To my great delight my name tag was read and recognized every few minutes all week long-a large percentage of the delegates read science fiction.
SOUTHWEST TRIP
March 9, 1956: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
We are just back from an eight-day swing of Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and Portales, a very enjoyable time which included seeing friends at Sandia Weapons Center, the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission], a rocket society do at White Sands, seeing -- 's new baby, photographing the gypsum sands, a real dust-bowl storm with the sun blacked out and silt up to the fence tops, a visit on a cattle ranch, lecturing at the University of New Mexico, getting stuck in the mud, and encountering quite a bit of sunshine and warm weather after a very hard winter. I am now trying to clear my desk.
USSR
August 15, 1960: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Well, I'm home and completely swamped by the volume of work in front of me. I've spent the past four days just trying to get enough stuff put away and thrown away so that I can get at my desk to write. As soon as I finish this letter I will get to work on an attempt to try to revise and extend the Intourist article along the lines you suggested-but, truthfully, trying to write humorously about the USSR won't be easy. Ginny and I laughed ourselves silly time and again, but it was hysterical laughter; there is not much that is really funny about the place.
EDITOR'S NOTE Robert wrote two articles about this trip; they can be found in Expanded Universe.
ALMA
May 15, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
We went to Alma, Oklahoma, on April 29th, using a chartered airplane and getting it all done in one day. "The Sequoyah Book Award" turns out to be a handsome plaque. I addressed the State Library Association and they had a book-signing afterwards-and durn if they hadn't sold almost two hundred copies of Have Space Suit-Will Travel.
Scribner's offered to pay for the trip, but I preferred not to be under obligations to them while there is such continuous pressure on me to quit Putnam's and go back to Scribner's. Anyhow, it cost less than two roundtrip commercial tickets and considerably less than it would have cost to drive it-and it's deductible. Anyhow, arriving by private plane added to the show.
SAN DIEGO
July 12, 1962: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
My short trip to San Diego and to sea was terrific. A day under the sea in the submarine Raton, spent with destroyers hunting us and trying to (simulate) depth bombing-which they do with grenades, which make a terrible racket but, at most, break a light bulb-then we flew aboard the carrier Lexington, spent the night watching night operations, then day operations the next day, then flew back to Colorado Springs-elapsed time C.S. to C.S. fifty-four hours and almost no sleep. The night landings were made by supersonic fighters, Demons (F3H), and it was the most exciting-and the noisiest-thing I've ever seen. She's an angle-deck carrier and landings and catapulting go on simultaneously, one of each about every thirty seconds-and they hit at about 130 miles per hour and roar away if they miss the wire.
Besides that, I was recognized repeatedly, which boosts my morale. The icing on the cake was a birthday party in the air for me on the way home. Much fun!
LAS VEGAS AGAIN
September 30, 1962: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I've got to bathe, shave, dress, and run-the Houston trip was fast and frantic; the Las Vegas trip was long and delightful. Ginny hit several nickel jackpots, I did not gamble at all but saw all the shows...The space and aircraft exhibits were magnificent, there were many fine parties and three open bars, and a fine firepower show -- bombing, Thunderbirds, refueling in the air, the new planes, and a joint AF and Army Strike demonstration. And we saw many old friends. The Folies Bergere was : as always, and the Lido de Paris show better and more lavish than ever.
ANTARCTICA
December 28, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I think I told you by phone that Popular Mechanics wants me to do another article, or several. Since then we have tentatively agreed on a subject for the next one: the research going on at the South Pole. I had in mind going there next year, but Stimson's last letter spoke in terms of right away. Since summer has just started at the South Pole this is reasonable-save that I am up to my ears in this Hollywood deal with Screen Gems. The trip need not take long-ten days or two weeks -- but if I am to go at all this [Southern Hemisphere] summer, it must be in the next few weeks, with conflict most probable with the Screen Gems deal...
If it does work out that I go now instead of about a year from now (anytime after Labor Day 1964, that is), this would solve the problem of what to use for a Boys'
Life seriaclass="underline" Lay it at the South Pole and make it a mixture of science and adventure. And that would also solve the problem of my next juvenile for Putnam's-three novellas totaling about 50,000 words, Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon, Tenderfoot on Venus, and Polar Scout. [Put-nam] has written me, twisting my arm a little to turn out another juvenile; this would satisfy [Putnam] for the '65 spring list, I think. If you see fit, you might ask Boys' Life if they would like a serial about Antarctica, one written from personal observation.
I should add that I told Popular Mechanics that, having given them a first article, I reserved the right to do other articles and fiction based on the trip. They want to pay only what they paid before...I could hitchhike the entire trip on military "space available," but I am more likely to go commercially to Auckland. But I can show a nice profit by writing other things on the same material.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This trip did not come off, but we did travel to Antarctica in 1983.
CARIBBEAN
December 11, 1964: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
All the various checks sent registered in two mailings arrived, of course, and Ginny is again complaining that it is backing up on her. It is her own fault; spending is her province and she returned from this last trip with more than a thousand in cash-she didn't even really try. Her largest purchase was three "pans" (or drums) for a steel band, purchased in Trinidad, and they weren't expensive; they were simply hard to get home-one medium-sized, eighteenth-century brass cannon purchased in New Orleans (so now we are in business for ourselves). The cannon helped a little -- $275 -- but when a guide offered to have a jewelry shop opened for her on a Sunday in Caracas she turned him down. We simply
The 18th Century Brass Cannon was the inspiration for the original title of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. will have to buy some more stock after we pay the income tax; she has lost her touch.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the trip was visiting a Bush Negro village far up in the jungle in Suriname, formerly Dutch Guiana-descendants of escaped slaves who continue to live Congo-style deep in the rainforest, up a side river by launch. My principal reaction was that bare breasts aren't necessarily sexy; the Zulus are much better equipped in that region. We also visited an Amerindian settlement-the Indians were polite and dirty, the Negroes were pushy and very clean. As for other matters-well, a flying fish with a 12-inch fin wingspread flew into the lounge one evening through a port dogged open only 4 inches without damaging the fin wings. I couldn't ask him how he did it; the landing killed him. We got a royal tour of the Boeing plant in Louisiana (guests of the chief engineer and chief counsel), and I beg to report that the Saturn is the most monstrous big brute imaginable and I do not believe that the Russians can do things on the scale of our Apollo project. I do believe we will have a man on the moon this decade; progress looks good. Ginny visited a Negro whorehouse in Jamaica, and behaved with such aplomb and savoir faire that one would think she had spent her whole life in one. We arrived in Denver late at night to find our flight did not run that day, so I chartered a 2-engine Aero-Commander and we landed in a snowstorm in Colo. Spgs. by GCA. I watched it from the co-pilot's seat-much like a carrier landing. The ground is covered with white stuff but it is good to be home.