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!
American Science Fiction: Five Classic Novels 1956-1958 [Library of America edition]
American Science Fiction: Five Classic Novels 1956-1958 [Library of America edition]
This second of two volumes surveying the best science fiction novels of the 1950s presents works by five of the field’s most admired and influential practitioners. In Robert A. Heinlein’s Double Star (1956), an actor forced to impersonate a twenty-second-century political leader intent on forging bonds between Earthlings and Martians learns hard lessons about the nature of power. Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (1956), which Neil Gaiman has called “the perfect cyberpunk novel,” is a classic revenge tale set in a nightmarish future dominated by corporations.
In James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (1958), space voyagers on the remote planet Lithia find themselves challenged by the values of an alien civilization. Algis Budrys’s Who? (1958) unleashes Cold War anxieties about technology and human identity with its story of a scientist rebuilt beyond recognition after a devastating accident. Set in “the Place,” a bar and bordello in the backwater of time’s stream, Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time (1958) explores the implications of the “Change War,” an endless cosmic struggle in which shadowy antagonists dart in and out of history in a contest to control destiny.
The range of styles—by turns adventurous, satiric, incisive—is as varied as the themes addressed by these novels, all now acknowledged as American classics. Together they mark an explosively entertaining era in modern fiction.
Gary K. Wolfe, editor, is Professor of Humanities in Roosevelt University’s Evelyn T. Stone College of Professional Studies and the author, most recently, of Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature and Sightings: Reviews 2002–2006.
This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.