THE ROBERT HEINLEIN INTERVIEW
Conducted by J. Neil Schulman
June 30, 1973
Note for the Pulpless.Comtm edition: This interview appears exactly as it was
edited by Robert A. Heinlein in 1973, with no deletions, additions, or changes. -- JNS, 1996
SCHULMAN: All right. Why don't we start with question number
one?
HEINLEIN: Question number one: "Do you believe time travel is
possible or is it merely a fictional device?"
There is no basis for belief or non-belief in this question,
Neil. We don't have any data from which to work. There is at
present no satisfactory theory of time. We haven't the slightest
idea of how you might get your teeth into the fabric of
time--whatever it is. Time travel, as of now, comes under the
head of fantasy, inasmuch as it requires one to postulate something
about which we know nothing. I do not regard time travel as
either impossible or possible. I have no opinion about its
possibility or impossibility because we have no data on which to
make a judgment. But it makes an excellent device for telling
stories, particularly stories that speculate about the condition of
mankind and his future, and so forth and so on; it's been used
almost entirely for that purpose, including A Connecticut Yankee In
KIng Arthur's Court which is very largely a social and political
pamphlet expressed in story form, to go back to a time-travel story
of the last century and one which doesn't even use a time
machine--it just postulates it. And the same thing is true, of
course, of H.G. Wells' Time Machine and his When The Sleeper
Wakes. In both cases he was using a time-travel device in order to
permit him to speculate about the human condition.
SCHULMAN: If you did manage to find a time machine, would
you go back and try strangling yourself as an infant to see if the
universe would collapse around you?
HEINLEIN: No I wouldn't try it. [laughter] In the first
place, I am not at all unhappy about having lived the life I've
lived. In the second place, if I strangled the infant and the
universe collapsed around me thereby--the solipsist's point of
view--then I would have proved my point by failing to prove my
point. I mean you wind up with a zero--with no observer, follow
me? You wouldn't know if it worked or not. If you're going to
engage in the notion that the universe ceases to exist if you die,
then you're not entitled to an observer outside that to see what
happens. Solipsism has its own logical paradoxes.
SCHULMAN: Okay. We might as well proceed to question number
two, then.
HEINLEIN: "I'd like to know more about your theory that 'no
matter how individualistic you feel, you are really only part of an
evolutionary organism.'"
SCHULMAN: Did I quote you correctly on that?
HEINLEIN: You've placed a little emphasis in there: "really
only a part of." What i believe I said--the book is across the
room and I'm not going to dig it out--was that "you are part of an
evolutionary organism" not "really only a part of." Difference in
emphasis, do you follow me?
SCHULMAN: Yes.
HEINLEIN: Just as you are J. Neil Schulman and you are also
part of the population of an area known as New York City. But it
isn't a case of J. Neil Schulman being "really only a part of" New
York City. You are J. Neil Schulman and you also happen to be one
of that population group called by that name. Now, there is a
matter of emphasis here. You say, "Can you prove this?" Well, I
can't prove that you are "really only a part of" but I observe
that you are only a part of. No emphasis on it, we simply observe
it. You have parents. You have at least the potentiality of
offspring. I assume that you go along more or less at least with
evolutionary theory.
SCHULMAN: To a certain extent.
HEINLEIN: ...Yes. We simply observe that we are part of this
continuing process.
SCHULMAN: Now, I think what I was asking here was the more
philosophical question...in other words, I can see that I have
parents and come from an evolutionary chain.
HEINLEIN: Yes.
SCHULMAN: But the phrase "evolutionary organism" seems to
suggest that you have one being with central control or
something...or at least some central plan.
HEINLEIN: It doesn't... I don't mean to imply that.
Evolutionists differ in their notions as to whether or not there is
any central plan or whether the whole matter is automatic, or what
it may be. All I really meant is that although we feel as if we
were discreet individuals, if you consider it in terms of four
dimensions with time as the fourth dimension, you are part of a
branch...a branching deal, with an actual physical connection going
back into the past and physical connection extending into the future
until such a time as it's chopped off. If you have no children then
it's chopped off at that point. I have no children myself, however
I'm not dead yet, either. I think, however, you are more interested
in a later part here: "if so but we retain free will, why should we
place the welfare of the whole organism above ourselves?" The
question as to whether or not you place the welfare of your
species--your race--above yourself is a matter for you to settle
with yourself and for me to settle with me.
SCHULMAN: On what basis?
HEINLEIN: [Quoting question] "If you say it's something you
can't justify on a purely rational basis, then what other basis is
there to justify it?" That's what you're getting at; you're trying
to make it as either/or here between rational and irrational.
SCHULMAN: Well...rational and nonrational in any case.
HEINLEIN: All right. [Long pause] Uh, I'm trying to phrase
this clearly. And you say this last question leads up to this next
one: "Is there ever any justification to accept something on faith?
How can you prove this since by doing so you are inherently
rejecting reason as final arbiter?" Now, there are a lot of
implications in your question, a lot oh hidden assumptions in your
question.
SCHULMAN: I suppose so.
HEINLEIN: Yes, indeed. All the way through this I can see
that you regard yourself as a rationalist and you regard reason as
the final arbiter on anything.
SCHULMAN: Well, I'm basically starting out with Ayn Rand's
Objectivist epistemology.
HEINLEIN: Well, I'm not going to comment on Miss Rand's
epistemology; I have notions of my own. Have you read anything by
Alfred Korzybski?
SCHULMAN: No, I'm familiar with his work only through your
own; you've mentioned him quite a few times.
HEINLEIN: Only through my own. You haven't read Science and
Sanity, for example?
SCHULMAN: No, I haven't.
HEINLEIN: And you're not familiar with his epistemological
approach?
SCHULMAN: Only what you yourself have mentioned.
HEINLEIN: Uh, huh. [interruption] Uh, I've just been talking
to Mrs. Heinlein; now let me see.
Let me invert these questions a bit. If you've read Stranger
in a Strange Land, you've probably gathered what I think of faith.
