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

by William H. Patterson, Jr.

  Many of the interviews he gave did not get published. Heinlein was not, therefore, unduly surprised when Neil Schulman reported a struggle with his editors to get “Looking Upward Through the Microscope” published.

  Nonpaying chores were taking up more and more of Heinlein’s productive time: There were two more major critiques that spring for writers just starting out, and Ginny finally extracted a written promise from him forswearing all such unindentured servitude.

  Blassingame agreed—but gave him G. Harry Stine’s Third Industrial Revolution to puff soon thereafter, so Ginny agreed to temper the agreement with generous exceptions, when and as appropriate.

  Turning back to his own outstanding business, Heinlein came to a decision about the releases Scribner wanted from him. He instructed his accountant to return the $1,900 they had given him to quitclaim the dispute over outstanding royalties (they had used a different, and smaller, royalty percentage figure for the paperback editions than their original contract with Heinlein specified). There would be no new agreement with Scribner until and unless they made a reasonable offer at market rates.

  In early August, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle surprised him with a revision of Motelight. He was shocked to see that they had taken his criticisms not merely in the spirit in which they were given, but as blueprints, even withdrawing the book while they reworked it:

  I am pleased (and much flattered) that you took my comments on the earlier version seriously. I cannot remember this ever happening in the past (and for this reason I long ago quit commenting on other writers MSS; it is almost always a waste of time—but I tried once more because I liked almost all of the earlier version so well). I know all too well how dear to a writer are his brain children; most writers usually will not accept criticism—and usually should not, as creativity is usually not helped thereby.8

  The writing business handed Heinlein new problems. One was a homegrown menace in Hollywood, the “fascinatingly terrible” television show Starlost.9 Harlan Ellison had been involved in the show at the start and told the producers at Twentieth Century Fox that it was clearly based on an idea in Heinlein’s “Universe”—the generation starship that has lost its purpose over the centuries and reverted to an agricultural society. But Fox ignored the information and sold the show to a low-budget Canadian developer who was busily gutting the concept—to say nothing of the copyright infringement. Ellison walked off the show—he had in fact been banned from the set—and required the new producer to take his name off the credits and substitute his “Cordwainer Bird” pseudonym. Ben Bova, hired as a science advisor for the series, also resigned in disgust but did not have the same contractual right to remove his name from the credits. Robert and Ginny missed the show’s premiere, but they asked all their friends who had contacts in the industry to monitor the show as they put together the necessary documentation to pursue the copyright infringement.

  The contracts and rights situation in England had gotten snarled in the last few years. The issue was brought to a head in 1973 when Sphere Books issued unauthorized paperbacks of an anthology assembled by Angus Wells and published by Sidgwick & Jackson in authorized hardcovers, The Best of Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein’s British agent, Innes Rose, didn’t seem to have any concern about protecting the value of the rights—and in fact they understood that Rose neither liked science fiction nor had any particular special interest in or knowledge about marketing it.10 He was a haughty Oxford man who despised anything American, but he handled all Blassingame’s clients for English rights,11 so they had kept their opinions to themselves. Their relationship with Rose and his agency, Farquharson’s, dated all the way back to 1946, when Rose had initiated the unwanted Gollancz issue of Beyond This Horizon.

  One of the book contracts Rose had let a few years ago, with Dennis Dobson, had never paid any royalties. Ginny raised the issue of nonpayment with Rose and was told she should get a lawyer and pursue the matter herself. They retained the London firm of Field Fisher and Martineau and spent a great deal of time for the remainder of 1973 preparing the finicky detail documentation a royalty suit requires—but they got into court early in 1974 and were awarded full back royalties, which Farquharson forwarded them, less their 10 percent agency cut. Requiring the client to do their job of enforcing the contracts, and then taking a cut, offended Ginny (and therefore Robert): not even the slightest suggestion that they share the legal fees (small in any case—a total of seventy-five dollars) or that their carelessness with their client’s interests should in any way be acknowledged or mitigated.

