Robert Heinlein - Expanded Universe

"Harper!" he shouted, while his quick glance was still taking in the situation. "What's happened?"

Harper told him briefly. He nodded. "I saw the tail end of the fight from my office Steinke!" He seemed to grasp for the first time who was on the trigger. "He can't manage the controls - " He hurried toward him.

Steinke looked up at his approach. "Chief!" he called out, "Chief! I've got my mathematics back!"

King looked bewildered, then nodded vaguely, and let him be. He turned back to Harper. "How does it happen you're here?"

"Me? I'm here to report - we've done it, Chief!"

"Eh?"

"We've finished; it's all done. Erickson stayed behind to complete the power plant installation on the big ship. I came over in the ship we'll use to shuttle between Earth and the big ship, the power plant. Four minutes from Goddard Field to here in her. That's the pilot over there." He pointed to the door, where Greene's solid form partially hid Lentz.

"Wait a minute. You say that everything is ready to install the pile in the ship? You're sure?"

"Positive. The big ship has already flown with our fuel - longer and faster than she will have to fly to reach station in her orbit; I was in it - out in space, Chief! We're all set, six ways from zero."

King stared at the dumping switch, mounted behind glass at the top of the instrument board. "There's fuel enough," he said softly, as if he were alone and speaking only to himself, "there's been fuel enough for weeks."

He walked swiftly over to the switch, smashed the glass with his fist, and pulled it.

The room rumbled and shivered as tons of molten, massive metal, heavier than gold, coursed down channels, struck against baffles, split into a dozen dozen streams, and plunged to rest in leaden receivers - to rest, safe and harmless, until it should be reassembled far out in space.

December 1979, exactly 40 years after I researched BLOWUPS HAPPEN (Dec. '39): I had some doubt about republishing this because of the current ignorant fear of fission power, recently enhanced by the harmless flap at Three Mile Island. When I wrote this, there was not a full gram of purified U - 235 on this planet, and no one knew its hazards in detail, most especially the mass and geometry and speed of assembly necessary to make "blowups happen." But we now know from long experience and endless tests that the "tons" used in this story could never be assembled - no explosion, melt - down possible, melt - down being the worst that can happen at a power plant; to cause U - 235 to explode is very difficult and requires very different design. Yes, radiation is hazardous

BUT - RADIATION EXPOSURE

Half a mile from Three - Mile plant during the flap 83 millirems

At the power plant 1,100 millirems

During heart catheterization for angiogram 45,000 millirems

- which I underwent 18 months ago. I feel fine.

R.A.H.

I had always planned to quit the writing business as soon as that mortgage was paid off. I had never had any literary ambitions, no training for it, no interest in it - backed into it by accident and stuck with it to pay off debt, I being always firmly resolved to quit the silly business once I had my chart squared away.

At a meeting of the Mai ana Literary Society - an amorphous disorganization having as its avowed purpose "to permit young writers to talk out their stories to each other in order to get them off their minds and thereby save themselves the trouble of writing them down" - at a gathering of this noble group I was expounding my determination to retire from writing once my bills were paid - in a few weeks, during 1940, if the tripe continued to sell.

William A. P. White ("Anthony Boucher") gave me a sour look. "Do you know any retired writers?"

"How could I? All the writers I've ever met are in this room.

"Irrelevant. You know retired school teachers, retired naval officers, retired policemen, retired farmers. Why don't you know at least one retired writer?"

"What are you driving at?"

"Robert, there are no retired writers. There are writers who have stopped selling... but they have not stopped writing.

I pooh - poohed Bill's remarks - possibly what he said applied to writers in general... but I wasn't really a writer; I was just a chap who needed money and happened to discover that pulp writing offered an easy way to grab some without stealing and without honest work. ("Honest work" - a euphemism for underpaid bodily exertion, done standing up or on your knees, often in bad weather or other nasty circumstances, and frequently involving shovels, picks, hoes, assembly lines, tractors, and unsympathetic supervisors. It has never appealed to me.

Sitting at a typewriter in a nice warm room, with no boss, cannot possibly be described as "honest work.")

BLOWUPS HAPPEN sold and I gave a mortgage - burning party. But I did not quit writing at once (24 Feb 1940) because, while I had the Old Man of the Sea (that damned mortgage) off my back, there were still some other items. I needed a new car; the house needed paint and some repairs; I wanted to make a trip to New York; and it would not hurt to have a couple of hundred extra in the bank as a cushion - and I had a dozen - odd stories in file, planned and ready to write.

So I wrote MAGIC, INCORPORATED and started east on the proceeds, and wrote THEY and SIXTH COLUMN while I was on that trip. The latter was the only story of mine ever influenced to any marked degree by John W. Campbell, Jr. He had in file an unsold story he had written some years earlier. JWC did not show me his manuscript; instead he told me the story line orally and stated that, if I would write it, he would buy it.

He needed a serial; I needed an automobile. I took the brass check.

Writing SIXTH COLUMN was a job I sweated over. I had to re - slant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line. And I didn't really believe the pseudoscientific rationale of Campbell's three spectra - so I worked especially hard to make it sound realistic.

It worked out all right. The check for the serial, plus 35 in cash, bought me that new car.. . and the book editions continue to sell and sell and sell, and have earned more than forty times as much as I was paid for the serial. So it was a financial success. . but I do not consider it to be an artistic success.

While I was back east I told Campbell of my plans to quit writing later that year. He was not pleased as I was then his largest supplier of copy. I finally said, "John, I am not going to write any more stories against deadlines. But I do have a few more stories on tap that I could write. I'll send you a story from time to time.. . until the day

comes when you bounce one. At that point we're through. Now that I know you personally, having a story rejected by you would be too traumatic."

So I went back to California and sold him CROOKED HOUSE and LOGIC OF EMPIRE and UNIVERSE and SOLUTION UNSATISFACTORY and METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN and BY HIS BOOTSTRAPS and COMMON SENSE and GOLDFISH BOWL and BEYOND THIS HORIZON and WALDO and THE UNPLEASANT PROFESSION OF JONATHAN HOAG - which brings us smack up against World War II.

Campbell did bounce one of the above (and I shan't say which one) and I promptly retired - put in a new irrigation system - built a garden terrace - resumed serious photography, etc. This went on for about a month when I found that I was beginning to be vaguely ill: poor appetite, loss of weight, insomnia, jittery, absentminded - much like the early symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis, and I thought, "Damn it, am I going to have still a third attack?"

Campbell dropped me a note and asked why he hadn't heard from me? - I reminded him of our conversation months past: He had rejected one of my stories and that marked my retirement from an occupation that I had never planned to pursue permanently.