I do not regard faith as a basis on which to believe or disbelieve
anything. On the other hand, Neil, there are many
things--practically all of the important questions of
philosophy--are not subject to final answers purely by reason. In
my opinion, they are not subject to final answers simply by
reason. This has been gone into a considerable extent by
philosophers in the past, and there's even a term--a technical
term--for that called "noumena" as opposed to "phenomena."
Phenomena are things that you can grasp through your physical senses
or through measurements made with your physical senses through
instruments and so forth and so in other words, phenomena are things
that we can know about the physical universe. Noumena translates as
the unknowable things. The unknowable things: What is the purpose
of the universe? Why are you here on this earth? What should a man
do with his life? All of those wide open, generalized, unlimited
"whys." There are all noumena, and consequently they are not
subject--consequently by definition--these things are not subject
to final answers simply by reason. My own attitude on that is shown
a bit in several places in this last book [Time Enough For Love] in
which Lazarus Long indicates that he hasn't been able to find any
purpose to the universe any more significant than gametes using
zygotes to create mare gametes. He expresses it that way in one
place, then he turns it over, turns it upside down, and expresses it
another way to the effect that as far as he knows, there's no more
important purpose to the universe than making a baby with the help
of a woman you love. And yet obviously neither of these things are
answers; they are just expressions of what Lazarus Long happens to
like. Now, do you happen to like chocolate malted milks?
SCHULMAN: Uh, yes.
HEINLEIN: Now, do you like them better than strawberry
malted milks?
SCHULMAN: Yeah, I would say so.
HEINLEIN: Can you justify that by reason?
SCHULMAN: No, I would say that it's a purely subjective
judgment.
HEINLEIN: That's right. That is correct. It doesn't involve
faith and it doesn't involve reason.
SCHULMAN: But I'm using internal data; there is data which I
am acting upon.
HEINLEIN: That's right. The internal data tells you that you
like it better...but it doesn't tell you why. This applies also
to a great many things about the universe: it's your own internal,
subjective evaluation of it, not any final answers given by reason
or rationality.
SCHULMAN: This brings up the end of Methuselah's Children in
which Lazarus Long seems to be taking just about the opposite
attitude.
I have a quote here:
"'The last two and a half centuries have just been my
adolescence...men...never had enough time to tackle the important
questions. Lots of capacity and not enough time to use it
properly.'"
And then he's asked: "'How do you propose to tackle the
important questions?'
"'How should I know? Ask me again in about five hundred
years.'
"'You think that will make a difference?'
"'I do. Anyhow it'll give me time to poke around and pick up
some interesting facts...'"
A little later: "'...Maybe there aren't any reasons.'
"'Yes, maybe it's just one colossal big joke with no point to
it.' Lazarus stood up and scratched his ribs. 'But I can tell you
this...here`s one monkey who's going to keep on climbing, and
looking around him to see what he can see, as long as the tree holds
out.'"
HEINLEIN: And that's exactly what he's doing at the end of the
next book.
SCHULMAN: Just holding on.
HEINLEIN: Uh, yes. In the mean time it is postulated that
he's had a couple of thousand years trying this, that, and the other
thing, and he has reached one point. He has reached one
opinion; it's stated flatly in the early part of the book: that you
cannot get final answers about the universe from inside. He said
you'd have to get outside and take a look at it. And the man he's
talking to, Weatheral, says: "Then you believe in immortality?" [In
the book, the word "afterlife" is used.] And Lazarus says, "Wait,
wait, wait, wait, now--hold everything! I didn't say I believed in
immortality; I don't believe in anything. Because belief gets in
the way of facts." He's made certain observations and they've
given him certain limited opinions, and among the limited opinions
he has is the one working hypothesis that there are no final
answers to be obtained from human being inside the universe, that
the position of observation doesn't permit that--to get any final
answers. Follow me?
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: There's nothing inconsistent about the end of
Methuselah's Children and what the man has to say a couple of
thousand years later; it's just that he's had a couple of thousand
years trying this that he said he was going to try and he still
hasn't gotten any final answers.
SCHULMAN: I suppose this leads up to question number fifteen
on page two.
HEINLEIN: Question fifteen on page two: "What would a 2,300
year old man know that we don't?" Neil, I haven't the slightest
idea; I'm not even a hundred, yet! Remember, this thing's a work of
fiction. "Wouldn't it take a 2,300 year old man to write the
memoirs of Lazarus Long?" Of course it would, but do you know any?
This is a work of fiction. If I've managed to make him at all
convincing as an extremely old man--not necessarily twenty-three
centuries but extremely old--then it's successful as a work of art,
as a work of fiction. If it entertains the reader in the course of
doing that then it's a commercially successful work of art. But I
am not twenty-three hundred years old; I'm not even a century, yet.
SCHULMAN: I just wanted to check that out.
HEINLEIN: All right.
HEINLEIN: [Reading next part of question] "How did Shaw's
Back to Methuselah influence this if at all?"
I read Shaw's Back to Methuselah about ten years before I
started writing--oh, sometime in the thirties. I haven't looked at
it since, don't remember it too clearly. I've read most of Shaw's
plays and some of his essays and I suppose I've been influenced by
him, just as I've been influenced by everything I've ever read,
seen, tasted, felt, so forth and so on. But as for specific
influence of one book on the other, they're rather different. As I
recall, in the latter part of Back to Methuselah everyone has
gotten extremely cautious because they`re afraid they might die.
They've got so much to lose. Lazarus Long never suffers from that
although I do indicate that some of the other Methuselahs or Howard
people do have a bit of that trouble. But, I don't remember it too
well; after all, I didn't see the play: I read it once something
over forty years ago--or just about forty years ago--and I've never
reread it since.
SCHULMAN: I think what I was referring to was a specific line
that Richard Friedman, our NLN review editor [when this was
taped], pointed out to me--something along the line that it would
take long life to plan anything, that we simply don't have enough
time to decide what the questions are to ask.
