Grumbles From The Grave — Robert A. Heinlein — (1989)

Edited by Virginia Heinlein

For Heinlein’s Children

FOREWORD

This book does not contain the polished prose one normally associates with the Heinlein stories and articles of later years. It has been taken from the day-to-day correspondence between the author and his agent, and from letters from several others, many of which have been excerpted.

Such cutting eliminates a great deal of tedious back-and-forth correspondence concerning details of contracts, discussions about royalty rates, and other items which would hold up the flow of information about the writing business (and other things). This book has been abstracted from enormous files, which run millions of words long, much of it boring to those not concerned with the daily business of writing and selling.

Many people have asked me to consider writing Robert’s biography, or a joint one-his and mine-but I am not ready to do that yet. Perhaps, one day.

Meanwhile, this correspondence covers mostly the years from the time when Robert first began writing until the period 1969-1970, at which time he found that his writing time was effectively cut down to zero by the continuing details of his business and subsequently, grave illness…Over the years, I had taken over record keeping, information on sales, taxes, and some of the correspondence. In 1970, Robert was very sick for the entire year, and it was then essential that I keep the business running. It was fortunate that I had begun doing so the previous year.

In order to follow the various subjects, I have excerpted these letters to put together as many as possible of the remarks and ideas on those subjects. Each letter did have a number of topics in it, these have been separated where possible. Some of the topics are: juveniles, adult novels, publishers, travel, fan mail, time wasters, Robert’s writing methods, and so forth.

Some names have been left out for legal reasons.

There are places where there are only notes on telephone conversations. It wpuld be impossible to reconstruct those. They have been omitted.

There are a few sparse excerpts from letters which were written after I took over running the business end of Robert’s writing…most of those letters written by Robert. He talked to Lurton Blassingame, his agent, now and then, but mostly he spent his time reading for his work, or writing. During the last eighteen years of his life, he had many illnesses. But, in between, he continued working.

I was his “first reader” — the person who read each work first and made suggestions for cutting, revisions, and so on. It was a great responsibility. When Robert came down with peritonitis in 1970, / Will Fear No Evil needed more cutting, but it was obvious that he was (and would be for a long time) in no condition to do that. And his publisher was calling for the manuscript, so I had it Xeroxed and sent it in. I take full responsibility for that. With further cutting, it might perhaps have been a better story. In spite of this, it has sold more than a million copies in U.S. paperback alone, and has been translated into more than half-a-dozen languages, and is still in print in all of those, including English.

At one time, Robert wrote to his agent about the possibility of writing a memoir-autobiography: Grumbles From The Grave by Robert A. Heinlein (deceased).

This is that book. It covers many years, many subjects, and some personal comments-taken mostly from letters between Robert and his agent, Lurton Blassingame.

Virginia Heinlein Carmel, California 1988

A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN BY

VIRGINIA HEINLEIN

Robert Anson Heinlein was born July 7, 1907, the third of seven children of Bam Lyle Heinlein and Rex Ivar Heinlein, in Butler, Missouri. The growing family moved to Kansas City during his childhood.

When Robert learned to read, he read everything he could lay his hands on. He did, in fact, read on his way to school, going along the street, up and down curbs, up to the schoolhouse. He attended junior high school, Central High School in Kansas City, arid spent one year at a local junior college. His next older brother had gone before him to the United States Naval Academy, and Robert set his sights on going there. He collected many letters of recommendation from people and gained the appointment from Senator James Reed to enter the Naval Academy in 1925.