William H. PattersonRecensioni

Because the two volumes of William Patterson's biography of Robert Heinlein make up a single work, and because most readers who finish the first volume will want to proceed to the second, this is a combined review of both volumes.

Patterson has poured as much time and research into this big biography of Heinlein as typically goes into a life of a major historical figure, and the result is engrossing, especially the first volume. Heinlein overcame a childhood of emotional neglect, a lack of financial resources, and a highly sensitive nature to enter the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, where he withstood harsh conditions and (especially in the first year) brutal hazing, and achieved what could have been expected to be a secure, lifetime career as a naval officer, only to be permanently retired in his 20s by ill health. Recovering, he entered politics as a socialist candidate for the California Assembly, knocking on every door in his district--no easy task for a man on the introverted side of the spectrum--only to be defeated by a few hundred votes. When the Japanese attacked in 1941, he applied immediately to be returned to active duty, but was denied due to his authorship of a bitter public letter protesting police brutality almost eight years previous. Undefeated, he relocated to Philadelphia to work in a civilian defense plant, where his coworkers included fellow writers Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp. As the war ended, his marriage of 15 years broke up as he fell in love with the woman with whom he would spend the rest of his life. The first volume ends there; the second details his life with Virginia (Ginny) Gerstenfeld Heinlein, and covers the period during which he was most famous and productive.

Patterson covers all this in great detail--no small feat after most of the major players have died and the traces of some, including his former wife Leslyn, have been largely obliterated. At times the detail is a bit more than necessary, but usually the picture is vivid and illuminating, and judiciously rendered. (The habit some 20th century people had of keeping carbon copies of their correspondence is a biographers' godsend.) The exception, and it's a big one, is in his treatment of Leslyn, an intelligent and vivacious woman who could hardly have been more important to the first half of Heinlein's life, but of whom few historical traces remain, since she had little public life, and the bulk of her letters were destroyed. Patterson's main source and patron for this biography wsa Ginny, Leslyn's successor wife, whose disdain for Leslyn appears to have been boundless. Carol McGuirk of SF Studies points out that "Leslyn’s index entries (“affairs,” “alcoholic deterioration,” “badmouthing of Heinlein,” “bouts of rage,” etc.) speak volumes about the biographer’s special pleading for Virginia Heinlein’s version of this part of Heinlein’s story....When Leslyn discovered that her brother-in-law had been shot and then burned alive in a Philippine prison after months of torture, her depression deepened further. Stress and grief surely had their part in wrecking the marriage, yet Leslyn bears all responsibility. Another index entry on Leslyn includes four references to “psychotic episodes”; yet going back to the pages, one finds passages that fail to document any such thing: “she just locked herself in an enraged frame of mind” (221), “the psychotic episodes went away” (350), “Leslyn was confined to bed in a state of mind that could only be called psychotic” (415), and she was showing “flashes of temper” (537 n24). Only in a grudging footnote does Patterson concede that in 1950 Leslyn joined Alcoholics Anonymous and that she remarried twice, dying in 1981."

Otherwise, where gaps need to be filled in and conjecture must be resorted to, Patterson is for the most part reasonable and open about how he reached his conclusions. His adulation of his subject goes over the top mostly in the endnotes, where he can't resist explaining what makes a particular story so ahead of its time, and advocates for Heinlein's views of religion or politics too defensively. Patterson really gets up on a soapbox as he repeatedly lectures the reader about classical versus modern liberalism, by way of arguing that Heinlein's essential politics never changed. It's not a convincing argument, given that the one-time socialist candidate became an intense supporter of presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, and dropped friends with more nuanced views of the Communist threat to America.

Patterson was not the first writer authorized to write Heinlein's biography. Dr. Leon Stover, an anthropologist, first worked on it before his access to Heinlein's papers and archives was revoked by Ginny. Patterson says that this was due to her "concern at the amount of rumor Stover was soliciting and not fact-checking with her"--in other words, at his widening his sources and attempting to paint a balanced portrait. Her action apparently succeeded, in that getting any sense of Heinlein's flaws as a writer, husband, or friend requires an extremely careful reading between the lines combined with considerable informed speculation.

