The third story, Lost Legacy, was a major effort by Heinlein, but despite revisions he was not able to sell it to Astounding (or even to get Campbell to understand what Heinlein considered the real point of the story). Heinlein was forced to sell it to Fred Pohl at Super Science Stories, which at the time paid half a cent/word. He was embarrassed by the sale and insisted that Pohl run it under a new pseudonym, Lyle Monroe.
Almost immediately after Pohl accepted the story, Ejler Jakobsson replaced him as editor. I’ve shown above that Heinlein was treated with scant courtesy (and sparing honesty) by the top magazine and editor in the SF field. Here at the bottom of the heap (I speak of Jakobsson both from personal experience and from discussions with Jakobsson’s later assistant and successor at Galaxy, Jim Baen) he was treated much worse.
The story was butchered in the editing. A major supporting character, Ambrose Bierce, was excised. (Heinlein thought that may have been from fear that Bierce, who had disappeared in Mexico in 1913, would reappear as a centenarian and sue the magazine. The notion is ludicrous, but it’s the only explanation on offer.)
The title was changed from Lost Legacy to Lost Legion. This may simply have been a mistake by a typesetter misreading the editor’s scrawl, but Jakobsson (who bragged that his editing could improve Shakespeare) may have made the change deliberately for some unfathomable reason of his own.
The story appeared in the November, 1941, Super Science Stories. The cover announced that the issue contained The Science Classic of the Year—but the reference was to Tumithak of the Towers of Fire by Charles R. Tanner. Lost Legion, Lyle Monroe’s full-length novel (it wasn’t, of course), got second billing but no fanfare.
The final story in this collection, Jerry Was a Man, appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories in October, 1947, as Jerry Is a Man. TWS was a second-rate magazine, but it was well up from the bottom of the field; and the story is one of Heinlein’s best and most powerful. I didn’t like it when I read it at age 13, but I never forgot it. When I reread the story in preparation for writing this essay, I found that its brutal honesty and lack of sentiment still made me uncomfortable, but it has the strength of truth which most fiction lacks.
I wish I could write as well as Heinlein did with Jerry Was a Man.
Assignment in Eternity shows you Heinlein finding himself both as a writer and as a member of the SF community; it shows you Heinlein as a working writer before he became the Dean of Science Fiction. These stories are the steps by which Heinlein rose to his later eminence, and for that reason alone they would be worth reading.
A better reason is that the stories range from good to great, and that Heinlein was arguably the most thought-provoking writer in the field as well as being the best by general consensus.
Read, think, and enjoy.
Dave Drake
david-drake.com
Robert A. Heinlein, Assignment in Eternity
(Series: # )
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