Robert Heinlein

Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 - May 8, 1988) was one of the most influential authors in the science fiction genre.

Heinlein was born in Butler, Missouri, but spent his childhood in Kansas City, Missouri, in the early years of the 20th century. This was a time of great religious revival across America, especially socially marginalized areas such as Missouri. The outlook and values of this period would inform his later works; however, he would also break with many of its social mores, at least on an intellectual level, frequently portraying them as narrow-minded and parochial.

After high school, Heinlein attended the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. After graduating from the Academy in 1929, he served as an officer in the United States Navy until 1934, when he was discharged due to pulmonary tuberculosis. The military was the second great influence on Heinlein; throughout his life, he strongly believed in loyalty, leadership, and other military ideals. This attitude permeated his fiction, most prominently (and controversially) in the novel Starship Troopers. His 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land was the first science-fiction book to become a national best-seller -- readers who did not read SF books as a rule were interested in Heinlein's philosophy, as expressed in that novel, which transcended what was seen as the usual scope of such novels at the time, preoccupied with robots, flying saucers, and bug-eyed monsters.

After his discharge, Heinlein studied mathematics and physics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also worked in a series of odd jobs, including real estate dealership and silver mining.

Heinlein's philosophy

As in the work of other authors, in Heinlein's work there is little clear distinction between the themes of his work and the sort of philosophical views that he propagated.

In his book To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Heinlein has the main character, Maureen, state that the purpose of metaphysics is to ask questions: Why are we here? Where are we going after we die? (and so on), and that you are not allowed to answer the questions. Asking the questions is the point for metaphysics, but answering them is not, because once you answer them, you cross the line into religion. He doesn't really say why, but the answer as to "why" is obvious: because any answer is an opinion[?]. It may be a good opinion, or a bad one, but it's only what the person who wrote the opinion believes. Such opinions cannot be validated, e.g., you can't ask the person to show you what it is like after death or provide for a personal audience with their God or gods.

Struggle for self-determination

The theme of revolution against corrupt, nasty oppressors informs several of Heinlein's novels:

• Loonies rebel against Warden (aided by self-aware computer) in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
• Venusian colonists break away from earth in Between Planets
• A student rebellion on Mars in Red Planet
• Cabal overthrows religious dictatorship in If This Goes On
• Scientists overcome foreign invaders in Sixth Column
• Youths and mutants rebel against and escape entrenched authority in Orphans of the Sky

The theme of self-making

The theme of self-making is taken to its furthest in the related books Time Enough for Love, The Number of the Beast, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. We are invited to wonder, what would humanity be in the absence of all customs? How would our humanity be expressed if we did not develop under the soul-squashing influence of culture? We would be individuals. We would have self-made souls.

Other recurring themes binding Heinlein's works together include individual dignity and the value of both personal liberty and responsibility, the virtue of independence, science as a liberating factor, the perniciousness of bureaucrats, the brutality of corporate power, the hypocrisy of organized religion, and the subjective value of mysticism.

Novels

• Methuselah's Children (1941))
• Beyond This Horizon (1942)
• Rocket Ship Galileo (1947)
• The Rolling Stones (1947)
• Space Cadet (1948)
• Red Planet (1949)
• Sixth Column aka The Day After Tomorrow (1949)
• Farmer in the Sky (1950)
• Between Planets (1951)
• The Puppet Masters (1951)
• Starman Jones (1953)
• The Star Beast (1954)
• Tunnel in the Sky (1955)
• Double Star (Hugo Award, best novel, 1956) (1956)
• Time for the Stars (1956)
• Citizen of the Galaxy (1957)
• The Door into Summer (1957)
• Have Spacesuit, Will Travel (1958)
• Starship Troopers (Hugo Award, best novel, 1960) (1959)
• Stranger in a Strange Land (redacted) (Hugo Award, best novel, 1962)
• Glory Road (1963)
• Podkayne of Mars (1963)
• Farnham's Freehold (1965)
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Hugo Award, best novel, 1967) (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)
• Stranger in a Strange Land (original uncut) (1991)

Short stories

• All You Zombies
• And He Built a Crooked House (1940)
• Blowups Happen
• By His Bootstraps
• Coventry
• Delilah and the Space Rigger
• Gentlemen, Be Seated
• If This Goes On
• It's Great to Be Back
• Life Line
• Logic of Empire
• Methuselah's Children
• Misfit
• Ordeal in Space
• Our Fair City (1941)
• Requiem
• Searchlight
• Space Jockey
• The Black Pits of Luna
• The Green Hills of Earth
• The Long Watch
• The Man Who Sold The Moon
• The Man who Traveled in Elephants[?] (1957)
• The Menace From Earth
• The Roads Must Roll
• The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag[?]
• They[?] (1941)
• Universe
• We Also Walk Dogs

Collections

• The Man Who Sold the Moon (1950)
• Waldo and Magic Inc. (1950)
• The Green Hills of Earth (1951)
• Assignment in Eternity (1953)
• Revolt in 2100 (1953)
• The Robert Heinlein Omnibus (1958)
• The Menace from Earth[?] (1959)
• The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag[?] (1959)
• Lost Legacy[?] (1960)
• Orphans of the Sky (1963)
• Three by Heinlein[?] (1965)
• A Robert Heinlein Omnibus[?] (1966)
• The Past Through Tomorrow[?] (1967)
• The Best of Robert A. Heinlein[?] (1973)
• Expanded Universe[?] (1980)
• A Heinlein Trio[?] (1980)
• The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein[?] (1999)

Nonfiction

• Grumbles from the Grave[?] (1989)
• Take Back Your Government: A Practical Handbook for the Private Citizen[?] (1992)
• Tramp Royale[?] (1992)

Spinoffs

• The Notebooks of Lazarus Long[?] illuminated by D.F Vassallo (1978)
• Fate's Trick[?] by Matt Costello[?] (1988)
• Requiem: New Collected Works by Robert A. Heinlein and Tributes to the Grand Master[?] (1992)

Filmography

• "Starship Troopers" (book) (1997)
• "Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles[?]" TV series (1999)
• "Red Planet[?]" TV mini-series (book) (1994)
• "Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters[?]" (book) (1994)
• "The Brain Eaters[?]" aka "The Brain Snatchers" aka "Keepers of the Earth" aka "The Keepers" (book The Puppet Masters) (uncredited) (1958)
• "Project Moon Base[?]" (1953)
• "Destination Moon[?]" (book Rocket Ship Galileo) (screenplay) (technical advisor) (1950)

External Links

• The Heinlein Society (http://www.heinleinsociety.org/)
• Good bibliography, essays, news, links, etc. (http://www.wegrokit.com/)
• Robert Heinlein Biography (http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/rahbio)