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

by William H. Patterson, Jr.

  A little time after her husband’s death, when Virginia Heinlein could move again, there were things that needed to be done. She called his sister, MJ, and the burying society. MJ and Andy Lermer were with her when they arrived to take the body away to be prepared and cremated. The death certificate was made out the next day.

  From those two telephone calls, a spontaneous information tree developed, of people whose lives Heinlein’s writing had touched calling others who shared their affection for him. Within an hour, hundreds of thousands of telephone calls were made, one person calling two or three others in a wave going in many directions, around the entire world, leaving in its wake grief more personal and more profound than the regard of a merely public figure—the kind of thing that had happened much more slowly in 1910, when Mark Twain passed away.

  Robert Heinlein’s books and stories had stirred people on an inexplicably personal level—because he had made it a policy to tell the disowned truths, things that people needed to have said, and repeated. The arrangements the Heinleins had made to preserve their privacy, to keep from being crushed by those who wanted only to be present in him, prevented them from truly grasping the magnitude of his personal influence, mediated through his fiction. Thousands of letters came to Mrs. Heinlein in the next few months—of people sharing what Heinlein had meant to them, of how he had influenced their career choices, of the comfort he had given them in personal darkness.

  And the oddest thing of all: They were the same letters they had received every day of their working lives, steeped now in grief. Water divided is water multiplied.

  Virginia Heinlein got through her personal grief and numbness by answering the thousands of letters of condolence that flooded in, as she had answered all the fan mail. In the end there was an entire filing cabinet drawerful of them, several thousand (which ultimately passed to the Robert A. Heinlein Archive at the University Library, UC Santa Cruz). On May 26 a Memorial Resolution was introduced in the California Assembly by Sam Farr. At Heinlein’s instructions, over three days Ginny burned two file drawers’ worth of his “experimental” writing in the small fireplace in Carmel, working in batches. She then began reading the forty-plus years of his accumulated correspondence, in preparation to compile and edit Grumbles from the Grave, which was issued the following year.

  The Heinleins’ tax advisor told her that long-term planning for the literary estate is not a high priority because typically current royalties dwindle to nothing by five years after a writer’s death. The cash value of the entire estate at that time was about $1 million. She set in motion the Butler Library Foundation Robert had wanted her to create, with a cash endowment plus transfer of some of the literary properties and, eventually, title to the Bonny Doon house so that its sales proceeds added to the Foundation’s endowment. These were the first acts of what became Virginia Heinlein’s private and personal effort to preserve and extend Heinlein’s legacy. In the midst of this first spate of legacy work, Mrs. Heinlein wrote a letter to her husband.

  June 29, 1988

  My beloved darling,

  Now it’s almost eight weeks that you’ve been gone. And I’ve been in a terrible emotional state all that time; sometimes it seems that I miss you so terribly, other times I wonder whether I’m not just feeling sorry for myself. Which one?

  This house misses your presence, but I seem to feel you guiding me … [sic] can that be true? Now you know the answer to the great mystery, but I don’t. Will you be waiting at the end of that tunnel, as you promised me, or is there just nothing out there? I remember vividly, when I landed in Denver, you were there at the foot of the stairway of the airplane. Did I cry then? Or did we both?

  And, when we were finally married, you cried all the way through the ceremony, and I cried at the end. Or was it the other way around?

  We weren’t separated very often after that, although you made a number of trips here and there and I made that one by myself to Seattle, and another to Phoenix.

  One of the things that troubles me is the way you lay in bed, dying (I know now—you told me, but I wouldn’t believe it) and I wondered and wondered what you were thinking about all those quiet hours. I didn’t ask, and you didn’t say. Were you reviewing your life, were you ever sorry that you married me? I wish I could be sure about that latter.

  Kathy [Petty?] told me several times how patient I was with you, and she said that I spoiled you. I don’t think I spoiled you, but perhaps I did. And Gale told me in a note that I had been a wonderful “nurse” to you, and that I gave you outstanding care. But I wonder whether there wasn’t something more I could have done?

