Robert Anson MacDonald Heinlein

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Heinlein, Robert A[nson] (1907–88), graduated from Annapolis, served in the navy (1929–34), and did graduate work in physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, before beginning his career as a writer of science fiction whose first book was published in 1947. He became a master of the field in technique and output, producing 64 books, of which over 45 were best‐sellers. His books were translated into 29 languages. His very popular and influential works deal mostly with the future, outer space, and eugenic breeding of humans but are also often tinged with mysticism and marked by sociopolitical views variously called rightist or anarchistic. His Future History, composed of relatively short fictive sketches, includes The Man Who Sold the Moon (1950), The Green Hills of Earth (1951), Revolt in 2100 (1953), Methuselah's Children (1958), and Orphans of the Sky (1963). Of his numerous longer novels the most popular is Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), whose hero is a human born of space travelers from earth and raised by Martians. He is brought to the totalitarian post‐World War III world that is in many ways depicted as a satire of the U.S. in the 1960s, marked by repressiveness in sexual morality and religion. The plot, which tells how the heroic stranger creates a Utopian society in which people preserve their individuality but share a brotherhood of community, made Heinlein and his novel cult objects for young people dedicated to a counterculture. Heinlein continued to publish prolifically other novels, including The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1967), Time Enough for Love (1973), The Number of the Beast (1980), and Friday (1982); works of nonfiction; many books for children; stories for magazines not collected into volumes; and film and television scripts.

Robert Anson MacDonald Heinlein , 1907–88, American science-fiction writer, b. Butler, Mo. His best-known novel, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), concerns a young man raised by Martians who returns to earth. It became a cult classic during the 1960s. Other works include The Green Hills of Earth (1951), a collection of short stories; Double Star (1956), Starship Troopers (1959), The Door into Summer (1957), The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), and The Cat Who Walks through Walls (1985). Heinlein's writings helped win respect for science fiction as literature.

Bibliography: See study by H. B. Franklin (1980).