Fenris…the knitting needles gave you chills? Do you suspect the old woman was manipulating them all?
Correct. I have no idea what I was thinking there.
Welllll, that’s a special case. Just ask J. Neil Schulman.* giggle*
I don’t think that “R. A. Heinlein” really counts as a pseudonym.
Just ask J.K. Rowling.
It does when it is different than how he normally styled himself, and was done purposefully to mask his identity (i.e. his sex).
Wait–“Lost Legacy”? The one about the two guys and girl who discover that we all used to have SUPER PSYCHIC powers and the Bad Guys had erased our memory of it but the good guys had left hidden messages in certain places recorded in the rocks, so if you slept in certain areas, you’d learn the truth. When the guys and girl learn, they get the secret masters to get off their ass and do something active, rather than sitting around and eventually the world learns the truth.
The bit at the end was something about how the earth still swung around the sun, the sun was rising on the green hills but “nowhere was man”. But a great ape went to sleep on Mount Rainier (or where-ever) and got strange dreams. It’s really weirdly (nice) poetic prose for Heinlein, kind of Bradbury-esque. Really great stuff and seriously–one of my favorite Heinlein stories
Are we talking about the same story? It sounds like you’re thinking of “Project Nightmare” where psychics (a black guy, a little old lady, others in a surprisingly diverse group for the '40s) have to use their super-powers to stop a bunch of backpack nukes hidden in cities all over the USA. At the end, the punchline is something about how the little old lady psychic squishes the remaining nukes in the USA and then offers to explode all the Russkie nukes on their launch pads. I thought this was a fun little piece of fluff “gimmick” story. Nothing to write home about, but a fun little diversion.
I don’t remember a little old lady with knitting needles at the end of “Lost Legacy”
Beyond Doubt from Creating a Genre
Written under the pseudonym Lyle Monroe and co-written with friend Elma Wentz. This is a story that had another torturous path to publication.
Essentially this is a goof story using a political campaign in Mu (as seen in the previous story, Lost Legacy) to explain the existence of the Easter Island statues. The original genesis of it was a bet by Heinlein at one of his ‘salons’ (writers workshops) that a salable story could be conceived and plotted in less than 1/2 hour.
To a certain extent this shows. It’s clearly just a joke heading for delivery. It’s also early Heinlein. The dialogue still seems to me to be a little self-consciously stilted and ‘hard boiled’ but not as bad as some. This seems to have more cohesion and tighter plotting than some of the earlier work.
Interesting note: Elma Wentz, who was Heinlein’s collaborator on this one, was Upton Sinclair’s personal secretary during his political campaigns in California. This was another story rejected by Campbell and purchased by Frederick Pohl.
Another interesting factoid here is that when it was collected in an anthology Pohl was putting together in the early 1950s BOTH writers changed their attribution. Wentz had divorced and changed her pen name to Elma Miller and Heinlein allowed his real name to be used.
Oooh. I bet we’re working from different texts. Yes, there’s a part at the ending of ‘Lost Legacy’ that has a bit of a ‘2001’ feel, if you’ll grant me the anachronism. But the end of the story in ‘The Virginia Edition’ has the girl discussing her future with the old woman with the knitting needles. Or maybe I’m misremembering. Anyway, I agree with you that the bit with the apes is well done.
The Virginia edition is that different? Holy shit. I wasn’t intending to get it…but…seriously? The text diverges that much? Really?
…
Ok, I just checked an electronic edition I scanned in to my library. The second to last segment is the Ancient Masters killing off all the remaining black hats. At the end of it, they elect one of the two guys as the new leader of the Ancient Masters (since the three newcomers, led by the one guy, have done more in a few years than the Ancient Masters did in 6000+ years). Then Joan says that jeepers! This project of uplifting the human race is gonna take forever. And the little old lady Ancient Master (who I’d totally forgotten) says (in essence) “Don’t worry about forever, what are you going to do next?” and Joan realizes that she’s gonna marry whatshisname. Then comes the (very apt description) 2001-esque bit.