Overall, however, the picture is of a talented and admirable man who would not have succeeded were it not for many times the usual measure of self-discipline, resilience, and the confidence that comes as a result of both. Heinlein was in many ways more interesting than one might have guessed from reading his novels and stories. I'm grateful to William Patterson for preserving this rich record, however incomplete, of an unusual and fascinating human being.½

Wonderful authorize biography of the Dean of American Science Fiction, covering childhood, Annapolis, Navy career ended by illness, early writing career, and political activism. The book ends at the verge of turning from short story writer to novelist. Illuminating and insightful. All boomers started reading science fiction with Heinlein's juveniles, reading about rockets to the moon, spaceships, terraforming, generation starships, and other exciting topis that wetted our appetites. Read this book.

The second volume of the authorized biography. Detailed, references galore, a full description of the life of the Dean of American Science Fiction starting with endd of his second marriage and including the glory years as a novelist. I surprised myself by misting up when reading of his death and I had to skip reading Virginia Heinlein's letter to Robert after he died. A wonderful, generous, active life with tremendous impact.

Here, at last, is the long-awaited second volume of the authorised biography of Robert A. Heinlein. ‘Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, Volume 1: 1907-1948: Learning Curve’ told the story of his boyhood, his time in the navy and the beginnings of his writing career. ‘Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, Volume 2: 1948-1988: The Man Who Learned Better’ starts in 1948, by which time he was selling short stories to high paying magazines like the ‘Saturday Evening Post’ and had an arrangement with the publisher Scribner to write one juvenile novel a year, timed for the Christmas trade. Soon, he was working on the screenplay for ‘Destination Moon, the film version of ‘Rocketship Galileo’ and also got a job as a technical advisor on the production.

‘Volume 1’ also covered his personal life: the first brief marriage, the second longer one to Leslyn and the advent of Virginia, who became his third wife. Ginny moved in with Robert and Leslyn under their open marriage arrangement and ‘when the Snow Maiden got her skate in the door, things were different’ according to one correspondent. ‘Leslyn slept in the studio whilst Bob and the femme fatale cavorted in the master bedroom.’ Later, Ginny casually mentioned to Bob’s old friend, Cal Lanning, that they had lived together before they were married. Heinlein was furious. He was always very keen on keeping his private life private.

As well as being a private man, Heinlein was also rather madly patriotic and could not abide with anyone speaking against his country, even natives. He told Asimov off for complaining about the food when they worked in the Navy shipyards and, much later, he fell out badly with Arthur C. Clark when that worthy opined that the so-called ‘Star Wars’ missile defence system might not be a good idea. When I read ‘Grumbles From The Grave’, the posthumous collection of Heinlein’s grumpy letters, I had the impression that he had cut off all contact with John W. Campbell, Jr., following criticisms of the navy by Campbell during World War II. In fact, contact with the editor of ‘Astounding Science Fiction’ continued, usually in letters about L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics system, something Heinlein wisely avoided. No one was messing with his brain. He needed it. However, he certainly counted Hubbard as a good friend in 1948 because he loaned him $50 at a time when the Heinleins were pretty hard up themselves.

Many examples of his generosity are cited in the book. He gave money to Theodore Sturgeon when he was broke and also handed him a few plot ideas. He was generous to Sturgeon’s widow when she was in financial difficulties. He bought an electric typewriter for Philip K. Dick and loaned him money. He quietly supported the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) through hard times, even though a few of the other authors were highly critical of his political views. He really didn’t seem to care about money for its own sake. As soon as it was earned, he and Ginny would go off and spend it, usually on travelling around the world if they weren’t building a house. Later, a lot of it went on medical expenses.

