On Robert A. Heinlein

Literary Criticism and Reviews: Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein remains one of my favorite authors. Unlike Ray Bradbury, who often may be read for an assignment in an English class, Heinlein might be somewhat lesser known to those not already familiar with science fiction. For myself, though, since the time that I first read Space Cadet at age 11 or 12, I have returned to Heinlein again and again.

I read the book pictured at right probably 8 times when I was a kid. Later I read most, if not all, of Heinlein’s “juvenile” novels of the 1940s and 1950s aloud to my children. I still revisit Heinlein for entertainment and enlightenment, and as a critic I have written about several topics that happened to have caught my attention.

Below is a list of my Heinlein criticism. Quite a bit of it is available in the online literary research databases to which many school libraries subscribe, but I also have provided links to other full-text sources when possible.

“ ‘A Grim-Jawed Angel of Mercy’ or ‘There’s No Question of Heroism in All This’ ? Crisis and Response in Albert Camus’s The Plague and Robert A. Heinlein’s ‘Sky Lift’.” Critical Insights: The Plague. Ed. Robert C. Evans. Critical Insights Series. Ispwich, MA: Salem, forthcoming 2023.

“ ‘There Must Be Something Wrong with Us’ Versus ‘A Black Widow Spider Can’t Help It—But That’s the Point’: Right and Wrong and Responsibility in In Cold Blood and Robert A. Heinlein’s Have Space Suit—Will Travel.” Critical Insights: In Cold Blood. Ed. Nicolas Tredell. Critical Insights Series. Ispwich, MA: Salem, 2020. 135-50.

“So That ‘Everyone Shall Sit in Safety under His Own Vine and Fig Tree, and None Shall Make Him Afraid’: Rebellion in the Fiction of Robert A. Heinlein.” Critical Insights: Rebellion. Critical Insights Series. Ed. Robert C. Evans. Ispwich, MA: Salem, 2017. 175-90.

“From This I Believe to ‘The Marching Hordes’: The Edges of Multiculturalism in the Juvenile Novels of Robert A. Heinlein.” Critical Approaches to Literature: Multicultural. Critical Approaches Series. Ed. Robert C. Evans. Ispwich, MA: Salem 2017. 107-20.

“ ‘Until the Grownups Come to Fetch Us’ Versus ‘To Found a New Nation’: Human Nature in Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky.” Critical Insights: Lord of the Flies. Ed. Sarah Fredericks. Critical Insights Series. Ispwich, MA: Salem, 2017. 73-87.

“Stranger in a Strange Land—Robert A. Heinlein.” Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Ispwich, MA: Salem, 2015. 306-307.

Editor, Critical Insights: Robert A. Heinlein. Critical Insights Series. Ispwich, MA: Salem, 2015. Amazon page here, Salem page here.

  “About This Volume.” vii-xii.

  “On Robert A. Heinlein.” 3-17.

  “Mr. Koshchei Makes the Law: To Hell and Back in Robert A. Heinlein’s ‘Magic, Inc.’ and Job: A Comedy of Justice.” 70-85.

  “ ‘Locked in Somewhere Safe’: Robert A. Heinlein and the Bomb Shelter.” 183-98.

“Chronology of Robert A. Heinlein’s Life.” 245-50.

“Works by Robert A. Heinlein.” 251-56.

“Bibliography.” 257-61.

“About The Editor.” 263.

“From Selenite Suicide to Bonestell Backdrops: Robert A. Heinlein on the Course to Destination Moon.” The Fantastic Made Visible: Essays on the Adaptation of Science Fiction and Fantasy from Page to Screen. Ed. Matthew Wilhelm Kapell and Ace G. Pilkington. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015. 28-42.

“The Heritage of Heinlein: A Critical Reading of the Fiction” (review). SFRA Review 309 (Summer 2014): 39-41. Available online here.

“He ‘Just Plain Liked Guns’: Robert A. Heinlein and the ‘Older Orthodoxy’ of an Armed Citizenry.” Extrapolation 45 (Winter 2004): 388-407. First page preview here.

“ ‘Maybe the Hardest Job of All—Particularly When You Have No Talent for It’: Heinlein’s Fictional Parents, 1939-1987.” Extrapolation 44 (Summer 2003): 169-200. Available online here and here.

Letter. Extrapolation 42.4 (Fall 2001): 385.

“From Free Love to the Free-Fire Zone: Heinlein’s Mars, 1939-1987.” Extrapolation 42 (Summer 2001): 137-49. Available online here and here.

Listed in Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2002.

“[Time in] Heinlein’s Have Space Suit—Will Travel.” The Explicator 59 (Spring 2001): 144-47. Available online here.

“ ‘Starry-Eyed Internationalists’ versus the Social Darwinists: Heinlein’s Transnational Governments.” Extrapolation 40 (Spring 1999): 53-70.  Available online here, here, and here.

Cited in Jari Kakela.  “Managing and Manipulating History: Perpetual Urgency in Asimov and Heinlein.”  Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 1.2 (2014): 7-22. URL: http://journal.finfar.org/articles/60.pdf.

Listed in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders, vol. 1. Ed. Gary Westfahl.  Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2005. 360.

Listed in Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2002.

Listed in Candace R. Benefiel. “The Man Who Sold the Future: A Research Guide to the Fiction of Robert A. Heinlein.” Texas A&M Universities Library, 2001. URL: http://cushing.library.tamu.edu/collections/browse-major-collections/the-science-fiction-collection/the-man-who-sold-the-future-a-research-guide-to.html.

Listed in “Starship Troopers.” Wikipedia.org (“External Links”). URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers.

“Heinlein’s Inhabited Solar System, 1940-1952.” Science-Fiction Studies 23 (July 1996): 245-52.

Rpt. in Short Story Criticism 305. Detroit: Gale, 2021.

Rpt. in Children’s Literature Review 75. Ed. Rebecca A. Blanchard. Detroit: Gale, 2002. 71-76.

Rpt. in Short Story Criticism 55. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 235-40.

Abstract available here.

First page preview here.

Cited in Brent Ryan Bellamy. Remainders of the American Century: Post-Apocalyptic Novels in the Age of US Decline. Middletown, CT: Weslyan UP, 2021. 137.

Listed in Candace R. Benefiel. “The Man Who Sold the Future: A Research Guide to the Fiction of Robert A. Heinlein.” Texas A&M Universities Library, 2001. URL: http://cushing.library.tamu.edu/collections/browse-major-collections/the-science-fiction-collection/the-man-who-sold-the-future-a-research-guide-to.html.