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Robert A Heinlein
The outlook and values of this time and place would influence his later works; however, he would break with many of its values and social mores, both in his writing and in his personal life. Robert A Heinlein graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929, and served as an officer in the United States Navy. He married soon after graduation, but this marriage lasted only about a year. He married his second wife, Leslyn Macdonald, in 1932. Leslyn was a political radical, and Isaac Asimov recalled Robert during those years as being, like her, "a flaming liberal. Heinlein served aboard the USS Roper (DD-147) in 1933–1934, reaching the rank of naval Lieutenant. In 1934, Heinlein was discharged from the Navy due to pulmonary tuberculosis. During his long hospitalization he developed the idea of the waterbed, and
his detailed descriptions of it in three of his books later prevented others
from patenting it. The military was the second great influence on Heinlein;
throughout his life, he strongly believed in loyalty, leadership, and other
ideals associated with the military. When Sinclair gained the Democratic
nomination for governor of California in 1934, Robert A Heinlein worked actively in the
unsuccessful campaign. Heinlein himself ran for the California State Assembly in
1938, but was unsuccessful. In later years, Heinlein kept his socialist past
secret, writing about his political experiences coyly, and usually under the
veil of fictionalization. In 1954, he wrote: "...many Americans ... were
asserting loudly that McCarthy had created a 'reign of terror.' Are you
terrified? I am not, and I have in my background much political activity well to
the left of Senator McCarthy's position. He published four influential stories for The Saturday Evening Post, leading
off with "The Green Hills of Earth" in February 1947, which made him the first
science fiction writer to break out of the pulp ghetto. Destination Moon, the
documentary-like film for which he had written story, scenario, and script, and
invented many of the effects, won an Academy Award for special effects. Most
importantly, he embarked on a series of juvenile novels for Scribner's that was
to last through the 1950s. Asimov believed that Robert A Heinlein made a drastic swing to the right politically
at the same time he married Ginny. The couple formed the Patrick Henry League in
1958 and worked on the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign, and Tramp Royale contains
two lengthy apologias for the McCarthy hearings. However, this perception of a
drastic shift may result from a tendency to make the mistake of trying to place
libertarianism on the traditional right-left spectrum of American politics, as
well as from Heinlein's iconoclasm, and unwillingness to let himself be
pigeonholed into any ideology (including libertarianism). The evidence of
Ginny's influence is clearer in matters literary and scientific. She acted as
the first reader of his manuscripts, and was reputed to be a better engineer
than Heinlein himself. Over the next few months, he became more and more exhausted, and his health again began to decline. The problem was determined to be a blocked carotid artery, and he had one of the earliest carotid bypass operations to correct the blockage. Asked to appear before a Joint Committee of the U.S. House and Senate that year, he testified on his belief that spin-offs from space technology were benefiting the infirm and the elderly. His surgical treatment re-energized Heinlein, and he wrote five novels from 1980 until he died in his sleep from emphysema and congestive heart failure on May 8, 1988, as he was putting together the early notes for another World as Myth novel. Several of his works have been published posthumously. Selected BibliographyNovels
Omnibus
Nonfiction
Retrun from Robert A Heinlein to Biographies
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Robert
A Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was one of the most popular,
influential, and controversial authors of "hard" science fiction. He set a high
standard for science and engineering plausibility that few have equaled, and
also helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was the first
writer to break into mainstream general magazines such as The Saturday Evening
Post in the late 1940s with unvarnished science fiction. He was among the first
authors of bestselling novel-length science fiction in the modern mass-market
era. For many years Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were known as
the "Big Three" of science fiction.
During World War II Robert A Heinlein did aeronautical engineering for the Navy,
recruiting 
Beginning in 1970, however,
Robert A Heinlein had a series of health crises, punctuated
by strenuous work. The decade began with a life-threatening attack of
peritonitis, recovery from which required more than two years. But as soon as he
was well enough to write, he began work on Time Enough for Love (1973), which
introduced many of the themes found in his later fiction. In the mid-1970s he
wrote two articles for the Britannica Compton Yearbook. He and Ginny
crisscrossed the country helping to reorganize blood donation in the U.S., and
he was guest of honor at a World Science Fiction Convention for the third time
at Kansas City, Missouri in 1976. While vacationing in Tahiti in early 1978, he
suffered a transient ischemic attack. 