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1. Heinlein's Second Period 

    Itisn't at all difficultto justify calling Heinlein's second period his Period of Success. The period begins with his return to writing after the war and ends, asdid his first period, with one of his better stories, in this case thejuvenile novelHave Space Suit--Will Travel,published in 1958. These years were both economically and artistically successful forHeinlein. Of Heinlein's best stories, two, "Waldo" andBeyond This Horizon,belong to his first period, and five,Red Planet, Starman Jones, The Star Beast, Citizen of the Galaxy,andHave Space Suit--Will Travel,belongto his second.  Moreover, during this second period, Heinlein wasin solid control of his writing tools and nearly everything he did wasfirst rate.  It is only in his third period that his writing mannerismshave gotten out of control and some of his ideas have begun to seemcompulsive: the equivalent perhaps of stiffening joints. 
    Allfive of the novelsthat I have named as being the best of Heinlein's second period are juveniles,or at least were published in book form as juveniles.  Three of thefive were published in adult magazines as adult novels prior to their bookappearances.  This leads to a very interesting question:  isHeinlein's second period his strongest because the juveniles that he wasdoing then allowed him the opportunity to show off all that was best inhis writing, or are these novels so uniformly good because they happenedto be written at the time that Heinlein was at the height of his writingpowers?  I have no firm answer for this.  It may not be answerableat all, any more than any other chicken-and-egg question.  Nonetheless,I can't help but find it intriguing.  It is possible, of course, thatmy estimate of these novels is completely mistaken, but we shall see aboutthis when we come to examine the individual stories.  In any case,since the period is bounded on one end by Heinlein's first juvenile forScribner's and on the other by his last, you may, if you wish, call ithis Scribner's Period. 
    During this middle period, Heinlein switched froman emphasis on short stories to an emphasis on novels.  Until 1947,he had had no books published.  He had sold twenty-eight science fictionand fantasy stories, one quarter of which might be called novels. The emphasis was clearly on short fiction.  In his second period,Heinlein published twenty-two short stories and fifteen new novels, butsixteen of the short stories were published by 1950 and eleven of the novelswere published after 1950, a distinct change in emphasis.  The changehas been even more marked in his third period which, through 1967, hasseen six novels and only three short stories. 

    Ofall the science fiction magazines,Analogaverages the best payment, between three and fourcents a word.  If you consider $10,000 a year a good living, you canset up a neat little equation:

2. 1947 

     Heinlein'sfirst post-warstory was "The Green Hills of Earth" in the February 8, 1947 issue of theSaturday Evening Post. It is a very pretty, sentimental narrative. Rhysling, an atomic power plant "jetman" on the early spaceships, has beenblinded by a defective jet.  He then spends twenty years bumming aroundthe Solar System making up songs.  Finally, on a trip to Earth anotherjet goes haywire, the regular jetman is killed and Rhysling takes over,mends the trouble, records one last version of his most famous song, anddies from exposure to radiation. 
    The story begins, "This is the story of Rhysling,the Blind Singer of the Spaceways -- but not the official version." I don't know why it couldn't be the official version.  There are admissionsthat Rhysling drank, wore a dirty eyepatch, and made up filthy songs fromtime to time, but these strike me as the sort of failings that are madeto order for the official version of a life.  Very romantic. 
    "SpaceJockey" was in the April 26Post. This one is about a pilot who is having troubleswith his wife because his job, piloting between the Earth satellite, Supra-NewYork, and a Lunar satellite, takes him away from home too much.  Atthe end he has a new job piloting between the Lunar satellite and the Moon,and his wife will be seeing much more of him. 
    This is much more detailed than "The Green Hillsof Earth" and much more prosaic.  Both these stories are typical ofthe new approach Heinlein adopted for his slick stories.  He inventedsimple problems and handled them very straightforwardly, perhaps the onlyapproach that would have been effective for the slick magazines. Both these stories are primarily human stories rather than stories of process,and that too was something new for Heinlein, and again probably necessaryfor his new market. 
    "ColumbusWas a Dope" may have been intended for thePost,too -- it does have a verysimple story line.  Or it may have been an older Heinlein story leftover from before the war.  In any case, it was published inStartling Storiesin May, the last story to appear under the name of Lyle Monroe,and the only Heinlein science fiction story to appear under a pseudonymafter 1942.  It is not a people story -- it is a short, simple, beautifulgimmick.  A good gimmick story is probably the easiest kind of storyto sell and the kind most likely to be reprinted.  It is also theshallowest and most easily forgotten. 
    The story itself is a bar conversation among twosalesmen, the bartender, and the chief engineer of the first starship,now under construction.  One of the salesmen doesn't see any pointin sixty-year trips, particularly ones that are unlikely to succeed. They are unnatural.  At the end, the conversation turns out to betaking place in a bar on the Moon.  Simple, short, and effective. 
    "It'sGreat to Be Back" was in thePostin the July 26 issue, and is another people story. When their contracts are up, a young man and his wife quit their highlypaid jobs on the Moon and with a sigh of relief head back to Earth again. They find, however, that Earth isn't quite the paradise they remember --they have changed, they no longer fit.  At the end they are headedback to the Moon where they really do belong. 
    While it is true that much of what we think of as"human nature" is really a result of our own culture, I do believe thatin some regards people are much the same everywhere.  A story likethis that asks the question, "Where is home?" is going to be intelligibleto almost every man. This is a good and valid story. 

