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

by William H. Patterson, Jr.

  Perhaps there had been embedded in Roosevelt’s New Deal the seeds of this current leftism that was softening the brains of otherwise bright and well-intentioned people, who seemed not to realize that they had conceded important intellectual and moral ground to that stunted and malign child of socialism, as Wells had called Lenin’s and Stalin’s Communism. America’s leftism now had no room for that strain of American progressive optimism and benevolent patriotism that married love of country to love of the great ideals of the Founders, that went back to the last century, through Emerson and back even to that old Puritan thunderer Jonathan Edwards.

  Heinlein resigned from the Democratic Party in 1954 and for ten years remained unaffiliated, voting a split ticket.10 Doubtless he wanted to be free of that now-tainted legacy—but he may also have foreseen that he would be forced increasingly into conflict with his party as leftism continued to overwhelm and then displace liberalism. “So everyone is out of step but Willie. This may be the March of History. I think it may be. I strongly suspect that the process is irreversible and that I am utterly out of step with the times.”11

  With these ideas starting to percolate through his mind, he traveled to Annapolis for his class’s silver (twenty-fifth) reunion, a journey back in time for him: During the reunion on May 22 and 23, 1954, he and Ginny stayed at Carvel Hall, the old Paca Mansion across from the campus, where Robert had stayed the night before he took his Midshipman’s Oath in 1925. They moved on to Philadelphia on the 24th, to see the de Camps, and Sprague introduced him to a young friend and budding writer then in med school, Alan E. Nourse, who was also the president of the Philadelphia SF Society.12

  The next day they went on to New York, where they had dinner with Isaac Asimov and the Blassingames on May 25.13 Isaac Asimov remembered that dinner: Heinlein was trying to talk him into listing with Blassingame, but he was put off when Blassingame’s wife, Peggy, sampled his Shrimp Fra Diavolo. Asimov was extremely territorial about his food.14

  Ginny was suffering from a slight bladder infection and took an early flight back to Colorado. Robert stayed behind, bunking with John Arwine, in order to have a long, face-to-face talk with John Campbell.15

  Campbell had been writing for some time about his own, independent psychological researches now that he had left the Dianetics movement. He and his new wife, Peg, used each other as subjects—but it was hard for Heinlein to grasp exactly what it was they were doing from Campbell’s “frustratingly inconclusive”16 letters. He had a deep suspicion, he had told Campbell, of figures of speech used as if they were rational arguments17—to which Campbell was particularly prone, because of his analogical style of argument.

  Campbell had arranged to have the house in Westfield, New Jersey, to himself one evening and invited Robert. He had an overriding agenda in mind and didn’t allow small talk to get in the way: Without even asking about Heinlein’s trip around the world just concluded, he took Heinlein to his basement workshop for hours of increasingly mystifying and increasingly frustrating—and then downright insulting—lecture.18

  It had started out cordially enough: Campbell had come up with “a new concept of distance” that seemed somehow to be pivotal to his psychological researches. As Campbell went on lecturing, though, it got foggier and foggier. Heinlein tried to understand it from the ground up: What were the data on which Campbell built his superstructure of philosophical ideas?

  But the data—even the actual description of the new concept of distance—was “confidential.” Heinlein could get nothing out of Campbell about methods, or data, or even tentative conclusions. Campbell repeatedly told him he didn’t understand—true enough—and that he lacked the patience—and the math (Heinlein was a better mathematician than Campbell)—for this kind of painstaking work in any case. Campbell was going to develop a radio that was not subject to the inverse-square law. “Good trick,” Heinlein remarked dryly. “John demands applause now for results he is going to produce tomorrow.”19

  At last, Heinlein’s Semantic Pause gave out: “I finally told him that until he disclosed his data and explained what he was doing nobody was obligated to take his work seriously.”20

  He never did find out what Campbell supposedly wanted to communicate to him. The meeting broke up after four exhausting hours with Campbell telling Heinlein that he lacked the “serious social purpose” that Campbell had—which caused Heinlein to think unkind thoughts:

  After four hours of bullyragging I felt insulted—not only my intelligence insulted by prime damfoolishness, but personally and emotionally insulted by being told repeatedly that I did not understand simple statements—and then told I was a slacker because I did not drop everything and follow him!

