Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century

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Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Page 74

by Robert A. Heinlein


  Paul Rydeen, “Brother Jack Parsons: The Magickal Scientist and His Circle,” an excerpt of Rydeen’s privately published Jack Parsons and the Fall of Babalon, at one time widely available on the Internet, but now available on only a few sites. See, for example, http://www.greylodge.org/occultreview/glor_003/magickalscientist.htm.

  The Alva Rogers memoir published as “Darkhouse” in Terry Carr’s fanzine Lighthouse V (1962), is quoted extensively in biographies of Parsons, but the narrative is of limited usefulness because Rogers misunderstood—and therefore misrepresented—much of what he was able to observe.

  RAH, letter to Ted and Irene Carnell, 04/02/52; see also [second] contemporaneous three-by-five-inch notecard, 04/13/45, pencil in RAH’s hand, in “Wartime and Snafu Manor” personal file, RAH Archive, UCSC.

  Eyewitness account by Harry J. Herder, Jr., at www.remember.org/witness/herder.html. A good number of oral histories and eyewitness accounts are being placed online in lieu of print publication and consequently are only available online.

  RAH, letter to John Arwine, 05/20/45.

  Clipping from The Philadelphia Record (06/25/45), preserved in Heinlein’s personal “Wartime and Snafu Manor” personal file, RAH Archive, UCSC.

  RAH, letter to Ted Carnell, 05/13/45.

  RAH, letter to Poul Anderson, 09/06/61.

  RAH, letter to Poul Anderson, 09/06/61.

  Three-by-five-inch notecard penciled in RAH’s hand, “Wartime and Snafu Manor” personal file, RAH Archive, UCSC.

  RAH, letter to Ted Carnell, 05/13/45.

  RAH, letter to John and Doña Campbell, 07/03/45.

  RAH, letter to John S. Arwine, 05/20/45.

  The expression first occurs quoted back to Heinlein by John Campbell in a fall 1943 letter and recurs periodically through 1945, used by both Robert and Leslyn Heinlein in correspondence with their intimates.

  Although Heinlein only mentions a “major publisher” contacting him in spring 1945, the first mention in contemporaneous correspondence with Heyliger of what became his first book dated from January 1946. I have chosen to interpret this as the same book project, after a lapse of some time.

  See, for example, RAH’s letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 09/16/41.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 06/03/45.

  Joel Charles, letter to RAH, 04/05/88.

  The text of this report will be given in the first of two volumes of Heinlein’s juvenilia and nonfiction writings in the Virginia Edition published by the Heinlein Prize Trust, and is to be made available for download from the online Heinlein Archive, http://www.heinleinarchives.net/.

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

  The only contemporaneous documentation for this assertion is her defense of Robert to Cal Laning in May of 1945.

  Henry Kuttner, letter to Robert and Leslyn Heinlein, 09/15/45.

  See, for example, Leslyn Heinlein’s postcard to Jack Williamson, 01/09/45.

  Henry Kuttner, letter to RAH, 09/20/44.

  26. Dangerous New World (pages 352–370)

  RAH, letter to John Arwine, 02/25/45.

  In his “Agape and Eros” posthumous tribute to Theodore Sturgeon, Heinlein mentions John Campbell’s wartime work on the supersecret radar project and adds, “(And didn’t even think the word ‘uranium,’ not even in one’s sleep”), implying he knew it was a war secret. In a taped interview with Phillip Homer Owenby conducted in 1994, Virginia Heinlein recalled: “Actually one time we got to talking about uranium and its possibilities and he said, ‘We can’t talk about this.’ So we never mentioned the subject again until the war was over.” Clearly Heinlein knew something of what was going on, even if he did not know specific information about the Manhattan Engineer District.

  Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with Phillip Homer Owenby (1994), Tape 7, Side B.

  RAH, resignation form letter, 08/15/45, RAH naval jacket, RAH Archive, UCSC.

  Copy preserved in RAH Archive, UCSC, and first published in the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Souvenir Book, July 7, 2007.

  The term is Heinlein’s and is first recorded in a letter to Cal Laning, dated 09/17/45, where it is used casually and without explanation, suggesting it might already have been in use among the developers of this project for some time.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 09/17/45.

  RAH, letter to Henry Ralston, 01/28/46.

  This is little more than a summary of the case Heinlein made in a series of letters in 1946 through 1948, detailed seriatim in the text, to Campbell and then to Ralston, the “Publications Executive” [Vice President?] of Street & Smith: at the time of the original sale, he had been assured that the purchase of “all rights” was formal only and that rights would be reverted to him on request. Street & Smith then unilaterally changed its policy and would revert only some rights, under some circumstances. Even worse, as Heinlein observed, the circumstances kept changing.

  It was the dispute over rights, more than any personal disagreement with Campbell, that resulted in Heinlein’s refusal to sell to Street & Smith for nearly ten years after the end of World War II (“Gulf” in 1949 was an exception under special circumstances, for which Heinlein waived his usual objections).

  See, for example, John W. Campbell, Jr.’s letter addressed “Dear Heinleins” and dated 02/06/46, among others.

  See, for example, RAH’s letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 02/19/41.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 01/28/46.