HEINLEIN: Oh, yes; I agree with that, and this also makes it
difficult for me to pretend to be a twenty-three century old man
because, as I pointed out to you, I'm not even a century yet. I've
noticed that you've paid quite a bit of attention to Have Space
Suit--Will Travel. Do you recall in there, I think it's the Mother
Thing appealing on behalf of the human race: "But my lord peers,
they are all so very young." She's asking a certain amount of
forbearance for the human race because it's so young. And that's
about the situation we're in: our civilization is very young. None
of us live long enough to cope with too much. About the time we
begin to get our thoughts straightened out we begin to go senile.
Or, in the mean time, we've been knocked over by a taxicab or died
of the plague or something else. We don't live that long.
Shall we finish the rest of that same question?
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: "Do you have any comments on the Wandering Jew
legends which you've made reference to in several of your books?"
I don't recall the other references I've made to it but
throughout my books I refer constantly to mythological matters,
biblical matters, so forth and so on. Call these cultural ties, if
you like. It comes under the head of putting a little flavor in the
stew, that's all. The Wandering Jew legend, I really don't know
anything about it. The Encyclopedia Britannica doesn't have much
to say about it. It's apocryphal; there have been some good
stories from it. General Lew Wallace's The Prince of India--which
isn't nearly as well known as his book Ben Hur from which this
movie was made--was based on the Wandering Jew legend and there have
been several others. It's a nice, romantic legend that has
considerable story value to it. You might say that I grabbed it and
renamed him Lazarus Long and made this book out of it.
SCHULMAN: That's one of the first things I was thinking--that
you might've been intending Lazarus Long to be the Wandering
Jew--until he made reference to having met him.
HEINLEIN: As I recall--I seem to recall writing that
paragraph--I don't think I specifically used it-- Sometime one does
put something like that into a story in order the deny an assumption
of that sort? I don't think I put it in for that purpose; I think
it was just Lazarus Long enjoying one of his whoppers again.
Lying in his teeth! [laughter]
SCHULMAN: Is there anything in the book he believed?
HEINLEIN: Oh, sure. If you examine the fashion in which it is
written, the story of the adopted daughter is written cold sober all
the way through.
SCHULMAN: That was, if I remember, third person?
HEINLEIN: No, it's both third person and first person, because
part of it is narration recounting the events that take place on New
Beginnings and part of it he's talking to the computer, Minerva.
But he's being dead serious all the way through. But when he's
simply engaged in conversation with other people...Mark Twain once
said, "First research the facts. Then distort them to prove your
case." [laughter] This character is sort of a Mark Twain
character. I even have him come from Mark Twain's general part of
the country. The Ozarks are noted for their whoppers.
SCHULMAN: Okay. What about the story of David Lamb?
HEINLEIN: David Lamb? What about him?
SCHULMAN: Well, is it based on anybody you know or material
you drew from your own Annapolis experience or...?
HEINLEIN: You trying to get me sued? [laughter] This is why
author's put disclaimers on the front of books.
SCHULMAN: Which is the biggest lie in any book.
HEINLEIN: Oh, sure. That character is fictional, but it is of
course based on various things I knew, experienced, people I've
known, when I was in the Navy. And obviously in telling the story
Lazarus Long is having fun with it and not necessarily sticking
closely to the truth. In fact, even in a casual reading of it, you
can see big holes in it--where things don't fit, where the
chronology is wrong--where the locations are wrong--all sorts of
things.
SCHULMAN: I've only read it three times; I haven't had a
chance to analyze it yet.
HEINLEIN: Well, for example, just casually on the side he
locates the Naval Academy at West Point.
SCHULMAN: I'd thought that was just a failing of memory.
HEINLEIN: Probably. Possibly. Maybe. In any case, there are
things like that through the story; it's not told at all in the
dead serious way in which "The Tale of the Adopted Daughter" is
told. Entirely different sort of story. It's partially a piece of
satire. This man, no matter what he did, took the easiest way out,
the laziest way out--and it always worked.
SCHULMAN: I can empathize with that.
HEINLEIN: [Laughing] Yes.
SCHULMAN: Would you like to go back to question number four?
HEINLEIN: Sure. Let me turn the pages here; oh, here we are.
[Softly;] There's too much on this desk; there's always too much
on this desk.
"About the space program. I know you are extremely impressed
by the accomplishments of NASA. (Well, so am I.)" The
accomplishment of NASA that I'm most impressed by is how they manage
to take the most romantic subject I know of and by careful
application make in incredibly dull. [Laughter] I am not
disparaging the engineering accomplishments nor the heroic
accomplishments of astronauts in saying that. I'm talking primarily
about their P.R.O.! [Returning to question] "But since it was
financed with tax money"--and your parenthetical remark in there
["(which I believe is the same thing as stolen money)"--JNS]--"isn't
the expenditure of any more money by government on space program
illegitimate?" Now the word "illegitimate" has a technical meaning,
Neil: it means illegal. And the answer to that is that the
expenditure is not illegal; it's perfectly legal--the laws are on
the books. However, you used it in a philosophical sense. I
think you used it equivalent to "immoral."
SCHULMAN: Well, you see, I equate legality with being based on
natural law, and I see that statutory law is a nullification of
that.
HEINLEIN: Well, now natural law--the concept of natural law
--is one that many philosophers have tried to put over, but as far
as I'm concerned natural law are things like the second law of
thermodynamics--that entropy always increases--which could be
defined mathematically. Natural law are the facts that we know
about the physical world.
SCHULMAN: I believe that also in the "Notebooks [of Lazarus
Long]" you have a statement that if you can't talk about it in math,
it's not science, it's just opinion.
HEINLEIN: That is correct; if you can't talk about it
quantitatively it is not science, it is just opinion. And on most
of these matters of natural law, each philosopher that's attempted
to do this has come up with a different set of natural laws from the
one next door. Now, I don't know which philosopher you follow on
this. Do I make myself clear?
SCHULMAN: Yes.
HEINLEIN: I should say at this point that my stories have
consistently shown space travel being undertaken by private
enterprise. That I regard as a matter of taste--my own taste.
Which apparently agrees with yours.
SCHULMAN: Right.
