Chapters in the History of Sexual Ethics: Robert A. Heinlein

Chapters in the History of Sexual Ethics:

Robert A. Heinlein

By Norman Elliott Anderson

-- Note well: This is a work in progress. --

Progress report. I am doing another read of the Heinlein corpus and am now writing up my notes as I go along.

Outline

1. Introducing Heinlein's place in the history of sexual ethics.

2. A short life of Heinlein, with special mention of:

His complexity
His three marriages
Certain of his close friendships
His shift in target audiences
His political shift
Shifts of perception of Heinlein

3. Heinlein's understanding of humankind.

4. Discussion of ideas about sexual relationships, title by title, in chronological order. Beware: spoilers! (May they whet the appetite rather than bring a surcease to it.) Thus far covered:

1938 or 1939, For Us, the Living
1940 May, "Let There Be Light"
1940 Summer, "Heil!" or "Successful Operation"
1940 September, "The Devil Makes the Law" or "Magic, Inc."
1941 February, "-- And He Built a Crooked House -"
1941 April, "Beyond Doubt"
1941 April, "They"
1941 May, "Solution Unsatisfactory"
1941 May and October, "Universe" together with "Common Sense" (Orphans of the Sky)
1941 September, "Elsewhere" or "Elsewhen"
1941 October, "By His Bootstraps"
1942 August, "Waldo"
1942 October, "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag"
1947, "late '47" (published 1980), "On the Slopes of Vesuvius"
1949 January, "Our Fair City"
1955 Tunnel in the Sky
1957 October, "The Elephant Circuit" or "The Man Who Traveled in Elephants"
1959 March, "'-- All You Zombies --'"
1964, Farnham's Freehold

5. Critique.

Some notes on the bibliographical data provided in section four:

For each essay on a Heinlein title, I provide bibliographical data at the head of that essay. The data covers the original publication and the edition or editions I am citing. In the case of a short story, I mention also other collections in which it appears.
The control list I am using is the bibliography in Grumbles from the Grave, [by] Robert A. Heinlein; edited by Virginia Heinlein (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990, c1989; "A Del Rey Book"): pp. 268-274. For the most part, I am trusting this work for data about original publication, especially of short stories. This bibliography is supplemented by my own library of Heinlein titles.

A note on conventions: When a mark of omission is mine, I employ no spaces between the dots, thus: ... When Heinlein himself uses an elision, I represent it with a space between each dot, thus: . . .

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Begun July 2001; posted, February 2, 2007; last modified, July 24, 2007