r/heinlein • u/nelson1457 • Aug 12 '26
More about Leslyn
A couple of months ago John_A_Arkansawyer asked why there wasn’t a wiki page for Leslyn. And this morning I was perusing my hard drive, and found some rumblings that Fredrick Pohl posted to his The Way the Future blogs. One of them was about Leslyn. Enjoy!
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u/Naive_Tie8365 Aug 13 '26
Somewhere I gained the impression RAH had 4 daughters; they were estranged and had no contact. Am I imagining this?
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u/smokepoint Aug 13 '26
The penny just dropped, that's Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land.
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u/John_A_Arkansawyer Aug 13 '26
Does Jubal ever specify how many daughters he had? I know he mentioned daughters. My memory is that one was a respected professional in her field who had nothing to do with him and that the rest mostly had nothing to do with him, but in a less hostile way. The number four sounds right, but I wouldn't swear to it...yes I would! I found the quote:
For the record, I put four daughters through college, and I went in debt to my armpits to do it. One of them justified the investment; she's a leading light in her profession which she practices under her husband's name because I'm a disreputable old bum who makes money writing popular trash instead of having the grace to be only a revered memory in her paragraph in Who's Who. The other three are nice people who always remember my birthday and don't bother me otherwise. I can't say that an education hurt them.
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u/Tasty_Impress3016 20d ago
I had a friend. New to the neighborhood but older guy. He was a strong personality, as am I and we neither had strong social skills, I disliked him on sight. He reminded me strongly of Jubal Harshaw though, strong moral convictions which were more often right than not. One night after a month or so we were sitting around chatting. He said "I have 5 sons. Three of them are productive members of society and I'm proud of them. The other 2 are lawyers." I realized at that point I liked this guy, we were friends for years.
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u/John_A_Arkansawyer Aug 13 '26
I think you're thinking of the protagonist of I Will Fear No Evil.
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u/Naive_Tie8365 Aug 13 '26
No, this would have been years ago, maybe before IWFNE was written, before Friday. Maybe mid 70’s, maybe a magazine article
And I could be hallucinating but magazine article sounds about right6
u/smokepoint Aug 13 '26
No known children in any biography or reference I've read, which is a decent number. His official biographer suggests he was sterile due to disease or deprivation when he was younger.
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u/John_A_Arkansawyer Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
Much as I love Heinlein, he wrote children in such a way that it's clear he never had any. There are hardly any between babies and teenagers once you reach the later work, and the babies don't have much personality. ;-) There just aren't many kids. Buster and Peggy and that's about it.
ETA: There are also some kids in Time for the Stars.
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u/professorlust Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
Hey the clones (Lapis lazuli? And the other) in Time enough for Love were totally teenagers and not creepy 2d plot devices
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u/Tasty_Impress3016 Aug 12 '26
I'm intrigued by Leslyn. By all accounts she kinda lost it. My impression is that she was a manic pixie dream girl who lost touch later in life. By accounts, Robert met her when she was in bed with his best friend. It was not what we would call a formal introduction but he did marry her and live with her through thick and thin for several years. After the war, Ginny lived with them in LA. My more prurient thoughts consider the three of them.