Robert A. Heinlein: A real-life Forrest Gump

Tor Blogs ^ | August 11, 2010 | MITCH WAGNER

[narses]

William Patterson’s big Heinlein biography isn’t just the life story of one man. It’s a history of United States in the first half of the 20th century. Not a complete history, but in some ways it’s better than complete, because it’s more intimate. Heinlein was like a real-life Forrest Gump, in the middle of many of the trends that shaped America.

Heinlein was born in Kansas, in 1907, the heart of Middle America.

He was a cadet at Annapolis during the years between the great wars. His classmates believed ruefully that they’d be the first academy class that would never see combat. Of course, World War II belied those beliefs. Heinlein’s military experience put him in the middle of the American rise to world power.

Tuberculosis put an end to his naval career, which plunged Heinlein into the middle of the Great Depression. Until Heinlein’s Navy discharge, he was a civil servant who didn’t have to worry about where his next paycheck was coming from. But after the war, he and then-wife Leslyn were on their own with only his small medical pension. Heinlein had to learn to support himself. This wasn’t the first time he was on his own financially—his family growing up was huge, his parents were distant, and they were always broke. Heinlein took a variety of jobs during his adolescence, including work as a math tutor, artist’s model, insurance salesman, and professional soft-shoe or tap dancer in a roadhouse.

Heinlein worked on the 1934 California gubernatorial campaign of socialist Upton Sinclair, whose End Poverty In California (EPIC) party sought drastic remedies to the Great Depression. Later, Heinlein ran for state office himself. This put him in the middle of big-state and even national politics.

Heinlein didn’t serve during World War II because of his health, but he worked at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, recruiting Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, and others to build military technology. His co-workers included a young Naval officer named Virginia Gerstenfield, whom he would later marry, spending the last 40 years of his life as her husband. In Philadelphia, Heinlein was in the middle of the war at home.

And of course as the top science fiction writer of his lifetime, Heinlein was in the middle of the growth of that genre, from crazy Buck Rogers stuff for kids and nerds to mainstream pop culture, dominating the Hollywood box office and book bestseller lists.

Patterson’s biography, Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1 (1907-1948): Learning Curve covers that period of his life. It looks pretty intimidating at first—it’s a massive brick of a book and it doesn’t even cover Heinlein’s whole life, just the first half of it—but it’s a fascinating read, not just for Heinlein fans, or science fiction fans, but for anyone curious about life in this great country during a turbulent half-century.

Heinlein didn’t just get himself in the middle of history. He also had a knack for getting into the middle of unlikely situations. If you think you’ve got him pegged as a political conservative and ex-military man, think again.

On the one hand, Heinlein was a hard-headed scientific rationalist. One of my favorite Heinlein quotes:

What are the facts? Again and again and again—what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history”—what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your only clue. Get the facts!

But he was also sympathetic to occult beliefs. His second wife, Leslyn, his partner during his political and early science fiction careers, was a practicing witch, and he believed in life after death. He made a pact with several friends that whichever of them died first would get in touch with the others from beyond.

Heinlein not only espoused free love, but he also practiced it from very early on. Both of his first marriages were open marriages, decades before the free love generation of the 60s.

One of my favorite—and weirdest—passages in Patterson’s biography comes after Heinlein has graduated Annapolis, but before he accepts his military commission on the U.S.S. Lexington. The Lexington was only the second aircraft carrier commissioned and was the biggest ship afloat, with a crew of 3,000 and the most advanced technology available in 1929, including primitive ballistic computers.

There are many things you might imagine a young Navy officer doing in the time between graduation and his first commission. One thing you wouldn’t imagine is what Heinlein actually did: He took an apartment in New York’s Greenwich Village for 11 weeks, immersing himself in the bohemian culture there, sculpting and painting nude women models, playing at sex, becoming an enthusiastic Socialist, and experimenting with mental telepathy.

Then he returned to the Navy. Heinlein apparently saw no contradiction between those lives.

Heinlein was a fascinating individual, and he’s been one of my heroes all my life. I’m glad I had a chance to get to know him better through Patterson’s biography.

Robert A. Heinlein portrait by Donato Giancola

Mitch Wagner is a fan, freelance technology journalist and social media strategist, who blogs about technology on the Computerworld Tool Talk Blog. Follow him on Twitter: @MitchWagner. He’s looking for a publisher for his first science fiction novel, and hard at work on his second.

[SevenofNine]

I think safe to say you could find anything on Amazon.com Bender

[bert]

I do not have a closed mind. Your preaching is offensive to me

[Bender2]

My apology, I should have seen there were many, many repeats on the webpage before I posted it—

[Bender2]

Re: Incest was a continuing theme for LL (RAH alter-ego). Recommend you do as I have done and leave this author 30-years in the past. Heinlein is a good historical study and this book would probably interest me. But I’d stay away from Heinlein’s kind of thinking as long and as far as possible. Just a suggestion.