HEINLEIN: [Continuing question] "Shouldn't the entire program
be turned over to private enterprise to try and make a profit?" I
don't like the expression "turned over." Shouldn't the entire
program be "sold" to private enterprise?
SCHULMAN: Well, since from anarchistic point of view I don't
see that government can legitimately own property...
HEINLEIN: All right; how can they legitimately pass on a
title to it by "turning it over" to private enterprise?
SCHULMAN: I guess there's a philosophical contradiction in
there...
HEINLEIN: Yes.
SCHULMAN: But if you accept the presence of government as an
unwanted, already existing thing, you're always backed into corners
like that. [This problem is soluble only by postulating a post-
revolutionary situation in which anarchocapitalist arbitration
agencies are liquidating all government properties and returning
them to those victims with valid claims.]
HEINLEIN: Well, in any case..."For example, my colleague at
New Libertarian Notes, Sam Konkin, says that if he were running
the space program he's simply pay back his investment by running
shiploads of moon rocks back to earth to sell as ornaments and
jewelry." Well, I wonder if Mr. Konkin has considered the economic
law of diminishing returns at that point?
SCHULMAN: I think he did take that into account; he had
several other schemes like that...The point he was trying to make
was that if somebody like him could figure out a way to bring back
profits, sooner of later some sort of trade would be built out of
this.
HEINLEIN: Oh, yes. I am quite certain that space travel is
going to be enormously profitable in the long run. But that
particular stunt...By the way, that is included in this enterprise
of the Hubbards; I suppose you've heard about that?
SCHULMAN: L. Ron Hubbard?
HEINLEIN: No, no no. Colonel Hubbard, and his wife. Let me
see. I'd like to find one of their magazines around here; I don't
see one offhand and haven't time to look. In any case, they are
trying to get together an organization to buy one of the remaining
Apollos--to buy from the government one of the remaining
Apollos--and start in on a commercial venture to get the human
race out into the solar system and on out. They think it could be
done by private enterprise and they're trying to do it. In other
words, they have a point of view that is consonant with yours and
consonant with mine.
SCHULMAN: We might as well bring in question number ten here,
because it's related to number five.
HEINLEIN: All right; let me get to it. Number ten: "This
question is related to number five. Have you heard the claims made
by Dr. Andrew J. Galambos several years before the space program
started that he could put a man on the moon for $100,000? If so, do
you have any comments?" Who is Galambos?
SCHULMAN: Galambos is a Californian; he's at the Free
Enterprise Institute which is in the Los Angeles area.
HEINLEIN: And what is the doctorate in--do you know?
SCHULMAN: I think it's in economics. [I was incorrect:
Galambos's degree is in astrophysics.]
HEINLEIN: How far back did he make this remark?
SCHULMAN: Oh! I can't give anywhere near an exact date; I
think it was as far back as the fifties that he was claiming that he
had a plan to finance it.
HEINLEIN: Yes. Well, the fifties. I have to consider
inflation as to what a hundred thousand dollars meant then and what
a hundred thousand means now. Well, let's put it a few years back
and figure that he'd be talking about a considerably more than a
hundred thousand now; but if it's anything like that recent it
wouldn't have more than doubled--the amount he's talking about--in
buying power.
Now. I happen to be a quite experienced R and D engineer
myself--not in space activities but in aircraft and in high
altitudes work, things like that. Also, I built this house from
which I'm talking to you right now--built it fairly recently. I
spent considerably more than a hundred thousand dollars on it. I
know durn well that I couldn't begin to build a
spaceship--completely shut of all the difficulties of working
through the government or anything like that; I mean if I simply had
the cash and undertook to build it myself--I couldn't begin to build
it for anything like a hundred thousand dollars. I do not think
that Dr. Galambos is an experienced engineer of any sort.
SCHULMAN: I think the point he was trying to make is that if
the government had allowed private research to be pursued in this
instead of every time something was discovered clamping a top
security on it that--
HEINLEIN: The government did not do that. On the contrary,
everything that NASA puts is open.
SCHULMAN: Everything?
HEINLEIN: Everything. And they also put out a thing saying;
now what subjects are you interested in? As a result of that,
having noted several of the subjects that I was interested in, I
have received so many, many pounds--so many millions of words--of
research reports, that I finally had to move them up into my
storehouse because I no longer had library space for them.
Everything that NASA puts out, they do not have anything classified.
Nothing. Now, let me distinguish between anything that the Air
Force might be doing. The two activities are conducted separately:
the Air Force does have classified espionage satellites, for
example. But NASA does not, and they don't work the same places,
they don't work together. Everything that NASA does--from the start
by law--was to be open and unclassified and it has been. This is
one of the things that I have cited--and that Arthur Clarke has
cited--as being a payoff on the space program right now.
Expensively as they've done it, nevertheless all that bread cast on
the waters has already come back severalfold in the way of
unclassified new technology that doesn't even have patents on it.
You can get these things and you can use them all you please. I
know that a lot of people are not aware of this but anyone in
engineering that has any engineering interest is likely to be aware
of it if he has taken the trouble to have himself placed on the
mailing list.
SCHULMAN: Well, I guess that was just a mistake on my part.
[Even more ironic is that Galambos is the father of the theory of
primary property that states that all ideas are private property
and should be copyrighted.]
HEINLEIN: Yes. However, the thing that makes it so expensive
when you do things through government is the enormous amount of
bureaucracy and red tape. This is not alone, however,
characteristic of government; it is characteristic of almost any big
human organization. You get one of those really big corporations
and you have a tremendous bureaucratic structure inside the
corporation itself.
SCHULMAN: However, I've heard that because of competition
demands, if you take the bureaucracy of a private corporation, it's
maybe around ten percent of that which government manages to
generate.
HEINLEIN: Well, I've seen a bit of both and I don't think
the increase in efficiency on the part of free enterprise is that
great. The justification for free enterprise is not that it's more
efficient, but that it's free! Follow me?
SCHULMAN: Yes.
