Grumbles From the Grave

CHAPTER VIII

FAN MAIL AND OTHER TIME WASTERS

March 13, 1947: Robert A. Heinlein to Saturday Evening Post

"Green Hills of Earth" has brought me in such a flood of mail that it has almost ruined me as a writer-I don't have time to write. None of it appears to be from crackpots; about half of it comes from technical men. All of it shows that the United States is still made up of believers and hopers, for they echo the brave words I heard last summer, while standing in the shadow of a V-2 rocket: " -- anything we want to do if we want to do it badly enough."

March 17, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

...The rest of my time has been taken up playing scrabble (Ginny wins about 60-40: she has a better vocabulary than I have) and the endless load of correspondence. I've got about a dozen letters on hand from high school and college kids, asking me to help them on term papers-in recent years teachers all over the country have been giving kids assignments which result in me (and, I'm sure, many other writers) receiving letters accompanied by long lists of questions...which they want answered last Wednesday...and each letter, properly answered, takes a couple of hours of time. Hell, one college boy even phoned me from West Virginia, wanted to read me the questions over the phone and have me answer them airmail special-otherwise he was going to flunk his English course. This was while I was working sixteen hours a day to cut that ms. for Putnam's, so I told him to go right ahead and flunk his course because I was not going to stop work against a deadline to meet a commitment I had not assumed.

March 9, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

...I am clearing my desk of mail (pounds of fan mail and I'm tempted to burn it! -- they all want quick answers, and only one in fifty encloses a stamped and addressed reply envelope) -- and when I have that out of the way I will cut this new book, Grand Slam [Farnham's Freehold} or whatever we call it, and try to be free about April Fool's Day.

February 4, 1969: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

(Speaking of the time burned up by overhead work such as that-poor Ginny! Fan mail has gotten utterly out of hand, and about a month ago, in a frantic attempt to get back to writing ms., I dumped it all on her. This morning in came about the 500th letter from still another young man who had read Stranger and wanted to discuss his soul with me. He had been "meditating" and taking courses in "sensativity" (sic). So I passed it over to Ginny, my surrogate chela in the guru business. She read it, looked tired, and said wistfully, "You know, I wish I had all the time to meditate that these kids seem to have.")

June 4, 1969: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

What would be your opinion if I simply stopped answering mail from strangers?

I ask because the fan mail situation has gotten out of hand. In the past five years the volume has tripled, or more. Unless I keep it answered each day, the accumulation gets out of hand and it takes me forever to catch up. Yet I cannot answer it daily-even if I were never to write another story, there are still interruptions: trips out of town, houseguests, illnesses, etc.

This may seem trivial; it is not-unsolicited letters from strangers, fan mail plus endless requests for me to go here, speak there, donate mss., advise a beginning writer, these things add up to the major reason why I have not been able to turn out any pay copy in the period since we finished building. Secretarial help does not seem to be the answer. I can't use a full-time secretary and I have never been able to find a satisfactory moonlighter-tried again just this past month and thought I had one, an ex-Navy yeoman. Result: It cost two dollars per letter in wages with the answers to those letters limited to postcards in most cases and never longer than one sheet of the small-size notepaper, plus postage and. materials -- and did not save me one minute of time. In fact, it took more of my time than it would had I simply answered them myself.

Form letters won't serve; there is simply too much variety in the incoming mail-I must either draft or dictate each answer. Either Ginny or I must write the answers. Ginny has offered to do all of it (and frequently has coped with a logjam). But I don't want Ginny to do it as it is not fair to her to tie her to a typewriter when she wants and needs to spend every possible minute on landscaping this place (and I want her to landscape-no point in having a lovely place if it is allowed to look moth-eaten). Besides, she cooks, cleans, does all the shopping, and does the not-inconsiderable record keeping and tax work and bill paying and money handling.

So it is either do it myself-or quit answering mail from strangers.

