Robert A. Heinlein

Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988), was born in Butler, Missouri, to a German-American family with generations of military service in it. He became one of the most celebrated and influential science fiction writers of the 20th Century. A US Naval Academy graduate with engineering training, he brought to the wild-west-type field of science fiction of the pulp era a rigorous scientific mind and a temperment to question all assumptions of the genre, of society, and of human history and of the human future.

Upon medical discharge from the Navy in 1934, he turned to several pursuits, finally ending up writing with a first short story publication in 1939. Initially, he was one of the stable of writers of the legendary editor of Astounding, John W. Campbell, Jr., but Heinlein was too independent a spirit to follow an editor — he would always rather blaze new trails. Professional and financial security came with an epic series of so-called “juveniles” written for about 10 years from the late Forties to the late Fifties. These transformed themselves into sophisticated cultural critiques from Starship Troopers (1959) and Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) onwards.

He brought the verbal gymnastics of George Bernard Shaw and the adventurous pace of Rudyard Kipling to a pulp genre struggling for self-confidence and literary legitimacy. Whatever his provocations (and there are many for his readers from all backgrounds), he raised the standard of great speculative fiction. A tip on beginning Heinlein: begin with the early novels, even the excellent juveniles, plunge into those written in the Sixties, and then tackle the big ambitious novels of his late period. Enjoy the ride!