HEINLEIN: This reminds me of a story--oh, it's from a preface
to a book about some civil liberties cases about forty years back; I
wish I could remember the author; he was a prominent civil liberties
lawyer. But he told this anecdote about down South, some time
postbellum, but probably fifty or sixty or seventy years back, in
which this Southern gentleman was attempting to explain to the
Yankee friend that the Negro had actually been better off under
slavery. He says, "I'll prove it to you." He says, "Oh, Tom,
Uncle; come over here." And this old Negro shuffled over. And he
said to him, "Uncle, you were a slave, weren't you?"
"Yes, Cap'n."
"Tell me. Do you eat as well now as you did when you were a
slave?"
"Oh, no, Cap'n. Sometimes pickin's might poor."
"Do you work as hard as you did when you were a slave?"
"Oh, no. I works lots harder now."
"Do you live in as good a house?"
"That little shack I'm in now, the rain comes in all the
time."
He says, "Then you were better off when you were a slave,
weren't you?"
And the old Negro didn't agree, he didn't say yes; he
scratched his head and he said slowly, "Boss, there's somethin'
about this heah freedom that I lahkes!"
SCHULMAN: [Laughing] Okay.
HEINLEIN: In other words, you don't have to justify private
enterprise on the basis of its being more efficient than
government--although it usually is. Not always, but usually.
SCHULMAN: Well, at least it keeps the bureaucracies running
against each other so you have a bit of a choice.
HEINLEIN: Yes, and that's even possible inside the
government--I'll tell you about a case in a moment. The
justification for free enterprise is that it's free. "Sort of a
looseness about this heah freedom that I lahkes!" That's all.
SCHULMAN: Okay. I don't need any further justification,
myself, either.
HEINLEIN: It's a matter of taste. It's the way you feel about
it, It's the way I feel about it. You don't have to prove it.
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: Oh. Competition. I thought and still think that
one of the mistakes that they made in this government was when they
converted the Army and Navy into the Department of Defense and
created the Air Force Department and simply incorporated it therein.
You know what it did? It removed from a government system one of
the few examples of healthy competition we see in government. The
thing that kept the Navy on its toes was the Army, and the thing
that kept the Army on its toes was the Navy, and the point at which
they had to fight was right over the appropriations. And they
weren't able--either one of them--to judge it for themselves: it was
up to the Congress. And they had to compete. Now, all through
the military service there are attempts to set up competition--oh,
between ships, between companies, between squads, so forth and so
on--because there are a hell of a lot of military officers--most of
them perhaps--who realize that the competition which any socialistic
set-up inherently lacks--and the Army and Navy are socialistic
set-ups--is a shortcoming. It makes it less efficient. So they set
up these artificial competitions just to keep them on their toes.
There are plenty--Perhaps most professional military men are
acutely aware that the Army and the Navy do not have it unless
they deliberately build it up as a sort of a game.
SCHULMAN: I guess I could bring up the point in question
number eleven on page two at this point.
HEINLEIN: All right. "In the 'Notebooks of Lazarus Long'
there is a statement that since anarchists and pacifists refuse to
support a state, they deserve no protection from that state.
Wouldn't you say--at least about anarchists--that this statement is
irrelevant because anarchists don't even want protection 'from'
the state, they want protection against it?" Now. Neil. You
have in there an assumption contrary to fact. And that is that
there is such a thing as anarchists which agree on any one thing.
[Laughter] There are as many sorts of anarchism as there are
anarchists and you sure as hell know it by now!
SCHULMAN: [Laughing] Yes.
HEINLEIN: You've been in it a relatively short time--I mean by
my time scale, not by Lazarus Long's--but you've certainly seen it.
How do anarchists spend their time? Why they spend it fighting with
other anarchists. Isn't that true?
SCHULMAN: [Still laughing] Well, a few of us manage to get
along.
HEINLEIN: Well, you sent me first this New Libertarian Notes
and I noticed that the lead article in there was one panning the
hell out of the magazine called Reason. [Laughter] And blasting
these revisionists, dissidents, and so forth. There are as many
sorts of anarchists as there are anarchists.
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: Incidentally, I'm delighted to have both magazines
in the house as I frequently find something in each of them that
disagrees with my own point of view. It does me no good to read
something that agrees with my own point of view. I want to read
something that disagrees with my own point of view, follow me?
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: You can't learn from a man who agrees with you. But
the point I wanted to bring out was that there are one hell of a lot
of anarchists who think that there is pie in the sky and that Santa
Claus sill lives and that somehow, some way, policemen will still be
on the corner no matter if they do away with them. There are an
awful lot of starry-eyed ignoramuses among anarchists, Neil--just as
there are in any other political point of view. And there are
plenty of them who still expect the government to protect them,
and they really don't have imagination enough to visualize a
completely lawless situation.
[Therein lies the value of libertarian science fiction--JNS]
SCHULMAN: In a recent book by Harry Browne called How I Found
Freedom In An Unfree World--I don't know if you're familiar with it
or not...
HEINLEIN: I've seen some reviews. I haven't read it. I've
seen some reviews and things of it.
SCHULMAN: Well one of the things he brings out in there is the
basic anarchocapitalist viewpoint--which he's bringing to the
bestselling reading public for the first time--in which he's saying,
"Well, suppose you didn't have police anymore--what would you do?"
And he says, "Well, you'd probably lock your doors and stay out of
unsafe neighborhoods and keep your children away from unsavory
people--isn't that exactly what you're doing now?"
HEINLEIN: Yes.
SCHULMAN: And then he goes on to state the basic difference
we have with government: that it provides relatively very little
protection at all; if it does anything it simply provides a little
retaliation to act as a deterrent--and it doesn't even do very much
of that.
