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Errors and Omissions, Volume 1 of the Bio 
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Over at the Tor.com blog, Joe Walton's blog entries have turned into a discussion of errors, which gives me a chance to set up this errors and omissions thread. Some of the criticisms are errors-that-are-not-actually-errors, and some of them are in my opinion simply unreasonable, but there were some real errors detected, and this is a good place to memorialize them.

First off, I confused two speeches Churchill gave in 1940 and wrongly attributed the "Never has so much been owed by so many" speech to the evacuation from Dunkirk. I can't lay hands on my marked-up advance copy, but on the uncorrected bound galleys, it's on page 256.

The "never have so much been owed..." speech does appear to have been a genuine slip-up; in my mind I had associated that with the evacuation from Dunkirk, but actually Churchill said that about the RAF in the battle of Britain in a speech before the Commons given in August 20, 1940 -- a bit more than two months after the Commons speech with the "we shall fight them on the beaches" lines (June 4, 1940)


Fri Aug 13, 2010 8:40 am
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A more serious error was placing an incident in WWII at Iwo Jima when apparently it happened elsewhere. Again the bound galleys,Chapter 25, "Stabilizing, Somewhat," at page 342, the last three lines of the paragraph.

My reply acknowledging the error:

OK -- I've been going over sources and doing research for the last six hours, and here's what I've found about what I've been calling the "Mt. Suribachi incident."

1. It didn't happen on Iwo, which means not Mt. Suribachi.

2. It didn't happen on Okinawa. None of the civilian suicides in Okinawa are ringing bells at all. Understandable as I know I didn't research the Okinawa campaign at the time this was written.

3. I'm having the same problem James Nicoll reported re tracking down the incident and reconstructing my original sources. It's hard to find information about Japanese civilian casualties without reliable keywords to work with.

So, yes, it does appear to be an error -- and an embarrassing one. I think I know how it happened, from the fact that there is no source noted in my original draft.

The text in question was written six years ago. I used my chronology of notes (35 mb by now) as the basis for whatever I was writing, but that essentially covers only stuff that was going on in Heinlein's life and a scattering of other contextual information. In the middle of composition it often happened that I needed to look up additional contextual data using online sources. Somehow I conflated information from different sources together.

I have a vague recollection that I picked up that particular incident from a USMC history of some kind -- but it's six years ago and the page I thought I noted in the original draft is now something else, confusingly having to do with a national park.

I think the best "fix" is simply to omit the Mt. Suribachi part of the discussion there -- the rest of the passage on how the Japanese defense hardened is correct and necessary for the overall thrust of the rest of the chapter.

I want to thank you for catching that. It's an embarrassing mistake, to be sure, but in some weird way I'm glad it was a kind of mistake it was, if it had to be a mistake.


Fri Aug 13, 2010 8:57 am
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Jo Walton points out that Heinlein could not in fact have met Edna St. Vincent Millay in summer 1930 when he was in Greenwich Village because she was off writing sonnets. Bound galleys, p. 122, ". . . he would naturally also have run into Edna St. Vincent Millay.

This is not really an "error" of fact (because it's in a passage clearly marked as speculative by its language, in Subjunctive Mood), though I'm darned if I can figure out exactly what kind of counterfactual to call it. Jo Walton found the information in a biography of Millay published in 2002. At the time I wrote that passage, in 2003, the university library would not have yet had time to get the book on the shelves -- and none of the half-dozen sources I did look at for bohemian Greenwich Village suggested otherwise. I've requested the Millay biography from the LA Public Library and will consider exactly how to make the revise once I find out whether, in fact, Millay was in New York in that period stretching from spring (May) into early summer (June). Walton says only that she was not in New York that summer.

The essence of that passage is to portray how Bohemian Greenwich Village in the 1920's probably felt to the young Heinlein, and Millay was an example that brought the society's polymorphous perverse sexuality of the first sexual revolution of the century to life for the reader. So I think the evocation has to stay in one way or another, but the exact way the evocation is stated probably does need to change in some way.


Fri Aug 13, 2010 9:07 am
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Bill- the Mt Surbachi incident you speak of may well instead have been Saipan- an estimated 20 to 30 thousand Japanese civilians committed suicide there when it became apparent to them that the americans would prevail- whole families jumped off seaside cliffs

I verified my recollections on our old fav wikipedia


Fri Aug 13, 2010 11:16 am
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Fri Aug 13, 2010 2:02 pm
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Good catch, Nick and Jim. How did you recover the information? I looked through a couple of narratives about Iwo and Okinawa and ruled them out. But once you eliminate those keywords, I was floundering trying to find what I had conflated with Iwo.

Jim, can we eliminate the confirmation code, or at least get a different character generator? These characters are so degraded that it sometimes takes me four or five tries to get an acceptable confirmation -- and I'm pretty darned good at reading degraded stuff. I want to lower the frustration threshhold for people to post here.


Sat Aug 14, 2010 7:38 am
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Bill

WWII has always intriqued me- the mass civilian suicides at saipan was something i recalled due to their horrific nature - the documentary footage of whole families leaping from the cliffs- i shudder thinking of it even now

i did verify my info via wikipedia <ducks Jim's roundhouse> LOL

Nick


Sat Aug 14, 2010 11:48 am
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Ah, wetware!


Sat Aug 14, 2010 2:38 pm
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Gertrude Whitney Vanderbilt (p. 122) should be Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Thanks.

Helen Schinske


Sun Aug 15, 2010 10:04 am
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An excellent place to list all this, Bill, as well as on your own web page. I suspect there shall be more nitpicking.

Let us remember that Niven had the earth rotating in the wrong direction in Ringworld, and that the Ringworld in its original incarnation would have shaken itself apart.

People make mistakes; readers catch them; this is what second editions are for :)

That, and more royalties....


Sun Aug 15, 2010 9:41 pm
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Mon Aug 16, 2010 6:01 am
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Ed Wysocki spotted an inconsistency in naming the computer Heinlein trained on in 1930:

"In Chapter 10, you have him going to Ford Instrument to learn about the Lexington's Mark III Rangekeeper. In the middle of the chapter you refer to the Mark IV Ballistic Computer. At the end of the chapter you are back with the Mark III. Then at the beginning of Chapter 11, when he returns to the Lex, it is now a Mark IV.

A rangekeeper is a ballistic computer."

Urk. I probably followd the sources more than I should have. He referred to it in different ways at different times. I think the "rangekeeper" designation came from the orders. I'll have to put this in the Nexus's Errors and Omissions thread for second edition.

Thanks
Bill


Wed Aug 18, 2010 5:56 am
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I bought the book on Kindle, so I have to give surrounding context rather than page references.

"a notorious freethinker, Durant had scandalized New York by marrying his thirteen-year-old student, Ariel."

Ariel Durant was fifteen when they married. See the Durant Foundation's website,
http://www.willdurant.com/visit.htm

"the possibility of an 'internal antiseptic, even though penicillin was already on the market"

In 1932, when Heinlein was diagnosed with TB, penicillin certainly was not on the market; no reliable way of mass producing it had been invented. Penicillin wasn't widely available to civilians until after World War II. In any case, penicillin is pretty much useless against TB; the first antibiotic that actually fought TB, streptomycin, was introduced in 1946.