I have been thinking about the following expedient: A form printed on a U.S. postal card reading something like this -- "Thank you for your letter, which Mr. Heinlein has read and appreciated. We have no secretary and the volume of mail makes it impossible for me to answer each letter as it deserves. If your letter requires an answer other than this acknowledgment, please send a stamped and self-addressed envelope and refer to file number...In the meantime your letter will be held for thirty days in the pending file.

' 'We regret having to use this expedient, but the alternative is for Mr. Heinlein to give up writing stories in favor of answering letters.

"Sincerely,

"Virginia Heinlein

"(Mrs. Robert A. Heinlein)."

The above, with the surplus words sweated out of it and printed in smaller type, would go on a postcard-and each letter could be acknowledged each day simply by cutting the address off the letter and scotch-taping it to a card. Plus using one of those automatic serial-number stampers.

But it strikes me as an almost certain way to lose friends and antagonize people. Despite the fact that well over half the letters contain the phrase " -- while I know you are a very busy man -- " the truth is that each writer-reader is so important in his own eyes that he feels sure that his letter is so different, so interesting, so important, that I will happily stop whatever I am doing and answer his letter in full. When he gets one of these printed forms, his reaction will be: "Why, that snotty son of a bitch!"

So what do you think I should do? Quit answering at all? Use this printed acknowledgment? Keep on trying to answer them all? Or some other course I haven't thought of?

June 13, 1969: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Thank you for your long and thoughtful comments about fan mail. I am glad to have your confirmation that the printed postcard method is a bad idea; I will not use it. But I am much afraid that there is no solution to the problem short of not answering it at all.

In the first place I am not "too conscientious" about it as I do not spend a couple of pages in answering silly questions; Ginny and I have long since cut it to the bone -- the normal answer is done on a postcard. If an enclosure is required (such as a list of my books, the commonest enclosure request), we use the smallest note paper. True,

I used to write careful answers to intelligent letters-but we gave that up over five years back; we had to.

Let's assume I could get a college student to answer letters satisfactorily at a dollar a letter (I can't, but let's stipulate it for the moment). That would still cost me a couple of thousand dollars a year-which I think is too much to pay for the questionable privilege of unsolicited mail from strangers. Most of my fan mail does not go through your office; the bulk of it is forwarded from publishers directly or has been addressed to Colorado Springs and forwarded from there (as every public library in die country has that C.S. address). Plus quite a chunk that is addressed to Santa Cruz. It adds up-it usually takes about a half hour each day just to read the fan mail. I can answer it usually, faster than I can read it, if a postcard will suffice. But Ginny is the only other person who can answer it quickly, as she is the only one sophisticated enough in what to answer and what to ignore to be able to do it.

But I do have to read it. Several times, when Ginny and I were especially busy, we have let what appeared to be fan mail pile up unread-and this is a mistake as again and again there has turned out to be one or more actual business letters buried in the fan mail simply because the external appearance (one or two forwardings, with nothing in the return address to tip me) led me to assume that it was fan mail.

As near as I can find out from inquiries made to other colleagues, I get far more mail than any of my colleagues-for none of the others seems to find fan mail any problem. (I recall a plaint published by James Blish asking readers to please write to him-he needed feedback!)

This morning at breakfast we were reading the mail, which included your nice letter-and Ginny sez to me: "Send this one back to L. and let him see how difficult the stuff is to answer." Well, I'm not sending it back but it was from a man and wife in New York who wanted to come out here on his vacation to talk with me. I must turn it down as man who travels a long distance to talk is affronted (reasonably? unreasonably? -- either way, his feelings are hurt) if asked to leave in twenty minutes. What he asked for was an "afternoon or evening" -- and what he will expect is a full day and late that night. I know, it has happened too many times. For this sort of letter is not at all uncommon; I got one from two students at Oxford University, England, earlier this spring, who wanted to come here this summer and stay an indefinite time; I got one from six students at Temple University who wanted to drive here on their Christmas vacation, camp on the beach, and see me every day. And we told you about the young man from Arizona who drove first to C.S., then here just last week...sweet-talked his way past Ginny, then stayed until I chucked him out four hours later. Plus many others. So now we turn down all requests to come see us...but such turn-downs must be gentle.