  There was a similar violation of paperback rights in Germany. All of Heinlein’s juveniles had gone to Gebruder Weiss Verlag as they came out in hardcover; Gebruder Weiss was interested only in the juveniles, so the sales and therefore the royalty statements sagged over the years. Blassingame had reported struggles with Gebruder Weiss for years, going back to 1960, but in 1973 Robert and Ginny discovered Gebruder Weiss had made secondary contracts with a paperback house—not allowed by their contracts. The royalties were split fifty-fifty between Gebruder Weiss and the paperback house—and Gebruder Weiss simply did not notify them of subsidiary contracts or report those royalties at all. Blassingame’s local agent found them a German law firm, and they instituted suit to get back royalties and declaratory reassignment of the rights back to them. It was to drag on for seven years.

  Robert was developing a new skin cancer and wanted it taken care of at the superficial stage. He was given a new drug in the form of a salve—“Efuxed, or 5, fuschian, uracil.” The treatment was no pleasure, since the salve stung going on and burned and itched while it was working—but it was a complete nonsurgical cure and didn’t even leave a scar.12

  In May 1973 Alexei Panshin wrote to Rita Bottoms, asking for access to the Heinlein Archive. Apparently he was getting ready to write more about Heinlein. Bottoms called Heinlein to discuss the matter on August 7, 1973.

  As it happened, Panshin was on Heinlein’s mind at the time. When Putnam’s had announced Time Enough for Love in Publisher’s Weekly in April, with no more information than the subject matter, size and price of the book, and the expected issue date, Panshin had written a recap of his view of Robert’s psychology and guesses at what “more of the same” they might find in the new book—all wildly off the mark. This article had just appeared in the most important fanzine then being published, Richard E. Geis’s The Alien Critic, no. 9.

  Panshin’s article was generating a lot of controversy already—which is, of course, meat and drink for the fanzines. Heinlein was professionally committed to ignoring such things:

  I was hurt when the fanzines started panning me—after years of praising my work. It took me quite a while to realize that it proved I was on the right track … those fanzines don’t even influence the organized fans enough to matter; I was awarded three of my four Hugos for “best novel” after the fanzines started panning me.13

  When you write an adult story, he had concluded, the fanzines will always pan it—and that is good news, not bad news, he continued:

  … even the organized fans who attend conventions and vote on Hugos are only a few thousand—while you are shooting for a market of millions … and I am only one of several writers who have proved that the general market will accept a well-written SF yarn quite as readily as any other type of fiction …14

  Heinlein’s feelings about Panshin made it difficult for him to be objective about the prospect of his coming to Santa Cruz. Ginny was alarmed and angry when she saw how disturbed Robert was over this. She got out her household miscellany and made Voodoo dolls of Panshin to stick pins in—to no apparent effect.15

  Although such archives are normally open to the public with only minimal qualifications, that is a matter of practice rather than of policy: Bottoms had a certain amount of latitude in this case and a professional policy of not placing obstacles in the way of donors. When Heinlein told her Panshin was persona non grata with them, she wrote Panshin a brief and succinct reply:
“I am sorry to inform you that the Robert Heinlein Archive is open by special permission and it is not being granted to you.”16

  Panshin naturally wrote back asking why permission was being denied him. This put Heinlein into an emotional tailspin, and he agonized over it for days. He even got out his copy of Heinlein in Dimension and read it. This was something, he decided finally, that he was not competent to decide: He drew up a long letter to Bottoms—eight pages—laying out his history with the Archive and his personal history with Panshin, and put the matter back in her hands.

  To his credit, he acknowledged, Panshin had not published any fact about him not already in the public record. But, he concluded:

  I do not like Mr. Panshin. I judge him to be neither a careful scholar nor a competent literary critic. I think he lacks judicial temperament and the proper scholarly coolness of approach. I know that he frequently misunderstands the clearest English I can write—then jumps to unfounded conjectures that he then treats as if they were proved conclusions.17

  He concluded if it were anyone but Panshin, he would have allowed the access without a second thought—but he couldn’t be emotionally objective in this case. He knew there was ample material to support the access: Panshin had a legitimate college degree and was both a published writer18 and a member of SFWA. Heinlein withdrew his objection to Panshin accessing the Archive.