Wed Aug 18, 2010 5:09 pm
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Wed Aug 18, 2010 6:11 pm
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p. 105 says Elwood Teague left the Naval Academy in the Spring of 1929.
p. 65 says he left in 1926. (From the Google Books version – haven't been able to check the printed text yet.)


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Thu Aug 19, 2010 6:33 am
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not sure if this is the right section for this but Bill did ask for the Kindle feedback = have not finished the book yet but it would be nice if there was a way to glance easily back and forth for the footnotes on the kindle version. I see the number but do not know how to get to the actual footnote (and if I do find it, then how do I to get back to where I left off on the narrative?)

Very nice so far Bill.


Thu Aug 19, 2010 12:41 pm
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Audrey, I had to figure it out by trial and error. To follow a footnote, use the little square button to move the cursor until it turns to a hand. This point may actually be a character or two past the footnote number. Now click. You're in the footnote. Hit Back to return to where you were. If you prefer, when you're in the Footnote section, you can click any footnote number to return to the corresponding text.

Under some circumstances, using the square button to navigate right at the top of the page sends you to the beginning of the next chapter. Most annoying.


Thu Aug 19, 2010 1:47 pm
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In her blogpost about the bio being unreliable as to details Jo Walton stated categorically that Heinlein could not have met Edna St. Vincent Millay in New York in 1930 because she was in upstate New York at the time writing the sonnets that would become "Fatal Interview." She cites a biography of EstVM, "Savage Beauty." That had been published at the time I wrote the passage in collection, but it wasn't on the shelves in the University Library.

Below is a research report on this point:

Jo, I got a library copy of _Savage Beauty_ (large print ed., so page number references probably won't match the edition you read). As I've said elsewhere, that book was not available to me when I wrote the passage that mentions EStVM, but I've been reading through it now, trying to find out what, if any, revision needed to be made to that passage in the bio. I've just gotten past that time frame and stopped with a question for you (I did skim through the remainder before stopping, but there doesn't seem to be anything relevant to my question).

First, just an observation: while it's true Edna and Eugen had been living at Steepletop for some years and not in New York, they had been off and on in New York for the last couple of years, 1928 and 1929, for, e.g., the production of her opera written by Deems Tayor. The relevant chapter points out [586] that they were in New York in March and presumably again in May 1929 on either end of a trip to France. It's true they had not been "core bohemians" for some years -- but not true that they were therefore unavailable entirely.

My question is, how did you decide that she was at Steepletop during the time RAH was in New York? I have been unable to find any mention or even reference to the relevant timeframe. The book only says that she worked on the sonnets that would become _Twice Required_ [working title of _Fatal Interview_] in the "fall and winter" without attributing the year[s].

Construing from the very vague dating Milford provides [the last definite date is 3/11/29 on p. 586 and the reference to _Fatal Interview_ takes place on 602, so there has been 16 pages covering apparently two years, without a single definite date], I took the year of "fall and winter" to be 1929-30 with the book to be published in March 1930, but the various Millay sites and bibliographies list year of publication of _Fatal Interview_ as 1931, which would mean "fall and winter" of 1930-31, whereas Heinlein was in Greenwich Village in May through June of 1930 -- about which there is no information at all in Milford. There is not a single letter, event or document definitely tagged to 1930 in Milford.

Consequently, I have no way of evaluating your objection.

I'm not entirely sure you will see this, so I'm copying this to my author site's "errors and omissions" thread on the Heinlein Nexus in case discussion eventuates.


Fri Aug 20, 2010 1:42 pm
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Jo Walton's post was unfortunate in many ways.


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Fri Aug 20, 2010 6:39 pm
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Edna St. Vincent Millay departed Havre, then Southampton on the SS Caronia on 5/11/1929, arrived NY 5/20/1929.


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Sun Aug 22, 2010 8:28 am
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Ed Wysocki (08/23/10):

Page 347:

Three days later, Mussolini was torn to pieces by a mob in Rome and his broken body hung from a lamppost.

= = = = =

Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were actually shot in the small town of Mezzegra, which is on the shore of Lake Como, up near Switzerland. Nowhere near Rome. Their bodies were then strung up in Milan.

I would suggest looking it up on wikipedia

Me again: I told Ed Wikipedia is probably where I got it in the first place! This would have been written, probably in 2003 or early 2004. I don't doubt Ed's facts, but I'm going to try to develop a different online source for this documentation.


Mon Aug 23, 2010 6:34 am
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Mon Aug 23, 2010 9:19 am
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Mon Aug 23, 2010 10:26 am
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On page 23, you mention the references to the "'tramp" in the end sequences of "Gulf" and Starship Troopers. The tramp is also explicitly worked into "Water is for Washing."

I am thoroughly impressed! Here's to vol. 2!


Mon Aug 23, 2010 1:58 pm
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Tue Aug 24, 2010 6:15 am
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Bill, I would strongly urge you to include errata for the first volume in the second volume, to address these concerns. I would also suggest a thorough review of the secondary contextual references, since this seems to be where the boo-boos are.

I will happily help, as always.


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Another from Ed Wysocki (8/24/10):

P 316:

Some progress was possible, even in “Snafu Manor,” as Heinlein’s group of friends and colleagues there had begun to call the Naval Air Experimental Station (their little corner of the AML)

=

AML is part of the NAES, not the other way around.

From “Wings for the Navy” by William Trimble, p 224:

General Order 198, issued by the secretary of the navy on 20 July 1943, formalized the sweeping changes already accomplished by Ziegler. This document established the Naval Air Material Center (NAMC) at Philadelphia. Individual commands within the NAMC were the Naval Aircraft Factory, the Naval Aircraft Modification Unit (NAMU), the Naval Air Experimental Station, and the Naval Auxiliary Air Station at Mustin Field. . . . . The Naval Air Experimental Station, administered by a director, was to include all former NAF laboratories and was responsible for research and development, testing, and the ship installation activities of the SEU [Ship Experimental Unit].

I really appreciate this very fine-level of critique and error-detecting. I think it was Belloc who said what historian really needed was a gang of trained slaves to go over the manuscript from many different perspectives. Well, that hasn't been possible for a couple thousand years, so we are forced to rely on the goodwill and expertise of friends.


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Tue Aug 24, 2010 8:50 am
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Another catch by Ed Wysocki:

In the text, specifically pg 325 and 326, you correctly identify the bulletin as Air Scoop.

But in the caption to the picture of de Camp, Asimov and Heinlein, you call it Wind Scoops.

That is the kind of inconsistency that makes me tear my hair out! (That's what happens when you choose and write captions five or more years after writing the original text!)


Tue Aug 24, 2010 9:23 am
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I missed another catch by Ed Wysocki today (8/24/10):

P 328

In August, Heinlein was transferred from the Naval Aircraft Factory Engineering Division to the NAES Material Laboratory, Plastics and Adhesives section.

=

I think you have this backwards somehow. He had been in the Plastic & Adhesives section of the Materials Lab. See the very bottom of page 316.

