There is no copy extant of the checkoff letters, but when letters were answered on computers, here is how they ran: An ever-increasing flood of mail has forced Mr. Heinlein to choose between writing letters and writing fiction. I have taken over for him, but he reads each letter sent to him and checks the answer.
Four or five requests come in each week for help in cla.s.s a.s.signments, term papers, theses, or dissertations. We can"t cope with so many and have quit trying.
Sincerely, Virginia Heinlein [Mrs. Robert A. Heinlein]
Even since Robert"s death, fan mail still comes in asking me to answer questions about his work.
TIME WASTERS.
November 3, 1951: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame ... In addition to the above, I"ve let myself be roped into going to Denver to speak to the Colorado Authors" League. I find myself in a running fight to keep my time from being nibbled away by such secondary activities. I avoid such things as much as possible, but too often I get backed into a corner.
January 27, 1952: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame I have been asked to be a guest speaker on Edward R. Murrow"s CBS program, "This I Believe." I"m flattered but am thinking of turning it down; I don"t relish getting on a national hookup and doing an emotional striptease. Furthermore, such things take me away from my regular work by distracting my mind, sometimes for days, from story. No mention was made of a fee and I think it"s a sustaining program with the guest speakers appearing just for glory. I mention this because you may think the "glory" important enough that I should do it anyhow. I won"t give them an answer until I hear from you.
August 21, 1952: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame . . . This entire year of "521 have found frustrating. Today I tried to figure out exactly where the time had gone, since I have no copy to show for it. I can account for every day and don"t see how, in most cases, I could have done anything about it, but that fact writes no stories. Believe me, Lurton, I have not loafed this year, but my time has been eaten away . . . operation, convalescence . . . cutting Rolling Stones, skating nationals, mechanics in the house three times wasting a month and a half, two unpaid writing jobs, two unpaid radio appearances, some unpaid speaking engagements, Arthur C. Clarke-one week, the George O. Smiths-two weeks, other houseguests totaling perhaps a week, shopping for a new automobile . . . death of a close friend-one week, two weddings where I was involved and could not refuse my time without being a heel, innumerable visits from readers who were polite enough to write and ask to see me, a novel started and aborted, same for a short, the d.a.m.ned telephone ringing and ringing and ringing and myself the only person in the house . . . and finally a trip to Yellowstone and the Utah parks. That last I could have skipped but Ginny deserved a rest and I needed one, even if I hadn"t been accomplishing anything. All of the above adds up to about time enough to answer mail and read proofs. Some of these things you may feel I could have avoided-well, close up to them, they could not have been avoided. The telephone situation we have finally licked by putting a bell in the garage where I can"t hear it and a cutoff switch in the house, thereby evading the company"s rules.
Most of my troubles seem to arise from the difficulty I have in refusing to give my time to other people. Should I refuse to entertain the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society? Can I refuse to see a cla.s.smate who shows up in town with an engineer from my hometown in tow? A physicist from Johns Hopkins who is a fan of mine shows up and wants to meet me-can I refuse? Same for an air force intelligence officer who writes politely? Or the head of the Flying Saucer project? Today I was invited to address the southwest division of the Rocket Society and attend a night firing of a V-2 rocket-that one I turned down as it involved flying to White Sands- but it was a highly desirable date and one that I would have kept had I had the time. I don"t know the answer but I am beginning to see why so many writers hire hotel rooms-I am entirely too well known for comfort. Anyhow, I am about to try another story.
September 4, 1952: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame Now, about writing time: since the war it has been one d.a.m.n thing after another, poor health, domestic trouble, housebuilding, et al. I hope that the future will be quieter. If not, I will simply do the best I can under the circ.u.mstances. Getting an office away from the house is not a solution I want at "all-I"ve just finished a house with an office built into it. One minor new circ.u.mstance should be a help-we finally have a cutoif switch for the telephone, after long wrangling with the phone company.