  You know, I was always scared, despite the lots of money we had, that it would all go out and then what? I’d have spent it all on you, if it had been necessary, and I hope that you knew that.

  The past almost-two-years have been so very difficult, and I have been so tired that it has been hard to know what to do. I miss you dreadfully. You were what made life worth while. But we had those few months of moving back last summer when we found this house and left Bonny Doon forever. The time when you tried to get Jeane Kirkpatrick to run for President, and the times when you were packing up your study for moving. When we got rid of the years of stuff we had pack-ratted away, I don’t even know what left that house,[sic] I do know that you packed up lots of stuff in those plastic bags and got rid of it. But I found that you had saved my letters from so long ago, as I had saved yours. I’ve read them all over, and now I know that I loved you more when we parted, four weeks ago, than I did when we were so passionately in love (at least I think you were—I know I was!).

  But one thing I want to say to you is that I’m surprised, although perhaps I shouldn’t be, at the quantities of mail which keep coming in from people we loved, from some whose lives touched ours briefly, from others we never met. I have been, more or less steadily, at this computer trying to cope with that flood of mail. Four diskettes have already been filled with answers, and there are lots more still to go. It’s more mail than came in over Expanded Universe, and heaven knows, that was a man-killer.

  A couple of days ago I sent off a check to the Leukemia Society, for the usual amount, because I missed the drive while you were so sick. Via Lee Rodgers, in your memory.

  Problems have come up since you left, which I would have liked to discuss with you before I did anything about them.

  I sent off a number of keepsakes you cherished to members of the family. MJ has your watch—the last of the “little watch which Ticky gave me” series. And Clare has Gramp’s chess set, to pass along to Jim. I sent Lynnie and Doug that emerald shaped paperweight which we admired so much, and Jennifer has the little bird’s egg which was so beautifully decorated. William got the Apollo 11 things, and Ethan the B-1 airplane. Bill Bacchus and Mary have the Danish liqueur glasses you loved so well. And I sent Amy Baxter your “Curtsey to the Moon” vase as a reminder of our grandchild relationship. Kathleen wanted your sword, so I gave that to her. She will pass it along to one of the girls, I guess, along with her first husband’s sword. Perhaps someday, someone in the family will wear it again, proudly.

  And I am planning to set up a foundation for that Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein library in Butler. If it’s done that way, and it can get a tax exemption, all the money we’ve saved over the years will go to that foundation, without a cut for Uncle Sam, and possibly California. I think you would have liked that!

  A crew will be here one of these days to shred those papers you wanted destroyed. I know I promised to burn them but it just isn’t possible in the fireplace here, so they will be shredded and taken away. The company which will do it, will do it here on the premises, so I will know that they’re gone.

  And I’m going to get the study whipped into shape—with all your awards displayed properly. Oscar did the obituary for Shipmate in proper form; I sent him a list of your awards, and he was very impressed with them. Somewhere in the masses of paper on my desk there’s a letter from him about that. And
get some pictures hung here and there. For some reason, you didn’t seem to particularly like the Nichelle Nichols portrait, so I won’t hang that. And get this place fixed up—the counters for the kitchen and study bath are ordered, and should be here soon. The kitchen ones are the yellow we planned, and the bath will be blue. And I’ll get that floor and unfinished area around the bidet fixed up again. I told you that the pink curtains had been taken down, and some simple blue ones put in their place.

  It seems to me that that takes care of all the requests you made. The funeral arrangements weren’t turned into a circus—you were cremated and the ashes were strewn at sea, with military honors. Mostly, the obituaries have been kind to you, although several (which were take[n] from wire services mostly) had a number of items which weren’t exactly facts. But the obits have come in from all around the world, and you know how newspaper people are.

  I hid out, aided by the Coroner’s office here, and Charles Brown. When they couldn’t find me, they went to almost everyone associated with science fiction to get quotes. Isaac spouted off in his usual fashion, and so did several others.