Also, according to the diagram in the PDF file, it would have been the Engineering [b]Department.[/b]

Found the second one. I must have been completely out of it this a.m. (It's now been almost 2 weeks of temps over 90 and I have no a/c where I live. I'm getting more than a little frazzled.)

Well, you're right there is an inconsistency, but the transfer to Plastics & Adhesives was taken directly from the transfer paper, so that must be right (including the "division" vs. "department" language; I wonder if they were perfectly consistent in the way they used it contemporaneously?). I think it's probably 316 that's in error, as being about a year before the event.


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Well, errata are a moving target, best published on the web where you can continually update it. Don't expect at any point in time that you've found every bug. So a note to the effect of "this book's web site, with value-added material such as errata, fora, data, desiderata, and other pabla is at ---"


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I am not so certain of the future of computer maintenance as I am of plumbing. I have never met a plumber who is not booked solid through 2014. I called mine to fix a leak in my water filter and he allowed as how he was swamped and might make it one evening this week. He lives a couple of minutes away.


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Another error, this one by e-mail from William S. Cornell:

In a message dated 8/25/2010 9:35:46 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, williamcornell@gmail.com writes:
Dear Mr. Patterson:

I started reading your Heinlein biography today (it's past midnight,
so yesterday), and the third chapter raised a question. On page 40,
near the bottom, you mention that in August 1923 Heinlein was about to
start his junior year at Central High. Then, on page 43, Heinlein
graduates from high school in June 1924. Am I to understand from this
that Heinlein skipped his senior year of high school? Thanks for any
clarification that you can give.

No, I think you've caught another error (I've got a thread for errors and omissions in the biography on the Heinlein Nexus). He went to Central 1920-1924, so graduated as a senior. That should have been "senior year."


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Reading through the chronology this morning, I came across another data point in an "errata" or "variorum" discussion that somehow hasn't made it into this thread yet.

There are two (now three) versions of when Heinlein joined LASFS. In a 2000 interview with Dr. James, Forrest J. Ackerman indicated that he met Heinlein "a few weeks" before the August 1939 issue of ASF came out -- i.e., July 1939.

In a 10/25/73 letter congratulating LASFS on its new clubhouse, he said "I joined December 1938 or possibly January 1939, as it was at the meeting of the new Hollywood chapter at which 4SJ announced that a new magazine, Unknown Worlds, would be on the stands in February 1939 "

In an 11/4/85 letter Virginia Heinlein to Leon Stover she relays Heinlein telling him that he joined LASFS in the spring of 1939, shortly after he began writing -- which we usually assume means after April 1939 because of "Life-Line," but might be earlier, referring instead to "For Us, The Living," which was circulating to publishers in the spring of 1939.

In various other places he gives 1939 as the year.

This material should probably be worked into the relevant footnote.


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Ed Wysocki again:

On page 348, you say “mustered in, in June 1925, with 626 members.”

I think that number is seriously in error. The number mustered in should be close to number of graduates + number of non-graduates.

Unfortunately the only plebe class size figure I can find is for the class of 1927, which my source gives as 885.

The Register of Alumni says that for class of 1927, it was 579 graduates and 250 non-graduates, for a total of 829.

For the class of 1929, it says 240 + 130 = 370.

There is a mismatch in both cases, but I think you will agree that 829 is closer to 885 than 370 is to 626.

I think the 626 figure must be a typo, but it's going to take some research to figure out just what it should be. The 370 figure does "sound" right to me.


Sun Aug 29, 2010 6:48 am
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The "Register of the commissioned and warrant officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps. January 1, 1926" lists 391 members of the "Fourth Class" (freshmen/plebes). The vol from 1/1/1927 lists 322 members. The vol from 1/1/1928 lists 258 members. The vol from 1/1/1929 lists 246 members.

A Washington Post article from 9/21/1925 about a speech from Sec of Navy Curtis Wilbur to the incoming plebes said the incoming class had a roster of 300.

A NYTimes article from 6/7/1929 about the class's graduation said that 239 received diplomas.

P. 64 of Learning Curve shows the class starting at 478 and dropping to 240 by graduation.

Pick your number.


Mon Aug 30, 2010 10:02 am
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Page 488: "(Heinlein later combined qualities of his aunt Bam and his mother's sister, Anna, as the basis for Hazel Stone of The Rolling Stones.)"

Shouldn't that be great-aunt Bam? Since she was his mother's aunt, the one for whom she was named?


Mon Aug 30, 2010 10:35 am
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Tue Aug 31, 2010 5:57 am
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I suspect we need a note on "the bottle with the three dimples". The bio has Heinlein use this with reference to Leslyn's alcoholism. One of his characters also uses the term "milk the bottle with the three dimples" -- and it has to be Ben, Jubal or Sam (from Puppet Masters).

Is this some specific kind of alcohol, or just any whiskey?


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Phil Sutherland [?] from Australia writes:

On page 57 (Plebe Summer) in item V of "Worldly Wisdom from the Old
Master" there's a reference to "one of Bljdf's letters", and a footnote
indicating that Bljdf is unknown. Has it occurred to you tha Bljdf can
be turned into Alice by substituting the previous letter for each letter
(except the L, which may be a (deliberate?) mistake)? Would
correspondence from Alice make sense in this context?

It certainly does -- and I can't imagine why I didn't twig to that already.

Phil was just given a copy as a gift. Wonder if his was one of the purchases at worldcon or ordered by amazon.com.uk.


Sun Sep 05, 2010 3:45 pm
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This one is a little odd -- not the contents, but it came as a message in a Friend Request on FB, and I can't find it in my Facebook information anywhere:

Robert Whitaker Sirignano

Robert says, "You know, Upton Sinclair wasn't a very good looking man and was not exceptionally sober...

& mention of "Gerald McBoing Boing is the late forties is a misplaced point: the cartoons were from the mid fifties.

Enjoyed the bio of RAH, but found some information with regards to date placement in need to tinkering with.".

I think the Mitchell book quotes a back east journalist as saying Sinclair looked like Henry Ford gone slightly fey.

Point taken re Gerald McBoing-Boing cartoons. Would be interested in your date-placement comments. It was a constant problem, because it's really necessary to keep the reader time-place oriented, but it can overwhelm the logical flow of the narrative. I lost the ability to "hear" the prose a couple of years ago (i.e., 2.5 years into the editing process!), so couldn't rely on the writer's tool necessary to correct that as we got toward the final language.


Tue Sep 07, 2010 1:23 pm
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Follow-up re Gerald McBoing Boing. The original story appeared in 1950, with the first UFA film in 1951, so I'm a little more sanguine about the reference on p. 455. However, the language does need to be re-worked, as it implied he had already done them in 1948.


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Mon Sep 13, 2010 11:09 am
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Thanks for the input on format, Geo. It is a work still in progress (I haven't loaded in here some additional comments by Ed Wysocki, because I haven't had time to do the necessary research yet. (That's right, I research error comments the same way I researched the original stuff.)


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On page 13, Introduction: "...the fictional lunar landing in [MWSTM] was set in 1970..."