  (Goddam[n] it, I was working my heart out and ruining my health during the war while he was publishing Astounding—doing what I could when they would not accept me for combat. I don’t need JWC to tell me my duty. As for space flight, who is actually sweating to achieve it? You [Stine] and the boys with you, eating sand and wind at 130 degrees in the Jornado basin? Or John Campbell sitting on his fat buttocks back in Jersey and laying down the law from his easy chair?)

  Hell and Maria, John has never seen a big rocket. He (so help me!) had never even been up in an airplane until the Navy gave him a free ride down to Washington the week the war ended.…21

  But that was not the worst of it: Campbell went on that he lacked serious social purpose because he did not have children. At that, it was past time to shut up, but he went inexorably on:

  … if only I had his feel of social responsibility to the next generation I would join up under his leadership and solve these problems (what problems I still don’t know!) in time to stop the Russian H-bombs.… Me, I’m just a butterfly with no progeny; I can’t be expected to have any social responsibility, natch!22

  Heinlein got out of there. “I did not take offense; I don’t think he knew he was being insulting. I remain fond of John, but some of his bullyragging is hard to take.”23

  He did not tell Ginny about this incident: Ginny would have been offended by that no-kids-equals-no-social-consciousness crack—but she knew something he did not. In their last round of fertility testing,24 the doctor had let her see the slides of Robert’s sperm sample: There were no wigglers living in it at all. “I never told him that,” Ginny later remarked. “He would have been devastated. I just let him think that it was that ‘mutual infertility.’”25

  This generation of Heinlein’s family all had low fertility. Neither Rex nor Clare had natural children, either, while Larry had a son by his first marriage (Lawrence Lewis Heinlein) and three girls by his second. Perhaps in Robert’s case it was due to childhood malnutrition. Or perhaps the measles he had had in 1914 caused the infertility—or the succession of genito-urinary tract infections during his Navy years.

  Heinlein would probably never have said anything about the incident with Campbell to anyone, but Campbell made the disagreement rather “public” by writing a seven-page letter to G. Harry Stine at White Sands, complaining about Heinlein’s close-mindedness. Stine wrote to Heinlein, expressing his confusion: Campbell’s intuitive, Fourth-of-July sparkler was very different from Heinlein’s careful building of foundations from which inferences could be made—but belittling Heinlein was out of bounds.26

  Heinlein was outraged that Campbell should expose their disagreement to any third party—but at the same time it gave him someone he could talk to. He was grateful, he told Stine, for the reality check.

  Your remarks about John did my heart good, as I have been much disturbed to know that he would write a long letter to another person about the argument we had and have been doing some soul-searching to try to decide whether or not I had been out of line in what I said to him.

  As an admittedly biased judge, I am forced to say that I do not think I was out of line. On the contrary I think I was very slow to speak and long suffering.…27

  The travel book was nearly done in draft. He sent out the first half of the book t
o Blassingame, to begin showing around. Walter Bradbury at Doubleday passed on Tramp Royale—he was charmed by it, he told Blassingame, but travel books were a tough market to crack, and this book didn’t fall into any of the usual categories.28

  That must have been irritating, of course, but Blassingame continued to shop the book around while Heinlein finished writing it—between squiring drop-in visitors around Colorado Springs. He also wanted to do an “adult” book before starting on his annual boys’ book.29 He was growing tired of the petty censorship in the juvenile market, but Blassingame convinced him Dalgliesh was “just doing her job,” and so Heinlein planned to write another again this holiday season. Once the travel book had made its first rounds, Heinlein asked Blassigname to send back the half-manuscript for Tramp Royale, so that he could finish the book and get it out of his system.30

