Robert Heinlein - Grumbles From the Grave

December 5, 1961: Lurton Blassingame to Robert A. Heinlein

The Scribner royalties roll on and on. Here is another nice check to help with your Christmas shopping. And we have received a big batch of marks for you from Germany, and the check for this will go to you before the end of the week.

Boxing Day 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

...and also for a nice check from Germany to make our Christmas green. You will be pleased to hear that Ginny has already spent quite a chunk of it; she bought five dresses and a coat before I was out of bed this morning.

SHORT SHORT

May 9, 1962: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Carson Roberts, Inc., the advertising firm which has been preparing these short-short science-fiction ads for Hofiiman Electronics (which you may have seen in Fortune, Scientific American, or elsewhere) have been bothering me for months to do a 1,200-word story for them. I have not bothered you with this because it is my usual policy to refer to you only such business as is really business-and I had no intention of writing 1,200 words of SF for anybody at any price. Such length is poorly suited to the genre.

But they kept raising the price, from $250 to $500 and then to $750 -- and I tried to shut them up by outlining in one paragraph how feeble a SF story would have to be to be told in 1,200 words...whereupon they accepted the outline and asked me to go ahead. I may possibly do so. If I do, I will submit it through you. Otherwise this is just for your information. It's a silly business at best -- sixty-two cents a word is more than it's worth, but 1,200 words is a silly length for science fiction.

ADULT NOVELS

THE PUPPET MASTERS

November 4, 1950: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I have not written lately because I have been working seven days a week and far into the night on the new novel -- 75,000 words down on paper so far and all I need now is a smash ending. That is giving me trouble. I should be working on it at this moment (8:30 P.M., Sat. Eve.) but enough things have accumulated that I must write.

December 2, 1950: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Herewith the original and first carbon of The Puppet Masters.

As the story stands, it is a bit long (about 90,000 words) for serialization and much too long for a single-shot, but I would much rather cut to an editor's specific requirements than to cut blindly ahead of time. I append hereto something which you may or may not see fit to send along with the copy submitted for serialization: a list of possible breaks. I don't know whether this is good salesmanship or not, but I thought it might help if an editor could see at once that the story was very flexible, serialwise. As you know, I can cut, bridge, write around, etc., to shorten anything they want shortened to any extent they wish...

I suspect, too, that a magazine editor will want the sex in this toned down; that's easy.

January 5, 1951: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Oh yes-Bradbury [Walter Bradbury, science fiction editor for Doubleday] wrote to me about The Puppet Masters; I wrote back agreeing to make all suggested cuts and changes, but nevertheless expressing some difference of opinion as to the advisability of the revisions. In my opinion a horror story -- which this is-is not improved commercially by watering it down. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a great many things; I own and have read all his works-he is known for about 5% of his published writings, all sheer unadulterated horror, much of it much more grisly than mine. But I am going to do exactly what Bradbury says to do; he's paying for it and I need the money.

March 23, 1951: Lurton Blassingame to Robert A. Heinlein

Revision on Puppet Masters satisfied Doubleday. Sent word to Gold [H. L. Gold, editor of Galaxy].

April 3, 1951: Lurton Blassingame to Robert A. Heinlein

Talked with Gold today. The magazine is undergoing a policy change, and must wait before purchase. Controlled from abroad-France and Italy-will let LB know when there is definite word.

April 21, 1951: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

You will recall that you advised me that Gold's original demands for revision for serial publication were outlandish in view of what he would pay-about $2,000.

June 3, 1951: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Galleys for The Puppet Masters have arrived; galleys for Between Planets are expected this week; Gold wants synopses for The Puppet Masters. I am still on a merry-go-round but will take care of these items without undue delay. I learn from the grapevine (but not from -- ) that "Green Hills" is about to be published.

August 20, 1951: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I have been sitting on my hands this past week to keep from writing a stiff letter to Gold. He sent me an advance copy of the September Galaxy with the first installment of The Puppet Masters. Gold turns out to be a copy messer-upper; there is hardly a paragraph which he has not "improved" -- and I am fit to be tied.

Now Galaxy is an excellent market and I do not wish to make your task any harder by antagonizing an editor to whom you may be offering more of my copy-but if I were freelancing without an agent, I'd be quite willing to risk losing the market permanently in order to settle the matter. What I would like to say to him is: "Listen, you cheesehead, when we were both free-lance writers I had a much higher reputation than you had-in fact you never wrote a number-one science fiction story in your life-so who in hell do you think you are to be 'improving' my copy!"

Well, I didn't and I won't-but that is how I feel and it is the literal truth; Gold is turning out a good magazine, but as a writer he was never anything but a run-of-the-mill hack. This whole matter no doubt sounds like a tempest in a teapot, particularly as Gold did not change the story line but merely monkeyed with dialog, rephrased sentences and such-in short, edited the style. Look, Lurton, my plots are never novel, I am not an originator of brand-new and wonderful ideas the way H. G. Wells was; my reputation rests almost solely on how I tell a story...my individual style. It is almost my entire stock in trade.

Without changing the plot in the least, without changing the manuscript in any fashion that could be detected by someone else without side-by-side comparison, Gold has restyled the copy in hundreds of places from my style to his style. It would be very difficult to show how he has damaged the story, but in my opinion he has changed a story-with-a-moth-eaten-plot amusingly told into a story-with-a-moth-eaten-plot poorly told. This is my first serial appearance in a long time; his changes will not make it easier to get top rates for my next such appearance. The cash customers won't know what is wrong, but they will have the feeling of being let down-not quite "first-rate Heinlein."

I'll cite just one example out of hundreds: At one point I have a nurse say, "Eat it, or I'll rub it in your hair."

Gold changes this to, "Eat it, or you'll get it through a tube."

See the difference? My phrasing is mildly (very mildly) humorous. It conjures up a picture of a nurse who maintains discipline by cajolery, by the light touch, the joking remark. Gold's phrasing is as flatfooted and unsmiling as an order from a hard-boiled top sergeant.

There are both sorts of nurses, admitted. But the entire characterization of this nurse (Doris Marden) had been consistent as the sort of a person who kidded her patients into cooperation (modeled after a nurse who attended me at Jefferson Medical); with one phrase Gold louses up the characterization and turns her into the top-sergeant type.

In another place I describe the heroine as "lean"; Gold changes it to "slender" -- good Lord, heroines have always been "slender"; it's a cliche". I used "lean" on purpose, to give her some reality, make her a touch different.