I've just found an . The last line on the page is: "There ain't no such thing as free lunch."

There's summarizing efforts to find the origin of the phrase, with the earliest instance being 1938. So this 1959 example is nowhere near the origin.

Neverthelesss, I thought this worth noting as a particularly high-profile venue for TANSTA(A)FL, one that Heinlein might well have seen.

Are you questioning RAH's tale that he got it from Jerry Pournelle's father, who was also active in 1930s politics and dated the term to that era?

Some fellow members of the American Dialect Society listserv have been tackling this lately:


. . . which leads to

followed by:
[urlhttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-August/143703.html]http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-August/143703.html[/url]

Pournelle claimed in 2002 that the acronym went from his father, to Jerry Pournelle, to Heinlein, and that Heinlein acknowledged such several times:


Patterson expands the story in vol 2 of the biography


let me edit that last link in my previous post: