An Untitled Letter - written in 1972

GRUMBLES FROM THE GRAVE | 1989 | Robert A. Heinlein

[danielmryan]

EDITOR’S NOTE: In 1971, a fan group that based many of its philosophies on STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND wrote to Heinlein asking permission to use material from the book. Permission was not granted. Later, a member of that group wrote to Heinlein asking why he was unsympathetic to its aims. Here is his reply.

JANUARY 20, 1972: ROBERT A. HEINLEIN TO A READER

Facts:

1. The last time I was present at any organized SF fandom meeting was at Seattle in 1961 plus a very brief appearance at Chicago in 1962 to accept the Hugo for Stranger – brief because I showed up at the last minute, having been busy at NASA Houston on some writing for the Gemini program. Stranger was published in 1961. If there were any “nests” or such by Labor Day, 1962, I was unaware of them. My contact with organized fandom since that day has been zero.

2. Before 1962 my contact with organized fandom was slight. I went several times to meetings of the LASFS [Los Angeles Science Fiction Society] in 1939-40 and went to the convention in 1940 or ’41. Check: 1941, at Denver, as I recall now that I was in the east at that time in 1940. After 1940 the next contact that I recall was (I believe) in 1958 – a meeting in Newark – then again in Chicago in 1960, to receive a Hugo. I think this sums up the total of my contacts with organized fandom, although I may have forgotten some casual appearance, as the period spans thirty-three years and I kept no records on it. But I am certain that my last appearance at a meeting was ten years ago. [Heinlein didn’t receive too many invitations – DMR.]

3. Contacts with individuals, fans of SF who may or may not have been part of organized fandom: There have been many of these, by letter, in my home, in other people’s homes, or elsewhere. There have been more fan contacts in the past than in recent years, because of pressure of work and loss of time caused by illness. In many cases I do not know whether a stranger I have met (in person or by letter) is or is not a member of organized fandom. In some cases I’ve learned it later (too late!) through learning that a private letter of mine has been published in one of those fan magazines, or have found that casual, social remarks have been treated, without my consent or review, as an “interview” and published in a garbled form... [This is known as “putting words in the king’s mouth,” or less neutrally, “borrowing his clothes” – DMR.]

4. As a result of the above we have become somewhat more cautious in recent years with our social contacts and in the letters we write, especially as the pressure from strangers has become much greater. I have to live behind a locked gate and with an unlisted phone to get any work done at all – and this is a hell of a note as my wife and I are by nature quite gregarious and social [as well as being trained when young to regard such socializing as “goofing off” – DMR.] Mrs. Heinlein usually answers and signs all of the mail, which tends to discourage the incipient “pen pals” who would, if allowed, take up all my time and leave none for writing. A rare exception, such as your letter, I answer myself. We necessarily find our social life among people who don’t read science fiction.

5. All of the above adds up to this: There are very, very few people in organized fandom who know anything at all about me in the sense of knowing me personally or in being privy to my private opinions, tastes, or habits. My published works are widespread and anyone can read them. The public facts about my life are in several reference books in most public libraries. But a member of science fiction fandom is most unlikely to know any more about me than you do, and if he claims otherwise, he is almost certainly talking through his hat.

6. But I am repeatedly amazed at the number of people that claim to be “experts” on me. (One of them even wrote an entire book about me. I have never met him in my life.)

7. I have never expressed “antagonism” or hostility to “nests” or “water-brotherhoods.” This is sheer fabrication. I would like to throw such a lie into the teeth of anyone saying so, if I knew who he was.

8. On the contrary, a number of nests have indeed gotten into contact with me. I have treated them with politeness. I have standing invitations to visit them. I think I am on good terms with every such organization which has taken the trouble to get in touch with me. If you have any specific data to the contrary, I would like to hear it, in detail. (But I have no way to deal with malicious allegations from faceless, nameless strangers.)

Stranger: It is a work of fiction in parable form. It is not a “put-on” unless you choose to classify every work of fiction as such. Who are these persons who allege this? I would like an opportunity to face up to one or more of them...as this allegation has come back to me often enough to cause me to think that someone has been spreading it systematically and with malice. But the allegation always reaches me at least secondhand and never with the name of the person. Will you tell me where you got this allegation? I would like to track down this “Scarlet Pimpernel” and get him to hold still long enough to ask him what he is up to and why. Now, for some background on Stranger and my stories in general: I write for the following reasons –

1. To support myself and my family;
2. To entertain my readers;
3. And, if possible, to cause my readers to think.

The first two of these reasons are indispensable, and constitute, together, a common market transaction. I have always had to work for a living, for myself and now my dependents, and I come from a poor, country family – root, hog, or die. I have worked at many things, but I discovered, somewhat by accident, that I could produce a salable commodity – entertainment in the form of fiction. I don’t know why I have this talent; no other member of my family or relatives seems to have it. But I got into it for a reason that many writers have – it was what I could do at the time, i.e., I have been ill for long periods throughout my life, and writing is something a person can do when he is not physically able to take a 9-to-5 job. (Someday I would like to find time to do an essay on this. The cases range from blind Homer to consumptive R. L. Stevenson and are much more numerous than English professors seem to be aware of.)