    Iknow of four good storiesthat ask the question, "What is a man?"  One is "Conditionally Human"byWalter M. Miller, Jr.*  One is H. Beam Piper's set of two novels,Little FuzzyandThe Other Human Race,reallyforming one long story and probably Piper's best work.  A third isVercors'You Shall Know Them. Heinlein is the author of theearliest of the four, a story called "Jerry Is a Man" that appeared inThrilling Wonder Storiesin October 1947. 
    In a future in which genetic manipulation of animalsis a commonplace, a woman with a soft heart and an extremely large bankaccount gets an affection for a "neo-chimpanzee" worker named Jerry whohas cataracts and consequently is scheduled to be turned into dog food. Jerry can't think very deeply, but he can talk, shoot craps, enjoy television,and sing off-key.  The question of whether he is a man or not is finallytested in the courts, and to help us decide the question we are presentedfor contrast with a very intelligent and unpleasant Martian geneticistwho has been acknowledged by treaty to be a "man."  The answer isgiven clearly that Jerry is a man, indefinable as the thing may be. 
    It is interesting, by the way, that of the fourstories on the question of humanity, three find their resolution in thecourts.  If such a court test is ever made, I suspect that the answerwill be the same positive one that Heinlein, Piper, and Vercors arrivedat, simply because to include us all, any definition of humanityhastobe a broad one. 
    "Jerry Is a Man" is hardly long enough or deep enoughto allow us to extract any final answers from it.  For instance, ifJerry is a man, why isn't Nappy, the miniature elephant in the story whocan read and write, who enjoys music and even beats time to it with histrunk?  The story is, however, an entertaining, honest and serioustreatment of a serious subject. 
    Bythis point, Heinleinwas fully in control of the human problem story, starting from the comparativelow point of "The Green Hills of Earth."  Look again at "Jerry Isa Man."  That is a process story. The author's original question is"What is a man?"  The story concerns the settling of this question. The people in the story are interesting to look at, but they aren't whatthe story is about.  Human problem stories are attacked from anotherangle.  They consist of taking a person who has certain characteristicsand putting him into a situation at odds with his nature, then observingwhat happens. 
    "WaterIs For Washing" (Argosy,November 1947) is an apt example of a people story. It takes a man who doesn't like water, puts him in the Imperial Valleyin California, and then throws an earthquake and the whole Pacific Oceanat him.  This is science fiction only by courtesy, but it does addup to a readable story. 

    RocketShip Galileoisthe first and least of Heinlein's juveniles for Scribner's.  EitherHeinlein underestimated his audience or was misled by someone who thoughthe knew what juvenile books should be like.  The result is a bookthat I would unhesitatingly give to an eleven-year-old but to no oneolder. 
    Its greatest weakness is its stock parts. There is a scientist who has invented a superior rocket drive -- but nobodywill listen to him.  There are the three young boys who serve as hiscrew on the first trip to the Moon.  There are mysterious prowlers,blackjackers, and saboteurs who lurk in the nighttime.  There arethe left-over Nazis Behind It All and the Nazi base on the Moon. (Luckily, of course, the scientist just happens to have a rifle on boardhis spaceship . . .) 
    You could call 1947 a year of marking time and preparingfor new markets.
 

