26

MR. SCIENCE

The Dirac article occupied him all the summer of 1974, punctuated by concerns over his family’s medical condition. His oldest brother, Lawrence, was frail though in no immediate danger, and Rex was at Letterman hospital breathing bottled oxygen. Bam fell again in June 1974. She fell again in July and broke the other hip (she had broken her right hip in a fall five years previously). She was in a convalescent hospital as a temporary solution, but she seemed to have lost contact with reality, inhabiting the world of her extreme youth. This hospital was appallingly dirty, careless, and understaffed—Bam had been allowed to fall again—and so Mary Jean was considering a permanent placement in a better facility, since it was not likely she would ever be able to come home. Ginny instructed their tax attorney to be prepared to take the full payment for the new convalescent home in Duarte as a deduction on their taxes that year.

Robert spent most of his time catching up on developments in physics since his days in high school. Dirac’s antimatter led to quantum mechanics and speculative physics, and he found that the old nature-of-time argument that had been the hot topic when he was in high school was still going on. The players had different names, but J. W. Dunne’s serial time thesis and Ouspensky’s six-dimensional spacetime were still around, modified and cloaked in the lingo of quantum mechanics as “The Wheeler-Everett Many Worlds Hypothesis.”

The Humanitarian Award was bearing additional fruit, too. Now that he was an “Authority,” Heinlein’s suggestion for a blood sciences article for the Britannica was quickly taken up by Mr. Pope, who commissioned a “rare blood” article for the 1976 Compton Yearbook.1 At about that time, Heinlein was contacted by a Canadian hematologist, Denis Paradis, who wanted to put a Heinlein quote—Lazarus Long’s definition of a zygote from Time Enough for Love—into his Atlas of Immunohaematology, a reference work that would be used by clinical researchers at the highest levels of blood science. Heinlein granted the permission, of course, adding “and besides, Lazarus may have stolen it himself—he would.”2 Paradis was a Heinlein fan as well as an authority in the blood field. He would be a valuable asset, since Robert had already decided to take the entire next year off to research blood science.

… the principle article on “Blood” in EncBrit is by C. Lockard Conley, M.D., head of hematology division at Johns Hopkins … it is an excellent article, packed with information, with no attempt to be entertaining.

I would never be asked to write that article … [sic] and Dr. Conley is not expected to do what I do. I am expected to entertain while informing and do both equally well. I am most emphatically expected to be scientifically accurate, but I am neither expected to be as detailed in treatment nor am I allowed as many words.…

But … probably 90% of my readers range from 16 to 45, prime candidates to become repeat blood donors … I have no way of guessing how many future donors it will be the first incitement toward eventually becoming donors. Possibly none. But if (as I hope) it stirs out even a few hundred, my work will not have been wasted.3

Ginny pointed out he could have written another book—or two—in the time he was devoting to these projects, and it/they would certainly have brought in more cash—but what would be the point of that? Considering their tax situation already, the entire proceeds would have gone to the federal government and the California Franchise Tax Board.

Heinlein finished the draft of the Dirac article at four thousand words and cut it to twenty-nine hundred words for submission on July 30, 1974—two days before his August 1 deadline—and sent it off.4 In fact, he was not yet done with the article, as he had to find and specify illustrations before 1 October.

Mr. Pope called it a “good article,”

So I phoned him and told him it was like hell a good article as it had been cut from 4000+ words and all the juice and color squeezed out. He thought a moment and said, “I’ve already vouchered this for payment through your agent … [sic] but do you want to make it longer?”

“I certainly do.”5

He was given complete control over the copy and illustrations—the kind of freedom a writer is rarely given.

There was time even for a complete rewrite—which might be necessary, since he had discovered that Dr. Dirac was still alive and still working, in Florida at the moment. That was something like finding that Santa Claus was visiting your uncle or Albert Einstein had moved in next door. With this untapped resource, it would be a shame to let all the effort go to waste: He arranged for a telephone interview with Dr. Dirac—not a simple proposition, as Dirac despised telephones and would not use them at all.

