heinlein’s script presented technical problems Swicegood had probably wanted to avoid. The story was quite good—but the way it was told was just too different from what the audience (and more importantly, what the sponsors) would expect to see:

  It makes excellent reading, like just about all of your published material and letters, but … for half-hour (or any length) dramatic show, it would be sudden death! As you had it there were so many requirements for a television show that were entirely disregarded71 that the average editor would throw up his hands in despair, never even considering the slim possibility of scissors and paste.… However, I’ve gotten some damn good stories by offering my inept suggestions and having the authors come back at me with, “To hell with that foolishness! But—instead, suppose such and such,” etc. Sometimes it works.72

  Not this time. Swicegood reworked the story and retitled it “Moonquake” for the second version of the script,73 cutting out most—but not enough—of the dialogue establishing the base’s conflict with the funding agency Earthside, and he discarded the original work-together-and-learn-better ending in favor of some foolery with a spaceship toppled in the quake (why this particular gimmick was so attractive to TV and film people was a mystery). The revised story was now inconsistent in terms of the characters’ motivations—there was, for example, no reason for his VIP to be there at all—and the ending had nothing logically to do with the setup. It was, Heinlein told Swicegood and Doherty, part horse and part cow, a chimera too mismatched to live. It would be better to junk the resulting mess and start over.74

  Probably this was looking like more work than the project could justify. On the last day of July, Swicegood wrote his regrets:

  I haven’t wanted to write this letter, but there doesn’t seem to be any way out of it. Your comments about putting the horse and the cow together are entirely correct—which unhappily leaves us little alternative other than to take your own advice and “DON’T!”75

  Swicegood himself was already on to the next thing, an anthology series of true sea stories. Ultimately, Crater Base One was never produced.76 Apparently, Heinlein was never paid for his work, either.

  Alice Dalgliesh’s “reconsideration” of Starship Soldier had no different results, but it hardly mattered. G. P. Putnam’s Sons wanted the book very badly. One of Putnam’s senior editors, Peter Israel, told the owner and managing editor of Putnam’s, Walter Minton, that a Heinlein juvenile had come on the market. Minton told him to grab it, sight unseen.77 Heinlein’s reputation in the children’s lit publishing industry
was solid—though apparently, he was a profit without honor in his former home at Scribner: Miss Dalgliesh had told him once that his books had kept her department in the black for years—yet Charles Scribner himself had been involved in the rejection of this book and had voted to dump him—a discourtesy Heinlein felt deeply (and said so repeatedly).78

  Peter Israel ducked the issue of whether it was a juvenile or an adult novel: He simply presented it as a “new book by Robert Heinlein” at a sales conference, saying, “Let’s let the readers decide who likes it.”79 They would bring it out by the Putnam’s Children’s Department, but design and promote it on their adult list.

  They would publish it as-is, William McMorris, Heinlein’s line editor, told him,80 but they went over the manuscript practically line by line, rebalancing the text and working through alternative titles until they settled on Starship Troopers.81 McMorris’s suggestions for revisions were cogent, improving the story by adding, for example, another combat scene, and sending his hero down into one of the bugs’ tunnels.82 Heinlein added an entirely new section of 30,000 words before his final scene, with Johnny Rico in Officer Candidate School, bringing the total word count up to 90,000.

  During the revision process for Starship Soldier, John Payne was talking about having Heinlein come out to Hollywood to script The Puppet Masters for a full production—and he accepted the price Heinlein had set for his services (based on a calculation of his earning power at home in Colorado Springs similar to that he had done in 1949).

  And then Payne saw The Brain Eaters.

  “It’s a crying shame that some character could take the elements from The Puppet Masters and demolish the concept,” he wrote Heinlein.83 His bankers and loan sources refused to back any production with such a spoiler already out in public.84 Payne abandoned the project.

  It wasn’t a total loss: Heinlein’s attorneys could now prove definite damages to Heinlein’s commercial property as a result of the Brain Eaters infringement.85 Payne offered to testify on their behalf86—but how much money they could pry out of American International was anybody’s guess.

  Heinlein was invited to speak at an Air Force Association conference in Tampa in September 1959, which gave him an opportunity first to stay at The Floritans nudist resort in Tampa, and then go on to Cape Canaveral to see a static test of an Atlas launch vehicle. He came back to Colorado Springs by way of a business-pleasure stop in New Orleans to visit with the Item editors and Hermann Deutsch. Deutsch had introduced him to another science-fiction colleague whose fresh and original approach Robert particularly liked, Dan Galouye.87 “Most sci-fic has become formula-ridden and standardized. We need more new blood and new ideas, such as Dan provides.”88

  Ginny had other matters on her mind. Robert had been handed a flyer on one of his recent travels—a Seattle-area character wanted to found an anti-Communist society named after an American soldier killed by the Communist Chinese. Ginny was immediately interested—so interested that she wanted to attend this organizing seminar at the Olympic Hotel on September 25, 1959. The organizer’s name was Robert Welch, and his project was the John Birch Society. His message fit right in with their recent charitable interest with Eugene Guilds and the Korean War MIAs, and Welch’s magazine, American Opinion, had some thoughtful material to offer. An observer named “Clise” who took extensive notes of the meeting described Heinlein as “an independent writer of philosophical fiction” whose “prime interest” was winning the release of American prisoners held in the Soviet Union.89

