The point being that, while I mailed off yesterday morning the "deathless masterpiece"--or at least I hope coffee and cakes item--which kept me from writing the copy you asked for, now I am faced with another deadline of a slightly different sort; we must leave for the coast the day after tomorrow. I go to work as soon as I get there and will not be able to call my time my own for several weeks. This then may well be my last opportunity to provide the requested copy.

I literally do not have time to organize and write a proper article; I don't see how I can accomplish the thousand loose ends necessary to closing a household and moving beforethe time I must leave, so--I am writing this letter instead. You can print it as is, or you may, if you choose, edit it into a third-person article. You see, as a letter, i know that I can ramble on incoherently for enough pages to fill your copy, whereas an article requires some semblance of literary form. Perhaps your readers will prefer a letter; I usually prefer letters to articles--especially letters with checks in them.

Let's get the vital statistics out of the way:

• Born: 7-7-07 Butler, Missouri, in a country house with no plumbing.
• School: Kansas City public schools, University of Missouri, U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. (graduated 1929), U.C.L.A. Graduate School (physics).
• Served in the fleet: 1929-34, disabled and retired 1934.
• Politics, Silver Mining and Real Estate: 1934-39.
• Started Writing in 1939, stopped when Pearl Harbor came along, started again after V-J day in 1945, and am still at it.
• Married, no Children as yet. My wife is the former Virginia Doris Gerstenfeld, organic chemist and bio-chemist by trade--and superlative kitchen chemist now that she is out of the lab. She is red headed and quite much of an athlete--four letters in college--and could probably lick me in a fair fight, but I never fight fair, so it doesn't matter. She outranks me on the Navy rolls, which seems to give her quite a bit of satisfaction.
• Principle Interests: democracy, civil liberties, fiscal theory, rocketry and space travel, epistemology, semantics, the organization of knowledge, etc.
• Principle Aversions: communists, communism and other forms of fascism; astrology and other ways to be mush-headed; department stores and the large, strong women who apparently live in them; people who express opinions without data; those fans who regard writers as their property; mere gally slaves; censorship; blue laws; people who don't vote, etc.
• Hobbies: seeing the United States; seeing this planet; seeing the rest of this system (slight hitch on the arrangements on that one; the service is poor); figure skating; reading (anything, including the moist paper around garbage); talking and a certain amount of listening--more than my associates will admit; dogs and cats; and, to a lesser extent, anythingalive, including snakes, wasps, bees, spiders and children; the company of women, and again to a lesser extent, the company of men. (We plan to take up square dancing and skiing next winter but these can hardly be classified as hobbies at the moment.)

This being a letter, with no rules, now seems a good time to say that I am much pleased by the format and appearance of The FANSCIENT. Furthermore the contents seem quite superior. I particularly enjoyed the article about Will Jenkins. Will is a wonderful guy; I enjoy reading anything about him or by him. I have learned a lot about writing from him and expect to learn more.

Having said that, I should mention some of the others among my colleagues who have taught me to write. John Campbell, of course--there is an editor who really goes to some trouble to bring out his writers. Hank Kuttner and his talented wife, C.L. Moore, L. Ron Hubbard, Doc Smith, A.E. van Vogt, Jack Williamson, Robert Moore Williams--it would be quite impossible to credit all the writers who have helped me directly; if I were to attempt to list those who have affected my writing through their published works I would have to start with Homer and not stop short of Stanley Weinbaum. Those listed simply popped into my mind as cases where I _know_ of specific ways in which I have copied them or been helped through their graciousness; no slight is intended to anyone else.

You asked about pen names. Let me see--Anson MacDonald, Lyle Monroe, Caleb Saunders, John Riverside, and another one for whodunnits that I defy anyone to figure out. You mentioned publishing a list of my stuff; I don't know just what you have listed but I've appeared in BOYS LIFE, CALLING ALL GIRLS and TOWN AND COUNTRY as well as more likely places--but my most voluminous writing I am sure you won't list at all: aviation engineering reports, all incredibly dull and most of them classified. Sometimes I find myself slipping into the bureaucratese of report writing from sheer reflex.

Still some more white stuff to cover, I see--I got into writing more or less by accident, wrote one story, "Life Line", in response to the stimulation of one of those BIG PRIZE CONTEST ads, then threw it on the open market instead of sending itin to the contest. It sold; I stared at the check and asked myself, "How long has this been going on?" I was hooked; I had at last found a way to cook a wolf without having to get up at an early hour, check into an office, conform my ideas to a boss, or be polite to customers.

So I've been at it ever since, save for the years eaten by the War, and I still think it's the best occupation a person can have short of having selected wealthy grandparents. I have only one real regret; before I discovered this pleasant way to avoid honest work the reading of science-fiction was a principal recreation with me. My present occupation has durn near ruined this harmless pleasure. I am much more critical than I used to be and, when I find some good stuff, I am so busy trying to analyze how he does it that I get something less than maximum pleasure out of it.

Still, writing the stuff is a lot of fun. I have tried writing ordinary fiction and found it not too hard to turn out commecial copy, but no fun. In speculative fiction it is a real pleasure to modify the factors, shift things around a bit, and see what comes out.

But let it be understood that I am a writer by trade, for a living. I would enjoy the luxury of sitting back and reading what others write during working hours; I can't afford it. I have a fairly expensive household to support--and have to buy mink coats for doctor's wives at regular intervals. I write for money.

But, being under the necessity of making money, I have stayed in the occupation which let me make money with a maximum of pleasure in so doing. I like to speculate about shoes and ships and sealing-wax and the shape of the future; It seems a lovely thing to me that people should appear pleased to pay me for what I want to do.

Continued--15 June--I didn't even manage to finish this before leaving Colorado Springs. Dateline is now Hollywood and life is triple-geared. Some Monday I;m going to wake up and find that it's Thursday. I had better get this thing off to you at once; I am rapidly being swallowed up. Today is almost a free day--an appointment with Chesley Bonestell, a trip to the studio, then an appointment with Forry Ackerman.

So far making a space-flight movie is a lot of fun, but very tiring. We long for the bucolic quiet of Colorado. But, I repeat, it's a lot of fun. We are making every effort to insure that this pic is as realistic a portrayal of what space flight will be as we know how to make it. DESTINATION: MOON (Present production title) will not be loused up with phoney love interest, mad scientists, stowaways, chorus lines, or anything else that will detract from a straightforward story of man's conquest of space through technology. If it fails of utter realism, it will be a shortcoming of accomplishment, not of effort and intent. I hope the fans will like it; we are trying to give them what they have often asked for--a straight and undiluted science-fiction picture.

Speaking of fans, one of the real profits from having entered this field has been the fans, both organized and unorganized, I have met through writing. Fandom attracts a raucous minority of twerps--sadly true!--but it also attracts a vast majority of interesting, civilized, gentle people. I have met a lot of such and hope to meet more of them, discuss the shape of the world with them and what can be done to prevent it.

That's thirty for now--this is what comes of not having time to prepare a proper article.

--Robert A. Heinlein The article is followed by an almost complete list of Heinlein's published fiction to that time, including foreign editions of Astounding. There is a final paragraph: Heinlein's entire "future history" series will be published by Shasta Publishers in a set of five uniform volumes under the following titles: "The Man Who Sold the Moon", "The Green Hills of Earth", "If This Goes On", "Methuselah's Children" and "The Endless Frontier".