HEINLEIN: Well, we could get into a long discussion here of
political and anarchist theory; all that I was getting at is that
there are many anarchists who don't really get their teeth into that
notion that there could be anything to be afraid of in an utterly
lawless community. Now it is very much to the point to realize that
the community is already quite lawless, as Harry Browne points out
there. I'm one of those self-help people myself. Cop on the
corner? I said I was fifteen miles out in the country; I'm fifteen
miles from the nearest police service of any sort. It would take
over half an hour for a sheriff's car to get here if he started
right now. I mean if he were available and started right now. In
other words we have no police protection. And, as you may have
heard, Santa Cruz is noted as the murder capital of the world; it's
a small town and we've had nineteen murders so far this year. Just
a second. [pause] I had to shift position; my old bones were
getting tired. Well, I believe in self-help. I'm quite a good
shot. In fact I used to teach it. And my place is surrounded with
a seven-foot-high steel fence topped with barbed wire and controlled
by an electric gate....There are a number of people who can't seem
to realize that things could be mighty rough--even rougher than they
are now--if there wasn't the slightest bit of deterrence. I
believe in deterrence, myself. I know quite well that there are a
number of people walking the streets today alive and well only
because there's a law with a certain implied punishment--even if
it doesn't take place too often--for killing somebody. I'm not
talking about anyone in particular either as the object or as the
subject; I just say that I know that there are many times when
somebody would durn well get killed if somebody else didn't feel
that it was a little bit dangerous to go killing somebody. You
might get arrested; you might get thrown in the hoosegow, and at
least it would cause you dreadful inconvenience even if they didn't
hang you.
SCHULMAN: Well, of course, I can agree with the idea of
deterrence to a great extent, but I disagree with your premise that
you need government to provide the deterrent. Of course my own view
is based on the theories of Murray Rothbard and several other people
here in the movement, about private protection agencies, and private
armies, and settling disputes through private arbitration.
Competing agencies.
HEINLEIN: Yes, I've read a good deal of this. I don't think
that we can manage to settle matters of detail about political
philosophy on the time and toll charges of the Daily News. So
many things have been opened up at this point that you know quite
well that it could go on for days and days and days and many
thousands of words. I'm inclined to evaluate those things about
private protection agencies and how protection could simply be left
to the marketplace about equal to Karl Marx's notion that after the
perfected socialism the state would wither away. You remember that
was one of the predictions, that socialism led to anarchism through
the state withering away. That was the happy condition of the
future under Marx's predictions. Well, Marx turned out to be
mistaken, at least so far as any evidence of the state withering
away is concerned in the numerous countries that call themselves
communist.
SCHULMAN: Well, I certainly don't think you had to run a trial
run on it to find out; I think it was pretty evident from the
inconsistencies in what he was saying.
HEINLEIN: Yes. And, no doubt, you have read a number of
things criticizing this notion of leaving protection entirely to the
marketplace, too. I would be delighted to see a circumstance under
which we needed no laws, no protection, so forth and so on. None of
the philosophers that I have encountered have been able to convince
me that this is practical in the real world, that it could be done.
It is much more likely that if we had, for a short time, a condition
of anarchy, that shortly after there we weld have a condition of
fascism that would grow up from a sort of vigilantism until finally
a man on a horseback was in charge.
SCHULMAN: Well, you see there's where--of course you're right;
we don't have enough time to really get into this.
HEINLEIN: Yes.
SCHULMAN: The only question I'd want to ask is have you read,
for instance, The Market For Liberty by the Tannehills, or
Precondition For Peace And Prosperity: Rational Anarchy by
Richard and Ernestine Perkins, or For A New Liberty by Dr.
Rothbard? All three go into the theories in quite a bit of detail.
HEINLEIN: I have read a number of these things--not
necessarily ones that you've mentioned--but I've been reading on
this subject for considerably more than the past forty years. And
no one of them has convinced me yet. What we do have on this
globe in respect to nations is a condition of anarchy between
nations, despite something that we laughingly call international
law.
SCHULMAN: This is a point Dr. Rothbard makes frequently. He
says we already have international anarchy; why not just
decentralize down to the individual level?
HEINLEIN: Because along comes the bully boys. And if the
bully boys band together then the people who simply want to be left
along have to band together.
SCHULMAN: Fine. I'm not disagreeing with this.
HEINLEIN: Yes.
SCHULMAN: However, to use Franz Oppenheimer's definitions I
would much rather provide my protection through the economic means,
rather than the political means.
HEINLEIN: Well, I think that we had better chop this off.
SCHULMAN: Right.
HEINLEIN: Because it is too long; the Daily News can't
possibly use it in depth. You've got twelve hundred words,
something like that.
SCHULMAN: Fifteen hundred, it turns out.
HEINLEIN: Fifteen hundred. You couldn't possible discuss the
theory of anarchism in that space.
SCHULMAN: Right. Well, hopefully, one of these days we'll be
able to get it settled just between the two of us.
HEINLEIN: Well, I think we'll probably still be discussing it
as long as both of us are alive. It isn't that I wouldn't like to
see a condition of complete freedom; you saw me describe that in
Happy Valley. And you also saw Lazarus Long cope with the bully
boys. But he nevertheless suggested that Happy Valley was pretty
highly selective to start with for several reasons. And that as
long as they had a low population they could get along simply with
the Golden Rule. And they were beginning--he indicates that as
things got a little more complicated--they started having a little
more in the way of rules. But even at that he was sill talking
about an agrarian society with a very low population. But let's
move on to other matters out of fairness to the Daily News.
I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn
Rand's; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than
internal police and courts, external armed forces--with the other
matters handled otherwise. I'm sick of the way the government
sticks its nose into everything, now.
SCHULMAN: Okay. I think I'm going to have to turn over my
tape right about now. Let's hold on for a second while I do so.
[AFTER THE TAPE IS TURNED]
SCHULMAN: Okay. How about question number five? [A number of
questions relating to the Nixon Administration, impeachment, and
relations with communist countries]
HEINLEIN: Let's leave that one alone.
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: The reason I want to leave it alone is because like
it or not the people you mentioned, at the present time, have
tremendous responsibilities and I have no wish to jiggle their arms
or second-guess them or be a Sunday-morning quarterback. It's
very complicated and you don't have to like a man to know he's
Officer of the Deck at the moment.
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: Number seven would be next, if you want that one.
SCHULMAN: All right.