But if a writer does not entertain his readers, all he is producing is paper dirty on one side. I must always bear in mind that my prospective reader could spend his recreation money on beer rather than on my stories; I have to be aware every minute that I am competing for beer money – and that the customer does not have to buy. If I produced, let us say, potatoes or beef, I could be sure that my product had some value in the market. But a story that the customers do not enjoy reading is worth nothing.

So, when anyone asks me why I write, if it is a quick answer, standing up, I simply say, “For money.” Any other short answer is dishonest – and any writer who forgets that his prime purpose is to wangle, say, 95 cents out of a customer who need not buy at all simply does not get published. He is not a writer; he just thinks he is.

(Oh, surely, one hears a lot of crap about “art” and “self-expression,” and “duty to mankind” – but when it comes down to the crunch, there your book is, on the newsstands, along with hundreds of others with just as pretty covers – and the customer does not have to buy. If a writer fails to entertain, he fails to put food on the table – and there is no unemployment insurance for free-lance writers.)

(Even a wealthy writer has this necessity to be entertaining. Oh, he could indulge in vanity publication at his own expense – but who reads a vanity publication? One’s mother, maybe.)

That covers the first two reasons: I write for money because I have a household to support and in order to earn that money I must entertain the reader.

The third reason is more complex. A writer can afford to indulge in it only if he clears the first two hurdles. I have written almost every sort of thing – filler paragraphs, motion picture and TV scripts, poetry, technical reports, popular journalistic nonfiction, detective stories, love stories, adventure stories, etc. – and I have been paid for 99% of what I have written.

But most of the categories above bored me. I had enough skill to make them pay but I really did not enjoy the work. I found that what I did enjoy and did best was speculative fiction. I do not think that this is just a happy coincidence; I suspect that, with most people, the work they do best is the work they enjoy.

By the time I wrote Stranger I had enough skill in how to entertain a reader and a solid enough commercial market to risk taking a flyer, a fantasy speculation a bit farther out than I had usually done in the past. My agent was not sure of it, neither was my wife, nor my publisher, but I felt sure that I would sell at least well enough that the publisher would not lose money on it – would “make his nut.”

I was right; it did catch hold. Its entertainment values were sufficient to carry the parable, even if it was read strictly for entertainment.

But I though that the parables in it would take hold, too, at least for some readers. They did. Some readers (many, I would say) have told me that they read this fantasy three, four, five or more times – in which case, it can’t be the story line; there is no element of surprise left in the story line in a work of fiction read over and over again; it has to be something more.

Well, what was I trying to say in it?

I was asking questions.

I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers.

If I managed to shake him loose from some prejudice, preconception, or unexamined assumption, that was all I intended to do. A rational human being does not need answers, spoon-fed to him on “faith”; he needs questions to worry over – serious ones. The quality of the answers then depends on him...and he may revise those answers several times in the course of a long life, (hopefully) getting a little closer to the truth each time. But I would never undertake to be a “Prophet,” handing out neatly packaged answers to lazy minds.

I find that I have written an essay to myself rather than a letter. Forgive me – perhaps I have reached the age at which one maunders. [Heinlein was about 65 at the time he wrote this - DMR.] But I hope I have convinced you that Stranger is dead serious...as questions. Serious, nontrivial questions, on which a man might spend a lifetime. (And I almost have.)

But anyone who takes the book as answers is cheating himself. It is an invitation to think – not to believe. Anyone who takes it as a license to screw as he pleases is taking a risk; Mrs. Grundy is not dead. Or any other sharp affront to the contemporary culture done publicly – there are stern warnings in it about the dangers involved. Certainly “Do as though wilt is the whole of the Law” is correct when looked at properly – in fact, it is a law of nature, not an injunction, nor a permission. But it is necessary to remember that it applies to everyone – including lynch mobs. The Universe is what it is, and it never forgives mistakes – not even ignorant ones...

[danielmryan]

The man who wrote both Stranger in a Strange Land and this was a Goldwater supporter in 1964. Stranger was reviewed favorably inNational Review in 1962 or so.

