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By the end of January (1956) he (Heinlein) was generating a new “adult” book. He had an engineer/inventor on a bender because his wife dumped him to marry a rich man. But the elements weren’t coming together quite right, and he kept turning them over in his mind, changing a bit here and a bit there and seeing how the fit-together improved. One late January morning at breakfast, Ginny crossed his field of vision, being led-between-the-legs by their cat, Pixie. Bemused, he watched her open a people door for him and wait while Pixie sniffed disdainfully and turned away from the snow, complaining vocally at Ginny’s mismanagement of the weather. There were seven people doors leading out, and the same little playlet was reenacted at each door. When Pixie had rejected the last door and stalked away, indignant, Ginny shrugged. “I guess he’s looking for the door into summer.”

Suddenly, all the jumble of story elements he had been fiddling with fell into place in his head—a completely different configuration, and one that felt perfectly right. “Don’t say another word,” he said. He got up and almost ran to his office, eager to start getting the story down on paper. Thirteen days later, The Door into Summer was finished—the shortest length of time he had ever taken to write a full (if short) novel—and nearly perfect as it came off his typewriter. Pixie was the missing element; Robert’s familial affection for “the old warrior” gave the book its emotive core and tied all the incidents together in another ingratiating, seducing book.

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better (1948-1988) by William H. Patterson Jr.

Since late in 1944, Nelson Eddy’s recording of “The Ballad of Rodger Young” had been playing on the radio, and that song became intensely meaningful to Heinlein.

Young, an infantry private, had been killed on July 31, 1943, in the campaign for the Solomon Islands. He had been a runt—five feet two inches—and so nearly deaf that he had given up leadership of his squad and asked to be demoted to private because he feared missing an order in battle that would get his squad killed. He was wounded when his squad was pinned down by a hidden Japanese machine gun nest protecting the Munda airstrip on the island of New Georgia, and a second time when his return fire pinpointed his position. He had crept forward and begun to throw hand grenades, covering his squad’s withdrawal. He was shot a third time and killed. This was the “finest traditions” of the infantry.

When Private First Class Frank Loesser heard about the posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor awarded Rodger Young in January 1944, he had written the song. It was released later that year. For Heinlein, “The Ballad of Rodger Young” was symbolic of the war and of what even he, sheltered and sequestered in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, experienced on a daily basis.

“We had a very nervous-making day last week,” Heinlein wrote (John W.) Campbell, “but one of the most remarkable and significant of my life. First, it was Leslyn’s day to work with her blind marines in the shop—work she loves and has worked up herself, but hard on her emotionally—then, as we came out of the lunchroom that noon, we found ourselves listening to a speaker outside—it was … just a guy in uniform talking about action he had seen. But I could not walk on past. The man brought it to you and laid it in your lap, with the blood still flowing …”

“I couldn’t leave until he had stopped talking. I skipped my one and only chance to buy my weeks’ cigarette ration in order to hear him, but I could not leave. It was while he was talking that I decided that I could not with clear conscience take a day off until I had my work in better shape.”

“Well—that night we went across the street to dinner. Miles’ and Rod’s was crowded. There was a marine with one leg sitting on the couch. He said, no, he wasn’t waiting for a table; he had had to move because the hard chair hurt him—his leg wasn’t healed. Presently a party started coming out, another one-legged marine with a corpsman, then a bluejacket with a crutch under the stump of his arm, then a man with no legs, carried. The marine said with respect to the bluejacket,

'There’s the bravest guy in the ward. One arm, one leg, one eye, and one ear—and he jokes about it.'

“We went in as the marine left, feeling pretty shaky, but thinking that the party was gone. But there was still one marine in there, apparently all right. As the last one on crutches left, this one said, “There’s the way I’m going to walk.” Just then a corpsman returned, said brightly, “bet you thought I’d forgotten you,” and turned around, presenting his back to the kid. The kid put his arms around the corpsman’s neck and the corpsman carried him out, like a sack of flour. There was just enough of him left to sit down.”

