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Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction author, engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accuracy in his fiction and was thus a pioneer of the subgenre of hard science fiction. His published works, both fiction and non-fiction, express admiration for competence and emphasize the value of critic…
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culture · American author and engineer (1907–1988) · writer · screenwriter · literary critic · naval officer · essayist · also Robert A. Heinlein, John Riverside, Robert Heinlein, Robert Anson Heinlein, Lyle Monroe, Simon York
Born 7 July 1907 · Died 8 May 1988 · Q123078
93 published statements · 0 followers
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the biggest, fattest sacred cows
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“The book caused a controversy because it had a lot of real people in it (albeit half-veiled by pseudonyms) and morphed into this big party with a lot of free sex … Many of his fans just did not know what to make of it.”
“the biggest, fattest sacred cows”
“Once there was a race, quite unlike the human race—quite. I have no way of describing to you what they looked like or how they lived, but they had one characteristic you can understand: they were creative. The creating and enjoying of works of art was their occupation and their reason for being. I say ‘art’ advisedly, for art is undefined, undefinable, and without limits. I can use the word without fear of misusing it, for it has no exact meaning. There are as many meanings as there are artists.”
“Joe, I’ve learned by bitter experience not to trust statements set off by ‘naturally,’ ‘of course,’ or ‘that goes without saying.’”
“Mooncraft isn’t a game; it’s the real thing. ‘Did you stay alive?’ If you make a mistake, you flunk—and they bury you.”
“The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it—once you can honestly say, ‘I don’t know,’ then it becomes possible to get at the truth.”
“My uncle used to say, ‘Never pick up a stray kitten…unless you’ve already made up your mind to be owned by it.’”
“It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person’s behavior. I spoke of myself as ‘responsible’ for this group, that was verbal shorthand. The most I can do—or you, or any leader—is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself.”
“Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. From an anthropologist’s view, ’justice’ is a search for workable customs.”
“From the ignoramuses we get for recruits I’ve reached the conclusion that this new-fangled ‘functional education’ has abolished studying in favor of developing their cute little personalities.”
“You put me in mind of a case I ran into in the American West. A respected citizen shot a professional gunthrower in the back. When asked why he didn’t give the other chap a chance to draw, the survivor said, ‘Well, he’s dead and I’m alive and that’s how I wanted it to be.’ Jamie, if you use sportsmanship on a known scamp, you put yourself at a terrible disadvantage.”
“Mr. Jones, has it ever occurred to you, the world being what it is, that women sometimes prefer not to appear too bright?”
“Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.“For explanations of a universe that confuses him he seizes onto numerology, astrology, hysterical religions, and other fancy ways to go crazy. Having accepted such glorified nonsense, facts make no impression on him, even if at the cost of his own life. Joe, one of the hardest things to believe is the abysmal depth of human stupidity.”
“Instead, pay it forward to some other brother who needs it.”
“Provide educational materials to educators.”
“The truth of a proposition has little or nothing to do with its psychodynamics. The notion that ‘truth will prevail’ is merely a pious wish; history doesn’t show it.”
“Johnnie, the nice thing about citing God as an authority is that you can prove anything you set out to prove. It’s just a matter of selecting the proper postulates, then insisting that your postulates are ‘inspired.’ Then no one can possibly prove that you are wrong.”
“Promote scholarly research and overall discussion of the works and ideas of Robert Anson Heinlein.”
“but my political career ended when Yorty beat me for the Democratic nomination to the State Assembly.”
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“You don’t pay back, you pay forward.”
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“There isn’t any law here. And you aren’t being logical, Pod. Anything that is right for a group to do is right for one person to do.”
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“me and my kind, we have often been offered that bargain. It never worked out worth a damn.”
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“that Th’Wing thinks that I am an idiot studying hard to become a moron—but flunking the course.”
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“had to re-slant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line”
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“at the heart of Heinlein, science fiction, libertarianism, and America. Heinlein imagined how everything about the human world, from our sexual mores to our religion to our automobiles to our government to our plans for cultural survival, might be flawed, even fatally so.”
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“No one ever dominated the science fiction field as Bob did in the first few years of his career.”
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Indiatimes: Quote of the day by Robert A. Heinlein: "Everything is theoretically impossible, until…" - why the word "impossible" has such a poor track record
Yahoo: Where To Start Reading Robert A. Heinlein, The Dean Of Science Fiction
“Taking the Fiction Out of Science Fiction: A Conversation about Indigenous Futurisms”
Phoenix Pick announced that through a collaboration with the Heinlein Prize Trust, a reconstruction of the full text of an unpublished Heinlein novel had been produced
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Awarded Retro Hugo Award for Best Novel for Beyond This Horizon (2018).
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Awarded Retro Hugo Award for Best Novella for Waldo (2018).
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Awarded Prometheus Award - Hall of Fame for Coventry (2017).
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Awarded Retro Hugo Award for Best Novella for "If This Goes On—" (2016).
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Awarded Retro Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Roads Must Roll (2016).
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After an intensive online campaign to win a vote for the opening, Heinlein was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians
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Includes three short stories never before collected in any Heinlein book (Heinlein called them "stinkeroos")
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Awarded Prometheus Award - Hall of Fame for Requiem (2003).
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"for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings to inspire the human exploration of space"
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Awarded Retro Hugo Award for Best Novel for Farmer in the Sky (2001).
