Grumbles from the Grave (37 page)

The question now is not whether the ideas above are true, or just twaddle—the question is whether or not there will be any book left if I cut them out. I hardly think there will be. Not even the mild thread of action-adventure, because all of the action is instigated
by these heretical ideas.
All of it.

Mr. Cady's wish that I eliminate the first "miracle," the disappearances on pp. 123-124, causes almost as much literary difficulty. Certainly, I can rewrite that scene, exactly as he suggested . . . but where does that leave me? That scene establishes all the other miracles in the story, of which there are dozens. Now I will stipulate that "miracles" are bad copy—but if I eliminate them, I must throw away the last 700 pages of the ms.—i.e., write an entirely different story. Miracles are the "convincer" throughout. Without them the Man from Mars cannot recruit Harshaw, Ben, Patty, Dr. Nelson, not even Jill—nobody! No story.

(I thought I had picked a comparatively slide-down-easy miracle, in that I picked one which has a theoretical mathematical inherent possibility and then established its rationale later in Harshaw's study. But I'm afraid this one is like atomic power: no one but professional dreamers could believe in it until it happened. I might add that if I had trapped out that miracle with fake electronic gadgetry I could have "disappeared" an elephant without a squawk.)

All I can see to do now is to accept Mr. Cady's most gentle offer to hold off six months while we see if some other publisher will take it without changes, or with changes I think I can make.

But I shan't be surprised if nobody wants it. For the first time in my life I indulged in the luxury of writing without one eye on the taboos, the market, etc. I will be unsurprised and only moderately unhappy if it turns out that the result is unsalable.

If it can't be sold more or less as it is, then I will make a mighty effort to satisfy Mr. Cady's requirements. I don't see how, but I will certainly try. Probably I would then make a trip to New York to have one or several story conferences with him, if he will spare me the time, since he must have some idea of how he thinks this story can be salvaged—and I'm afraid that I don't.

The contract offered is gratifyingly satisfactory. But I want one change. I won't take one-half on signing, one-half on approval of ms.; they must delay the entire advance until I submit an approved manuscript. It is unfair to them to tie up $1,500 in a story which may turn out to be unpublishable. I don't care if this is the practice of the trade and that lots of authors do it; I disagree with the guild on this and think that it is a greedy habit that writers should forgo if they ever expect to be treated like business men and not children.

Please extend my warm thanks to Mr. Cady for his care and thoughtfulness. He must be a number one person—I look forward to meeting him someday.

October 31, 1960: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I have thought about your suggested changes in
The Man from Mars.
I see your point in each case and do not object to making the changes . . . but it seems to me that I should leave the present form untouched until I start to revise and cut to suit the ideas of some particular publisher. If I do it for Putnam's, then the horrendous job of meeting Mr. Cady's [
of Putnam
] requirements will automatically include all the changes you mention—in fact, most of the book will be changed beyond recognition.

But I still have a faint hope that some publisher will risk it without such drastic changes and cutting.

December 4, 1960: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Lurton, I do not think I have told you what a wonderful job I think you have done in placing this ms. I wrote the thing with my eye intentionally not on the market. For twenty years I have always had one eye on the market with the other on the copy in this mill (yes, even when I disagreed with editors or producers). But I knew that I could never get away from slick hack work, slanted at a market, unless I cut loose and ignored the market . . . and I did want to write at least one story in which I spoke freely, ignoring the length, taboos, etc.

When I finished it and reread it, I did not see how in hell you could ever sell it, and neither did Ginny. But you did. Thank you.

If this one is successful, I may try to write some more free-wheeling stories. If it flops, perhaps I will go back to doing the sort of thing I know how to tailor to the market.

January 27, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

. . . I told you about a week ago that I had finished the basic cutting on
Man from Mars.
In the meantime, I have had a squad of high school girls count the manuscript, word by word, and totted up the results on an adding machine. The manuscript is now 160,083 words—and I am tempted to type those excess eighty-three words on a postcard . . .

I am a bit disappointed as my estimates as I went along had led me to believe that I would finish up at around 155,000 words and then I could even sweat off most or all of another 5,000 words and turn it over to Putnam's at 150,000, which I know would please them better. But I don't see any possibility of that now; the story is now as tight as a wedge in a green stump and, short of completely recasting it and rewriting it, I can't get it much tighter. I have rewritten and cut drastically in the middle part where Mr. Minton [at Putnam's] felt it was slow, and I have cut every word, every sentence, every paragraph which I felt could be spared in the beginning and the ending. As it is, it is cut too much in parts—the style is rather "telegraphese," somewhat jerky— and I could very handily use a couple of thousand words of "lubrication," words put back in to make the style more graceful and readable.

The truth is that it is the most complex story I have ever written, a full biography from birth to death, with the most complex plot and with the largest number of fully drawn characters. It needs to be told at the length of
Anthony Adverse
(which ran 575,000 words!): I am surprised that I have managed to sweat it down to 160,000.