I wrote to you as extensively as I did simply to let you know that my lack of output this year has not been through laziness but through complications. One problem I have not yet found a satisfactory solution to is the demand on my time resulting from becoming better known. I answer all fan mail and it comes in stacks. That is almost necessary, isn"t it? I limit the answers to post- cards but it takes time. There are frequent requests for me to speak in public-one only last night. I have adopted a policy of refusing such invitations if possible-but what do I do when the Colorado Librarians" a.s.sociation asks me? . . . Perhaps the greatest time waster is the person who reads my stuff, is coming to Colorado Springs, and wants to call on me-and an amazing number of them manage to find their way to Colorado Springs, remote as this place is. If they simply walk in on me I won"t see them. . . . But if they write or telephone and are courteous, I find it hard to give them a cold brush-off. I see no good answer to this problem, but will have to handle it by expediency as I go along.
. . . This is probably the very last of the V-2s and it will be one of the very few uncla.s.sified firings for a long time. There is nothing like watching one of the big ones climb for outer s.p.a.ce-it will make a believer out of you, I warrant. I do not regard a trip to White Sands as lost time for me; it comes under the same head as research. Since I write about rockets, I need to know what they sound like, talk to rocket men. Besides that, I will have an opportunity to meet Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered the planet Pluto and, perhaps, to see the ca.n.a.ls of Mars through his telescope. . . . This is almost a once-in-a-lifetime thing, as perfect seeing, the right telescope, and the right technique are a rare combination.
January 6, 1953: Lurton Bla.s.singame to Robert A. Heinlein The script for the "This I Believe" program just checked in. It is certainly splendid, the best I have come in contact with. I have been especially interested in this program because one of my boys [clients], Ed Morgan, has been a.s.sociated with it since the beginning. I do think this material of yours was excellent, and I am very proud of you.
THIS I BELIEVE.
I am not going to talk about religious beliefs but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them. I believe in my neighbors. I know their faults, and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults.
Take Father Michael down our road a piece. I"m not of his creed, but I know that goodness and charity and lovingkindness shine in his daily actions. I believe in Father Mike. If I"m in trouble, I"ll go to him.
My next-door neighbor is a veterinary doctor. Doc will get out of bed after a hard day to help a stray cat. No fee-no prospect of a fee-I believe in Doc.
I believe in my townspeople. You can knock on any door in our town saying, "I"m hungry," and you will be fed. Our town is no exception. I"ve found the same ready charity everywhere. But for the one who says, "To heck with you-I got mine," there are a hundred, a thousand who will say, "Sure, pal, sit down."
I know that despite all warnings against hitchhikers I can step to the highway, thumb for a ride, and in a few minutes a car or a truck will stop and someone will say, "Climb in, Mac-how far you going?"
I believe in my fellow citizens. Our headlines are splashed with crime, yet for every criminal there are 10,000 honest, decent, kindly men. If it were not so, no child would live to grow up. Business could not go on from day to day. Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but it is a force stronger than crime. I believe in the patient gallantry of nurses and the tedious sacrifices of teachers. I believe in the unseen and unending fight against desperate odds that goes on quietly in almost every home in the land.
I believe in the honest craft of workmen. Take a look around you. There never were enough bosses to check up on all that work. From Independence Hall to the Grand Coulee Dam, these things were built level and square by craftsmen who were honest in their bones.
I believe that almost all politicians are honest . . . there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true we would never have gotten past the thirteen colonies.
I believe in Rodger Young. You and I are free today because of endless unnamed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River. I believe in-I am proud to belong to-the United States. Despite shortcomings from lynchings to bad faith in high places, our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history.
And finally, I believe in my whole race. Yellow, white, black, red, brown. In the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability, and goodness of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth. That we always make it just by the skin of our teeth, but that we will always make it. Survive. Endure. I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure. Will endure longer than his home planet-will spread out to the stars and beyond, carrying with him his honesty and insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage and his n.o.ble essential decency.
This I believe with all my heart.
