Grumbles from the Grave
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''Grumbles from the Grave'' is a posthumous 1989 autobiography of science fiction author
Robert A. Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein (; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accu ...
collated by his wife
Virginia Heinlein Virginia Heinlein (April 22, 1916 – January 18, 2003), born Virginia Doris Gerstenfeld, was an American chemist, biochemist, engineer, and the third wife and muse of Robert A. Heinlein, a prominent and successful author often considered on ...
from his notes and writings.


Background

The work is the closest that Heinlein, an ex-naval officer and prominent
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
writer, came to writing an autobiography. The book contains a wide range of correspondence, notes and memoirs edited by Heinlein's wife Virginia, and was published a year and a half after his death.


Contents

''Grumbles from the Grave'' provides insight into Heinlein's writing process (and the editorial/publishing process with which he was often at odds). In addition, it contains evidence of his philosophy as applied to his life and personal opinions. Beginning with a short biography of Robert by Virginia, the bulk of the book consists of excerpts of correspondence from the period from 1939 to 1970, from when he began writing science fiction until the onset of his first major illness. There is considerable information provided into how the 13-year gestation of Heinlein's novel ''
Stranger in a Strange Land ''Stranger in a Strange Land'' is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by ...
'' evolved. Additionally there is the original postlude to ''
Podkayne of Mars ''Podkayne of Mars'' is a science-fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialised in '' Worlds of If'' (November 1962, January, March 1963), and published in hardcover in 1963. The novel features a teenage girl name ...
'' and a discussion of cuts made to his novel '' Red Planet''.


Criticisms

Frederik Pohl has complained "Robert had talked about allowing posthumous publication of his real feelings about a lot of things that he didn’t feel comfortable to talk about while he was alive, and indicated that some of his private letters would be a source for the book. Then some posthumous book with that title did come out, and it was a great disappointment. Someone — it could have been only irginia Heinlein— had washed his face and combed his hair and turned whatever it was that Robert might have wanted to say into the equivalent of thank-you notes for a respectable English tea. I know that Robert wrote some much more raunchy letters than any of those, because I myself got one or two. But all the raunch has been edited out. What’s left is actually rather boring and does a great disservice to the real Heinlein, whose physical person may have been embodied as a conventional hard-right conservative but whose writing was — sometimes vulgarly — that of a free-thinking iconoclast".


Awards and honors

The book was a finalist for the 1990
Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book The Hugo Award for Best Related Work is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for primarily non-fiction works related to science fiction or fantasy, published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The Hugo Awards have bee ...
.


Selected quotes

* ''"How long has this racket been going on?"'' — Heinlein's remark after receiving a $70 US check for his first published story.. * ''"I expect this to be my last venture in this field; 'tain't worth the grief"'' — Heinlein's response to attempts to censor his juvenile novel ''Red Planet'' for language, violence, and references to reproduction among Martians.


References


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Grumbles From The Grave 1989 non-fiction books Books by Robert A. Heinlein Literary autobiographies Books published posthumously Del Rey books Books with cover art by Michael Whelan