To Be Held in Kansas City, Missouri
Plans have been
announced for a major convention to be held in Kansas City,
Missouri to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of
American author Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein's birth on 7/7/1907
will be celebrated on the weekend of 7/6 - 7/8/2007, with a series
of major events on the centennial day, Saturday, 7/7/2007.
The Heinlein Centennial Convention will be a multi-faceted event
celebrating Heinlein's life, works and far-reaching influence. More
than 3,000 professional and amateur attendees from throughout the
US and around the world are expected to participate in distinct
tracks focusing on Heinlein's contributions to science fiction,
American literature, the American aerospace industry and commercial
development of space, and film and television. Evaluation of
Heinlein's overall impact on American culture and politics will be
an integral part of all the tracks.
The Hyatt Regency Crown Center & Westin Crown Center hotels,
adjacent to the Crown Center complex in downtown Kansas City, have
been selected as the site of the Heinlein Centennial Convention.
All three venues will host various Convention events. The
convention is sponsored and organized by Heinlein Centennial, Inc.,
a California nonprofit corporation.
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein, born in Butler, Missouri on July 7, 1907,
became known by the 1940s as one of the premier writers of
speculative fiction and was later widely credited as an influence
on postwar American literature and the US space program. Heinlein
grew up in Kansas City and later attended the United States Naval
Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He was commissioned with a
background in naval engineering in 1929 and served as a line naval
officer until his medical discharge in 1934.
Heinlein worked at a variety of trades, including grassroots
political work, until 1939, when he turned to writing as a
profession. Within two years, he was one of the most highly
regarded authors in science fiction. During World War II, he
returned to naval aircraft engineering as a civilian, spending the
war years at the Naval Air Experimental Station in
Philadelphia.
It was in the decades
immediately following the war that Heinlein wrote the works for
which he is most highly regarded, including the award-winning and
controversial novels Starship Troopers (1959) and Stranger in a
Strange Land (1961), the latter of which introduced the word "grok"
to the language and strongly influenced the counterculture of the
1960s. He also wrote twelve novels for young adults that helped
redefine and refine the notion of "juvenile literature," and some
40 other important novels and book-length works. Several of his
novels have been turned into feature films, with his other works in
frequent option for development.
Robert Heinlein died on May 8, 1988 in Carmel, California,
leaving a substantial literary and philosophical legacy that was
managed by his widow Virginia until her death in 2003, and is now
managed by the Heinlein Prize Trust (www.heinleinprize.com),
among whose aims is to continue Heinlein's lifetime championing of
space progress by presenting the US$500,000 "Heinlein Prize" for
advances in commercial space development. Heinlein also left
millions of readers and admirers worldwide, with his works
translated into most of the world's major languages. Seventeen
years after his death, the majority of his published works are
still in print and selling briskly.
Much more than a "science fiction writer," Robert Heinlein was
an important and influential American philosopher and thinker. His
impact can be discerned in postwar through present-day American
fiction, current political circles, and perhaps most importantly,
on the US space program. His writings from 1945 through 1960 are
credited with influencing a generation of engineers that went on to
build Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle. Near the end
of his life, he was still involved with space policy, contributing
to discussions on the military uses of space.