June 6, 1962: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame No other news save that the Silly Season has opened and we have many visitors; this will continue until fall. One of my plebes showed up this week-an admiral now and chief of research, a job I would like to have had (and might have achieved) if I hadn"t gotten TB a long time ago. However, all in all, I like being a writer and don"t really miss not being an admiral. (Dan Gallery managed to be both, but he is exceptional!) August 10, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame We have been badly slowed down, too, by visitors, a steady flood of them all summer long, friends, relatives, and readers, plus some of the organized science fiction fans-and none of them invited, not even the relatives nor any of the friends. . . . This place being a resort, people simply pour through here in the summer and if I shut off the phone, they ring the doorbell. I don"t ever intend to try to write a story in Colorado Springs again between June 1st and September 1st; it is too much like trying to write directly under a busy three-holer. Even if my relatives had stayed home (and, d.a.m.n it, they all traveled this year), friends, acquaintances, and strangers were enough to keep us in a hooraw. Had I not been interrupted so many, many times by visitors, the work I was doing would have been farther along and the flood damage would not have been nearly so severe.
May 6, 1964: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame The letter you received from Kenneth Green (and so kindly answered) is much more typical of fan mail-pleasant but with the same old phrases over and over again, and I get as tired of answering them as an old wh.o.r.e gets of climbing those stairs. I"ll drop young Green a card in this mail, however; I always answer them, all but the crackpot ones.
But I have inst.i.tuted a New Public Relations Policy-one which makes me almost as hard-to-get as the mysterious Mr. B. Traven. Some years ago you sent to me a clipping of Art Buchwald"s column with a long quotation from Thornton Wilder in which Wilder declared such a policy, one in which he resolved not to let strangers waste his time, not in any fashion. I have kept that clipping up over my typewriter ever since you sent it to me-but I have not emulated it very well.
But I am pushing sixty now myself and it gets harder and harder each year to turn out a decent amount of copy-largely because total strangers want such large chunks of my time. I am darn well going to quit it! In fact, I have quit it. The only concession I am making is that I will continue to answer politely worded fan mail-but only by postcards . . . and usually picture postcards which have no return address and room only for a sentence or two. Even that response costs me a dime for materials and postage, plus (much more important) about fifty cents" worth of my working, professional time that should be put on story-writing.
Someday I may be so browned off and bored with it that I will answer only such letters as are accompanied by stamped and self-addressed envelopes (about one in twenty). I was taught in school always to enclose such in writing to a stranger; my present mail shows that most teachers do not teach this courtesy today, as a lot of my mail starts out: "Dear Mr. Heinlein, Our English cla.s.s is writing to their favorite author-" but a reply envelope rarely is enclosed, although the letter usually demands a reply and asks endless questions-often with a deadline stated.
Mr. Wilder says, in that clipping you sent me: "I hereby serve notice on the school children of America . . . that I am going to dump all their letters-" I"m not going to go quite that far just yet, Lurton-but I am now ignoring all requests for pictures and for anything which requires me to stir out of my chair to answer-or which requires me to use an envelope rather than a postcard when said envelope has not been supplied by the pet.i.tioner.
No doubt this will lose me a certain amount of good will. But it will greatly increase my working time-on pay copy-and the problem had grown way out of hand. To supplement this greatly reduced program on fan mail I am resolved not to do anything I don"t want to do. No more public speeches, not even for librarians. No more interviews given to school kids-other than by telephone. No more "Library Week" appearances. No more breaking off my work (whether writing or mixing cement) to visit with strangers who "just happened to be pa.s.sing through town and have always wanted to meet" me- unless it suits me and they manage to make themselves sound interesting enough to warrant the time. No more messing around with books I don"t want to read sent to me, unsolicited, in the mails-and this includes books sent to me by Putnam and its a.s.sociated companies, as the promotion department seems to feel that any Putnam-published writer should be willing at any time to act as an unpaid reviewer and source of trained-seal favorable testimonials. (They put out a lot of good books, but they never send me those books; they send me little stinkers that should never have been published.) No more acknowledgments of fan magazines sent to me-it simply results in more of them and requests for free copy.
