Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7 1907 – May 8 1988) was an American novelist and science fiction writer. Often called "the dean of science fiction writers," he is one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of the genre. He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was one of the first writers to break into mainstream, general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, in the late 1940s, with unvarnished science fiction. He was among the first authors of bestselling, novel-length science fiction in the modern, mass-market era. For many years, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.
Easton Press Robert Heinlein books
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag - Masterpieces of Fantasy - 1997
Starship Troopers - Masterpieces of Science Fiction - 2008
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - 4 volume Dark Side of The Moon set - 2018
Within the framework of his science fiction stories, Heinlein repeatedly integrated recognizable social themes: The importance of individual liberty and self-reliance, the obligation individuals owe to their societies, the influence of organized religion on culture and government, and the tendency of society to repress non-conformist thought. He also examined the relationship between physical and emotional love, explored various unorthodox family structures, and speculated on the influence of space travel on human cultural practices. His iconoclastic approach to these themes led to wildly divergent perceptions of his works and attempts to place mutually contradictory labels on his work. For example, his 1959 novel Starship Troopers was regarded by some as advocating militarism and to some extent fascism, although many passages in the book disparage the inflexibility and stupidity of a purely militaristic mindset. By contrast, his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land put him in the unexpected role of a pied piper of the sexual revolution, and of the counterculture, and through this book he was credited with popularizing the notion of polyamory.
Heinlein won Hugo Awards for four of his novels, in addition, fifty years after publication, three of his works were awarded "Retro Hugos" — awards given retrospectively for years in which Hugo Awards had not been awarded. He also won the first Grand Master Award given by the Science Fiction Writers of America for his lifetime achievement. In his fiction, Heinlein coined words that have become part of the English language, including "grok" and "waldo," and popularized the terms "TANSTAAFL" and "Share Water."
Writer Robert A. Heinlein
Heinlein (pronounced Hine-line) was born on July 7, 1907, to Rex Ivar and Bam Lyle Heinlein, in Butler, Missouri. His childhood was spent in Kansas City, Missouri. The outlook and values of this time and place (in his own words, "The Bible Belt") had a definite influence on his fiction, especially his later works, as experiences from his childhood were heavily drawn upon both for setting and for cultural atmosphere in Time Enough for Love and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, among others. However, he would later break with many of its values and mores — especially those concerning morality as it applies to issues such as religion and sexuality — both in his writing and in his personal life.The military was the second great influence on Heinlein; throughout his life, he strongly believed in loyalty, leadership, and other ideals associated with the military. Heinlein graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1929, and served as an officer in the United States Navy. He served on the new aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2) in 1931. During that time, Heinlein worked on radio communications, then in its nascent phase, with the carrier's airplanes. The Captain of the warship was Ernest J. King who was later to serve as the Chief of Naval Operations during the Second World War. Heinlein was frequently interviewed during his later years by military historians on Captain King and his services as the commander of the U. S. Navy's first modern aircraft carrier. Heinlein also served aboard the destroyer USS Roper (DD-147) in 1933–1934, reaching the rank of Lieutenant.
In 1929, he married Eleanor Curry of Kansas City in Los Angeles, Calif. but this marriage lasted only about a year. He soon married his second wife, Leslyn Macdonald, in 1932. Leslyn was a political radical, and Isaac Asimov recalled that Heinlein later told him that during these years, he was, like her, "a flaming liberal."
In 1934, Heinlein was discharged from the Navy due to pulmonary tuberculosis. During a lengthy hospitalization, he developed the concept of the waterbed, and his detailed descriptions of it in three of his books constituted sufficient prior art to prevent a US patent on water beds when they became common in the 1960s.
After his discharge, Heinlein attended a few weeks of graduate classes in mathematics and physics in the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), but he soon quit either because of his health or from a desire to enter politics.
Heinlein supported himself at several occupations, including real estate sales and silver mining, but for some years found money in short supply. Heinlein was active in Upton Sinclair's socialist End Poverty in California movement in the early 1930s. When Sinclair gained the Democratic nomination for Governor of California in 1934, Heinlein worked actively in the campaign. Heinlein himself ran for the California State Assembly in 1938, but he was unsuccessful. In later years, Heinlein kept his socialist past secret, writing about his political experiences coyly, and usually under the veil of fictionalization. In 1954, he wrote, "...many Americans ... were asserting loudly that McCarthy had created a 'reign of terror.' Are you terrified? I am not, and I have in my background much political activity well to the left of Senator McCarthy's position."
