They started out with three receptions to handle all the donors who RSVP’d. And they had to add a fourth before the convention, each catered by the hotel with finger sandwiches and punch.9 The expenses of these events made Ginny blanch. She was in charge of paying for things, and she was not allowed to say “we can’t afford that,” so she sometimes felt quite faint when the bills came in.10
The March trip was another working vacation—blood collection research in New Zealand and Australia. Just before they left to meet Mariposa in Honolulu, they got a pleasant, if frustrating, surprise: They would be at sea when Jack Williamson would be named the SFWA’s second Grand Master at the Nebula Awards banquet in 1976. Heinlein wrote a warm and funny congratulatory letter:
Two writers have influenced my writing most: H.G. Wells and Jack Williamson. But you influenced me more than Mr. Wells did.
(I hope not too many readers noticed how much I’ve leaned on you. You spotted it, of course. But you never talk.…)
I’m going to tell on myself just once. I took your immortal Giles Habibula, mixed him with your hero in Crucible of Power … [sic] and made another, after carefully filing off the serial numbers and giving it a new paint job. You invented the hero in spite of himself, the one with feet of clay, human and believable—and I knew a good thing when I saw it. The result? Lazarus Long.11
Mariposa ran two days behind schedule throughout the trip—which gave Heinlein more time for necessary study-prep. Blood-collection services in Australia and New Zealand were models the United States could use, and he had illuminating working discussions with the Secretary Organizer of the New Zealand Blood Transfer program in Dunedin.
The delay put them returning to Hawaii on Ginny’s birthday, and the route took them zigzagging across the International Date Line and back as midnight passed, so that Ginny got two sixtieth birthdays. They docked in Hawaii, made a little time to visit, and flew back home: The MidAmeriCon project wouldn’t wait—and the writing business was stacking up, too.
Ginny’s friend Ward Botsford of Caedmon Records had decided to offer spoken-voice disks and had set up Leonard Nimoy to read “The Green Hills of Earth” and “Gentlemen, Be Seated.” Heinlein wrote a set of liner notes that gave him a chance to get Tony the blind machinist before the public: “My lead character is obviously not Tony—but without knowing Tony I could not have written it.”12
And there was more travel: Ginny had been referred by Alan E. Nourse to a specialist in Seattle, to consult about the tinnitus she had picked up in Rio de Janeiro in 1969. She scheduled the doctor’s appointment in July, to coincide with the American premiere performance of Wagner’s complete Ring cycle. Robert felt topped off with Wagner. Instead, he wanted to go to Pasadena for the Mars landing. NASA was going to have live pictures of the landing.
This resulted in one of the few real conflicts of wills Robert and Ginny had over the years. Ginny wound up simply taking off for Seattle on her own on the thirteenth of July, Robert furious and not speaking to her. He left for Southern California on the sixteenth, staying with Larry and Marilyn (Fuzzy Pink) Niven in at their large home in Tarzana. Ginny joined him in Pasadena. They were both at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena the next night, which happened to be the seventh anniversary of the lunar landing—in the special lounge the NASA PR flacks had set up for VIPs. Jerry Pournelle had brought them even though there hadn’t been time to get the proper press credentials: Heinlein was so obviously appropriate for this event that Pournelle thought nothing of it. According to an informal poll Pournelle had conducted, somewhere between one-third and one-half of the working scientists on the Viking Project told him they had been recruited into their careers by reading Heinlein—particularly the juveniles. But just before the lander was to touch down, they were approached by the senior NASA official at the Von Kármán Center, who told them Heinlein could not stay there, but should instead go up to the cafeteria where large television monitors had been set up for the general public admissions.