Heinlein would chat with Mrs. Dirac, and she would take questions to Dr. Dirac—often outside in the garden—while Heinlein waited on the phone (Dirac wasn’t uncooperative, just eccentric). Heinlein sent him two copies of the draft asking him to feel free to strike anything in error, anything he might regard as too personal. “Or objectionable for any reason whatever.”6 Knowing what a bane fan letters were to his existence as a writer, he carefully included a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

For the re-expansion of the Dirac article, Heinlein polished his original draft, but still this called for a full-out effort, can-to-can’t, finishing up on the 14th of August, and then he slept for twenty hours straight. Dirac’s daughter, Mary Collevaine, sent him a photograph of her father to be used in the article. A month after the first interview, he had a second telephone interview when Dirac was back at his permanent posting in Boulder, Colorado—and was flattered and flabbergasted when Dirac sent him a message through his wife that he was reading and enjoying Starship Troopers.

Mr. Pope had the article reviewed by one of EB’s knowledgeable production editors, as well, Charles Cegielski, who questioned some of Heinlein’s interpretations. This correspondence was very satisfying, since most of Cegielski’s questions related to the assumptions underlying his interpretations, and he was forced to articulate just what he meant by some of the statements, to strike the exact nuance of belief and practice he lived by:

The universe is what it is … [sic] but the returns from the upstate counties are not in; we don’t know what it is in most of its major aspects … One must use assumptions in order to live, and I assume that the universe of my perceptions is real and behave accordingly, paying taxes, driving carefully, etc.—but I do not forget that it is an assumption, and this permits me to toy with solipsist notions in private … [sic] or sometimes on paper as fiction for profit.7

Other work was stacking up at the same time. Ginny handled an inquiry from Baird Searles, who was doing, of all things, a Cliffs Notes pony on Stranger. Heinlein wrote to Philip K. Dick, who was in the hospital, having lost (temporarily) the use of one arm as a result of surgery. A get-well card would not do, so, as soon as the deadlines were met, he sent a long, chatty letter, talking shop and assuring him the injury need not seriously interrupt his writing and suggested an electric typewriter to cut down the sheer physical drudgery of writing.8 Since freelance writers rarely have good medical insurance, he knew Phil and Tessa Dick would probably be broke, or next to it, so he bought and had delivered to them a good electric typewriter.9

There was another letter only he could handle: A naval officer, Commander Thomas B. Buell, had sent him an elaborate questionnaire about his time with then-Captain Ernest J. King. Buell was preparing a new biography of Fleet Admiral King for the Naval Institute Press and was routinely contacting all officers who had served with King.

Robert counted his time with King on board Lexington (CV-2) from 1930–32 as one of the formative experiences of his life. The things he noticed about King, and thought about then and in the years since, had created him as a person, as much as family and as much as any reading he had done. Master shiphandler, airplane pilot, submariner, and engineer-inventor, rigidly just and tempered with compassion, his intellectual processes sure and correct, King was Robert’s idea (barring some nonsensical intra-service infighting after the war) of a perfect human being—not a model to be copied as to detail, but as an exemplar, to show how a self-aware human being can order the materials of his profession and his life. Heinlein wanted Buell to get it right, in a way that the recitation of biographical facts just cannot convey. He sat down at his typewriter with the questionnaire on October 3, 1974, and brought all his narrative skills into play to make King live for Buell.

Ernest J. King was a man toward whom no one who knew him felt indifferent. He aroused either extreme dislike (often mixed with very grudging admiration)—or he inspired liking so extreme that his admirers tended (figuratively) to worship the deck he trod.

I was of the latter group, so please take into account my bias.…

I consider E.J. King to have been the most nearly perfect military officer I have ever known.10

And so on, forty-seven pages that day, then continuing on for a total of fifty-nine pages of reminiscences, speculation, polemical argument, and analysis—and then four more pages of officers who knew King well enough to humanize him for Buell, urging Buell to use Robert’s name and the depth and intensity of his response to open up the personal memories of naval officers who might otherwise answer lukewarm.11

Heinlein found himself adopting this project as a personal enthusiasm, much as he had done the year before with The Mote in God’s Eye. That correspondence was a cathartic act of confession for Robert, and he probably released in that letter the impulse to write a memoir, which he had been kicking around for a few years.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, Richard Pope sent galleys for the Dirac article, together with a set of layouts for correction and critique.

