Exhibit Notes: Robert Heinlein

Lilly call number: PS3503.R18

Items in the exhibit:
The Puppet Masters
The Green Hills of Earth
The Man Who Sold the Moon
Letter to Boucher
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
Stranger in a Strange Land

Robert Heinlein was  famous for a series of short stories called his "future history" stories.  They, along with The Lord of the Rings and Asimov's Foundation trilogy, were nominated for a special Hugo award for best all time series.  Though set in the future, the stories all share a set history of what happened with humanity between Heinlein's present and the times of the stories.  As with most science fiction, it can be amusing and educational to see where they expected humanity to be at various points in their future and now our past.  Heinlein's timeline calls for interplanetary imperialism between 1970 and 2020.  Obviously, that hasn't happened yet.  Man has not yet made it beyond the moon.  But that does not make these stories any less interesting, simply because the timeline was off.  Science fiction tells us more about the time in which it was written than about an potential future.

Heinlein was also a controversial author in his time.  His novel Stranger in a Strange Land, with it's polyamorous views on sexuality, was included in Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire" along with Catcher in the Rye and Peyton Place, two other novels that were sensations when they were written.  Another well-known novel of his that I could not put in the exhibit because the Lilly did not have a copy was Starship Troopers, which was also made into a movie.  But science fiction as a genre has always been on the side, so it's authors could more or less write whatever they wanted, because so few of them were taken seriously.  And though some science fiction novels have entered the cannon, genre novels still tend to not be taken as seriously as straight fiction, which is of course grossly unfair.  Sure, Stranger in a Strange Land may present some interesting views about human nature, but it is also a well-written book.  And what good is literature if it doesn't make us think?  I can only hope that visitors to my exhibit will realize that science fiction is as serious a literary genre as straight fiction and leave with a greater respect for it and its authors.