  Virginia Heinlein, letter to author, 12/11/99.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 09/17/45.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 09/17/45.

  RAH, letter to John Arwine, 09/15/45.

  RAH, letter to E. E. Smith, 10/17/45.

  What is informally known as the Manhattan Project was formally named the Manhattan Engineer District.

  RAH, letter to Judith Merril, 11/01/67.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 09/17/45.

  H. G. Wells, Phoenix: How to Rebuild the World—A Summary of the Inescapable Conditions of World Reorganization (Girard, Kans.: E Haldeman-Julius, 1942), 22.

  RAH, letter to Henry Sang, 09/15/45.

  RAH, letter to E. E. Smith, 10/17/45; see also RAH’s letter to John Arwine, 09/15/45, and similar letters of the same time frame, addressed to others.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 09/17/45.

  RAH, letter to the Honorable Jerry Voorhis, 10/04/45.

  RAH, letter to Henry Sang, 09/15/45.

  RAH, letter to E. E. Smith, 10/17/45.

  RAH, letter to E. E. Doc Smith, 10/17/45.

  RAH, letter to Doña (Cambell) Smith, 02/03/51.

  RAH, letter to E. J. “Ted” Carnell, 10/18/45.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 09/17/45.

  RAH, letter to Henry Sang, 09/15/45.

  Virginia Heinlein, quoting an expression of Robert’s in a letter to George Warren, 03/09/79.

  RAH, letter to John Arwine, 09/20/45.

  RAH, letter to Henry Sang, 09/15/45.

  Cal Laning, memo to RAH, undated, but by context mid- to late September 1945.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 02/16/46; Leon Stover also recorded in a letter to Virginia Heinlein, dated 05/20/89, that Robert Heinlein told him verbally that Susie Clifton was the model for Sally Logan.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 09/17/45.

  A recent (2005) biography of Parsons, Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons, by George Pendle provides the best account of the facts of Parsons’s life, without necessarily comprehending Parsons’s nonprofessional activities; Pendle’s account of Parsons’s rocketry, on the other hand, is first-rate.

  Informally—Scoles organized the Point Mugu naval facility. See, for example, RAH’s letter to Cal Laning, 09/17/45.

  RAH’s personal-library copy of the Smyth Report in the RAH Archive, UCSC. Perhaps the last line of the dedication was Laning’s way of acknowledging the anti-kamikaze think tank Heinlein had set up in Philadelphia in the last months of t
he war, since as an informal intelligence project it would never otherwise be publicly acknowledged. Laning had criticized Heinlein for not mastering his situation at Snafu Manor; it is possible also that he was thus making amends.

  RAH, letter to Henry Sang, 09/15/45.

  RAH, letter to John Kean, 09/20/45.

  Leslyn Heinlein, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 11/27/41.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 09/27/45. Virginia Heinlein gave this piece of Trinitite to her friend Mark O. Martin, who confirmed in August 2010 that it is still in his possession—though no longer even faintly radioactive.

  RAH, letter to Willy Ley, 10/15/45.

  Michael J. Patritch, “One Hour and Fifty Minutes into Forever: A Meeting with Robert Heinlein,” Thrust XXXIII (Spring 1989), 9.

  RAH, letter to Willy Ley, 10/15/45.

  RAH, letter to Armand B. Coign, 10/17/45.

  RAH, letter to Armand B. Coign, 05/26/46.

  Possibly “How to Be a Survivor” per RAH’s letter to E. E. Smith, 10/17/45.

  RAH, letter to Ted Carnell, 10/18/45.

  Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by author, Second Series, Tape A, Side B.

  “Historical Note” section of the online Finding Guide of the University of Oregon’s “Lurton Blassingame Literary Agency Records 1965–1978,” http://nwda-db.wsulibs.wsu.edu/ark:/80444/xv82437.

  Lurton Blassingame, letter to L. Ron Hubbard, 11/05/45.

  27. Settling In (pages 371–392)

  Heinlein discusses this in “If You Don’t See It, Just Ask,” an essay originally written for Playboy but never marketed.

  Fuller never got into production on the Dymaxion House. The website of the Henry Ford Museum, where the only surviving Dymaxion House has been on exhibit since 2001, says that the partnership fell apart because Fuller would not compromise his design; Heinlein says it could not be sold because there were no housing codes anywhere that would permit it to be erected.

  RAH, letter to Henry and Catherine Kuttner, 04/21/47.

  RAH, letter to L. Ron Hubbard, 07/01/45.

  RAH, letter to John Kean, 11/24/45.

  Theodore Sturgeon, letter to RAH, 05/13/46.

  RAH, letter to Theodore Sturgeon, 05/19/46.

  Theodore Sturgeon, letter to RAH, 05/25/46.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 03/28/53.

  Cards containing RAH’s notes for letter to L. Ron Hubbard, undated but clipped to L. Ron Hubbard’s letter to RAH, dated 12/04/46.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 11/20/45. The University of Chicago Library contains “Minutes of Temporary Steering Committee Meeting, November 15, 1945,” which refers to Robert Cornog, but not to John Arwine, in the Cal Tech Athenaeum. Document provided courtesy Author Services, Inc.