  Single-issue politics often makes very strange bedfellows. As disconnected as Robert felt from his own party, anything was possible—any kind of ad hoc coalition of interests. The Heinleins also found Welch personally sociable—a pleasant drinking companion in the hotel bar.90 They would not offer to found chapters in their locale, but they did purchase several gift subscriptions to the magazine, and they contributed money to Welch’s anti-Communist effort (and later found he had enrolled them as members, which was not what they had in mind at all. They asked to be taken off his lists.).91

  After a side trip to Camp Forestia, the Fraternity Snoqualmie nudist resort92 (Ginny not participating), they flew back from Seattle to Colorado Springs. Heinlein was in some discomfort, as he had an ulcerated molar. They were immediately snowed in—in September!—with forty inches of very wet snow, a four-day wait to get to the dentist, and many days afterward doped up and unable to work.

  When he was finally able to concentrate, he fiddled around with a number of ideas. The steady stream of domestic anthology rights, and the foreign sales, individually smaller—a lot smaller—than his domestic sales, added up to a substantial income when combined with his domestic book contracts. In the last eighteen months Blassingame had placed a British contract for Revolt in 2100, Danish contracts for The Puppet Masters, Space Cadet, and “The Green Hills of Earth”; Finnish rights to “Ordeal in Space,” a Dutch right to “The Long Watch,” Italian rights for Red Planet and Revolt in 2100 again, and a Japanese contract for “They.” He was also negotiating a Japanese contract for Methuselah’s Children and a Portuguese sale of The Green Hills of Earth and Other Stories. Blassingame disclaimed any responsibility for that success: “Your foreign sales are ‘fabulous’ because of your stories—and subject matter,” he told Robert.93

  Other friends and family were not doing so well. When Heinlein visited Kansas City, he had been brought back in contact with family members still living there, including “Bud” Heinlein, his brother Larry’s oldest boy with his first wife, Alice.94 Bud called Heinlein, late in October,95 wanting him to drop everything and come to Kansas City because he and his wife Donna were in desperate straits.

  The problem seemed less the money than a complete unwillingness to come to grips with the situation. Heinlein made them a cash loan to take care of immediate expenses, “secured” by their furniture (actually a way of taking the storage problem off their hands, since they wanted to give up their jobs and move, to make a fresh start).96 When he got back to Colorado Springs, Heinlein supplemented the original loan with another and wrote a long and detailed letter of advice about how to reverse their downward financial spiral, advising them to pull back to the bedrock of their marriage partnership—the way he and Ginny had to economize the winter of 1947–48 while they were in Fort Worth97—and build from there.98 Bud’s response was to use his credit to get deeper in debt. Bud’s next letter was resentful and frankly offensive, threatening to punch Robert for making Donna unhappy to read his October 29 reply.99 And then, just a few days later, an abject apology.100 It was hard to believe these letters came from the same individual.101

  Bud would flip from rage to despondency overnight. Robert recognized this was something that money would not solve, and it was the same kind of emotional black hole his relationship with Leslyn had become at the end. He gave Bud’s mother Alice a release of their furniture102 and wrote a firm and clear letter to Bud, detailing what course of action he needed to take, concluding:

  One last word: Bud, I would not be going to this much agonizing trouble if I were not very fond of you and deeply concerned with the welfare of your entire family. I hope that you will take this letter calmly and be guided by it. But if you blow your stack instead, I can’t stop you. The most I can do is to try to help you in helping yourself. I can’t live your life for you.103

  Probably Bud’s emotional situation was made worse by the agony the whole family was going through at the same time. Robert’s father had seemed to get better early in the year, gaining a little weight. But just weeks before his sixtieth wedding anniversary in November, Rex’s health was obviously declining, and he had only days to live. Bam wanted him buried in Kansas City, next to Rose Betty’s grave—and with military honors. Rex Ivar Heinlein’s service in the Spanish-American War had been the defining moment of his life, in his own mind. As the oldest son, Larry began making those arrangements.

  Rex passed quietly on November 13. Robert flew to Kansas City immediately
to finalize the funeral arrangements while Bam accompanied the coffin by train (a requirement of the railway). He signed for the entire funeral and burial arrangements as a package.

  The service at the grave was short—the Methodist ritual. (I intended to say earlier that we used the 23rd Psalm and “In my Father’s House are many mansions—” at the chapel.) This was followed by the military part … [sic] and it was over.

  I was particularly glad that Mother decided to use the military ceremony. I did not urge her to; none of us did so—she decided it herself. But we all know how proud Dad was (and rightly so) of his service to his country. It made me happy and proud—even though I was blinded by tears—that he had it.

  The honor guard and bugler were supplied by my [Robert’s] old outfit, the 110th Engineers, doing their own proud. The riflemen were all master sergeants.104

  Then the Bugler played taps:

  Day is done

  Gone the sun—

  From the hill

  From the lake

  From the sky … [sic]

  Rest in peace

  Sol … [sic] dier Brave

  God is nigh.

  I couldn’t take it, of course—I can’t take hearing it even when it is not someone I love. It was all I could manage to remain at attention and not let my sobs be audible. But, hurt as it did, I am glad Mother decided to use it—for I know that it was done precisely as Dad wanted it … [sic] The full honors that are meet and proper for a man who loved his country and had served it proudly and honorably.105