A Letter to Joel Gotler
When Los Angeles literary agent, Joel Gotler, began
representing Heinlein's film rights in 1986, Joel and I had been
friends since he'd begun representing me eleven years earlier.
Since that time, I'd also worked for Joel as an assistant on and
off, got him started representing science fiction writers, which
later became a substantial part of his "stable," and later co-
represented several clients with him when I took my own shot at
becoming a literary agent. So when I heard that Joel was taking
on Heinlein as a client, I thought I'd better write him a "user's
manual."
***
30 October 1986
Dear Joel:
I'm writing regarding your recent addition of Robert
Heinlein to your client list. As you know, Vic Koman and I are
both huge Heinlein fans. I've practically memorized Heinlein's
entire writing output and have been a friend of the Heinleins
since I interviewed Robert for the New York Sunday News in
1973. So I thought you might want some background by way of an
introduction.
Heinlein was born July 7, 1907--which makes him just short
of 80. He's a tough old bird who's a graduate of Annapolis,
trained as an engineer, and served as a naval officer on aircraft
carriers before World War Two until tuberculosis disabled him
out. By the time World War Two broke out, he was already
established as one of the top science fiction writers. He tried
to get back into the navy for the war, but he was needed
elsewhere--Roosevelt needed him to work secretly as an engineer
on the Manhattan A-bomb Project.
After the War, Heinlein was the first American science
fiction writer to break out of the pulps into the mass-market
slick magazines--Saturday Evening Post for one--the first to
have his science fiction novels published not only serialized in
magazines but as books--and the first modern science fiction
writer to have his work made into a successful movie: Heinlein
co-scripted, and was technical consultant for George Pal's 1950
Destination Moon, based loosely on Heinlein's novel Rocket
Ship Galileo--the huge success of which started the spate of
science fiction movies of the 1950's. But Heinlein disliked
working in Hollywood and after having his script for a 1951
picture called Project Moonbase turned into a mishmash by the
producers, left Hollywood vowing never to return.
Heinlein's novel Space Cadet was the basis for both the
Space Cadet TV series of the early 50's and the basis for the
immensely popular Tom Corbett--Space Cadet series of books,
which Heinlein didn't write but which a friend of his--scientist
Willy Ley--acted as a consultant for. But Space Cadet has
never been seriously filmed; it would be terrific.
For many years the Heinleins spent 3/4s of each year
traveling the world--both he and Ginny are multi-lingual--and
1/4 of the year at home where he did his writing. Poor health in
recent years (he had a stroke and carotid artery bypass in 1979)
has interfered with that. Currently he suffers from emphysema
and a troublesome nasal hemorrhage which recently has been
hospitalizing him. But he's also vowed not to die until he can
die on the moon. I hope he makes it and I wouldn't make large
bets against it either.
After a decade of not writing much (only two novels in the
70's) he's been prolific recently--almost a book a year for the
last few years. Heinlein never shows anybody anything until
it's finished and never writes on contract, which he considers
wage slavery. Ginny Heinlein has handled her husband's literary
and business affairs for the last thirty or so years, and I've
heard from writers and agents that she's a top expert on
publishing, negotiating, and contracts--as good as the best
agents in the business.
I should also mention that the Heinleins are hard-core
libertarians. They're also supporters of Reagan's SDI "Star
Wars" Defense program. (Heinlein was predicting the
inevitability of space-based defenses as far back as the
forties.) Incidentally, Heinlein is also the inventor of the
water bed (the first manufacturer got the plans from Heinlein's
description in Stranger in a Strange Land) and the robot arms
used in radioactive labs are called "waldoes" after robot arms
Heinlein first described in his 1940's story "Waldo."
Robert Heinlein is considered--by other leading lights in
the field ranging from Isaac Asimov to Ray Bradbury to Jerry
Pournelle and Larry Niven--as the most important science fiction
writer since H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. I second or third the
nomination. Half the ideas in modern science fiction--ideas that
movies like Star Wars and E.T.--have made a fortune on--stem
from one or another of Heinlein's books.
Twenty years before there was E.T.--about a human boy
making friends with an alien--there was Heinlein's The Star
Beast. The Force in Star Wars couldn't do anything that
Heinlein's human raised by Martians, Valentine Michael Smith,
didn't do first in Stranger in a Strange Land--and Luke
Skywalker can trace his roots back to young heroes in Heinlein
books like Space Cadet and Starman Jones. The book Invasion
of the Body Snatchers came out about the same time as Heinlein's
The Puppet Masters--but Heinlein's Puppet Masters are even more
frightening than the Body Snatchers, and in Puppet Masters
humans wage war against the planetwide invasion of alien slugs
and win.
Aliens? Heinlein was there first, and better. Heinlein's
Starship Troopers shows the training and combat of spaceborne
Mobile Infantry fighting an interplanetary war against aliens a
couple of centuries from now, and Heinlein's future marines--
parachuting out of orbiting spaceships into alien cities, each
man with more firepower than Patton's tank corps--are the
toughest sons of bitches alive. Rambo probably would wash out of
their training--he's too soft.
You want a Nick-and-Nora-type detective couple caught in a
web of occult intrigue? Heinlein's novella The Unpleasant
Profession of Jonathan Hoag. The ultimate paranoid fantasy
about a man who's convinced the entire world is a charade put on
for his benefit--and it is? Heinlein's short story "They" is in
that same volume.
An old billionaire has his brain transplanted into the body
of his beautiful and accidentally-killed secretary? Heinlein's
I Will Fear No Evil (1973).
The ultimate novel of interplanetary revolution and war with
a computer, who makes HAL 9000 look stupid by comparison,
organizing a moon-based revolution against Earth tyranny? The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966).
The ultimate post-nuclear holocaust novel? Farnham's
Freehold (1964).
The life story of a 2,300-year-old man--born in 1912--which
takes us two millennia into the future and across a couple of
dozen planets? It also contains the best sequence about
frontiering on another planet ever written. Time Enough For
Love (1973).
You want Star Wars, E.T., Aliens, and more all in one
neat package? Heinlein was there first and best with Have Space
Suit--Will Travel. Seventeen-year-old Kip Russell wins a space
suit in a TV contest, fixes it up, is kidnaped out of his back
yard by an alien spaceship full of creatures worse looking than
Alien, and meets aboardship an 11-year-old girl who's a
precocious genius and a friendly alien called The Mother Thing.
The evil aliens are staging an invasion of earth, and Kip, the
girl, and the Mother Thing have to stop them. The story takes
Kip and friends on a dangerous moonwalk, into a dungeon on Pluto,
and to an InterGalactic Court which will decide whether or not to
destroy Earth because of our race's history of violence. This
book is high adventure, high comedy, and serious philosophy all
rolled together.
You want time travel that makes Back to the Future and
Peggy Sue Got Married look like Edsels sitting next to a
Ferrari? In Time Enough For Love the 2,000-year-old hero time-
travels back to World War One, has an affair with his own mother,
meets himself at five-years old, and enlists into the army for
duty overseas. In Heinlein's The Door Into Summer, the hero is
drugged and cryonically frozen by business enemies, awakens
thirty years in the future, time-travels back thirty years to get
even with his business enemies, and travels forward a second time
to marry the little girl who fell in love with him in the past,
time travel having resolved the age difference.
There's more: Heinlein has written over forty books--all
still in print--and if there's a science fiction idea, Heinlein
was probably there with it first and best.
[Some personal material deleted]
All best,
Neil
Copies: Robert & Virginia Heinlein
Victor Koman