In short, no more of anything unless it durn well suits me and adds to my own pleasure in life. More and more, over the years, strangers have been nibbling away at my time. It has reached the point where, if I would let them, all of my working time would be wasted on the demands of strangers. So I am lowering the boom on all of it- and if this makes me a rude son of a b.i.t.c.h, so be it. My present life expectancy is seventeen years; I"m d.a.m.ned if I will spend it answering silly questions about " "Where do you get your ideas?" and "Why did you take up the writing of science fiction?" several thousand or more times. I hereby declare that an author has no responsibility of any sort to the public . . . other than the responsibility to write stories as well as he knows how.
If I can stick to this, I should get in quite a lot more writing, and quite a lot more healthy work with pick and shovel and trowel-and a judicious mixture of these two may enable me to stretch that life expectancy quite a bit. But I "m not going to let those remaining years be nibbled away and wasted by the trivia that some thousands of faceless strangers seem to feel is their right to demand from anyone in a semipublic occupation.
July 10, 1967: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame Herewith is a curious letter from an instructor, ---, at the U. of Oregon. I was about to tell him that I could not stop him, but not to let me see the result-but I decided that I had better let you see this and get your advice and/or veto. If Mr. --- does this adaptation "just for fun," as he proposes, I suspect that he will then fall in love with his own efforts and get very itchy to produce it. Which could be embarra.s.sing. Lurton, even though "Green Hills" is a short, I think it has possibilities- someday-as a musical motion picture. So I am hesitant to authorize anything which might cloud the MP or stage rights. What shall I tell him? Or do you prefer to write to him? (I"m not urging you to-not trying to shove it on you. But I do want your advice.) October 12, 1967: Margo Fischer (secretary to) Lurton Bla.s.singame to Robert A. Heinlein A drunk began calling at 3:15 insisting on Heinlein"s phone number . . . After telling him at least seven times that he would have to write a letter which would be forwarded airmail, he became sarcastic and went on and on. After 15 minutes I told him I was hanging up, and I did. He was incoherent and it was impossible to tell him he had to write a letter. He said he would wire. He wanted to know about "-We Also Walk Dogs." I told him it was in an anthology published by World. He"ll probably call you and be abusive about me. Over and over he kept saying, "Mam, Mam"-long silence, then he"d say, "It"s a hard world." Silence. Then, "We should all be courteous to one another." Etc.
February 28, 1968: Margo Fischer to Robert A. Heinlein Here"s a little ego boo for you.
The telephone just rang. A voice said, "I was told I could get some information from you. About one of your clients. About Robert Heinlein." Cagey Margo. "Who is this?" "I"m n.o.body-that is, n.o.body in the business," he said. "Just a Heinlein fan." Me again-"Well, what did you want to know?" .
He wanted to know when Heinlein was going to have another book. "He hasn"t written anything for some time," was the complaint. "I have two favorite authors. Michener and Heinlein. Michener just came out with one and I was hoping I could make it a double red-letter day."
Then he added, "Heinlein is the one bright spot in this whole fantasy-science-fiction world." A pause. "Moon is the last one he"s written, right?" Then I said, "Have you read Stranger1?" Answer: "Four times." Finally, " "Just one more thing-how long does it usually take him to write a book?"
HOW CAN YOU DEPRIVE YOUR FANS A MINUTE LONGER, BOB?.
CHAPTER IX.
MISCELLANY.
STUDY.
April 10, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame No, we are not contemplating any immediate ventures into Arabic-speaking lands; all of Africa and the Middle East are too unstable at the present time to be attractive- besides, we"ve been there a couple of times. Tackling Arabic is simply to keep my mind loosened up with something new. It could have been any language I don"t know, but I picked it because it is one of the five "critical" languages as listed by the State Department-i.e., an important language which is known by too few Americans; they have plenty of people who know French, German, Spanish, and such. One of the five is Russian and I didn"t want to duplicate what Ginny has already done (besides, Russian is very hard; Arabic is relatively simple, save for the odd alphabet) and two of the critical languages are tonal languages, and my ear for tones is not very good; I don"t think I could learn them as an adult. But I must admit that I have made no real progress as yet; I"ve nothing to force me to a schedule and there are too many other things that demand attention.