3. 1948 

    In1948, Heinlein publishedjust three short stories and one novel.  The three short stories areclosely related psychologically.  All three use a science fictionalcontext to put extreme stress on a main character.  The stories differin what the stress causes the characters to learn about themselves. A very influential historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, has argued thatAmerica's strength has lain primarily in the fact that it has had a constantfrontier to serve as both a psychological goal and as a test.  Inthese stories, Heinlein uses a space frontier in much the same way as atesting ground of character. 
    "TheBlack Pits of Luna"(January 10, 1948) was the last and probably the most effective of Heinlein'sSaturday Evening Poststories.  It is quite a simple story:  the spoiledyounger son of a family on the Moon for a business trip wanders off, andhis teen-age older brother, the narrator, eventually finds him in a holeon the Lunar surface when no one else can.  The reaction of the boy'sfamily is to head back where they belong.  The reaction of the narratoris to plan to come back again. 
    "GentlemenBe Seated!" (Argosy,May) is based on an incident from the end of "Space Jockey,"the story about the pilot with wife trouble.  In that story, the sealon a Lunar tunnel is mentioned as having blown.  "Gentlemen, Be Seated!"takes up the plight of some men caught in the leaking tunnel.  Theirproblem is to put a temporary seal on the leak until help reaches them,and they solve the problem by taking turns sitting on the hole.  Thenarrator of this story reacts like the parents in "The Black Pits of Luna"-- his first impulse when rescued is to head back to Des Moines. 
    "Ordealin Space" (Town and Country,May) is a quiet story about a man who has lost his nervein space and come back to Earth -- in effect, it takes up the dropoutsfrom the first two stories.  The man regains his nerve in the processof rescuing a kitten from a thirty-fifth floor ledge, and at the end isprepared to give space another try. 

    Heinlein'ssecond juvenile,SpaceCadet,is markedly better than his first, mainly because its plot isnot nearly so over-simplified. Rocket Ship Galileohad some nicedetails, but these were largely obscured by its goshwow plot. Space Cadet,on the other hand, is far less melodramatic and much more relaxed,and consequently is far more successful. 
    Thestory is about thetraining of a cadet in the "Interplanetary Patrol."  (AsRocket Ship Galileo,in radically different form, was the basis of the movieDestination Moon,so the seeds ofTom Corbettcan be seen inSpace Cadet.)  In this case, Heinlein knows his material particularly well-- the training he writes about is quite clearly an analogue of the traininghe himself received at Annapolis.  There are a number of novels aboutthe U.S. Naval Academy, and any comparison will show the basic similarity. If this transference were all that Heinlein was doing, he might as wellnot have bothered.  James Blish has labeled stories of this sort "calla rabbit a smeerp" and describes the justification as, "They look likerabbits, but if you call them smeerps, that makes itscience fiction."**   However, Heinlein is doing a job of extrapolation,not merely a simple job of reporting.  In other words, there is muchmore than a mere one-to-one correspondence. 
    The course of the story takes the hero, Matt Dodson,through qualification to be a cadet, training, personal doubts, and eventualself-realization, the standard pattern for a story of this sort. What is good about the book are some of the moments along the way. 
    One, very nicely underplayed, has Matt as an advancedcadet doing a minor detail, guiding a bunch of newly-arrived cadets, ascene we saw once before from an opposite point of view when Matt himselfwas newly-arrived.  The difference in perspective is startling, andit is a measure of the distance he has traveled.  The problems thatbothered his earlier self are simply not the problems he has now. It is a compelling little scene and is a good illustration of the centralpoint of the book -- the growing of a boy into a man. 
    Another, near the end of the book, finds Matt andseveral fellow cadets having to straighten out a touchy situation on Venusand get off the planet again with a sick man and a prisoner.  Theirsuccess is important for the way it is received, that is, as being no morethan was expected of them. Nicely done. 

    Iwould like to digresshere for a moment and mention Clifford Geary, the illustrator of eightof Heinlein's novels for Scribner's, beginning withSpace Cadet. Afew of the pictures are ordinary drawings, but the bulk of them are somethingquite unusual and quite striking.  The figures are black, and thebackgrounds and detail are white, instead of just the opposite as in mostpictures.  This is done by what is known as "scratchboard" technique,a process in which a dark medium is laid down on a light-colored surfaceand then blocked out and scraped away to form a picture.  In Geary'shands, the result was quite odd and added an unusual flavor to the bookshe illustrated.  It's hard to say whether they were an ornament ornot, but I rather think they were.