Claim profile

Robert A. Heinlein

American author and aeronautical engineer (1907–1988)

  • Fame66.7
  • Momentum0.0
  • Wikipedia55.5K
Source-basedStable
Lived 1907–1988, aged 81United States
United StatesUnited StatesWritersWriter / Author
  • Wikipedia
    72 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    1907–1988
    Aged 81
  • Known for
    Starship Troopers
    1997
Summary
Updated 2026-06-09

He made science fiction respectable—and dangerous. Breaking into mainstream magazines when the genre was still pulp, he used moon rebellions and Martian messiahs to ask whether your marriage, your government, your certainties could survive contact with the future.

Biography

About

Born July 7, 1907, trained as an engineer and naval officer before tuberculosis ended that career and pushed him toward writing. In the late 1940s he cracked The Saturday Evening Post and other mainstream outlets, unusual for a science fiction writer at the time. Over decades he built novels—Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress—that used space travel and alien worlds to probe plural marriage, militarism, individual liberty, the weight of religion on government, the shape of sexual relationships in a technically competent society. Early a progressive liber…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein
said
I started clipping and filing by categories on trends as early as 1930 and my "youngest" file was started in 1945.
— "The Happy Days Ahead" in Expanded Universe (1980)
Robert A. Heinlein
said
Each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken.
— Introduction to "Cliff and the Calories," in Expanded Universe, (1980), pg. 355
Robert A. Heinlein
said
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
— In: Time Enough for Love: the lives of Lazarus Long; a novel (1973), p. 366
Robert A. Heinlein
said
How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?
— Life-Line (p. 15)
Robert A. Heinlein
said
He seeks order, not truth. Suppose truth defies order, will he accept it? Will you? I think not.
— Life-Line (p. 16)
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
By the numbers

Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Stable
66.7
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Historical26.0
Source confidence70.0
Completeness80.0
Global rank
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Country rank
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Category rank
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Receipts

Sources