The above examples of how nice Heinlein was highlighted the main enigma about him. He didn’t practice what he preached. The latter books seem to advocate selfishness, greed, looking after number one, etc and to sneer at altruism as pure foolishness. Lazarus Long regards lesser mortals – nearly everyone – as stupid and deserving of their Darwinian fate: poverty, famine or death. But Robert A. Heinlein wasn’t Lazarus Long or Jubal Harshaw or even Valentine Michael Smith. He spent a lot of time and money on recruiting blood donors. He went out and campaigned for political causes he believed in, though they were usually right wing. As mentioned above, he was generous with his money. In real life, he was more like the teenage idealist in a Heinlein juvenile than he was like the sour old heroes of the later novels. That is to his credit.

Heinlein always wanted his works to speak for him and avoided as much as possible any delving into his private life. That was quite interesting in ‘Volume 1’: political campaigns, marriage and breaking into the Science Fiction field and rising to the top. In ‘Volume 2’, the life is really a bit boring. Many squabbles with Shasta Publishing and Hollywood finance men over his share of the loot for the products. There’s a lot about house-building and trouble with contractors. There are family visits, family squabbles and loads of world travel. ‘Volume 1’ concentrated more on Science Fiction writing as he was learning his trade and to an extent on the Science Fiction fraternity of the time. As he became popular in the slicks and book publishing, Heinlein largely left hard-core SF fandom behind. Forrest Ackerman played a large part in this by being a pain in the neck, acting as ‘agent’ for Heinlein properties when he had no right to do so, this despite repeated attempts to make him stop. By this stage, Lurton Blassingame was the agent for virtually everything and was doing a very good job of making his client richer, obtaining foreign sales for the Scribner’s juveniles and getting good rates for serialisations of them in ‘Boy’s Life’ magazine. These had to be cut considerably and slightly amended to make the instalments more fitting but getting paid twice for the same novel was a good gimmick. The adult novels were usually serialised in the top SF magazines of the day so they also paid off twice.

Heinlein’s fame comes from his work as a Science Fiction writer. This biography reveals that he didn’t spend a whole lot of time writing. The very successful run of ‘juveniles’ for Scribner, one a year, were usually knocked out in a month. For example, he started writing ‘Star Beast’ on August 26th 1953 and had it finished by September 26th. The adult books didn’t take much longer. He wrote ‘The Puppet Masters’ in about five weeks beginning October 1, 1950. ‘Glory Road’ took three weeks. However, the time spent bashing out the first draft isn’t the whole story. Heinlein kept a large file of index cards on which he constantly made notes when he had an idea. Furthermore, he seems to have spent almost as much time cutting the first draft for publication as he did writing it. Certainly, this was the case with ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’. He also spent a lot of time and emotional energy arguing with Scribner’s editor Alice Dalgiesh about her ‘censorship’ of his work, though it seems to me that she knew the restrictions of the time and her cuts were designed to get the book safely past spinster librarians and other guardians of public morals in fifties America.

Of course, the time taken to write a work is no reflection of quality, for by now he had become a master of his art. All of Heinlein’s juveniles are intelligent, exciting adventure stories, easy to read and still popular today. The literati may criticise the lack of similes, metaphors and deep Freudian meaning but that stuff isn’t necessary to the average reader. The adult books of the fifties still had to be mostly about plot and characters. By 1960, Heinlein was fairly secure financially and ventured to include a bit more lecturing in ‘Starship Troopers’. That won a Hugo and his course was set. Thereafter, the books were more about his views than about plots and character. There were honourable exceptions, notably ‘The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress’ but, in general, the adult novels from ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’ onwards are the thoughts of Chairman Heinlein.