Pournelle was furious, but Heinlein would not let him make a scene, saying simply, “You will not do that.” He took Pournelle by the arm, “and he essentially frog-marched me up the hill with him.”13
They were just getting settled in—a very good view of the proceedings—when network news camera crews from NBC and ABC appeared and gathered around, cameras trained on Heinlein. They had followed them from the Von Kármán Center in order to interview Heinlein for first actual touchdown on an alien planet, leaving all dignitaries behind, including the governor of California and James C. Fletcher, the NASA administrator, wondering why no one was covering the event.
The first pictures of Mars started coming in around dawn the next day.
This event gave Pournelle an opportunity to talk with Heinlein about another project he was becoming interested in—the new L5 Society. In the 1970s Gerard K. O’Neill’s space habitat concept—giant farmland stations in high Earth orbit—caught the imagination of some technically savvy young people, who had founded the L5 Society to put the ideas before the public. Getting the space message before the public was a subject Heinlein was always very interested in. Heinlein was on board with L5.
Ten days before MidAmeriCon, August 20, 1976, Robert’s brother Rex died in Palo Alto. He had endured emphysema for years and had been struggling to stay alive for Kathleen, one breath at a time, as she suffered through chemotherapy on her own, ultimately losing battle for survival against metastatic lymphoma—cancer.
All his life, Rex had been the one Heinlein had to measure himself against—in a sense, he could mark when he became a man when he no longer had to compare himself to Rex and could come to like and admire his brother as a person.
Robert took on the sad but cathartic task of writing Rex’s obituary. Rex was cremated at once, and his ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. The Anglo-Catholic church Rex and Kathleen attended in Palo Alto held his memorial service:
By the arrangements the priest had made, I read my brother’s favorite psalm, the 23rd. Got up to the lectern and found that the revised Book of Common Prayer used a version worded quite differently from that of the King James Version. So I pretended to read while in fact quoting the King James Version, that being the one that I knew my brother knew and certainly preferred. It went off all right … when I had been much fretted by the unavoidable duty of taking part in this—when highly emotional I tend to choke up and can’t talk … which I was, not from sorrow for my brother, as to him it was a victory and a release; his body was worn out and every moment was a pain-filled burden—no, I feel bereft; I shall no longer have his warm company and his wise counsel.14
MidAmeriCon was not what anybody expected. The committee’s efforts to discourage attendance worked too well: Instead of the seven thousand that had been projected, on-site attendance was closer to two thousand, and a good many of them were disenchanted with the committee. This did not seem to lessen the numbers Robert and Ginny had to deal with, however: Almost everybody wanted into the receptions. They both were quite frazzled by the time the convention opened.
This was a very different experience from his last appearance as a WorldCon guest of honor in 1961. This time, he seemed surrounded by a phalanx of committee people and rarely made contact of any sort with the convention attendees. Heinlein tried to keep a pleasant demeanor as they were whisked through back corridors and up and down service elevators, feeling isolated and sometimes a little disoriented, overworked and overcommitted. “The truth of the matter is,” Ginny wrote after it was over,
aside from the official events, Robert and I saw very little of the convention. Whenever Robert was in public he was busy signing books until his hand could practically no longer write. I did a lot of the inscriptions which people wanted and also some book-signing when I was asked. We did not go to any of the panels; there was always something else demanding our presence … Several days we got nothing to eat from breakfast until after midnight.15
Family commitments added to th
e pressure: Relatives he had, perhaps, not seen in years could not understand that he could not get away from the convention to have a reunion dinner and remember Rex with family. Robert and Ginny had invited Lurton Blassingame to spend the convention with them, and he was using one bedroom of the Truman Suite. They were not able to spend much time with him as it was.16 Heinlein’s brother Larry brought an entire suitcase full of his books to be autographed: It was either sign Larry’s books or write his guest of honor speech.17 He signed books for Larry; when the time came to give his guest of honor speech, he made up an impromptu speech using his accumulated repertoire of bits and anecdotes—and made it more interesting by using a gimmick of setting his watch’s timer at the start of the speech and then simply chopping off in the middle of a sentence when the time was up. The speech—indeed many of the events of the convention—were “cablecast” in the hotel’s in-house television network.18
The Community Blood Centers of Kansas City (whose Dr. Bayer was organizing the on-site blood collection at the convention) gave him an award plaque—as did the convention itself. Both he and Ginny were made honorary citizens of Texas, which was odd but pleasant. Heinlein was organizing three new groups at this convention: Science Fiction Blood Donors International, to take advantage of the worldwide attendance at WorldCons; The Future Donors of America and Canada (he had set this one up because some youngsters trying to donate had been brushed off when they should have been given deferral cards); and the SFWA Blood Club.
