For the next five years, Heinlein attended graduate school (which he was forced to abandon due to further health problems), architecture, real estate, silver mining, and politics before discovering an ad in Thrilling Wonder Stories which offered a fifty dollar prize for the best piece of amateur fiction. Heinlein wrote the short story "Life-Line" in four days. He considered the story too good for the "pulp" magazine (literally, a magazine printed on pulp, or poor quality, paper) that had placed the ad and sent the story to John W. Campbell at Astounding Science-Fiction where it was ultimately published. For the rest of his life, Heinlein maintained that he did not write for art, but for cash.

Over the course of his career, however, the quality of his writing garnered him four Hugo awards. In 1975, the Science Fiction Writers of America presented him with a special Grand...