It should be noted that as Heinlein is an intelligent, witty writer and the books are very charming and readable. I like them all, even though I don‘t agree with his politics. It’s worth pointing out, though, that his reputation was mostly built on the fifties work and I believe that is what will stand the test of time. ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’ remains a classic and marks his zenith, the equivalent of ‘Sergeant Pepper’ for The Beatles. After the fact, people may argue about its worth but no one doubts its importance. The comparison is apt, too, because, like that popular beat combo, Heinlein was at the top of the field and had sufficient clout with the men in suits to experiment. They could be sure that any Heinlein book would sell. It was also like ‘Lord Of The Rings’, very much a part of sixties pop culture.

There is a theory, backed up by information here, that with the later works, especially the very latest, he was not interested in melodrama and the usual stuff of adventure but more in ideas and social satire. That being so, criticism of ‘I Will Fear No Evil’ or ‘The Cat Who Walks Through Walls’ for not being like ‘Starman Jones’ is futile. They weren’t meant to be. Heinlein knew what he was doing and if some people in the so-called SF community didn’t like it, he didn’t give a damn.

The main thing lacking in this authorised biography is any definite opinion by the author about his subject. The general tone is reverent, which is okay, but many biographies are extended essays which put forward a particular point of view. Sometimes the biographer may not like his subject. That’s okay, too. Patterson has done wonderful research as evidenced by the extensive notes accompanying each chapter but doesn’t have a conclusion or any analysis of what Heinlein was about. The two books might be called ‘What Heinlein Did’ and ‘What Heinlein Did Next’. On the other hand, there are plenty of opinions about Heinlein and his work out there and the facts assembled here are useful in their own right. ‘Volume 2’ contains some interesting stuff but, probably because the life of a struggling artist is more precarious than that of a successful rich one, the first book was better.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/

Because the two volumes of William Patterson's biography of Robert Heinlein make up a single work, and because most readers who finish the first volume will want to proceed to the second, this is a combined review of both volumes.

Patterson has poured as much time and research into this big biography of Heinlein as typically goes into a life of a major historical figure, and the result is engrossing, especially the first volume. Heinlein overcame a childhood of emotional neglect, a lack of financial resources, and a highly sensitive nature to enter the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, where he withstood harsh conditions and (especially in the first year) brutal hazing, and achieved what could have been expected to be a secure, lifetime career as a naval officer, only to be permanently retired in his 20s by ill health. Recovering, he entered politics as a socialist candidate for the California Assembly, knocking on every door in his district--no easy task for a man on the introverted side of the spectrum--only to be defeated by a few hundred votes. When the Japanese attacked in 1941, he applied immediately to be returned to active duty, but was denied due to his authorship of a bitter public letter protesting police brutality almost eight years previous. Undefeated, he relocated to Philadelphia to work in a civilian defense plant, where his coworkers included fellow writers Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp. As the war ended, his marriage of 15 years broke up as he fell in love with the woman with whom he would spend the rest of his life. The first volume ends there; the second details his life with Virginia (Ginny) Gerstenfeld Heinlein, and covers the period during which he was most famous and productive.

Patterson covers all this in great detail--no small feat after most of the major players have died and the traces of some, including his former wife Leslyn, have been largely obliterated. At times the detail is a bit more than necessary, but usually the picture is vivid and illuminating, and judiciously rendered. (The habit some 20th century people had of keeping carbon copies of their correspondence is a biographers' godsend.) The exception, and it's a big one, is in his treatment of Leslyn, an intelligent and vivacious woman who could hardly have been more important to the first half of Heinlein's life, but of whom few historical traces remain, since she had little public life, and the bulk of her letters were destroyed. Patterson's main source and patron for this biography wsa Ginny, Leslyn's successor wife, whose disdain for Leslyn appears to have been boundless. Carol McGuirk of SF Studies points out that "Leslyn’s index entries (“affairs,” “alcoholic deterioration,” “badmouthing of Heinlein,” “bouts of rage,” etc.) speak volumes about the biographer’s special pleading for Virginia Heinlein’s version of this part of Heinlein’s story....When Leslyn discovered that her brother-in-law had been shot and then burned alive in a Philippine prison after months of torture, her depression deepened further. Stress and grief surely had their part in wrecking the marriage, yet Leslyn bears all responsibility. Another index entry on Leslyn includes four references to “psychotic episodes”; yet going back to the pages, one finds passages that fail to document any such thing: “she just locked herself in an enraged frame of mind” (221), “the psychotic episodes went away” (350), “Leslyn was confined to bed in a state of mind that could only be called psychotic” (415), and she was showing “flashes of temper” (537 n24). Only in a grudging footnote does Patterson concede that in 1950 Leslyn joined Alcoholics Anonymous and that she remarried twice, dying in 1981."