1975 on the original handwritten chart; 1978 in the 1941 and 1950 charts; date removed for the 1967 chart but still positioned after the "Strike of '76"; timeline revised (is retconned too phannish?) back to 1964 in TSBTS. I am not aware of any other specific datings.


Tue Sep 21, 2010 8:40 am
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I'm not sure if this is the place to do it, but I'd like to point out that in the photo section the other engineer with whom RAH is pictured at the NAES c.1943 is Henry Sang, Heinlein's boss and my dad. I'd love it if future editions could credit him since he is also mentioned several times in the book. (I also have a copy of that photograph.)


Tue Sep 21, 2010 4:35 pm
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Tue Sep 21, 2010 5:40 pm
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Thanks Bill, I'll look and see if I have photos of that era ... I think there were some taken either by Bob (as my parents knew him) or Leslyn at their house. BTW I am really enjoying the book which I bought today ... it's great to be able to put stories I heard as a child into perspective (I came MUCH later) and it's a revelation to know that my father's letters to RAH are over at UCSC in their archives, I assume. (It will be interesting to hear my mother's opinion of the book, as she is still very much alive at 90 ... and I can ask her about photos.)

If it's okay I'll friend you on FB (since I check that often) and you can keep me updated as to whether you have any use for photos ... my last name is Sang. ;)


Tue Sep 21, 2010 6:34 pm
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Wed Sep 22, 2010 6:00 am
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Earl Wells left a comment in the author site's blog which asked for more errors to be corrected:

"Bill, congratulations on the publication of volume one. I’m ready for volume two whenever you and Tor are!

Here’s a correction — minor, but Heinlein-related:

On page 497, note 28, you say that Heinlein told the story of the courageous hobo in Swope Park in his 1976 GOH speech; actually, he told that story in his 1961 GOH speech (see Requiem, pp. 178-180 of the hardcover, pp. 237-9 of the paperback).

I think this is interesting because the 1961 speech was relatively close in time to Starship Troopers & Stranger in a Strange Land, which had themes akin to what Heinlein felt was the meaning of the anecdote."


Fri Sep 24, 2010 1:23 pm
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I haven't read as far as Earl Wells' comments, but recall that Heinlein also recounted the Swope Park tramp story in the 1973 graduation speech to the midshipmen. You might have been thinking of that date.

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Fri Sep 24, 2010 2:16 pm
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Fri Sep 24, 2010 6:43 pm
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Fri Sep 24, 2010 10:47 pm
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Bill Higgins -- a wonderful cornucopia of facts. You know, for the last couple of years (since Denver, at least) I have been sending people your way when Cornog's name comes up, but I didn't realize the depth and detail of the material you've been developing. You know, Cornog really deserves a biography, and you are the man to write it.

In my research, Cornog kind of falls off Heinlein's radar in the 1960's, until Heinlein refers to him as a "former friend." Have you been able to develop any factual information about this rift? It wasn't covered in Cornog's oral history at all. I was hoping the new material Pendle developed from interviews with Cornog's relatives might shed some light on this -- and of course he might have more information on this point, but it didn't bear on his own topic. Haven't had occasion to contact him since he asked me for information several years ago (which he then completely misrepresented in Strange Angel)


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Sat Sep 25, 2010 10:25 pm
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Bill -- in a 1979 letter to Kingsbury enthusiasing over "Moon Goddess," Heinlein refers to Cornog as a "former friend." I was more impressed with "Courtship Rite," which I read over again every few years.

I have never run into any explanation for the rift in the 1960s.

I'm not so sure that Heinlein cut people any more than is usual for long-lived people who are much in the public eye. It might be more that several of the people Heinlein ceased to make time for grumbled about it excessively -- FJA a classic example.

There are several examples where one or both of the Heinleins told a person, "if you do thus and so" (one example is to publish am article that accuses Heinlein of being a hypocrite) "I will consider that an unfriendly act, and I won't do any further business with you." And the act was done and Heinlein stopped doing business. I'm not sure this quite qualifies, though it is certainly posed as if it did.

I can't quite understand why anyone would expect to continue being treated as a friend when they (a) do unfriendly things and (b) are told upfront that the act will wound their "friend." but do it anyway.

Possibly bearing on this situation, I have found in my own life that I will say in a temperate, reasonable voice on multiple occasions, "what you are doing is [offensive] [wounding] [something else] to me, please stop or do something else" and am completely ignored. At some point I have had enough and let them have an earful -- at which point they act as if this comes completely out of the blue and is unreasonable on my part.

I don't tend to hang around with people who enact this pattern over and over.


Sun Sep 26, 2010 12:44 pm
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My mother seems to think that the rift between Cornog and RAH was political and tells a story about this that must have been told to my parents by Corson or someone else because I am sure that they did not witness it. My parents drifted away from Heinlein after he married Ginny and his politics began to shift, but there was never any big break-up.

@Bill - my mother seems willing to connect with you. She is enjoying the book and says that she thinks you treated Leslyn quite accurately. My father, Henry Sang, died in 1981 (within a week of Corson's death in WA, I believe) and my mother remarried five years later. We all live the in SF Bay Area, where I grew up. May parents moved up here @1950 so my father could work at SRI.

My mother's given name was Grace, which she disliked, and when she met RAH he said she wasn't a "Grace" and said he would call her Long-haired Cat or Cats (they all liked cats.) This eventually turned into Cathy (which she also disliked) or Catherine. She was always Catherine as I was growing up, but in recent years she has gone back to using Grace.

Also, it was HER apartment in NYC that she shared with Jerry Stanton and Sturgeon ... apparently SHE wasn't too concerned about laws concerning miscegenation. ;) But then that was during WWII, as opposed to the late 40's when Ginny was supposedly worried about it; I have to figure there was a somewhat different attitude during the war ... more of a "live for today" kind of a feeling ...

Under corrections: I noticed that Sturgeon only appears in the index once (my mom has my book, so I can't be sure) whereas there is at least one other reference to him that is apparently not indexed ... when RAH has someone else (Campbell?) tell Sturgeon that there is no room for him. (I find Sturgeon interesting, so I had immediately looked him up in the index.)


Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:00 pm
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Ooops ... I didn't mean miscegenation. :lol: Simple cohabitation among unmarried mixed gendered adults will do.


Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:30 pm
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Tue Sep 28, 2010 6:11 am
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Actually Doog was an AKA for my father ... they were Doog and Dugan as a couple. His full pseudonym was Septeen Doog ... I am really not sure how that name came about, perhaps my mother can explain. I have seen letters in which he signed off as Doog or just a large "D".

I know my mother said she'd be interested to talk with you, she may have been thinking more about a phone conversation. I'll ask her about it. In the meantime we can plan to have you contact me through Facebook or the email I gave you with the friend request if you find yourself coming to the Bay Area.

~Hilary Sang


Tue Sep 28, 2010 7:19 am
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Tue Sep 28, 2010 5:07 pm
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I'm in the process of compiling a list of corrections (including one received from Jim Gifford in email this a.m.) to send to David Hartwell for a presumptive second impression. Once I get it finished, Ill post bits and pieces here.


Fri Oct 01, 2010 7:45 am
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The system is still not letting me log in, so I have to do this the hard way.

