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

by William H. Patterson, Jr.

  52. RAH, “The Future Revisited” in Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo, 177.

  53. RAH, “Discovery of the Future,” Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo, 173.

  54. RAH, “Discovery of the Future,” Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo, 196.

  55. RAH, “Discovery of the Future,” Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo, 172.

  56. RAH, “The Future Revisited,” Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo, 175.

  57. RAH, “The Future Revisited,” Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo, 176.

  58. RAH, letter to F. M. Busby, 09/06/61.

  59. F. M. Busby (1921–2005) began writing short science fiction in 1957 while still best known as a prominent fan and publisher/editor of Cry of the Nameless, a fanzine that won a Hugo Award in 1960. He began writing novels in the 1970s. Of his nineteen novels, the best known are his Alien Debt series, with Bran Tregare and Rissa Kerguelen.

  60. F. M. Busby, “The Science Fiction Field Ploughed Under,” Speculation II:12 (September 1969): 29.

  61. Postcard from Jerry Pournelle to RAH, undated but from context some time in September 1961.

  62. Jerry E. Pournelle, Ph.D. (Psychology and, in 1964, Political Science) (1933–) did take up writing for a living, achieving considerable success, particularly in his writing partnership with Larry Niven and as an early and longtime contributor to Byte magazine. Pournelle remained a friend of the Heinleins for all the remainder of Heinlein’s life, and features periodically in the remainder of this biography.

  63. Karen Anderson is reported to have coined this phrase at SeaCon in 1961, but its appearance in print is obscure. Both Poul and Karen Anderson used the phrase as late as their (separate) appreciations in Yoji Kondo’s Requiem (1992), and Charles Brown (founder of Locus magazine) is reported by Ed Meskys to have disseminated the phrase:

  When Charlie Brown was still a fan he traveled to Worldcons and took numerous pictures and would have slide shows on his living room wall in the Bronx. I remember him after returning from Seacon in 1961 showing slides of RAH in a yellow bathrobe holding court and referring to him as “God in a yellow bathrobe.” I think it was meant with awe …

  (Ed Meskys, letter to No Award, no. 11 [2002]: 18.) Meskys goes on to speculate that the phrase might be a play on L. Ron Hubbard’s phrase “God in a dirty bathrobe” in “Typewriter in the Sky” (Unknown, 1940), a metaleptic novella about the uneasy relationship of an author and his character. If so, the phrase gained ironic weight after 1980 when Heinlein began writing his quasi-postmodern, metaleptic World As Myth novels, that imply our consensus reality is the creation of a strong fabulist existing in another dimension.

  64. Several correspondents including at least one of the convention’s organizers wrote after the convention to express appreciation for Heinlein’s accessibility at Seacon. Cf. Dirce Archer, letter to RAH, 10/09/61:

  You made a decided hit at the con from reports, and if you were the right sex could be elected Miss America by con members. I’ve often wondered just why those being honored by a whole convention should think they had to hide, and hope you have started a new trend.… It was so very good to hear that for once a GoH acted as if he was being honored!

  65. RAH, letter to Earl and Nancy Kemp, 09/09/61.

  66. RAH, letter to Judith and Dan Merril, 08/21/61.

  67. RAH, letter to F. M. Busby, 09/06/61.

  68. RAH, letter to Bruce Pelz, 10/17/61.

  69. Jim Harmon, letter published in The Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies, no. 137 (October 1960).

  70. RAH, letter to Bruce Pelz, 10/17/61.

  71. Gen. Laurence S. Kuter (1905–79) was in 1961 the commander in chief of the NORAD facility at Cheyenne Mountain. Kuter is best remembered for advocating to the Eisenhower administration a nuclear defense of Taiwan against Communist China in 1958. Construction on the NORAD facility had gotten under way in June 1961.

  16. Smoking Rubble

  1. RAH, letter to Robert K. Willis, 12/08/65.

  2. RAH, letter to Poul Anderson, 12/13/61.

  3. RAH, letter to Poul Anderson, 12/13/61.

  4. RAH, letter to Poul Anderson, 12/13/61.

  5. RAH, letter to Poul Anderson, 12/13/61.

  6. The term “latchkey kid” had been coined in 1944—that is, during World War II—as a result of children being left alone and unsupervised while both parents were working (or a single mother was supporting the family while the father was in the armed forces). Children routinely left without parental supervision and both the restrictions and the feedback parents can provide often develop behavioral problems as a result of greater susceptibility to peer pressure in their teen years. Podkayne’s younger, sub-teen brother, Clarke, was already a behavioral problem, and Podkayne’s poor judgment Heinlein attributed also to her parents’ self-absorption in their own careers.

