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Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) is generally considered the greatest American SF writer of the twentieth century. A famous and bestselling author in later life, he started as a navy man and graduate of Annapolis who was forced to retire because of tuberculosis. A socialist politician in the 1930s, he became one of the sources of Libertarian politics in the United States in his later years.
His most famous works include the Future History series (stories and novels collected in The Past Through Tomorrow and continued in later novels), Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. He was a friend of admirals and of bestselling writers and artists, and was on the advisory committee that helped Ronald Reagan create the Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative. Given his desire for privacy in the later decades of his life, he was both stranger and more interesting than one could ever have known.
This is the first of two volumes of a major American biography. Robert A. Heinlein: Volume 1 (1907–1948): Learning Curve is about Robert A. Heinlein's life up to the end of the 1940s and the midlife crisis that changed him forever.
- Sales Rank: #704585 in Books
- Published on: 2011-06-21
- Released on: 2011-06-21
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.42" w x 6.00" l, 1.39 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 640 pages
Review
“[Heinlein] made footsteps big enough for a whole country to follow. And it was our country that did it… We proceed down a path marked by his ideas. That's legacy enough for any man. He showed us where the future is.” ―Tom Clancy
“Like Carlos Baker's Hemingway, this is an essential and exhaustive life.” ―Joe Haldeman
“Patterson offers a meticulous life-portrait of America's most pivotal science fiction author. In following Robert Heinlein's journey, step-by-step, we come to understand the persistent themes of his work. Perseverance, compassion, courage, curiosity, and--above all--a drive to confront the future on its own terms, eye-to-eye.” ―David Brin
About the Author
William H. Patterson, Jr., is an independent scholar who has published two books about Heinlein as well as numerous articles. He is an editor and contributor to the Virginia Edition Collected Works of Robert A. Heinlein. He lives in Los Angeles.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Robert A. Heinlein
1THE HEINLEINS OF BUTLER, MISSOURIButler, Missouri, has been the county seat and market town for Bates County since the resettlement of the "dark and bloody ground" after the Civil War. Eighty miles southeast of Kansas City, in 1907 it was in its third decade of sustained growth and had achieved a kind of stability that let its residents--most of them--enjoy what is now seen as a golden age of America, though in October of that year they were in for another depression, as debilitating as the savage depression of 1893.Both the Heinlein and Lyle families were well established in Butler. Rex Ivar Heinlein and Bam Lyle Heinlein grew up there (though Rex's father, Samuel Edward Heinlein, was a traveling salesman working out of Kansas City), and they began dating when both were attending Butler's Academy (the local equivalent of a college). Rex enlisted for the Spanish-American War, and when he came back, sick and "on a shutter," as family lore has it,1 they were married in November 1899.The couple immediately moved into Bam's parents' house--a common practice in the days before installment credit contracts brought the purchase of a house within the range of newlyweds. Extended families were the rule, and houses were built to accommodate generations living under the same roof. Even so, the Lyle ménage must have been crowded: Bam's six-year-old brother, Park, was living at home, and when her older sister, Anna, was widowed, leaving her to support her daughter, Thelma, by teaching, she, too, had gone back home to Butler and to her father's house.Fortunately, Dr. Lyle's horse-and-buggy medical practice was flourishing; even with the additional people in residence, he was able to indulge in trotting races as a hobby, running a fashionable sulky--a light cart with only a driver's seat--in the annual Bates County Fair, drawn by a half-brother of the famous Dan Patch.In 1899 Rex Ivar had prospects: he was working as a clerk and bookkeeperin his uncle Oscar Heinlein's dry goods store in Butler, a kind of combination hardware and general store. Uncle Oscar, in his mid-thirties, was unmarried and childless; it was understood that, if he applied himself and worked hard, Rex Ivar might inherit O. A. Heinlein Mercantile one day.2Rex Ivar and Bam started a family: their first child, a boy, was born on August 15, 1900. They named him Lawrence Lyle Heinlein, honoring grandparents on both sides of the family. On March 25, 1905, another boy was born. They named him Rex Ivar, after his father. A year later, Bam Heinlein became pregnant again.On July 7, 1907, not-quite-seven-year-old Larry Heinlein was delegated to keep his two-year-old brother, Rex, under control, at least till his father got home from work.3 Bam Lyle Heinlein was upstairs for her lying-in, attended by her father's office partner, Dr. Chastain, since it would have been improper for Dr. Lyle to attend his own daughter. Shortly after 3 P.M., she delivered a fine baby boy. They named him Robert Anson, after her great-grandparents Robert Lyle and Anson S. Wood.But by 1907 Rex Ivar's prospects in Butler no longer seemed quite so rosy. Like the biblical Jacob, he had served his uncle for seven years, and that was enough. The October stock market crash and Panic of 1907 threw the country into a depression. That winter Rex Ivar decided to give up on Butler and joined his father and uncles (plus aunt Jessie) in Kansas City.Rex Ivar's father, Samuel Edward Heinlein, had been in Kansas City for some years, working as a traveling salesman for the Kansas-Moline Plow Company. In 1903 he moved to the Midland Manufacturing Company, where his brothers Harvey and Lawrence also got work as salesmen and his sister Jessie was a clerk. In 1906 Samuel