My typist is now completing the third quarter of the ms. She is able to work for me only evenings and weekends; if her health holds up, I expect that she will finish about 12 to 15 February. In the meantime, I will work on further cutting and revision and should be able to eliminate a few words—more than a thousand but less than five thousand. If my typist finishes on time I will expect to deliver the manuscript to you by Monday the 20th of February (I doubt if you will want to reread it, but you may want to see how I have revised the sex scene that you were bothered about). That will give Putnam's in excess of three weeks more margin on production time in order to publish on or before the Science Fiction Convention in Seattle 2-4 September 1961. Or they can, if they wish, use the three weeks to read it and bung it back to me for revision of anything they don't like—and still keep their production schedule. I can't do extensive cutting in that time but I can certainly revise a scene or two, if needed.

March 17, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I've just been talking to Mr. Cady at Putnam's. He tells me that Doubleday wants to issue my Sex and Jesus book as a SF book club choice and as an alternate for some other non-SF book club. Little as I like the Doubleday SF book club, I enthusiastically okayed this plan as it makes almost certain that Putnam's will make their nut and a bit of profit even if the trade edition doesn't do very well—which has been my principal worry. However, Mr. Cady seems to think that these book club sales will materially enhance the trade book sales—also, he seems to have great confidence in the book (more than I have)—I hope he's right.

This change in plans will result, he tells me, in the book being sold by Doubleday as their June offering, with trade book publication as soon as possible, probably early July.

The final title will be set on Monday afternoon (Cady will phone me) and, Lurton, you are invited and urged to suggest titles—direct to him is simplest. (I assume that this letter will reach you in the early Monday mail.) The titles now in the running are:

The Heretic

The Sound of His Wings
(which has an SF tie-in through my "Future History" chart without being tagged as "science fiction" in the minds of the general public. All of these titles have been picked to permit the book to be sold as a mainstream novel, "Philosophical Fantasy" or some such.)

A Sparrow Falls

Born Unto Trouble
(Job 5:7)

That Forbidden Tree
(Milton)

Of Good and Evil
(Genesis 2:17)

Editor's Note: At this date, no one recalls just who came up with the
Stranger in a Strange Land
title.

(232)

Stranger in a Strange Land
won the Hugo Award for Best Novel of 1962, given by the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago.

CHAPTER XV
ECHOES FROM
STRANGER

(236)

Cults sprang up around
Stranger in a Strange Land,
and Heinlein himself was considered to be a spiritual guru.

Editor's Note: Putnam's sales on
Stranger
were not very good during the first year after publication. It went immediately into the book club edition, a two-year contract, and there was a second two-year book club contract. In the second year following publication, it was out in a paperback edition from Avon. Sales went from humdrum to medium to spectacular. This book turned out to be a "sleeper." Only word-of-mouth advertising could have accounted for this. At this time, it has been in trade edition for many years, still selling enough copies to make it worthwhile for the publisher to keep it in print. And it still sells merrily in the paperback edition, which is now with Ace. It is currently in the sixty-fifth paperback printing. The Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club recently sent a request for another reprinting under their auspices.

October 9, 1966: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Herewith is ----'s letter to you re dramatizing
Stranger.
I have no idea what is proper and reasonable in this matter and will continue to leave it entirely up to your judgment. But I'm beginning to think that additional rights to
Stranger,
such as stage, TV, and movies, might someday be worth something—possibly through Ned Brown, possibly through other channels. The fan mail on this book has been increasing steadily instead of decreasing and it clearly is enjoying quite a lot of word-of-mouth advertising. I recently learned that it was considered the "New Testament"—and compulsory reading—of a far-out cult called "Kerista." (Kee-rist!) I don't know exactly what "Kerista" is, but its L.A. chapter offered me a $100 fee to speak. (I turned them down.) And just this past week I was amazed to discover a full-page and very laudatory review of
Stranger
in (swelp me!) a slick nudist magazine—with the review featured on the cover . . . And there is an organization in the mountain states called "Serendipity, Inc.," which has as its serious purpose the granting of scholarships—but which has taken over "water sharing" and other phrases from the book as lodge slogans, sorta. Or something. And there is this new magazine of criticism,
GROK
—I have not seen it yet but it is advertised in the
Village Voice.
And almost daily I am getting letters from people who insist on looking at me as some sort of a spiritual adviser. (I fight shy of them!) All in all, the ripples are spreading amazingly—and Cady may be right in thinking that the book could be exploited in other media. (I'll settle for cash at the bedside; I want no part of the cults.)

November 6, 1966: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I think I mentioned to you that the Esalen Institute wants me to lead a seminar late in June on "Religion in the Space Age," along with Alan Watts, the Zen Buddhist writer, and an Episcopalian priest. It takes just one weekend, and the place (Big Sur) is near here, and the fee ($500) is satisfactory. Nevertheless I probably will not accept, as I do not see how I could take part without mortally offending both the priest and the Zen Buddhist. I'll negotiate it directly by telephone to the director, as I am reluctant to state my real misgivings bluntly in a letter.