Influential Science Fiction Author Robert Heinlein Dies

The passing of Heinlein recalls my meeting with him in the late 1930s when I was an aspiring writer still in high school and he resided next door to my father in the Hollywood Hills. While recovering from tuberculosis, he read a great deal and one day met a writer whose work he critiqued. That writer bet Heinlein that he couldn’t write science fiction and sell it.

Bob Heinlein advised me that a good writer should have many facts on hand so that he or she could select the best, whether for fiction or nonfiction, so that the writing product would be realistic and entertaining.

SPENCER CRUMP

Corona del Mar