By the end of January (1956) he (Heinlein) was generating a new \u201cadult\u201d book. He had an engineer\/inventor on a bender because his wife dumped him to marry a rich man. But the elements weren\u2019t coming together quite right, and he kept turning them over in his mind, changing a bit here and a bit there and seeing how the fit-together improved. One late January morning at breakfast, Ginny crossed his field of vision, being led-between-the-legs by their cat, Pixie. Bemused, he watched her open a people door for him and wait while Pixie sniffed disdainfully and turned away from the snow, complaining vocally at Ginny\u2019s mismanagement of the weather. There were seven people doors leading out, and the same little playlet was reenacted at each door. When Pixie had rejected the last door and stalked away, indignant, Ginny shrugged. \u201cI guess he\u2019s looking for the door into summer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suddenly, all the jumble of story elements he had been fiddling with fell into place in his head\u2014a completely different configuration, and one that felt perfectly right. \u201cDon\u2019t say another word,\u201d he said. He got up and almost ran to his office, eager to start getting the story down on paper. Thirteen days later, The Door into Summer was finished\u2014the shortest length of time he had ever taken to write a full (if short) novel\u2014and nearly perfect as it came off his typewriter. Pixie was the missing element; Robert\u2019s familial affection for \u201cthe old warrior\u201d gave the book its emotive core and tied all the incidents together in another ingratiating, seducing book.<\/p>\n
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better (1948-1988) by William H. Patterson Jr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By the end of January (1956) he (Heinlein) was generating a new \u201cadult\u201d book. He had an engineer\/inventor on a bender because his wife dumped him to marry a rich man. But the elements weren\u2019t coming together quite right, and he kept turning them over in his mind, changing a bit here and a bit…
Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":909,"featured_media":18698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-frontpage","category-heinlein"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/The-Door-Into-Summer.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/909"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18699,"href":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18695\/revisions\/18699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heinleinsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}