26. Mr. Science

    1. Richard Pope, letter to RAH, 03/31/75; see also RAH PS to form letter to Denis Paradis, 07/20/74.

    2. RAH, PS to form letter to Denis Paradis, 07/20/74.

    3. RAH, letter to Dr. Harry Wallerstein, 12/03/75.

    4. RAH, letter to Richard Pope, 07/30/74.

    5. RAH, letter to William Rotsler, 08/23/74.

    6. RAH, letter to Mrs. Paul Dirac, 08/20/74.

    7. RAH, letter to Richard Pope and Charles Cegielski, 09/18/74.

    8. RAH, letter to Philip K. Dick, 08/22/74.

    9. Heinlein apparently had the typewriter sent directly from the seller; there is no correspondence dating the purchase and gift; however, it is mentioned by both Theodore Sturgeon and by Spider Robinson [291] in their appreciations of Heinlein collected in Requiem, Yoji Kondo, ed. Dick himself mentioned the loan and the gift of the typewriter in his introduction to his short story collection The Golden Man (1980).

  10. RAH, letter to T. B. Buell, 10/03/74.

  11. Heinlein’s relationship with then-Captain King is detailed in the first volume of this biography, Learning Curve, in chapter 11, 126–43.

  12. RAH, letter to Richard Pope and Carol Timmons (marked “never sent”), 07/12/75.

  13. Virginia Heinlein, IM with the author, 04/19/00. Mrs. Heinlein, whose screen name was “Astyanax12,” remarked: “SFWA would have vanished if Robert hadn’t paid their bills and no one except Joan Hunter Holly knows about it. Knew about it—I think she’s dead now too.… Actually he swore her to silence. But I knew about it. He must have sent her a lot of money—from our joint account!” Joan Carol Holly (1932–82) wrote science fiction under the pseudonym “J. Hunter Holly” from 1959 to 1977. Ms. Holly’s papers are archived at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.

  14. RAH, letter to Jerry Pournelle, 07/14/73.

  15. RAH, letter to Philip José Farmer, 11/21/73.

  16. Transcription by the author of Jerry Pournelle’s presentation at the October 8, 1988 NASA Distinguished Public Service Awards Ceremony—from videotape provided by Virginia Heinlein.

  17. In Joe Haldeman’s remembrance in Requiem, 274.

  18. The times of the two ovations were given by Joe Haldeman in Requiem, 274.

  19. Confusingly, even though The Forever War was published both in serial and hardcover formats in 1974—and so ought to have been eligible for a Nebula at the 1975 ceremony in New York—it was instead voted best for the year 1975, so Haldeman received the Nebula at the 1976 ceremony in Los Angeles—the same year the book received the Hugo and Locus awards.

  20. Spider Robinson, “Robert,” Requiem, Yoji Kondo, ed. (New York: Tor, 1992), 315.

  21. In an e-mail to the author dated 06/18/08, Herb Gilliland (English Dept., USNA) mentioned speaking with Haldeman about Heinlein’s opinion.

I asked Haldeman Saturday in Kansas City [at the Heinlein Centennial, in 2007]. He said, yes, there had been a slight followon. Some time after the first encounter, he and Heinlein were at an autograph table at some convention (with, he said, Heinlein’s throng stretching off toward the horizon while Haldeman had two or three people), and Heinlein said something like, “I read your book again, and I like it even better.”

Haldeman is probably referring to MidAmeriCon (1976), though it might have taken place at a blood drive at SunCon in 1977.

  22. RAH, handwritten note on Thomas Clareson’s invitation letter dated 04/26/75. Heinlein referred to this work by Samuelson as “a thesis on me (for his master’s degree, I think) in which he picked up Blish’s theory about 1st-person stories” (RAH, letter to Lloyd Biggle, 08/30/76). This seems to rule out Samuelson’s best known Heinlein essay, published as “Frontiers of the Future: Heinlein’s Future History Stories” in Voices for the Future, Thomas Clareson, ed. (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1976), and as “Major Frontier Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein: The Future and Fantasy” in Robert A. Heinlein, Joseph Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds. (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1978).

  23. Dr. Ruth Sanger was married to Dr. R. R. Race.

  24. RAH, letter to Editors Compton Yearbook (marked “never sent”), 08/31/75. The reference to pornography may be obscure: Before pornography was legalized, some libraries kept locked reference collections of pornographic and other “unacceptable” literature.

  25. RAH, letter (marked “never sent”) to editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 08/31/75.

  26. No further mention is made of a copy obtained in New York; it may well be that the language of Heinlein’s memorandum of the Levin dinner and subsequent book hunt with Tanner is unclear and what Tanner was actually communicating was that when Levin’s team located a copy it would be available at the Times-Mirror office. But the Heinleins left New York within a few days.

  27. RAH, letter to Dr. Harvey Wallerstein, 12/03/75.

  28. This “Francis X. Riverside” pseudonym is unique; it is possible that it invokes Francis X. Bushman (a silent-era cowboy movie star) and the “John Riverside” name under which “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag” had originally been published in Unknown in 1942.

  29. Three-by-five index card in RAH’s hand clipped to 1,990-word version of manuscript, 07/03/75.

  30. RAH, memo to Richard Pope and Christine Timmons, 07/06/75.

  31. RAH, letter to Tessa Dick, 08/03/75.

  32. RAH, letter to Tessa Dick, 08/03/75.

  33. Dr. Robert Hecht-Nielsen, letter to RAH, 08/13/75.

  34. Dr. Eloise R. Giblett, letter to RAH, 09/26/75.

  35. Alan E. Nourse, letter to RAH, 09/19/75.

  36. Charles Huggins, M.D., letter to RAH, 09/24/75.

  37. Isaac Asimov, letter to RAH, 09/26/75.

  38. RAH, application for AABB membership, 12/11/75.

  39. RAH, memo to Richard Pope and Christine Timmons (marked “never sent”) 08/31/75.

  40. RAH, letter to R. Faraday Nelson, 02/07/77.