Here are the corrections I'm about to give David Hartwell. There are 11 pages of 12 pt. type, so this is going to take several postings. As you can see, a large number of these corrections are essentially copyediting that should have been taken care of three galley sets ago but weren't.

p. 3 1 2 Italicize “The” in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

40 6 1 Change “junior year” to “senior year”

50 2 11 Change “Middies” to “mid.” Also please check consistency of initial-
capitalization; in most places it’s “mid” with minuscule. Finally, how
about moving the “middie” vs. “mid” footnote from Chapter 5 (p. 504) to
here, first occurrence of the term? [also note initial minuscule in footnote]

52 11 Remove superfluous period at end of line that begins “Publish orders.
March . . .”

54 2 6 Replace “He” with “Robert” [or whatever you believe is correct for this
place -- presumably “Bob” or “Heinlein”]

65 2 3 Replace “1926” with “1928”

82 7 2 Initial cap “Academy”

85 Paragraph 1 is illusory. Three-line indented block quote should be
integrated with the continuing paragraph at start of page and the concluding
text in the margin following. Eliminate block indent and float.

92 2 Initial cap “Midshipman” in “Corps of Midshipmen”

105 This is awkward. The whole paragraph is out of sequence because Teague left in August 1928 -- i.e., back to p. 98. Minimum change would be to
eliminate “That spring,” change “diminished” to “diminishing,” put a
period after “further,” change “‘Woody’” to “(Woody)” [that is, elminate
the quote marks to be consistent with Arwine’s nickname, below],
eliminate “when,” eliminate “before graduation” and replace with “in
August 1928.” Following “stock market” and before the period, add “, and
John S. (Whitey) Arwine discovered an unsuspected heart murmur and was
let go in the spring of 1929.” Eliminate “The world of 1929" and replace
with “The end of the 1920's.” Those three lines probably expand a bit (I
make it a line and a half) and so affect the following page as well, but
should now read as follows:
Heinlein’s small circle of friends was diminishing even further,
Elwood (Woody) Teague left the Academy in August 1929 to
take up a career in the stock market, and John S. (Whitey)
Arwine discovered an unsuspected heart murmur and was let go
in the spring of 1929. The end of the 1920's was thoroughly . . .

122 4 6 Change “Whitney Vanderbilt” to “Vanderbilt Whitney”

122 4 11 Change “would naturally” to “might naturally” QUERY: Do we want to address Jo Walton’s buffoonish and highly unprofessional objection to this point on Tor.com? She has casually misread her biographical source,
which says nothing at all about Millay’s whereabouts in the period between
1929 and 1931.
I am of two minds about this. First, unfortunately, The Internet Is Forever,
and that congeries of her mistakes read as errors on the book’s part is going
to come up on Google searches “forever.” (The one actual error will be
corrected infra). On the other hand, it’s not something I am professionally
compelled to take notice of, and her complaint itself is so full of obvious
factual errors she is unaware of that it might colorably be regarded as
falling beneath the radar of a credible criticism.
So I leave it up to you. If you deem it necessary, I will draft a footnote
explaining that a criticism has been raised, though the ground for the
criticism is somewhat ambiguous, as the biographical source cited does not
contain the information on which the objection is based.

148 1 7 Change language: “port of a visit by French Academician Robert Esnault-Pelterie, saying he thought . . .”
I thought I wrote a footnote to follow Esnault-Pelterie’s name, but I don’t
find it anywhere. I wanted to note that a late interview with David Lasser,
still at that point editing Wonder Stories, indicates that Esnault-Pelterie was
delayed so his talk was actually delivered by Lasser. I’ll have to dig up the
citation, so I’ll come back to this when I’ve got it.
In any case, the reference citation is to Bulletin no. 5, dated November-
December 1930 and received with Heinlein’s welcoming letter from the
Secretary of the AIS, C.F. Mason, dated 01/27/32.

150 7 Paragraph 7 is illusory -- a three line block indent that should be
reintegrated with the surrounding paragraph, fore and aft, and all “float”
line spaces eliminated.

159 4 1 Following “Coronado” and before the period, insert the following language:
“(Voter Registration records show them at 521 Palm Avenue, a little less
than a block north of Coronado High School)”

244 8 5 Delete “at” before “chez Heinlein” (I thought you had made this correction earlier)

255 3 11 Change “He” to “Heinlein” (or “Robert” or whatever you deem appropriate here)

256 1 8 Delete “On May 29,” and replace with “Between May 27 and June 3,
1940,”

256 1 11 Delete “‘Never have so few done so much for so many’ radio speech:” and replace with “‘We shall fight on the beaches’ speech to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940.” 256 1 14 At the end of the paragraph, after “home isles” but before the period, insert “‘We shall never surrender.”

268 4 1 There is an ambiguity re pronoun reference. “he”could be Cornog but is intended to mean Campbell. Let’s rewrite a few lines starting from ¶3, line 6: “pregnant technical concept. ‘Such nice ideas he has,’ Heinlein
remarked of Campbell’s weaponized radioactive dust -- but it dovetailed
with a political story he was already germinating based on discussions he
was having with Robert Cornog. The radioactive dust gave focus to the
story.
“In the same letters, he . . .”

That's the first three of eleven pages.


Fri Oct 01, 2010 12:57 pm
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Here are pp. 4-8 of 11

282 4 4 Remove a superfluous “the” before “one”

283 2 9 Change “shove,” to “shovel,”

286 6 1 After “accident” insert “[in 1937]” This also entails an alteration to the footnote on p. 554, which I will take up when we get there.

293 3 8 Replace “in dry dock” with “tied up, waiting for repairs, in Pear’s East
Loch” and continue “at the time of the attack.”

315 1 Following “potential friends” insert “(along with Charles G. Finney’s The Circus of Dr. Lao [1935] and an odd little French graphic novel, Private
Memoirs of a Profiteer (M. Scrullionaire), An Animated Cartoon by Marcel
Arnac [1939])”

316 4 3 Replace “AML” with “Naval Aircraft Factory”

316 5 Delete the last two lines of the paragraph and the page, from “He was made” to “under Henry Sang.” This happened later.

10 of Photographic insert. Redo the caption: “Heinlein captured in a hall
conference with his boss, Henry Sang, in the Plastics and Adhesives section
of the Naval Air Experimental Station, about 1943.”

321 6 1 Change “She took” to “Keith took”

333-34 I’ve been trying for the better part of a week to fix this by patching it up, but this isn’t going to work: I’ll have to rewrite at least the last paragraph on 333 and the first on 334, and move a passage from 334 to 335.

