Robert A Heinlein

Robert Anson Heinlein, considered by many to be the most influential author of science fiction since H. G. Wells, is dead at the age of 80, it was reported Monday. Heinlein, who had suffered from heart ailments and emphysema for a decade, died in his sleep over the weekend at his Carmel home, Charles Brown, publisher of the science-fiction magazine Locus and a friend of the family, told United Press International.

"I am submitting the enclosed short story 'LIFE-LINE' for either 'Astounding' or 'Unknown,'" Robert A. Heinlein wrote to editor John Campbell in 1939, "because I am not sure which policy it fits the better. " The former magazine published science fiction, the latter fantasy. Heinlein's short story ? the first he had attempted professionally, at age 31 ? concerns a machine that can predict when a person will die. That he sold this neophyte production, on first submission, to a top pulp editor (kicking off an intense friendship and correspondence)

He was a onetime utopian socialist who became an assertive right-winger, a libertarian nudist with a military-hardware fetish, a cold warrior who penned an Age of Aquarius sensation with a hero who preached free love. He won admiration from Ronald Reagan, who enlisted his ideas in his "Star Wars" missile shield, and Charles Manson, who was captured with the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" in his backpack. He predicted the European Union and invented the water bed. But Robert A.

He was a onetime utopian socialist who became an assertive right-winger, a libertarian nudist with a military-hardware fetish, a cold warrior who penned an Age of Aquarius sensation with a hero who preached free love. He won admiration from Ronald Reagan, who enlisted his ideas in his "Star Wars" missile shield, and Charles Manson, who was captured with the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" in his backpack. He predicted the European Union and invented the water bed. But Robert A.

If you grok grokking, then you may already know that the original, uncut version of Robert A. Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land," one of the most famous and controversial science-fiction novels published in this galaxy, has reappeared on the shelves of the third planet's bookstores in celebration of its 30th anniversary.

The recent death of Robert Heinlein, science fiction writer and the best of that genre (Part I, May 10), reminds me that he received his start toward success as an author by failing as a politician. In 1938, Bob Heinlein, then a physically disabled Naval Academy graduate, sought the Democratic nomination for the Assembly in the old 59th District (western part of Los Angeles County). He ran against Charles Lyon, Republican Speaker of the Assembly who had cross-filed, as was then permitted.

Although his sprawling "Stranger in a Strange Land" became one of the icons of the '60s counterculture, Robert Heinlein did his best writing in the juvenile novels he produced during the late '40s and early '50s.

Robert A. Heinlein, the reclusive science fiction author, writes history before it happens. Impossible? Well, in 1940, when America was at peace with fascism, one of Heinlein's first short stories predicted that atomic weapons would end the coming world war. In the 1800s other science fiction writers fantasized about nuclear weapons, but Heinlein foresaw that the United States would be first to use them.

THE science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein was born in Missouri, and his fiction was mostly set in the future and on distant planets. But there's no question that Heinlein -- born 100 years ago this week -- was one of Southern California's great prophets. He lived in Los Angeles in the 1930s and '40s, and first turned to writing because of looming mortgage payments after his failed campaign in 1938 to represent Hollywood in the Assembly.

THE science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein was born in Missouri, and his fiction was mostly set in the future and on distant planets. But there's no question that Heinlein -- born 100 years ago this week -- was one of Southern California's great prophets. He lived in Los Angeles in the 1930s and '40s, and first turned to writing because of looming mortgage payments after his failed campaign in 1938 to represent Hollywood in the Assembly.

If you grok grokking, then you may already know that the original, uncut version of Robert A. Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land," one of the most famous and controversial science-fiction novels published in this galaxy, has reappeared on the shelves of the third planet's bookstores in celebration of its 30th anniversary.

In 1961, Robert Heinlein published a science-fiction novel, "Stranger in a Strange Land," that became a '60s campus favorite and a perennial big-seller. Now the book has been reissued in an "uncut" version that is a third again as long.

Although his sprawling "Stranger in a Strange Land" became one of the icons of the '60s counterculture, Robert Heinlein did his best writing in the juvenile novels he produced during the late '40s and early '50s.

The passing of Heinlein recalls my meeting with him in the late 1930s when I was an aspiring writer still in high school and he resided next door to my father in the Hollywood Hills. While recovering from tuberculosis, he read a great deal and one day met a writer whose work he critiqued. That writer bet Heinlein that he couldn't write science fiction and sell it. Bob Heinlein advised me that a good writer should have many facts on hand so that he or she could select the best, whether for fiction or nonfiction, so that the writing product would be realistic and entertaining.