Heinlein Bio Volume 2 Getting Closer

William H. Patterson Jr. has blogged about the latest edits to his Heinlein biography —

Some time in 2014 — nine years after I finished it the first time — we should have volume 2.

Part of that time was spent expanding the text and dividing the manuscript to make two volumes instead of one, an idea ultimately abandoned:

In the spring of this year [2012], midway into David [Hartwell]’s first set of edits for this volume, he brought up the possibility of splitting this volume into two books, giving a three volume biography in all. There was some back and forth; ultimately David decided not to go forward with a third volume, and since he gave me the word late in August, I’ve been working ever since to cut the manuscript back to the same size as volume 1. Possiby with the idea of a third volume in mind, David had asked for an expansion of the text that utimately accounted for about 400 pages of new manuscript. The expansion itself was not particularly demanding, as I had cut much more than that out of the manuscript in 2005 and 2006 — but it was neither possible nor desirable simpy to restore the old version; the expansion incorporated all of Hartwell’s edit.

Cutting a 1400+ page manuscript back to about 1000 pages is a time-consuming and finicky process involving several passes through the entire thing.

Medical Progress Report

jan  howard finder was released from the hospital on August 24:

The doctor decided I could face the world. The stents were doing what they are supposed to do.

He planned to stay in Reno a couple of days before returning home.

Bill Patterson, meanwhile, was in ICU at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles until Thursday, August 25 when he was moved to a hospital room. He is expected to be there several more days.

Wooster: Bill Patterson’s Cato Institute Lecture

By Martin Morse Wooster: Authorized Heinlein biographer Bill Patterson spoke at the Cato Institute on October 21. The event, part of an East Coast promotional tour that also included a lecture at the Naval Academy, was apparently the first event at the Cato Institute devoted to an sf writer. The auditorium was about a third full, and I didn’t see any fans there that I recognized.

Among the more interesting parts of Patterson’s talk:

  • Heinlein regularly attended Hudson Institute seminars on “grand strategy” in the early 1960s. Heinlein’s invitation came about because Hudson founder Herman Kahn “was a science-fiction fanatic and got Jerry Pournelle to invite Heinlein to his next seminar. Heinlein was fascinated by the idea of ‘grand strategy’ and put some of the ideas” learned at the Hudson seminar “into The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.”
  • Patterson said that Heinlein’s most important political legacy was his support for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Reagan administration anti-missile space defense program popularly known as “Star Wars.” Patterson traced the origins of this space defense idea to Jerry Pournelle. In 1970 Pournelle and Stefan Possony wrote an article stating that missile defense in space was technically feasible. In 1979 Pournelle invited Heinlein, Larry Niven, and other sf writers to a panel, which advised Ronald Reagan both as a candidate and as president to build a missile shield in space. The Strategic Defense Initiative was implemented beginning in 1983, and Patterson saw it as the catalyst that ended the Cold War and led to the death of the Soviet Union, since the USSR could not compete against the West both in missile construction and in outer-space defense. “If Heinlein was to claim a legacy,” Patterson said, “having the Soviet Union disappear from the face of the earth” was a good one.
  • Politically, Patterson said, Heinlein “was always a libertarian” but his political evolution was from a libertarian socialist to a right-wing libertarian. One key point in Heinlein’s political evolution came in 1954 when he read an article skeptical of the official government story about why warnings about the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack were ignored. The article led to Heinlein quitting the Democratic Party. Heinlein stayed an independent until 1964, when he became a Republican and started volunteering for the Goldwater campaign.
  • When asked which writers continued Heinlein’s legacy, Patterson named two. John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and Last Colony were books Patterson saw as books directly influenced by Heinlein “and probably in dialogue with Stranger in a Strange Land.”  Patterson also saw Charles Stross as being a Heinlein literary descendant, not so much for the sort of books Stross writes but in the way he meshed together disparate genres, such as in novels combining speculation about artificial intelligence with Chthulu Mythos references. Patterson saw Stross’s genre jumping as comparable to Heinlein’s attempt to weld genres together in his novels of the late 1970s and 1980s.

No date has been set for the publication of Patterson’s second volume, but it’s likely to appear in 2012.

[Editor’s note: The Cato Institute has posted a video of Patterson’s talk.]

Heinlein Society and Biographer at Loscon 37

I’m putting together the program for Loscon 37, which takes place Thanksgiving weekend (Fri-Sun) in Los Angeles at the LAX Marriott. Over 75 writers, artists, editors, filmmakers, and (of course!) fans have already agreed to participate. This post launches a series of highlights I hope will make you interested in coming to the con.

William Patterson Jr., author of the new biography Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 1 (1907-1948): Learning Curve, will speak about the Dean of Science Fiction on a panel at Loscon.

He’ll be joined by Dr. Robert James of whom Patterson says, “He’s the authority on Leslyn Heinlein and at the Heinlein centennial interviewed the last surviving Heinlein relative who knew Heinlein’s first wife, Elinor Curry. He’s one of the main people I leaned on for help while writing the book.”

And the Heinlein Society, led by new President Mike Sheffield, will hold its annual membership meeting on Saturday at Loscon. Mike writes:

Anyone is welcome to attend. We’re a non-profit, so all our business is a matter of public record. Only Heinlein Society members can vote on the board positions that are up for re-election, of course. But the official business will probably not fill the entire time slot, and we’re looking forward to having people ask questions get to know us during the remaining time.

Update 09/30/2010: Corrected to Dr. Robert James.