Category: Articles

Citizen of the Galaxy Comic, #2

Citizen of the Galaxy Graphic Novel

A Kickstarter program has been started to turn Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy will be the first graphic novel adapted from Robert Heinlein’s Virginia Edition.

The Ensign’s Prize Court

The Ensign’s Prize Court As detailed in the June 2007 NewsletterGinny Heinlein discovered a publisher selling illegal copies of some of Robert A. Heinlein’s best known works on the internet. Through perseverance and at no small cost to herself, she fought the pirates and won. A consent decree awarded her the publisher’s entire stock of…
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FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about Robert A. Heinlein, the person.

Robert A. Heinlein, the person Updated and reviewed Feb. 2013 by William Patterson, Robert James, Ph.D. and J.H. Seltzer. Homes question reviewed and corrected thanks to Heinlein Forum members John Welsh and Tom Losh, June 2023. ©2003-2024 No reproduction or distribution without consent. This material may not be copied and put on another website without…
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Robert Heinlein Remembered by L. Neil Smith

Robert Heinlein Remembered by L. Neil Smith Take big bites. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love Imagine a lonely kid, undersized and overbright, living on an American air base overseas. Comic books taught him to read years before he started school and he’d tackle anything that fell open…
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ROBERT HEINLEIN and THE TOM CORBETT SPACE CADET UNIVERSE

Heinlein Society This is copyrighted material and may not be copied or reproduced in any form, including on other websites, without permission of the copyright holder. ROBERT HEINLEIN and THE TOM CORBETT SPACE CADET UNIVERSE by Ed Pippin ©1996-2004 TOM CORBETT SPACE CADET website: Introduction, Facts and History During the first part, of the 5th…
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“Starry-eyed internationalists” versus the Social Darwinists: Heinlein’s transnational governments

Heinlein Society This is copyrighted material and may not be copied or reproduced in any form, including on other websites, without permission of the copyright holder. “Starry-eyed internationalists” versus the Social Darwinists: Heinlein’s transnational governments by Rafeeq O. McGiveron ©Kent State University Press, 1999 Permission for this article to appear here has been non-exclusively licensed…
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Rah, Rah, R. A. H.! by Spider Robinson

Heinlein Society This is copyrighted material and may not be copied or reproduced in any form, including on other websites, without permission of the copyright holder. Rah, Rah, R. A. H.! By Spider Robinson, ©1980 This essay has previously appeared in Destinies magazine (Jim Baen, ed., Summer, 1980), Time Travelers Strictly Cash (Spider Robinson, 1981),…
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Voyage to a Thousand Cares by David M. Silver

Heinlein Society – Scholastic/Academic articles Voyage to a Thousand Cares: Background on Slavery in Citizen of the Galaxy This is copyrighted material and may not be copied or reproduced in any form, including on other websites, without permission of the copyright holder. Voyage to a Thousand Cares: Background on Slavery in Citizen of the Galaxy…
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Heinlein Timeline

On January 7, 2013  I posted a Heinlein timeline on the Heinlein Facebook page for a reader who asked for assistance in determining the order of Robert’s books.  The post drew a lot of looks, many more than I expected,  so I decided to create an improved timeline which of course wouldn’t fit in Facebook.  …
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My Virginia Edition Arrived!

My Virginia Edition of the Complete Works of Robert A. Heinlein arrived and has a new home on shelves in my office! My goodness… with as many things having to do with Heinlein and his legacy I’ve been involved in (Heinlein Archives, Heinlein Society, Heinlein Prize Trust, and more), I didn’t think a book set…
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Prophets of Science Fiction – About the Production

Wednesday, February 29, 2012 the Science Channel program Prophets of Science Fiction will run its episode focusing on Heinlein. In August of 2011, the producers of the Discovery Science Channel’s series Prophets of Science Fiction contacted The Heinlein Society with a request for help for their episode on Robert A. Heinlein. The script was completed…
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STRANGER VS STRANGER

Heinlein Society This is copyrighted material and may not be copied or reproduced in any form, including on other websites, without permission of the copyright holder. STRANGER VS STRANGER: Comparing Versions of Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” by G. E. Rule ©1994 G. E. Rule “My reputation rests almost solely on how I tell…
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CAMPBELL ON HEINLEIN: SELECTIONS FROM THE JOHN W. CAMPBELL LETTERS

Heinlein Society – Scholastic/Academic articles Posted 06.11.2004 CAMPBELL ON HEINLEIN: SELECTIONS FROM THE JOHN W. CAMPBELL LETTERS This is copyrighted material and may not be copied or reproduced in any form, including on other websites, without permission of the copyright holder. Selected and introduced by Robert Gorsch Professor of English Saint Mary’s College of California…
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Sir Arthur Clarke Named Recipient of 2004 Heinlein Award

Heinlein Society Press Release: 05.22.04 Sir Arthur Clarke Named Recipient of 2004 Heinlein Award MAY 22, 2004— The Heinlein Society announced today that the panel of judges for the Robert A. Heinlein Award for outstanding published work in hard science fiction or technical writings inspiring the human exploration of space has chosen Sir Arthur C.…
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Heinlein History: Kansas City, Missouri

Heinlein History: Kansas City, Missouri around the time the Heinlein family lived there… ©2000 Deb Houdek Rule Robert A. Heinlein was born in 1907 in Butler, Missouri. A few years later the family moved to Kansas City where he grew up. Kansas City around this time figures prominently in several Heinlein pieces, being the homes…
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The Lost Manuals

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.

Robert Heinlein: Murder Suspect

In his 1942 novel Rocket to the Morgue, Anthony Boucher captured this moment in science fiction history and preserved it by using his friends and fellow members of the Mañana Literary Society as the suspects in a murder mystery.

Robert and Rex Ivar Heinlein at the Naval Academy

Robert A. Heinlein and Rex Ivar Heinlein, Jr. at the Naval Academy at Annapolis contributed by Deb Houdek Rule and Geo Rule Robert A. Heinlein United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, class of 1929 “He does have uncanny ability to do those things which to others seem impossible.” – Lucky Bag, 1929 “…the foil was…
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Methuselah’s Children

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.

Heinlein’s Women: Strong Women Characters in the Heinlein Juveniles

Heinlein’s Women: Role Model Characters in the Heinlein Juveniles by Deb Houdek 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 Women characters. My portion of the discussion was on the older women characters in the…
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Strong Women Characters in Early Heinlein

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 Women characters. My portion of the discussion was on the portrayal of Women characters prior…
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If This Goes On…

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.

A Flight of Speculation

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.

For Us, the Living

For Us, the Living, The last of the wine, or, still sane after all these years by Spider Robinson: Robert Anson Heinlein died in 1988, and his fans have been more than half-seriously expecting him to return from the dead for fifteen years, now.

Red Planet – Blue Pencil

In 1949 Robert Heinlein submitted a juvenile called ‘Red Planet’ to Scribners. They published it only after many cuts and changes in the plot and this is the version referred to as the 1949 edition in this article.