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A newly-discovered novel by legendary American author, Robert A. Heinlein, will soon be published, marking the first time in more than 30 years that a book by the award-winning author will be published since his death in 1988. The book, The Pursuit of the Pankera, is based on Heinlein’s manuscript from his series, The Number of the Beast. The new publication was made possible by a Heinlein Prize Trust (HPT)-sponsored Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $46,000 to date. The Kickstarter campaign was established in September 2019 with the goal of $30,000. The Pursuit of the Pankera is 185,000 word...

Way back in 1959 legendary science fiction author and political libertarian Robert Heinlein was quite clairvoyant in predicting the demise of our culture due to misguided progressive policies and beliefs. Much of Troopers’ “future history” is told via high school teacher and former infantryman Colonel Jean DuBois to protagonist Juan Rico (by the way, how is that for diversity — a novel from the 1950s in which the main character is Filipino and whose family speaks Tagalog?). In one scene, students in DuBois’ class are horrified that children couldn’t play in city parks in the 20th and early 21st centuries...

As some of you know, I’m an American by choice. I left kin and country, culture and connections to throw in my lot with the freedom gang. How did this come to happen? How could a girl raised in Portugal, of patriotic (fanatic, really) parents get to the point where she felt expatriate, a stranger in a strange land? Well, a lot of it had to do with what I read. When I tell people I was raised in Robert A. Heinlein books, I wasn’t joking. And there was something in those books that just made me American, before...

Written after the Robert A. Heinlin book of the same title and which I highly recommend. Yes had member Rick Wakeman on keyboards in his standard silver cape. He was on and off with Yes, but always a good performance. Jon Anderson was the lead singer and always talked about his wife Janie who he always travelled with, until she divorced him a few years ago. And Bass guitarist Chris Squire who died in 2015 and Geddie Lee from Rush played in his place for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Steve Howe has been a long-time guitarist...

There are often things that inspire us. This is most especially true when you are young and looking for direction. In my case, I was greatly influenced by the books that I read. My favorites were short-length science fiction “pulps”. These were often paperback books that I could shove in the rear pocket of my bluejeans. I would read them, and often reread them. The authors of these stories varied, but my favorites included Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein. Here is one such story. This story illustrates that sometimes, it take one person to take a necessary action. Often that...

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One of the things that makes science fiction so popular is that it means many things to many people. Some people will insist that they are not even reading science fiction when they read a Star Wars novel or a novel dealing with alternate history. That is what makes Sci-Fi so wonderful! It’s easy to love and difficult to define. What other genre has so many sub-genres? You have hard Sci-fi, often times written by people who actually were scientists. There’s Cyber Punk, adventurous Space Opera, Military Sci-Fi, Alternate History, Steam Punk, and even Space Westerns. Something for almost everybody!...

William Patterson’s big Heinlein biography isn’t just the life story of one man. It’s a history of United States in the first half of the 20th century. Not a complete history, but in some ways it’s better than complete, because it’s more intimate. Heinlein was like a real-life Forrest Gump, in the middle of many of the trends that shaped America. Heinlein was born in Kansas, in 1907, the heart of Middle America. He was a cadet at Annapolis during the years between the great wars. His classmates believed ruefully that they’d be the first academy class that would never...

Between the ages of 36 and 38, I spent nearly $50,000 to freeze 70 eggs in the hope that they would help me have a family in my mid-40s, when my natural fertility is gone. For this baby insurance, I obliterated my savings and used up the money my parents had set aside for a wedding. It was the best investment I ever made. In RAH's 1963 Novel "Podkayne of Mars", the common ability of a woman to "Freeze" embryos in order to delay childbirth is the starting plot generator.

Writers are sometimes stern and cold at heart—introverts who escape into their own solitary world, away from outward distractions that would somehow muddle their extraordinary work. Other times, writers just need a friend. And while they say that a dog is a man's best friend, these writers each found solace in another four-legged companion.

...The one thing modern education does not do very well is teach critical thinking and this needs to change. In my own life, it was the hall way bull sessions of high school and college that probably did more along this line than any class. In Space Cadet, this took the form of the hall way bull session, but in Starship Troopers it was an actual class called History and Moral Philosophy...

We had the pleasure to interview J. Neil Schulman last week. He is the author of the Novel Alongside Night and has twice won the Prometheus award for his work. Currently Mr. Schulman is working on a movie based on Alongside Night.

You may not agree with what Heinlein says here but he is speaking directly across the years to Ron Paul and his people at the Republican National Convention.

In the February 1952 issue of Galaxy magazine, Robert Heinlein offered his verdict on the conclusion of the twentieth century. He would later revisit these predictions in the 1966 short story collection The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein and discuss the challenges of predicting the future. Here's what the author gathered, six decades ago: So let's have a few free-swinging predictions about the future. Some will be wrong - but cautious predictions are sure to be wrong. 1. Interplanetary travel is waiting at your front door — C.O.D. It's yours when you pay for it. 2. Contraception and control of...

Today, the Occupy Wall Street protestors decided to finally list their demands. Mixed in with some generic references to items like restoring Glass-Steagall which has been called for by many on the left, are a series of unachievable and cryptic utopian demands. From forgiving all debt and eliminating the debt and credit system in general, to making wars ‘pay as you go’ and granting every person a minimum living monetary allocation so they can choose not to work, the demands seem to be a mishmash of societal changing goals. If one steps back and looks at the big picture of...

  This is excerpted from the April 5, 1973 address “The Pragmatics of Patriotism” to the Naval Academy by Robert A. Heinlein, author and Academy graduate. Heinlein’s naval career was cut short by tuberculosis, which was the Navy’s loss but science-fiction readers’ gain. Some of what he says may seem old-fashioned, but there is nothing wrong with that. It is good to recall where we come from, and how much we owe to those who bought our freedom with their sweat and blood. Much has changed since 1973, but much hasn’t, including the anti-military feelings Heinlein describes. Note the...

October 25, 2010 4:00 A.M.Heinlein’s Conservatism A new biography explores the political evolution of a first-rate science-fiction writer. Ask a science-fiction fan who the three greatest writers of the 20th century were and you’ll start an argument that will last all day, but the consensus remains that they were Isaac Asimov, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein. Clarke kept politics out of his novels. Asimov was a devoutly liberal Democrat; liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has repeatedly stated that his teenage enjoyment of Asimov’s Foundation series, which depicts a precisely planned and controlled future, inspired him...

...These are all things we’ve been experiencing in large and small ways for some time now. For every item in the list above, I’m sure you can call to mind several recent occurrences that you’ve read or heard about in the news. Good grief, if our current economy and the ridiculous legislative attempts to spend ourselves out of debt isn’t a poster-child for doom, I don’t know what is...

Ask most people about Starship Troopers, and, if they recognize the name at all, they’ll link it to the over-hyped 1997 film directed by Paul Verhoeven. This is unfortunate, as the film did no justice to the Heinlein text. My first acquaintance with the book came in 2003 when I found a 1959 copy in a flea market in Indian Springs, GA for the tidy sum of $5. I’d never read the book before buying that copy, but I consumed it in a day. The writing was aimed at a young adult audience, but its themes resonate today, regardless of...

I was just thinking that many quotes from the works of science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein seem to apply to the current political situation. Here are a few choice ones, please feel free to add more!