Grumbles From the Grave Read online

  Some few of them might study us casually—or might not. Some odd duck among them might keep a few of us as pets. That was what happened to my hero. He got too nosy around one of their activities, was captured, and by pure luck was kept as a pet instead of being stepped on. In time he understood his predicament, except in one respect—he never did realize to its full bitterness that the human race could not even fight these creatures. He was simply a goldfish in a bowl—who cares about the opinions of a helpless goldfish? I have a fish pond in my patio. Perhaps those fish hate me bitterly and have sworn to destroy me. I won't even suspect it—I'll lose no sleep over it. And it seems to me that the most esoteric knowledge of science would not enable those fish to harm me. I am indifferent to them and invulnerable.

  I used a working title of "Goldfish Bowl" but changed it because, in my opinion, it tipped the story. Now it appears that you want the story tipped more quickly. Perhaps the working title is almost the only change it needs. In any case, John, you habitually give the key idea of a story in the blurbs—sometimes, I think, to the detriment of the dramatic punch of a story. That was my reaction to the blurbing on "By His Bootstraps." (But you're the editor! I ain't complaining; I'm expressing an opinion.) I'll look the story over in a day or two and try to see where I can do some planting in the early part. If you have any specific ideas, please mention them right away; I am not quite sure what you want—the degree, at least. Maybe we'll have to ship this story back and forth a couple of times yet.

  It will please me to sell this story for a reason that has developed since I last wrote to you. As you know, I have been gradually selling off the half-dozen stories you have rejected since I started writing. Last week I sold two in one day—the last two ["Pied Piper" and "My Object All Sublime," both under Lyle Monroe. Heinlein never permitted reprinting these]. Utter dogs they were, written in the spring of 1939. That leaves me with an absolutely clean sweep of having sold every word I have ever written from the first day I sat down to attempt commercial writing . . . So—a clean sweep right up to this last story. The opportunity to fix it up to sell is very pleasant.

  (16)

  "Goldfish Bowl," published in Astounding March 1942, under pseudonmyn Anson MacDonald. Art by Kramer. "Goldfish Bowl" had originally been rejected by Campbell, but eventually Heinlein and Campbell agreed on revisions.

  September 17, 1941: John W. Campbell, Jr. to Robert A. Heinlein

  I had forgotten that little point of yours. And now, of course, the thing sticks me at a wonderfully tender spot. Item: We went to large size, with about a 70% increase in consumption. Item: We have novelettes, but are atrociously short of short stories. Item: We've had one good author who could really produce wordage. And now—now of all times!—that one wants to retire! Just when, it so happens, we haven't a single thing of yours on hand. Your proteges, helpful as they are, can, together, produce about as much, but not the quality, that you can. So—we launch the large-size, large-consumption book with the loss of the top one-third of our authors—the one man with three names.

  Look—how about at least making it a new year's resolution, or something? By that time, maybe we can get shaken down into a better order.

  On that story-that-bounced: Science fiction is normally read as light, escape literature. The reader does not expect or seek heavy philosophy; particularly, he does not expect or prepare himself for heavy philosophy when he reads a story that shows every sign of being action-adventure. Bathyspheres—alien something-or-others—men vanishing and men killed—heavy menace, with Navy personnel called in to look into it—something powerful and active under way here, with violent action ending in a solution—

  Or at least that seemed the setup. The answer you gave was utterly unexpected, the right answer to the wrong question, so to speak. Therein it was a seemingly pointless question-and-answer, and disappointing to the reader. At Heinlein-MacDonald 1-1/2 cent rates, I can't disappoint; alteration of either the answer—so it fitted the question the reader was asked—or of the question into a form that more evidently called for the type of answer provided, would make it click. The answer provided did make a highly interesting point, but a point overwhelmed in the rush of unfulfilled expectation of action-adventure.

  In general, if you retire abruptly at this particular moment, Astounding is going to feel it in much the way one's tongue feels a missing tooth just after it's been yanked.

