From William H. Patterson’s book Robert A. Heinlein, Vol 2: In Dialogue with His Century Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better, p. 263.
At just that moment, in fact, science-fiction fandom was tearing itself apart over the preemptive cancellation of the membership of a suspected pedophile by PacifiCon, the most recent world science-fiction convention, in September 1964. This conflict might have passed the Heinleins by, except that the suspected pedophile was the husband of one of Heinlein’s more intimate correspondents, Marion Zimmer Bradley. Heinlein never commented on the “Breen Boondoggle” publicly, but to Bradley Heinlein wrote:
The fan nuisance we were subjected to was nothing like as nasty as the horrible things that were done to you two but it was bad enough that we could get nothing else done during the weeks it went on and utterly spoiled what should have been a pleasant, happy winter. But it resulted in a decision which has made our life much pleasanter already and which I expect to have increasingly good effects throughout all the years ahead. We have cut off all contact with organized fandom….I regret that we will miss meeting some worthwhile people in the future as a result of this decision. But the percentage of poisonous jerks in the ranks of fans makes the price too high; we’ll find our friends elsewhere.
Fortunately, not all their fan contacts were so unpleasant.
(end excerpt)
You know, I’ve never been a Heinlein fan either, but this takes my non-fandom to new depths. Guess they never cared how pleasant the winter of the kids would be. Patterson’s a piece of work, too.
For context, Mark D. Eddy adds:
For context, though, Heinlein had already had a series of negative experiences with fans and conventions (including a fan who was harassing friends and family to try to write an unauthorized biography for a publisher Heinlein wouldn’t write for), and was already distancing himself from the “poisonous jerks” — so all he apparently knew about the situation was filtered through MZB, who was hardly an uninterested party.
Which is a fair point. While it’s always good to get as much of both sides of the story as possible, there’s a real human failing believing the predator’s side of the story. (See also: STK’s comment on the deirdre.net version of this entry.)
Hat tip: RPG.net commenter The Scribbler.
Note: I’m also tagging all of the posts with the breendoggle tag to make it easier to find in the future.
Also: When asked, Can this be true? The MZB click thrus are upsetting., Deborah J. Ross, author of many books set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover universe, replied, Only half the story is being told. Please be careful about believing sensationalist rumors online.
Note: I’ve edited out a couple of paragraphs from the original post as Deborah has apologized for her ill-considered tweet.
In light of that apology, I’ve deleted my unnecessarily harsh snark but am leaving the context above intact.
You don’t have to love Heinlein, but I think that this is a tad unfair. I suspect that Heinlein, being friends with Bradley, believed that the accusations against her husband — which he may or may not have known about in detail — were false and malicious.
We all want to believe the best about our friends. This doesn’t mean he condoned her conduct, or his.
Given that condone historically means “overlook” rather than the modern American usage “approve of”—he quite literally did condone it.
Sure, if you use the historical definition, rather than it’s ordinary meaning.
He did not want to believe a horrible allegation about a friend of his. He may or may not have had evidence that would have led a reasonable person to believe the allegations were true.
But I don’t think he approved of abuse or molestation.
I don’t think anyone ever wants to believe such allegations, friend or no.
We all want to believe that people we admire don’t approve of these things, but The way Heinlein turned doesn’t look good from this side of history.
Pete said:
Sure, if you use the historical definition, rather than its illiterate meaning.
There, I fixed it for you.
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
I say this as someone who’s never read Heinlein or Bradley and who therefore doesn’t have any icons being smashed by this scandal:
There’s no indication at all in this piece about what Heinlein knew or did not know. No indication, either, if he had any source for whatever he believed/though/knew than MZB herself (whose account of Breen’s behavior was probably not idenitical to the account in the Breendoggle file).
And since I know nothing at all about Heinlein’s life, I have no idea if there are indications elsewhere, not mentioned here, of what he knew, heard, or saw about this.
From this context, how do we know that the “horrible things” Heinlein refers to are, in terms of what he knows, not some version of “a nice couple is being wrongly maligned and bullied by a bunch of nasty jerks.” Is there information about Heinlein RE Breendoggle somewhere?
There may be. Heinlein has a society and they have a great many of his letters. That said, my involvement in Heinlein fandom has been mostly limited to the occasional post, driving over a copy of Friday back when an old car had studded snow tires, and telling the Heinlein society they couldn’t run a track of Heinlein panels at a con where I was running programming.
It should be noted that this part of Mark’s comment, “…(including a fan who was harassing friends and family to try to write an unauthorized biography for a publisher Heinlein wouldn’t write for)…” is not necessarily a realistic portrayal.
