References to characters from previous Heinlein stories are frequent and the effect is like a joyous old home week with the abundance of ideas combining as an intoxicating "sense of wonder" party. To many, Heinlein reached his peak in the October, 1941, issue of astounding science-fiction, which featured By His Bootstraps. Without question, this is one of the greatest time-travel paradox stories of all time. A man comes back from the future to meet himself, fights himself, while himself stands by and watches. The man from 30,000 years hence is sent back to obtain certain items for a resident of the future who also turns out to be himself. The effect is like examining a Moebius strip or a Klein bottle from the other side. Of course, the story is a trick, but it virtually takes mathematics to disprove it, and Heinlein doesn't forget in the process to tell a good tale which has touches of the magic of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine.
Heinlein had made his point. Nineteen months after the appearance of his first story in August, 1939, a nationwide poll of science fiction fans, published in the February, 1942, issue of fantasy fiction field, nominated Robert A. Hein-lein as the most popular author.
Nine months earlier, almost as if in rehearsal of the event, Heinlein had been guest of honor at the Third Annual World Science Fiction Convention in Denver, Colorado, over the July 4, 1941, weekend. He said then: "I think that science fiction, even the corniest of it, even the most outlandish of it, no matter how badly it's written, has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change." He appeared as guest of honor again at the 19th World Science Fiction Convention in 1961. A dyed-in-the-wool military man, Heinlein found a way to serve his country after Pearl Harbor. As a mechanical engi-neer he put in long hours on highly secret radar and antikamikaze work. When he entered the service, science fiction lost three major authors: Robert A. Heinlein and Anson MacDonald for astounding science-fiction and Lyle Monroe who was doing short novels for super science stories. Two other Heinlein alter-egos, Caleb Saunders and John Riv-erside, had a single story apiece published when the call came.
The most heralded "last" story of this first phase of Hein-lein's writing was Waldo, which appeared under the MacDon-ald name in astounding science-fiction for August, 1942. Depicted on the cover was a remote control device for manipulating objects, since built and utilized for handling radioactive materials in atomic energy plants and actually called "waldoes," in acknowledgment of the story in which they were conceived. This precise scientific prediction was one of a number in a wildly imaginative story with two precious characters: Waldo, a fat boy, born with a muscular weakness that made it possible for him to function properly only in the weightlessness of an orbiting earth satellite, who is forced to develop his abilities for survival and becomes a supreme mechanical genius; and Schneider, an ancient Amish-country hex doctor, who seems to be able to make metaphysics less "meta" and more "physics" under certain circumstances.
Waldo's struggle to gain normal muscular strength, utiliz-ing the philosophy of the old hex doctor, is told in first-rank style with the superb science leavened by a touch of near witchcraft. For almost a year after the end of World War II, nothing by Robert A. Heinlein appeared. Then, quite unexpectedly The Green Hills of Earth, a story in the Future History series, appeared in the Saturday evening post of February 8, 1947. It was followed the same year by Space Jockey, It's Great To Be Back, and The Black Pits of Luna. With the exception of It's Great To Be Back, a small masterpiece about the adjustment of long-term residents on the moon to the heavier gravitational pull of the earth, they were elemen-tary primer science fiction in polished prose.
Heinlein, one of the most original of science-fiction writ-ers, was now taking the most basic, near-to-the-present, space themes and proving that stylistically he was so adroit that he could write them for a general audience, the saturday evening post was simply the first of the general magazines in which he appeared. He made argosy with Water Is for Washing (November, 1947), in which an earthquake turns a portion of Southern California into an ocean, and again with Gentlemen, Be Seated (May, 1948), which involves the prac-tical use of a man's padded rear end to stop a leak in a lunar excavation until help arrives, town and country bought Ordeal in Space (May, 1948), telling how the rescue of a kitten from an apartment outside ledge helps overcome a spaceman's fear of falling; blue book took Delilah and the Space Rigger (December, 1949), which dealt with the prob-lem of a woman overcoming men's prejudice to help build a space station; the American legion magazine got The Long Watch, a story in which a moon-based member of the space patrol dies of radiation to prevent a military takeover of the earth, actually a variant of The Green Hills of Earth, in which the Blind Singer of the Spaceways, Rhysling, dies of radiation to save a spaceship from disaster.