Replace the last paragraph on 334 which goes over to 335 with the
following:

The war was again brought home to him personally when Cal
Laning was involved in the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea (also
called the Battle for Leyte Gulf) October 23-26, 1944. This, the
largest naval battle in history, was the Navy’s part in Gen.
MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. Laning was then commanding
the destroyer USS Hutchins in Surigao Strait, between the islands of
Mindinao and Leyte, and ordered his ship in closer, attacking
a force of enemy battleships, cruisers and destroyers,
inflicting on them numerous torpedo and gunfire hits.
These hits damaged the enemy to such extent that his
eventual destruction followed. Commander Laning's
gallant fortitude and conscientious devotion to duty
contributed materially to the victorious outcome of the
engagement and were in keeping with the highest
traditions of the Navy of the United States [footnote --
Language taken from Cmdr. Laning’s Navy Cross
Citation, sent to Heinlein and preserved in the RAH
Archive, U.C. Santa Cruz.]
Hutchins’ courageous behavior on this occasion earned Laning a
Navy Cross and Legion of Merit citation -- and the nickname “Killer
Laning” in press photos.”
Note that all the kamikaze material has been ellided. Don’t delete it --
much of it will be moved to p. 335. Then replace the following paragraph,
¶1 on p. 334 with the following.

But Laning’s “extraordinary heroism” -- “in keeping with the
highest traditions of the Navy” -- was not his main contribution to
this battle. In addition to commending his “indefatigable energy and
inflexible purpose,” Laning’s Legion of Merit citation makes special
note of “expeditious development of certain doctrine and
organization” which “materially shortened the period necessary for
full utilization in combat. In addition he evolved a considerable
portion of the special techniques and training facilities thus further
contributing to its marked success.” This oblique language
circumspectly refers to Lanings work since 1942 in modernizing the
Combat Information Center (“CIC”), which collects and evaluates
and redistributes information about the engagement (“field
intelligence”) while it is going on, to organize the battle plans in real
time. Hutchins had been refitted with the newest CIC equipment in
its last overhaul at Pearl Harbor.
Laning acknowledged to Heinlein drawing on years of reading
science fiction and the speculative bull sessions they had in their
Academy days. “And it works and sinks and shoots down Japs” he
wrote to Heinlein. [footnote] Although histories of world War III
naval engagements pay scant attention to the improvements in CIC
during the war, integrating field intelligence from the new
technologies radar (one of Laning’s specializations) and sonar with
visual data, they do remark often on the surprisingly aggressive --
and successful -- behavior of destroyers in the Battle of Surigao
Strait, one of the four major battles in the Battle of Leyte Gulf).
Laning’s innovative work with CIC put him in the forefront of CIC
development, and he repeatedly acknowledged the role Heinlein’s
fiction had played in the accomplishment, urging his friend, “Save
yourself for some super-stories.” [footnote]

335 2 1 Before the existing “In theory, the demonstration...” insert the following new paragraph 2:

In the First Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944 --
sometimes known as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot” -- Japanese
naval air support capability was severely crippled. There were
essentially no aircraft carrier forces available. The Japanese high
command had devised a strategy that struck many people inside the
Japanese government as a corruption and perversion of Bushido:
the “divine wind” kamikazes (named for typhoons in the thirteenth
century that fortuitously drove off invading Mongolian fleets) would
crash their ships into targets -- the WWII version of suicide
bombers. Some of the kamikaze pilots were as young as fourteen.
Some were bolted into their cockpits so they could not escape their
fate. The first regular use of kamikazes took place in the Battle for
Leyte Gulf -- the day after Laning’s night engagement in Surigao
Strait.
In theory, the demonstration of Japanese fighting spirit . . .
And continue with the old paragraph 2

345 2 2 Delete “Golden Dawn variety” and replace with “system”

347 4 Delete “in Rome” and replace with “in a small town near Lake Como”

347 5 At the end of the sentence, after “lamppost” but before the period, insert the words “in Milan.”

348 1 2 Replace “626" with “478"

359 7 1 Replace “the start of the war” with “April 1943

367 2 4 Replace “half desert” with “half-desert”

372 4 Paragraph 4 is illusory. It’s a 3 line quote that should be blended back into the preceding paragraph with the following 2 lines in the margin, and the float eliminated.

374 1 7 Delete “at” before “chez Heinlein”

377 3 3 “guys like Bilbo” requires a footnote. “Theodore G. Bilbo (1877-1947) was a Senator from 1934 to his death. He was a vocal White Supremacist and member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was re-elected in 1946, but the Senate refused to accept his credentials because of bribe-taking and inciting violence against blacks. He died of oral cancer a year later, his credentials still “on the table” and never having taken his seat for his third term.”

377 4 2 Change “Northrup” to “Northrop” Same at line 5 of same paragraph.

377 4 4 After “stars” and before “jamming” add “nuclear-powered rockets and aircraft,”

406 Paragraph after poem beginning “Of the half dozen” change “half dozen” to “half-dozen”; following “only” delete “half of one was” and replace with “one-and-a-half were”; following the colon insert “‘Why Buy a Stone Axe”
sold to Facts Magazine and was scheduled for the July 1946 issue, and half
of” and continue with “‘Man in the Moon’ appeared...”; Finally, at line 3,
delete “at” before “chez Heinlein”

455 1 11 After “Flit ads” add “and”; after “documentary films” delete “, and the cartoon Gerald McBoing-Boing

455 1 13 After “during World War I” and before the period, add (his Gerald
McBoing-Boing cartoon would first appear in 1950 and 1951)” then
continue with the period.

469 2 1 Change “just go” to “just to”

488 4 9 After “When Aunt Bam” insert “(Heinlein’s great-aunt)”

495 I’d like to improve the ease of using the notes by adding the pages by the chapter title, e.g., “Introduction (pp. 11-16)”; “1. The Heinleins of Butler,
Missouri (pp. 17-23)”

497 n. 28, line 4, change “1976" to “1961"; line 5, change “MidAmeriCon” to
“SeaCon” Add to the end. The full text from Heinlein’s draft is published
in the Nonfiction volumes of the Virginia Edition, and a comparison of four
versions including the full draft text and three shorter versions was
published in The Heinlein Journal, Nos. 15 and 16 (July 2004 and January
2005).”

497 After title of Chapter 2, add “(pp. 24-32)”

498 Note 14. Delete “First Series” for consistency of format.

498 Note 17. Add to end of note: “James Steinmeyer, who, as of 2010, is preparing a biography of Thurston, was unable to confirm that Thurston used this trick in his how. Nevertheless, Heinlein’s oral recollection, as conveyed by Virginia Heinlein in Taped Interview with Author, Tape 12,
Side A, is firm and unambiguous on this point.”

498 Note 18. Delete “First Series”

499 After Chapter 3 title, add “(pp. 33-47)”

501 Note 37. Change “John Campbell,” to “John W.Campbell, Jr.,” for
consistency.

501 Note 47. Change “John Campbell,” to “John W. Campbell, Jr.,”

502 After Chapter 4 title, add “(pp. 48-60)”

504 Note 35. At end of note add a continuation of the paragraph: After the initial publication of this biography, a number of people suggested this might be a shifted-substitution cipher, with the “l” unintentionally (?) left
unshifted. That is, the letters in the cipher are substituted for the
immediately preceding letter of the alphabet. Thus “b” substitutes
for “A,” “j” for “i,” and so forth. “Bldjf” is thus “Alice [McBee] -- which
seems to fit the sentiment of the notation.