  So far as going up goes, I'll agree you can't very well. I can agree with your desire to retire, under your circumstances. But look—when you don't have to, writing's a lot of fun. When you have to fill magazines, as I do, good manuscripts are godsends. Be god for a little while more, and send more, willya?

  I know one thing: I'm going to get some loud and angry howls from readers.

  September 19, 1941: John W. Campbell, Jr. to Robert A. Heinlein

  In re your own stories. Novelettes are your meat—those and short serials, which will be, under the new setup, short novels complete in an issue. You need elbow room to develop the civilization background against which your characters act. I know that, and have suggested shorts to you mainly when I was kinda desperate for short stories that couldn't be smelled before opening the book.

  September 25, 1941: Robert A. Heinlein to John W. Campbell, Jr.

  I think I've got it. Darned if I don't think so. The serial, I mean—the one I've been looking for ["Beyond This Horizon"].

  Like this—for some time I've been wandering around in a blue fog, trying to get a theme, a major conflict suitable for a novel-length S-F story. I wanted it to be fully mature, adult, dramatic in its possibility—and not used before. Naturally, the last requirement was the sticker. Perhaps the possibilities in S-F have not been exhausted, but they have certainly been well picked over; for me, at least, it is hard to find a really fresh theme. But I started searching by elimination. First, I eliminated space travel. Old hat, and it tends to steal the scene from anything else. Then I assumed that the basic problems of economics and politics had been solved. Thus, in one sweep, I got rid of almost every type of story I have done up to this time.

  Okay—in a world that is all peace-and-prosperity, what will men and women have left to struggle for? Problems of sex and marriage obviously, but I am not writing for Ladies' Home Journal. The basic problem of esthetics? Wide open for S-F treatment, and new, but the issues are subtle and it would be difficult to convince the readers that the problems of esthetics are susceptible to scientific analysis and manipulation. Same for metaphysical problems.

  I seemed to be up against a dead end, when a possibility occurred to me which, while not new, has been futzed with rather than dealt with—the possibilities of genetics, and in particular, What Are We Going to Make of the Human Race? Mr. Tooker discussed it ably in the March '39 book, Stapledon has dealt with it on the grand scale in "Last and First Men," Taine-Bell suggested some possibilities in "The Time Stream," numerous superman stories have been written, and lots of stories of the mad-scientist-in-the-laboratory-creates-new-species type have been done. [Aldous] Huxley did a beautiful satire in Brave New World, and even Heinlein has brushed the edges of the subject in "Methuselah's Children." But it seems to me that there remains a different and in some ways better story yet to be written.

  (19)

  "Methuselah's Children," Heinlein's tale of a super-race, Astounding, July through September 1941. Art by Hubert Rogers. September 30, 1941: Robert A. Heinlein to John W. Campbell, Jr.

  Herewith is a piece of utter hoke which you saw in its original form in 1939. I shortened it to fit an immediate market ready to buy it, but I am not obligated to sell it there. In its shortened form it seems somewhat improved and it occurred to me that, if you are still having trouble getting short stories "which can't be smelled before the book is opened," as you put it, this item might stand a chance. It isn't good, I know, but it may be no worse than the competition.

  It is offered to you at one cent a word, under the Monroe name which appears on it, or unde
r the name of Leslie Keith. God knows it is not worth a cent a word, but I believe that is your lowest rate. If you can't use it, place it carefully in the enclosed receptacle and bounce it back to me at once, so I can shoot it off to the low-pay, slow-pay market for which it is intended.

  I suppose it is silly of me to waste time revising and selling these dogs, but this is the last of them, and it is a source of satisfaction to have disposed of all of them. And none of them took more than one rewriting, which isn't bad, since most writers do two drafts in any case.

  Tomorrow I start revising "Creation Took Eight Days" ["Goldfish Bowl"], which won't take me eight days and will leave two whole months for the serial. I've continued research every day and have a stack of notes that high. I'm going to like this serial, I think.