With that task at last out of the way, Robert and Ginny could go off on vacation—a working vacation, as Robert was already deep into the research on the blood science article. They booked passage again on Mariposa, back to Hawaii for an eighteen-day cruise beginning December 14 and returning to San Francisco on New Year’s Day. They managed this time to catch the ship in San Francisco, loaded down with books and magazines.

The increasing complexity of their literary business demanded increasing vigilance. Their annual receipts continued steadily to grow, for the ninth year in a row—$158,745 for 1974—but just in time to meet increasing expenses. Bam’s upkeep in the convalescent facility was costing one thousand dollars a month out of pocket, and by May 1975 it was clear that she would probably be there for the rest of her life. It was something they could afford, and no one else in the family was able to support Bam this way. The market for Heinlein’s writing was strong now—but they had seen ups and downs in the market for science fiction before. Continued writing was the only way Heinlein could assure their financial situation would not collapse.

They were getting another useful tax deduction this year that would help: They had taken a 5 percent cash investment in the Red Pine Mine in Montana, through their old friend from Colorado Springs Rowan Thomas, and had increased their investment to 7 percent in the meantime. The investment was intended to be risk-capital with a tax deduction attached, and Thomas told them they could take a whopping $17,500 deduction for 1974 taxes. Between the increase in medical expenses and the venture capital deduction, they were just about covering the increase in taxes.

Heinlein was starting a project that would soak up a lot of that increased income. Perhaps it was sparked by a request they found in the mail from a daughter-of-a-friend in the publishing business for a letter to be published in a Candian high schoolers’ civics magazine, Canada and the World. He wrote a 750-word letter/article to be published in their April issue: “A U.S. Citizen Thinks About Canada.” The timing for this was particularly good: Robert had noticed that the vast majority of his research and reference materials on blood science were coming from Canada and England, and not the United States. Perhaps this was at least partly a reflection of the fact that Denis Paradis, from Montreal, was one of his primary sources of information, but he discovered that Canada and England—and all the Commonwealth countries, so far as he could tell—had much more efficient and better-organized blood collection services than did the United States. There were individuals with heroic dedication here, and he found the willingness to give of time and attention astonishing, but as he researched and wrote the rare blood article for the Compton Yearbook, 90 percent of the information he was using, and 75 percent of the support, was coming from Canada.12

That situation changed a little when they went to New York in April 1975. The Science Fiction Writers of America were honoring him with the SFWA’s first Grand Master Nebula Award. Heinlein had quietly supported the SFWA during the lean years when it was in formation, actually paying the organization’s bills with cash donations out of pocket, keeping it afloat until it should become self-supporting from member dues. Possibly no one but Joan Hunter Holly, the then-treasurer, knew about that, and that was just the way Heinlein wanted it.13 He had let his membership lapse when Alexei Panshin became head of publications14—and would not, as a matter of stubborn pride, re-up while Time Enough for Love was still eligible for the Nebula. “I don’t want any possible hint that I am arse-kissing,” he told Philip José Farmer.15 But now that was over, he quietly rejoined.

Jerry Pournelle was president of the SFWA in 1975. He had been outraged at the attitudes among some SFWAns about Time Enough for Love when it was up for Nebula consideration in 1974. Not only was the book outstandingly deserving of a Nebula (pace Clarke), but it was the organization’s first, and possibly only, opportunity to honor one of the field’s most influential writers, a generous and supportive colleague.

