Fotografía de autor
4+ Obras 350 Miembros 19 Reseñas

Sobre El Autor

Obras de William H. Patterson

Obras relacionadas

Amos de Títeres (1951) — Introducción, algunas ediciones3,634 copias
Red Planet (1949) — Introducción, algunas ediciones2,404 copias
The Green Hills of Earth and The Menace from Earth (2010) — Prólogo, algunas ediciones160 copias

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Otros nombres
Patterson, William Hugh
Fecha de nacimiento
1951-10-28
Fecha de fallecimiento
2014-04-22
Género
male
Nacionalidad
USA
Lugar de nacimiento
St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Lugar de fallecimiento
San Francisco, California, USA

Miembros

Reseñas

Because the two volumes of William Patterson's biography of Robert Heinlein make up a single work, and because most readers who finish the first volume will want to proceed to the second, this is a combined review of both volumes.

Patterson has poured as much time and research into this big biography of Heinlein as typically goes into a life of a major historical figure, and the result is engrossing, especially the first volume. Heinlein overcame a childhood of emotional neglect, a lack of financial resources, and a highly sensitive nature to enter the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, where he withstood harsh conditions and (especially in the first year) brutal hazing, and achieved what could have been expected to be a secure, lifetime career as a naval officer, only to be permanently retired in his 20s by ill health. Recovering, he entered politics as a socialist candidate for the California Assembly, knocking on every door in his district--no easy task for a man on the introverted side of the spectrum--only to be defeated by a few hundred votes. When the Japanese attacked in 1941, he applied immediately to be returned to active duty, but was denied due to his authorship of a bitter public letter protesting police brutality almost eight years previous. Undefeated, he relocated to Philadelphia to work in a civilian defense plant, where his coworkers included fellow writers Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp. As the war ended, his marriage of 15 years broke up as he fell in love with the woman with whom he would spend the rest of his life. The first volume ends there; the second details his life with Virginia (Ginny) Gerstenfeld Heinlein, and covers the period during which he was most famous and productive.

Patterson covers all this in great detail--no small feat after most of the major players have died and the traces of some, including his former wife Leslyn, have been largely obliterated. At times the detail is a bit more than necessary, but usually the picture is vivid and illuminating, and judiciously rendered. (The habit some 20th century people had of keeping carbon copies of their correspondence is a biographers' godsend.) The exception, and it's a big one, is in his treatment of Leslyn, an intelligent and vivacious woman who could hardly have been more important to the first half of Heinlein's life, but of whom few historical traces remain, since she had little public life, and the bulk of her letters were destroyed. Patterson's main source and patron for this biography wsa Ginny, Leslyn's successor wife, whose disdain for Leslyn appears to have been boundless. Carol McGuirk of SF Studies points out that "Leslyn’s index entries (“affairs,” “alcoholic deterioration,” “badmouthing of Heinlein,” “bouts of rage,” etc.) speak volumes about the biographer’s special pleading for Virginia Heinlein’s version of this part of Heinlein’s story....When Leslyn discovered that her brother-in-law had been shot and then burned alive in a Philippine prison after months of torture, her depression deepened further. Stress and grief surely had their part in wrecking the marriage, yet Leslyn bears all responsibility. Another index entry on Leslyn includes four references to “psychotic episodes”; yet going back to the pages, one finds passages that fail to document any such thing: “she just locked herself in an enraged frame of mind” (221), “the psychotic episodes went away” (350), “Leslyn was confined to bed in a state of mind that could only be called psychotic” (415), and she was showing “flashes of temper” (537 n24). Only in a grudging footnote does Patterson concede that in 1950 Leslyn joined Alcoholics Anonymous and that she remarried twice, dying in 1981."

Otherwise, where gaps need to be filled in and conjecture must be resorted to, Patterson is for the most part reasonable and open about how he reached his conclusions. His adulation of his subject goes over the top mostly in the endnotes, where he can't resist explaining what makes a particular story so ahead of its time, and advocates for Heinlein's views of religion or politics too defensively. Patterson really gets up on a soapbox as he repeatedly lectures the reader about classical versus modern liberalism, by way of arguing that Heinlein's essential politics never changed. It's not a convincing argument, given that the one-time socialist candidate became an intense supporter of presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, and dropped friends with more nuanced views of the Communist threat to America.

Patterson was not the first writer authorized to write Heinlein's biography. Dr. Leon Stover, an anthropologist, first worked on it before his access to Heinlein's papers and archives was revoked by Ginny. Patterson says that this was due to her "concern at the amount of rumor Stover was soliciting and not fact-checking with her"--in other words, at his widening his sources and attempting to paint a balanced portrait. Her action apparently succeeded, in that getting any sense of Heinlein's flaws as a writer, husband, or friend requires an extremely careful reading between the lines combined with considerable informed speculation.

