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Update metadata and transcripts through end of July 2026

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Episode: 4640
Title: Robert A. Heinlein
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4640/hpr4640.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:15:42 (official HPR transcript)
---
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4640, for 2026-05-15
Today's show is entitled, "Robert A. Heinlein"
The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:10:48
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "An introduction to Robert A. Heinlein"
Hello, this is Ahuka, welcome to you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode in our ongoing series on science fiction and fantasy from the Golden Age
and this time we're going to start on a very important author and that is Robert A. Heinlein
Now, many people would say that Heinlein would see author who kicked off the Golden Age
though that can be the subject of many a barrum argument.
E. E. Doc Smith was already an established writer by this time,
and A. E. Van Vote was contemporaneous with Heinlein.
But Heinlein managed to outshine everyone in very short order.
He was widely known as the Dean of science fiction writers, which testifies to a stature in the community,
and along with Arthur C. Clark and Isaac as a mob, he was one of the big three of the Golden Age.
He was the first person to be named a science fiction grandmaster in 1974.
Four of his novels won Hugo Awards, those being double star, starship troopers,
stranger in a strange land, and the moon is a harsh mistress.
Seven more works were given retro Hugo Awards.
Now those awards are given for works that were written before the Hugo's were established.
He also had many more works nominated for both awards, as well as many other awards like Nebula Awards.
In short, he was a big deal to the science fiction community at large, and to me personally.
I was for a short time managing the website for the Heinlein Society,
and I have read every work of his that I am aware of.
Now, let's have a little bit about his background.
Robert Anson Heinlein was born in 1907 in Butler, Missouri, and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri,
which he described as the middle of the Bible belt, and this background is reflected in some of his stories, particularly the later ones.
His family tradition had it that the Heinleins had fought in every American war since the beginning of the War of Independence.
And Robert and his brothers all joined the armed forces.
Robert lied about his age when he was 16 in order to enlist in the Missouri National Guard,
and a few years later attained an appointment to the Naval Academy, graduating in 1929 with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree in engineering.
Now I say equivalent because at that time the Naval Academy did not award degrees.
Now his engineering background is very apparent in his writings. He served on several ships rising to the rank of Lieutenant,
before being discharged in 1934 due to pulmonary tuberculosis.
It seems likely that if he did not contract this illness, he would have continued his career in the Navy,
and with World War II coming, well, who knows what might have happened.
But he did get ill, and he had to find things to do.
He notably got involved with Uptonson Claire's Social Historganization Epic, which is an acronym for End Poverty in California.
He ran for office unsuccessfully running as a left Democrat in a conservative district,
and while he had a disability pension from the Navy, he turned her writing to pay off his mortgage.
Now, Highline was originally known as a hard science fiction writer,
meaning one who puts plausible and accurate science at the heart of the story.
But looking at his entire career, he was equally comfortable writing fantasy,
though not the faux medieval kind that many writers do.
In fact, he coined the term speculative fiction to describe the kind of stories he wrote.
And if he wanted to, he was quite capable of mixing hard science and the fantasy, particularly in his later novels.
And as output was very substantial.
As of more books than Highline,
but Highline stuck to fiction, while as of wrote in a variety of fields.
So Highline's output in the general area of science fiction and fantasy is the greater of the two.
And he has known for works of all lengths from short stories to novels.
A useful guide to his works is the book Robert A. Highline, a readers companion by James Gifford,
and there will be a link in the show notes for that.
This book covers all of his science fiction and fantasy works known as of 2000,
and gives additional information about the writing and circumstances of the stories.
But in 2003, an early work was discovered and published.
It was a novel called For Us The Living.
And while you can see the germ of Highline's style in this novel,
it is also a very early work written in 1938, and is not one of his best.
He would get a lot better than this.
In any case, it was not published at the time, and is mostly of interest to Highline's super fans or scholars.
Now, Highline got his real start in 1939, with a short story called Lifeline.
Now, this was published in John W. Campbell's astounding magazine.
Isaac Asmoth had published a few stories by this time,
and his first for John W. Campbell's astounding was in the previous month, July 1939.
So you can see this with very fertile time in the development of the genre.
Highline's story was about a scientist who developed a technology to predict a person's time of death.
This totally threatens the insurance industry, and one of the CEOs put out a hit on the scientist,
which he of course already knows about having tested himself.
Now, this is not the best short story, but it was quite competent,
and John W. Campbell immediately asked for more.
And more short stories followed.
In the November 1939 issue of astounding, the story misfit appeared.
It introduces the character of Andrew Jackson Slipstick Libby,
a young man with little education, but a great ability to do mathematics in his head.
And his ability turns out to be just what is needed during a construction project in space when things go wrong.
In a 1940, Highline had nine more stories published,
and at this point he faced a problem.
He was becoming so prolific that for a number of reasons he had to employ pseudonyms for some of his stories.
One reason was that he couldn't have too many stories in one magazine in his name.
It made the editor look bad.
In any case, all of the stories are now published under Highline's name.
And of the nine stories, six were either nominated for or won Retro Hugo Awards,
several also won Prometheus Hall of Fame Awards,
and those were awarded for the best libertarian or anti-authoritarian works.
So you can see that his was a talent that exploded on the scene,
so that you could legitimately divide the science fiction history into pre-highline and post-highline periods.
11 more stories of various lengths followed in 1941 and five in 1942.
There were mostly short stories, but a few novellas and novelettes appeared.
But he was really a short fiction writer at this time, and there are some extraordinary stories in this group.
He was the most successful writer or specular fiction at the time,
and passed along some advice to anyone who wanted to be a successful writer.
So here are Highline's rules of writing.
And because he was so successful, it should come as no surprise that aspiring writers frequently wrote to him for advice.
So he put this together and could then just point people to his rules of writing.
And this is taken from his on the writing of specular fiction, link in the show notes.
Rule number one, you must write.
Yeah, pretty much.
Two, finish what you start.
Three, you must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.
Four, you must put your story on the market.
Five, you must keep it on the market until it has sold.
And he goes on to say in this article, the above five rules really have more to do with how to write specular fiction than anything said above them.
But they are amazingly hard to follow, which is why there are so few professional writers and so many aspirants.
And which is why I'm not afraid to give away their racket.
This is very good advice, but as Highline points out, his rules are indeed hard to follow.
For example, rule number one, you must write.
Many people want to be a writer, but not as many really want to write, and there is a very distinct difference.
Just as many people want to be a rock star, but don't want to spend years dead broke playing in dive bars to get there.
It's also fair to point out that Highline was a rare talent.
And I doubt if simply following his rules would make anyone else a similar success.
They are good rules no doubt, but Highline was already very familiar with and well read in the field before he started writing.
So this finishes our exploration of where Highline came from and how he began his career.
And since it all started with short fiction, I next want to focus on that beginning with his future history.
So this is a hookah for Hacker Public Radio, signing off, and as always encouraging you to support free software.
Bye-bye.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.org.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
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Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.