Robert Heinlein(1907-1988)

Widely acknowledged as the Grand Master, and Dean of Science Fiction, he was a driving force in bringing the science fiction market out of the "dark ages" of pulp fiction into the light of mainstream publication. He held that the destiny of Mankind lay in expansion into the vastness of the solar system and the universe beyond.

He also firmly believed that debts must be paid. If you can't pay one back, you PAY IT FORWARD.

In 2003, Directors of the Heinlein Society established the Heinlein Prize to achieve both these goals. The Award is given to honor outstanding published works in hard science fiction or in technical writings that inspire human space exploration.

On Saturday, July 7, 2007, a gala celebration was held in Kansas City, Heinlein's hometown, on the Centennial of his birth. As part of the festivities, at the appropriate point in the evening, the lights dimmed, the crowd hushed, and the announcement came...

Elizabeth Moon has won the 2007 Heinlein Award!

Elizabeth Moon (1945 - )

Born in McAllen, Texas, she graduated from Rice University with a B.A. in history. She later got her B.A. and did two years of post-graduate work in biology. She served for three years on active duty in the USMC, mostly working with computers. She has been an EMS volunteer, a member of the local library board, held public office, and is active in her church. When not writing, she rides and cares for her horses, advocates space exploration, fences with rapier and dagger, and enjoys classical music. She applies her knowledge of biology practically,carrying on her own ecological restoration and wildlife management projects on land she owns.

She is married to fellow Rice student, Richard Sloan Moon, now a doctor. The couple has one son, Michael.

Though best known for her works in Science Fiction and Fantasy, her first professional sales were non-fiction. She wrote articles for medical journals (ghosted using Richard's byline). She has also written essays and articles of political commentary, on global warming, and on writing.

She deeply researched the subject of autism. Her conclusions about its causes ran counter to accepted theories of the time, but recent biomedical studies support her hypothesis. That research led her to write her Nebula-winning book The Speed of Dark, published in 2002.

Heinlein was especially known for his capable, intelligent, and multi-talented female characters. With her education and accomplishments, Elizabeth Moon might well have been one of Heinlein's characters, herself.

THE INTERVIEW

MB: You've said here, and on your Moonscape website, that you started writing at a very young age, but as a sideline. How much did Heinlein's books lead you to pursue a career in writing?

EM: Heinlein's books did not lead me to pursue a career in writing; they influenced me towards a career in science (didn't happen, but that was the main influence of the science fiction I read -- it bolstered my already-existing desire to become a scientist and get us to the stars.) The science fiction I read, starting in junior high, simply added science fiction to the types of stories I wrote. I wrote whatever I was reading at the time and I read constantly, across many genres.

What finally got me to consider writing as a career was the discovery that I could actually earn money at it (something that hadn't been clear for my first 35 years) and it started with nonfiction. I liked writing fiction more, but nonfiction put bread on the table first.

MB: Who or what else influenced you in your writing?

EM: Everything I ever read, which included vast amounts of magazine fiction (Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, Atlantic Monthly) and nonfiction (National Geographic, Reader's Digest) as well as books. If you want writers' names, Nevil Shute was certainly an influence. So also Helen MacInnes, Josephine Tey, Dorothy Sayers, John Steinbeck (yes, I went through a Steinbeck phase for a year or so), Kipling, Austen, Trollope (mostly the Barchester novels), Surtees (the hunting novels), Cecelia Holland, Chesterton -- plus large chunks of fantasy (Dunsany, Cabell, Chesterton, Smith, Morris, Tolkein, Lewis, and others) and SF.

MB: It could be said that your life and Heinlein's are mirror-images. Obviously, you're female, to his male. He aspired to -- and failed to achieve -- public office, while you've held office on more than one occasion. Heinlein did not get to finish his military career due to medical discharge, while you completed your tour of duty. Did Heinlein's "failures" inspire you to achieve?

EM: Not at all. For one thing, I never considered Heinlein a "failure." As a young person, I had very little interest in (and thus no knowledge of) writers as people -- I didn't know their life stories and frankly didn't care. All I cared about was their writing. And even after I learned more about Heinlein (some 20 or more years later) I didn't consider him a failure.