But I would like to, in time, be able to be of some use to the country by knowing a language which is needed. But if it is never of any use that way, I find the study of strange languages rewarding per se; I always learn a lot about the people and the culture when I tackle one.
But I have a dozen subjects that I want to study. I would like to go back to school and take a formal course in electronics; it has changed so much since I studied it more than thirty years ago-and I may, some day soon. About twenty years ago I dropped out of a figure-drawing cla.s.s because I needed to buckle down and pay off a mortgage-and that turned me into a writer and I haven"t been back. But I want to go back, it is something I love doing-and I would like to add a wing to this house and get into sculpture again, too, but simply signing up for a figure sketching cla.s.s is more likely. I am not a still-life artist. There are only five things really worth drawing; four of them are pretty girls and the fifth is cats.
PREDICTIONS.
March 13, 1947: Robert A. Heinlein to Sat.u.r.day Evening Post ... I could list many more variables-never mind. Swami Heinlein will now gaze into the crystal ball. First unmanned rocket to the Moon in five years. First manned rocket in ten years. Permanent base there in fifteen years. After that, anything! Several decades of exploring the solar system with everyone falling all over each other to do it first and stake out claims.
However, we may wake up some morning and find that the Russians have quietly beaten us to it, and that the Lunar S.S.R.-eight scientists and technicians, six men, two women-has pet.i.tioned the Kremlin for admission of the Moon to the USSR. That"s another unknown variable.
And keep your eyes on the British-the British Interplanetary Society is determined to get there first.
The worst thing about this business of predicting technical advance is that there is an almost insuperable tendency to be too conservative. In almost every case, correct prophecy of the Jules Verne type has failed in the one respect of putting the predicted advance too far in the future. Based on past record, if the figures I gave above are wrong, they are almost certainly wrong in being too timid. s.p.a.ce flight may come even sooner. I know that, yet I have trouble believing it.
November 7, 1949: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame . . . My real claim to being a student of the future, if I have a claim, lies in noting things going on now and then in examining speculatively what those trends could mean-particularly with respect to atomics, s.p.a.ce travel, geriatrics, ge- netics, propaganda techniques, and food supply. To evaluate my success in such it would be necessary for a person to have some familiarity with my published writings. But I don"t intend to dig through my writings and say, "Look, here in Beyond This Horizon I predicted the robot-secretary recording telephone and now it has been patented!" I did-and it has-but that doesn"t mean anything. The short-term prediction of gimmicks isn"t prophecy; it is merely a parlor trick.
PROPHECY.
September 24, 1949: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame EDITOR"S NOTE: With the motion picture about to start shooting, and with Robert at work on the next juvenile for Scribner "s, a request came in from Cosmopolitan for an article about prediction of what the U. S. would be like in the year 2000. In this letter Robert was asking for information about what sort of article the editors would like-he made some suggestions about it.
When the article was finished, Cosmopolitan turned it down. It sold to Galaxy and was published as " "Pandora"s Box."" The article was periodically updated, and the most recent version can be found in Expanded Universe.
. . . Under "treatment" come a couple of other questions: This article is to be prophetic. Fine-that"s my business; I make my living as a professional prophet of what science will bring to us. But such an article-nonfiction-must consider and to some extent report the present status in various fields before the author can go out into the wild blue yonder with predictions. Therefore, I inquire how much reporting do they [Cosmopolitan] want of the sort which one finds in Scientific American, Science News Letter, Nature, etc., and how much speculation or prediction do they want? The two things are closely related, but are not the same thing. Also, how far in the future shall I go? (For example, everybody knows that the cancer men, radiation men, and biochemists stand an excel- lent chance of perfecting selective radiation treatment of certain types of cancer in the very near future by finding ways to bond short half-life isotopes to some compound which a particular type of cancer will pick up selectively.) Or should I go well into the future and consider the necessary statistical effect of food supply, geriatrics, life-span research, public health, etc., in forcing the development of a brand-new art, planetary engineering, as it affects the growth of colonies on the planet Mars?