  (21)

  A scene from "By His Bootstraps," Astounding, October 1941. Art by Hubert Rogers, an artist closely associated with Astounding and with Heinlein's works.

  October 1, 1941: John W. Campbell, Jr. to Robert A. Heinlein

  Re "By His Bootstraps." It's taking first place away from "Common Sense" . . . "Bootstraps" is not hack; it's the first all-out, frank attack on the circle-of-time story. It's a magnificent idea, and it's been worked out beautifully. You've taken a minute, but highly intriguing point in the whole theory of time-travel, and built it up to the proportions it deserved. Reasons it's good, among others: you follow the thoughts of each of the several returns of Wilson, showing why he did, each time, say what he said, though he might well have tried to change from his remembered speech. You have a story in which, each time, the man from the future who knows more, says, "It's too long a story to explain," and brushing off the explanation, both intrigues and annoys the reader—and makes him like it.

  October 4, 1941: Robert A. Heinlein to John W. Campbell, Jr.

  I have been beset by insomnia while trying to get the serial started, and was forced last night to the expedient of twin beds and barbiturate. Under the influence of drugs I was awake only three times in the night, but got over eight hours sleep, by damn, and feel fine today. But serial still looks hopeless. The idea is grand, wonderful, and I see more interesting angles to it every day. But each day it looks a little more impossible to work out than the day before—for pulp. The events would take place with such geologic leisureliness. And there are other difficulties, which will be obvious to you. I don't know—I don't know.

  . . . "By His Bootstraps" is still hack—a neat trick, sure, but no more than a neat trick. Cotton candy.

  CHAPTER II

  BEGINNINGS

  October 16, 1941: Robert A. Heinlein to John W. Campbell, Jr.

  I can write my own story with great speed when I start, but I am not yet satisfied as to the central conflict. I have several different central problems in my mind, any of which would make a story, but as yet do not have one which fully satisfies me. I want this story to be high tragedy rather than horse opera—full of gore and action as a Greek tragedy, but tragedy in the Greek sense. (Necessarily a tragedy, because wisdom required to control genetics wisely is superhuman, and I'm no superman.)

  Editor's Note: As the use of working titles was frequent, titles of stories are not always given. Now and then a final title to a story was affixed by the author, but, more often, the editor changed the title before the story saw print. It would only cause confusion here to show all the title changes some stories went through.

  (24)

  "Beyond This Horizon," by "Anson MacDonald," Astounding, April and May 1942. Art by Hubert Rogers.

  November 9, 1941: Robert A. Heinlein to John W. Campbell, Jr.

  Here are the first ten thousand words of the current struggle ["Beyond This Horizon"]. Confidentially, it stinks. But I am and have been doing my goddamndest to turn out printable copy for you. My worst trouble is to get enough illustrative action into the story and to keep it from bogging down into endless talky-talk. I have stacks of notes on this story, more than twice as much as on any story I've ever done; the ideas it suggests really interest me—but I am finding it hard as hell to beat a story out of it.

  But I am turning out copy and will continue to do so, at about two thousand words a day or more. Those spots on the right margin are my blood, a drop per line.

  November 15, 1941: Robert A. Heinlein to John W. Campbell, Jr.

  Here is another hunk of hack ["Beyond This Horizon"]. I think it well to let you see it in weekly chunks, as I am by no means confident of its quality and would like for you to look it over and comment on it as I turn it out. Then, if you get any brainstorms, I can incorporate them without delay. You appear to think better of this yarn than I do. I think it is going to require a deus ex machina to give the ending any real oomph—in my present sterile state of mind you may be elected deus.

  December 2, 1941: Robert A. Heinlein to John W. Campbell, Jr.

  I believe I am correct in assuming that required revisions and corrections can wait until I get to New York. Most of the changes, if any, would need to be made in the second installment. I think I have ducked around the taboos sufficiently; compare this story ["Beyond This Horizon"] with any issue of Ladies' Home Journal—this story is much more discreet than the stuff now printed in domestic magazines. I remember a story in Street and Smith's National Magazine, in which the hero scrubs the heroine's back—both raw. Me, I did not even suggest that sexual intercourse was an old human custom, and you can search the yarn from end to end without finding any reference to anatomical details.