I’m not gonna spoiler-box this since we’ve already ruined the story. 
We rarely see this poetic side of Heinlein. It shows up in “Unpleasant Profession”, in “The Man Who Travelled in Elephants”, arguably in “Year of the Jackpot*” and a few others. But he rarely gets that poetic.
When you get to “Let There Be Light”, I’d love to compare and see if the preferred version is the “smutty” one or the “clean” one.
*A funny typo keeps happening in a lot of the reprints of “Jackpot” is that the last two words are often left off. Even in the wonderful collection Off The Main Sequence, they made that mistake.
Modern short story reprints generally cut the “THE END” at the end of the story. Modern readers know the story’s over, they don’t need the author to tell them.
However, in “Jackpot”, the protagonist looks up, sees the sun start to explode and
The ending doesn’t make sense without the “THE END”. Hell, the sentence doesn’t even finish. When you get to “Jackpot”, you gotta let us know that they left the “THE END” in (or not). 
I’ll go back and check, if you’d like. But some of the text does vary significantly in some of the books. There are several whole pages of deleted text in Red Planet, for example. I’ll cover that more when I get to it.
Nearly all of the variant/extended versions are available in published form - Red Planet and Puppet Masters were published uncut about the same time as the long version of Stranger, for example. For some of the variant text, you have to find the original magazine appearances of the stories.
Those interested in chasing down all the variations, nearly all of which are now available (in the VE, if nowhere else) can use the New Heinlein Opus List as a checklist.
Holy Crap.
First off, thank you Mr. Chance!
I also checked the price, and I am up for a big promotion at work. I may seriously look at doing the 12 month pay program for this. Hmmm…
It’s too bad, then, that the girls’ magazine in which he used it included an author bio and a photograph.
You should. It’s totally awesome. And they will work with you about pricing and payments and such. Private message me and I’ll send you the editor’s info. She’s really cool.
She.
Gott im Himmel.
Is there a problem with a woman being an editor? I’d wager, from my 20+ years in publishing, that MOST editors are women.
Nothing of the kind - it’s just that I don’t know of any women who were actually editors on the project. I know who you’re talking about, though. “Editor” is a courtesy title at best and her real job titles are about as removed from that as you can imagine.
Let’s just say that the entire dismal story of the Virginia Edition will come out some day, and many owners will look at their groaning shelf of high-quality binding and say something a lot like, “Oh. Shit.” Like B5, nothing is quite as it seems.
But carry on. I’m as intrigued by your comments here as is everyone else in the thread.
Hmm. Sounds like academic politics: “The vitriol is so high because the stakes are so small.”
No one will ever care about it. Ever.
I’ll be back after the holiday, hopefully with a completed Creating a Genre.
Magic, Inc from Creating a Genre
Sneaking this one in, here, because I finished it last night and have this morning free. Provided the kids don’t blow something up downstairs.
This is the first story I’ve read in Creating a Genre that begins to feel like a true Heinlein story. The story is there, the background is there in the little things like the disappearing desserts and alcohol, and the dialogue, for the first time, begins to sound less stilted and more true-to-life.
It’s also likely the most famous from this book so far, having been compiled in Waldo and Magic, Inc. But it’s possible it was compiled because it was better.
Still, a good story that centers on (despite the actual plot) the impact of having magic in everyday life. The use of magic in commerce and industry isn’t just a part of the story, it’s the basis of the background of the world that’s been built. That’s what makes the story really work. None of the characters are agog over it because it’s a basis of their lives, like breathing, or cars, or any of the day-to-day things that people take for granted.
And the payoff is pretty good. The climax doesn’t come rushed or take too long and the build up is good. This is a good story (Novella? It’s about 80+ pages in the book) and was first published in the fantasy pulp Unknown. I’m glad to have read it again.
NOTE: In the notes we’re told that Heinlein thought that compiling Waldo and Magic, Inc into one book was like mixing “Mustard and Watermelon”. Ew.
Is there a reason you don’t start that thread? I mean like nondisclosure agreements, your paycheck, etc.