“I got up and went out and locked myself in the head and bawled my eyes out for about fifteen minutes. Then we took a walk around the block and came back. I was all right by then but I couldn’t get Leslyn to eat.”

“I wish more people could have seen them.”

• "Robert A. Heinlein: Volume I: Learning Curve, 1907-1948" by William H. Patterson Jr.

(Jerry) Pournelle got back to his seminar, and Heinlein began making notes on his new book. In the course of that evening, Pournelle had casually used an expression they had never heard before: TANSTAAFL. It was an acronym, Pournelle explained, that he got from his father, for the expression, still widely used in the American South (Pournelle had been born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1933):

There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Saloons used to advertise free lunches with drinks—anything from pickled eggs to elaborate buffet spreads. Of course, there was nothing “free” about the food. The cost was folded into the price of the drinks. Free lunches had disappeared from the American scene around the time of World War I. The acronym, collapsing the whole thing into a single word, was exactly what Robert had been looking for:

“I was working on a novel into which it fitted perfectly.”

Heinlein later explained. He was working up a story background around Economics in One Lesson, and that one word, TANSTAAFL, functioned perfectly as a motto for that society. At the time he made a note of it on one of the three-by-five index cards he carried everywhere with him, for just such flashes of inspiration, and it entered the mix that had been accumulating for some time. Virginia Heinlein later recalled:

“I suppose that all of this society in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress arose out of discussions that Robert and I had. What happened was that we held a number of discussions (and I remember them well) about ideal government. The problem with government is that, given some areas to make laws about, they move out into other areas, until all freedoms are gone.”

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better (1948-1988) by William H. Patterson Jr.

But liking cats is hard to fake to a cat person. There are cat people and there are others, more than a majority probably, who “cannot abide a harmless, necessary cat.” If they try to pretend, out of politeness or any reason, it shows, because they don’t understand how to treat cats—and cat protocol is more rigid than that of diplomacy.

It is based on self-respect and mutual respect and it has the same flavor as the dignidad de hombre of Latin America which you may offend only at risk to your life.

Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy. If somebody asked me why it was worth anyone’s time to cater to them I would be forced to answer that there is no logical reason. I would rather explain to someone who detests sharp cheeses why he “ought to like” Limburger. Nevertheless, I fully sympathize with the mandarin who cut off a priceless embroidered sleeve because a kitten was sleeping on it.

Belle tried to show that she “liked” Pete by treating him like a dog... so she got scratched. Then, being a sensible cat, he got out in a hurry and stayed out a long time—which was well, as I would have smacked him, and Pete has never been smacked, not by me. Hitting a cat is worse than useless; a cat can be disciplined only by patience, never by blows.”

— The Door into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein

(There always seems to be some confusion about “If This Goes On —” and Revolt in 2100. “If This Goes On —” is a novelette first published in Astounding in 1940. Revolt in 2100 was a book published in 1953 that incuded three stories, “If This Goes On —” being the primary, along with Coventry and Misfit Heinlein hated the book title since the year 2100 didnt relate to any of the stories.)

Campbell’s letter accepting “—Vine and Fig Tree—” (“If This Goes On —”) on August 25, 1939 had been the most backhandedly complimentary thing Heinlein had ever received. It was full of complaints, mostly about how the religious theme would offend his readership—but the tone of the letter was pure delighted frustration, like a dog growling over a fresh bone he kept turning over and over, gnawing at the good stuff.

(Campbell’s letter) The story, by practically all that’s good and holy, deserves our usual unusually-good-story 25% bonus. It’s a corking good yarn; may you send us many more as capably handled. But—for the love of Heaven—don’t send us any more on the theme of this one. The bonus misfires because this yarn is going to be a headache and a shaker-in-the-boots; it’s going to take a lot of careful reworking and shifting of emphasis.

Ye gods man, read your own dicta at the end of the yarn as it now stands (incidentally, you don’t think, on the basis of the material’s own logic, we could print that safely, do you?) And consider the sort of reaction that yarn, as it stands, would draw down on us! Even after considerable altering of emphasis, it’s going to be a definitely warmish subject to handle.