In placing these stories, Heinlein broke down some of the barriers in the mass circulation magazines against the use of science fiction, the saturday evening post, which had used only a few such stories in the 520 issues they published between 1930 and 1940, notably, Mr. Murphy of New York, by Thomas McMorrow (March 22, 1930) and The Place of the Gods, by Stephen Vincent Benet (July 31, 1937), had a wide selection to choose from when they compiled an anthol-ogy of twenty such stories (all but one since Heinlein's appearance) in The Post Reader of Fantasy and Science Fiction (Doubleday, 1964). The pages—and the audiences—of collier's, esquire, playboy, as well as the post, became more receptive to science fiction.
Perhaps the most significant sale he made was a juvenile to Scribner's, Rocket Ship Galileo, concerning three boys and a scientist who discover a base on the moon, established by Nazis whose purpose is to reverse the decision of World War II with atomic weapons they have readied. Though written with more competence than most, as teen-age volumes go, the book was nothing much out of the ordinary, but elements of it were adapted by Heinlein (in collaboration with Alfred van Ronkel and James O'Hanlon) as a screen play. The story interested Hollywood Producer George Pal, who had re-ceived an Academy Award in 1944 for his specialty, the development of novel methods and techniques to attain un-usual screen effects. Obtaining backing for the project, Pal retained Heinlein as Technical Advisor and, to prepare the sets, hired Chesley Bonestell, an industrial and science-fiction artist who could render imaginary astronomical landscapes with such detail and scientific authenticity that they were nearly indistinguishable from color photographs.
Destination Moon, the Technicolor production, was re-leased in 1950 (a fiction version appeared in short stories, September, 1950) to awed reviews of its unparalleled sets and special effects. The critics were not quite as kind to the story line, feeling that too much dependence had been placed on the natural sensationalism of the subject matter. Never-theless, the release of the picture marked a movie milestone. A spate of above-average science-fiction motion pictures immediately followed, including two more by Pal from fa-mous science-fiction novels, Balmer and Wylie's When Worlds Collide (1951) and Wells' The War of the Worlds (1953), and Fox's production of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), based on Harry Bates' novelette Farewell to the Master (astounding science-fiction, October, 1940). Pal, who started the cycle, virtually killed it when he did an inferior job of fictionizing two factual books, The Conquest of Space by Willy Ley and Chesley Bonestell (for the title) and Mars Project by Wernher von Braun (for the subject mat-ter), to produce The Conquest of Space, an inferior "documentary" of the future. No one realized it at the time, but the science-fiction magazines had sent a missionary to the masses. Their top writer, Robert A. Heinlein, had begun a process of education of the general public to science fiction, beginning with the public's basic media of entertainment: mass-circulation slicks, the teen-age magazines (including serialization of his material in boy's life), and, most influential of all, the motion picture screen, with all its attendant high-powered publicity and promotion.
