I heard from Akatsukami that he’d gotten a notice that Virginia Heinlein had died. We both did some research and confirmed it.
On rec.arts.sf.written, David Silver posted the following message:
(since he cross-posted to a half-dozen appropriate newsgroups and it’s a public announcement, I’m sure it’s ok to reprint here)
:: sigh ::
I never met her, sadly, but I’ve only heard good things about her and somehow her death seems the end of an era.
I’m going to go read “The Man Who Travelled in Elephants”. I can’t think of a more appropriate choice of reading material to remember Robert and Ginny Heinlein by.
Damn, damn, damn. She was supposedly working on a biography of Robert. Anyone know if that’s true or how far along in it she was in writing it? It’s more than the end of an era. Gonna have to dig up some Heinlein and start reading it again.
Another good choice would be Tramp Royale, a travelogue that Robert Heinlein wrote about a trip he and Ginny took around the world. Since it was published after RAH’s death, Ginny wrote the foreword.
It’s a fun read. Who wouldn’t want to travel around the world with the Heinleins?
Czar:
I dunno. I do know that Robert and Ginny were big fans of (and, I assume) supported The National Rare Blood Club, (The National Rare Blood Club is also the group that probably saved Heinlein’s life in the early '70s.) It’s mentioned in I Will Fear No Evil and Expanded Universe, iirc.
I did some searching and I think that these folks is the same National Rare Blood Club. The page I linked to explains how to go about donating money.
In addition The Heinlein Society (who wrote the post quoted in the OP) has a blood drive every year on Heinlein’s birthday (July 7).
It was bad week for SF figures named Virginia. Virginia Kidd also died.
Kidd is probably not very well known to the general public (though she had a few stories published), but her influence behind the scenes was immense. She was one of the field’s first major agents, representing Ursula K. LeGuin, Anne McCaffrey, Gene Wolfe, R.A. Lafferty, Alan Dean Foster, James Tiptree, Jr., and many others (see http://www.sfwa.org/news/kidd.htm for an obit).
IIRC, she evidently was an exceedingly unpleasant woman and RAH divorced her. Ginny’s obit on the SFWA site state’s that Ginney was RAH’s 3rd wife. Whatever happened to the second wife?
I think the “third wife” thing’s a typo: Polycarp knows more about Heinlein’s personal stuff than me, so maybe he can correct me, but as far as I know, he married Leslyn MacDonald in '32, divorced her towards the end of 1947 and married Ginny in '48. That’s not a lot of time to squeeze in another marriage.
And I hadn’t heard that Leslyn was unpleasant (I’m not saying Tuckerfan’s wrong, just that I hadn’t heard it), but I haven’t heard/read much about Leslyn: people don’t seem to talk about her much.
There’s a brief timeline of Heinlein’s life here, for those interested. According to that site, Heinlein divorced Leslyn in “late '47” and according to the SFWA obit, married Ginny in Oct, '48. I can’t imagine that Heinlein would get divorced and remarried twice in less than a year.
Fenris has the straight scoop, to the best of my knowledge. The account of David Lamb in Time Enough For Love, which is known to have some autobiographical elements, includes a while-at-USNA marriage that may or may not have had any relevance to Heinlein’s own life. Until tonight I had heard nothing about a wife before Leslyn.
Damn, indeed. It was obvious to any fan that theirs was one of the really solid marriages. I’m thinking of the poem R.A.H. wrote about her ice skating, and their mutual love of cats.
I can’t think of a better choice, Fenris, than The Man Who Traveled in Elephants. I can recall as a teenager reading it to my girlfriend at the beach, tears streaming down my face.
I firmly believe that it was colored by the flavor of their relationship.
And, though YMMV, it comforts me some to think of them together again, somewhere…
