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Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 - May 8, 1988) was one of the most
influential authors in the science fiction genre. He developed new
themes, new techniques and approaches. He became the first science fiction writer to break into major general magazines in the
1940s and 1950s with true, undisguised science fiction, and the first bestselling novel-length science fiction in the 1960s.
Early life
Heinlein was born in Butler, Missouri, but spent his childhood
in Kansas City, Missouri, in the early years of the
20th century. This was a time of great religious revival across America, especially socially marginalized areas such as Missouri. The outlook and values of this period would influence his later works; however, he would also
break with many of its social mores, at least on an intellectual level, frequently
portraying them as narrow-minded and parochial.
After high school, Heinlein attended the U.S. Naval Academy
in Annapolis, Maryland. After graduating from the Academy
in 1929, he served as an officer in the United States Navy
until 1934, when he was discharged due to pulmonary tuberculosis. During
his recovery he re-invented the waterbed. The military was the second great influence on Heinlein; throughout his life, he strongly believed in loyalty,
leadership, and other military ideals. This attitude permeated his fiction, most prominently (and controversially) in the novel
Starship Troopers. His 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land was the first science-fiction book to become a national best-seller -- readers who as a
rule did not read SF books were interested in Heinlein's philosophy, as
expressed in that novel, which transcended what was seen as the usual scope of such novels at the time, preoccupied with robots,
flying saucers, and bug-eyed monsters.
After his discharge, Heinlein studied mathematics and physics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also worked in a series of odd jobs,
including real estate dealership and silver mining. Heinlein was active in Upton Sinclair's socialist EPIC (End Poverty In
California) movement in early 1930's California. When Sinclair gained the Democratic nomination for governor of California in
1934, Heinlein worked actively for the campaign (which was unsuccessful). Heinlein himself ran for the California state assembly
in 1938, which also was unsuccessful (an unfortunate juxtaposition of events had Konrad Henlein making headlines in the Sudetenlands).
While not destitute after the campaign -- Heinlein had a small disability pension from the Navy -- he turned to writing to pay
off his mortgage, and in 1939 his first story, "Life-Line", was published in Astounding Magazine. He was planning on retiring as soon as he held his mortgage party, but wanted a
new car, a trip to NY, and a few other things. He then told John Campbell, the editor of Astounding, that he was planning to quit. He made an agreement to send a
few stories he had on tap but that he would quit writing when Campbell bounced a story. When Campbell bounced a story, he quit
and started to feel unwell. He became jittery and absent-minded, suffered loss of appetite, weight loss, and insomnia. He thought
this might be the onset of a third attack of pulmonary tuberculosis. Campbell eventually dropped him a note, and when reminded of
the conditions, said he would take another look at the story. He did so and asked for some very minor edits. When Heinlein sat
down to do those edits, he suddenly felt better.
During WWII he served with the Navy in aeronautical engineering, after the war he returned to writing. During his time there,
he recruited a young Isaac Asimov to work at Mustin Field, where he wrote
the first two books of the Foundation Trilogy. He also got
L. Sprague de Camp yanked from the naval commission he was
headed for, to work there as well.
In the early 1970s, Heinlein suffered a series of strokes. Heinlein credited his
recovery to the support of his wife Virginia and improved medical technology that he saw as "spinoff" from space technology. He
went on to write several more bestsellers.
Heinlein's philosophy
As in the work of other authors, in Heinlein's work there is little clear distinction between the themes of his work and the
sort of philosophical views that he propagated.
In his book To Sail Beyond the
Sunset, Heinlein has the main character, Maureen, state that the purpose of metaphysics is to ask questions: Why are we here? Where are we going after we die? (and so on), and that
you are not allowed to answer the questions. Asking the questions is the point for metaphysics, but answering them is
not, because once you answer them, you cross the line into religion.
Maureen doesn't state a reason for this; she simply remarks that such questions are "beautiful" but lack answers. The
implication seems to be as follows: because (as Heinlein held) deductive reasoning is strictly tautological (i.e. never generates conclusions that were not already
presumed in the premises) and because inductive reasoning is
always subject to doubt, the only source of reliable "answers" to such questions is direct experience -- which we don't have.
Maureen's son/lover Lazarus Long makes a related remark in Time Enough For Love. In order for us to answer the "big
questions" about the universe, Lazarus states at one point, it would be necessary to stand outside the universe. (It is
not quite clear why this should be so, but at any rate this is what Lazarus says. The usual warnings about mistaking a
character's views for those of the author apply here, of course, but this opinion seems fairly easy to tie into Heinlein's own
views as expressed in nonfiction and interviews.)
During the 1930s and 1940s, Heinlein was deeply interested in Count Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics and
attended a number of seminars on the subject. His views on epistemology seem to have flowed from that interest, and (some of) his
fictional characters continue to express Korzybskian views to the very end of his writing career.