Edward was promoted from traveling salesman and assistant manager to full manager for Midland Manufacturing (soon to become Midland Implements, Jobbers of Implements & Vehicles), and with the attendant raise he bought a larger house. In December 1907 Rex and Bam and the three boys moved into his father's house. Rex Ivar, too, started out as a traveling salesman for Midland, and Robert remembered being taken several times by his mother to the train station at the foot of Wyandotte (building torn down in 1914) to meet his father returning home from his sales route.4 Soon, however, Midlands promoted him to clerk and cashier, and he was able to rent a small house of his own at 2605 Cleveland.5 Now Rex and Bam felt truly launched in Kansas City.6 They would work hard and strive--and have many more children.Robert Anson was an easy baby for his mother. She later said he gave no trouble and always entertained himself.7 Robert later recalled that he was fedon Eagle Brand condensed and sweetened milk, rather than breastfed like the rest of the children.8 No explanation for this has survived. Sometimes it just happens that lactation does not start.Robert's infancy cannot have been easy for him, though: a middle child, between the older boys and the new babies that came one by one, he was outcompeted for his mother's attention. He said on several occasions that he was a stammerer as a young man, and stammering is often associated with family disturbances during the time when a child is learning to speak, roughly from about ages two through five--for Robert, that was from 1909 through 1912.9 Bam seems to have preferred her father's day-to-day care during her pregnancies (there are no records of perinatal doctoring or midwifery), and she spent a great deal of time in her father's house in the early days.A baby girl, Louise, arrived on February 27, 1909. In 1910 Midland failed and went out of business. In 1911 brothers Samuel and Harvey Wallace Heinlein put the Heinlein family's expertise to work and set up their own company--Heinlein Brothers, Agricultural Implements--across the street from the old Midlands site. Rex Ivar was their clerk-cashier.10He was thirty-one years old; he was also sickly and had a series of operations during Robert's childhood. Work, church, and politics left very little time to spend with the family. When Bobby was five years old, he noticed unusual tension in the house; he later found out his father had received word from a local doctor that he had only three months to live--a false alarm, it turned out.11The children shared two bedrooms, with the smallest children in a crib in the parents' bedroom. Nor were there enough beds to go around. Heinlein recalled as an adult that he slept on a pallet on the floor for years, in a constant state of amiable warfare with baby sister Louise, "a notorious pillow-swiper (with nine in the family, pillows were at a premium) clear back when she pronounced the word pillow as 'pidduh.'"12As is common in large families, the older children had to help raise the younger. Bobby adored his oldest brother, Lawrence, but not brother Rex. Rex was only two years older, but gave himself privileges Bobby did not appreciate. A family anecdote from about 1911 or 1912 illustrates the problem: Rex came running in to their mother complaining--tattling--that Bobby was standing by the curb and saying hello to everybody who came along, and Rex didn't approve of that.13 Rex continued trying to raise his brother for a very long time, and this was a source of strain between them as they grew older.On September 10, 1912, another boy was born, Jesse (later called "Jay")Clare, named for his Aunt Jessie. Then Rose Elizabeth on July 23, 1918, named apparently for the paternal and maternal grandmothers, Rose Adelia Wood and Elizabeth Johnson (much as Robert Anson had been named for the grandfathers). Mary Jean, arriving on Christmas Day in 1920, rounded out the family at seven children. Bam Heinlein was forty-one years old.Until 1914 Bam and the children went by train to live with Dr. Lyle in Butler during summers and holidays. There she and the children could get out from under many of the pressures and privations of their life in Kansas City and Bam could let the children run (relatively) free in the cleaner, rural environment. Rex Ivar was bound to his desk in Kansas City, joining them when he could get away--weekends occasionally; a full week when possible. (In 1909 he had taken a temporary job with a bank in Butler while Bam was pregnant with Louise.)14Young Bobby seems to have been a particular favorite of Dr. Lyle's, and the affection was certainly reciprocated; Dr. Lyle built a special seat in his sulky for the boy, so he could accompany him on his medical rounds. Dr. Lyle did not shield the realities from the boy: outside the very largest and most advanced hospitals, medical practice consisted of iodine and aspirin, and encouraging people to heal themselves.15 Years later, Robert remembered seeing Dr. Lyle burn and bury his instruments after an infectious disease case, possibly anthrax.16Dr. Lyle also taught Bobby to play chess at age four. As Dr. Lyle died in August 1914, when his grandson had just turned seven years old, these incidents must have made a very deep impression on him. Heinlein was to take Dr. Lyle as his pattern for all the American frontier virtues of intellectual range and toughness, patriotism, and pragmatic morality in his fictional portrait of Lazarus Long's grandfather, Dr. Ira Johnson, in Time Enough for Love (1973) and To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987).But Kansas City was home, more and more. The Heinleins had an almost proprietary, family interest in Swope Park, since an uncle Ira (who had married Bobby's Aunt Jessie) worked for the city, and he drew for his own amusement a detailed map locating every rock and shrub in the park (he also achieved renown for collecting a large ball of twine).17 Later, Heinlein recalled stripping and playing naked in the park, before World War I, pretending he was Tarzan.18 Nakedness became an important sensual experience for him. Years later, for fictional purposes, he r...