Making the arrangements for the special SFWA blood drive, he found the blood-donor proportions astonishingly high among his colleagues—fourteen times higher than the general public’s rate. Dr. Bayer assured him, higher than the rate even among doctors and nurses. Heinlein took special pains to acknowledge his colleagues at this convention. He had been warmed to find that not only was he mistaken about the general attitude of his colleagues to him, but the fraternal feeling in the SFWA in general was much more pronounced than he knew—or could reasonably have expected.
After one reception, he had a chance to chat briefly with Spider Robinson in a receiving line. Spider stammered that “The Man Who Traveled in Elephants” was his favorite story. Heinlein looked surprised and leaned in to whisper that it was his, too—and no one had ever told him that before.19
On the last day of the convention, they had a book signing; Ginny intercepted books before they got to him, and wrote out the inscriptions so that Robert could just sign—and spend additional seconds chatting with people. Ginny flew back to Santa Cruz, leaving Robert in Kansas City for a few days to complete the blood-banking discussions he had started with Dr. Bayer. He made it home on September 11.
Ginny’s wrists ached for days after they got back home, and she had to wear a wrist brace for weeks longer—but it was a wonderful experience, memories to be cherished and individuals met and to be cultivated. The blood drive was a terrific success; his pilot program worked out better, even, than he had expected.
Four days after he got back—September 15, 1976—Bam passed away. It was another “release,” and a final cadence of sorts for the Heinlein family. She had been almost completely senile for the last five years. Her lucid periods showed that she was living in her youth; nothing after 1899 (the year of her marriage to Rex Ivar) existed for her, and she did not recognize her own children, not even MJ, who took care of her daily needs. Bam’s body was shipped back to Kansas City; she wanted to be buried with Rex in the family plot. Robert and Ginny flew back to Kansas City for the burial.
Heinlein’s appearance at MidAmeriCon had opened a floodgate, and invitations gushed in. He subscribed to Andy Porter’s Algol for its reliable listing of science-fiction conventions, adding:
If this is of any interest to your readers, let me add that Mrs. Heinlein and I intend to attend as many SF and/or ST [Star Trek] conventions that hold blood drives as possible—i.e., subject to health, strength, and conflicting dates while continuing to average three months per year for writing fiction (that being the average time I have devoted to fiction for the past 39 years) and while continuing our on-site investigation of blood services abroad (one or more months each year). But those restrictions will still permit us to attend many conventions; we are already signed up for seven in ’77–’78, and each of us is in excellent health.20
They had set a policy to pay their own expenses, since they didn’t want to be beholden to whatever deals the local sponsoring organizations were embroiled in. In October alone they were scheduled for a trip to Alamogordo, New Mexico, for the dedication of the International Space Hall of Fame, then to San Francisco for a blood bank convention. In 1977 they were scheduled for a Star Trek convention in Seattle and then across country to Atlanta for an important joint Red Cross–Community Blood Centers meeting on “The Human Element in Blood Services,” specifically to discuss volunteerism in blood collection.
The blood bank conference in San Francisco was unusually productive for Heinlein. The blood professionals were struggling—floundering, really—with the volunteer donor concept. The regional director of the CCBC approached him to organize a Bay Area blood drive the following year, which he was delighted to undertake. Since Heinlein was a member of the American Association of Blood Banks—a “rival” blood banking organization—this was particularly welcomed as an example of cross-association cooperation.