The in-group of the science-fiction world was proud of Heinlein's achievements in the name of their literature, but they found it difficult to hide their disa
ppointment that his success also meant an end to his pioneering taboo-breaking and mind-stimulating concepts, such as had marked " If This Goes On . . .," Universe, Methuselah's Children, By His Boot-straps, and Waldo. A resigned acceptance of Heinlein's new career began to become apparent in the ranks when his second juvenile, Space Cadet (1948), appeared. True, it was little more than a fictionalized approach to the training pro-gram of future spacemen, but there was such a wealth of fascinating science as well as a peek at a Venusian alien culture woven into the background that it seemed a bit more than "just a juvenile." Each year another Heinlein teen-age book appeared, and each year the fabric became richer and the writing more adult. Only the characters and the situations remained on an elementary level. The Red Planet (1949) dealt with the problems of colonists on Mars; Farmer in the Sky (1951) involved an overpopulated, underfed earth cultivating the barren soil of Ganymede; Between Planets (1951) offered the space adventures of a "boy without a country" when a rebellion by Venusians breaks out against the Federation; The Rolling Stones (1952) told of a lunar family that wanted to move further "out," toward the asteroids; Starman Jones (1953) took the action out of the solar system; The Star Beast (1954) was an
"alien pet" story; Tunnel in the Sky (1955) followed the training of a space "Robinson Crusoe"-to-order; Time for the Stars (1956) made a boy a key member of a project to discover new worlds to colonize; but buttress-ing those simple plots was an ingenious admixture of the elements of the everyday work, business, transportation, en-tertainment, and politics of the near and distant future so smoothly blended into the mix that reviewers cheered and serializations which started appropriately in boy's life (1950), Farmer in the Sky as Satellite Scout moved into bluebook (September and October, 1951), Between Planets as Planets in Combat and then into the "adult" science-fiction magazines when the magazine of fantasy and science fiction ran The Star Beast as The Star Lummox (May to July, 1954). The 1957 juvenile, Citizen of the Galaxy, appeared in as-tounding science-fiction as a four-part serial beginning in its September, 1957, number. When this tale of a sickly boy sold on the slave block of a planet in the far galaxy to a crippled beggar, who finally returns to earth to find himself heir to a mammoth interstellar commercial enterprise, won first place among the readers for each of its four install-ments, even Heinlein's book publishers, Scribner's, began to entertain doubts that he was still writing juveniles. Have Space Suit—Will Travel, his 1958 "teen-ager," ending with the burden placed on two children to convince a superior race that humanity must not be destroyed and should be permitted to follow its destiny, marked the last of the books published specifically for the juvenile market. When Starship Troopers was submitted, although it had an adolescent hero Scribner's refused to publish it, and a relationship termi-nated. How did Heinlein succeed in retaining his influence and leadership in science fiction during the 12 years between 1947 and 1959, when, despite the excellent qualities con-tained in his parade of juveniles, he actually was writing in a strait jacket?
He had, of course, contributed an occasional original yarn to the science-fiction magazines. Outstanding among them was Jerry Is a Man (thrilling wonder stories, October, 1947), in which an intelligent talking ape must be proved "human" in court to save his life; Gulf, a two-part novel beginning in astounding science-fiction in November, 1949, dealing with a post-World War III world where an underground society, The New Men, seeks to restore progress to the world; The Puppet Masters (galaxy science fiction, September to November, 1951), an extremely well-written thriller on the old theme of "possession," in this case a race of slugs from out of space, each of whom takes complete physical and mental control of a human being; Double Star (astounding science-fiction, February to April, 1956), tell-ing how an unemployed actor is required first to impersonate and then to become one of the most powerful men in the solar system (this won Heinlein a Hugo); and The Door Into Summer, (the magazine of fantasy and science fiction, October to December, 1956), in which money will buy you suspended animation in a deepfreeze and a new start in the future. This last novel, while it suffers from the Heinlein failing of a letdown at the end, has parts in which the prose style is of such engaging charm that "craftsmanship" becomes a totally inadequate term.
What actually sustained Heinlein's reputation was the rise of book publishing firms run by the science-fiction readers themselves, specializing only in science fiction and fantasy. This surge of free enterprise was made possible by the vacuum created when the major trade book publishers all but ignored science fiction. Even a Heinlein couldn't get his serious work into hardcovers first, though he had no trouble with juveniles. All this has something to do with library budgets and bookstore distribution, and the publishers' argu-ments are convincing, but the fact remains that the regular publishers felt that they were unable to make a profit in the science-fiction market, and demand for the books had to be satisfied by
"specialty houses."