Overall, however, the picture is of a talented and admirable man who would not have succeeded were it not for many times the usual measure of self-discipline, resilience, and the confidence that comes as a result of both. Heinlein was in many ways more interesting than one might have guessed from reading his novels and stories. I'm grateful to William Patterson for preserving this rich record, however incomplete, of an unusual and fascinating human being.
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½
1 vota
Denunciada
john.cooper | 6 reseñas más. | May 10, 2020 |
Wonderful authorize biography of the Dean of American Science Fiction, covering childhood, Annapolis, Navy career ended by illness, early writing career, and political activism. The book ends at the verge of turning from short story writer to novelist. Illuminating and insightful. All boomers started reading science fiction with Heinlein's juveniles, reading about rockets to the moon, spaceships, terraforming, generation starships, and other exciting topis that wetted our appetites. Read this book.… (más)
 
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NickHowes | 9 reseñas más. | Jan 2, 2020 |
The second volume of the authorized biography. Detailed, references galore, a full description of the life of the Dean of American Science Fiction starting with endd of his second marriage and including the glory years as a novelist. I surprised myself by misting up when reading of his death and I had to skip reading Virginia Heinlein's letter to Robert after he died. A wonderful, generous, active life with tremendous impact.
 
Denunciada
NickHowes | 6 reseñas más. | Dec 26, 2019 |
Here, at last, is the long-awaited second volume of the authorised biography of Robert A. Heinlein. ‘Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, Volume 1: 1907-1948: Learning Curve’ told the story of his boyhood, his time in the navy and the beginnings of his writing career. ‘Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, Volume 2: 1948-1988: The Man Who Learned Better’ starts in 1948, by which time he was selling short stories to high paying magazines like the ‘Saturday Evening Post’ and had an arrangement with the publisher Scribner to write one juvenile novel a year, timed for the Christmas trade. Soon, he was working on the screenplay for ‘Destination Moon, the film version of ‘Rocketship Galileo’ and also got a job as a technical advisor on the production.

‘Volume 1’ also covered his personal life: the first brief marriage, the second longer one to Leslyn and the advent of Virginia, who became his third wife. Ginny moved in with Robert and Leslyn under their open marriage arrangement and ‘when the Snow Maiden got her skate in the door, things were different’ according to one correspondent. ‘Leslyn slept in the studio whilst Bob and the femme fatale cavorted in the master bedroom.’ Later, Ginny casually mentioned to Bob’s old friend, Cal Lanning, that they had lived together before they were married. Heinlein was furious. He was always very keen on keeping his private life private.

As well as being a private man, Heinlein was also rather madly patriotic and could not abide with anyone speaking against his country, even natives. He told Asimov off for complaining about the food when they worked in the Navy shipyards and, much later, he fell out badly with Arthur C. Clark when that worthy opined that the so-called ‘Star Wars’ missile defence system might not be a good idea. When I read ‘Grumbles From The Grave’, the posthumous collection of Heinlein’s grumpy letters, I had the impression that he had cut off all contact with John W. Campbell, Jr., following criticisms of the navy by Campbell during World War II. In fact, contact with the editor of ‘Astounding Science Fiction’ continued, usually in letters about L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics system, something Heinlein wisely avoided. No one was messing with his brain. He needed it. However, he certainly counted Hubbard as a good friend in 1948 because he loaned him $50 at a time when the Heinleins were pretty hard up themselves.

Many examples of his generosity are cited in the book. He gave money to Theodore Sturgeon when he was broke and also handed him a few plot ideas. He was generous to Sturgeon’s widow when she was in financial difficulties. He bought an electric typewriter for Philip K. Dick and loaned him money. He quietly supported the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) through hard times, even though a few of the other authors were highly critical of his political views. He really didn’t seem to care about money for its own sake. As soon as it was earned, he and Ginny would go off and spend it, usually on travelling around the world if they weren’t building a house. Later, a lot of it went on medical expenses.

The above examples of how nice Heinlein was highlighted the main enigma about him. He didn’t practice what he preached. The latter books seem to advocate selfishness, greed, looking after number one, etc and to sneer at altruism as pure foolishness. Lazarus Long regards lesser mortals – nearly everyone – as stupid and deserving of their Darwinian fate: poverty, famine or death. But Robert A. Heinlein wasn’t Lazarus Long or Jubal Harshaw or even Valentine Michael Smith. He spent a lot of time and money on recruiting blood donors. He went out and campaigned for political causes he believed in, though they were usually right wing. As mentioned above, he was generous with his money. In real life, he was more like the teenage idealist in a Heinlein juvenile than he was like the sour old heroes of the later novels. That is to his credit.