While not destitute after the campaign — he had a small disability pension from the Navy — Heinlein turned to writing in order to pay off his mortgage and in 1939, his first published story, Life-Line, was printed in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine. He was quickly acknowledged as a leader of the new movement toward "social" science fiction. He was the guest of honor at Denvention, the 1941 Worldcon, held in Denver. During World War II, he did aeronautical engineering for the U.S. Navy, also recruiting Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp to work at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Pennsylvania.
As the war wound down in 1945, Heinlein began re-evaluating his career. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with the outbreak of the Cold War, galvanized him to write nonfiction on political topics. In addition, he wanted to break into better-paying markets. He published four influential short stories for The Saturday Evening Post magazine, leading off, in February 1947, with The Green Hills of Earth. That made him the first science fiction writer to break out of the "pulp ghetto." In 1950, the movie Destination Moon — the documentary-like film for which he had written the story and scenario, co-written the script, and invented many of the effects — won an Academy Award for special effects. Also, he embarked on a series of juvenile S.F. novels for the Charles Scribner's Sons publishing company that was to last through the 1950s (at the rate of one book per year).
Heinlein and his second wife divorced in 1947, and the following year he married Virginia "Ginny" Gerstenfeld, to whom he would remain married until his death forty years later.
Shortly thereafter, the Heinlein couple moved to Colorado, but in 1965 her health was affected by the altitude. They moved to Santa Cruz, California while constructing a new residence in the adjacent Bonny Doon, California.
(The unique circular California house, which, like their Colorado house, he designed with Virginia, and built himself, can be seen on Google Maps for "6000 Bonny Doon Road, Santa Cruz, California", on the east side of Bonny Doon Road just south of where Shake Mill Road dead-ends into Bonny Doon Road from the west.)
Ginny undoubtedly served as a model for many of his intelligent, fiercely independent female characters. In 1953–1954, the Heinleins voyaged around the world (mostly via ocean liner and cargo liner), which Heinlein described in Tramp Royale, and which also provided background material for science fiction novels set aboard spaceships on long voyages, such as Podkayne of Mars and Farmer in the Sky. Ginny acted as the first reader of his manuscripts, and she was reputed to be a better engineer than Heinlein himself.
Isaac Asimov believed that Heinlein made a drastic swing to the right politically at the same time he married Ginny. The couple formed the small "Patrick Henry League" in 1958, and they worked in the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign, and Tramp Royale contains two lengthy apologias for the McCarthy hearings. Yet during this period Heinlein wrote Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), which is generally considered to advance very liberal themes, and was occasionally called "the unofficial bible of the hippie movement" in the late 1960s.
The Heinlein juveniles, S.F. novels for young adults, are also considered to be an important part of his output. He had used topical materials throughout his series, but in 1959, his Starship Troopers was considered by the Scribner's editorial staff to be too controversial for their prestige line, and they rejected it; Heinlein found another publisher, feeling himself released from the constraints of writing novels for children, and he began to write "my own stuff, my own way," and he wrote a series of challenging books that redrew the boundaries of science fiction, including his best-known work, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), and also The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966).
Beginning in 1970, however, Heinlein had a series of health crises, broken by strenuous periods of activity in his hobby of stonemasonry. (In a private correspondence, he referred to that as his "usual and favorite occupation between books.") The decade began with a life-threatening attack of peritonitis, recovery from which required more than two years. As soon as he was well enough to write again, he began work on Time Enough for Love (1973), which introduced many of the themes found in his later fiction.
In the mid-1970s, Heinlein wrote two articles for the Britannica Compton Yearbook. He and Ginny crisscrossed the country helping to reorganize blood donation in the United States, and he was the guest of honor at the worldcon for the third time at MidAmeriCon in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1976. While vacationing in Tahiti in early 1978, he suffered a transient ischemic attack. Over the next few months, he became more and more exhausted, and his health again began to decline. The problem was determined to be a blocked carotid artery, and then he had one of the earliest known carotid bypass operations to correct it. Heinlein and Virginia had been smokers and smoking appears often in his fiction, as well as fictitious strikable self-lighting cigarettes.
Death
Asked to appear before a Joint Committee of the U.S. House and Senate that year, he testified on his belief that spin-offs from space technology were benefiting the infirm and the elderly. His surgical treatment re-energized Heinlein, and he wrote five novels from 1980 until he died in his sleep from emphysema and heart failure on May 8, 1988.At that time, he had been putting together the early notes for another World as Myth novel. Several of his other works have been published posthumously.
