Happiness and Sorrow

On June 3rd, 2014, the concluding volume of the impressive and thorough official biography of Robert A. Heinlein was released. Our happiness at this event is mixed with sorrow, however, because the author, William H. Patterson, Jr. passed away unexpectedly only a little over a month before this, on April 21st, 2014, thus missing by scant weeks seeing the publication of his masterpiece work.

Bill Patterson was not only a close friend and colleague to many of us in the Heinlein Society and the greater realm of Heinlein fans and scholars, he was also one of the founding members -- with Ginny Heinlein -- of the Heinlein Society.

There have been tributes, shared grief, and remembrances of Bill around the internet, both public and private. You can read some here on the Heinlein Society website at heinleinsociety.org/2014/04/bill-patterson-memorial-from-facebook/. No one in the Heinlein Society has, as yet, been able to muster the sense of distance needed to write a formal biographical tribute to Bill. The event and the loss are still too close.

The Heinlein Society board did vote unanimously to name any future awards for academic scholarship in Heinlein Studies (which we've awarded in the past and expect we will do so again in the future), "The William H. Patterson, Jr. Memorial Heinlein Scholarship Award" to honor our Founding President and friend. We are also working to see if we can continue to publish The Heinlein Journal on Bill's behalf, and keep past issues available.

If you go to Amazon.com to purchase Robert A. Heinlein, In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 2, 1948-1988: The Man Who Learned Better we'd appreciate if you'd go through the link here or on the Heinlein Society website so a small commission on the sale will go to the Heinlein Society.