...Surely, I could load all the answering onto Ginny; she would hold still for it. But as long as we aren't missing meals I see no reason why she should give up what she wants to do for this purpose-she's carrying her full load anyhow...

November 20, 1970: Virginia Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Yes, sir. We will be careful with graduate students. We answer all letters except those which go into the "screwball" file, the ones from people who are more or less obviously crazy.

EDITOR 's NOTE: We went over to the use of form letters, a checkoff list. There were several different form letters. But I found myself adding handwritten P. S. 's to make them more personal, which consumed even more time. Arthur Clarke was shocked when we told him we were using form letters, but not too much later, he was using them, too.

EDITOR 's NOTE: Lurton saw little of the fan mail, but occasionally a letter arrived addressed to him. In this case, he saw some merit, more than usual, in a letter from a graduate student in English. So he counseled caution in dealing with those.

There is no copy extant of the checkoff letters, but when letters were answered on computers, here is how they ran:

An ever-increasing flood of mail has forced Mr. Heinlein to choose between writing letters and writing fiction. I have taken over for him, but he reads each letter sent to him and checks the answer.

Four or five requests come in each week for help in class assignments, term papers, theses, or dissertations. We can't cope with so many and have quit trying.

Sincerely,

Virginia Heinlein

[Mrs. Robert A. Heinlein]

Even since Robert's death, fan mail still comes in asking me to answer questions about his work.

TIME WASTERS

November 3, 1951: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

...In addition to the above, I've let myself be roped into going to Denver to speak to the Colorado Authors' League. I find myself in a running fight to keep my time from being nibbled away by such secondary activities. I avoid such things as much as possible, but too often I get backed into a corner.

January 27, 1952: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I have been asked to be a guest speaker on Edward R. Murrow's CBS program, "This I Believe." I'm flattered but am thinking of turning it down; I don't relish getting on a national hookup and doing an emotional striptease. Furthermore, such things take me away from my regular work by distracting my mind, sometimes for days, from story. No mention was made of a fee and I think it's a sustaining program with the guest speakers appearing just for glory. I mention this because you may think the "glory" important enough that I should do it anyhow. I won't give them an answer until I hear from you.

August 21, 1952: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

...This entire year of '521 have found frustrating. Today I tried to figure out exactly where the time had gone, since I have no copy to show for it. I can account for every day and don't see how, in most cases, I could have done anything about it, but that fact writes no stories. Believe me, Lurton, I have not loafed this year, but my time has been eaten away...operation, convalescence...cutting Rolling Stones, skating nationals, mechanics in the house three times wasting a month and a half, two unpaid writing jobs, two unpaid radio appearances, some unpaid speaking engagements, Arthur C. Clarke-one week, the George O. Smiths-two weeks, other houseguests totaling perhaps a week, shopping for a new automobile...death of a close friend-one week, two weddings where I was involved and could not refuse my time without being a heel, innumerable visits from readers who were polite enough to write and ask to see me, a novel started and aborted, same for a short, the damned telephone ringing and ringing and ringing and myself the only person in the house...and finally a trip to Yellowstone and the Utah parks. That last I could have skipped but Ginny deserved a rest and I needed one, even if I hadn't been accomplishing anything. All of the above adds up to about time enough to answer mail and read proofs. Some of these things you may feel I could have avoided-well, close up to them, they could not have been avoided. The telephone situation we have finally licked by putting a bell in the garage where

I can't hear it and a cutoff switch in the house, thereby evading the company's rules.