Most helpful customer reviews
102 of 105 people found the following review helpful.
An amazing accomplishment
By Michael Booker
Patterson has been given unprecedented access to prepare a two-volume authorized biography of science fiction giant Robert A. Heinlein. The depth of detail that he offers here - backed up by nearly a hundred pages of footnotes--means that we have a definitive biography of a one of America's greatest authors.
One of the things that I most deeply appreciate is that this isn't a hagiography. Patterson has deep affection for his subject, but Heinlein is shown as a flawed human being who makes many mistakes and who had many shortcomings. Many mysteries about his life are finally resolved (who was his first wife - the one before Leslyn?) thanks to extensive detective work.
For fans of Heinlein's fiction, this book (and I trust, the subsequent volume) will help to answer the tired question that ever author dreads, "Where do you get your ideas?" Heinlein's life is, naturally, the chief source for his fictional characters and plot lines. Sometimes Patterson is explicit in drawing these connections. In other places, readers versed in Heinlein's work will catch these linkages on their own.
The book must also be praised as a fascinating lesson in American history. Heinlein came from humble Missouri roots and lived through the bulk of the 20th century. His Navy career prior to WWII is fascinating in its own right, as is his involvement in California politics during the Depression.
Fans of Heinlein: READ THIS BOOK. Fans of science fiction: READ THIS BOOK. As for those interested in American History, especially U.S. Naval history...I strongly commend this biography to you.
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful.
A thorough and objective biography (up to 1948)
By T. D. Welsh
Having read every one of Heinlein's novels, short stories, and non-fiction articles that I could get hold of, I was keen to learn more about the great man and so snapped up this first of two volumes in William Patterson's authorized biography. My expectations were fairly low. Biographies of SF writers tend to be amateurish, enthusiastic, or condemnatory; in any case, they don't often measure up to the highest standards. Patterson, however, has done a scrupulously thorough job - as witness the 453 fact-packed pages he devotes to the first 41 years of Heinlein's life (1907-1948). Not only is this an authorized biography; Mr Patterson was actually invited to write it by Mrs Virginia Heinlein (Heinlein's third wife and widow), who gave him complete access to all the surviving documents as well as introducing him to many invaluable sources. While it is possible to argue that Heinlein is given an easy ride, in the sense that Patterson does not overtly condemn any of his behavior, I think it is fair to say that the biographer stands back and lets the facts speak for themselves. Whether you end up idolizing Heinlein, finding him flawed but admirable, or detesting him, is a matter for you and depends on how you choose the interpret the facts. The book is very well written, in fluent prose that never gets in the way of the story, and is full of interesting quotations from letters, conversations, and the like.
Even if you already knew, it is a shock to realize that Heinlein was born in the age of the horse and buggy, when motor cars, the telephone, and electricity were still quite recent inventions, and when Mark Twain still had a couple of years to live (and H.G. Wells another 39!) Indeed, Heinlein was 7 years old when the First World War began - and 10 when the USA became a combatant. He was 32 when the Second World War began (and 34 when the USA began to fight); and he spent over a third of his life in a world without technology that we take for granted, such as antibiotics, nuclear power, and miniaturized electronics. Probably not many of his readers know that he commanded a gun turret on the battleship USS Oklahoma in the 1920s, and as captain's aide even brought the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (at that time the world's largest warship) into port.