Heinlein always wanted his works to speak for him and avoided as much as possible any delving into his private life. That was quite interesting in ‘Volume 1’: political campaigns, marriage and breaking into the Science Fiction field and rising to the top. In ‘Volume 2’, the life is really a bit boring. Many squabbles with Shasta Publishing and Hollywood finance men over his share of the loot for the products. There’s a lot about house-building and trouble with contractors. There are family visits, family squabbles and loads of world travel. ‘Volume 1’ concentrated more on Science Fiction writing as he was learning his trade and to an extent on the Science Fiction fraternity of the time. As he became popular in the slicks and book publishing, Heinlein largely left hard-core SF fandom behind. Forrest Ackerman played a large part in this by being a pain in the neck, acting as ‘agent’ for Heinlein properties when he had no right to do so, this despite repeated attempts to make him stop. By this stage, Lurton Blassingame was the agent for virtually everything and was doing a very good job of making his client richer, obtaining foreign sales for the Scribner’s juveniles and getting good rates for serialisations of them in ‘Boy’s Life’ magazine. These had to be cut considerably and slightly amended to make the instalments more fitting but getting paid twice for the same novel was a good gimmick. The adult novels were usually serialised in the top SF magazines of the day so they also paid off twice.

Heinlein’s fame comes from his work as a Science Fiction writer. This biography reveals that he didn’t spend a whole lot of time writing. The very successful run of ‘juveniles’ for Scribner, one a year, were usually knocked out in a month. For example, he started writing ‘Star Beast’ on August 26th 1953 and had it finished by September 26th. The adult books didn’t take much longer. He wrote ‘The Puppet Masters’ in about five weeks beginning October 1, 1950. ‘Glory Road’ took three weeks. However, the time spent bashing out the first draft isn’t the whole story. Heinlein kept a large file of index cards on which he constantly made notes when he had an idea. Furthermore, he seems to have spent almost as much time cutting the first draft for publication as he did writing it. Certainly, this was the case with ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’. He also spent a lot of time and emotional energy arguing with Scribner’s editor Alice Dalgiesh about her ‘censorship’ of his work, though it seems to me that she knew the restrictions of the time and her cuts were designed to get the book safely past spinster librarians and other guardians of public morals in fifties America.

Of course, the time taken to write a work is no reflection of quality, for by now he had become a master of his art. All of Heinlein’s juveniles are intelligent, exciting adventure stories, easy to read and still popular today. The literati may criticise the lack of similes, metaphors and deep Freudian meaning but that stuff isn’t necessary to the average reader. The adult books of the fifties still had to be mostly about plot and characters. By 1960, Heinlein was fairly secure financially and ventured to include a bit more lecturing in ‘Starship Troopers’. That won a Hugo and his course was set. Thereafter, the books were more about his views than about plots and character. There were honourable exceptions, notably ‘The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress’ but, in general, the adult novels from ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’ onwards are the thoughts of Chairman Heinlein.

It should be noted that as Heinlein is an intelligent, witty writer and the books are very charming and readable. I like them all, even though I don‘t agree with his politics. It’s worth pointing out, though, that his reputation was mostly built on the fifties work and I believe that is what will stand the test of time. ‘Stranger In A Strange Land’ remains a classic and marks his zenith, the equivalent of ‘Sergeant Pepper’ for The Beatles. After the fact, people may argue about its worth but no one doubts its importance. The comparison is apt, too, because, like that popular beat combo, Heinlein was at the top of the field and had sufficient clout with the men in suits to experiment. They could be sure that any Heinlein book would sell. It was also like ‘Lord Of The Rings’, very much a part of sixties pop culture.

There is a theory, backed up by information here, that with the later works, especially the very latest, he was not interested in melodrama and the usual stuff of adventure but more in ideas and social satire. That being so, criticism of ‘I Will Fear No Evil’ or ‘The Cat Who Walks Through Walls’ for not being like ‘Starman Jones’ is futile. They weren’t meant to be. Heinlein knew what he was doing and if some people in the so-called SF community didn’t like it, he didn’t give a damn.

The main thing lacking in this authorised biography is any definite opinion by the author about his subject. The general tone is reverent, which is okay, but many biographies are extended essays which put forward a particular point of view. Sometimes the biographer may not like his subject. That’s okay, too. Patterson has done wonderful research as evidenced by the extensive notes accompanying each chapter but doesn’t have a conclusion or any analysis of what Heinlein was about. The two books might be called ‘What Heinlein Did’ and ‘What Heinlein Did Next’. On the other hand, there are plenty of opinions about Heinlein and his work out there and the facts assembled here are useful in their own right. ‘Volume 2’ contains some interesting stuff but, probably because the life of a struggling artist is more precarious than that of a successful rich one, the first book was better.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
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bigfootmurf | 6 reseñas más. | Aug 11, 2019 |

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Miembros
350
Popularidad
#68,329
Valoración
½ 3.7
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19
ISBNs
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