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

So what do you think I should do? Quit answering at all? Use this printed acknowledgment? Keep on trying to answer them all? Or some other course I haven’t thought of?

June 13, 1969: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Thank you for your long and thoughtful comments about fan mail. I am glad to have your confirmation that the printed postcard method is a bad idea; I will not use it. But I am much afraid that there is no solution to the problem short of not answering it at all.

In the first place I am not “too conscientious” about it as I do not spend a couple of pages in answering silly questions; Ginny and I have long since cut it to the bone — the normal answer is done on a postcard. If an enclosure is required (such as a list of my books, the commonest enclosure request), we use the smallest note paper. True,

I used to write careful answers to intelligent letters-but we gave that up over five years back; we had to.

Let’s assume I could get a college student to answer letters satisfactorily at a dollar a letter (I can’t, but let’s stipulate it for the moment). That would still cost me a couple of thousand dollars a year-which I think is too much to pay for the questionable privilege of unsolicited mail from strangers. Most of my fan mail does not go through your office; the bulk of it is forwarded from publishers directly or has been addressed to Colorado Springs and forwarded from there (as every public library in die country has that C.S. address). Plus quite a chunk that is addressed to Santa Cruz. It adds up-it usually takes about a half hour each day just to read the fan mail. I can answer it usually, faster than I can read it, if a postcard will suffice. But Ginny is the only other person who can answer it quickly, as she is the only one sophisticated enough in what to answer and what to ignore to be able to do it.

But I do have to read it. Several times, when Ginny and I were especially busy, we have let what appeared to be fan mail pile up unread-and this is a mistake as again and again there has turned out to be one or more actual business letters buried in the fan mail simply because the external appearance (one or two forwardings, with nothing in the return address to tip me) led me to assume that it was fan mail.

As near as I can find out from inquiries made to other colleagues, I get far more mail than any of my colleagues-for none of the others seems to find fan mail any problem. (I recall a plaint published by James Blish asking readers to please write to him-he needed feedback!)

This morning at breakfast we were reading the mail, which included your nice letter-and Ginny sez to me: “Send this one back to L. and let him see how difficult the stuff is to answer.” Well, I’m not sending it back but it was from a man and wife in New York who wanted to come out here on his vacation to talk with me. I must turn it down as man who travels a long distance to talk is affronted (reasonably? unreasonably? — either way, his feelings are hurt) if asked to leave in twenty minutes. What he asked for was an “afternoon or evening” — and what he will expect is a full day and late that night. I know, it has happened too many times. For this sort of letter is not at all uncommon; I got one from two students at Oxford University, England, earlier this spring, who wanted to come here this summer and stay an indefinite time; I got one from six students at Temple University who wanted to drive here on their Christmas vacation, camp on the beach, and see me every day. And we told you about the young man from Arizona who drove first to C.S., then here just last week…sweet-talked his way past Ginny, then stayed until I chucked him out four hours later. Plus many others. So now we turn down all requests to come see us…but such turn-downs must be gentle.