SOURCE: Slusser, George Edgar. The Classic Years of Robert A. Heinlein, pp. 9-39. San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1977.

In the following excerpt, Slusser surveys the plots and major thematic concerns of Heinlein's short fiction.

Stories

Heinlein's short stories belong, essentially, to his early years. From his first published tale, “Life-Line” (August 1939) through 1942, when the war briefly interrupted his writing career, Heinlein worked exclusively in shorter forms, and the medium-length serialized narratives which, in their episodic quality, bear more affinity with the story than the novel. The majority of these early tales appeared in Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction; some were written under pseudonyms (the most famous of which is Anson MacDonald). Among this handful of works is some of the most interesting fiction Heinlein has done. In the years immediately after the war (1947-1949), he resumed writing stories—here, however, is a different kind of tale, for a different...