You say, in your concluding part, that religion is dogma, incapable of logistic alteration or argument. Evidently you believe that. Then, on that basis, what reaction would you expect this yarn to evoke in the more religious minded readers? Your logic, throughout, is magnificent and beautifully consistent. That’s swell. I love it. Lots wouldn’t, you know.

I’m reworking it, I’ll be forced to eliminate some beautiful points possessed of an incendiary heat, so far as controversy goes. Consider, man, the reaction if we let that bit about the confessional pass! As a useful adjunct to a dictator’s secret police, it undoubtedly is surpassingly lovely; as an item to print in a modern American magazine, it’s dynamite. That’s out like a light …

I genuinely got a great kick out of the consistency and logic of the piece. You can, and will, I’m sure, earn that 25% bonus for unusually-good stuff frequently. (End Campbell’s letter)

Heinlein could not help but be pleased—amused and complimented. And Campbell’s specific comments showed that he was most impressed by things Heinlein had put into the story as throwaways—details that added believability to the backstory. If he could tease out some coherent, specific discussion of what Campbell liked about what he was doing, he could write specifically to Campbell’s needs and stop all this out-and-back-again with stories that weren’t selling. The $300 and then some that “—Vine and Fig Tree—” brought in would pay down the mortgage for six months!

Dear Mr. Campbell:

Your letter accepting VINE AND FIG TREE arrived today, and you have no idea what a lift it gave this household. We have been undergoing a long, dry spell—I was beginning to think I was definitely poison ivy to editors. No other editor has even been friendly. I had developed a case of the mulligrubs. Then—your letter arrived on my wife’s birthday, constituting the perfect birthday present.

Incidentally, the major portion of the check is going to go a long way toward lifting the mortgage on Castle Stoneybroke.

I agree with you absolutely in your criticisms of the story. I knew the story violated a lot of taboos and didn’t think it could be sold and published under any conditions. I was very sick of it by the time it was finished, but Mrs. Heinlein and I decided to waste postage too and send it off once, in the belief that you might enjoy reading it, even though it couldn’t be printed.

I shall avoid the more ingrained taboos in the future—at least for market.

"Robert A. Heinlein: Volume I: Learning Curve, 1907-1948" by William H. Patterson Jr.

Robert and Leslyn were having dinner one night in September [1941] with his old friend Elwood “Woodie” Teague when an unpleasant incident occurred. Teague had been at the Naval Academy with Heinlein, though he left before graduation to go into banking and had done quite well for himself. A “black reactionary,” he would argue politics with Heinlein for hours on end, but he had done everything he could to promote Heinlein’s political career.

We were very close—when their baby girl was killed in an accident [in 1937], it was us they sent for. We spent a week with them then, going home only to sleep. I arranged the funeral, and fed him liquor, and held his head. And so forth. More of the same, over seventeen years. Somehow, over the years, the subject of race had never come up before. Teague suddenly went off about “the Jews,” making anti-Semitic remarks that would have been at home in the mouth of a Nazi. At first, Heinlein thought Woody was just kidding, in extremely bad taste, but Teague assured him he was not kidding.

I sat there for another fifteen seconds, thinking about my lawyer, who is a Jew and one of the finest men I know, and about my campaign treasurer, another Jew, and about their kids. Anyhow, I decided that I couldn’t let it go on and ever look them in the face again.

So I stood up and said, “Woodie, apparently there has been a mistake made. It appears you didn’t know that I am half Jewish.” Then I turned to Leslyn and said, “Come on—we are going home,” and went out to get our coats.

This was a complete surprise to Leslyn: she knew as well as Robert that his background was Protestant at least six generations back, and Bavarian Catholic before that. Moreover, Robert never lied. (“I don’t tell a lie once in five years; when I do, it’s arc-welded and water tight.”) But she caught her cue and followed his lead.