  7. D. H. Steele, letter to RAH, 01/02/62.

  8. RAH, letter to D. H. Steele, 03/22/62. Heinlein’s two ideas were (1) to use a combination of radar and RF frequency-modulated laser to locate a man lost on the Moon and (2) using infrared to locate a missile or a ship hidden in the debris that collects in the Trojan points. By letter dated 04/05/62, Mr. Steele passed on to Heinlein approval by Hoffman Electronics of the laser idea. Steele suggested a four-to-six-week deadline (late May). The story “Searchlight” was written in late May and early June 1962, around the time the rewrites were being done on Podkayne of Mars.

  It is notable that, even in such a restricted compass, Heinlein complicates his basic idea, making the lost victim blind, a young girl, and giving her perfect pitch.

  9. RAH, letter to Charles Ho, 07/11/62.

  10. RAH, letter to Poul and Karen Anderson, 06/22/62.

  11. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, probably 02/23/67 though misdated as 02/03/67.

  12. RAH, letter to Marion Zimmer Bradley, 08/08/63.

  13. It was not yet obvious to the public at large—though it appears to have already been a matter of concern to Heinlein—that “parenting” had completely collapsed in the United States during the 1950s, largely as a secondary consequence of the flight to the suburbs, which took the commuting breadwinner essentially out of the picture as a parent and trapped the children in an impoverished environment—at the same time (and at least partly for the same reasons) that education was collapsing as well. Antisocial self-involvement has become an endemic problem in this country as a result of this ongoing crisis.

  14. RAH, PSS to Ginny letter to Laura Haywood, 12/02/73.

  15. Lurton Blassingame, letter to RAH, 03/19/62.

  16. “Searchlight” was published in the August 1962 Scientific American and the following month in Fortune. A year later, “Searchlight” received an award, a “Certificate of Merit” from the Annual Exhibition of Advertising and Editorial Art in the West.

  17. Lurton Blassingame, letter to RAH, 07/09/62.

  18. At science-fiction conventions, George Scithers (1929–2010) many times remarked on Heinlein’s ability to write an entire novel from a dropped remark and cites his own question to Heinlein as the incitement for Glory Road. The author heard Scithers tell the anecdote in 2001 at the Millennium Philcon in Philadelphia, where Scithers was the guest of honor.

  The specific letter in which Scithers made the remark has not been preserved—perhaps it was kept in a desk file later inadvertently destroyed. But Scithers had been sending Amra to Heinlein since at least 1959, and the magazine is mentioned periodically in Heinlein’s correspondence with fans.

  19. James Branch Cabell, “Epistle Dedicatory” to The Lineage of Lichfield. If Heinlein made any written notes before writing Glory Road, they are not preserved in the RAH Archive, UC Santa Cruz; but the Cabellian story form—which Cabell called the “Cabellian comedy”—is immediately recognizable as the inspiration for the story form, from Heinlein’s later resistance to his editors’ desire to cut the last hundred manuscript pages—Oscar Gordon after the adventure of the Egg.

  20. Heinlein had mentioned the Red Grimoire in 1940 (in the context of “Magic, Inc.
”) as an actual book in the Library of Paris, but whether copies of this particular grimoire exist could not be determined. However, “Red Grimoire” blank books are sold at occult supply stores. Heinlein may have at some time acquired “a” Red Grimoire rather than “the” Red Grimoire. Virginia Heinlein remembered the encyclopedia of magic:

  Between juveniles, Robert did books for adults—something much more to his taste. He enjoyed doing Glory Road and such things. I think that it was at that time that he got the Magic encyclopaedia. I don’t know where the Red Grimoire came from—he could have had that earlier. Books would come into his order, and I would unwrap those and turn them over to him. Mostly I did not have a chance to read those.

  Virginia Heinlein, letter to the author, 11/07/1999b.

  21. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 06/22/62.