So the guy or his work can't be chalked up to "left wing nuttiness." You might recognize the conservatism in his mission statement above. Heinlein is ours.

But the people brought up on the screw-as-you-please philosophy could get themselves into a lot of messes, as Heinlein noted above, because they lack his experience, or his "restraint radar."

This is one of the first SF books to be brought into the university for "analysis," and Heinlein was the first post-'30s American SF writer to be recognized as a serious one.

Reason for some pride, folks. He's ours.

[Swordmaker]

Because Heinlein writes to ask questions and to question answers, he has been accused of being everything from a communist to a fascist... when in actuality he was among the first true libertarians.

I am a child of Heinlein... I grew up reading his works and much of my conservative/libertarian outlook on life came from his work.

I started reading Heinlein for pleasure... imagine my surprise when I found I already knew much of what my Economics professors were teaching me about the creation of money from reading Time Enough For Love! You want an example of a polite, armed society read Beyond This Horizon. For political philosophy read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, and Revolt in 2100.

if you really want to bend your mind read Heinlein's short story All You Zombies where he takes the classic time travel paradox of killing your grandfather before he has children and turns it completely on its ear!

[danielmryan]

I read almost all of what he wrote. I can't really muster the level of enthusiasm that Spider Robinson had in 1980 or so, but there's little the man wrote and said about Heinlein that I'd disagree with.

If you read Starship Troopers, you can see some of it as an answer to Atlas Shrugged. Especially the pacifism embedded in Rand's novel.

Here's a bit of trivia, though. From what I heard, the average Canadian thinks that Hamilton Felix is a bit of a jerk. They tend to prefer Monroe Alpha.

That doesn't tell you anything about Heinlein or the novel itself, but does tell you something about the cultural situation in Canada. Real-life people that act like Hamilton tend to be jerks up here.

[Paradox]

"An armed society is a polite society"...

or somethin like that :)

[Storm Orphan]

If Ayn Rand formed the minds of future libertarians, Robert Heinlein gave it the heart and the guts.

Bump for Adam Celine, Prof. DeLaPaz, Friday, the Sixth Column, and all the rest.

From another Stranger in a Strange Land...

[Storm Orphan]

And one more BUMP for Lazarus Long.

[MHGinTN]

Great post! Real Heinlein follower here. I discovered his books when in my eleventh year of schooling. Reading all of his books launched me into a life of reading, reading everything! And now, at the middle of life, I'm even launching into writing. His acknowledgement that asking the questions is vital for him and his audience's consumption is about as close as Robert Heinlein would ever get to altruism. He is a masterful writer.

[danielmryan]

You're damn right he is. I learned a hell of a lot myself.

The point I was making is that to the typical Canadian, Heinlein is too "American." To be specific, he tends to raise issues that we Canadians would prefer not to be raised, in part because we want to keep our own identity as a country and are thus insecure with "American" stuff after a certain point.

Here's a personal example: Starman Jones. A book I later loved, but when I first read it at sixteen, I nodded off. Something like Podkayne of Mars is more compatible with the culture of the Canada I grew up with. It's an issue similar to the "annoyance of Felix" above, which was something I myself was too naive to see when I was younger.

But that doesn't change the genius of the man. I bet you that the "cultural risk takers" that read Stranger and paid attention to the first part might owe their life to Heinlein.

[Storm Orphan]

we want to keep our own identity as a country (Canada)

Um, I thought you guys were just another yankee state. ;^)

[TennesseeProfessor]

I'm also a Heilin fan. As the prophet himself said, I don't know him or his political philosophies in person, but the heroes in his stories are definately libertarian :-). The one problem I have with his philosophy is that I'm a Christian, and Heinlin seems to be agnostic, and I'm against divorce and Heinlin seems tolerant of it.

[danielmryan]

No, we're not. Same language, but political traditions that are very different.

The most obvious one is that all criminal law is federalized. If you get dinged for a crime, the only Criminal Code the police refer to is the federal one. There are provincial statutes, of course, but none which cover the area of "crime" which is defined by common sense.

The same thing applies to the police force. You guys tend to be suspicious of the FBI, but our Royal Canadian Mounted Police used to be idolized, and are still very respected. I don't know of any American fictional FBI agent that's as unambigious a fiction-hero as Benton Frasier of Due South.

In our Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a "notwithstanding clause," which allows the provinces to enact a law that violates certain sectrions in the Charter for a five-year period; such a law is automatically sunsetted. An older counterbalancing power is the federal government's "right of disallowance." Our Parliament could disallow a provincial law under certain circumstances, which I don't remember.