This is Heinlein’s version of the events surrounding the writing and publication of Alexei Panshin’s Heinlein in Dimension, which is not an “unauthorized biography,” nor was Panshin “harassing” Heinlein’s friends or family. You can find Panshin’s version on his website, and it is quite different from Heinlein’s. Panshin also links to a side of the story told by an editor for the publisher in question (Advent: Publishing), which, again, quite differs from Heinlein’s version.
Thank you. I’d meant to follow up with a link from later in the RPG thread that offers a counteropinion to Mark’s comment, but I just forgot.
I’ll also admit that Heinlein the person isn’t one of my subject matter areas of expertise. I’ve read relatively little of his work, easily less than 10%.
And here’s a link to Panshin’s site.
I see I’m gonna have to read the L. Ron Hubbard links.
Let me say that Robert Heinlein was one of my favorite writers as I was growing up. I loved the books about Lazarus Long and his YA/space exploration books. Partially because of him, I grew up believing that I could be an astronaut, for example, if I wanted to be. He was so great at showing the idea that if you wanted it bad enough, you shoud try your hardest to make it happen. Have Spacesuit, Will Travel is still one of my favorites. You may not get exactly what you wanted, but you’ll come a lot closer than if you never tried.
That said, it is pretty clear if you read any of Heinlein’s books for adults that he had very liberal ideas towards sex and marriage, and particularly for sex between the young and the old, although not with children. He was one of the first to come up with the idea of a generational marriage, where a husband or wife married all the other husbands and wives. He pointed out that this made children more secure and kept assets growing. In this marriage, the new wife slept with all the husbands one a night, from oldest to youngest. Ditto husbands. Heinlein also mentioned homosexuality in a very tolerant way.
A fairly good example of his kind of mind is that I believe Lazarus Long, the oldest man in the universe, went back in time and fathered himself.
I also read an article about him where presumably he stated that his pool was suit free. That does not mean a thing, but I think he had a daughter and it made it clear that nudity was casual at his house.
My attitude toward sex is about as liberal as it gets: whatever one or more consenting adults wish to do, so long as they do not harm others by doing so. The latter clause was always implicit in my mind, but I’ve lately heard things that made me realize it needs to be more explicit.
I think Heinlein didn’t really get the downsides of poly, so I don’t think he was seriously poly himself. Clearly it was a persistent fantasy for him. I don’t have a problem with that.
On nudity, though, this whole episode has struck me that there really needs to be explicit permission to not participate, especially where there are children involved. Ability to choose to share—or not share—one’s body is important.
For example, the second line (from the Breendoggle):
I wondered if the second sentence was just about a household where nudity was common. The rest of the paragraph shows there was, however, a different story.
Nudity was common in the house of my parents.
I disliked it, and was labeled a “prude” by my father. It was also hard to explain to my friends.
It is never wise to assume that something exists for saintly reasons.
–Moira Greyland.
Parm said: “That said, it is pretty clear if you read any of Heinlein’s books for adults that he had very liberal ideas towards sex and marriage,… Heinlein also mentioned homosexuality in a very tolerant way.”
In some of his later books, especially Time Enough for Love and later works, RAH was rather tolerant of homosexuality. But in Stranger in a Stranger land Jill is convinced that the “poor in-betweeners” would never be invited to ‘share water” and learn the ancient Martian Wisdom. In The Puppet Masters the female agent Lucky is convinced that she is a sufficiently desirable woman that when a man does not respond with body language indicating sexual interest, it is conclusive proof that he has been subverted by the alien monsters, and she shoots him dead on the spot. This occurs several times. The possibility of someone being naturally not interested is mentioned, and such people are referred to as ‘natural harem guards” as if to be gay is to be neutered. There are other examples.
“A fairly good example of his kind of mind is that I believe Lazarus Long, the oldest man in the universe, went back in time and fathered himself.”
I am afraid that was another story, “All you Zombies”, in which the central character (“Jane”), with the help of a time machine and a sex change, was both father and mother to himself/herself. Long does go back in time and have sex with his mother.
“I also read an article about him where presumably he stated that his pool was suit free. That does not mean a thing, but I think he had a daughter and it made it clear that nudity was casual at his house.”
Heinlein had no children. He often wrote of the casual acceptance of public nudity as a welcome change in the future.
Thank you for your comment.
One of the cultural difficulties of public nudity is the fact that not everyone would consent to be nude. (Or clothed.)
I’m fine with clothing optional, so long as clothing is indeed optional.