  22. RAH, letter to Martin Greenberg, 05/04/59.

  23. See, e.g., Lurton Blassingame, letter to RAH, 07/30/62, in which Peter Israel’s involvement in negotiations with Doubleday for the ombnibus is mentioned; and Lurton Blassingame, letter to RAH, 12/18/62, in which the Gnome Press issue of Methuselah’s Children will complicate a Putnam’s omnibus issue.

  24. The incident is detailed in chapter 9 of the first volume of this biography, Learning Curve.

  25. RAH, letter to Mary Collin, 03/06/62.

  26. RAH, letter to Mary Collin, 08/06/62.

  27. RAH, thank-you letter to Capt. H. D. Hilton, USS Lexington, 07/09/62.

  28. RAH, letter to Bam Heinlein, 07/11/62.

  29. Earl Kemp, letter to RAH, 07/21/62.

  30. Tom Stimson, letter to Robert and Ginny Heinlein, 06/22/62, and confirmation of arrangements made by telephone, 06/29/62.

  31. “Powerglide”—also sometimes “Power Glide transmission”—was the first generally available two-speed automatic transmission used on Chevrolets and some Pontiacs from 1950 through 1973. Ford did not introduce its own automatic transmission until 1974.

  32. RAH, letter to Tom Stimson, 07/14/62.

  33. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 09/30/62.

  34. John W. Campbell, Jr., letter to RAH, 08/12/62.

  35. Earl Kemp, letter to RAH, 08/16/62. Kemp had told Heinlein about the Hugo win, in highly coded language (“… the condition is GO. Or to be more appropriate, COME HERE. Pack the big harp, please, you will be expected to play a brief but strange Martian melody”) on 08/06/62.

  36. RAH, letter to Mary Collin, 08/06/62.

  37. This telephone conversation was overheard by Virginia Heinlein and related in 2000 as part of the taped interviews in preparation for this biography. Six months or so later, Alexei Panshin web-published a set of “memoirs” by Earl Kemp. Somehow not wanting to “take the shine off,” Sturgeon was remembered as a demand for a follow-spotlight—something that would have been next to physically impossible in any case, though Kemp also says Hugh Hefner demanded a spotlight for his own entrance. A follow spot in one room for a limited occasion would not be impossible, but there is no evidence that such was actually ever done. Surviving photographs of the event show no evidence of a follow-spot.

  38. Betsy Curtis was a fan friend. Virginia Heinlein remembers, “I believe it was following the publication of Stranger that Betsy wrote to Robert, asking whether he would like to have a list of 100 reasons why she liked the book so much.… The correspondence continued for some years.…” (Virginia Heinlein, letter to Leon Stover, 04/07/89.) Indeed, Ginny was still receiving a kind of daily written blog from Betsy Curtis in 2000, and the file of correspondence from her amounts to several reams of paper in the RAH Archive, UC Santa Cruz.

  39. Alexei Panshin gives a slightly different order and interpretation of events:

  One for-sure example of egotistical game-playing (self-dramatisation?) I can give where Heinlein and Chicon are concerned is Heinlein’s Hugo acceptance. He hung around out of sight, dressed to the nines in a white jacket and black tie, while the awards were made. Then, after Betsy Curtis had accepted his Hugo for Stranger, he made an out-of-breath entrance.

  According to the convention proceedings (edited by Earl Kemp!), Heinlein said:

  “I’ve been here about four minutes and, having asked Betsy to accept for me, I just held back for a minute. Just call me the late R. A. Heinlein.

  “I have been down in Texas at the Manned Space Flight Center, flew up to St. Louis to see the hardware for the project I’ve been working on and worked until 5 a.m. this morning in order to get here at all. As you know, Operation Skyshield stopped the planes this afternoon and I have spent the afternoon and evening getting across Illinois from St. Louis. I am glad to have gotten here at all. I didn’t expect to.

  “My wife is complaining about dusting these things.

  “Having just this minute gotten off the train and checked in I have no prepared speech. In fact, I thought this would all be over with by the time I got here. I am very happy to be here and I am going to stay through the rest of the Convention and hope to see a lot of all of you.”

  Panshin goes on to point out that much of this business was disingenuous and self-dramatizing (i.e., knowing about the Hugo Award in advance, he had ample opportunity to prepare a speech). Alexei Panshin, e-mail correspondence with the author, 11/11/05. One may view it as Heinlein’s view of “good theater” rather than disingenuousness—but, of course, Heinlein himself did not always make a clear distinction between the two.