It is hard to say how much Heinlein's distinctive personality owed to nature, and how much to nurture (or lack of it). Born into a large and steadily expanding family with barely adequate resources, young Bobby began earning his own living as early as 12 - the year he entered high school - and was completely self-supporting by the age of 15. Somehow he managed to combine this life of what would now be considered "child labor" with a Matilda-like affinity for books - everything from Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz to Mark Twain, Kipling, Edgar Rice Burroughs, T.H. Huxley, H.G. Wells, and Conan Doyle. Perhaps because his childhood (in the modern sense) was so short, he had very clear memories going back to a very early age. Seeing few possible escapes from the life of routine drudgery that so many of his friends and family endured, Heinlein pulled off the remarkable feat of getting himself appointed to the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, in 1925. The thoroughness of his preparation for this bid beggars belief - for instance, the US senator who sponsored him said that each of the 50 other candidates submitted one letter of recommendation... whereas Heinlein submitted 50 letters!
His four years at Annapolis shaped Heinlein's views in many ways, further strengthening his patriotism and love of the USA and giving him unusual insights into the nature of command and other military/naval relationships. This contributed to some of the apparently puzzling contradictions in his personality: a conservative with anarchic beliefs; a loving, sentimental, emotionally vulnerable man who could come across as authoritarian and insensitive; an intellectual who understood that there is sometimes no substitute for decisive action. Although he would have liked to be an admiral, ill health forced him out of the US Navy and eventually left him struggling to earn a living. The story of how he campaigned on behalf of Upton Sinclair's EPIC ("End Poverty in California") party, then stood for office as a Democrat in a heavily Republican district and suffered a crushing defeat, also casts a lot of light on some of his plots and the familiarity with practical politics which informed his writing. Then there was the abortive silver mine venture (very briefly described by Patterson) before taking up a public offer to submit a story to Astounding Science Fiction magazine. That story, "Lifeline" still reads very well today, and told editor John W Campbell that he had a talented new writer. Heinlein's reaction, when he gazed at the resulting check for $70 (worth a little over $1000 today), was characteristic: "How long has this racket been going on? And why didn't anybody tell me about it sooner?" That was 1939, the dawn of a new era in many ways, and the start of a brief few years when Heinlein wrote mostly for the pulp magazines. By 1948 (the year I was born) he had several novels in print, and had broken out of the pulp ghetto to sell stories to glossy magazines. From then on, he was to be almost exclusively a novelist.
It's hard to judge Heinlein's personal life without a better understanding of the period than most of us nowadays can muster. He seems to have had an overpowering urge to marry - certainly his first marriage, to Elinor Curry the moment he graduated from Annapolis, seems inexplicable otherwise. They had already slept together, and she had made it clear to him that she did not consider their marriage exclusive. So what difference did it make to either of them, except to make them unhappy? In the first place, it destroyed Heinlein's hopes for a Rhodes Scholarship, which would have paid for three years at Oxford University and could have opened the doors to a career in astronomy. His second marriage was no less singular: Cal Laning, one of his best friends from Annapolis, invited Heinlein to meet his new fiancee Leslyn Macdonald - a brilliant, mystical waif - only to hear, the following morning, that Leslyn was going to marry Heinlein instead! Nevertheless, they all remained firm friends. Reading about such events, it's sometimes hard to believe that we are getting the whole story. Either that, or people were different in the 1930s. Leslyn seems to have thrived on hard times, of which there were plenty as the two of them threw themselves into the war effort, but later (it seems) took to drink and suffered something like a nervous breakdown. And so Heinlein ended up with wife number three, Lieutenant Virginia Gerstenfeld (Ginny), who was to be his partner and helpmeet for the rest of his life.
In addition to its 32 chapters, this chunky hardback features a brief Introduction, over 30 good black-and-white photographs, a couple of pages of acknowledgments, a substantial appendix on the genealogy of the Heinlein and Lyle families, a brief one on Heinlein's political campaigns, a full 100 pages of detailed notes on the text and sources, and a good index. Even my critical eye found no editing oversights of any kind. Now I shall be biting my nails until I can get hold of Volume 2!
39 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Heinlein biography brilliant
By Amazon Customer
This Heinlein biography is both well researched and brilliant. The author does his best to understand Heinlein and his work in the context of his work, his interest in science, and most of all, his patriotism and military service. As a former military member myself, it's hard to explain to those who have never been in exactly what a life-changing experience this can be. I had never heard over half of the personal detail before (the book's fair and in many ways, loving description of Leslyn Heinlein makes reading FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD a much more interesting experience). It was also great to see the descriptions of fans and other SF writers (some of whom I have been lucky enough to meet) in this book as well. I'm about three-quarters of the way through, and I can already tell that I'm going to be really ticked the second volume isn't out yet.
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