HEINLEIN: "Do you consider the revolution in The Moon is a
Harsh Mistress to be a success?" I'm not sure what you mean by
success; I described what happened and you can evaluate it to suit
yourself. What happened in the long run appears in the first
paragraph of the book and then again in the last paragraph. So far
as Manny is concerned, the moon has acquired far too much
government, they've thrown off the dictatorial rule from above and
now they're getting far too much government from democratic means.
It's not to his taste--nor to mine nor to yours. But I simply
described what happened. I might say that there is implied there
my own belief that government is an almost incurable disease of
mankind when you get anything resembling a dense population.
SCHULMAN: And I think you also make a point in Time Enough
For Love--I think Lazarus makes the statement--that any time you
get a large enough population you have absolutely no privacy any
more and it's time to move on.
HEINLEIN: In fact he defines it as when the population reaches
the point where they require I.D.'s. Now, let me comment on that in
my own case.
When I was born the population of the United States was
seventy-five million. Take a look at it now. When I first went in
the service, you didn't even have to have a birth certificate. I
didn't get a birth certificate until I was nearly fifty years old--a
so-called "delayed" birth certificate. We didn't have I,D.'s--I
mean to say a member of the military forces did not carry an I.D. on
his person--back when I started in. He simply didn't; there
weren't any. Very much smaller population, very much smaller
organization, so forth and so on. And now we've reached the point
where every time I turn around somebody asks me for my social
security number; I had it forced on me. Any time a place gets
densely enough populated for things like this to happen, it's time
to move on. I've moved on to what extent I can; I live out in the
country. I've taken a look at all the rest of this globe and I can
say this for the United States; it's the worst possible country on
the globe except for all the others. And as for California,
California has tremendous shortcomings; it simply happens to be
better than the rest for my taste. For my taste. Alaska has a
very small population but it has a horrible climate and I'm tired of
shoveling snow.
SCHULMAN: My friend, Sam Konkin, is a bit of a Canadian
chauvinist and he's always telling me about the glories of Alberta.
HEINLEIN: Oh, yes. He's perfectly right in that--if you're
willing to put up with fifty degrees below zero; I'm not.
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: I've done the best I can under the circumstances to
get as much freedom as I can by self-help methods.
SCHULMAN: Okay. There's a second part to that question.
HEINLEIN: Okay.
SCHULMAN: And even a third.
HEINLEIN: Oh, yes. "One of our group of libertarians, David
Friedman, believes that Prof locked out Manny and Wyoh from further
conversation with Mike, then committed suicide to prevent Mike from
using his powers as a dictatorial tyrant." Well, inasmuch as Prof
died right on stage, suicide seems sort of unlikely to me. You
remember how he died? He was speaking at the moment.
SCHULMAN: Right.
HEINLEIN: He's on a platform and speaking.
SCHULMAN: Of course, I could think of several ways it could
be done.
HEINLEIN: Oh, yes, surely. So far as the author of the story
is concerned, I never had any such theory in mind. David Friedman
is mistaken about that. So far as I could, that story--told in the
first person--was told as accurately as Manny could tell it. Of
course his viewpoint is limited.
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: "Is that what you intended? If not, what did you
intend?" I intended to tell the story that the words set forth.
SCHULMAN: Okay, that's self explanatory.
HEINLEIN: And as for the revolution being a success, success
is a word--used with respect to a revolution or any attempt of that
sort--that involves a subjective judgment. It's clear from
Manny's standpoint that it is something less than a success.
The final result--the final outcome--is not entirely to his taste.
He's thinking about moving on to where things are looser.
SCHULMAN: Okay. How about question number six, now?
HEINLEIN: "What would Da Capo have been like if you'd
written it right after Methuselah's Children?" [Da Capo was the
original title for Time Enough For Love--listed on the "Future
History" chart--when Heinlein planned it back in the forties--JNS]
Well in the first place I would have written it right after
Methuselah's Children. So I'm reasonably certain that it would
have been somewhat different from what it is, in fact very
different. Look, I've lived more than a generation--in human
terms--between those two books. It would be surprising if I hadn't
changed some, grown some, changed my evaluations a bit in the course
of that time, but in any case I did not write it then. And these
are works of fiction.
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: All right. "Do you believe, as some of my friends
have claimed, that you 'copped out' by resolving the matters of the
Jockaira gods only in conversation?" Look, I'm not dead, yet. What
makes your friends think that I won't write that story?
SCHULMAN: They're hoping you will! In fact Sam Konkin--when I
mentioned that I was still hoping you might write such a
story--suggested that you should entitle it Del Segno, which means
"from the sign."
HEINLEIN: Well, I used a musical analog all the way through
this thing; it's Aria Da Capo and that's why the last part is "Da
Capo." Aria Da Capo simply means to go back to the
beginning...which he did.
SCHULMAN: Yes, he certainly did.
I have to say that I disagree with one point that you made in
our last conversation; that pornography is literature written to
create an erection, and that you didn't think that this was the case
with the last part of Time Enough For Love. I can name at least
three friends who read through that last part with an erection.
HEINLEIN: [Laughing] How old were they?
SCHULMAN: Right about my age.
HEINLEIN: Well, look--at the age of which you speak, almost
everything makes you horny. The last part of that is certainly not
pornography such as you can buy on Forty-Second Street. There is
a great difference between realistic treatment of sex and
pornographic treatment, and all I can say about that is that it was
not intended to have that effect but if it did, my congratulations
to you.
SCHULMAN: Okay. How about the next part of number six?
["What really happened at the Families' meeting of 2012?"]
HEINLEIN: The Families' meeting of 2012? Nobody knows what
happened at the Families' meeting of 2012 but Lazarus and he ain't
talkin'! The point is, if you take timing on the thing, this is the
point at which the Families had to make a decision as to how they
were to deal with what they could see was an upcoming dictatorship.
Just consider the date involved on the thing. That ties in with the
story--oh, something "Empire..."
SCHULMAN: "Logic of Empire"?