Most of my troubles seem to arise from the difficulty I have in refusing to give my time to other people. Should I refuse to entertain the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society? Can I refuse to see a classmate who shows up in town with an engineer from my hometown in tow? A physicist from Johns Hopkins who is a fan of mine shows up and wants to meet me-can I refuse? Same for an air force intelligence officer who writes politely? Or the head of the Flying Saucer project? Today I was invited to address the southwest division of the Rocket Society and attend a night firing of a V-2 rocket-that one I turned down as it involved flying to White Sands -- but it was a highly desirable date and one that I would have kept had I had the time. I don't know the answer but I am beginning to see why so many writers hire hotel rooms-I am entirely too well known for comfort. Anyhow, I am about to try another story.

September 4, 1952: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Now, about writing time: since the war it has been one damn thing after another, poor health, domestic trouble, housebuilding, et al. I hope that the future will be quieter. If not, I will simply do the best I can under the circumstances. Getting an office away from the house is not a solution I want at "all-I've just finished a house with an office built into it. One minor new circumstance should be a help-we finally have a cutoif switch for the telephone, after long wrangling with the phone company.

I wrote to you as extensively as I did simply to let you know that my lack of output this year has not been through laziness but through complications. One problem I have not yet found a satisfactory solution to is the demand on my time resulting from becoming better known. I answer all fan mail and it comes in stacks. That is almost necessary, isn't it? I limit the answers to postcards but it takes time. There are frequent requests for me to speak in public-one only last night. I have adopted a policy of refusing such invitations if possible-but what do I do when the Colorado Librarians' Association asks me?...Perhaps the greatest time waster is the person who reads my stuff, is coming to Colorado Springs, and wants to call on me-and an amazing number of them manage to find their way to Colorado Springs, remote as this place is. If they simply walk in on me I won't see them...But if they write or telephone and are courteous, I find it hard to give them a cold brush-off. I see no good answer to this problem, but will have to handle it by expediency as I go along.

...This is probably the very last of the V-2s and it will be one of the very few unclassified firings for a long time. There is nothing like watching one of the big ones climb for outer space-it will make a believer out of you, I warrant. I do not regard a trip to White Sands as lost time for me; it comes under the same head as research. Since I write about rockets, I need to know what they sound like, talk to rocket men. Besides that, I will have an opportunity to meet Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered the planet Pluto and, perhaps, to see the canals of Mars through his telescope...This is almost a once-in-a-lifetime thing, as perfect seeing, the right telescope, and the right technique are a rare combination.

January 6, 1953: Lurton Blassingame to Robert A. Heinlein

The script for the "This I Believe" program just checked in. It is certainly splendid, the best I have come in contact with. I have been especially interested in this program because one of my boys [clients], Ed Morgan, has been associated with it since the beginning. I do think this material of yours was excellent, and I am very proud of you.

THIS I BELIEVE

I am not going to talk about religious beliefs but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them. I believe in my neighbors. I know their faults, and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults.

Take Father Michael down our road a piece. I'm not of his creed, but I know that goodness and charity and lovingkindness shine in his daily actions. I believe in Father Mike. If I'm in trouble, I'll go to him.

My next-door neighbor is a veterinary doctor. Doc will get out of bed after a hard day to help a stray cat. No fee-no prospect of a fee-I believe in Doc.

I believe in my townspeople. You can knock on any door in our town saying, "I'm hungry," and you will be fed. Our town is no exception. I've found the same ready charity everywhere. But for the one who says, "To heck with you-I got mine," there are a hundred, a thousand who will say, "Sure, pal, sit down."

I know that despite all warnings against hitchhikers I can step to the highway, thumb for a ride, and in a few minutes a car or a truck will stop and someone will say, "Climb in, Mac-how far you going?"

I believe in my fellow citizens. Our headlines are splashed with crime, yet for every criminal there are 10,000 honest, decent, kindly men. If it were not so, no child would live to grow up. Business could not go on from day to day. Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but it is a force stronger than crime. I believe in the patient gallantry of nurses and the tedious sacrifices of teachers. I believe in the unseen and unending fight against desperate odds that goes on quietly in almost every home in the land.

I believe in the honest craft of workmen. Take a look around you. There never were enough bosses to check up on all that work. From Independence Hall to the Grand Coulee Dam, these things were built level and square by craftsmen who were honest in their bones.