Fantasy Press, a firm run out of Reading, Pennsylvania, put Beyond This Horizon into cloth in 1948 and followed with four shorter Heinlein works (Gulf, Elsewhen, Lost Leg-acy, and Jerry Is a Man as Jerry Was a Man) as Assign-ment in Eternity in 1953. Gnome Press issued Sixth Column in 1949, and most effective was Shasta Publishers, which began reprinting the Future History stories in a series of collec-tions: The Man Who Sold the Moon (1950), The Green Hills of Earth (1951), and Revolt in 2100
(1953).
All of these were widely reviewed as hard-cover books and were reprinted as paperbacks, in many editions right through to the present, spreading Heinlein's work to literally millions of readers. The complete range of Heinlein, from his earliest to his current work, was constantly kept in print. Beginning with Starship Troopers, Heinlein assumed the role of science fiction's maverick. The theories in that book and those in the books immediately to follow repelled many readers and inspired stormy controversy, but apparently did not keep them from reading Heinlein. The book that followed, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), was the major work of this phase, written, read, and reviewed as a serious book. The first half had been written years earlier and remained unfinished. Heinlein then picked it up, completed it (in a somewhat different style), and waited for response. Hopes of a critical success were dashed when the reviewer in the new york times excoriated the novel. The reaction and support of the in-group readers was the opposite. A philosophical work, in which a human being, born and raised on Mars, returns to earth to offer his pun-gent, outrageous, and shockingly original views on the sacred cows of our society, the early part of the novel was accepted pretty much as a story, but the latter portions, laden with sex and bizarre concepts of a different form of religion, left the readers shaking their heads, but still willing to vote it the best novel of the year.
It was now evident that though Heinlein would still come through periodically with a juvenile, such as Podkayne of Mars (1963), an engaging space adventure with a 16-year-old (earth reckoning) Martian girl as a protagonist, Heinlein otherwise was going to write what he wanted to in the manner in which he wanted to. Cases in point were Glory Road (1963), a departure from science fiction into fantasy and a spoof on a number of heroes and schools of escape fiction, and Farnham's Freehold (1964), a post-atomic-disaster story, with a difference, stressing the individual's obligation to society. A master hand, Heinlein was proving that he knew enough about the rules to break them and still get away with it. He had established a separate status for himself, above and beyond the aspirations of most new writers.
However, decades earlier, because of his popularity in the science-fiction field and his later surehanded success with a wider audience, Heinlein had become the most imitated figure in science fiction. Authors by the dozen copied his matter-of-fact style, with major emphasis on the turn of the phrase. They seemed unaware of the flavor and substance contained in the background of the stories, or they were unable or unwilling to duplicate it. Heinlein was casual, but his work did not lack a sense of wonder. He was merely more sophisticated about the manner
in which he introduced it. The readers were not cheated of the one thing that science fiction had to sell. What effectiveness would The Roads Must Roll have had without the carefully constructed picture of a society dependent on conveyors?
"Sense of wonder" was defined by Rollo May in his book Man's Search for Himself: "Wonder is the opposite of cyni-cism and boredom; it indicates that a person has a heightened aliveness, is interested, expectant, responsive. It is essentially an 'opening' attitude ... an awareness that there is more to life than one has yet fathomed, an experience of new vistas of life to be explored as well as new profundities to be plumbed."
The newcomers and the imitators trying to emulate Hein-lein misinterpreted style for substance, sliding their papier-mache characters down well-grooved situations past improvised props, with an overall effect as unreal as a puppet show. "The art that concealed art" looked easier than it was. There were a great many imitators and they crowded the pages of the magazines until one by one the magazines disappeared. Heinlein's legacy to his own field has therefore been a tragic one. Through no fault of his own, he played the role of a literary Pied Piper in the decline of science fiction that continued uninterrupted through the entire decade of the 1950's. One of his stories, published in 1941, in body and title was apropos. It was called Lost Legions; it told of a search for secreted powers, and it should have been dedicated to his imitators.
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