Inasmuch as I am not a theologian but simply a writer of fiction I have most carefully refrained from trying to “Explain” Stranger In a Strange Land. My implied contract with my readers requires me to entertain him sufficiently to compensate him for the price he paid for the story.… if he gets six-bits worth of amusement out of the story, I have dealt honestly with him—I did not contract to save his soul nor to unscrew the inscrutable.
But this story is a fantastic allegory, more complex than a bang-bang cops & robbers; inevitably each reader reads it differently and what he finds in it depends as much on what he brings to it as on what I wrote into it. I have not tried to interpret the mysteries of the Universe for him nor solve the ancient problems of Good and Evil—at most I have tried to say that such questions are real and overwhelmingly important … [sic] and that they cannot necessarily all be solved by three o’clock this afternoon.
As to my own guesses, suspicions, or inner convictions as to the final problems I think I had best keep them to myself; I could so easily be wrong. Waiting is.32
But there were others; he patiently and earnestly answered cries for connection that went well beyond “fan letters.” A young woman wrote to him about an argument the book had prompted with her (West Point cadet) boyfriend, who argued Stranger said sex brought people closer together—engendered love. Wrong, he told her. Her view was the correct one:
I ordinarily do not discuss my own stories in any fashion but your letter leads me to think that in this case there may be a very practical reason to bend that rule.…
It seems to me that it is made emphatically clear in Stranger that it is your viewpoint which is being expounded, not his. I am not going to stop to dig into my own writings in order to cite line and paragraph but in every case in that book the sharing of sex takes place after and only after the two persons already share love. Always.
Furthermore, the word “love” is precisely defined. It does not mean physical attraction.… If a male and a female each loves the other, it is almost a certainty that they will also feel physically attracted—in which case, if they choose to do something about it, the safest arrangement is contractual marriage, our society being what it is. Any other arrangement is hazardous, especially for the female. If a male truly does find that a certain female’s happiness is essential to his own he will be very careful what risks he urges her to take in this cultural matrix we have today.
Anybody who suggests Stranger urges sex as a way of attaining love hasn’t understood what he has read.33
And on and on and on. One day Ginny answered the door to a young man who had travelled from Texas to confess to Robert that he had been having an affair with his minister’s wife, and wanted Robert to shrive34 him. Creepy and disturbing. Ginny wrote, “The whole thing was quite upsetting to both of us.”35
You could not fume and storm when someone was in such deep spiritual distress and you could help. No good, either, to fume and storm when Blassingame received a postcard announcing the book publication of Alexei Panshin’s “unauthorized biography,” Heinlein in Dimension. Panshin had published fragments of the book in fanzines over the last several years, and Advent, now operated by George Price (Kemp had gotten himself in trouble with the postal authorities for mailing “pornography” as social criticism and was now in jail), was bringing out the book. Heinlein resented the commercial exploitation of his name in the title, he told Blassingame, though he would not do anything about it. He particularly asked Blassingame not to send him a copy of the book when it came out, as he would not read it, and “am particularly anxious that Ginny shall not read it; it would just make her froth and set this house in turmoil for days on end.”36 Blassingame skimmed the book and assured him there didn’t seem to be anything actionable in it—not even anything that could be deemed an “invasion of privacy.” He could relax and spend his money on the house instead of lawyers.
The threat to privacy coming just from the neighborhood was becoming a bother.
Sure, I’ve known for years that I was a competent commercial writer. I have lots of check vouchers to prove it. But now I suddenly find I am an “Author” with my work taken seriously and used in many college courses—and the change from obscure pulp writer startles me … [sic] and while it’s flattering, it’s not very comfortable.37
But all was not completely irritating: Lee Atwood, the president of North American Rockwell, issued a warm invitation for them to view the Apollo Project equipment Rockwell was working on that March. Since it could coincide with a niece’s wedding (Mary Jean’s daughter, Kathy), they made a weekend of it. Atwood, they discovered, was an incorrigible check-grabber. He tried to pay for everything (but Heinlein outflanked him on the air tickets). They were somewhat embarrassed to find that Atwood had saddled the head of the Space Projects division with them as escort-cum-valet, it seemed, giving them “split-second service everywhere.”38
Atwood took us to dinner the evening between the two days. We stopped at his home for drinks first, and I got him aside and asked him why we had received such extraordinary treatment. He looked thoughtful and said, well, he had read Starship Troopers.…39
They were barely able to see Kathy (now Petty) at her wedding reception, and had to go directly by taxi to the airport.
