Grumbles from the Grave
Robert A. Heinlein
325 pages, including index
published in 1989

Like him or loathe him, if you are seriously interested in science fiction you cannot ignore Robert Heinlein. For one thing, name another science fiction writer popular enough to have warranted a paperback collection of his letters? Only Isaac Asimov comes close to his status and perhaps Arthur C. Clarke; but of the three, Heinlein is the only one whose reputation was made entirely writing science fiction.

And popularity aside, Heinlein is important as a trailblazer. He first came to prominence as one of John Campbell's proteges, of which Heinlein was easily the most important. Then he went and broke out of the pulp ghetto, first through the slicks, then through his series of juveniles --the first true science fiction author to get his novels published in hardcover. He went on to become a bestseller, with several novels as controversial as they were succesful. He absolutely dominated American science fiction for half a century and had a large, loyal fan following.

So a paperback collection of his letters is not that outlandish an idea. Originally Heinlein had planned to bring out a post-humous autobiography himself, prepared from his own archives, which would've been called "Grumbles from the Grave, by Robert A. Heinlein (deceased)", but that never happened. Instead his widow, Virginia Heinlein, used that title for this collection of extracts from Heinlein's professional letters.

It would be naive to have expected this slim volume to contain a complete or truly representative selection of Heinlein's correspondence --the man did have a fifty-odd year career after all. However, the way in which this selection is presented is abysmal. This is not a selection of letters: this is a selection of extracts from letters. A lot of context is lost that way; in many cases too much context. It doesn't help that a number of these extracts are barely a paragraph long. At times Virginia Heinlein des provide background when needed, but not always. For example, there's a letter about some wellknown political ad Heinlein had drawn up in the late fifties ("Who are the true heirs of Patrick Henry?"), but the ad itself is not reproduced...

Another problem is that this book only follows Heinlein's correspondence from 1939 up until 1970; which misses out on perhaps the most controversial period of Heinlein's career, when the books he wrote were all bestsellers yet of a, shall we say, varying quality. Of course, 1970 was the year Heinlein became very ill and almost died, something from which he never fully reocvered, so it is perhaps a natural stopping point anyway.

Finally, I got the distinct impression this selection was the way it was to make Heinlein look good, again perhaps a natural impulse in his widow, especially since it only came out the year after his death...

Even with these flaws, this is still an interesting book. It's no great surprise that Heinlein's voice in these letters does not differ much from that of his narrator-characters. He comes across as competent, knowing, confident of himself to the point of annoyance. As in his fiction, his opinions on anything, writing, politics, gardening, come across as Truth from On High and, as in his fiction, it doesn't grate the way it would in others.

This is not the serious critical selection of letters Heinlein deserves to get at one point, but this would still be interesting to any Heinlein or science fiction fan.