Robert Heinlein's Pre-Internet Fan Mail FAQ

Hugh Pickens writes "Kevin Kelly has an interesting post about a letter he found amongst correspondence from his days editing the Whole Earth Catalog. The letter is Robert Heinlein's own nerdy solution to a problem common to famous authors: to deal with fan mail. In the days before the internet, Heinlein's solution was to create a list of frequently asked questions, answer them, and remove the questions. Then he, or rather his wife Ginny, checked off the appropriate answer(s) and mailed it back. Some of the entries in Heinlein's answer sheet are quite illuminating and amusing. Our personal favorite: 'You say that you have enjoyed my stories for years. Why did you wait until you disliked one story before writing to me?'"

Re:who ?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

is this idiot ? and why cvant he use a computer ?

TFA makes it quite clear that it's talking about days before home computing, not the days before the internet.

Ginny Heinlein said that by 1984, "with the advent of computerization in our household, we no long use the form letter to answer fan mail. I find that it is possible now, with the computer, to write individual letters in reply to fan mail faster than I could check off the answer on the form."

Re:Citations?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Renshaw reference is regarding "Citizen of the Galaxy": accelerated education using a tachistoscope to provide brief glimpses of material that must be read and or memorized. Using a projector with exposure settings much like a camera, you can learn to recognize things very quickly. I used this when I learned to speed read and it was quite effective.

Re:Good idea

[complete loony]

And of course in a similar vein there is the stock response to spam solutions [craphound.com].

Another one

[ian_mackereth]

Spider Robinson appropriated (with permission) another form of RAH's and used them as thank you cards to subscribers to his Spider on the Web podcast.

There's a copy here: http://mackereth.net/images/SotW_Thank_You_Card.jpg [mackereth.net]

Actually, he missed on that point

[Mathinker]

I know that your post is tongue-in-cheek, but the reality is that Heinlein didn't foresee electronic computing and in all of his early works which I am familiar with (e.g., the "Future History") he has human mathematical savants being used for navigation calculations.

Re:I have to say

[demonlapin]

a lot more polite in that letter than I would have expected from his books. A letter bomb wouldn't have surprised me

Ah, but bombs are expensive, and most people aren't worth the money.

Re:Actually, he missed on that point

[cthulu_mt]

The early stories did have some computers; Heinlein just fell into the same trap as most writers then and thought they would always be huge. "Slipstick" Libby was a special case.

I personally like Space Cadet; its only one sentence, but the character has a pocket-sized portable telephone. 40 years ahead of the curve on the cellphone.

Re:Good old Robert

[elrous0]

Dick Tracey had a cellphone long before THAT. It was never much of a stretch, even in the early 20th century, to imagine a portable radio that could be used like a telephone.

I just want to know when we get out powersuits.

George Bernard Shaw did it too

[Piete]

We recently cycled to his home shaws corner [nationaltrust.org.uk] and on display are the colour coded "FAQ" letters that his secretary would send back to questions about vegetarianism etc.

Re:Actually, he missed on that point

[Anonymous Coward]

Heinlein didn't foresee electronic computing

True. In Beyond This Horizon a computer tech explains that the computer operates off of 3-dimensional cams, and says he wishes he could have a 4-dimensional cam (and some 4-dimensional lubricant for it) because he has some functions that are too complicated to encode to just a 3D cam.

In Methusela's Children the protagonists steal a prototype starship, and the ship's computer is described as being one of the new models with no moving parts. That novel is set in the 22nd century.

In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress there is one single computer to run the lunar colony; its workings are not described but are presumably electronic. It becomes sentient and goes by the name "Mike"; it generates a video image and says something like "this is taking everything I've got".

The wildest one might be Starman Jones, where starship navigation is done by hand, on paper, referring to tables of logarithms. There is some kind of primitive calculator to assist but it doesn't help much.