  This does not change my opinion of Mr. Panshin as a man nor my opinion of his competence as a critic. But in fairness I must treat him in this professional matter exactly as I would treat a stranger having equivalent credentials.…

  I urge you to ignore my personal animus and to do exactly that which you judge to be professionally correct—as if it had not been possible to consult me … you will never hear any objection now or later from me or Mrs. Heinlein.19

  There were two “professionally correct” solutions: Accepting the gift bound the university morally as well as at law to abide by the donor’s understanding of the terms of the gift: Panshin should be forbidden access. Yet the function of the Archive is to be a public repository: Panshin’s access should be allowed. Bottoms reached a Solomonic decision: She wrote Panshin the next day, September 11, 1973, sending him Heinlein’s letter and permission—but now Panshin was reluctant to make the trip to California, and Bottoms would not, as a matter of policy, copy and mail out any of her collections. Later, a researcher named Paul Crawford came to Special Collections, to research some of Panshin’s questions.20

  Ginny was ready to move into the “reconstruction” stage of her oral surgeries in mid-October. Before she went under the knife again, Robert had something to take care of: A scaly patch on his chest developed into an actual lump during the Panshin hoo-raw. Sensitized to skin cancers, Robert went to his doctor to have it biopsied. While he was anesthetized, they decided to remove the entire tumor, just to be on the safe side. The biopsy came back negative—it was a benign growth21—and it gave him opportunity to write teasingly for a few months, until the amusement palled, to various female correspondents, asking whether in view of his recent bout with “breast cancer” he should consider joining women’s liberation or gay liberation. The sampling of opinion he collected thus lightly did not surprise him: theoretical agreement and aesthetic dislike of both. He agreed with one (female) correspondent: “I think I find Gay Lib distasteful for much the same reasons you find Fem Lib not to your taste: Each is raucous. Not that I am disdainful of either one; they are doing valiant fighting for personal freedom.”22 And to another, he wrote:

  Surely you know my views, as shown in Stranger in IWFNE and in TEFL: Anything at all between two or more freely consenting adults is good, and no damn business of government, of neighbors, of churches, or anyone else—but in the culture in which we live one has to be reasonably careful not to get slammed for some (utterly harmless) acts, and be especially careful not to harm the public reputations of others.23

  But the lingering scar from his biopsy was the final straw. When the dressings came off, he made a conscious decision that his “practicing nudist” days were over, at least for “public” purposes. His scars would either frighten the children and horses, or else be used as a horrible example.24 He allowed his and Ginny’s already long-unused memberships in various nudist associations to lapse, one by one.

  Vexations continued to accumulate. Copyright infringement was becoming an accelerating problem as his name and reputation grew outside of science-fiction publishing. Ignoring the new piracies created a presumption they could get away with more and more—and they did. He was doing the preparatory work for not less than five copyright infringement actions: “If I can work up just one cleancut one, I shall make the outcome quite public—as a warning. The money does not matter (I’ll show a net loss anyhow, through loss of working time)—but I must abate this nuisance.”25

  “I’m not anxious to make money on infringements,” he wrote to Walter Minton; “I just want to put one head on a spike at the city gates as a warning to others.”26

  Late in 1973, another egregious infringement hit the stands: A new science-fiction magazine was launched in large, glossy format, Vertex, the Magazine of Science Fiction. The first issue, dated April 1973, had an unauthorized reprint of Heinlein’s 1941 guest of honor speech at Denvention. The editors at Vertex had contacted him for an interview, but he declined.27 They contacted Forrest Ackerman on a consulting basis, and he gave them the transcription he had published (also unauthorized) in 1941.

