Heinlein almost never showed up in anthologies. Sometimes editors would apologize for omitting him, admitting (with some frustration) that they just couldn’t get the rights to the Heinlein tales they wanted. The problem was that by the mid-70s Heinlein was a star, the top-selling author in the field, and his entire short fiction catalog was locked up in his own bestselling collections.
I read collections, of course. Lots of them. But the seminal Heinlein collection, the one containing virtually all of his really important short work — including classics like “The Roads Must Roll,” “Blowups Happen,” “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” “Gentlemen, Be Seated,” “The Green Hills of Earth,” “Logic of Empire,” “The Menace from Earth,” “If This Goes On —”, and the short novel Methuselah’s Children — was the massive The Past Through Tomorrow.
I picked up on The Past Through Tomorrow recently, and I was impressed all over again at just how many true SF classics are packed within its pages. I can almost forgive its length, given that it contains 21 stories, three novellas (“The Man Who Sold the Moon,” “Logic of Empire,” and “Coventry”) and a complete novel, Methuselah’s Children. The stories within were published across four decades, from 1939 to 1962, first in John W. Campbell’s Astounding and later in places like Argosy, Blue Book, The Saturday Evening Post, and Scientific American.
Here’s the complete Table of Contents.
Introduction by Damon Knight
“Life-Line” (Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1939)
“The Roads Must Roll” (Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1940)
“Blowups Happen” (Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1940)
“The Man Who Sold the Moon” (The Man Who Sold the Moon, 1950)
“Delilah and the Space-Rigger” (The Blue Book Magazine, December 1949)
“Space Jockey” (The Saturday Evening Post, April 26, 1947)
“Requiem” (Astounding Science-Fiction, January 1940)
“The Long Watch” (The American Legion Magazine, December 1949)
“Gentlemen, Be Seated” (Argosy Magazine, May 1948)
“The Black Pits of Luna” (The Saturday Evening Post, January 10, 1948)
“It’s Great to Be Back!” (The Saturday Evening Post, July 26, 1947)
“—We Also Walk Dogs” (Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1941)
“Searchlight” (Scientific American, August 1962)
“Ordeal in Space” (Town & Country, May 1948)
“The Green Hills of Earth” (The Saturday Evening Post, February 8, 1947)
“Logic of Empire” (Astounding Science-Fiction, March 1941)
“The Menace from Earth” (Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1957)
“If This Goes On —” (Astounding Science-Fiction, February 1940)
“Coventry” (Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1940)
“Misfit” (Astounding Science-Fiction, November 1939)
Methuselah’s Children (Astounding Science-Fiction, July-August 1941)
Robert A. Heinlein was one of Campbell’s most famous discoveries, and certainly the one that Campbell was most proud of. Alec Nevala-Lee, when discussing his groundbreaking non-fiction book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, said, “Heinlein was the author Campbell was waiting for,” and I think that’s precisely right. Heinlein’s first published story was “Life-Line” in the August 1939 issue of Astounding; more rapidly followed and within a year Campbell was lauding Heinlein in his editorials as “a major science fiction writer.”
The Past Through Tomorrow was published in hardcover by Putnam in 1967, and reprinted in paperback by Berkley Medallion in 1975. The paperback version is 830 pages, priced at $1.50. The cover artist is uncredited.
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