After his death, his wife Virginia Heinlein issued a compilation of Heinlein's correspondence and notes into a somewhat autobiographical examination of his career, published in 1989 under the title Grumbles from the Grave. Heinlein's archive is housed by the Special Collections department of McHenry Library at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The collection includes manuscript drafts, correspondence, photographs and artifacts. A substantial portion of the archive has been digitized and is available online through the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Archives.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein's
all-time masterpiece, the brilliant novel that grew from a cult
favorite to a bestseller to a classic in a few short years. It is the
story of Valentine Michael Smith, the man from Mars who taught humankind
grokking and water-sharing. And love.
Valentine Michael Smith is
a human being raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people
for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and
prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him, while teaching them
his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, watersharing, and love.
Stranger
in a Strange Land grew from a cult favorite to a bestseller to a
classic in a few short years. The story of the man from Mars who taught
humankind grokking and water-sharing and love it is Robert A. Heinlein’s
masterpiece.
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
Jonathan Hoag has a curious problem. Every evening, he finds a mysterious reddish substance under his fingernails, with no memory of how it got there. Jonathan hires the husband-and-wife detective team of Ted and Cynthia Randall to follow him during the day and find out, but Ted and Cynthia find themselves instantly out of their depth. Jonathan leaves no fingerprints. His few memories about his profession turn out to be false. Even stranger, Ted and Cynthia's own memories of what happens during their investigation do not match. There is a thirteenth floor to Jonathan's building that does not exist, there are mysterious and threatening beings living inside mirrors, and all of reality is not what they thought it was. Part supernatural thriller, part noir detective story, Heinlein's trip down the rabbit hole leads where you never expected. From the bestselling author of Stranger in a Strange Land, Glory Road and Starship Troopers.
"In the beginning was The Bird. Wise and cruel was The Bird, and wise and cruel were The Sons of the Bird..."
Robert
A. Heinlein, the celebrated author of Stranger in a Strange Land,
interrupts the lives of two ordinary people for a terrifying night-ride
along the interface between reality and . . . our world.
Starship Troopers
Starship
Troopers is a classic novel by one of science fiction's greatest
writers of all time and is now a Tri-Star movie. In one of Heinlein's
most controversial bestsellers, a recruit of the future goes through the
toughest boot camp in the universe and into battle with the Terran
Mobile Infantry against mankind's most frightening enemy.
The
historians can’t seem to settle whether to call this one "The Third
Space War" (or the fourth), or whether "The First Interstellar War" fits
it better. We just call it “The Bug War." Everything up to then and
still later were "incidents," "patrols," or "police actions." However,
you are just as dead if you buy the farm in an "incident" as you are if
you buy it in a declared war...
5,000 years in the future,
humanity faces total extermination. Our one highly-trained soldiers who
scour the metal-strewn blackness of space to hunt down a terrifying an
insect life-form known only as 'Bugs.'
This is the story of
trooper Johnny Rico, from his idealistic enlistment in the infantry of
the future through his rigorous training to the command of his own
platoon. And his destiny is a war that will span the galaxy.
Johnnie
Rico never really intended to join up and definitely not the infantry.
But now that he’s in the thick of it, trying to get through combat
training harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone
in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the
interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids.
Because
everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn’t
kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job...
In
one of Robert A. Heinlein’s most controversial bestsellers, a recruit of
the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the Universe and into
battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against mankind’s most alarming
enemy.
Robert A. Heinlein announced himself as a master of modern
science fiction with Starship Troopers, his controversial take on
modern military politics. His best-known novels include The Moon is a
Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land.
The Door Into Summer
It
is 1970, and electronics engineer Dan Davis has finally made the
invention of a lifetime: a household robot with extraordinary abilities,
destined to dramatically change the landscape of everyday routine.
Then, with wild success just within reach, Dan's greedy partner and even
greedier fiancée steal his work and leave him penniless, and trick him
into taking the long sleep—suspended animation for thirty years.
Brilliant
engineer Dan Davis finds himself hoodwinked by his greedy business
partners and forced to take the Long Sleep… placing him in suspended
animation for 30 years. But his partners never anticipated the existence
of time travel, enabling Dan to exact his revenge and alter his own
future…
When Dan Davis is crossed in love and stabbed in the back
by his business associates, the immediate future doesn't look too
bright for him and Pete, his independent-minded tomcat. Suddenly, the
lure of suspended animation, the Long Sleep, becomes irresistible and
Dan wakes up 30 years later in the 21st century, a time very much to his
liking.
