Talk:My Object All Sublime

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Sources For Basic Information On "My Object All Sublime"[edit]

I was able to locate the entry for "My Object All Sublime" in the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base, the source for the following information:

"Title: Future Combined with Science Fiction, Date : February 1942, Author/Editor: Lyle Monroe/ed. Robert W. Lowndes, Publisher: Columbia Publications, Inc., Price: $0.15, Pages:116, Type:pulp mag, Cover Artist: Hannes Bok"

as well as information about it in the Heinlein Society's "Frequently Asked Questions About Robert A. Heinlein, His Works" Web page:

"What are the "Lost Three" stories?

These are three short stories published in the early 1940s that are rather hard to find. Heinlein called them "stinkeroos".

The stories are:

*Beyond Doubt, (co-author Elma Wentz), Astonishing Stories, April 1941, Republished in Beyond the End of Time (ed Fred Pohl, 1952), Political Science Fiction (ed Martin H. Greenberg and Patricia S. Warrick, 1974), Election Day 2084 (ed Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, 1984).

*My Object All Sublime, Future, February 1942

*Pied Piper, Astonishing, March 1942 (never republished)"

What we now lack is sources for the statements

" Its plot follows an invisible man through his adventures.

and

"The title is taken from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado:

"My object all sublime I shall achieve in time —

To let the punishment fit the crime —

The punishment fit the crime;

And make each prisoner pent

Unwillingly represent

A source of innocent merriment —

Of innocent merriment."

To be able to remove the "unreferenced|date=March 2012" tag. I may see if William Patterson's two-volume work on Heinlein:

Patterson, Jr., William H. 2010. Robert A. Heinlein in Dialogue With His Century: 1907–1948 Learning Curve. An Authorized Biography, Volume I. Tom Doherty Associates. ISBN 0-7653-1960-8
Patterson, Jr., William H. 2014. Robert A. Heinlein in Dialogue With His Century: 1948–1988 The Man Who Learned Better. An Authorized Biography, Volume II. Tom Doherty Associates. ISBN 0-7653-1961-6

is available through my local library. Anyone else in a large city, say, a state capitol or with access to a university library ought to feel free to beat me to it.

By its nature (a wikipedia article about one of four things Heinlein wrote which he actively wished not associated with his real name), our article My Object All Sublime will likely always be a stub. loupgarous (talk) 16:55, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Beyond Doubt is certainly not something RAH "actively wished not associated with his real name" - in his letters to Pohl, he states that he likes the story very much, wants it in print as a matter of his boosting his own morale (the piece having been initially rejected) and offers it under the Lyle Monroe name which costs half as much as the Heinlein name, even though this means money lost for the authors time spent on revising the manuscript. When FP accepts it, he is especially pleased on behalf of the co-author. Stinkaroo refers in part to RAH's acknowledging that he wrote them while still learning the craft, and partly to the fact that editors found the stinkaroos off-putting; but RAH did not positively consider these stories to "stink" 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:3167:66A1:1588:91FA (talk) 12:58, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]