I believe that almost all politicians are honest...there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true we would never have gotten past the thirteen colonies.

I believe in Rodger Young. You and I are free today because of endless unnamed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River. I believe in-I am proud to belong to-the United States. Despite shortcomings from lynchings to bad faith in high places, our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history.

And finally, I believe in my whole race. Yellow, white, black, red, brown. In the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability, and goodness of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth. That we always make it just by the skin of our teeth, but that we will always make it. Survive. Endure. I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure. Will endure longer than his home planet-will spread out to the stars and beyond, carrying with him his honesty and insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage and his noble essential decency.

This I believe with all my heart.

June 6, 1962: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

No other news save that the Silly Season has opened and we have many visitors; this will continue until fall. One of my plebes showed up this week-an admiral now and chief of research, a job I would like to have had (and might have achieved) if I hadn't gotten TB a long time ago. However, all in all, I like being a writer and don't really miss not being an admiral. (Dan Gallery managed to be both, but he is exceptional!)

August 10, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

We have been badly slowed down, too, by visitors, a steady flood of them all summer long, friends, relatives, and readers, plus some of the organized science fiction fans-and none of them invited, not even the relatives nor any of the friends...This place being a resort, people simply pour through here in the summer and if I shut off the phone, they ring the doorbell. I don't ever intend to try to write a story in Colorado Springs again between June 1st and September 1st; it is too much like trying to write directly under a busy three-holer. Even if my relatives had stayed home (and, damn it, they all traveled this year), friends, acquaintances, and strangers were enough to keep us in a hooraw. Had I not been interrupted so many, many times by visitors, the work I was doing would have been farther along and the flood damage would not have been nearly so severe.

May 6, 1964: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

The letter you received from Kenneth Green (and so kindly answered) is much more typical of fan mail-pleasant but with the same old phrases over and over again, and I get as tired of answering them as an old whore gets of climbing those stairs. I'll drop young Green a card in this mail, however; I always answer them, all but the crackpot ones.

But I have instituted a New Public Relations Policy-one which makes me almost as hard-to-get as the mysterious Mr. B. Traven. Some years ago you sent to me a clipping of Art Buchwald's column with a long quotation from Thornton Wilder in which Wilder declared such a policy, one in which he resolved not to let strangers waste his time, not in any fashion. I have kept that clipping up over my typewriter ever since you sent it to me-but I have not emulated it very well.

But I am pushing sixty now myself and it gets harder and harder each year to turn out a decent amount of copy-largely because total strangers want such large chunks of my time. I am darn well going to quit it! In fact, I have quit it. The only concession I am making is that I will continue to answer politely worded fan mail-but only by postcards...and usually picture postcards which have no return address and room only for a sentence or two. Even that response costs me a dime for materials and postage, plus (much more important) about fifty cents' worth of my working, professional time that should be put on story-writing.

Someday I may be so browned off and bored with it that I will answer only such letters as are accompanied by stamped and self-addressed envelopes (about one in twenty). I was taught in school always to enclose such in writing to a stranger; my present mail shows that most teachers do not teach this courtesy today, as a lot of my mail starts out: "Dear Mr. Heinlein, Our English class is writing to their favorite author -- " but a reply envelope rarely is enclosed, although the letter usually demands a reply and asks endless questions-often with a deadline stated.

Mr. Wilder says, in that clipping you sent me: "I hereby serve notice on the school children of America...that I am going to dump all their letters -- " I'm not going to go quite that far just yet, Lurton-but I am now ignoring all requests for pictures and for anything which requires me to stir out of my chair to answer-or which requires me to use an envelope rather than a postcard when said envelope has not been supplied by the petitioner.

