So, when is the oft-rumored double-volume biography of Robert and Virginia Heinlein going to hit the bookstands? Does anyone know?

It is currently in press with Tor Books, and Bill Patterson is slaving away over the final galley edits as we type. I don't know a press date - perhaps next spring?

Yeah, well - David Hartwell has been editing at this thing for going on a year now, and he's just turned in the last chapter of the second volume. That makes 8 chapters in the last 6 weeks. So I am laboring to catch up.

It's impossible to say when it might hit the stands, because the process has gone for months at a time with no progress. I'm guessing half a year minimum to get the editing finished. Typically it's months after that.

There are a few copies of the unedited raw draft out there, which, with some glaring flaws, is still much better than the edited version. I'm becoming disenchanted with the process.

After the experiences with my first couple of (now largely inconsequential) books, there was simply no option for me but to form my own publishing house for the important stuff. The aim of commercial publishing seems to be to deliver as little as possible at as high a cost as possible - and by cost I don't mean only cover price. I believe that the only thing that made ARC a success was my having control of every last detail down to the style of the page numbers.

Now, now, no advertising in here.

My first book wasn't inconsequential, but it's become pretty dated. It was, and as far as I know still is, the only comprehensive book on automotive security system design ever published. But the material dates from the early 1980s and so is only of passing relevance to current cars and technology.

Second book was a reference to a programming language now long forgotten. Truly inconsequential. The following five years were writing books and publications for hire, none of which was ever considered for a Pulitzer.

Oh, the poor trees! Whole forests of them!

At this point, any republication by anyone would have to be after Tor's interests and rights run out, which is going to be a while.

Yeah. 700,000+ words -- and I had to do almost no literary commentary at all in order to keep it within those bounds. Since a 700,000 word biography is simply unpublishable in the current climate, for submission purposes I cut it to about 400,000+ words.

The editor at Tor does not want the unedited version to see print, ever. After the current struggle, I think that's at least partially justifiable; it does show -- very much -- the starts and stops of the writing, and some unevenness of treatment (i.e., after a six months' hiatus, I jump-started myself by writing a fictionalized narrative, and that and the succeeding chapters show definite signs of an interiority that would be more appropriate to a novelization than to a biography; also, where there is richness of material, as in his two years aboard Lexington, the chapters ballooned out to 15,000 words, whereas where the supporting documentation was skimpy, I had to skim over long stretches in short chapters of about 4,000 words. The ordinary chapter was about 7000-8000 words). But the edited version at about 400,000 words is going to miss a lot of the electricity I was able to generate. In particular, Hartwell has this bizarre idea that any interiority at all -- any statement of an emotion or a thought on Heinlein's part -- must be cited or cut (whereas, for example, it's a convention of biography that if someone actually did something, other things being equal, the mention of a decision to do it is unremarkable).

Incidentally, Jim, who is the J. Daniel Gifford who coauthored ARC according to http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Heinlein-R ... 619&sr=1-1 ? Evil twin? Er, good twin?

So...any news?

I thought Bill had made passing reference in another thread, but my understanding is that it's going very, very slowly in the publishing editor's hands. They are somewhere near completing edits on the first volume.

Word's an excellent tool when you beat it into submission. Two-thirds of its faults are from extremely poor, marketing-driven initial configuration.

Most of the other faults come from the vast number of ill-wrought features crammed into it, which sensible users will ignore.

As a straight-up, don't-get-too-fancy-with-the-formatting word wrangler, it's decent. Even better than decent, considering its extremely wide compatibility with common files and a vast user pool.

Gives me a story idea. Radio transmission is received from a planet 25 light-years away. It is eagerly decoded, and found to begin:

"We have received your video transmissions and want to share the benefit of our vast scientific knowledge with you. Based upon what we have seen, we are ready to solve your most pressing problem.

"Here is how you stabilize the fuel injector in the 1957 Chevrolet..."

Just a head's up. Today I start the second-pass revisions on the last chapter (which Hartwell wants me to split into two chapters each shorter than any others in the book). I should finish it up over the weekend, taking advantage of a break in the rain Sunday to get another toner cartridge and four reams of paper so I can print off two copies and mail one off to Hartwell this weekend, and another off to Spider Robinson, who has volunteered to read through it for technical writing issues (like consistency of tone and voice, which I can't judge any more).

After this, it goes to a copyeditor. After that, there's another round of corrections -- hopefully much more minor -- then theoretically, to press.

*sigh*

And then we start on the second volume, which I hope does not have the same technical problems the first volume had.

Another red letter day 20 February 2009; I mailed off the 1009 pages of clean redraft and send the RTF format of the digital draft with hidden comments, to David Hartwell. The first volume editing is now theoretically finished. Copyediting is next, but that ought to be a purely mechanical process.

What is the expected title? Thanks for all you do for RAH fans!

Curt

Having written more than one biography (credited and uncredited), I'm aware of the work that goes into one--in research and writing. I would judge the research on this project more difficult than the writing--a real challenge, what with the subject having worked so hard to keep his life out of the public eye!

I was surprised at first that Bill's project was taking as long as it has. Having looked around (I'm new here) I see that the delay is not all down to the author. If the publisher puts it through much more delay, the book is going to assume the status of myth among the general public, which will result in many readers not getting the book right away.

We'll just have to be sure to tell everyone we know when it hits bookstores and Amazon.
--Mike

My hat is off to you, Bill. I have never had to relocate for a project and, to be honest, I've not had the back-and-forth like you have. Arbitrary changes after the writing, yes--but not extended delays over titles and other issues. And no publisher shifts. (And--truth be known--it's far simpler to have an editor who learns most of what he or she knows about the subject from your manuscript.)