For another: Heinlein and I had very different cultural backgrounds, due to the difference in our ages and our gender--I never considered that we were in any way equivalent. He was a child during WWI, and WWII was the defining war of his adulthood; that was, if you will, a "popular" war and veterans were (and are) treated with great respect and admiration. He also lived through the Depression. My childhood war was the Korean War and Vietnam defined war for my generation; military personnel and veterans of that war were (until very recently, and still by some) treated with disdain, hostility, and disrespect by most. Thus whatever problems he might have encountered, as someone who was medically discharged, were very different from the ones I encountered as someone on active duty during a very unpopular war and as a vet afterwards. Moreover, the gender difference was, back then, profound in its effects on available choices. Heinlein, as a male, had a wide range of possibilities which anyone would consider acceptable: there were no barriers in education or occupation specifically against male gender. That was not true for me, as a girl or woman, in a time when departments and graduate schools had a quota system for female applicants (typically 5% or less of medical school and law school classes were female; as late as the mid-1970s a friend of mine had trouble getting into a surgical residency on the grounds of gender.

And he was a success in his profession -- in writing -- which was the way that I knew of him. So "Heinlein as failure" never occurred to me.

However, his books and others showing people achieving despite obstacles did inspire me to keep struggling--not, most of the time, towards a writing career, but towards other goals.

MB: Has your military career influenced the kinds of stories and characters you create?

EM: Of course. Without that experience I could not have created realistic military characters. However, I wouldn't call a mere three years of active duty a "career."

MB: You've just won the 2007 Robert Heinlein Award. Did you ever get to meet Robert Heinlein?

EM: No, alas. He died before my first book was published.

MB:Others have compared your books to his. I see his influence, too. Your book Sassinak was co-written with Anne McCaffrey. It is set in Anne's Dinosaur Planet universe and Sassinak was originally, I believe, a McCaffrey character. Yet I sense your Sassinak as a combination of Helen, the Marine big sister from RAH's Tunnel in the Sky, and Thorby Baslim from Citizen of the Galaxy. I'm reading your Sheepfarmer's Daughter right now. I am put in mind of Starship Troopers. Do you consciously emulate him, as he emulated James Branch Cabell?

EM: No (and I had no idea he emulated James Branch Cabel, whom I've also read.) Admittedly, my early science fiction, written at ages 14 to 18, is a pretty obvious mix of Heinlein and Norton, with little dollops of Sturgeon and others, but long before I started Sheepfarmer's Daughter a lot of that had faded into the general soup.

As an adult writer, past the age of 18 or 19, I never consciously emulated anyone, though of course what you read shapes, to some degree what you write. I always enjoyed well-written action fiction (and for that matter, nonfiction) -- mysteries, spy stories, adventure stories of all kinds -- so all those writers would be in the mix. I can spot the bits of Shute, MacInnes, Fleming, Tey, Holland in my work when I re-read it.

I think a lot of people assume SF writers read only SF--that all their influences come from SF -- but that's certainly not true of me, and wasn't true even in the years when I read the most SF.

MB: How would you classify your own similarities to and differences from Robert Heinlein?

EM: Similarities: respect for reality, respect for individuals despite gender/class/race, respect for manners, respect for hard work/craftsmanship, appreciation of technology, desire to see human exploration of space.

Differences: cultural changes (as mentioned above) that affect every aspect of life, different gender, different background (both family and location), and probably, religion. Different education (mine more in the humanities.) More interest in history and anthropology and much more interest in biology (both molecular and "field" biology -- I still do field biology.)

MB: One last question, since we're a writing school -- on behalf of our students: Was there one single factor that you can point to that resulted in your first professional sale? Or perhaps more than one?

EM: First: Stubbornness: I kept submitting until I got a sale.

Second: Cooperation: I had four rejections from the market that made my first professional sale (MZB'sSword and Sorceress III) and with the fourth she said she might have bought that story if it had come in earlier, but now she had room for only 1500 words with some humor. I stared at that rejection letter for a long time, wondering if it was an invitation and then quickly wrote a story that was funny and 1497 words long. (It started, as I clearly remember, at 2300 words. Getting it down below 1500 was not easy.) I had, at that time, been writing to length for a newspaper and understood that when an editor says she has only 1500 words of room, that's a factual statement.

MB: Thank you, Elizabeth, for taking the time to repond to my questions, and for the deep and breadth of your answers.