504 After Chapter 5 title, add “(pp. 51-73)”

506 After Chapter 6 title, add “(pp. 74-86)”

508 After Chapter 7 title, add “(pp. 87-96)”

508 Note 3. Change “John Campbell,” to “John W. Campbell, Jr.,”

510 After Chapter 8 title, add “(pp. 97-109)”


Fri Oct 01, 2010 4:43 pm
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And here are the last pages:

512 After Ch. 9 title, add “(pp. 110-120)”

514 Note 26, line 6, replace “Rhodes Scholarship to him.” with “Rhodes
Scholarship for him.”

515 After Ch. 10 title, add “(pp. 121-125)”

516 Note 2. Delete “First Series”

518 After Ch. 11 title, add “(pp. 126-143)”

520 After Ch. 12 title, add “(pp. 144-157)”

521 Note 11. Some -- but not all -- of this material is duplicative of information in Note 13 of Chapter 8, p. 511. But I am inclined to leave it as is.

523 After Ch. 13 title, add “(pp. 158-172)”

523 Note 3, line 2, replace “2004” with “2009”

527 After Ch. 14 title, add “(pp. 173-184)”

529 After Ch. 15 title, add “(pp. 185-200)”

529 Note 6, after “Campbell” and before “Jr.,” insert a comma

531 Note 32, line 2. Comma after “Campbell” and before “Jr.,”

533 After Ch. 16 title, add “(pp. 201-213)”

535 After Ch. 17 title, add “(pp. 214-223)”

537 Note 20, line 3, transpose “,]” to “],”

538 Note 28, para 3, line 7, delete “First Series”

539 After Ch. 18 title, add “(pp. 224-235)”

540 Note 17, line 2. Insert comma after “Jr.’s”

541 Note 21. Insert comma after “Jr.” and before date

542 After Ch. 19 title, add “(pp. 236-251)”

542 Note 5. Add a new paragraph to the end of the note:
However, Heinlein’s own recollection, in his 10/25/73 letter to
LASFS congratulating them on their new clubhouse, was “I jointed
December 1938 or possibly January 1939,” and in various letters he pegs it
to 1939 (letter to Bjo Trimble, 03/08/62) and “spring 1939” (Virginia
Heinlein letter to Leon Stover, 11/04/85, relaying a note written by
Heinlein).”

545 After Ch. 20 title, add “(pp. 252-270)”

547 Note 24, line 3, after “identify it.” insert “The story Heinlein is referring to might not even be ‘If This Goes On --’”

551 After Ch. 21 title, add “(pp. 271-292)”

551 Note 7. Put “Doc” in parenthesis, e.g., “A.D. (Doc) Kleyhauer, Jr.,”

554 Note 68. To the end of the note add: “The ‘accident’ was an explosion and fire on Teague’s yacht on September 4, 1937. ‘Trapped Chldren Die in Fiery Yacht Blast.” L.A. Times (09/05/37), p. 1."

556 After Ch. 22 title, add “(pp. 293-305)”

556 Note 17. Delete “dated” [consistent format]

558 After Ch. 23 title, add “(pp. 306-323)”

560 After Ch. 24 title, add “(pp. 324-337)”

560 Note 9, line 7. Initial-cap “Collection”

564 After Ch. 25 title, add “(pp. 338-351)”

566 After Ch. 26 title, add “(pp. 352-370)”

568 Note 45. Following text add: “Virginia Heinlein gave this piece of
Trinitite to her friend Mark O. Martin, who confirmed in August 2010 that
it is still in his possession -- though no longer even faintly radioactive.” 569 After Ch. 27 title, add “(pp. 371-392)”

570 Note 17, line 4, delete “in the first instance”

574 After Ch. 28 title, add “(pp. 393-410)”

575 Note 16, line 1. Rteplace “published” with “wrote”

577 After Ch. 29 title, add “(pp. 411-432)”

581 line 2 on page (of Note 56) after “1954” insert “-- six years after their
marriage” and continue with the closing square bracket

583 After Ch. 30 title, add “(pp. 433-447)”

587 After Ch. 31 title, add “(pp. 448-457)”

590 After Ch. 32 title, add “(pp. 458-473)”

592 After App. A title, add “(pp. 479-492)”

594 After App. B title, add “(pp. 493-494)”

619 Index “Sturgeon.” Add p. 72. Have not checked the index line by line. This was pointed out to me by a Sturgeon fan.


Fri Oct 01, 2010 9:13 pm
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Albert Michelson

Albert Michelson made many important early measurements of the speed of light. On p. 63 of the biography, it says "a textbook ... did not even mention the ongoing measurements of the speed of light, which Michelson had started at the Naval Academy in 1886." (The Michelson-Morley experiment, which gave the first evidence disproving the ether, was conducted in 1887 at what would become Case-Western.)

Michelson's first experiments on the subject were in late 1877 and early 1878 at the USNA.

P. 107 quoted RAH saying that Michelson "performed his first famous experiments in 1878".

The index, under "Michelson", includes the reference on p. 107 but not the one on p. 63.


Thu Oct 21, 2010 6:42 pm
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Fencing Coach

p. 53 "His fencing master was a real French swordsman with a mystery in his past. Capitaine Deladrier gave instruction in epee . . ."

Clovis Deladrier (1885-1948) was from Belgium. He started coaching at the Academy in the late 1920s, and became head coach in 1932 upon retirement of George Heintz Jr. He wrote _Modern Fencing_, published by the Naval Institute in 1948. He died during a match with Yale.

His son Andre coached at the Academy from 1957 to 1990, and was US Fencing coach at the 1960 Olympics.


Thu Oct 21, 2010 9:38 pm
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A scattering of good touch-up points from the helpfully eagle-eyed Heinlein crew, but of course not amounting to more than a few freckles on such a necessarily wide-ranging biography and cultural history as the altogether excellent Learning Curve. I certainly appreciate the determination and good-will, as well as the scholarship, to provide Heinlein's own story and character to the world.

I like the idea of an html and/or pdf file at the author's site to contain corrections and minor discoveries pertinent to the volumes; with perhaps larger items -- Lanning's career and friendship, for instance -- developing into separate essays as out-of-book appendices.

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Fri Oct 22, 2010 8:16 am
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Fri Oct 22, 2010 4:56 pm
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p. 592 note 47: Both #9 and #11 of The Heinlein Journal are dated as July 2001. I supposed at least one of these is incorrect . . . .


Wed Oct 27, 2010 9:33 pm
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Today in E-mail from Nathan Howe, I received a supplemental bit of information that is entertaining, but I'm not quite sure how it might go into the biography yet:

I just got off the phone with a family friend in her eighties, who's from Missouri and now wants to read Learning Curve. I was just skimming it again--kind of poignant about his teenage years. You know, I think Learning Curve is going to go the distance and last the ages. It's going to be absolutely necessary down the ages to anyone who even comes near a Robert Heinlein story.

I don't know if you picked up on it, but the Heinleins were in touch with the writer Robb White, Annapolis '31. He's the guy who wrote Secret Sea, Up Periscope [1956] (they made the old James Garner movie from the book [in 1959]) and about 25 others; his books complement the Heinlein juveniles remarkably well. Robb told me that at Annapolis RAH was the world's fastest rope climber. During the war, Robb got to visit General Macarthur every month to tell him that he couldn't have a dozen aircraft carriers this time, either. Admiral Nimitz made him write down Mac's subsequent blasphemies and obscenities for his personal review and private amusement. Robb White eventually made Captain; the Navy liked what he wrote about it. He died after a car accident in 1990....he was another great man. I understand that he wrote Virginia a very warm, caring letter after Robert died. (I'm using these first names loosely; I wouldn't have dared use them in real time.)

