Prolific American writer, one of the grand masters of science fiction with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Heinlein produced during his career fifty novels and collections of short stories.
Heinlein was born in Butler, Missouri, into a family of seven children. He attended public school in Kansas City and graduated from Central High School in 1924. In 1929 he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, and served in aircraft carriers and destroyers. Heinlein retired in 1934 for physical disability, and started to study physics at the graduate school of U.C.L.A. He left the school without completing his studies and worked then in odd jobs. Heinlein's first published stories appeared in action-adventure pulp magazine Astounding Science Fiction in 1939.
During the World War II years from 1943 Heinlein published no stories, but worked as an engineer at the Naval Air Experimental Station, Philadelphia. His first novel, ROCKET SHIP CALILEO, appeared in 1947 and paved way to childrens' science fiction.
Initially Heinlein's works were aimed at young readers, in 1959 he also received the Boys' Clubs of America Book Award. However, from the late 1950s Heinlein started to address adults and deal with such topics as cloning, incest, religion, free love and mysticism. His short stories were independent of one another but related in the author's 'Future History: 1951-2600' AD time line. Nearly all of his works fit into a specific time period within this larger scheme. The idea was then imitated by several writers, with considerable success by Poul Anderson and Larry Niven. Also Isaac Asimov developed similar scheme, and claimed imaginative copyright on the imagined furure.
Among Heinlein's best known works are THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH (1951), DOUBLE STAR (1956), militarist STARSHIP TROOPERS (1959), which moved Heinlein beyond a teenage audience and was filmed in 1997, and the 1960s hippie oriented STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (1961), which was also one of the favorite books of the mass murderer Charles Manson. It is a story of Valentine Michael Smith, born and raised on Mars. He comes to Earth without much knowledge of sex. Helped with psi powers he establishes a new religion and starts his transformartion into a Messiah-figure.
Heinlein's other works include MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS (1966), where an exploited penal colony invents new forms of marriage due to shortage of women, I WILL FEAR NO EVIL (1971), where a dying tycoon has his brain transplanted into the body of a young woman, and CAT WHO WALKS THROUGH WALLS (1985), a story of a alternate histories and time travels.
In 1973 Heinlein taught as James V. Forrestal Lecturer at the U.S. Naval Academy. He was awarded the first Grand Master Nebula in 1975. Heinlein was repeatedly voted as 'the best all-time author' in reader's polls held by the magazine Locus in 1973 and 1975. He died on May 8, 1988.
NOTE: Heinlein's social Darwinist view - 'the survival of the fittiest' - is seen among others in his works THE PUPPET MASTERS (1951), Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
For further reading: World Authors 1900-1950, ed. by M. Seymour-Smith, A.C. Kimmes (1996); The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ed. by John Clute, Peter Nicholls (1995); Robert A. Heinlein Cyclopedia by N.B.A. Downing (1989); Robert A. Heinlein by L. Stover (1987); Robert A. Heinlein by P. Nicholls (1982) Robert A. Heinlein by H.B. Franklin (1980); Robert A. Heinlein, ed. by J.D. Clander and M.H. Greenberg (1978); The Classic Years of Robert. A. Heinlein by G.E. Slusser (1977); Robert A. Heinlein by G.E. Slusser (1977): Heinlein in Dimensions by A. Panshin (1968)
Selected works:
For further reading: Robert A. Heinlein: A Biography, by Mark Owings (1973); Robert A. Heinlein: A Stranger in his Own Land, by George Edgar Slusser (1976)