Otherwise, where gaps need to be filled in and conjecture must be resorted to, Patterson is for the most part reasonable and open about how he reached his conclusions. His adulation of his subject goes over the top mostly in the endnotes, where he can't resist explaining what makes a particular story so ahead of its time, and advocates for Heinlein's views of religion or politics too defensively. Patterson really gets up on a soapbox as he repeatedly lectures the reader about classical versus modern liberalism, by way of arguing that Heinlein's essential politics never changed. It's not a convincing argument, given that the one-time socialist candidate became an intense supporter of presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, and dropped friends with more nuanced views of the Communist threat to America.

Patterson was not the first writer authorized to write Heinlein's biography. Dr. Leon Stover, an anthropologist, first worked on it before his access to Heinlein's papers and archives was revoked by Ginny. Patterson says that this was due to her "concern at the amount of rumor Stover was soliciting and not fact-checking with her"--in other words, at his widening his sources and attempting to paint a balanced portrait. Her action apparently succeeded, in that getting any sense of Heinlein's flaws as a writer, husband, or friend requires an extremely careful reading between the lines combined with considerable informed speculation.

Overall, however, the picture is of a talented and admirable man who would not have succeeded were it not for many times the usual measure of self-discipline, resilience, and the confidence that comes as a result of both. Heinlein was in many ways more interesting than one might have guessed from reading his novels and stories. I'm grateful to William Patterson for preserving this rich record, however incomplete, of an unusual and fascinating human being.

When The Martian Named Smith was published in 2001 it was the only full book dedicated to literary analysis of Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. If that has changed in the years since, I haven't been able to find the others. Author William Patterson was a longstanding and insightful proponent of Heinlein's work, who went on to write the magisterial two-volume biography Robert Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century. Co-author Andrew Thornton is a cipher to me.

This book is clearly designed for use in undergraduate instruction. It is written in an academic style, but it also pauses to furnish a great deal of background on basic concepts that might have been addressed with more succinct allusions and citations. Each short chapter is supplied with a set of "questions for discussion" to aid instructors and students, and the book includes a glossary defining terms that the authors considered recondite. Since Stranger in a Strange Land has been included in college curricula since the 1960s, these choices are reasonable, but they did make the book feel a little remedial when I read it.

The larger monograph is divided into five sections, named after the sections of Heinlein's Stranger (just as The Martian Named Smith was a working title for Heinlein's book). But the criticism does not proceed through the novel's contents in sequence. Instead, "His Maculate Conception" treats the biographical context and publishing history of Stranger, "His Preposterous Heritage" concerns literary traditions and critical concepts relevant to the book, and "His Eccentric Education" works through the book's concerns and themes in detail. "His Scandalous Career" includes a full review of the prior critical publications concerned with Stranger, and the authors don't find much to like, entitling this section's only chapter "Martyrdom." The final section "His Happy Destiny" is concerned with the popular reception of Stranger and its presence in American culture. An appendix on "The Significance of Names in Stranger" has a slightly wider scope than its title would indicate, speculating on the general significance of the main characters of the book, individually and in combination.

