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OtherRealms Issue 21 Part 10
Electronic OtherRealms #21
Summer, 1988
Part 10
Clifford Simak -- 1904-1988
Robert A. Heinlein -- 1907-1988
Clifford Simak
On April 25, 1988, we lost Clifford Simak. He was 83, An SFWA Grand Master,
winner of the Hugo, the Nebula and the International Fantasy Award. His
best known works were City (1952 IF Award), The Big Front Yard (1959
Hugo), Way Station (1964 Hugo) and Grotto of the Dancing Deer (Hugo and
Nebula, 1981). He is survived by a daughter, a son, and a brother.
I feel guilty about the paucity of appreciations. Simak was well liked and
appreciated by many. A number of comments got lost in the mourning when
Heinlein's death was announced, and I wasn't able to track them down in
time for this issue. I feel sorry that a man to the field and loved by
it's readers is leaving us under the shadow of another. I will carry
appreciations for Simak next issue as well if they are sent to me.
Clifford, you brightened our lives and lightened our hearts. Wherever you
are, our love and our respect go to you. Be happy, and know you are loved.
Robert A. Heinlein
I got the word on May 9th, the day after he died. Life hasn't been the
same since. This isn't an obituary -- I've tried writing one since I
heard the word, and my mind refuses to accept that he's gone.
He's not really gone, you know. Open up one of his books and he's back,
staring over your shoulder, talking, teaching. He sat up with me, many
nights, sharing his life, his love of people, his demands that you
stand up for yourself and not wait for others to do it for you. He
taught me a lot. I like to believe I got at least some of the lessons
right. He was, more than any other writer, my spiritual father,
although we never met.
So no obituary. Anything I do would be a pale imitation to the
good-byes in Locus, and I refuse to let him die. Any time someone tells
me otherwise, I'll just look at the bookcase and smile. I know better.
I'm not alone, either. Never before has a Science Fiction writer been
recognized as widely as Heinlein has. Obituaries in all the newspapers;
in Time, in Newsweek; in the New Republic. NBC Network; NPR. Even Herb
Caen, spiritual guardian of San Francisco, said goodbye.
Not all of these were good obituaries, or accurate, but it is an
indication of how important Heinlein was, not just to us, but to
everyone.
Waldos. Waterbeds. Grok.
How many authors have words in the dictionary?
How many authors can look at major technological advances and say
"That's mine!"
Starship Troopers. Time Enough for Love. Have Spacesuit Will Travel. I
will Fear no Evil. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Friday. The Roads Must
Roll. The Man Who Traveled in Elephants. To Sail Beyond the Sunset.
No, he's not dead. He's right in the other room, and down the street,
and across town and in the libraries and towns and minds across the
country. Open up a book, and you'll see.
Appreciations
Tom Galloway
Last July I did something stupid.
I was going back to LA from Westercon in Oakland. I would be moving to
Switzerland soon, and since I'd never done it, I decided to take the
Pacific Coast Highway back along the coast. And this took me through
Santa Cruz.
I knew about the Heinlein collection at UCSC, so I called and set up an
appointment to look at it. For someone like me, for whom Robert
Heinlein is one my two favorite authors, it's interesting. I got to
read a couple of stories that hadn't been reprinted in any of his
collections. Some unreprinted magazine articles. Some correspondence
about stories and articles. Earlier drafts, with marked in changes.
Fascinating stuff.
But that wasn't the stupid thing. That was the smart thing I did that day.
Now, I have to give you some background about myself. I know several
authors at both the friend and acquaintance level, mostly from having
worked conventions. I've met a number of other people who are
celebrities, or major authorities, in a limited field, such as chess or
Artificial Intelligence or other interests of mine. I was a member of a
committee at Yale that selected and contacted prospective speakers for
one of the residential colleges. So I know how to behave and act around
such. I know that you don't just pop up on someone's doorstep and go,
"Gosh, Mr. Einstein, I really love your work". If everyone did that,
such people'd never have time to do what they did to make people want
to pop up on their doorstep.
Right now, you're thinking that the something stupid I did was to pop
up on Mr. Heinlein's doorstep. Wrong. This something wasn't that stupid.
Close though. Y'see, for several years before that, I had in my
possession the Heinleins' phone number. I'm not going to say how I got
it. But I had this number, and I hadn't used it for the several years
that I'd had it.
