I can’t hear it and a cutoff switch in the house, thereby evading the company’s rules.
Most of my troubles seem to arise from the difficulty I have in refusing to give my time to other people. Should I refuse to entertain the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society? Can I refuse to see a classmate who shows up in town with an engineer from my hometown in tow? A physicist from Johns Hopkins who is a fan of mine shows up and wants to meet me-can I refuse? Same for an air force intelligence officer who writes politely? Or the head of the Flying Saucer project? Today I was invited to address the southwest division of the Rocket Society and attend a night firing of a V-2 rocket-that one I turned down as it involved flying to White Sands — but it was a highly desirable date and one that I would have kept had I had the time. I don’t know the answer but I am beginning to see why so many writers hire hotel rooms-I am entirely too well known for comfort. Anyhow, I am about to try another story.
September 4, 1952: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Now, about writing time: since the war it has been one damn thing after another, poor health, domestic trouble, housebuilding, et al. I hope that the future will be quieter. If not, I will simply do the best I can under the circumstances. Getting an office away from the house is not a solution I want at “all-I’ve just finished a house with an office built into it. One minor new circumstance should be a help-we finally have a cutoif switch for the telephone, after long wrangling with the phone company.
I wrote to you as extensively as I did simply to let you know that my lack of output this year has not been through laziness but through complications. One problem I have not yet found a satisfactory solution to is the demand on my time resulting from becoming better known. I answer all fan mail and it comes in stacks. That is almost necessary, isn’t it? I limit the answers to postcards but it takes time. There are frequent requests for me to speak in public-one only last night. I have adopted a policy of refusing such invitations if possible-but what do I do when the Colorado Librarians’ Association asks me?…Perhaps the greatest time waster is the person who reads my stuff, is coming to Colorado Springs, and wants to call on me-and an amazing number of them manage to find their way to Colorado Springs, remote as this place is. If they simply walk in on me I won’t see them…But if they write or telephone and are courteous, I find it hard to give them a cold brush-off. I see no good answer to this problem, but will have to handle it by expediency as I go along.
…This is probably the very last of the V-2s and it will be one of the very few unclassified firings for a long time. There is nothing like watching one of the big ones climb for outer space-it will make a believer out of you, I warrant. I do not regard a trip to White Sands as lost time for me; it comes under the same head as research. Since I write about rockets, I need to know what they sound like, talk to rocket men. Besides that, I will have an opportunity to meet Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered the planet Pluto and, perhaps, to see the canals of Mars through his telescope…This is almost a once-in-a-lifetime thing, as perfect seeing, the right telescope, and the right technique are a rare combination.
January 6, 1953: Lurton Blassingame to Robert A. Heinlein
The script for the “This I Believe” program just checked in. It is certainly splendid, the best I have come in contact with. I have been especially interested in this program because one of my boys [clients], Ed Morgan, has been associated with it since the beginning. I do think this material of yours was excellent, and I am very proud of you.
THIS I BELIEVE