Gadzooks... bert, let RAH solve this with the following quote of his: The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: “Of course it is none of my business, but —” is to place a period after the word “but.” Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.

BTW I was not and have not been comfortable with RAH's use of incest in his Lazarus Long books following Methuselah's Children, but in the fictional world he conjures up, it makes a kind of sense for his characters.

[VermiciousKnid]

LOL Bendy. Nope, he didn’t mention the snow cone. Had he asked me, though, I would have fetched him one lickety-split!

That sweet little girl grew up to be...well...Mom. A mom who can, in fact, shoot pretty well, but I haven’t had cause to use my ability in an action-packed situation in a really long time. (I DID have to use it once, though, about 25 years ago. The same action with the same weapon today would make me a felon here in NY.)

<3
VK

PS: Look at those Spock bangs, willya? I must have done that to myself. At least they were straight...

[GOPJ]

Cool - I knew there was a reason I liked Heinlein - read all his stuff when I was a kid...

[Bender2]

Re; Look at those Spock bangs... willya? I must have done that to myself. At least they were straight...

I find your bangs... fascinating--

Gadzooks, Spock! Stop horning in... on my flirting!

[Sherman Logan]

Heinlein was a huge influence on me. Probably behind only Tolkien.

But I figured out a long time ago that RAH had some really odd places in his mind where I didn’t care to follow.

Luckily the best of his writing is only lightly tainted. He didn’t really get weird till his last years, and those works aren’t all that good anyway.

His best works, like Starship Troopers and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, are truly profound. Much more than just stories.

[Ransomed]

Here’s something I found a while ago, a list from a 1968 Galaxy mag of sci-fi authors for and against the Vietnam war. You might have to zoom to read it properly. I would take the pro authors over the antis on this one as far as which side I would want to read. Heinlein is pro, by the way.

http://www.natsmusic.net/articles_galaxy_magazine_viet_nam_war.htm

Freegards, thanks for all the pings on FR

[Bender2]

Re: Sherman Logan comment "But I figured out a long time ago that RAH had some really odd places in his mind where I didn’t care to follow."

Forgive, my boy, Bend... I couldn't get him to do the normal sniffing greeting either--

Forgive me, Sherman... I just couldn't help myself!

[GOPsterinMA]

“Lena Dunham”

I refuse to call that a woman or female.
Fugly shemale, maybe.

[DNME]

The cited Heinlein quote — “What are the facts? ...” — is from his book “Time Enough for Love.” The central figure in the story is a man who ... um ... never got around to dying, and lived a ridiculously long life, name of Lazarus Long.

Two chapters in the book are titled “Intermission, Excerpts from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long” and are collections of sayings. Some of the quotes are favorites of mine. (I don’t have the book in front of me, so my apologies for minor wording glitches.) To wit:

“Get off your first shot quick. This upsets him long enough to make your second shot perfect.”

“Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind. It may offer you a way to make him your friend, and if not you can kill him without hate, and quickly.”

“Always place clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.”

“Rub her feet.”

And many, many more.

[narses]

Nice find, thanks!

[Bender2]

From http://www.natsmusic.net/articles_galaxy_magazine_viet_nam_war.htm

...

[DNME]

Sorry ... can’t stop.

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.”

“Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”

“People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.”

[Resettozero]

Thanks for taking the time to respond to me. Preaching? Not really. Offensive? Obviously. Please try to keep an open mind about these kinds of posts, though, since this is a conservatives-oriented website.

[Resettozero]

Heinlein was a huge influence on me. Probably behind only Tolkien.

Me too. In those days, I would rather read a Heinlein book that eat. In front of Heinlein, for me, was E. R. Eddison with P. D. Ouspensky also. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis came behind.

It took many decades and the Grace of God to get my mind free from all the stuff I read in my late teens and throughout my twenties. Words have power.

[narses]

My experience mirrors yours.

[Billthedrill]

RH started out a little to the left of Left - quite a few bright people did in the Depression because there was a sense that somebody had to do something and that pretty much any change would be for the better. What saved him and his subsequent literature was the realization that there is little home for individualism on the Left despite its earnest protests to the contrary.

Nevertheless, he was certainly not a conventional thinker. To typify him as conservative is to ignore some pretty wild deviations from orthodoxy; to call him liberal would likely have garnered you a punch in the nose. Nor was his apparent political outlook consistent over his career.

What I find admirable that is consistent over his literary arc is a fierce belief in the individual, in liberty, and in the the creativity and beauty of the human being freed from governmental constraint. That does occasionally lead in some rather startling directions. He would tell you to accept or reject them as you please - that it's up to you, not some authority figure. I'm good with that.

His wife published the posthumous Grumbles From The Grave which is a rather interesting last word. In it is the original ending of Podkayne Of Mars which, had the publishers allowed it, would have vaulted that novel from its cheery juvenile ending into something much darker and, I think, better. Highly recommended.