Our equivalent of the Tenth Amendment contains specifications - the powers are divvied up fairly explicitly. Any unmentioned powers go to the federal level, not the province's level.

Every now and then, the premiers of the provices have to act as the loyal oppoisition. One of those times is now.

But more to the point, a lot of the Canadian Right is "progressive" in the old American sense - good-government boys. If Canada was absorbed into the States, this factor alone would make a lot of the Canadian right "strange as hell."

Our high literature tends to be tragic.

And also, we're bland and agreeable - and those values are respected. "Yanks" tend to be thought of as, well, spoiled a little, because the born Canadians that act in a "Yankee way" definitely are. I mean the ones that don't have fighting as an avocation.

Those that do are thought of as plain criminals. No mitigation unless a police officer agrees.

One more thing: the Canadian courts have a slight bias in favor of convicting the innocent among the ordinary run of Canadian - unlike the American courts. Guilty ones that go free are assumed to have been sprung because of a back-room string pull.

So we keep quiet about it, as well as what goes on in the cop's back room. We tend to assume that a roughed-up criminal was mouthing off, or otherwise deserved it.

[Storm Orphan]

I'm a writer, and I want you to know that was pretty damn informative for such brevity. Kudos.

(And I hope you know I was kidding about the state thing.)

[Storm Orphan]

Heck, Heinlein was for any matrimonial contract any number and
combination of consenting adults wanted to enter.

[danielmryan]

I can certainly see your point about divorce. You may be happy to know that one of Heinlein's editors, Alice Daigleish, might have seen Heinlein's own divorced status (Virginia was his second wife) as an excuse to make a sort-of play for him, which could have been what made their working relationship a bit of a trial for him. But this is just speculation and gossip on my part - no evidence.

As far as his "agnosticism," it would be closer to say that he had a form of Deism in his soul. One thing Heinlein was explicit about was that his religion was no-one's damned business. (Informed speculation has centered on a Twaynite American Calvinism.)

But you have to remember that the man had a hell of an imagination. The protagonist of one of his books, Farnham's Freehold, is clearly a New Dealer type of person. This book was written about a year before Heinlein himself raised money for Goldwater.

You have to watch it with him. Heinlein had a great writer's empathy: hence, the man is hard to pin down.

[danielmryan]

No offense - we're used to that. I took it as a chance to pull out my buried patriotism.

Brevity!? I thought I was being long-winded! [I'm a writer myself]

[Storm Orphan]

There is no offense where none is taken, northman.

Good to meet another Heinlein fan. Well met from Texas.

[MHGinTN]

Forgive me for interjecting the following ... it is sort of my defense of agnostics.

The position of true agnostic is an honest position, more honest than atheism, which assumes the atheist is so smart as to have the definitive answers (which no one is, that smart I mean). The belief in God is an act of faith, applied choice to believe. Oddly there is no proof to be poured over prior to making that declaration of faith, but once the leap is made, the declarer begins to see an near infinite array of data that resonate with his soul/spirit, even if they do not bear up to scientific rigor. The act of faith builds faith in what the word of God declares. Before declaring a will to believe, the truth which the Word of God declares remains elusive, ephemeral. But after the declaration, the Word of God builds the very faith so difficult to assert before.

Sorry for the lengthy aside; it is one of the mysteries Paul addressed in the New Testament.

[FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper]

If I managed to shake him loose from some prejudice, preconception, or unexamined assumption, that was all I intended to do. A rational human being does not need answers, spoon-fed to him on “faith”; he needs questions to worry over – serious ones. The quality of the answers then depends on him...and he may revise those answers several times in the course of a long life, (hopefully) getting a little closer to the truth each time. But I would never undertake to be a “Prophet,” handing out neatly packaged answers to lazy minds.

Great quote from a great man. Does anybody think like this any more, though? I'm appalled by the conformism, the lack of curiosity, and the intellectual timidity of the younger generation, especially the so-called "best and brightest." What the hell happened in the last 20 years? Surely not just MTV?

[danielmryan]

Thanks! But us northmen tend to be pretty weird in our literary tastes. Only in a country like Canada could someone be a fan of both Heinlein and Ayn Rand, and love 'em both.

Or, for that matter, Heinlein and Bradbury.

[danielmryan]

Here's something that's even scarier. I don't know if you saw any of those old high-conservative critiques of 'Education Lite,' but it was held as an article of faith by them that thinking in images and associations makes you a mob man.

Nowadays, this "mob think" is not only accepted as "valid" in the Ivy League, but also skill in using it is considered a sort of genius.

Have you read Expanded Universe? Heinlein saw it in 1980, and had more than a few laughs about this "decay to trendiness."