  I did include a scene involving telepathy with an unborn child—you suggested it. But I kept the mother off stage. I don't think there is a leer in the story. Lots of boy-meets-girl and some will object to that, but, dammit, there had to be—if the story was to be at all true to life.

  December 8, 1941: John W. Campbell, Jr. to Robert A. Heinlein

  I never meant to give you a feeling of extreme urgency. Perhaps your interpretation—your personal emotional index—of "desire" comes closer to my intent than "need." Partly, that can be due to the situation best expressed this way: I need—in the sense of "must have without fail"—some tall stories. I need manuscripts. I desire some tall stories from you; I ardently desire manuscripts of the quality you produce.

  (Curious—you and I each possess a vocabulary of perhaps 300,000 words, with a pretty fair ability to distinguish between the shades of meaning involved. And I can't quite adequately express the exact tone and intensity of value of the basic thought "I want you to write stories for Astounding.")

  But for the future. I don't know what you'll be doing. I have no idea what pressure of work will be on you. I don't know whether you can ever write a story as a method of relaxation. (I can; it's as much fun as reading someone else's work.)

  December 9, 1941: Robert A. Heinlein to John W. Campbell, Jr.

  This is the first time in forty-eight hours that I have been able to tear myself away from the radio long enough to think about writing a letter. Naturally, our attention has been all in one direction up to now. We are still getting used to the radical change in conditions, but our morale is extremely good, as is, I am happy to report, that of everyone. For myself, the situation, tragic as it is, comes to me as an actual relief and a solution of my own emotional problems. For the past year and a half I have been torn between two opposing points of view—and the desire to retain as long as possible my own little creature comforts and my own snug little home with the constant company of my wife and the companionship of my friends and, opposed to that, the desire to volunteer. Now all that is over, I have volunteered and have thereby surrendered my conscience (like a good Catholic) to the keeping of others.

  The matter has been quite acute to me. For the last eighteen months I have often been gay and frequently much interested in what I was doing, but I have not been happy. There has been with me, night and day, a gnawing doubt as to the course I was following. I felt that there was something that I ought to be doing. I rationalized it, not too successfully, by reminding myself that
the navy knew where I was, knew my abilities, and had the legal power to call on me if they wanted me. But I felt like a heel. This country has been very good to me, and the taxpayers have supported me for many years. I knew when I was sworn in, sixteen years ago, that my services and if necessary my life were at the disposal of the country; no amount of rationalization, no amount of reassurance from my friends, could still my private belief that I ought to be up and doing at this time.

  I logged in at the Commandant's office as soon as I heard that Pearl Harbor was attacked. Thereafter I telephoned you. The next day (yesterday) I presented myself at San Pedro and requested a physical examination. I am an old crock in many little respects—half a dozen little chronic ailments, all of which show up at once in physical examination but which I was able to argue them out of. Nevertheless, I was rejected on two counts, as a matter of routine—the fact that I am an old lunger and that I am nearsighted beyond the limits allowed even for the staff corps. They had no choice but to reject me—at the time. But my eyes are corrected to 20/20 and I am completely cured of T.B., probably more sound in that respect than a goodly percentage now on duty who never knew they had it. Sure, I've got scars in my lungs, but what are scars?

  * * *

  My feelings toward the Japs could be described as a cold fury. I not only want them to be defeated, I want them to be smashed. I want them to be punished at least a hundredfold, their cities burned, their industries smashed, their fleet destroyed, and finally, their sovereignty taken away from them. We have been forced into a course of imperialism. So let it be. Germany and Japan are not safe to have around; we are bigger and tougher than they are, I sincerely believe. Let's rule them. We did not want it that way—but if somebody has to be boss, I want it to be us. Disarm them and don't turn them loose. We can treat the individual persons decently in an economic sense, but take away their sovereignty.