1949 Hubbard and Heinlein Letter Correspondence

Box 1796
Savannah, Ga.

March 31, 1949

Dear Bob;

Just wrote John W. a letter and gave him hell, the air-conditioned sort. I sent him an athletic sort of yarn and he bounced it—just a lousy old short. But his emphasis on the esoteric these days graveled me, since he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Which is what I told him. So to take the editor taste out of my mouth I am writing a love letter to thee.

Glad if I really was of service in any Shasta matter, not because I want to hurt them but because it might aid the profession a bit—which is all too full of pitfalls as ’tis. A greased pig is non-skid compared to those lads.

Fascinated with this CALLING ALL GIRLS business. My lord! But it’s a good idea, though. Personally lately I have another tekneekew. (That’s a French word meaning “methods employable in getting into things.”) I completely apprehend your idea. You write a story. Then you get fan letters. Then maybe some of the fan letters are close to home. Then maybe….

Your request about the agents techniques recalls me that this here area is shore revolutionary, pard. They just ain’t fergot nothin’ about Reconstruction. Down at the library, all the way back in the vault, are four full length shelves of books such as the PSYCHOLOGY OF REVOLUTION, ERRORS MADE BY ROBESPIERRE, THE POWER OF THE RABBLE, LAWS GOVERNING LEVEE EN MASSE, HOME BOMB MANUFACTURE, ASSASSINATION AS A POLITICAL TECHNIQUE, etc. etc. for about three hundred big, authoritative volumes. And I’ve never before seen a single one of them.

Robert, if I hadn’t heard your last plan for Armageddon, I wouldn’t even think twice about separating myself from this data. But what would you do with it? You’d go and put it in books. And then maybe the conservatives would pick it up and what would right wing people like myself do then? No spoofing, though, I’ll dictate them off one of these days when I get this condemned southern girl up to a point where she can spell elementary English. I get a phone call every couple hours when she’s working with a long list of words. Then she plays a record back over the phone so she can fill in the first draft. And loddie, she can really stretch a point, which is to say a syllable. Pretty, though. Awful pretty.

I’d sure like to help pan that gold. By golly, of all the things I do poorly I pan gold the least poorly. I can pan gold where they ain’t no water, without a regular pan, without proper dirt and even without gold. Although I often find gold, that is the poorest part of it because then I have to stop looking and start working. So don’t let Ginny find herself a gold mine. It would be entirely fatal on your typewriting. You got any idea of how much a shovelful of wet blue clay weighs? Don’t find out. Just keep on telling her everything is pyrites but save it. Actually you can tell the two apart too easy to worry about. If it’s yellow and you can dent it with your nail or knock a corner of it flat (an ounce of gold will thin out to a sheet an acre in extent) and if she flattens, she’s gold. If she breaks, she’s pyrites. Also get yourself a little nitric or hydrochloric acid. Put a little in a saucer, put in the article to be tested. If she stays there, even if she stays black, she’s gold. In one or the other everything else under the stars dissolves. Gold dissolves only in aqua regia, a combination of those two acids. But once you see a piece of gold even if it’s tiny, in a pan, you’ll never make another mistake.

Boy, I’m sure not typing worth shucks. But that’s because I’m just plain weary. Or maybe lazy.

Sure would like to hit the road, but I’m planning to have a little fun anyway.

The worst of this moving is shifting my working setup which is pretty exact. But there’s a dog that howls all night out here and I haven’t been able to catch him and give him any therapy. So I give up.

Consider yourself wrote to.

My very best to Ginny and my love to you both.

Ron

PS: Too tired to proof. You’re a cryptographer anyway.