The next month they were in Berkeley for the West Coast version of SFWA’s annual Nebula Awards banquet on March 16, 1968, at the Claremont hotel. The Nebula Awards are given by vote of the members, to honor their colleagues. In the 1970s, SFWA held one Nebula banquet each year in New York and a second somewhere on the West Coast. This was the first time since SFWA was founded in 1965 that Heinlein would be on one of the coasts at the appropriate time—and not tied up with house-building. He enjoyed meeting his colleagues again—though, sadly, A. P. White—“Anthony Boucher” to mystery and science-fiction fans—was dying of lung cancer and passed away on April 29, 1968.
Heinlein was contacted by David Gerrold on April 28: Gerrold had been hired to write a screenplay for Stranger and wanted to talk to Heinlein about the project. “You are personally welcome,” Heinlein wrote Gerrold, but both his lawyer and his agent advised him not to discuss the script—or read it once written, unless specifically hired by the optioners, since to do so might prejudice his ability to re-option the property freely if they allowed the option to lapse—again.40
In any case, Heinlein didn’t have time at the moment. His mother, Bam, had come up the coast from Southern California to visit with his brother Rex and with Robert and Ginny early in May 1968. She arrived at Rex’s house in Palo Alto, and Robert phoned to make arrangements to come up to see her that day. While they were on the phone, Bam cut off in the middle of a sentence, and he could faintly hear moans of pain. After a moment, Rex came on the line and promised to call back—
The long bone in Bam’s right leg, the femur, had snapped spontaneously, and she had collapsed to the floor. Bam was nearly ninety, and her bones had lost a great deal of calcium over the years. Dr. David I. Hull, one of the top orthopedic surgeons in the country, was at Stanford Medical Center. He operated that same day, securing the break with a metal pin and plate. Recovery at such advanced age, with such an advanced case of osteoporosis, would be long and slow—and problematical. She might eventually walk again, with a cane. She might not walk again—ever.
This hospital stay lasted three weeks, and Bam required skilled nursing for an indefinite period after that. They really had no other option but a geriatric nursing facility. Rex and MJ (Mary Jean Heinlein-Lermer’s family nickname) argued about whether it would be in Palo Alto (close to Rex and to Robert) or in Pasadena (closer to MJ). Robert firmly stayed out of the argument.
Mortality. The old world was passing away that summer of 1968—a cousin wrote that Uncle Oscar’s Heinlein Mercantile general store building had been torn down in Butler recently—and a new world was coming painfully into being. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. There were race riots in 125 cities across the United States
that summer. Russian tanks rolled into Prague bloodily to suppress a relatively liberal reform movement in one of the Soviet Union’s “buffer states.” Lyndon Johnson declined to run for a second term as president, his entire social program for a second New Deal, the “Great Society,” run aground on the anti-war movement that was growing in size and volume. “Hey! Hey! L.B.J.! How many kids did you kill today?!” The New Left turned to violence, and the old left responded in kind: Mayor Daley’s notoriously corrupt Chicago police waded into anti-war protestors, mainly students, outside the Democratic National Convention—war of the government against its citizenry—as the convention nominated an anti-war candidate for president, Senator Eugene McCarthy. “Let’s review the bidding,” Heinlein wrote that summer to a friend in Colorado Springs:
—USS Pueblo was surrendered without a fight. Hanoi has agreed to negotiate the ending of all our aggressive acts against them. Mr. Johnson decided to be noble and statesmanlike and let Bobby have it. A Nobel Peace Prize winner [Martin Luther King] has been killed by person or persons unknown; today our leaders throughout the nation are beating their breasts and claiming the guilt for you and you and You. The White House is barricaded and the National Capitol is surrounded by machine guns. The United States has gone off the gold standard—except that it will continue to sell to France all it wants at $35/oz without being so rude as to mention 50-yr-old debts. We solemnly agree never to use space for warlike purposes and the FOBS41 doesn’t matter because we have a new radar that turns corners. And Stassen42 and Dick Gregory43 are running for President.