There is, or used to be, a big Commonwealth interest in RAH. I hope your agent is pushing for a good British edition. Funny, I looked through my stack of LOCUS and didn't spot any reviews, but it must be somewhere. They've gone kind of corporate since Charlie Brown left. Or maybe it's these eyes of mine....

The only one of White's books I could find still in print is Deathmatch (1972)


Thu Nov 04, 2010 7:41 am
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This may not be an _omission_ because it may belong in Volume II but there is no mention of RAH's interest in bridge. I know he played the game, although I don't think he played it often, and he had a bridge game going on in Farnham's Freehold Did he really pick the game up so late that it doesn't belong in Volume I?

Then there's the single word "mechanic" in the discussion of his ability to generate a little extra income in poker games. I saw nothing in the notes that convinced me that this is accurate yet I don't think you would say such a terrible, contemptible, thing about the subject of a biography without adequate reason. So I won't call it an error but I will say that I hope you are sure of your ground and, at the same time, I hope you are wrong.


Thu Nov 04, 2010 8:59 am
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Thu Nov 04, 2010 9:28 am
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Thu Nov 04, 2010 9:49 am

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Thu Nov 04, 2010 5:50 pm
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In the context of gambling with cards, "cheat" and "mechanic" are not synonymous. A mechanic cheats by manipulating cards, possibly at the shuffle, cut or deal; or during play by ringing extra cards in and out, marking cards on the fly (by nail nicking, crimping, etc.), surreptitiously exchanging cards with a partner, etc. The activities of a "cheat" would include much more than sleight of hand with the cards -- glimpsing or using shiners during the deal or cut, copping chips, miscalling hands, pre-marked cards, using stacked decks, etc. The simplest and most effective way to cheat, however, is signalling with a partner. In a five-handed game, if either of two players have any knowledge of each others' cards, they have an insurmountable advantage compared to the other three. (This technique works with bridge, as well).

Mechanic is a subset of cheat.

Jim Gifford is right -- without more specific knowledge that Heinlein had some specialized skill with cards, "sharp" is probably a more accurate term than "mechanic" would be.


Thu Nov 04, 2010 8:50 pm
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While "mechanic" and "cheat" are not synonymous, mechanic being a subset of cheat makes it equally insulting. Mechanics are a minor worry these days, collusion being the major form of effective cheating in casino poker, but they are still cheats. I am waiting for the author to clarify. I hope sharp is a better term for what he meant.


Fri Nov 05, 2010 7:52 am
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Sat Nov 06, 2010 7:14 am
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Because of his interest in and practice of stage magic, Heinlein would certainly have been capable of being a mechanic. It would have been both extremely risky and, in my opinion, dishonorable. However, young men are often quite sure of both their ability to avoid detection and their moral code, even when it differs from the norm.

Given a modicum of skill and serious application, the amounts you mention his making would not be difficult to make from a typical serviceman's game without card manipulation or collusion.


Sat Nov 06, 2010 11:31 am
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Sat Nov 06, 2010 2:40 pm
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p. 34, 3rd para, 1st line: "Junior high school also brought Robert's first opportunity to follow in the Heinlein family tradition of military service." Is "Junior high school" correct here? The first military service by RAH discussed here is his ROTC service at Central High -- did it start in Junior High?

Were Junior High and Senior High as clearly deliniated in the mid-1920s as they are now? When I went to school (mid 1970s), Jr High was 7,8 & 9 grades. My brother is 2 years younger, and his 9th grade was considered Sr. high, and only 7 & 8 were Jr high. Now, here in Huntsville, 1-4 are Elementary School, 5-8 are Middle School, and 9 - 12 are High School -- there are no named "Junior High" and "Senior High" schools.


Sat Nov 06, 2010 5:35 pm
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Junior High -- my father and uncle, both somewhat younger than Heinlein, went to school in Chicago. In their district, Junior High was "invented" in the few years between my father's schooling (1-8, 9-12) and my uncle''s (1-6, 7-9, 10-12).

Now in San Diego we have discovered "Middle Schools", and the grade levels are 1-5, 6-8, 9-12. This is Progress.

Moving 6th Grade up to Middling was done a few years ago to keep those big, bad-ass 6th graders away from the little kids.

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Sun Nov 07, 2010 12:16 pm
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Mon Nov 08, 2010 7:23 am
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"Card mechanic" is on p. 139, para 1 lines 5-6 and I will be replacing it with "card sharp." It took about an hour to pinpoint that.


Mon Nov 08, 2010 7:26 am
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I'm sorry about not giving a page number. I know there is no way to search as their would be on an eBook. My copy of the book rode the bus and train with me every day until I finished it but now it is on my shelves.


Mon Nov 08, 2010 8:15 am
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Mon Nov 08, 2010 10:00 am
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You can also use Amazon.com's "Look Inside" search feature for this sort of search. (And both it and Google books show the relevant term to be on p. 139, not 138.)


Mon Nov 08, 2010 10:40 am
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Mon Nov 08, 2010 6:30 pm
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BillP -- I had assumed that, as part of the editing and review process, TOR would have supplied you with a searchable PDF of the final version of the page images. I'm suprised that this isn't routine (but I'm an engineer, and am often suprised when the world doesn't work the way I think is logical).


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p. 130 3rd para, last line:
" . . . and then Buddy Scoles, Denbo, McCauley, and the rest went out in canvas-winged mosquitoes."

Scoles appears multiple times in the book. McCauley appears earlier in the paragraph. This is the only mention of Denbo that I could find by physically reading, or by electronic searching. He doesn't appear in the index.

I'm guessing that a previous version of the ms. included a passage in which Denbo was fully identified, so that subsequent mentions could be simplified to his last name only. But the identifying info was trimmed, and the editing process didn't restore his 1st name here. Is that right?

While I was reading the book, I ran across another short list of last names in which one of listees was similarly otherwise unidentified, but I can't remember or find it now.


Mon Nov 08, 2010 8:40 pm
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Tue Nov 09, 2010 7:01 am
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Tue Nov 09, 2010 7:06 am
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Robert Wayne Denbo was also at the NAF when RAH came to work there in 1942, as a test pilot. Eventually he retired as RADM


Tue Nov 09, 2010 7:08 am
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I've recently updated the errors and omissions listing on my author site, www.whpattersonjr.com, to include everything that has been caught from my proofreading, people writing in (thanks, everyone), and the pass through the galleys for the upcoming trade paper issue. This makes it the fifth revision of the errors and omissions list.


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Sat Jun 16, 2012 3:47 am
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Nevermind. Didn't even go far enough down the 1st page to find out Saipan had already been brought up. Gomenasai.

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Does it make sense to start collecting Errors and Omissions for Volume 2?

Has anyone conversed with the editor or publisher since Bill died?

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