Is it any wonder I love the gal? She looks little and soft and feminine, which she is, but she’s got mind as hard and tough and logical as a micrometer guage. Anyhow we left, leaving a social shambles behind us—went home to nurse a stomach attack and a migraine, respectively.

• "Robert A. Heinlein: Volume I: Learning Curve, 1907-1948" by William H. Patterson Jr.

Many people don’t know that Heinlein wrote screenplays for episodes for a proposed television series called Project Moonbase. The TV show was scraped in favor of a movie instead.

Project Moonbase contains the screenplay for the now classic sf film, plus eleven finished teleplays and two story outlines for a projected television show, The World Beyond. In addition to original tales (the story outlines "Home Sweet Home" and "The Tourist") Project Moonbase also contains teleplay adaptations of such RAH classics as "Delilah and the Space Rigger," "And He Built a Crooked House.”

Ginny also started working with the local little theater group, acting as wardrobe mistress for their production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and then for The Tea House of the August Moon.

Ginny’s actors and behind-the-scenes staff from the little theater were a mix of raw amateurs and seasoned semi-professionals, and Robert was usually ready to quit work for the day when Ginny brought them home with her in February of 1955. He must have listened thoughtfully as the new-to-him shop talk circled around. At some point it must have occurred to him that a theatrical background might give his next book just the novelty twist he needed. He asked leading questions—about makeup and other details he might use—and soaked up the theatrical lore that flew around the room without any prompting from him. The book that came out of all this, Double Star, turned on an actor hired to impersonate—double for—a politician who has been kidnapped to precipitate an interplanetary crisis—and matures into a thoughtful adult by this experience.

Double Star is one of Heinlein’s most charming entertainments, one of several masterworks of his 1950s, written ingratiatingly with what he called “the heroic hijinks with which the story is decorated, such as kidnapings and attempted assassinations,” lifted from English, Roman, and Chinese history (but mostly based on the long literary tradition of doubles, from The Man in the Iron Mask to The Prince and the Pauper). Heinlein had reached in his writing for young people a pinnacle of skill in seducing and pleasing his readers, gently teaching without seeking to challenge. Although Double Star was nominally written for adults, it fits comfortably with the juvenile novels he was writing at this period. Speaking of Double Star, Heinlein later defined his “pedagogical” intent:

“I think that a person with enough empathy to recognize and respect a horse as part of the Living Tree with a personality and feelings of his own is more likely thereby not to join in a lynch mob.”

“I may be entirely mistaken in this; I have no scientific proof. But it is a theme which has run consistently through all my stories … the theme that the human race is not alone in this universe and it had better get over its xenophobia … the notion that human beings should seek to find friends among other types of beings and not automatically assume that they are enemies.”

The book was finished by March 23 and edited for the typist three days later—less than a month before they were scheduled to leave for a trip to Europe.

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better (1948-1988) by William H. Patterson Jr.

In June 1973, Jerry Pournelle sent him (Heinlein) a gigantic manuscript for a science-fiction novel he had written in collaboration with Larry Niven, Motelight (what would become The Mote in God’s Eye), and Heinlein girded up his mental loins for another job of analysis and technical critique. As he read, though, he found himself turning pages, getting involved with the characters and the story. But it had a major fault as a book that urgently needed to be addressed. He spent three days going through the manuscript almost line by line, and finally, on June 20, sat down at the typewriter to frame his critique. His first note to the authors was:

“This is a very important novel, possibly the best contact-with-aliens story ever written.… (best aliens I’ve ever encountered, truly alien but believable and one could empathize with them, every ecological niche filled, total ecology convincing, etc.—grand[.])”

With Pournelle, he knew he could be straightforward and even blunt—and there simply was no “delicate” way of saying some of the things he thought needed to be said—

"We are in a highly competitive market, battling each year against not only thousands of other new novels but also TV and a myriad other things […] in the late XXth century one simply cannot use up 30,000 words before getting down to business with the main story line[…]

"How to correct the major fault? I don’t know. It’s your story. But cutting the bejasus out of those [first] 100 pp would help. It is all featherdusting, not story, and you need to determine just what supporting data must be saved to keep the plot intact—then see how much of it can be tucked away into corners after page 100, and what is left that must be on stage before page 100—and what is left be told in such a way as to grab the reader and pull him along, not lose him."