  Edmund Fuller, letter to RAH, 10/23/45.

  RAH, letter to Richard Pope at Compton’s Yearbook, 09/25/74 (for the Paul Dirac article).

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 01/17/42.

  Signed “Rough Draft of Agreement on collaboration on novel, working title For Us The Living,” between Robert A. Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard, 12/18/45.

  Crowley had received The Book of the Law by direct dictation from a “preternatural spirit” in 1904 and founded the religion of Thelema in 1909 based on its revelations. The core principle of Thelema (a Greek word which means “will,” in the sense of the intention precedent to an act) is contained in three precepts. The first is an adaptation of François Rabelais’ maxim: “Do what thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law” (Crowley rendered “Will” with an initial capital letter to indicate the human will in congruence with the divine will). This precept is followed by two others: “Love is the Law, Love under Will” and “Every Person is a Star”—meaning every human being who self-actualizes is a divine being with a place in the heavens.

  Jack Parsons, letter to Aleister Crowley, quoted in Michael Staley, “The Babalon Working,” at http://user.cyberlink.ch/~koenig/dplanet/staley/staley11.htm; original appearance in Starfire I: 3 (1989).

  Science-fiction fan Alva Rogers was renting a room in Parsons’s mansion at the time and witnessed enough of the odd goings-on to include them in a memoir widely quoted in biographies of Parsons. However, Rogers was not an acute observer, and he interpreted much of what he saw in terms of what he thought he ought to be seeing (it is not merely “unlikely,” for example, that he witnessed the summoning of a “demon,” it is actually impossible—demons not existing within Parsons’s well-documented magickal theory and practice). Rogers’s reports of jealous sexual tension at the dinner table over Hubbard’s affair are therefore suspect in view of Parsons’s actual behavior in trying, almost immediately, to ground an elemental—a fleshly incarnation of one of the four elements of classical and medieval science (earth, air, fire, water)—to act as his magickal assistant succeeding Sara Northrup (who married Hubbard a little later).

  Leslyn Heinlein, letter to Catherine and L. Sprague de Camp, 08/07/46.

  RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 06/23/46.

  RAH, letter to L. Sprague and Catherine de Camp, 02/13/46.

  RAH, letter to J. Francis McComas, 10/28/68.

  Undated letter, Cleve Cartmill to William A. P. White, quoted in Robert James’s e-mail correspondence with Virginia Heinlein, 06/01/2001.

  Manuscript in Opus 36 file, RAH Archive, UCSC.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 01/01/46.

  RAH, letter to John Kean, 11/21/45.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 01/07/46.

  RAH, “Why Buy a Stone Ax?” manuscript in Opus 38 file, RAH Archive, UCSC.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 02/15/46.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 01/07/46.

  RAH, letter to Rex Ivar Heinlein, 09/24/64.

  Theodore G. Bilbo (1877–1947) was a senator from 1934 to his death. He was a vocal White Supremacist and member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was re-elected in 1946, but the Senate refused to accept his credentials because of bribe-taking and inciting violence against blacks. He died of oral cancer a year later, his credentials still “on the table” and never having taken his seat for his third term.

  RAH, letter to Fritz Lang, 05/02/46.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 01/19/46.

  Cal Laning, letter to RAH, 03/20/46.

  RAH, letter to Cal Laning, 02/15/46.

  RAH, letter to Willy and Olga Ley, 11/23/45.

  John W. Campbell, Jr., letter to Robert and Leslyn Heinlein, 01/03/46.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 01/07/46.

  Ultimately published with a change of spelling to “Rhysling” as “The Green Hills of Earth.”

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 01/07/46.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 01/28/46.

  Henry W. Ralson, letter to RAH, 02/14/46.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 02/16/46.

  RAH, letter to L. Sprague de Camp, 02/13/46.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 02/16/46.

  RAH, letter to L. Sprague de Camp, 02/13/46.

  RAH, Accession Notes dated 04/02/67 for Opus 42, Rocket Ship Galileo, RAH Archive, UCSC; see also RAH, letter to John Arwine, 05/10/46.

  RAH, letter to Alice Dalgliesh, 02/17/59.

  Heinlein never specifically detailed Cartmill’s advice to him on the subject, but always included him, along with Fritz Lang, as talking him into writing his first juvenile. For example: “I did this one [Rocket Ship Galileo] on the advice of Fritz Lang and Cleve Cartmill, advice to the effect that no better field of propaganda existed than that of the adolescent-juvenile.” RAH, letter to John S. Arwine, 05/10/46.

  RAH, letter to Alice Dalgliesh, 02/17/59.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 02/16/46.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 02/16/46.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 02/16/46.

  RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., 02/16/46.

  RAH, letter to Lurton Blassingame, 01/29/46.

  Lurton Blassingame, telegram
to RAH, 02/25/46.

  Edmund Fuller, letter to RAH, 02/26/46. Fuller wanted to drop several of the early stories entirely and truncate “Methuselah’s Children” at the point where the Howard Families take off into interstellar space. Note also that this is before any of the Post stories were written or published.

 

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