  He had been trying out a couple of gimmicks to lighten the sheer physical work of production. He was sold, now, on electric typewriters, for their light, instantaneous touch, though the clatter of the keys against the platten was enough to raise complaints from Ginny two or three rooms away. But he could work longer hours if he didn’t get tired punching the keys, and it was his style to work steadily from “can” to “can’t.” He found an ideal solution: On July 29, 1954, he purchased an Underwood Model 12 “Silent” typewriter that had been built for a funeral home, with a silencer—a case built around the works, enclosing everything but the keyboard. Ginny called it a “baby’s coffin.”31 It cost as much as the advance for an entire book.32

  That summer of 1954, Heinlein’s brother Rex came through Colorado Springs with his wife and family. A year before, Rex had retired from teaching at West Point (at age forty-eight), and he had taken the entire family to Switzerland for a year so his daughters could attend a Swiss finishing school.33 On their way to the West Coast (eventually winding up in Palo Alto, California), they stayed with Robert and Ginny, overcrowding the Mesa Avenue house, which was rather too small for that many people. Robert and Ginny gave up their bedroom and slept in Robert’s study, while the girls slept on the built-in couches in the living room, or in Ginny’s office—but they gave everyone a good time. Karen sent them a bread-and-butter note two months later:

  Every minute we were there was so much fun. Lynnie and I had always hoped for the chance to ride a horse for the first time and you made that possible for us. And skating in the middle of summer was a treat for us especially since we did very little in Switzerland.… You really kept us busy doing wonderful things while we were staying with you in your lovely home.34

  The rest of the Heinlein family was again in a state of agitation during that summer: Father Rex had lapsed back into that state of depression the doctors had been calling Involutional Melancholia and was back in the hospital.

  John Campbell seemed to be getting over his snit in the fall: He sent them some LPs of Tom Lehrer songs that were funnier even than Pogo.

  We have played them repeatedly and we are forever grabbing people, telling them to sit down and listen carefully—then we watch their expressions with glee. Ginny and I sing the “love” songs to each other in saccharine tones, assuring each other that in twenty years or so we’ll wish the other one dead.35

  On the same day Heinlein wrote to Campbell, a librarian-reviewer with the unlikely name of Learned Bulman wrote to Alice Dalgliesh saying the child-divorce in The Star Beast was objectionable and ruined the book, and he would have to say just that in his review for Library Journal. Could that not be edited out of the second edition? Dalgliesh ducked the issue, saying Heinlein felt strongly about leaving it in. She forwarded the letters to Heinlein, with a handwritten P.S.: “Perhaps this gives you some idea of what an editor is up against!!”36

  Heinlein answered Bulman mildly, pointing out that the child-divorce was legitimate, straightforward extrapolation from current social trends—and that any change of customs will always displease some.

  Mr. Bulman wrote to me that he did not object to the idea of “divorce” for unfortunate children in itself, but that one of the characters was “flippant.” This epitomizes the nature of the objections; these watchful guardians of youthful morals do not want live characters, they want plaster saints who never do anything naughty and who are always respectful toward all the shibboleths and taboos of our present-day, Heaven-ordained tribal customs.

  I could write such books, of course—but the kids would not read them.37

  With Dalgliesh, however, Heinlein was less gentle.

  I am sure that you feel that you defended me in your letter to Mr. Bulman and I am sorry indeed not to agree. You told him that you discussed the “divorce” matter with me when the manuscript came in and that I was very firm about leaving it in. You specify that you yourself hold no brief for the idea. Then, having made it empathetically clear [possibly Heinlein means “emphatically”] that you have no liking for the notion and that you tried to talk me out of it, you do discuss it in general terms and suggest that it won’t hurt young people to think about odd ideas.

  If you will think back you will recall that I was out of the country when the manuscript came in and that you got permission from Mr. Blassingame to revise the “divorce” matter to suit yourself—which you did … The version Mr. Bulman saw was precisely as you had revised it. If you will think back still further you will recall that I have always, without exception, approved any change you asked for when the reason was to avoid trouble with librarians or teachers—no matter how little I liked the changes.

