History Creator / RobertAHeinlein

* Juan Rico, another grunt, who doesn't have the stuff to join one of the more glamorous organizations but proves to be an above-average officer and the right man at the right time. In film adaptations they tend to forget he's only ''called'' "Johnny," not named that.

* The Gorgeous Woman: Spirited, beautiful and complex. Many of them have [[HeroesWantRedHeads red hair]], like Heinlein's [[AuthorAppeal wife]] Virginia. In fact, it is often tempting to assume the Gorgeous Woman is essentially Virginia in various guises. Star, in ''Literature/GloryRoad,'' is described as hundreds of women in one body, along with a number of men, and amply describes the more universal version of the character.

* Human-alien relations (''Literature/RedPlanet'', ''Literature/HaveSpaceSuitWillTravel'', ''Literature/SpaceCadet'', ''Literature/DoubleStar'', ''Literature/StarmanJones'', ''Literature/TheStarBeast'', ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'').

* ''Literature/SpaceCadet''

* OutDamnedSpot: In ''Hoag,'' the title character comes home every day with red gunk under his fingernails, which he then compulsively scrubs clean.

Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) is widely considered one of the most influential and iconic writers of SciFi and SpeculativeFiction of the Twentieth Century. He is counted as one of the "Big Three" of ScienceFiction along with Creator/ArthurCClarke and Creator/IsaacAsimov. Often the standard to which other {{science fiction}} writers are compared, although he caught considerable flak for some of his [[WriterOnBoard recurring philosophical and political themes.]] His works range from space adventure Young Adult novels to political manifestos, and generally score towards hard science fiction.

* ButNotTooGay: Heinlein's own sexuality may never be resolved, but his characters all ''wanted'' to be bisexual. They were all ''mostly'' straight and ridiculously horny, but stopped at being curious. He waffled about male homosexual acts being "sad" even though many of his male characters "gave it a try, not so great, had a game of tennis instead" and gave female homosexuality [[GirlOnGirlIsHot a bit more leeway]]. Whether he was bi/pan and couldn't overcome his 1902 Missouri upbringing or ridiculously open and 40 years too early for bi/pan to really be a thing, we may never know.

* "Literature/IfThisGoesOn"

* "Literature/MagicInc"

* ''Literature/OrphansOfTheSky''

Heinlein's protagonists are typically geniuses, often with perfect memory and a love for mathematics. They have held opinions covering most of the political spectrum, to the point where the oft-made argument "Heinlein's heroes all have his political opinions!" needs to account for the fact that the sum total of "political opinions held by Heinlein protagonists" includes many mutually contradictory ideas. For that matter, Heinlein himself expounded the merits of wildly different political opinions; several of his earliest books were essentially guided tours through a couple of (non-Marxist) anarcho-libertarian [[MarySueTopia future paradises]] -- though these paradises also valued sexual freedom and the right to bear arms. He would later write of yet another such (alien) paradise in his famous AuthorTract ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'' -- and he would reference this paradise throughout much of his future work.

Heinlein's adult years were during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, and he was ''extremely'' hawkish, believing that the Soviets were a serious threat to the US, and that a strong military with lots of nuclear missiles was the only sane response. (For example, one of his character regarded the difference between the Soviets and mind-controlling alien slugs as nearly irrelevant). Further, he apparently ''supported'' Joe [=McCarthy=]'s anti-communist witch hunts. His views were not uncommon at the time, but given that the Soviet Union folded shortly after Heinlein's death, understanding his Soviet-phobia can be difficult for modern readers, but is necessary to grokking his work. (Saying the genocidal hive-minded Bugs from ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'' are stand-ins for the Soviets is ''not'' a stretch.)

His impact can be best seen in Larry Niven's short story ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_William_Proxmire The Return of William Proxmire]]'' where a fictional version of the infamously Luddite U.S. Senator Proxmire -- who wishes to prevent the "waste" of the space program -- decides to use time travel to cure Heinlein's pulmonary tuberculosis because every scientist and engineer "fanatic" in the space program credits him as being their inspiration. (For the interested, curing Heinlein means he rises to prominence in the Navy and pays attention in 1940 when Goddard tries to warn the military about the potential and dangers of rockets. When Proxmire returns to the present, Admiral Heinlein's Navy-run program has set up lunar colonies, orbital solar power stations, and prevented the Russians from developing [=ICBMs=]).

Rare exceptions aside, nearly all of his characters are prodigies and geniuses, to the point where this can be considered his CreatorThumbprint.

* While Roger Stone is a Competent Man, he freely admits that he's the least intelligent and adaptable person in his entire family, not to mention one of the least so among Heinlein's roster of Competent Men. He yet is the successful leader and moral conscience of the entire Stone family, and is perhaps the only being in the entire multiverse that Heinlein has written winning an argument with Hazel Stone.

* Valentine Michael Smith from ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'' is a human raised on Mars who is intelligent but with NoSocialSkills (but later becomes a charismatic preacher). Apparently Heinlein had a bet going with L. Ron Hubbard to see which one could inspire a cult... Heinlein lost, nanu-nanu. (But many people grok that it was a close race for a while there).

Heinlein's approach to female characterization is [[ValuesDissonance sometimes controversial.]] While his female characters are a reasonably varied lot, they tend to have a few things in common: [[MenActWomenAre The men spend a lot of time explaining things to them.]] They [[NeverASelfMadeWoman rarely end the story un-paired with a man]], [[NeverASelfMadeWoman and they often see motherhood as their highest goal.]] Many stories feature underage (barely teenage) girls "bundling" with far older men. It should be considered, however, that [[FairForItsDay at the time he wrote most of his novels]] an actively dominant female character was an extreme rarity, not to mention that his female characters usually tend to be [[GuileHero guile]] [[ActionGirl action girls]].