The synthesizing prophet has another advantage over the specialist; he knows, from experience and by examining the efforts of other prophets of his type in the past that his " "wildest"" predictions are more likely to come true than the ones in which he lost his nerve and was cautious. This statement is hard to believe but can be checked by comparing past predictions with present facts. (Show me the man who honestly believed in the atom bomb twenty years ago-but H. G. Wells predicted it in 1911.) (The "wild fantasies" of Jules Verne turned out to be much too conservative.) How can one spot a competent synthesizing prophet? Only by his batting average. If Cosmopolitan thinks my record of accomplished predictions is good enough to warrant it, then let"s by all means go all out and I"ll make some serious predictions that will make their hair stand on end. If they want to play safe, I"ll do an Inquiring Reporter job and we"ll limit it to what the specialists are willing to say. But I can tell them ahead of time that such an article will be more respectable today and quite unrespected ten years from now-for that is no way to whip up successful prophecy.
... I would proceed as follows: First, I would cut down the field by limiting myself to (a) subjects in which the changes would matter to the readers personally and not too remotely. A new principle in electronics I would ignore unless I saw an important tie into the lives of ordinary people, (b) subjects which are dramatic and entertaining either in themselves or in their effects. s.p.a.ce travel is such a subject, both ways. So is life-span research. On the other hand, a cure for hoof-and-mouth disease, while urgently needed, is much harder to dramatize, (c) subjects which can be explained. The connection between parapsychology and nuclear engineering is dramatic potentially but impossible to explain convincingly.
Since the article is for popular consumption I would wish to hook it, if possible, with some startling piece of quoted dialog, use ill.u.s.trative anecdote if possible, and end it with some dramatic prediction.
December 20, 1955: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame Please tell Howard Browne [editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic] that I accept his incredible offer and that ms. will arrive by 10 January-but that I expect a copy of that celebration issue, inscribed by him to me, or I shall go into the corner and stick pins in wax images.
I can"t imagine what I could possibly say that would be worth $100 for two pages; that isn"t even long enough for a horoscope. But if they want to throw away their money in my direction I will go along with the gag and do my d.a.m.ndest to entertain the cash customers. Fortunately, I shall be dead before my "prophecies" can be checked on.
January 5, 1956: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame Here is the ms. for Howard Browne. I discovered that 500 words were too cramping for what I wanted to say, so I called him yesterday (I a.s.sumed that you were at Ilikite, it being Wednesday) and got his authorization to let it run to its present length. No increase in the fee, of course, as the added length was entirely for my convenience.
PUBLISHERS.
July 5, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame As to Scribner"s and Doubleday, I intend to let each of them get away with it and not argue further. But my opinion has not changed. Each of them is deviating from the contract as written and in each case to my financial loss. They would not let me deviate from contract if it cost them sizable amounts of money. Doubleday talks as if the 50-50 split on pocketbook were a law of nature. Nuts and nonsense; it is merely an extortion that writers usually have to put up with. The entire history of the Authors" Guild and of divisible copyright is one of slowly getting rid of these grabs which publishers defend under the theory of "usual practice." If the "usual contract" did not contain these grabs, trade book publishers would have to work hard at selling the trade edition. Doubleday has never once done a decent job for me of selling the trade edition (take a look at your records)-no, not once. Instead they have signed a "sweetheart" contract with one of their own subsidiaries, printed a very cheap edition which they called a trade edition but which was in fact a book club edition-and the nominal royalty in the contract meant nothing; the extremely low royalty in the "sweetheart" contract was the one that counted. Then they had half of the NAL edition as well-except this one book and now they have grabbed that, too, without my consent. No, I do not like Doubleday. Okay, they get this few hundred dollars-but I will never sign another contract with them.