  How I miss you! You were the one fixed thing in my universe for over forty years. I never really appreciated how many, many people were affected by your ideas; now they’re writing me, and telling me that it was your standards of honor and other virtues which affected so strongly their lives and their choices of careers and so on. Darling, I didn’t realize it, but I did stop telling you to “sugar coat” those lessons you were giving them in the juvenile series. I do wish that you could read those letters, but perhaps you know? I certainly hope so.

  This is my usual disorganized way of thinking. I’m sorry for any troubles I caused you, but I never, never, NEVER stopped loving you above all else at any time. You were my star, and still are, and I only hope that I will be able to meet you at that end of the tunnel we spoke about, only once, as I recall. Maybe you will be waiting for me there, as you were when I first landed in Denver, that time so long ago.

  I’m lost without you. It’s only answering all those letters that has kept my sanity for the past four weeks. Keeping busy, through my tears, has been the only thing that has kept me going. Pixel misses you too. He won’t go into your bedroom—hasn’t since you left, although he sometimes sleeps on my feet, rather inconveniently.

  There are any number of small encounters which people tell me about that I hadn’t realized had taken place. I must have been present on those occasions, but busy with other things. I know you haven’t been up to it for a long time, but how much I’d give to work along with you on one of those blood drives again!

  And our travels. Maybe I will do some travel again someday. But not now—I can’t face being a widow on a cruise now—at least not for some time. But, if I ever do again, know that I will be looking at things with your eyes, for you.1

  NASA arranged that October to make a posthumous presentation to Heinlein of its Distinguished Public Service medal in a ceremony at the National Air and Space Museum on Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C. Dr. Yoji Kondo arranged a series of spoken memoirs by friends and colleagues.2 For the occasion, Ginny read a transcription she had made of the “This I Believe.”3

  Soon thereafter (October 21, 1988—the Heinleins’ fortieth wedding anniversary), the long process of the biography began with taped interviews made in the Carmel house with Leon Stover. Mary Jean and Andrew Lermer were also present for this occasion. In November 1988, Stover was granted special access to most of the sealed archival material at the Robert A. Heinlein Archive, Special Collections and Archives of the University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz. Over the next year, Stover undertook extensive research, both in the Archive and by personally interviewing (and in some cases establishing relationships with) many of Heinlein’s surviving friends, including particularly Cal Laning.

  A year later, increasingly concerned at the amount of rumor Stover was soliciting and not fact-checking with her, on November 19, 1989, Mrs. Heinlein revoked Stover’s access to the sealed portions of the Archive, as well as permission to write an authorized biography.4

  In rapid succession, Mrs. Heinlein arranged for publication of restored editions of three of Heinlein’s books that had been mangled in original publication: Stranger in a Strange Land (Ace/Putnam, 1990), which Heinlein had cut in 1961 from 220,000 words to 160,000 for no reason other than that an editor at the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club believed no one would read a 220,000-word book; Red Planet (Del Rey, 1990), which had been bowdlerized in 1949–50, particularly as to teenagers in a frontier setting using guns, at his Scribner editor’s insistence; and The Puppet Masters (Del Rey, 1990), cut in 1950–51 from 100,000 words to 75,000 words for book publication by Doubleday, probably to weaken and constrain some of the book’s horror elements.5 These three restored books were issued in direct competition with the original as-published versions, as at that time, the entirety of Heinlein’s work was in print with the temporary exception of the collection The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, which would soon be reissued. Quite remarkably, twenty-plus years later, all of Heinlein’s works are still in print, and the restored editions (plus others issued later) compete successfully in the market with the original publications.