Until that day last July. I'd just seen the collection. I was in the
same town. I was moving to Europe for an indefinite period, but at
least a year. And we all know that his health'd not been the best for a
number of years. And it all came together and I did the stupid thing.
I pulled over at a phone booth.
I even made a rationalization. I was going to offer to arrange for me
to pay for a dinner for him and Mrs. Heinlein at a restaurant of their
choice, as a token of my thanks for many hours of enjoyment and education.
I dialed the phone.
To my surprise, a male voice answered. For some reason, I'd expected
Mrs. Heinlein to answer, probably because I once read somewhere that
she handled his correspondence. I managed to recover slightly, and got
out an explanation of who I was, and why I was calling. Compounding my
stupidity, I managed to make it sound like I was trying to invite
myself to dinner with them.
That got straightened out, and he declined my offer as they were in the
midst of preparing to move to a condo. Other than that, I won't go into
the details of the maybe two minute conversation, except to say that at
the end I thanked him for the many hours of enjoyment and education.
Mr. Heinlein was very polite throughout the conversation, which I knew
was an imposition. It was dumb. It was stupid. I still have problems
believing I did it.
And even now, now that I know that I'll not have a chance, however
remote, to somehow manage to encounter him in a way that would not be
an imposition, I don't know how I feel about it. On the one hand, I'm
very glad that I did have a moment of personal contact with him. On the
other, I know that it was a stupid thing, and a very bad way of
supposedly trying to express my appreciation to him.
But, y'know, in a way I'm doing the same dumb thing right here. I'm
trying to express my appreciation of what his work meant to me and did
for me, and here I am just writing about two minutes of "personal"
contact which if anything were against the sort of thing I thought I'd
learned from his work.
I guess the point is, it meant enough to me that I did something that
normally I'd never do. The something was dumb. It was stupid. But the
work affected me that much.
Shit.
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
The litany of the dead goes on, and on, and on; but somehow these two
hurt more than most. Somehow these two touch us right where we live.
Both of them were getting on; both of them were had been ill, were living
on overtime. We should have seen it coming -- and I guess, in a way,
we did. In a way. But we never really expect it until it happens. Do we?
I never met Clifford Simak. I met Robert Heinlein only once, and that
at a time when he was very ill -- shortly before his bypass operation.
But both Heinlein and Simak have enriched my life, and many others --
probably yours, if you're reading this -- with their quintessentially
American dreams of the future.
Heinlein was the town-bred American, beating the drum and selling war
bonds. If he hadn't so much style, he would have been just a Babbit,
waving his flag and mouthing his cliches; but he was never cliche.
Think of every way you could to say something, and Heinlein would still
surprise you.
Simak, now, was the American outback woodsman. He told stories of a
quiet future where folks is still folks and everybody is basically
good, if you only understood 'em; and he filled this future with magic,
so nothing in the here-and-now ever looked quite the same after you
read a Simak book.
It was Heinlein's stories, more than anyone else's, who taught us that
it was possible to think and reason in an SF story. It was Simak's that
taught us that you could write SF with genuine feelings. They were,
respectively, the mind and the heart of science fiction, and it's
fitting that they should be taken from us so close together. No less
sad for that.
A few months ago, I reviewed Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset for
this 'zine. I wrote (among other things):
This may well be his last book; if so, he's built himself a monument
worthy of his life and work.
I stand by that.
Simak didn't need a monumental last book; each of his works was a
quiet, tastefully-placed stone or flower in a rock garden nobody else
could tend, and that stands for him as no towering headstone could.
In the last few years, it's been fashionable among young turks to call
Heinlein a fascist, Simak a sentimentalist; to say that both had outlived
their talent. I don't think so. Listen to me, young turks: years will
pass, and City and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Way Stations and
Double Star and They Walked Like Men and Time Enough For Love and A
Choice of Gods and To Sail Beyond the Sunset will still be here long
after all you young turks, and me, and Chuq, and the cyberpunq posers
have all been swept away to wherever they sweep trash like us.
And the answer will be unspoken, unheard, but true and passionate:
their talents outlived them. Not the other way around.
Sail on, Robert, into an unimaginable sunset.
And, Clifford, may your enchanted journey never end.
Kenn Barry
I never met Robert Heinlein. I wish I had. Saw him once, at a con, but
not being one of those people who feel that hero-worship is a good
excuse for bothering your hero, I didn't introduce myself.
