Slashdot Mirror
Robert Heinlein's Pre-Internet Fan Mail FAQ
Hugh Pickens writes "Kevin Kelly has an interesting post about a letter he found amongst correspondence from his days editing the Whole Earth Catalog. The letter is Robert Heinlein's own nerdy solution to a problem common to famous authors: to deal with fan mail. In the days before the internet, Heinlein's solution was to create a list of frequently asked questions, answer them, and remove the questions. Then he, or rather his wife Ginny, checked off the appropriate answer(s) and mailed it back. Some of the entries in Heinlein's answer sheet are quite illuminating and amusing. Our personal favorite: 'You say that you have enjoyed my stories for years. Why did you wait until you disliked one story before writing to me?'"
Some of the answers were amusing. Good to know that fannish entitlement and the false sense of intimacy are not merely a product of the internet.
http://transformativeworks.org/
Every time I feel like writing fan-mail, I think, "Wait, would I really want to be bothered by this? And is it creepy?" and then I don't send it. I'd love to tell Alastair Reynolds how much I enjoy his work, but then I stop myself because the last thing I want to do is waste his time reading "gosh I sur luv ur books lawl" when he could be spending that time writing more books...
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Wow, offtopic when he mentions Lazarus Long in a Heinlein article. People just don't read these days.
Maybe if you don't know anything about Heinlein, you shouldn't modding
Je ne parle pas francais.
" Your letter was most welcome! - loaded with friendliness and with no requests or demands. You suggested that no answer was expected but I must tell you how _much_ it pleased me. I wish you calm seas, following winds, and a happy voyage through life. "
I guess the mods didn't grok the joke. Or this one, in all liklihood.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Lazarus Long reminds me of The Simpsons... there is a quote by him relevant to practically any imaginable topic, The Simpsons by dint of its sheer volume and Lazarus Long because of the universality of his quotes.
"The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship."
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.