Heinlein’s experience with this kind of hard-love advice was not encouraging: “People seldom take advice—and this advice you did not ask me to give. I shan’t be offended if you don’t take it; I hope that you will not be offended that I proffer it.” He sent off the long letter to Niven and Pournelle[…]

In early August, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle surprised him with a revision of Motelight. He was shocked to see that they had taken his criticisms not merely in the spirit in which they were given, but as blueprints, even withdrawing the book while they reworked it:

"I am pleased (and much flattered) that you took my comments on the earlier version seriously. I cannot remember this ever happening in the past (and for this reason I long ago quit commenting on other writers MSS; it is almost always a waste of time—but I tried once more because I liked almost all of the earlier version so well). I know all too well how dear to a writer are his brain children; most writers usually will not accept criticism—and usually should not, as creativity is usually not helped thereby."

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better (1948-1988) by William H. Patterson Jr.

In December 1958 Heinlein took Podkayne Fries off his agenda: A hundred pages into the manuscript, it just was not coming together for him. He must have been mulling over the intertangled notions of freedom and responsibility, duty and moral self-discipline and citizenship—subjects possibly suggested by the depressing reception of the Patrick Henry campaign, but also by his brother Larry’s promotion to the rank of brigadier general of the Army Reserves: Larry “did it the hard way … he took the long route, all the way from private to general officer.” Another story came to him: Starship Troopers. Later, Robert recognized the origin of the story in something his father had said when he was just five years old: “I just remembered where I got the basic thesis of S. Troopers. From my father—his conviction (1912) that only those who fought for their country were worthy to rule it.” In 1912 the country was in the middle of the militarism associated with the Progressive movement—a time and place in the culture that persisted all through Heinlein’s own upbringing, and of which the Civilian Military Training Corps Heinlein attended while he was in high school was a part. It was undoubtedly that connection that suggested a young man undergoing military training…

“I do not know that this system would result in a better government—nor do I know of any way to insure “knowledgeable” and “intelligent” voting. But I venture to guess that this fictional system would not produce results any worse than those of our present system. Not that I think it is even remotely likely that we would ever adopt such a system.”

Moreover, from the evidence that this was the story Heinlein did write and did complete, it must have had that ring of “relevance,” of engagement, he had been missing with the Podkayne story. He later explained some of his thinking in generating the story to colleague Theodore Sturgeon:

“ … I’ll state explicitly the theme of Starship Troopers: it is an inquiry into why men fight, investigated as a moral problem.… being a novelist, I tried to analyze it as a novelist. Why do men fight? What is the nature of force and violence, can it be morally used, and, if so, under what circumstances?.… What I tried to do … was to find, by observation, a fundamental basis for human behavior—and I decided that the only basis which did not call for unproved assumptions was the question of survival vs. non-survival in the widest possible sense—i.e., I defined “moral” behavior as being survival behavior … [sic] for the individual, for the family, the tribe, the nation, the race. Now this thesis may or may not be true, but it is the theme of the book, explicitly stated over and over again—and every part, every incident, in the story merely explores some corollary or consequence of the basic theorem. Is conscription permissible morally? No, because moral decisions cannot be determined by law, by committee, by group—to fight or not to fight is a personal, moral decision. Everything in the book turns on this single theorem…“

He framed his ideas slightly differently for Alice Dalgliesh (juvenile editor at Scribner’s who rejected Starship Troopers):

“Let me state the theme of my story: the central theme of the story is John XV 13: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” The story starts with a boy, a child, a spoiled son of the extreme right, one who is utterly incapable of conceiving this ideal. The story ends when he is perhaps only two or three years older, but fully matured, a lined and tempered adult wholly dedicated to that simple, selfless proposition.”

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better (1948-1988) by William H. Patterson Jr.