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

The Saturday Evening Post carried a column about the authors who appeared in each issue. The column was called “Keeping Posted, “and Robert was asked for material about himself and~a picture. Because it was his first appearance in the Post with “The Green Hills of Earth” he was included in that column.

…sending you on Monday another interplanetary short, intended for slick (the Post, I hope) — the domestic troubles of a space pilot, titled either “For Men Must Work” or “Space Pilot” [“Space Jockey”]. It took me a week to write it and three weeks to cut it from 12,000 to 6,000 [words] — but I am beginning to understand the improvement in style that comes from economy in words. (I set it at 6,000 because a careful count of the stories in recent issues of the Post shows that the shorts average a little over 6,000 and are rarely as short as 5,000.)

EDITOR’S NOTE Robert’s ambition to write for higher paying and wider markets than pulp magazines caused him to look around for an agent who had good connections with other markets. For this purpose, he consulted L. Ron Hubbard, who introduced him to Lurton Blassingame.

Lurton had come to New York ambitious to write, but discovered that he could not make the grade. So he remained in the publishing center and became one of the most highly respected agents there. His brother, Wyatt Blassingame, sold regularly, if infrequently, to the Saturday Evening Post.

Robert became, eventually, Lurton’s star client, but he was preoccupied with ‘ ‘world saving” after the atomic bombs were dropped. The articles he wrote did not sell. He then began the juvenile series of books-with Scribner’s-starting with Rocket Ship Galileo (working title: Young Atomic Engineers). For some years, he wrote one juvenile per year.

The two men met on one of our trips to New York, and Robert urged Lurton to come to visit us in Colorado. Robert would accompany Lurton on a hunting trip, for elk and antelope and other game. I was asked to join them on fishing trips.

Although Robert neither hunted nor fished, he went on such trips with Lurton. During their trip to Gunnison, Colorado, where they went after elk, Robert “kept camp” while Lurton halted through the mountains, along with a group of other hunters. Lurton bagged an enormous elk, and we were left with a freezer full of elk meat. It was my impression that Robert went along on such trips for Lurton’s company.

Robert’s next conquest, assisted by Lurton, was the Saturday Evening Post, with “The Green Hills of Earth, ” followed by three other stories for that magazine.

The friendship flourished, despite Robert’s distaste for doing business with friends. It lasted until Lurton in the Iate~l970s, thinking of retirement, took on some younger associates. Robert’s books are still handled by the Blas-singame-Spectrum Agency in New York.

November 12, 1946: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

…and I shall get back to work, probably on a story called “It’s Great to Be Back!” A couple living in Luna City are about to return to Earth, their contracts completed after three years. They have been homesick the whole time and are always talking about it. They return to Earth and discover that they had forgotten the disadvantages of living on Earth-uncontrolled weather, dirt, colds-in-the-head, provincial attitudes, stupid and ignorant people (the residents of Luna City are of course exceptionally intelligent and civilized because of selection for those qualities-only persons of high IQs and social compatibility would pay the cost of sending them to the Moon and keeping them there), etc., etc. At the end of the story they are more homesick than ever-for Luna City! — and are straining a gut to get back there. The story will be used also to give a picture of Luna City and the conditions of life on the Moon, social and economic, for background and color.

EDITOR ‘s NOTE: Between 1947 and 1949, at least ten of Robert A. Heinlein’s ‘ ‘slicks” were published; four appeared in the Post and two in Argosy. This was a remarkable achievement, but it was soon eclipsed by the success of his juvenile novels.