HEINLEIN: "Logic of Empire" and "If This Goes On--" and so
forth. It was the date of a growing political crisis, and they're
having to decide what they're going to do, and then there are
indications later--in Methuselah's Children and elsewhere--that
what they did do was go underground as thoroughly as they could,
and distribute their wealth here and there under various and sundry
dummies. Quite evidently Lazarus Long thought that their intentions
were too mild--that they should do something far more dramatic--and
2,000 years later he is unwilling to argue the point as to whether
his judgment was better or worse than of men long since dead. I
don't particularly expect to do a story about the Families' meeting
of 2012--all I have are some notes--and I'm not sure that it
constitutes a story. Now. [Quoting from last part of question six]
"I have to admit that my first thought when I started reading Time
Enough For Love was shock and sadness to learn that Andy Libby
had been dead over a thousand years." Well, if I write another story
about Lazarus, it might turn out that Andy Libby isn't dead...at
the time that story takes place.
SCHULMAN: Oooh!
HEINLEIN: You see, my stories jump around in time, they always
have. They are not written in the sequence in which they appear
on the time-chart that John Campbell published a long time ago, not
at all in that sequence.
SCHULMAN: Speaking of the chart, there are two stories on
there which are a bit of a mystery to quite a few of us; "Word
Edgewise" and "Fire Down Below." [Two of the "Future History's"
"unwritten" stories.]
HEINLEIN: I can indicate to you what each was about and
they're--both of them--stories that I don't, at present, have plans
for writing. I might; all I have are notes. But look, Neil--I
probably don't have time to write too many more stories, and I have
lots of other things I want to do besides writing stories. Like it
or not I'm not going to last any twenty-three centuries. "Fire Down
Below" concerned a revolution in Antarctica and "Word Edgewise"
concerned Zebediah Scudder [sic] taking over the United States
through his church.
SCHULMAN: Wasn't that also "The Sound of His Wings"?
HEINLEIN: Well, there are two stories involved in there; both
of them were intended to be novellas when I originally planned them
many years ago. But I doubt if I will get around to writing these.
I'd rather tackle something else. I have well over a hundred
stories--with notes and outlines and so forth--in my files; most of
them will never be written. I mean it's physically impossible
simply for the reason that I acquire more stories each year than I
write. I have more stories on file, unwritten, than I have written
in my entire lifetime, and my backlog gets larger each year. So it
has to be a matter of choosing the story that I happen to want to
write.
SCHULMAN: Uh, huh.
HEINLEIN: And if I have that many stories left unwritten now,
I will have still more stories left unwritten if I manage to last
for a good many years longer, because it gets more so each year.
SCHULMAN: I think I can understand that because I find myself
writing maybe one story for every thirty story-ideas I get.
HEINLEIN: That's right. All right. [Quoting last part of
question six:] "I had expected the book to start telling about his
and Lazarus`s trips exploring for real estate." I had rather
expected that, too, except that I had to pick and choose what I
would put into this story; you can't cover twenty-three centuries in
one book. Libby's and Lazarus Long's real estate adventures are not
of the significance--I mean they're primarily adventures--they're
not of the significance of the stuff that I did write, in my
opinion. That book, despite its enormous bulk, is far more
characterized by what I left out than by what I put in. [Chuckling]
Twenty-three centuries.
SCHULMAN: There's one thing that comes to mind that I didn't
put on my list of questions, and that is I heard there was an entire
section of Stranger in a Strange Land which was never used.
HEINLEIN: Oh, there are big chunks of all my stories that
have never been used because I cut them to the bone as much as
possible.
SCHULMAN: Specifically, I heard it was one telling Valentine
Michael Smith's origins on Mars.
HEINLEIN: Oh, I've forgotten offhand just how much of that I
cut out; I'd have to go back and look at my notes. I suppose
somebody's been reading the archives down in the vaults at
University of California?
SCHULMAN: Uh, or--Is there a library nearby you in Santa Cruz
that has that?
HEINLEIN: University of California is my archivist and its
nearest campus is just below me. They have a completist attitude
and the very roughest of rough notes are saved just as carefully as
the final drafts. Any story I'd finished with--at the time they set
it up--I just turned everything over to them concerning that story.
SCHULMAN: I hope, one of these days, to get down there and
start reading it.
HEINLEIN: Well, I don't think it's too edifying because if I
hadn't thought the stuff I left in was better than the stuff I left
out, I wouldn't have done it that way.
SCHULMAN: Okay, I can buy that.
HEINLEIN: However, people who are interested in such literary
matters--which I'm not, especially--do dig into all these notes and
correspondence and such. Now where are we?
SCHULMAN: Question number eight. ["Of all your stories, which
one did you enjoy writing the most? Who is your favorite
character?"]
HEINLEIN: All right. Oh, those at two very different things.
When I gave the James Forrestal Memorial Lecture down there at the
Naval Academy I answered specifically that first question. I enjoy
writing them all because the thumb-rule that I have about fiction
is whether of not it interests me. If it interests me then I
assume that it probably will interest some other people. If it
bores me I don't write it. Follow me?
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: You know that's an impossible thing for me to
answer? To begin with, all an author's characters are the author
himself speaking in one way or another. He may even be speaking as
the Devil's Advocate at one point, but nevertheless the author does
it all. I could say Lazarus Long but that would simply be because
it's the character that's been on my mind most recently. I could
equally handily say Podkayne Fries, or Rhysling--it doesn't matter.
I can't have a favorite character. It's as ridiculous--If an
author has a favorite character, why he'll behave like a parent with
a favorite child. Each one has to be my favorite when I'm writing
about him.
SCHULMAN: Okay.
HEINLEIN: Or I don't do myself or the reader justice.
SCHULMAN: All right. Why don't we skip along to number nine,
then? ["New Libertarian Notes Review Editor Richard Friedman
created a fictional list of books that Dr. Samuel Russell (a character
in Have Space Suit Will Travel, for them who don't know) gave to Kip
to supplement his education. It was printed in NLN 5 (Summer
Issue, 1971) and I'm enclosing a Xerox copy for you. Interestingly
enough, one of the books is Eric Temple Bell's Men of Mathematics,
which you recommended to me just yesterday. Do you have any
comments or additions?"]