Pournelle found a way to rectify the manifest injustice by instituting a Grand Master Nebula, comparable to the Lifetime Achievement Oscar given annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Heinlein was to receive this singular honor at the New York Nebula Awards banquet on April 26, 1975, at the Algonquin Hotel, the day after he and Ginny attended the Mystery Writers of America annual banquet and met Eric Ambler as he received his own Grand Master Award, then met Ross MacDonald and Phyllis Whitney afterwards. That afternoon Ginny had the fortieth reunion luncheon at her college prep school, Packer, and Heinlein attended with her. They kept a cab waiting while he looked around. Ginny had told him it was like nothing so much as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in her day, and she had giggled all through the play. In fact, it had been presented at Packer the previous fall—“with the girls playing themselves,” Robert remarked dryly. Nor did they skip the ritual of having him autograph all of his books that were in the Packer library.

At a lunch with Robert and Ginny before the Nebula Award ceremony, Pournelle gratefully acknowledged all the help Robert had given him over the years. Remembering this moment for others, years later, Pournelle said:

He helped me with my career a very great deal, and I once asked him, “How can I pay you back?” This is a little absurd from a young man, maybe thirty, thirty-five years old just getting started, just, to someone twice his age and who is very well established, and he said “You can’t pay me back. But you can pay it forward.” Something that I have attempted to do.16

When the SFWA Grand Master Award was announced, the crowd leaped to its feet and gave him a six-minute ovation. Robert was very moved:

My brother, Major General Lawrence Heinlein, once told me that there are only two promotions in life that mean a damn: from buck private to corporal, and from colonel to general officer. I made corporal decades ago … but now at long last I know what he meant about the other. Thank you.17

He was given another three-minute ovation18 as he stood at the table holding the Nebula for photographers.

He was able to meet and talk with several “new” colleagues at this event. One was Spider Robinson, whose “Callahan’s Bar” stories he had read and enjoyed. He sought out Joe Haldeman, whose novel The Forever War had just been published in 1974,19 and complimented him on his writing—which astonished Haldeman and several people in the crowd around him, as the book was widely viewed as critical of Starship Troopers, as indeed it is: Haldeman challenged some of the assumptions and developments in Starship Troopers, based on his experience in Vietnam. But this was not so much a “disagreement” as it was a fruitful “conversation,” from which Heinlein could learn what he needed to know. Spider Robinson remembered the meeting as Heinlein interrupting the introduction by recognizing Haldeman as the author of “‘The Forever War, of course,’ Robert said, striding forward and thrusting his hand out. ‘It is an honor to meet you, sir. That may be the best future war story I’ve ever read!’”20 Heinlein always valued direct experience, and what Haldeman had to say was in no way inconsistent with Heinlein’s opinions as to what impact undeclared wars might have on the people who served.21

The day of the banquet was also the day that Thomas Clareson sent Heinlein an invitation to participate in a MLA (Modern Language Association) conference Christmas 1975 in San Francisco. The MLA is the most important and most prestigious organization for literary studies. Ginny declined the invitation for him, on the ground that they had no time free on the dates suggested—and in fact, it did fall into a time frame Robert had reserved for his long-delayed third, and hopefully final, hernia repair surgery. But Heinlein was also a little steamed about Clareson’s apparently unconscious arrogance, asking for an unpaid public speaking engagement and, even worse, the event they wanted him for was to be chaired by Dr. David Samuelson, who had written a rather clueless article Robert referred to privately as “Panshin-like ‘criticism’ of my work.”22

They had moved their usual holiday trip to after the Rare Blood article’s deadline on July 1, 1975, and wrapped up arrangements for it while in New York for the Nebula Awards banquet in April and May. The Seattle Opera was giving the first U.S. performance of the entire Ring of the Nibelung in August, and Ginny wanted to see it. Robert felt he had already “done” the Ring. Ginny snorted: twenty years ago in Bayreuth! This was a music event of international importance, and she wanted to be there. Robert was mollified by part two—a sea cruise continuing to Alaska.

The prestige of the Encyclopedia Britannica opened doors, and Heinlein found the people involved in blood services a surprising lot like science-fiction fans: passionate rather than detached, and willing to devote astonishing amounts of their professional time to anyone truly interested in the work.

