Author Archives: The Heinlein Society

The Lost Manuals by J. Neil Schulman: Sooner or later we all imagine there’s a set of technical manuals our parents were supposed to give us at birth with instructions on How Life Works. Look no further: you’ll find the closest thing to the Lost Manuals in the science fiction section: the author was Robert A. Heinlein. Continue reading →

Robert A. Heinlein first published Methuselah’s Children in a serialized version in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction in July through September 1941. He completely rewrote, expanded and republished the novel independently in 1958 and collected the longer version in The Past Through Tomorrow (1982), the version on which this precis is based. Continue reading →

Strong Women Characters in Early Heinlein by G. E. Rule (Geo Rule) ©2003   This article is based on a presentation given by me at BayCon 2003, May 24, 2003, in a panel discussion by Heinlein Society members on Heinlein’s … Continue reading →

From Bill Patterson, author of the Heinlein biography, a study of Heinlein’s story If This Goes On: The composition of “If This Goes On—” took place in August and September of 1939 and shows Heinlein in full command of his very identifiable prose style and distinctive “voice,” less than six months after he started commercial writing. Continue reading →

After World War II, Heinlein tells us, he resumed writing with two objectives: “first to explain the meaning of atomic weapons through popular articles… I wrote nine articles intending to shed light on the post Hiroshima age, and I never worked harder on any writing, researched the background more thoroughly, tried harder to make the (grim and horrid) message entertaining and reasonable…I continued to write those articles until the U.S.S.R. rejected the United States’ proposals for controlling and outlawing atomic weapons… and I stopped trying to pedal articles based on tying down the Bomb… –Was I really so naif that I though I could change the course of history this way? No, not really. But damn it, I had to try!” Heinlein referred to these articles as his “failing at World Saving.” Recently, Ed Wysocki wrote, for the The Heinlein Journal, an article about one of these attempts, entitled “Flight Into the Future.” By special arrangement with the author and the Journal, this paper is republished here. This is especially significant because it is the only one of Heinlein’s cautionary articles written after World War II that he was able to get published. Continue reading →