  You can imagine how surprised I was to find you telling Mr. Bulman that I overruled you on this … Over the years, out of eight books, this is to the best of my knowledge, the first time that any librarian, teacher, or parent has ever objected to anything in any of my boys books. Now, when the first attack does come along, I trust that you will understand the shock with which I find my editor promptly assuring the attacker that she knew I was guilty all along but could not talk me out of it.…

  Even if it had been true, I am surprised … that you would disavow my work to an outsider. I am wondering how Scribner’s handled the complaints about From Here to Eternity? Did the firm stick up for Mr. Jones?.… 38

  (I agree with you heartily; the lot of an editor is not a happy one.)39

  Dalgliesh wrote back, complimenting him on his mild-answer-turneth-away-wrath—but noted he was taking this too seriously.40

  This was not a reply calculated to settle Heinlein’s temper. In a scorching letter—possibly never sent, as it survives only in draft—he demanded to know, if she didn’t take her line seriously, how could she expect Bulman to? And if nobody takes him seriously, why should we? “I no longer take Bulman seriously because I no longer give a hoot about selling (or writing) juveniles under such circumstances. But I take your handling of this most seriously.”41

  Up until this incident it would never have occurred to me to question it. I had thought being with Scribner’s was almost like being in a family, with the writers proud of the publishing house (I certainly was!) and the house proud of its writers. I had assumed without thinking about it that in event of attack from the outside we would stand shoulder to shoulder beyond any question.… your very last statement to me assumes that I should understand that, in disavowing me, you were simply doing what was inevitably necessary under the circumstances.

  I don’t agree.

  I would not agree even if the facts had been as you alleged. I had thought that we were all one team so far as outsiders were concerned; I had never dreamed that locker-room differences of opinion could be carried out on the field and offered gratis as an advantage to someone who opposed us.

  I am as humiliated and mortified and astonished as you would be if you were to find me undercutting Scribner’s position.42

  This nonsense over the juveniles, he told Blassingame, was becoming so vexatious, so repeatedly irksome, that he wondered if he should give them up entirely and concentrate on “adult” novels instead. Blassingame wrote back with the
calm, measured, practical advice Heinlein so valued: Dalgliesh was doing her job—which was selling his books to librarians and teachers. Go on to your adult books now, he urged, and revisit the question of the juveniles if the book actually took a hit in sales because of Bulman’s negative review.

  The “adult” novel didn’t get written that year, though. Ginny had remarked one day about the “class honeymoons” that seemed to pass through Colorado Springs in waves that year: Graduating classes in high schools organized group trips to the Broadmoor or to places like Garden of the Gods, cluttering up the tourist sites when they wanted to take friends and family out.

  And that was a germ for his next juvenile: The class honeymoon became an interstellar survival exercise for a high-school class—an idea much more radical in 1954 than it is now (parasitic exploitation of other peoples’ ideas in, especially, the film industry makes it sometimes difficult to remember how fresh and arresting these ideas were when they first appeared). The young people are marooned on an alien and unexplored planet by an astronomical accident and must band together to survive and keep civilization alive. Heinlein began writing Schoolhouse in the Sky on November 11, 1954, finishing the 76,000-word draft on December 10, ahead of his usual work schedule, with ample time over the holidays to trim it and have it professionally retyped. He solicited Blassingame’s advice on the hunting sequences.

  This time, Dalgliesh’s only major request was for a change of title—titles with “Schoolhouse,” she explained, didn’t do very well with teenagers. He suggested Tunnel in the Sky instead—one of the “working” titles he had used occasionally in correspondence with Blassingame. That was satisfactory. But, she warned him, the racial mix of the class43 and the implication of miscegenation at one point, where a Zulu-descended girl was contemplating marriage with his protagonist, would cost them sales in the Deep South—and the reference to an “Australasian,” implying that in the future British Australia would be overrun by Asians—would dampen sales in Canada (and possibly other Commonwealth countries)—though “I’m with you, of course.”44