Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

be his death-although he was in far greater danger than his cheerful attitude

admitted. An amphibian of that era did not necessarily make a safe landing on the

high seas, and the galloping goose was an awkward beast at best-hard to see out of

it in landing. Assume a minor injury in landing, or several days’ exposure to

tropical sun-that’s a big ocean; they would not necessarily have been picked up the

next day or even that week.

Assume any one change that would have affected the pattern ofBuddy Scoles’

careerenough top/ace him elsewhere than at Mustin Field December 1941:

Now let’s take it in small, not in terms of history:

I would not have been at Mustin Field. I can’t venture to guess where I

would have been; the Navy Bureau of Medicine was being stuffy over my past medical

history. I would not have met my wife; therefore I would have died at least ten

years ago. . . and I would not be writing this book. (All high probabilities. Among

the low probabilities is winning the Irish Sweepstakes and moving to Monaco.)

Sprague de Camp would not have been at Mustin Field. He was already headed

for a Naval commission but at my suggestion Scoles grabbed him. Perhaps he would

havedied gloriously in battle. . . orhe might have sat out the war in a swivel chair

in the Navy Department.

But now I reach the important one. I practically kidnapped Isaac Asimov from

Columbia University, where he was a graduate student bucking for his doctorate.

You can write endless scenarios from there. The Manhattan District is

recruiting exceptionally bright graduate students in chemistry and physics; Isaac is

grabbed and the A-bomb is thereby finished a year sooner. Or he stays on at

Columbia, finishes his doctorate, and his draft board never does pick him up because

he is already signed as an assistant professor at N.Y. U. the day he is invested.

Etc., etc.

Here comes the rabbit- The first two books of the Foundation series

(Foundation, Bridle and Saddle, The Big and the Little, The Wedge, Dead Hand, The

Mule) were written while Isaac was a chemist in the labs at Mustin Field.

What would the Good Doctor have written during those years had I not fiddled

with his karma? Exactly the same stories? Very similar stories? Entirely different

stories? (Any scenario is plausible except one in which Dr. Asimov does no writing

at all.)

All I feel sure of is that there is an extremely high probability that an

almost-too-late decision by a battle-ship admiral in 1931 not only saved the lives

of some fighter pilots whose names I do not know.. . but also almost certainly

changed the lives of Admiral Scoles, myself, L. Sprague de Camp, Dr. Asimov and, by

direct concatenation, the lives of wives, sweethearts, and offspring-and quite a

major chunk of modern science fiction. (Had Scoles not called me back to

Philadelphia I think I would have wound up in a Southern California aircraft

factory, and possibly stayed with it instead of going back to writing. . . and

helped build Apollo-Saturn. Maybe.)

If you think SEARCHLIGHT derives from an incident off Ecuador, you may be

right. Possibly I dredged it out of my subconscious and did not spot it until later.

On This Site

The Afternoon of June 5th, 1834 Nothing of Any Importance Happened

Page 190

FOREWORD

On 5 April 1973 I delivered the James Forrestal Memorial Lecture to the Brigade of

Midshipmen at my alma mater the United States Naval Academy. As the first half of

the lecture, at the request of the midshipmen, I discussed freelance writing. This

is the second half~

THE PRAGMATICS OF PATRIOTISM

In this complex world, science, the scientific method, and the consequences

of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to

wherever we are going. If we blow ourselves up we will do it by misapplication of

science; if we manage to keep from blowing ourselves up, it will be through

intelligent application of science. Science fiction is the only form of fiction

which takes into account this central force in our lives and futures. Other sorts of