  Heinlein was furious: He had intended the “Channel Markers” editorial in Analog (January 1974) to be his highly publicized comeback to the SF magazines. This upstart had spoiled the publicity Bova could make of it. Heinlein wrote the Vertex editor, who offered to assign the copyright to him. That was satisfactory to amend their part in the piracy. Heinlein agreed to make up for their embarrassment by giving them an unpublished story for their second issue. The logical candidate was the “Three Brave Men” story he had revised and retitled after Harlan Ellison rejected it for Dangerous Visions. It had subsequently been rejected by another raft of magazines, and Blassingame had retired it again. The matter closed, he never dealt with Vertex again. He wrote directly to Ackerman in unequivocal terms: “You will not use that property again nor permit, encourage, or sell any ‘right’ to reproduce it. I will take any violation to court.” He concluded, “Keep your hands off my property.”28

  Looking forward to the end of Ginny’s surgery, they booked a cruise to the South Sea Islands. Their travel schedule for next year was already starting to fill up: the forty-fifth reunion of his Naval Academy class would take place in May 1974, and he had already lined up two speaking engagements in New York. Ginny’s preparatory school, Packer, was having a reunion about the same time, and Robert wanted to see the institution that had put its mark on her.

  Normally Analog comes out around the twentieth of the month preceding its issue date, but they got the January 1974 issue, with the Forrestal Lecture, on the stands early. Heinlein began receiving mail on it as early as December 2—and Ben Bova forwarded a letter of comment written for the letters column of Analog, “Brass Tacks,” with a November 26 date, that called it “deeply moving.” The sentiment was echoed almost unanimously in Heinlein’s mail. Some said simply “Bravo!” or even just “thank you.” The second half of the speech appeared in the tabloid Human Events as “Politics of Patriotism.”29 Almost immediately there were requests to both Analog and Human Events for offprints, which neither magazine could provide. Versions of “Politics of Patriotism” eventually appeared in several magazines. A broad range of people liked the piece and wanted to give it wider distribution: In addition to the usual places, it appeared in a Star Trek magazine, Dimensions,30 a college paper enthusiastically titled Right On!,31 and Heinlein granted permission to a group that made up flyers titled “Jesus to the Communist World.”32 He also made an extremely condensed, eight-hundred-word version, for Family Week, a Sunday-supplement magazine of the Jefferson City (MO) News and Tribune
.33 One State Farm insurance agency wanted to use excerpts in their monthly circular to policyholders.34

  Over the next year, Heinlein was contacted by each of the service academies in turn, to reprint “The Pragmatics of Patriotism” (an alternative title Heinlein had provided) for their own use—by the Army’s Commandant of Cadets at West Point, by the Air Force Academy, and twice by the marines—the first time for reprint in the USMC Gazette; the second time to be printed in the service manual. At Admiral Mack’s suggestion, Heinlein gave it to Naval Affairs.

  Just before Christmas in 1973, Heinlein received a prospectus from Rowan Thomas, their friend and former lawyer in Colorado Springs. He had been investing in mines himself, as the price of gold and silver floated up again, and now he was putting together a mining limited partnership venture for Red Pine Mine in Montana. Robert looked over the prospectus—doubtless mindful of his disastrous experience with a Colorado silver mine in 193435—and was impressed by Thomas’s thoroughly practical plan.

  The paperback for Time Enough for Love was going to be released in January, about six months earlier than usual—and in an issue of one million copies.36 The extra income would probably push them into a higher tax bracket next year. They decided to take 5 percent of the mining investment as a hedge against inflation and as a tax shelter, as well.

  Heinlein had never bothered with tax-avoidance planning before, content to pay whatever the government said he owed them that year. But since 1970 they had gone from living from royalty statement to royalty statement to having a plutocrat’s income. The royalties from Stranger in a Strange Land continued high (though not at the peak they had achieved in 1970), and were no longer being eaten up by hospital stays and experimental periodontal work—and the “ripple effect” he had noted earlier, of people discovering Stranger and then seeking out his other books, had raised the level of royalties overall—just as Scribner finally allowed all his juveniles to go to the large paperback market. Time Enough for Love had earned as much in the first month of its release as each of his books had earned in total over sometimes decades. For the first time in his life “too much money” was not a mildly ironic joke.