Scribner"s is a different case; they have a real sales organization for selling the trade edition, they do sell it and make money on it, for themselves and for me-and I am sorry on that account that they ever dropped me. ... But, nevertheless, their contract does not permit them to cut my royalty just because they choose to put out, under their own imprint, a softcover edition. Nor does it cut any ice with me that the percentage royalty is higher than it would be if they farmed it out to, say, NAL-because I am convinced that if they did farm it out to NAL, the dollar return would be much higher, even though the percentage was lower. I may be wrong and time will tell-but, so far, their venture into softcov-ers, at three times the price of an NAL softcover, seems to be going over like a lead balloon.
As may be-each of these publishers is rewriting a contract to suit himself and against my explicit objections . . . and I shall argue no further with them; life is too short. They can keep their grabs and be d.a.m.ned.
MAGAZINES.
March 9, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame I don"t think Fantasy and Science Fiction is riding the edge; I think they are just stingy. They claim 56,000 paid circulation. In view of their rates and their cheap production, plus some revenue from France and Germany, they should be showing a clear profit each month. Back in December --- told me that the publisher would happily pay me in advance. As it is, they got a bargain-copy for $1,500 that they normally pay $1,800 for, to any writer, known name or not. Still, it is pleasanter than offering copy to John Campbell, having it bounced (he bounced both of my last two Hugo Award winners)-and then have to wade through ten pages of his arrogant insults, explaining to me why my story is no good.
April 15, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame Re Playboy article: I have the material well worked out and am prepared to deliver it by 10 May.
But I shall not deliver it on the basis of a phone call. The last time I accepted a job from them based on a firm agreement by phone call there was a lot of nonsense afterwards about whether or not I was being paid for the work, or paid for an option, and I had to do two rewrite jobs.
. . . Just refer him to my letter of 2 April (of which you have a copy): "Just address a letter to me, or preferably to Mr. Bla.s.singame, offering me a firm a.s.signment for so many thousands of words for so many dollars on such and such a subject to be delivered by such and such a date-and with the explicit condition that the ma.n.u.script will be paid for whether used or not and that any rewriting lies outside the agreement and must be negotiated at an additional fee."
I meant every word. The a.s.signment must be in writing and the clause about rewriting must be spelled out, and all the terms must be explicit-and a phone call means nothing]
Otherwise I will not bother to come in out of my garden. It"s nice out there and I"m sick of this machine. I don"t need the money; I"ve already worked too much this year and will have too high a tax-and I am especially aware of it on income tax day.
Apparently --- thinks I"m a nice accommodating guy. Please explain to him that I am a son of a b.i.t.c.h.
DEFAULT.
January 27, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame Please tell --- that I am a kindly old gentleman and that the "A." in the middle of my name stands for " "Ebe-nezer Scrooge" and that I am buying a new freezer with my ill-gotten wealth to make room for him.
CHAPTER X.
SALES AND REJECTIONS.
November 24, 1947: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame The last couple of rejection letters you have sent me are rather disturbing. Miss Helen Grey of Town and Country is mistaken in thinking that my sales tp the SEP [Sat.u.r.day Evening Post] have gone to my head. It is simply that an idea as good as "The Green Hills of Earth" doesn"t come to me every week. I have been in a slump and am afraid that I am still in it. I continue to work and to work very hard indeed, but a lot of the stuff I turn out doesn"t seem too good to me. Stuart Rose"s rejection of "Broken Wings" is decidedly a disappointment, for I had believed that "Broken Wings" was up to standard. Still more disappointing is his statement "These s.p.a.ce ship stories didn"t do too well, according to our readership surveys." I interpret this as meaning that the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post is no longer interested in my interplanetary stories unless they are utterly terrific, superior in every way to a story with a customary contemporary down-to-earth background ...