The discovery that the robot household appliances he
invented have been mass produced is no surprise, but the realization
that, far from having been stolen from him, they have, mysteriously,
been patented in his name is. There's only one thing for it. Dan somehow
has to travel back in time to investigate.
He may even find Pete...and the girl he really loves
"Not only America's premier writer of speculative fiction, but the greatest writer of such fiction in the world." - Stephen King
"There is no other writer whose work has exhilarated me as often and to such an extent as Heinlein." - Dean Koontz
"One of the most influential writers in American Literature." - The New York Times Book Review
"Heinlein…
has the ability to see technologies just around the bend. That,
combined with his outstanding skill as a writer and engineer-inventor,
produces books that are often years ahead of their time." - The
Philadelphia Inquirer
"One of the grand masters of science fiction." - The Wall Street Journal
Robert A. Heinlein books
For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs - 1939
Rocket Ship Galileo - 1947
Beyond This Horizon - 1948
Space Cadet - 1948
Red Planet - 1949
Sixth Column - 1949 (aka: The Day After Tomorrow)
Farmer in the Sky - 1950
Between Planets - 1951
The Puppet Masters - 1951
The Rolling Stones - 1952 (aka: Space Family Stone)
Starman Jones - 1953
The Star Beast - 1954
Tunnel in the Sky - 1955
Variable Star - 1955
Double Star - 1956
Time for the Stars - 1956
Citizen of the Galaxy - 1957
The Door into Summer - 1957
Have Space Suit—Will Travel - 1958
Methuselah's Children - 1958
Starship Troopers - 1959
Stranger in a Strange Land - 1961
Podkayne of Mars - 1963
Orphans of the Sky - 1963
Glory Road - 1963
Farnham's Freehold - 1965
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - 1966
I Will Fear No Evil - 1970
Time Enough for Love - 1973
The Number of the Beast - 1980
Friday - 1982
Job: A Comedy of Justice - 1984
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls - 1985
To Sail Beyond the Sunset - 1987
Future History short fiction
Life-Line - 1939
Misfit - 1939
The Roads Must Roll - 1940
Requiem - 1940
If This Goes On - 1940
Coventry - 1940
Blowups Happen - 1940
Universe - 1941
We Also Walk Dogs - 1941 (as Anson MacDonald)
Common Sense - 1941
Methuselah's Children - 1941
Logic of Empire - 1941
Space Jockey - 1947
It's Great to Be Back! - 1947
The Green Hills of Earth - 1947
Ordeal in Space - 1948
The Long Watch - 1948
Gentlemen, Be Seated! - 1948
The Black Pits of Luna - 1948
Delilah and the Space Rigger - 1949
The Man Who Sold the Moon - 1951
The Menace From Earth - 1957
Searchlight - 1962
Other short speculative fiction
Magic, Inc. - 1940 (aka: The Devil Makes the Law)
Solution Unsatisfactory - 1940 (as Anson MacDonald)
Let There Be Light - 1940 (as Lyle Monroe)
Successful Operation - 1940 (aka: Heil! as Lyle Monroe)
They - 1941
And He Built a Crooked House - 1941
By His Bootstraps - 1941 (as Anson MacDonald)
Lost Legacy - 1941 (aka: Lost Legion as Lyle Monroe)
Elsewhen - 1941 (aka: Elsewhere as Caleb Saunders)
Beyond Doubt - 1941 (as Lyle Monroe with Elma Wentz)
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag - 1942 (as John Riverside)
Waldo - 1942 (as Anson MacDonald)
My Object All Sublime - 1942 (as Lyle Monroe)
Goldfish Bowl - 1942 (as Anson MacDonald)
Pied Piper - 1942 (as Lyle Monroe)
Free Men - 1946
Jerry Was a Man - 1947
Columbus Was a Dope - 1947 (as Lyle Monroe)
On the Slopes of Vesuvius - 1947
Our Fair City - 1948
Gulf - 1949
Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon - 1949
Destination Moon - 1950
The Year of the Jackpot - 1952
Project Nightmare - 1953
Sky Lift - 1953
Tenderfoot in Space - 1956
The Man Who Traveled in Elephants - 1957 (aka: The Elephant Circuit)
All You Zombies - 1959
Other short fiction
A Bathroom of Her Own - 1946
Dance Session - 1946 (poem)
The Witch's Daughters - 1946 (poem)
Water Is for Washing - 1947
They Do It with Mirrors - 1947 (as Simon York)
Poor Daddy - 1949
Cliff and the Calories - 1950
The Bulletin Board - 195
Source and additional information: Robert A. Heinlein