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away; I am not quite sure what you want—the degree, at least. Maybe we'll have to ship this story back and forth a couple of times yet.
    It will please me to sell this story for a reason that has developed since I last wrote to you. As you know, I have been gradually selling off the half-dozen stories you have rejected since I started writing. Last week I sold two in one day—the last two ["Pied Piper" and "My Object All Sublime," both under Lyle Monroe. Heinlein never permitted reprinting these]. Utter dogs they were, written in the spring of 1939. That leaves me with an absolutely clean sweep of having sold every word I have ever written from the first day I sat down to attempt commercial writing . . . So—a clean sweep right up to this last story. The opportunity to fix it up to sell is very pleasant.

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    "Goldfish Bowl," published in Astounding March 1942, under pseudonmyn Anson MacDonald. Art by Kramer. "Goldfish Bowl" had originally been rejected by Campbell, but eventually Heinlein and Campbell agreed on revisions.
    September 17, 1941: John W. Campbell, Jr. to Robert A. Heinlein
    I had forgotten that little point of yours. And now, of course, the thing sticks me at a wonderfully tender spot. Item: We went to large size, with about a 70% increase in consumption. Item: We have novelettes, but are atrociously short of short stories. Item: We've had one good author who could really produce wordage. And now—now of all times!—that one wants to retire! Just when, it so happens, we haven't a single thing of yours on hand. Your proteges, helpful as they are, can, together, produce about as much, but not the quality, that you can. So—we launch the large-size, large-consumption book with the loss of the top one-third of our authors—the one man with three names.
    Look—how about at least making it a new year's resolution, or something? By that time, maybe we can get shaken down into a better order.
    On that story-that-bounced: Science fiction is normally read as light, escape literature. The reader does not expect or seek heavy philosophy; particularly, he does not expect or prepare himself for heavy philosophy when he reads a story that shows every sign of being action-adventure. Bathyspheres—alien something-or-others—men vanishing and men killed—heavy menace, with Navy personnel called in to look into it—something powerful and active under way here, with violent action ending in a solution—
    Or at least that seemed the setup. The answer you gave was utterly unexpected, the right answer to the wrong question, so to speak. Therein it was a seemingly pointless question-and-answer, and disappointing to the reader. At Heinlein-MacDonald 1-1/2 cent rates, I can't disappoint; alteration of either the answer—so it fitted the question the reader was asked—or of the question into a form that more evidently called for the type of answer provided, would make it click. The answer provided did make a highly interesting point, but a point overwhelmed in the rush of unfulfilled expectation of action-adventure.
    In general, if you retire abruptly at this particular moment, Astounding is going to feel it in much the way one's tongue feels a missing tooth just after it's been yanked.
    So far as going up goes, I'll agree you can't very well. I can agree with your desire to retire, under your circumstances. But look—when you don't have to, writing's a lot of fun. When you have to fill magazines, as I do, good manuscripts are godsends. Be god for a little while more, and send more, willya?
    I know one thing: I'm going to get some loud and angry howls from readers.
    September 19, 1941: John W. Campbell, Jr. to Robert A. Heinlein
    In re your own stories. Novelettes are your meat—those and short serials, which will be, under the new setup, short novels complete in an issue. You need elbow room to develop the civilization background against which your characters act. I know that, and have suggested shorts to you mainly