Did I miss anything?
Oh, yes, Hindu students are rioting. So also are Polish students British students South American students (several flavors) and California students and Howard students—each for different reasons, if you’ll pardon the word.
I swear that I am not and never have been a member of the human race—and just as fast as I can report to the Intergalactic Council I shall recommend in the strongest of terms, using all tendrils, that this entire sector be placed OUT OF BOUNDS.
Further deponent sayeth not.
I’m damned if I’ll make any comment on any of the above. After you are liquidated by a sniper while trying to put out a fire set by a looter somebody might go through your papers, find this, and I might face a People’s Court for thinking forbidden thoughts. I’m glad old Sarge Smith died when he did.44
He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind. This was the late and bitter fruit of undeclared war, waged indecisively, the reckless spilling of treasure and blood.
I try to stay calm and not fret about things I can’t correct. I find myself simultaneously angry at the Administration and even more angry at most of its critics—an attitude so complex that I try to avoid any political discussion with anyone but Ginny … [sic] who shares my views at a somewhat higher temperature.45
He decided to turn down all speaking engagements—except for librarian groups—“for the duration” and tried to follow Candide’s advice. The rare letter he received from soldiers on the ground in Vietnam he valued as actual data. To a friend relaying data from a son in Vietnam he wrote:
I’m glad I’m too old to be doing the sort of things that Alex is doing. But I certainly do treasure these reports. I can’t get anything out of the newspaper stories. Between the credibility gap, a conviction that we are fighting with one foot in a bucket for undisclosed reasons, and a dark suspicion that even the (presumably) uncensored “background” stories are heavily slanted, I just can’t take the newspaper accounts. This private and straight tell right from the spot does far more for me than do the four newspapers we take.46
In the hours he was able to work, Heinlein continued to sort and catalog his working papers for the University Library. He had asked Special Collections to hold off making any announcement of the gift until his fence was up, but Robert Metzdorf, their selected appraiser, was ready to come to Santa Cruz and survey the papers already in the archive. The new tax laws that would take effect in 1969 were going to eliminate the “commercial value” of these gifts for tax deductions, leaving only the value of the paper and other materials.
Metzdorf arrived on November 5, 1968, just after the election (Richard Nixon was elected president, on a pledge to end the war in Vietnam—“victory with honor”) and was with them to November 8. He valued the collection—the two consignments Heinlein had sent by that time, plus a third Metzdorf hand-carried to the University Library—at a staggering $30,230.00. Heinlein told Cal Laning he was shocked at the recent appraisal. He knew the papers had to be worth something because he had been asked for them by five or six universities—“but they were waste paper to me and had to thin them out constantly.”47
They finished their guest cottage in December 1968, and that was the last of the house-building.
Chesley Bonestell had just moved from the Bay Area to Carmel, fifty miles around Monterey Bay from Santa Cruz, and had gotten in touch with the Heinleins. They invited the Bonestells up for Christmas dinner and also invited a couple of local friends—widowers both, who for one reason or another couldn’t spend the holidays with family that year: Dr. Robert D. Calkins, lately president of the Brookings Institute and now vice chancellor at UC Santa Cruz, and Lionel Lenox, a retired banker, amateur photographer, and Ginny’s gardening buddy.48 Robert was glad to be able to show off the house. Bonestell, trained as an architect, was not impressed—and said so.49 The house suited them and that’s what counted.