Heinlein took full advantage of blood science people’s willingness to help, asking Dr. Harry Wallerstein at Jewish Memorial Hospital in the Bronx to brief him on technical issues. Dr. Wallerstein took an afternoon off and came to the Tuscany. Tapping him was like tapping a gusher—he came prepared with an “unhurried private seminar” going over all the fundamental issues of blood science: blood chemistry, types and functions of blood cells and plasma components, methods of testing, preparing, fractionating for refrigerating and for freezing. Wallerstein made notes and sketches and as he talked turned them over to Robert for his use, patiently amplifying any point when Heinlein interrupted (frequently) to ask a question.

Isaac Asimov had assured Heinlein it was essential for his article to get his foundation from the Race & Sanger manual Blood Groups in Man. The Drs. Race23 had for thirty years been an international clearinghouse of blood science information, and Blood Groups in Man, first published in 1950 and now in its fifth edition, was the Bible of blood science. Ginny spent two days trying to track down a copy in New York, with no success: It was missing from all the libraries that had it in their catalog. The fifth edition was simply unavailable. It was, the director of the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank in San Francisco told Drs. Race and Sanger when they had met in Helsinki in March 1975, the book most likely to be stolen in America—more, even, than any pornography.24

But Heinlein’s resources included an extensive network of his connections. “You have been exposed to my gauche tendency to yak to anyone about whatever is currently on my mind,” he told his editor at Encyclopedia Britannica. He had talked about his problem of finding a research copy of Race & Sanger at a dinner party at the home of Martin Levin—the publisher of the Times-Mirror group.25 The next day, Levin talked to Bob Tanner, a European book and author agent—and Heinlein’s new agent for British rights. Tanner reached Heinlein the same day at the National Rare Blood Club and told him he could pick up a copy at the Times-Mirror offices. Levin and Tanner had deputized half a dozen people to hunt down copies of the book.26

Nor was that the end of it. When the Heinleins got home—a trip Robert weathered moderately well, as he only went to bed and slept thirteen hours straight but did not, as he often did, pick up some debilitating respiratory ailment—they found a copy of the Race & Sanger book loaned to them by mail by William M. Davis, M.D., Director of Hematology Service at the Western Medical Center of Massachussets.

It was their only copy, and Davis asked for it back in a week. Heinlein started swotting it immediately and found, as Asimov had told him, it was the basic foundation he needed—and the Wallerstein briefing had given him enough background to understand it properly. He asked Ginny to photocopy charts from the book for him on their 3M copier mornings when he slept in after working late into the night.

During the mornings, Heinlein availed himself of Dr. Wallerstein’s offer and phoned him from California with questions as they arose, and always received the same patient, illuminating responses. Dr. Wallerstein’s opinions were always carefully reasoned, even when they disagreed with the consensus, and Heinlein admired him for being a true scientist in a field so unexpectedly dominated by personal issues.27

By the time Dr. Davis’s copy was due back in Massachussetts, the Levin/Tanner research combine had turned up another copy, same deal, checked out personally from the library at the Washington University medical school—and then a third.

Levin found a small lot of the fifth edition that were being pulled from distribution and snagged a permanent copy for Heinlein. They had been scheduled for pulping since the new edition would be out within the year. Better yet, Tanner had cabled Race and Sanger in England about Heinlein’s problem, and they offered to send him page proofs early in June—just in time to make his July 1 copy deadline. There were, the doctors assured him, a number of important changes in this edition. It was an extraordinary courtesy but very consistent with the passionate advocacy Heinlein was finding throughout the entire community.