No doubt this will lose me a certain amount of good will. But it will greatly increase my working time-on pay copy-and the problem had grown way out of hand. To supplement this greatly reduced program on fan mail I am resolved not to do anything I don't want to do. No more public speeches, not even for librarians. No more interviews given to school kids-other than by telephone. No more "Library Week" appearances. No more breaking off my work (whether writing or mixing cement) to visit with strangers who "just happened to be passing through town and have always wanted to meet" me -- unless it suits me and they manage to make themselves sound interesting enough to warrant the time. No more messing around with books I don't want to read sent to me, unsolicited, in the mails-and this includes books sent to me by Putnam and its associated companies, as the promotion department seems to feel that any Putnam-published writer should be willing at any time to act as an unpaid reviewer and source of trained-seal favorable testimonials. (They put out a lot of good books, but they never send me those books; they send me little stinkers that should never have been published.)

No more acknowledgments of fan magazines sent to me-it simply results in more of them and requests for free copy.

In short, no more of anything unless it durn well suits me and adds to my own pleasure in life. More and more, over the years, strangers have been nibbling away at my time. It has reached the point where, if I would let them, all of my working time would be wasted on the demands of strangers. So I am lowering the boom on all of it -- and if this makes me a rude son of a bitch, so be it. My present life expectancy is seventeen years; I'm damned if I will spend it answering silly questions about ' 'Where do you get your ideas?" and "Why did you take up the writing of science fiction?" several thousand or more times. I hereby declare that an author has no responsibility of any sort to the public...other than the responsibility to write stories as well as he knows how.

If I can stick to this, I should get in quite a lot more writing, and quite a lot more healthy work with pick and shovel and trowel-and a judicious mixture of these two may enable me to stretch that life expectancy quite a bit. But I 'm not going to let those remaining years be nibbled away and wasted by the trivia that some thousands of faceless strangers seem to feel is their right to demand from anyone in a semipublic occupation.

July 10, 1967: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Herewith is a curious letter from an instructor, -- , at the U. of Oregon. I was about to tell him that I could not stop him, but not to let me see the result-but I decided that I had better let you see this and get your advice and/or veto. If Mr. -- does this adaptation "just for fun," as he proposes, I suspect that he will then fall in love with his own efforts and get very itchy to produce it. Which could be embarrassing. Lurton, even though "Green Hills" is a short, I think it has possibilities -- someday-as a musical motion picture. So I am hesitant to authorize anything which might cloud the MP or stage rights. What shall I tell him? Or do you prefer to write to him? (I'm not urging you to-not trying to shove it on you. But I do want your advice.)

October 12, 1967: Margo Fischer (secretary to) Lurton Blassingame to Robert A. Heinlein

A drunk began calling at 3:15 insisting on Heinlein's phone number...After telling him at least seven times that he would have to write a letter which would be forwarded airmail, he became sarcastic and went on and on. After 15 minutes I told him I was hanging up, and I did. He was incoherent and it was impossible to tell him he had to write a letter. He said he would wire. He wanted to know about " -- We Also Walk Dogs." I told him it was in an anthology published by World. He'll probably call you and be abusive about me. Over and over he kept saying, "Mam, Mam" -- long silence, then he'd say, "It's a hard world." Silence. Then, "We should all be courteous to one another." Etc.

February 28, 1968: Margo Fischer to Robert A. Heinlein

Here's a little ego boo for you.

The telephone just rang. A voice said, "I was told I could get some information from you. About one of your clients. About Robert Heinlein." Cagey Margo. "Who is this?" "I'm nobody-that is, nobody in the business," he said. "Just a Heinlein fan." Me again -- "Well, what did you want to know?" .

He wanted to know when Heinlein was going to have another book. "He hasn't written anything for some time," was the complaint. "I have two favorite authors. Michener and Heinlein. Michener just came out with one and I was hoping I could make it a double red-letter day."

Then he added, "Heinlein is the one bright spot in this whole fantasy-science-fiction world." A pause. "Moon is the last one he's written, right?" Then I said, "Have you read Stranger1?" Answer: "Four times." Finally, ' 'Just one more thing-how long does it usually take him to write a book?"

HOW CAN YOU DEPRIVE YOUR FANS A MINUTE LONGER, BOB?