Robert A. Heinlein: The Man Who Knew How

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

--Lazarus Long

A military man, a physicist, a poet, an architect, a politician, a real-estate agent, an engineer, a mining consultant, and a writer. Take them all, mix them together, add a dash of greatness and a pinch of creativity, shake well, and you have The Man Who Knew How, The Dean of Science Fiction, The Beast, Admiral Bob, Robert A. Heinlein, possibly the greatest science fiction writer who ever lived, certainly the greatest of the twentieth century.

Robert Anson Heinlein was born on July 7th, 1907 in Butler, Missouri. He was third of the seven children of Bam Lyle and Rex Ivor Heinlein. By the age of four he had learned to play chess. He was taught by his grandfather, Dr. Alva E. Lyle, before he had learned to read. In 1924 he graduated from Kansas City High School and entered the University of Missouri for one year. He served in the navy from 1925-1934, beginning as a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, then serving as gunnery officer on a number of ships. In 1934 he retired from the Navy on a medical discharge for tuberculosis. The next five years of his life were spent doing graduate study in physics at UCLA, and in various attempts to find careers in such fields as architecture, real estate, mining, and politics. Once during this time he ran for California State Assemblyman.

His first short-story, titled "Life-Line" was published in 1939 in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. His famous Future History series, starring Lazarus Long, began with Methusalah's Children in 1941. He spent the period during World War Two as a civilian research engineer at Mustin Field. He returned to writing in 1947 and was the first writer to bring science fiction into mainstream magazines, most notably the Saturday Evening Post. In the same year, he began work on a series of juvenile novels. The last novel of this series, Have Space Suit--Will Travel is said to be one of his greatest works. In 1948, he married Lt. Virginia Gerstenfeld, whom he met during his time at Mustin Field. He won a Hugo award in 1956 for Double Star, and another in 1959 for Starship Troopers. In 1962 his most famous novel, Stranger In A Strange Land won a Hugo Award, and was also the first science fiction novel to make the New York Times bestseller list. In 1967 he won another Hugo for The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. The Future History series and Lazarus Long came back to life with Time Enough For Love in 1973. He was given the first Grand Masters Award by Science Fiction Writers of America in 1975. Lazarus Long returned in 1980 in The Number Of The Beast, and again in 1985 in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, both best-sellers. In 1987 his last book, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, an autobiography of Lazarus Long's mother, was published on July 7th, Heinlein's 80th birthday.

Heinlein's works deal with many subjects in a variety of ways. They deal with space exploration and colonization, eugenic breeding of humans, and the fall of civilization. Mysticism and exotic sociopolitical views are characteristic of Heinlein. His works have been referred to as rightist and anarchistic due to the radical nature of his ideas.

Starship Troopers is a particularly fine example of his "right-wing views." It was quite popular in its day, even winning the 1959 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. Now it is condemned by many as a "'militaristic polemic' glorifying a violent, proto-fascist ethic, creating a polarized society in which heroic war veterans rule over 'draft-dodgers, effeminate snobs, pacifists, and other animals of low standing.'" The novel itself is a juvenile adventure, punctuated by flashbacks to the main character's history and moral philosophy class. These flashbacks explain the society in which the novel is set, and are the only portions which could be even remotely condemned as fascist. An example is as follows:

"The sovereign franchise has been bestowed by all sorts of rules-place of birth, family of birth, race, sex, property, education, age, religion, et cetera. All these systems worked, and none of them well. All were regarded as tyrannical by many, all eventually collapsed or were overthrown...

"Under our system every voter and office holder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage"

(Starship Troopers, 144)

The society in Starship Troopers is a military oriented society, in which only those people who have served a term in the military may vote or hold office. Some may consider this novel to be promoting a violent fascist society. The main character, Johnny Rico, is not in the military for the violence and killing, but because he wants to do his duty to society. "To evaluate the elements of militarism in the world of Starship Troopers, it is first necessary to understand that Mobile Infantryman Juan Rico cannot be regarded as a spokesman for his society. He is the universal soldier, and the quintessential career man." Once one has overcome this obstacle, it seems apparent that the society in the novel is Heinlein's way of motivating Johnny Rico to join the military. It is not meant to promote violence and militarism, but rather it is meant to illustrate a society in which the voter has shown that they are capable of placing society before their own desires.

On another level, however, all the recollections of history and moral philosophy are parts of Johnny's battle with himself over why he is in the military. He wants to become a citizen with voting rights, yet his family is rich and owns a successful business. Neither of his parents have ever been in the military, and they do just fine in society. This conflict is similar to many underlying conflicts, and often main plots in Heinlein's work. This style is not a linear journey from point A to point B, but rather is "a circular tour of the hero's nature" The incidents throughout the story "must be furnished to engage the reader's interest as a reader, rather than as an involved rider in the searching hero's head."

"A generation which ignores history has no past--and no future"
--Lazarus Long

Heinlein's most famous work, next to Stranger In A Strange Land, is his Future History series. A good portion of this series revolves around one character, Lazarus Long. Lazarus Long is the only immortal human being, the final product of a specialized eugenic breeding program known as the Howard Foundation. His immortality has granted him a unique perspective on what we call civilization, which is brought out in all of Heinlein's Future History series. The most compact source of his ideas is The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, which is a collection of Long's sayings which originally appeared as interludes in Time Enough For Love. In his notebooks, Long talks about everything from cats to love, kindness to civilization, and psychology to democracy.

Lazarus Long is Heinlein's charismatic spokesperson for the salvation of civilization. In all the novels where Long appears, he talks about why civilization as we know it is falling, the signs of it falling, and how it could be prevented. In To Sail Beyond The Sunset this is particularly apparent, and Long goes into much depth about the fall of democracy.

"A perfect democracy, a 'warm body' democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally has no internal feedback for self correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens...which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it...which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'

"Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader--the barbarians enter Rome."

(To Sail Beyond the Sunset, 227)

In this manner, Heinlein goes about warning us of our own folly and eventual fall, at least by his predictions. Lazarus Long is not the only one of Heinlein's characters who makes predictions and reveals warning signs. Maureen Johnson, Long's mother, makes a list of warning signs in To Sail. They include "too many lawyers, family decay, high taxes, decline in rational thinking, entertainers and high-paid athletes mistaken for important leaders of public opinion, strikes by public officials, peer-group promotion in public schools, declining literacy, and, last but not least, dirty public restrooms (a sign of declining courtesy and polite consideration for others)."

Robert Heinlein was not only a novelist and short story writer. He wrote poetry as well, although it was always carefully concealed within his stories. A prime example is "The Green Hills of Earth," the tale of a blind space poet. In this short story, he includes several poems about space travel and the like, the best of which is The Green Hills of Earth:

We've tried each spinning space mote

And reckoned its true worth;

Take us back again to the homes of men

On the cool, green hills of Earth.

The arching sky is calling

Spacemen back to their trade.

All hands! Stand by! Free falling!

And the lights below us fade.

Out ride the sons of Terra,

Far drives the thundering jet,

Up leaps the race of Earthmen,

Out, far, and onward yet--

We pray for one last landing

On the globe that gave us birth;

Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies,

And the cool, green hills of Earth.

(The Green Hills Of Earth, 133-134)

At the time of his death in 1988, Robert A. Heinlein had published more than 60 novels, countless short stories, won four Hugo Awards, and had been the guest of honor at the World Science Fiction Convention three times. He influenced thousands with his talent for writing, and made the sub-genre of speculative fiction what it is today. He was the Admiral, the Beast, the Dean of Science Fiction, the Man Who Knew How.