Although I should have read this book last year when I was researching toward the composition of a paper on the relationship of Stranger in a Strange Land to Thelemic occultism, there was hardly anything relevant here that I didn't already know from my own studies (which included a good deal of Patterson's other scholarship). On the whole, I found it an admirable treatment, and I would recommend it to anyone undertaking critical analysis or serious textual study of Heinlein's pivotal work, which I believe will endure as a key to the culture of its era as well as perennial inspiration to those who can read it lucidly.

The first volume of William H. Patterson's magisterial authorized biography of science fiction patriarch Robert A. Heinlein covers an immense amount of ground, including all of Heinlein's life prior to his work as a writer, work that he came to out of need as a third career. He had previously retired from the US Navy and worked as a political campaigner, primarily with the socialist EPIC movement in California associated with Upton Sinclair. This book spans all three of Heinlein's marriages, his complete writing career in the pulps, his Manana Literary Society, his engineering work for the military in World War II, and his entry into the "slicks" and book authorship.

In a very minor point, I was amused at Patterson's being stumped by a private Heinlein manuscript that mentions "Bljdf" (57), which is to my mind certainly "Alice" (a simple substitution cipher with the second letter evading encryption), i.e. Alice Catherine McBee (45).

The chief nugget I was seeking in the deep mine of this hefty tome is on page 374, where Patterson recounts Heinlein's attendance at an Agape Lodge (Pasadena) O.T.O. Gnostic Mass in December 1945. There is a little sloppiness of detail here--Patterson characterizes the Gnostic Mass uncharitably as "a theatrical piece, rather than a true religious rite" and manages to botch every one of his three direct quotes from Liber Legis in a long explanatory endnote (569-70). But his access to Heinlein's archives inspires confidence in his un-sourced remark that Heinlein kept "for research" the congregational missal sheet and copy of The Book of the Law he had received from the lodge.

I'm honestly feeling a fair amount of relief at having finished both hefty volumes of this work. I wish they were in my local public library for the convenience of my ongoing research, but now that I've read them and taken my notes, they've both been returned to the interlibrary system that furnished them to me. They were not quite so compelling or obviously useful that I'll want to acquire them for my own durable collection.

For no especially good reason, I've read this second volume before the first of William H. Patterson's enormous two-volume biography of Heinlein. (Volume 1 is now en route to me via inter-library loan.) It is certainly a detailed treatment, with a full accounting of both Heinlein's literary work and his personal life: travel, charity work, political involvements, health and finances, etc. All of this is scrupulously sourced, with the end notes and bibliography themselves long enough to be a book of their own.

An interesting thread in this volume was Heinlein's trouble with fans. One of these was the venerable alpha fan Forrest Ackerman, whose relationship with Heinlein graduated through strained to hostile, as Ackerman made arrangements as though he were Heinlein's literary agent, selling Heinlein's writings in small markets with no benefit to the author. Another was Alexi Panshin, who first wrote Heinlein to argue about ideas in Starship Troopers and later went on to author a full volume of criticism Heinlein in Dimension, which by virtue of its vanguard position became a go-to source for researchers seeking readings of Heinlein, and poisoned the well of academic discourse about Heinlein's works for decades. (I've read in the book, and it is indeed awful.)

An aspect of Heinlein's late career that loomed large in this treatment was his dedication to the cause of human blood science and medicine. This issue intersected with his fiction in the novel I Will Fear No Evil, and was relevant to his personal health because of his rare blood type. He ran countless blood drives (often among science fiction fans), wrote articles for reference works, butted heads with blood bureaucrats, and generally advocated for blood donation on every front available to him.

The whole of The Man Who Learned Better treats a Robert A. Heinlein married to Virginia Heinlein, and an epilogue discusses her administration of his estate and the ways she secured his legacy. It seems like it would be hard to overstate her contributions to his work in this period, when she was his first reader, ran interference with his fans, tended to his health, and traveled with him all over the world.