I may turn out quite a number of second-rate stories before I recover completely from the effects of my domestic breakup. For the past several months I have been able to continue writing only by the exercise of grim self-discipline. It occurs to me that you might find it desirable to sell or attempt to sell stories written during this period to secondary markets under a pen name. What do you think? Would it be good business to protect my reputation, such as it is, by keeping my own name off material which in your opinion is not as good as my best? . . .
. . . From now on I must devote my time exclusively to preparing the second juvenile novel [s.p.a.ce Cadet] for Charles Scribner"s Sons. I have been working on this boys" novel off and on for several months. I rather dread sitting down and turning out the first draft on it because I simply am not in the sanguine mood which should obtain in any book intended for the young. I could knock off half a dozen tragedies right now easier than I could write one cheerful story.
March 4, 1949: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame This has been a bad twelve months without very much real literary success. I wasted months on two collaborations which did not pay off. I wasted three months on Red Planet and it has not paid off. I"ve done three stories meant for slicks and they have not paid off. Aside from some reprint stuff and a sale to Boys" Life it has been a long string of failures.
I think I have a.n.a.lyzed in part what the trouble has been: I"ve been doing hack work, writing what some one else wanted me to write rather than what I wanted to write. In any case, the next year can"t be any worse if I write what I want to write and have some fun out of it. It might even be better; accep- tances might start coming in instead of rejections. So-I plan to write my stories instead of editor"s stories. I don"t intend to do any more juveniles unless I happen to have a juvenile story that I want to write. I am not going to promise Scribner"s, nor anybody else, one book a year. I am not going to work against deadlines. I am not going to slant stories for slick- nor for pulp-I am going to write my stories, the very best stories I can, and then let them sell (or not sell) to whatever market fits them. I can"t do any worse than I have been doing; I might do better. And I think you will see a lot more copy out of me. I"m a fast producer when I"m happy at it.
January 2, 1950: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame I want to get home awfully badly and I am worn out, but I need the money for house building.
Thanks for the SatRev of Lit-I am now a lit"rary man, ent.i.tled to wear a pipe, a spaniel, and baggy tweeds.
EDITOR "s NOTE: Robert did a review of The Conquest of s.p.a.ce by Chesley Bonestell and w.i.l.l.y Ley for the Sat.u.r.day Review of Literature. It was t.i.tled (by the editors) "A Baedecker of the Solar System, " and ran as the lead article for the issue in which it appeared.
SALES.
December 5, 1958: Robert A. Meinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame I mailed the contract for "All You Zombies" to Bob Mills, unchanged. Certainly, I would have preferred Playboy"s fancy rates, but it took me exactly one day to write it, so what the h.e.l.l? ... I hope that I have written in that story the Farthest South in time paradoxes.
. . . She [a romance writer] writes very well, and rather than have her run out of material, I would be glad to volunteer my services. I"m not as energetic as I was in the Coolidge administration, but I"ve learned a lot since then and that"s what a writer needs: ideas.
FOREIGN SALES.
February 19, 1959: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Bla.s.singame ... Is it really true that my foreign sales have been "fabulous"? You see, I have no experience whatever on which to form an opinion. I know that I take warm, special pride in these translations and we both enjoy the regularity with which the money rolls in. But are my foreign sales numerous in comparison with other writers of comparable domestic success? I just thought I had been d.a.m.ned lucky in being in the hands of an agent who had formed such excellent connections abroad and used them so well. I am sure that part of it is true.
February 26, 1959: Lurton Bla.s.singame to Robert A. Heinlein There are very few writers who sell in as many countries as you do. I try to line up with the agent in each country who is most respected for results and I check on this through visiting publishers to New York, and through them try to help our representatives in these publishers" countries; but in other countries, as here, the quality of the story is the deciding factor. It"s the high quality of your stories that makes them so popular. Fortunately, you are writing about a subject that is of interest everywhere; we"d have great difficulty in selling your stories, even of this quality, if you were writing about baseball and football.