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Awarded Retro Hugo Award for Best Novella for The Man Who Sold the Moon (2001).
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The United States Naval Academy created the Robert A
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Awarded Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame (1998).
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Awarded Prometheus Award - Hall of Fame for Time Enough for Love (1998).
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Awarded Prometheus Award - Hall of Fame for Red Planet (1996).
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Spider Robinson wrote the novel Variable Star based on an outline and notes created by Heinlein
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The International Astronomical Union named Heinlein crater on Mars in his honor
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Another movement that includes Heinlein concepts among its roots
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Under the title Grumbles from the Grave by his wife, Virginia; his book on practical politics written in 1946 and published as Take Back Your Government in 1992; and a travelogue of their first around-the-world tour in 1
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Died 1988-05-08.
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Awarded Prometheus Award - Hall of Fame for Stranger in a Strange Land (1987).
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Awarded Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel for Job: A Comedy of Justice (1985).
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Awarded Prometheus Award - Hall of Fame for The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1983).
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Robert Heinlein was a member of the Citizen's Advisory Council on National Space Policy, chaired by Jerry Pournelle, which met at the home of SF writer Larry Niven to write space policy papers for the incoming Reagan adm
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Awarded Inkpot Award (1977).
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And including an episode while vacationing in Tahiti in early 1978, he had episodes of reversible neurologic dysfunction due to transient ischemic attacks
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Heinlein was awarded the Inkpot Award, and in 1985, he was awarded the Eisner Awards "Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award"
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For the third time at MidAmeriCon in Kansas City, Missouri
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Awarded Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award (1975).
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Heinlein had a series of health crises, broken by strenuous periods of activity in his hobby of stonemasonry: in a private correspondence, he referred to that as his "usual and favorite occupation between books"
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Signed a pro–Vietnam War ad in Galaxy Science Fiction
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“People have a funny habit of taking as ‘natural’ whatever they are used to—but there hasn’t been any ‘natural’ environment, the way they mean it, since men climbed down out of trees.”
Awarded Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1967).
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(never sent) he said, "As for libertarian, I've been one all my life, a radical one
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After various chronic health problems of Virginia's were traced back to altitude sickness, they moved to Santa Cruz, California, which is at sea level
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Awarded Hugo Award for Best Novel for Stranger in a Strange Land (1962).
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Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (then still using his birth name, Tim Zell) founded the Church of All Worlds, a Neopagan religious organization modeled in many ways (including its name) after the treatment of religion in the nove
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Awarded Hugo Award for Best Novel for Starship Troopers (1960).
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His novel (now entitled Starship Troopers) was considered by the editors and owners of Scribner's to be too controversial for one of its prestige lines, and it was rejected
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Read a full-page ad demanding that the Eisenhower Administration stop testing nuclear weapons
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And they worked in the 1964 Barry Goldwater presidential campaign
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James Blish wrote that one reason for Heinlein's success "has been the high grade of machinery which goes, today as always, into his story-telling
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When the main character Douglas Spaulding is reflecting on his life being saved by Mr
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Awarded Hugo Award for Best Novel for Double Star (1956).
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Heinlein ceased considering himself a Democrat in 1954.
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Alien invasion novel The Puppet Masters, Sam persuades fellow operative Mary to marry him
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The movie Destination Moon—the documentary-like film for which he had written the story and scenario, co-written the script, and invented many of the effects—won an Academy Award for special effects
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But in 1958 he interrupted work on The Heretic (the working title of Stranger in a Strange Land) to write and publish a book exploring ideas of civic virtue, initially serialized as Starship Soldiers
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And reflecting his experience as an organizer with the EPIC campaign of 1934 and the movement's aftermath as an important factor in California politics before the Second World War; and a tribute volume called Requiem: Co
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Heinlein began to re-evaluate his career
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The year after selling 'Life-Line' to Campbell, he wrote three short novels, four novelettes, and seven short stories
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SF would have gotten the future right; I would suggest, however, that if Heinlein, and his colleagues, had been able to publish adult SF in Astounding and its fellow journals, then SF might not have done such a grotesque
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Worked actively for the Democratic campaign of Upton Sinclair for Governor of California
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Heinlein worked actively in the campaign
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Heinlein was discharged from the Navy, owing to pulmonary tuberculosis
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And 1934, reaching the rank of lieutenant
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While serving aboard the new aircraft carrier USS Lexington, where he worked in radio communications—a technology then still in its earlier stages
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Studied at United States Naval Academy, Bachelor of Arts (1925–1929).
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Graduated from the Naval Academy with the equivalent of a bachelor of arts in engineering
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Heinlein married Elinor Curry of Kansas City
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Was initially prevented from attending the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis because his older brother Rex was a student there, and at the time, regulations discouraged multiple family members from attending th
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Born 1907-07-07.
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To Rex Ivar Heinlein (an accountant) and Bam Lyle Heinlein, in Butler, Missouri, was the third of seven children
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Once there was a race, quite unlike the human race—quite. I have no way of describing to you what they looked like or how they lived, but they had one characteristic you can understand: they were creative. The creating and enjoying of works of art was their occupation and their reason for being. I say ‘art’ advisedly, for art is undefined, undefinable, and without limits. I can use the word without fear of misusing it, for it has no exact meaning. There are as many meanings as there are artists.
The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it—once you can honestly say, ‘I don’t know,’ then it becomes possible to get at the truth.
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