There's so much information in this book that it's easy to wonder what the forest must look like with so many trees in the way. Still, for anyone doing research on Heinlein these days, Patterson's work shows itself as a reliable reference of incomparable scope and detail.

Disclaimer: I was recruited into my professional career by reading Heinlein in my formative years, especially the juveniles. I didn’t even pretend to be unbiased when writing this. So read on at your own peril.

When modern SF began, there were two kinds of SF writers: those who broke into print at the top of their powers, like Burroughs and Van Vogt, and those whose later work showed significant improvement. In spite of Heinlein’s early reputation, his writing grew steadily in skill and power, particularly in stories at the longer lengths. Heinlein’s early stories were better than those of a beginner, perhaps because he was 32 when he started, but they were appealing more for their philosophy, toughness, and ability to evoke societies economically than their narrative skills. This is not to say that Heinlein did not publish significant fiction in his early years. He soon was producing short stories of revolutionary insight and developing artfulness: “Coventry”, “The Roads Must Roll…”, “The Long Watch”, “Solution Unsatisfactory”, “The Man Who Traveled In Elephants”. I still remember my first reaction when I read “The Puppet Masters” (first in Portuguese, and later on in English):”Oh, no! not the parasitic aliens again!” And then my surprise faded into admiration at the way Heinlein had rejuvenated that ancient idea. Heinlein had a talent to rehash old ideas and making them new again: solipsism, time paradox, immortality, superman, you name it. His skill made the parasitic aliens the reader’s nightmare as well.


The rest of this review can be found on my blog.

For the complete Patterson review of the 2-volumes biography, see review on my blog.

I’ve selected a few texts in direct speech, to illustrate some of his ideas, which I think worth retaining, because they help us understand the man as well as the writer (many more could have been extracted).

Volume 1:

“How long this racket has been going on? And why didn’t anybody tell me about it sooner?” (when Heinlein made the first sale to Campbell: “Life-Line”)
“I have been writing the Horatio Alger books of this generation, always with the same strongly moral purpose that runs through every line of the Alger books (which strongly influenced me; I read them all):
“Honesty is the best policy.”
“Hard work is rewarded.”
“There is no easy road to success.”
“Courage above all.”
“Studying hard pays off, in happiness as well as in money.”
“Stand on you own feet.”
“Don’t ever be bullied.”
“Take your medicine.”
“The world always has a place for a man who works, but none for the lazy.”
These are the things that the Alger books said to me, in the idiom suited to my generation; I believed them when I read them, I believe them now, and I have tried to say them to a younger generation which I believe has been shamefully neglected by many of the elders responsible of its moral training.” (now we understand where the “competence” theme comes from…)


You can read the rest of this review on my blog.

This is a bio of who some say is the greatest science fiction writer. I had already read Asimov's autobiiography. This is similar especially the parts about the early rejections and the relationship with their Editor John Campbell at the science fiction magazine Analog. Heinlein did have an interesting life. He was a graduate of the Naval Academy but had to leave the Navy for health reasons. He then had a fling in California as a left wing politician. He then during WW II worked for the Army in research with DeCamp and Asimov. He had three wives and by the time he married the third wife he had become more conservative. The early left wing politician would never have written Star Ship Troopers. Heinlein continued to develop since he was able to write such ground-breaking works as the Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land. This book is very thorugh abouit describing his writing life and why he left John Campbell to write for the slicks (Saturday Evening Post, etc.) more money! I am not sure I am going to tackle