It was wet and raining outside, but warm and dry inside the house. Ginny had spread herself for this feast, which featured a Swedish baked ham entree with this and that, and concluded with Crêpes Suzettes as they watched the launch of Apollo 8 on television.50
[S]o by combining forces we turned what would have been a grim and lonely day into a merry one. So the end of the year finds us in good mood, both in good health, all construction completed (thank God), and ready to enjoy life to the fullest.51
22
PICKING UP WHERE HE LEFT OFF
On New Year’s Day of 1969 the power went off in the middle of a winter storm. In an all-electric house, no power means no cooking, no heat—and no water, since the pumps from the spring are electric. Ginny built a big fire in the living room fireplace, and they moved into that one room for the duration. Robert was vexed because he had just started the new Allen Drury novel, Preserve and Protect, and couldn’t stand to put it down. Five straight hours of reading by electric lantern exhausted all the batteries.1
The outage was fortunately not more than a day—this time. Next time they could move into the guest house, which had a propane tank for heating and cooking. “The cats won’t like it, but we don’t expect to consult them.”2
In February Fred Pohl forwarded to them a cabled request for Robert to serve as an honored guest at a film festival late in March, in Rio de Janeiro. They would be screening Destination Moon as part of a tribute to George Pal. If he would give a speech introducing the film, the Brazilian Ministry of Culture would pick up the tab.3 There are certainly worse things in life, in the middle of a Northern California winter, than an expense-paid trip to Rio.
Ginny figures it’s a shopping trip. I pointed out that they had not offered to pay her expenses. She sez, “What’s that got to do with it? Let’s spend it before it inflates.” So she’s going. (I figure my tab comes out of my taxes anyhow, by way of the Alliance for Progress.)4
The weather continued to improve, and they held a big housewarming party on March 7. They invited Rex and Kathleen, as well as local friends they had made over the last two or three years—the McHenrys;5 Dr. Calkins and Lionel Lenox, senior and junior (who had all three been with them at Christmas dinner); Dr. and Mrs. Richard Bronson;6 Mr. and Mrs. Richard Kessell (their local lawyer who had been so helpful with all the legal matters in the house-building); Mr. and Mrs. Donald Clark and the Head of Special Collections and Archives at the university, Rita Berner; the Page Smiths7 and Mr. and Mrs. Joel Schaefer.8 They invited Frank and Bev
erly Herbert down from Seattle (where he was still a working journalist, Dune not yet earning enough for him to quit his day job). And Blassingame and his wife, Peggy, as informal guests of honor. This was, after all, “the house that Lurton built” by providing a steady stream of advances and royalty checks to pay the workmen.
Two weeks later Robert and Ginny were flying down to Rio on an all-expense-paid junket and on a plane full of science-fiction colleagues and celebrities such as Roman Polanski, for the “II festival internacional do film rio de janeiro.”9
They were given diplomatic courtesies and entertained at formal receptions in various embassies, all in Rio’s end-of-summer oppressive heat and humidity. Amid the floor-length gowns and Ginny’s formal white gloves, there was a sprinkling of the British “mod” fashion given a South American twist: see-through blouses and micro-mini skirts, often worn with nothing at all underneath.10 The festival viewings were held at the theater in the French embassy, and they also got to take in all the other films, new and old, at the festival (Robert recommended The Lion in Winter 11).
At one of the embassy parties, Roman Polanski found Heinlein and introduced him to his wife, the stunningly beautiful Sharon Tate. She had been filming in Europe but had taken a break to join her husband at the festival. Ginny was off, circulating, as she usually did. Karma balanced: She had Dorothy Lamour (from the Destination Moon wrap party in 1950—see chapter 3 supra), and he had Sharon Tate in 1969.
At the festival, all the attention was on Pal, but Heinlein wanted to commemorate Irving Pichel’s role in Destination Moon in his talk on March 28. He titled it after something Pichel had said to him once: “Creativity Is Indivisible.”12 Destination Moon worked, he said, because Pal had done with Pichel what Pichel had done with him: pick his man and let him work without interference. Pichel was able to craft a coherent filmic “vision” because of Pal’s creative work in producing—in picking the right man and letting him do the job.
Robert A. Heinlein, In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2 Page 38