But at least I had the pleasure of knowing him in the same way that the
rest of his legions of fans did. I found his books in my local library
when I was 12, one fine summer. Some things, some experiences, so
rivet a person that they can never be forgotten (nor, sadly,
recaptured). Such was that summer, for me. _The Rolling Stones_; _The
Star Beast_; _Tunnel In The Sky_; _Time For The Stars_; _Red Planet_.
When I couldn't find any more on the "books for young people" shelf, I
made my first foray into the grownup's side of the library, and read
until there was no more to read. When the Heinlein ran out, I moved on
to Clarke, Asimov, the rest of the crew, and they were fine, but it
wasn't really the same.
How can one put it into words? How can that feeling of the mind coming
alive be communicated? If I say it was like the first time I heard
"Rite of Spring", sitting in my room, in the dark, but not really even
knowing where I was, will it mean anything to anyone but me?
Heinlein has put the stars in our eyes, and his starry-eyed readers
will put the stars in our reach. Listen to the people who made Apollo,
who made the Saturn V. What did they read as youngsters? Over and over,
the same names are heard: Verne, Wells, Heinlein. Somewhere out there
are thousands of brothers and sisters I've never met, dreamers and
believers, who as children went through those books at lightspeed, and
knew it could be real, if we chose to make it so. Heinlein showed us.
He made that dream of the future a living reality, showed us that it
was only our bodies chained by gravity, not our minds. He took us to
space, and we won't ever come home again, not really.
The 12th summer passes; a year goes by. Puberty arrives, and with it
the mailer from the SF Book Club: new Heinlein novel! Stranger In A
Strange Land. Yet more horizons become visible. Question authority.
Think new thoughts. Never be afraid to doubt that which makes no sense,
no matter how many times They tell you you're silly or stubborn, a
troublemaker. Have faith in yourself.
I can't summarize a man's life work in one essay. So many threads, so
many lessons. I was never close to my real father, but Heinlein made
up much of the lack. He was not the only place I found lessons about
duty, and courage, and responsibility, but he more than anyone else
made these things real for me. Protect the weak; value honesty for its
own sake; take responsibility for your own actions. I haven't always
lived up to this model, of course, but at least I have the ideals;
Heinlein gave them to me.
Many more summers have come and gone for me since those first, electric
discoveries of new dimensions of my own humanity. Since then have come
the muddy, equivocal lessons of age, including the lesson that even
Heinlein can try, but fail, to distill wisdom into words. And now
there's that final lesson that we are only clay, and cannot tarry
forever, no matter how much we wish it were otherwise. Heinlein wished
harder than anyone, but he, too, now sails beyond the sunset. If there
were one thing I could tell him, I know what it would be: that those
stories he was always so modest about, those words strung together to
entertain, to "buy groceries", have given him the immortality that he
sought. As long as human children look up and wonder, his books will be
there to inspire them.
Goodbye, Mr. Heinlein. You are loved, and missed. And if there is
another shore upon the other side, maybe I'll one day get to thank you
personally, and laugh along with you at the wonderful joke we play on
ourselves called Life.
Joel Davis
I can remember reading Simak's books when I was, or, 10 or 11 years
old. I can even remember the smell and feel of that old, tiny library
branch, where I found those books. I don't even have to close my eyes
to see exactly which shelf they were on. I've read Way Station so many
times I can't count 'em. And City -- it blew me away. And my personal
Simak favorite was and still is Time is the Simplest Thing. It was the
first SF novel that this Catholic kid ever read that had a Catholic
priest in it. When I saw that, I remember thinking: Wow--this stuff is
really real. This guy writes about people like me! And, of course, the
story is so wonderful, gentle, the great Simak touch. I just checked my
own bookshelves. Yeah, still got a copy of it. Crest Book, Fawcett
World Library, paperback. 50 cents. Mmmmm. Love that smell of old
paperbacks. Copyright 1981 Doubleday edition. Don't know about this
one, since it doesn't have an imprint date. But it's old, and it's
real, and it is taking me home again to dusty roads in rural Ventura
County, California, 1961. 13 years old. I remember. Thanks, Clif. God
bless ya!
Fred Bals
I woke up sometime very late on Sunday night, May 8th. I jumped awake
out of a nightmare, reaching for my wife, knowing something had
happened. That happens to me frequently. I'm not a very good sleeper.
