I also write fantasy and would like to emulate Stephen Vincent Benet. The SEP {Saturday Evening Post] has been publishing quite a lot of fantasy since — took over; I would like to do the sort of thing they publish.
January 1, 1946: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I am quite used to being considered too spectacular. My own brother, a colonel of engineers, thought my prewar stories about the atomic bomb and atomic weapons to be sheer moonshine; he has since flown over Hiroshima and changed his mind.
April 20, 1947: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I am starting a short, Luna City series, slanted for Post, tomorrow. Like the hired man said, “We’ve had a lot of trouble around here,” but you may expect regular copy for some time hence.
June 24, 1947: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame To confirm my telegram of Tuesday, my new address is:
Suite 210,
7904 Santa Monica Blvd.,
Hollywood 46, Cal.
Letters or telegrams sent there will reach me promptly. My telephone has been disconnected. We have closed our house and in a few days-as soon as I can get some chores cleaned up-I am going to light out for the desert and get back to work. Leslyn [Heinlein’s first wife] is going to stay in town…
EDITOR’S NOTE While Robert was working at the Naval Air Experimental Station in Philadelphia, I was reassigned to duty there by the Navy. At that time, I was a lieutenant (j.g.) in the WAVES. We worked together on some projects, chiefly on attachment ofPlexiglas canopies. Both of us had other, separate projects. When World War II ended, Robert resigned his position as an engineer to return home to Los Angeles with his wife. As I had not accrued many points in the system that governed release from the service, I was required to remain on duty until March 1946. I had already decided to return to college for an advanced degree, and made arrangements for that. Robert suggested that I go to UCLA rather than Berkeley, as I had planned.
While the GI Bill paid for tuition and books, the stipend allowed was rather scanty, so I needed to work part-time, attending classes and studying in what free time I had. So my social life lapsed almost entirely. What I did retain was devoted to the symphony and figure skating. I saw very little of Robert and his wife, Leslyn, although we lived not too far apart.
When finals were finished in 1947, I had a call from Robert-he asked my help in clearing his papers from his house. He was getting a divorce.
I took the summer off from my studies to work-my finances were in poor shape. Robert spent that summer in Ojai, writing.
We were married in October 1948.
1948: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I’m back to work. The honeymoon is over, except for weekends. I hope, Lurton, to turn over to you more and better copy than you have seen yet. During my entire association with you, everything I have written has been turned out under difficult circumstances, most of them under most excruciatingly difficult circumstances. I have had to force myself to work, with the major portion of my mind and attention centered on the things that were happening around me and to me. I am not seeking sympathy, but I do want you to know that there is at least a fair chance that I will give you better material and more of it from now on.
November 6, 1948: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
It isn’t necessary to get Ginny to chain me to my typewriter four hours a day. I am frantically anxious to spend more hours than that at work every day. If I am spared more domestic upheavals for the next several months I should turn out a lot of copy. Right now I am racking my brain trying to cook up another subject for a boys’ novel for Scribner’s. I am not going to be able to go to Florida this winter to complete the diving and research I must do before I write Ocean Rancher. Therefore I have got to find another story for — . It would be easy enough to cook up another space opera, but I shall do my darnedest to find something else to write about before falling back on that.