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Encyclopedia Introduction |
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Acknowledgements
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(1908–1988). American writer.
Special thanks: StarCraft (video game) (Chris Metzen,
Matt Samia, Mark Schwarz, Glenn Stafford, and Duane Stinnett 1998).
Film based on his
work: Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (tv
series) (1950–1955); "Ordeal in Space," "Misfit," "The Green Hills of Earth"
(1951), episodes of Out There; The Brain Eaters (Bruno Ve Sota 1958)
(uncredited adaptation of The Puppet
Masters); Starship Troopers
(anime tv series) (1989); Robert A.
Heinlein's The Puppet Masters (Stuart Orme 1994); Red Planet (tv miniseries) (1994); Starship Troopers (Paul VERHOEVEN 1997); Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles (animated tv series)
(1999–2000); Starship Troopers: Terran
Ascendancy (video game) (2000); Starship
Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (Phil Tippett 2004); Starship Troopers (video game) (2005).
Only two results of his various film and television projects ever made
it to the screen. The first was Destination
Moon, a collaboration with producer George PAL.
Officially an adaptation of Heinlein's juvenile Rocket Ship Galileo (1947), Heinlein and Pal quickly decided that
they really wanted to make a realistic movie about space flight, to persuade
the world that it could actually be accomplished, and so they jettisoned
the novel's absurd plot (two nephews help their uncle build a rocket that
takes them to the Moon, where they discover Nazis plotting to establish
the Fourth Reich) and instead produced a sober account of how a team of
visionary industrialists construct and successfully launch a rocket to
the Moon. Blessed with excellent special effects in brilliant Technicolor
and a few striking scenes (like the moment when the astronauts venture
out of their rocket to make an emergency repair and confront the wonders
of space while standing upside down on the rocket's surface), Destination
Moon is generally dull, early evidence that Heinlein's desire to send
a proselytizing message could overwhelm his instinctive knack for entertaining
audiences.
Far more lively,
though almost impossible to track down for viewing, was Project Moonbase, a film constructed out of the pilot for a
proposed television series, Ring Around
the Moon. With no budget to speak of, this black-and-white effort was
technically inferior to Destination Moon,
but actually more imaginative in its depictions of weightlessness, and a
contrived plot about a saboteur on board the first Moon flight at least kept
things more interesting than radio man Sweeney's wisecracks in the earlier
film. There is also an unusual proto-feminist subtext, as a woman is made the
commander of the flight by the order of the President of the United States—who, the closing scenes reveal, is a woman herself. (But male chauvinism
triumphs at the end, as the commander's male assistant marries his boss and is
promoted above her.)
After other,
unsuccessful efforts to get projects off the ground, Heinlein realized that the
world of science fiction had changed, and he could now make as much money as he
wanted by writing novels; so he abandoned Hollywood, and he probably preferred
the freedom of being his own boss to the bondage of being a film and television
writer. While in theory, someone might dig out and film some of Heinlein's old scripts
and scenarios someday, his continuing presence on the screen will probably
depend upon the initiative and talents of adaptors. But their record to date has not been
promising. Ignoring many more interesting Heinlein workss, filmmakers have
focused their energies on two uncharacteristic novels with easy-to-dramatize
story lines: his thriller about invading alien parasites, The Puppet Masters (1951), and the gung-ho space war epic Starship Troopers (1959). (The inept
direct-to-video sequel Starship Troopers
2: Hero of the Federation, in which Heinlein's name thankfully never
officially appears, even contrives to combine the two stories, as the giant
insectoid aliens adopt the more insidious strategy of planting tiny insect
parasites in the bodies of human hosts.) And the two major adaptations of these novels suggest that Hollywood may
forever be unable to convey Heinlein's idiosyncratic passions for freedom and
human advancement: Robert A. Heinlein's
The Puppet Masters, while dutifully following the novel's plot, lacks any
passion at all, and Starship Troopers imposes
a layer of irony that is utterly foreign to Heinlein's vision. Still, since the
people now controlling his estate seem to share Heinlein's powerful drive to
make money, one can hope that such long-optioned works as Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966) might finally move beyond
pre-production; the miniseries Red Planet
demonstrated that Heinlein's juvenile remain good material for adaptations; and
there are any number of other Heinlein stories that would yield films far more
intriguing than Star ship Troopers and
The Puppet Masters, ranging from
"Universe" (1940) and "Magic, Inc." (1941) in the 1940s to Friday (1982) and Job: A
Comedy of Justice (1984) in the 1980s. Still, the worldly-wise Heinlein
learned long ago that one should never expect too much out of Hollywood, and
his present-day fans would be worldly-wise to maintain similarly low
expectations.
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