So even though there's a terrible temptation to point at the
coincidence and make more of it, I don't want to. I can wonder though
how many others who hold a similar love for science fiction may have
been suddenly jarred out of sleep that Sunday night and thought to
themselves, "something has happened." The name Robert A. Heinlein is --
by any measurement -- synonymous with the phrase science fiction. Ask
people with a passing knowledge of science fiction about writers, and
they are as likely to name Heinlein as Asimov or Clarke. Within fandom
itself, Heinlein is often referred to simply by his initials -- RAH --
in a shorthand sort of familiarity usually reserved only for Presidents
of the United States. In fact, that type of shorthand can be used only
when you know your listeners are as familiar with the subject as you
are. It's shared knowledge on almost a racial memory level. Say JFK to
the average North American and you know you're going to generate a
certain set of associations. Say RAH to the average science fiction
reader and you will get some sort of response. Heinlein so profoundly
affected science fiction that it's difficult to imagine what the field
would have been like without him. There is not a contemporary writer
working in science fiction who has not been influenced by Heinlein's
writing. That statement bears repeating -- there is not one writer in
the field who has not, in one way or another, had to deal and come to
terms with Heinlein's monolithic presence -- whether to ultimately
embrace him or to rebel against him. His influence is simply too
pervasive to ignore. Write a time-travel story, and lurking somewhere
in the back of your mind -- as you know it will with your readers -- is
"By His Bootstraps." Generation starships? "Universe." Self-aware
computers? "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." Swords and sorcery? "Glory
Road." Combat science fiction? "Starship Troopers." Try to create a
strong-willed, opinionated character, and you're guaranteed that he or
she will be compared to Heinlein's generic "competent man." The list
goes on and on. Only Hammett and Chandler in the mystery genre,
Hemingway in the mainstream, and Heinlein in science fiction have had
such a tremendous an impact on other writers -- and their field itself
-- as they have had upon their readers. The man has died. But the
writer achieved immortality long ago.
The Robert A. Heinlein Space Station
A Proposal
Raymond E. Feist
I like the sound of that. Heinlein Station. Yes. I do like the sound of
that. As a child I loved adventure and reveled in the works of Scott,
Sabatinni, and Dumas. Tales of daring- do and romance were my escape.
My alien planes were upon the shores of France as D'Artagnan sought a
boat for passage to England, or the windswept highlands of Scotland
where Alan Breck helped young David Balfour reclaim his due.
Then I discovered science fiction. And then I discovered Robert
Heinlein. Robert A. Heinlein was a giant, a man of letters as
important to his time and place as were Sir Walter Scott and Alexandre
Dumas to theirs. For in my life I have seen the idea of adventure turn
from being one of the King's Musketeers to being a Starship Trooper.
For has their been one of us, who as a child found a book by Robert A.
Heinlein that didn't have his or her imagination fired, who didn't
suddenly become seized with the desire to go Out There? There have been
and are other writers who have the same effect, but Robert had that
effect on more people than any other writer I know of. Ask those around
you which books got to "hooked" on Science Fiction, and there well
always be a Heinlein title among them. It may have been Tunnel in the
Sky, or Rocketship Gallelio or The Door Into Summer, but there's a
Heinlein title in there. For when I was a child, first learning that
there were places I'd never seen, landscapes of awesome design, people
with impossible creatures, with odd and alien sounding names, Robert A.
Heinlein was often my guide.
And that is why I like the idea of the Robert A. Heinlein Space
Station. Without leaving this Earth, he was my guide Out There. Without
leaving this Earth, he said it was all right for us to dream. Without
leaving this Earth, he took us to places of wonder beyond imagining and
made them real. He turned my mind toward Space, toward the idea of
going Out There. And in doing this for two generations of Americans--no
two generations of human beings regardless of nation--with others to
come, he becomes more important that Scott or Dumas, for while they
entertained and excited us, as Heinlein did, it was Robert A. Heinlein
who turned our vision heavenward. It was he, most of all, who said, now
that you've read about going Out There, go Out There! That's why I like
the idea of Robert A. Heinlein Space Station.
Heinlein Station. Can you think of a better place for us to begin out
voyages Out There?
OtherRealms #21
Summer, 1988
Copyright 1988
by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved
One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights
are hereby assigned to the contributors.
OtherRealms may not be reproduced in any form without written
permission from Chuq Von Rospach. The electronic edition may be
distributed or reproduced in its entirety as long as all copyrights,
author and publication information remain intact.
No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way
without the express permission of the author.