Struggle for self-determination
The theme of revolution against corrupt, nasty oppressors infuses several of Heinlein's novels:
- Residents of a Lunar penal colony, aided by a self-aware computer, rebel against the Warden in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
- Venusian colonists break away from earth in Between
Planets
- A student rebellion on Mars in Red Planet
- Cabal overthrows religious dictatorship in If This Goes
On
- Scientists overcome foreign invaders in Sixth Column
- Youths and mutants rebel against and escape entrenched authority in Orphans of the Sky
The theme of self-making
The theme of self-making is taken to its furthest in the related books Time Enough for Love, The Number of the Beast, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. We are invited to wonder, what would humanity be if we shaped
customs to our benefit, and not the other way around? How would our humanity be expressed if we did not develop under the
soul-squashing influence of culture? We would be individuals. We would have self-made souls.
Other recurring themes binding Heinlein's works together include individual dignity, the value of both personal liberty and
responsibility, the virtue of independence, science as a liberating factor, the perniciousness of bureaucrats, the brutality of
corporate power, the hypocrisy of organized religion, the objective value of Korzybski's general-semantics and the subjective
value of mysticism.
Juveniles
Heinlein originally wrote his first book, Rocket Ship
Galileo, because a boy's book was solicited by a major publisher. The publisher rejected it because 'a trip to the moon was
preposterous'. He took the manuscript to Scribner's, who bought it - and started a chain of options resulting in a yearly
Christmas trade book. This agreement lasted for twelve years, until the editor (who hated science fiction) rejected a manuscript,
which Heinlein then took across the street and for which he later won a Hugo.
The novels that he wrote for a young audience are very different than his "adult" works. He is still the same person, but the
themes he takes on in these books have much more to do with the kinds of problems that adolescents experience. His protagonists
are usually very intelligent teenagers who have to make a way in the "adult" society they see around them. They are simple tales
of adventure, achievement, dealing with dumb teachers and jealous peers. The books "Have Space Suit, Will Travel", "Farmer in the Sky", "The Rolling Stones" are most representative of this type.
However, Heinlein was outspoken with editors and publishers (and other writers) on the notion that juvenile readers were far
more sophisticated and able to handle complex or difficult themes better than most people realized. Thus even his juvenile
stories often had a maturity to them that make them readable for adults. Indeed, his last "juvenile" novel was Starship Troopers, which is also probably his most controversial work.
Starship Troopers was written in response to unilaterally stopping nuclear testing.
Amongst many other awards, he was the first to receive a Grand
Master Nebula of the Science
Fiction Writers of America.
Bibliography
Heinlein's fictional works can be found in the library under Library of Congress PS3515.E288, or under Dewey 813.54.
Early Heinlein novels
Juvenile novels
Late Heinlein novels
"Future History" short fiction
- Misfit (1939)
- Life-Line (1939)
- The Roads Must Roll (1940)
- Requiem (1940)
- If This Goes On... (1940)
- Coventry (1940)
- Blowups Happen (1940)
- Universe (1941)
- Methuselah's
Children (1941)
- Logic of Empire (1941)
- Space Jockey (1947)
- It's Great to Be Back! (1947)
- The Green Hills of Earth (1947)
- Ordeal in Space (1948)
- The Long Watch (1948)
- Gentlemen, Be Seated (1948)
- The Black Pits of Luna (1948)
- Delilah and the Space Rigger
(1949)
- The Man Who Sold The Moon (Retro
Hugo Award, 1951)
Other short fiction
Collections
Nonfiction
- Grumbles from the Grave (1989)
- Take Back Your Government: A Practical
Handbook for the Private Citizen (1992)
- Tramp Royale
(1992)
Spinoffs
- The Notebooks of Lazarus Long illuminated by D.F Vassallo (1978)
- Fate's Trick by
Matt Costello (1988)
- Requiem: New
Collected Works by Robert A. Heinlein and Tributes to the Grand Master (1992)
Filmography
- "Starship Troopers" (book) (1997) IMDb
- "Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles" TV series (1999) IMDb
- "Red
Planet" TV mini-series (book) (1994) IMDb
- "Robert
A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters" (book) (1994) IMDb
- "The Brain Eaters"
(book The Puppet Masters) (uncredited) (1959) IMDb
- "Project Moon Base"
(1953) IMDb
- "Tom
Corbett, Space Cadet" (book Space Cadet) IMDb
- "Destination Moon" (book Rocket Ship Galileo) (screenplay) (technical advisor) (1950) IMDb
(Retro Hugo
Award, 1951)
External links
Further reading
- H. Bruce Franklin.
1980. Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 195027469.
- Tom Shippey. "Starship Troopers, Galactic Heroes, Mercenary Princes: the
Military and its Discontents in Science Fiction", in Alan Sandison and Robert Dingley, ed.s, Histories of the Future: Studies in Fact, Fantasy and Science Fiction. 2000.
New York: Palgrave. ISBN
0312236042.
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