He also took the opportunity to meet with David Gerrold and R. Faraday Nelson in their suite in the Hilton to set in motion the arrangements for the ongoing SFWA Blood Drive.
Local blood centers around the country had seen the rare blood article for the Compton Yearbook and were asking for offprints. The initial supply furnished by Britannica of one hundred offprints was soon exhausted, and they had to find a source of paper in order to fill those requests. But it was a high priority: That article was Robert’s professional entre into the field, until such time as his work with volunteer donors earned the respect of the Big Three. He had been working closely with the Council of Community Blood Centers, and he had a certain amount of credibility built up with them; the American Association of Blood Banks and especially the Red Cross were going to be tougher: So far, they were not part of the solution …
The American National Red Cross was in charge of administering this joint conference with the Council of Community Blood Centers coming up in Atlanta from January 31 to February 4, 1977. What happened at that conference would affect what Heinlein would be able to do in the real world. But their application form stated bluntly that the conference was open only to professional staff members of the ANRC and CCBC plus officially invited guests. That left him out entirely, since the blood organization to which he belonged (AABB) was not part of the conference.
It was utterly ridiculous—but also utterly typical of the profession’s failure to grapple with the realities—that the conference on “The Human Element in Blood Services” excluded “the human element” from their deliberations. Nevertheless, the Heinleins sent in their applications and prepaid the conference fees, including a special fee for a seminar scheduled early in the conference, on recruitment efforts.21
They did not receive even an acknowledgment of the application.
They left for a Star Trek convention in Seattle on Friday, January 28, 1977. The Red Cross had eventually come across with an official “invitation”—for Robert only, and only for the last two days of the conference, the CCBC meeting after all the Red Cross people had left.22 Enough was enough. They dropped it from their schedule, canceled plane and hotel reservations for Atlanta, and concentrated on having a good time at the science-fiction and Star Trek convention in Seattle. Instead of visiting Atlanta, Robert now intended to let Ginny go home directly from Seattle while he took a dogleg side trip to inspect their investment in a Montana gold mine. Heinlein was interested in typical arrangements for blood supply when they were snowed in. The mine was too high for Ginny, at nine thousand feet.23
Seattle was their fifth blood drive since MidAmeriCon, but Robe
rt found that working the blood drive didn’t seem to take as much out of him as plain convention work. The example of these young people put as much—more—into him as the drain on his energy. He stayed in the recovery room, signing books and chatting, while he took the opportunity to observe closely how the entire process, as administered by the local Red Cross, worked.
It was a disillusioning experience. The professionals were … well, professional—competent, detached … and completely unprepared for any of the “new” donors they were getting. While Heinlein gave autographs outside the phlebotomy room at the Seattle blood drive, he saw a young woman sit down and collapse in on herself in a faint—a clear case of syncope. Feeling faint and woozy is a well-known side effect of giving blood. Experienced donors knew this syncope was not serious, knew what to do about it—slow down, eat something, wait it out. But no one here seemed to know what to do. Heinlein got her stabilized and took her back to her room with the help of a convention gofer, gently explaining to her exactly what had happened to her, why it need not happen, why it was not dangerous but merely unpleasant, how to avoid it the next time she donated—blandly assuming that she would donate again.24
The Red Cross—the professionals—weren’t using even good sense in their setup, and the waste of human resources he saw offended him: The out-of-state medical people, who were not licensed to practice in the convention’s state, could help out with care and feeding of the new donors. “A first donation must be a happy experience,” he wrote, “or you have failed to create a repeat donor.”25 Worst waste of all, though, was the volunteer donors simply turned away. With his recent insights about the emotional importance of the opportunity to be of service, Heinlein realized that this would have a deadening effect on the entire process. Instead, they should be allowed to serve in whatever capacity they could. He explained his thinking to the coordinator for the SFWA Blood Club:
Robert A. Heinlein, In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2 Page 49