The unbound page proofs of the Race & Sanger sixth edition arrived on June 5, while houseguests from Finland were visiting. Heinlein raced through the book and immediately found the revisions, as the Drs. Race had told him, substantial and material. Without this book, his article would have been out of date the minute it was published. He finished the first pass of the article, incorporating the new information, and it came out to 9500 words—five times the length Pope had contracted for. Heinlein worked on this manuscript for days, condensing where possible and cutting where absolutely necessary. He got it down to just under three thousand words and stuck there. It was not possible to condense any further without relying too much on the technical language of a very esoteric science—and cutting anything further eliminated some facts that were essential to understand the subject. Nevertheless, he had made a contractual commitment, and he would make it. He cut the piece to the contractual limit of 1,990 words, and the result was so unsatisfactory that he struck out his own name and penned in a pseudonym, “Francis X. Riverside.”28

A few days later, he called his project editor, Christine Timmons, and “tried to talk her into a longer version.”29 After additional meetings, he produced a clean manuscript of the 2,880-word version and sent it along, as well—with his own name on it. Pope and Timmons agreed this was much the better version and this was the one they would use. This time, the $1,000 fee went to the National Rare Blood Club.

Heinlein sent out copies of the 2,880-word version to his panel of experts, asking for the most nitpicking, close criticism. He explained to his editors: “I want it to be checked technically savagely, without mercy. I expect to be able to defend successfully every statement I have made … [sic] but I do not want any errors to find their way into print; the subject is too important.…”30

With the hard work done, they were able to leave for Seattle on July 14.

This production of the Ring cycle was much more satisfying to Ginny than the Bayreuth production had been in 1954 (though Bayreuth, she thought, had the better voices). This one was sumptuously mounted following as closely as possible Richard Wagner’s original staging instructions. Robert found himself listening and watching the production as music and text in a foreign language, but as he became more interested, more immersed in the drama—

Odd thing happened to me—My German is feeble … save that I learned Bavarian German at about five in the kitchen of a next-door neighbor—and forgot it. But it is buried somewhere deep down. I was listening and looking, entranced, when I suddenly realized that they were singing in English—whereupon they were singing in German. Then I again became bathed in the drama … and again they were singing in “English.” I went through this several times. By the last day I was understanding all the lyrics … save for a couple of singers who did not articulate clearly.31

While in Seattle they renewed acquaintances, having dinner at the Nourses’ home with F. M. and Elinor Busby and Frank and Beverly Herbert and the young writer Vonda McIntyre.

The cruise ship then took them to the Panhandle portion of Alaska, which they had never visited before. Once you got out of Anchorage and Fairbanks, there was more of the “Old West” there than they had found even in Arizona—wooden sidewalks, muddy streets, trading posts for trappers down out of the Yukon Territory—but it was Glacier Bay that arrested them and held them entranced on deck for most of the day, in the freezing weather:

I’ve seen, oh, 20 or 30 or more, glaciers in the past—but never from this angle, never so close up, and never so active. Instead of a few inches a day Margerie Glacier moves 30 feet per day—so it “calves” (gives off an iceberg) several times each hour. While I knew that glaciers give off icebergs, I had not realized how spectacular it is to see a cliff of blue ice break off and become a berg. And how noisy it is. A “white noise” rumble remarkably like that of a very large rocket.32

And back to the grind, and back, of course, to the usual stack of accumulated mail. They had offered Phil and Tessa Dick a loan in the summer, at the time Robert sent the electric typewriter, when they suspected the medical bills would swamp the Dicks financially, but Tessa had declined the offer. While they were in Seattle, she wrote reversing herself, apologizing that she simply couldn’t juggle the bills anymore and asking for a loan to pay at least part of their taxes. Robert and Ginny sent off a chatty and supportive letter, together with a check for the full amount of the taxes.

And in the same mail was an invitation to be the first civilian passengers on the proposed space shuttle—which Ginny accepted for them with enthusiasm.33

The writing work continued on the rare blood article, as the critical comments began coming in from his experts. Most of the comments were lavishly complimentary about the article as a unit—it was “a literary coup,”34 “a masterpiece of compression and information-loading,”35 and “first rate for a young person’s encyclopedia.”36 Isaac Asimov comically complained that, having driven all the science-fiction writers into the second rank, Heinlein was now driving the poor science popularizers (like him) into second place as well.37 But the finicky accumulation of corrections required revision after revision—including an opportunity to take a swing at the racist stereotype of sickle-cell anemia being a Negro disease (the mutation occurs in all races; it’s simply conserved only in places where malaria is endemic). Even as late as October, he was phoning in changes of wording, additions of a sentence or two to take new science into account, and a sudden change in federal law that required new handling procedures for reconstituted plasma.