  40. RAH, letter to T. B. Buell, 10/03/74.

  41. George Scithers, incident related orally at the Millennium Philcon, 09/02/2001.

  42. There are, of course, psychological downsides to the qualities that bring about that kind of self-assurance. Henry Sang, writing just after decamping from the Heinleins’ home in 1946 and 1947 (fifteen years before the 1962 Chicon), described some of these qualities:

  In spite of our great liking for the Heinleins, living there was a strain because of Bob’s emotional condition … the hard work of catering to his exacting needs or rather requirements. As friends and hosts the Heinleins had two principal faults so far as I was concerned: whether the fault lies in them or in me is not clear to me. (1) Example: When Dugan and I planned our trip to San Francisco … To avoid coming in at all hours, since we weren’t going to be living with them any more anyway, I said that we would stay in a Motel in Hollywood when we returned but Bob would not hear of it and said that we should stay there with them. When we arrived after our long drive, at seven in the evening, we had to stay up until 2:30 a.m. because Bob was using our bedroom for his writing and cannot be disturbed when he is at work. We went to sleep on the floor upstairs until he had finished. I considered this thoughtless, and typical of the strange mixture of great generosity and cruelty that the Heinleins sometimes show. (2) I could never quite get used to the Heinleins’ attitude that their considered judgment on any social problem was the final word. They are certainly as intelligent as anyone I have ever known, but they regard Bob as “God”—they even use the word—ostensibly in fun—to describe him, and they have developed a way of talking about their friends—everybody, in fact—as if they were indeed sitting on a cloud and passing judgment on people.

  This fragment was preserved in Henry Sang’s files and provided by Grace Dugan Sang Wurtz, who dated the fragment 03/29/46 (actually 1947).

  43. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 09/12/62. However, the list is quite incomplete—and “Anthony Boucher” (William A. P. White) did not participate in the Playboy Symposium, though he may have been at the party. The Playboy Symposium participants were: Arthur C. Clarke, William Tenn, Poul Anderson, Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Theodore Sturgeon, A. E. van Vogt, Frederik Pohl, Rod Serling, and Algis Budrys.

  44. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 09/12/62.

  45. RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 09/12/62.

  46. RAH, letter to Dorothy and Clare Heinlein, 12/03/62.

  47. RAH, letter to Dorothy and Clare Heinlein, 12/03/62.

  48. RAH, letter to Frank Deodene, libr
arian at Lebanon (PA) Community Library, 02/21/65.

  49. RAH, letter to A. C. Spectorsky, 10/10/62.

  50. Tom Stimson, letter to RAH, 10/19/62.

  17. Old World, New World, Old World

  1. There was one notable exception to the Eisenhower administration’s unnerving international passivity: the 1955 Formosa Resolution, which guaranteed the Formosa Strait islands of Quemoy and Matsu would not be ceded to the People’s Republic of China. The Formosa Resolution, together with the Soviet Union’s unwillingness to come to China’s aid, probably forestalled a hot war between Communist China and Chiang Kai Shek’s Formosa—which could only have ended with Formosa being conquered and absorbed into China, at a minimum. At worst, it might have ignited World War III.

  2. Pierre Salinger, then President Kennedy’s press secretary, later said that he was sent out to buy up twelve hundred Cuban cigars just before the embargo went into effect. Salinger told the story at a Cigar Association of America annual meeting in 1987. The incident is mentioned by cigar authority Richard DiMeola in http://www.bocaratontribune.com/2011/07/retired-cigar-man-takes-a-light-look-at-the-industry/,accessed 03/04/2014.

  3. The NSA archives say April, but Khrushchev’s memoirs say May.

  4. RAH, letter to Ted Carnell, 11/14/62.

  5. Judith Merril, letter to RAH, 11/04/62.

  6. Leon Stover, in Robert Heinlein for the Twayne U.S. Author Series, says Stranger appeared on the NY Times bestseller list in 1962 (45), which would be at the time of the first paperback issue. Other sources give 1963 as the date. That Stranger was the first science-fiction book to appear on the Times bestseller list is also widely mentioned, especially in reviews of the uncut version of Stranger published in 1990. The various online versions of the bestseller lists, however, are organized in ways that make it difficult, if not impossible, to confirm any of these references (the list maintained by The Times, for instance, lists only hardcover appearances and is not searchable in any case).