Finished Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Learned Better, 1948-1988 by William H. Patterson, Jr. This book is the second volume of Patterson's biography of Heinlein. He certainly presents every detail about Heinlein's life. The book is ultimately disappointing since like the first volume it lacks any critical analysis of Heinlein or his work. Why did Heinlein the early left leaning libertarian politician end up as a member of the John Birch Society and a backer of Barry Goldwater? Was it the influence of his Republican third wife? After winning Hugoes for Double Star, Star Ship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress why did Heinlein lose his way with I Will Fear No Evil, Time Enough For Love, The Number of the Beast, Job, The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, and I Will Sail Beyond the Sunset. The author does no more than recite the book sales of these later books and provides no analysis. The author does explain why Heinlein was a backer of Ronald Reagon's Star Wars defense plan and why that led to a conflict with Arthur C. Clarke. Like Asimov's autobiography which I compare this to one certainly learns a lot about publishing short stories and novels. There is some detail about his friendships with other writers such as E E Doc Smith, Theodore Sturgeon, Asimov, Clarke, Jack Williamson, L. Sprague De Camp, Poul Anderson, Fred Pohl, and Jerry Pournelle. There was an interesting note about Heinlein's help in critiquing Pournelle's and Niven's The Mote in God's Eye which turned the book into a success.

Filled in the gaps in our knowledge about Heinlein.

Patterson's second volume was a pleasure to read and filled with insight into Heinlein and the controversies about his work which still stir feelings. An excellent volume, and excellent exploration of the life and work of Heinlein.

In my youth, Robert A. Heinlein's "juvenile"novels and future history stories captivated me. This first volume of a comprehensive biography traces Heinlein from birth to roughly age 41, when he was on the verge of success as a science fiction writer. Patterson tells his story in engaging detail and while tracing and exploring the development of Heinlein's thought, politics and vision. I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this book, from his discussion of Heinlein's wartime service to the stories of Heinlein's friendships and the roots of his fascination with L. Ron Hubbard.

Good enough; ends with Heinlein's marriage to Ginny. The book really needed more extensive editing, mostly to remove unnecessary redundancies, but I've read biographies which were far less readable and showed far less research. Looking forward to the second volume.

A few photographs would have been a worthwhile addition.

This short review has also been published on a dabbler's journal.½

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1757001.html

Like most sf fans, I passed through a phase of total fascination with Robert A. Heinlein as a young reader - possibly even before my teens; and like most sensible people, I was repelled and appalled by the awfulness of his last few novels, to the point of wondering if they had all been like that and I was just too young to notice. (Though when I checked, I found the earlier ones were not as bad as I feared.)

At over 600 pages (including a 28 page index and 100 pages of grrrr endnotes), this book is nothing if not comprehensive; but it covers only the first 41 of Heinlein's 80 years, ending neatly on the day of his third marriage. We learn of Heinlein's liberal Missouri family background, his career in the Navy dashed by ill-health, his dabbling in political activism (as a left but libertarian Democrat in the 1930s) and his early writing career, and rapid emergence as a leading light in the world of sf. It's all told in meticulous detail.

However, the hagiographical tone of Patterson's introduction is a warning signal that the book may perhaps have too narrow a focus on its subject rather than on his environment. Heinlein's death is compared to the Kennedy assassinations and 9/11 in its impact on people"s lives; we are told that he "galvanised not one, but four social movements of his century: science fiction and its stepchild, the policy think tank, the counterculture, the libertarian movement, and the commercial space movement." It's news to me, as one who has been active in both, that policy think tanks are especially closely linked with sf in their historical origin.

As did Jo Walton, I had hoped for a biography that would both get under Heinlein's skin and contextualise his work in the politics both of the USA and of science fiction of the times. But you will learn more of Heinlein's politics by reading half of Ken MacLeod's essay in The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. This book is almost entirely surface detail - microscopically mapped and decently structured, but it will be an indispensable secondary source for other, better works in future.

Greatly enjoyed it and await Vol II. I had heard, but only in connection with this book prior to publication, of the first marriage, this explored it. Heinlein is remains one of my favorite science fiction authors, certainly holding his rank as three of the best ten science fiction authors of the 60, which was when I really discovered the genre.

This gives background on many of the locations, characters and names in his novels, and will cause me to go back and reread..

I think I have everything published under his name, I'm aware of missing some of the short stories published under others, although I've read many of them.

I wait for volume II.