He turned down a query from Rolling Stone magazine wanting to do a whole Robert Heinlein issue and let Blassingame handle the Avalon Hill people, who were doing a board game based on Starship Troopers. He began concentrating on blood services more than blood science.

Rivalry and factionalism was much more pronounced in blood services than in the pure-science end of the blood supply problem—but these people were passionate about something that actually mattered in the real world. That was something worth more than writing entertainments—worth dedicating your life and your treasure to. When he applied for membership to the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) in December 1975, his strategy was already well advanced, building on the rare blood article as a start. The application asked him to state the nature of his interest:

Recruitment … When I started research for this MS [the rare blood article] I knew nothing about blood programs other than through my work in recruiting for NRBC. I now wish to recruit donors of all blood types for all legitimate blood programs: AABB, CCBC, American Red Cross, Canadian Red Cross, British Red Cross, etc., and I have the means to do it; this typewriter.38

He used all his politician’s tact and fancy footwork to keep the dialogue going with the many scientists and scientist-administrators he had established relationships with—the same methods he and Ginny had used in Soviet Russia, turning their natural sociability to account:

The magic words “Encyclopedia Britannica” got the Big Man on the line; now I must keep him there. I couch my question in technical terms of hematology plus blood bankers’ argot.… then once I’ve established that I understand the language, I find opportunity to admit (with false modesty) that, No, I’m not a blood banker or an M.D. or anything of the sort, but a former aviation-structures engineer—however I have studied most carefully Race & Sanger’s 1975 edition.… these blood people are all enthusiasts (fanatics, most of them) and they welcome a chance to pontificate at length to a layman who understands and appreciates their problems—they meet so few who do.

If he shows any signs of slowing down, I use a banderilla: “Dr. Whoosis—” (some equally prominent hematologist as far from Santa Cruz as possible & who I know holds an opinion on a controversial issue diametrically opposed to that held by the man to whom I am speaking—and I usually do know, as I’ve been reading many pounds of the current literature and noting which side each one takes)—“Dr. Whoosis told me day before yesterday that, etc.”

He represses or sometimes fails to repress a snort of indignation. “Dr. Whoosis is a very learned man, a fine man, a close friend of mine—but between you and me he has a very narrow outlook on this matter. He fails to take into consideration the practical side of, etc.”—whereupon I sit down, light a cigarette and listen and take notes.39

The proofs of the article were finally ready in December, two days before Heinlein went into the local Dominican Hospital for his third—and final—hernia repair surgery. This time he stayed awake for the whole thing, with a saddle block anesthesia, though the doctors irritatingly put a screen up so he could not watch what they were doing. Heinlein was released from the hospital on December 23, heavily sedated with Demerol so he would not be hurt by the winding mountain roads on the way home.

They were not “doing Christmas” that year, since Heinlein was restricted to bed rest until December 30, when he was able to totter around the atrium and the pain of getting into and out of bed was decreasing. He was particularly anxious to get back to work. His extra time in the hospital had given him a chance to indulge one of his sickbed habits: He read up on the history of the nun-nurses’ religious order. That was an exceptionally productive read:

I suddenly figured out something I had long wondered about: why nuns live so long but never grow old. It enabled me to put into words a truth that had been inchoate in me for many years. Hear me: One certain path to happiness lies in having the opportunity to work to the utter limit of your strength on some difficult task that you believe to be worth doing.

That was exactly the insight he needed for what he was about to undertake: “And a … corollary: Any time you can give someone the chance to work hard on something that he himself—no other judge!—evaluates as being worth doing, you are doing him a favor beyond price.”40

Characters and personality types fall into and out of fashion, but they do not fall out of existence. Heinlein knew this character type; he was one, himself—and he had been writing for them, for more than thirty-five years.