I haven’t read that much nonfiction relating to science fiction/fantasy in the last few years but the releases that I have tackled have been nothing short of astonishing—specifically James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips; Frederik Pohl’s Chasing Science; and Beyond Human: Living with Robots and Cyborgs by Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre.
I can now add to that list William H. Patterson, Jr.’s recently released Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1 (1907-1949): Learning Curve.
When I heard that Tor Books would be releasing the first volume of an authorized biography of Robert A. Heinlein this summer, I was intrigued but not exactly thrilled—I’ve read accounts of Heinlein’s life in the past (Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction and Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader's Companion) so I didn’t know if this new biography would just be rehashing old information. But Heinlein’s writing had a huge influence on me growing up so I decided to pick up the meaty 624-page biography and give it a try…
…and what I found was a stunningly detailed account of Heinlein’s first 42 years of life. Yes, I was already aware of his less than affluent childhood in Kansas City, his time spent in the Navy and his forced retirement due to pulmonary tuberculosis, the three marriages, his left wing political aspirations, his work as a civilian engineer during WWII, etc. but the depth that Patterson has detailed Heinlein’s early life is simply astounding. This isn’t just a fleshed out timeline of Heinlein’s life, it’s a meticulously detailed, profoundly moving and at times downright heartrending story of a man growing up in one of the most tumultuous times in America’s history.
The inundation of data is almost overwhelming at times. Here are just a few random tidbits:
• In 1925, when Heinlein passed his physical to get into the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, he was six feet tall and just 118 pounds!
• While at Annapolis, two tragedies struck Heinlein: his beloved seven-year-old sister Rose fell out of the family’s car and was crushed under its wheels (their father was driving), and his high school sweetheart Alice McBee died suddenly of appendicitis.
• On Friday, June 7, 1929, Heinlein had his first sexual encounter with Mary Briggs.
• Heinlein was aboard the first aircraft carrier (the USS Lexington) to ever go through the Panama Canal.
• Heinlein suffered from non-specific urethritis for much of his life.
• After a second surgery to deal with hemorrhoids, Heinlein wrote in a letter to a friend that the operation had left him “with no rectum to speak of…”
• Heinlein’s second wife Leslyn practiced “white witchcraft.”
• Heinlein’s private battle with Leslyn’s severe alcoholism nearly wrecked him: “During the past eighteen months there have been more times when I wanted to be dead than there were times when I wanted to go on living… I think I have discovered that I can manage somehow to endure anything that happens to me. I may be mistaken—there may come a morning when I slit my wrists, or I may turn my face to the wall and quit answering anything that is addressed to me. But I don’t think so; I think I can stick it out somehow…”
Heinlein lived through WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, the passage of the 19th Amendment (women’s right to vote), the advent of the atomic bomb, the first moon landing, etc. Patterson stated it perfectly when he wrote: “The story of Robert A. Heinlein is the story of America in the twentieth century…”
Born just months before the stock market crash in 1907 (the Panic of 1907) and growing up in a depression was obviously hard for the young Heinlein, who had six other siblings and had to sleep on a pallet in the family’s living room. Heinlein got a job in the third grade—selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door—and over the course of his childhood, worked numerous jobs: delivery boy, selling refreshments in a theatre, delivering newspapers, etc.
Although the biography is filled with memorable anecdotes, this particular one struck me: In 1912, on a family outing in Swope Park, Heinlein (four or five at the time) witnessed a horrific event that would stay with him the rest of his life. A young married couple was walking along a set of railroad tracks when the woman caught her foot in a rail switch. With a train speeding towards them, the panicked couple tried to free her foot from the rail. Another man—described as “a tramp”—ran over and tried to help. But to no avail. The wife and the vagrant were killed instantly and the husband was seriously injured. “This incident became a core image for [Heinlein], one that showed him in a way beyond words what it means to be a human being. At the end he still could not articulate it. All he could say was: ‘This is how a man dies. This is how a man lives!’”
Heinlein has always been a demigod of a figure for me—this untouchable genius behind science fiction classics like The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, and Double Star. In the biography’s introduction, Patterson writes about how an entire generation of readers looked up to Heinlein as a visionary, a prophet, a wise man:
“Heinlein’s hard-core un-common sense, dosed out mostly as entertainment, had given the parentless generations of the mid-twentieth century something of what previous generations had gotten, in quiet moments one-on-one with their fathers and their tribe’s wise men: their portion, all they could take, of life wisdom. They counted Heinlein as their ‘intellectual father,’ as an earlier generation regarded Mark Twain…”
But what this biography succeeds in accomplishing is making Heinlein completely human: it doesn’t portray him in terms of a legendary, genre redefining literary giant, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century; he’s a tenacious and idealistic man struggling to find his way through life.
Uber-talented science fiction novelist John Scalzi (Old Man's War, Ghost Brigades, et.al.) blogged about this biography on Tor’s website and described it fittingly: “the gift this first volume of the Heinlein biography gave me [was] the ability to think of Robert Heinlein in terms of being a struggling writer, rather than Robert Heinlein, Grandmaster of science fiction.”
Reading Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1 (1907 – 1949): Learning Curve doesn’t change how I perceive his literary works—I grew up on Heinlein “juvenile” stories (Space Cadet; Red Planet; Have Space Suit, Will Travel, et. al.) like so many millions of others and cherish every Heinlein book that I own—but it does give me a new appreciation for the man, a man who didn’t let the overwhelming struggles and personal tragedies in his life stop him from his dream of doing something positive to advance our civilization, to in some small way direct humankind’s future. An offhand comment about writing pulp fiction, concisely describes Heinlein—and his writing: “I can’t get interested in writing which is not, to my mind, socially useful.”
How many fiction writers can say that today?
Like the writer—and the man—this biography of Robert A. Heinlein was a powerful and unforgettable read that (paradoxically) left me simultaneously saddened and hopeful: saddened that science fiction isn’t as socially powerful (or popular) as it was during Heinlein’s reign but also hopeful that somewhere out there is a new generation of budding young Heinleins preparing to advance humankind through their own futuristic, visionary tales…
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for almost the last two decades and has written more than 6,000 reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