  By 1990, Mrs. Heinlein’s vision had deteriorated significantly. She was diagnosed with macular degeneration and a hole in her retina. The following year, Mrs. Heinlein gave up driving and moved from Carmel to Fleet Landing, a mixed-use retirement community for Naval personnel near Jacksonville, Florida. She continued to work on various legacy projects, endowing a Chair of Aerospace Studies at Heinlein’s alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy. The search for the first occupant of the chair was to take eight years; it was inaugurated in 2001 by Dr. Vincent Pisacane. Dr. Pisacane was succeeded in 2012 by Captain Kenneth S. Reightler, Jr. She also changed her will to realize a project she and Robert had discussed in the past: On her death the proceeds of all the remaining intellectual property of the estate would go to fund a Prize Trust for commercial space development—the Heinlein Prize Trust—a substantial cash prize inspired by and comparable to the Orteig Prize that motivated Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

  Other of Mrs. Heinlein’s legacy projects, brought to fruition in spite of her vision problems, resulted in the eventual publication of a significant amount of Heinlein’s unsold file material, including the 1946 How to Be a Politician, published for the H. Ross Perot Presidential campaign as Take Back Your Government! (Baen, 1991)6 and the 1954 travel book, Tramp Royale (Ace Books, 1992). She also informally assisted Dr. Yoji Kondo in assembling the book that became Requiem: New Collected Works by Robert A. Heinlein and Tributes to the Grand Master (Tor, 1992).

  Having accomplished all of the major last wishes Robert left her with, Mrs. Heinlein regarded her memorial work as largely accomplished by 1992.

  * * *

  Robert and Virginia Heinlein had a very ambivalent attitude toward the commentary and scholarship about his work that came out during his lifetime, particularly starting with the contemporary comments about Starship Troopers published in the bombastically named fanzine for Heinlein’s colleague science-fiction writers and editors, Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-first Century Studies (Advent: Publishers, 1992). Alexei Panshin’s commentary on the book, in particular, exasperated him, and as Heinlein in Dimension became embedded in the emerging scholarly commentary (science-fiction criticism accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s), his exasperation extended to the academic community in general:

  I find Panshin’s opinions about that book [Starship Troopers], and about the books that followed it, repeated again and again in “scholarly” discussions of my works.

  It annoys me but I have found it useless to try to refute it—so useless that I have come to suspect that many and possibly most professors of English can’t read English.7

  Heinlein’s opinion of the academic community’s view of his body of work was somewhat justified: The sch
olarly work that existed by the time of his death was of generally dismal quality—“scholarship so faulty,” one later commentator expressed it, “as to fail high-school Lit standards, much less those of any higher body.”8 Publication of Leon Stover’s Heinlein book for the Twayne U.S. Author Series in 1987, despite its flaws, marked a genuine turning point in Heinlein scholarship, followed in 1993 by the doctoral dissertation of Marie Guthrie-Ormes, Robert A. Heinlein: A Bibliographical Research Guide to Heinlein’s Complete Works and in 1996 by the doctoral dissertation of Philip Homer Owenby, Robert A. Heinlein: Popular Educator and Philosopher of Education, which had an extensive appendix analyzing and identifying much of Heinlein’s philosophical underpinnings as deriving from the American Pragmatists. In 1997 The Heinlein Journal began publication to offer a venue for the new scholarship. In that same year the Heinlein Society was founded. Mrs. Heinlein began experimentally appearing in online group chatrooms in 1998, signaling that a genuine Heinlein community had begun to emerge online, and she assisted also with the early formation work of the Heinlein Society.

  This trendline came to fruition in 2000 with the publication of Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader’s Companion by James D. Gifford, which sought to establish an objective factual basis from which further academic and scholarly work could proceed. Other scholarly and academic works continue to emerge, many taking the work products of the new Heinlein scholarship into account.

  The value of Heinlein’s literary estate rose dramatically during the 1990s, as a result of Mrs. Heinlein’s careful management. The Copyright Act of 1995 made it possible for her to terminate contracts and re-place them where they would generate increased income. The surplus she allowed to accumulate, to fund the Heinlein Prize Trust after her death. Late in 1994, a more-or-less faithful film of The Puppet Masters was released, starring Donald Sutherland, Eric Thal, and Julie Warner. Film options on Stranger in a Strange Land (Paramount) and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Dreamworks SKG) were negotiated in 1995 and on Orphans of the Sky and The Star Beast (Disney) in 1996. Sony brought out a puzzlingly unfaithful production of Starship Troopers in 1997, directed by Paul Verhoeven.