Having read your sketches (they're still available through the Internet Archive), it's easy to see that you have a handle on information. I'm sure, in fact, that you are awash in facts, anecdotes, and conflicting stories than you can use.
-Mike

As a believer in the inherent value of professional copyediting, I have to ask: Is the delay in part because the manuscript is actually being copyedited and queried competently? Many publishers in recent years have skimped in this department, and nonfiction (especially a biography intended, as this one evidently is, to be definitive) should receive at least a modicum of fact-checking as well.

I just pre-ordered my copy of from Amazon. List price is $30 with projected publication date of April 13; they're offering pre-orders for $19.79.

Thanks for the link! I searched for the book yesterday, but didn't find it. ISBN: 0765319608
--Mike

Hey, Bill, will you sign my copy? ("Sure I will," he says...."for a price!")

Robert A. Heinlein: Volume 1 (1907-1949): Learning Curve looks to be doing more than okay at Amazon. Most books don't show up in the Amazon rankings for some time after publication. Bill's book is already in 5 digits (lower is better). It ranked 169,000 or so late this afternoon. Right now it's at 19,133.

Amazon sales rank doesn't necessarily correlate to sales, but the fact that this book is in the ranking already does speak well for it.
--Mike

I agree: advance orders early and often should ease the path of Volume 2.

The book shows up at Amazon's German and UK sites, having gotten enough orders to achieve a ranking in the latter. Let us hope that foreign-language rights deals are being made, too. (This week was the Frankfurt Book Fair.)
--Mike

Bill, i might have missed mention of this already, but what will the cover look like? do you have a jpg?

I just received a notice from Amazon that the release date for Learning Curve has been shifted to August.

John Scalzi (who receives advanced copies of many SF and fantasy books for review) that an advance copy of Robert Heinlein, Volume 1: Learning Curve (1907 – 1948), by William H. Patterson, Jr., has arrived in Ohio.

So, it's less of a myth now, and more of a fact!

Amazon.com continues to indicate that the publication date will be 17 August.

In other SF news, longtime fan and editor George Scithers has died.

On another thread I asked Jack Kelly for a copy of a picture of me as a possible candidate for a book jacket photo (they just told me they were going to use a book jacket photo).

I don't make or keep photos of myself, so anyone who has one they think might be a candidate is invited to send it to me (together with suggested wording for the permission and photo caption) or post it here and send it to me (the ones posted here aren't high-resolution enough but they can be shared and people can laugh at me that way), and I'll pass them along to David Hartwell.

I'll take a look thru our collection. We likely have some of you at UCSC, at a formal dinner or two, and behind various panel tables. No guarantee any are suitable, tho. Are you looking more for action shots, or the more soulful staring into the camera with the wisdom of the ages in your eyes types?

There is one of you in the UCSC exhibit you did where you look pretty good standing next to a globe of some sort and Santa Cruz redwoods in the window behind you. You should already have that one in your collection, as we got it from you. . . Is that a moon globe, maybe? Can't quite tell.

Tho I was thinking of the group trip we did to UCSC at Con Jose --I likely have you in a few of those as well.

Ahh, here's one of you standing next to the baby coffin and the word processor. . tho others are in the shot and it might be hard to aesthetically delete them. You are closest to the table tho, so that would help.

Ohhh. A real find! One of Bill sitting at a dinner table but not in the process of stuffing his face! Not too many of those around!

You do have a coffee cup in one hand, but you are obviously in the middle of bon motting or somesuch to Fred Pohl who is sitting next to you (Centennial dinner). RJ is on the other side of you.

The picture of you and Eleanor (there is a third person in the pic, but one or both could be easily deleted if you prefer, I think) holding Robert's Hugos at Philcon looks pretty nifty too.

Dunno who took it tho.

baby coffin? Who lost a child? Surely not RAH?

It wasn't a cross of StGeorge, it was just a white handkerchief with a gray and a burgundy strip along its border -- it just coordinated nicely as an accent.

Evidence of the advance copies are .

Well, as I've pointed out to Art before, there is a pretty decent outline of the story in FUTL. Of course, one still needs a protaganist to revolve around. I could think of several scenarios that could easily work. The one that seems most likely to me would be a young idealistic aide to the first prophet slowly becoming disillusioned and in the end being responsible for forming the germs of the eventually successful cabal.

Just to be clear, I don't expect a ms of TSoHW to show up. I picked that particular title as it is of course the subject of "The Counterfeit Heinlein" (and, hey, for a reason), so it seemed a easy resonator.

The reality is, I could imagine Robert managing to hide a completed ms manuscript from us (after all, he and Ginny made a game effort at doing so with FUTL), but I cannot imagine him managing to have hidden *the existance at one time* of a manuscript of that length. The chicken-scratches of history would have shown up in some fashion given the materials available to us.

The most I could imagine him getting away with re TSoHW without us even knowing he had done it at this point, would be a multi-page outline one day of notes on how to approach turning the basic story into a novel, and those notes since lost/destroyed. That level of effort might possibly have escaped leaving ghosts somewhere for our later detection.

And then there's Robert Charles Wilson's "Divided by Infinity" in Gardner Dozois' 16th annual anthology (1998), in which the narrator's discovery of a 1957 Signet paperback edition of The Stone Pillow (with credits page indicating that it had originally appeared as an Astounding serial in 1946) in a Toronto bookstore leads to an interesting chain of events.

If I'm honest, at least a little of my bitterness over those two stories is that picking titles was not exactly one of Robert's strong points in general, and those two are actually pretty darn good.

I should probably note here as well as RASFW and AFH that the author site for the biography is moving out of the construction phase and about ready for public assault -- er. I mean use. www.whpattersonjr.com. I plan to put all updates of information there from now on, instead of just on my Facebook page.