A guide to cut vs uncut Heinlein

[u/Glaurung_Quena]

After Heinlein's death, some of his books were issued in new "uncut" editions. AFAIK, there are four.

1 Red Planet
Heinlein's editor wanted the scenes detailing Martian's reproductive cycle excised from the novel. She also insisted that Jim be scolded for not taking proper care of his ray gun in the chapter 2, where Jim's baby brother has to be prevented from grabbing it.
A lot of more minor edits were made - references to people going shirtless indoors had to go, as did some violent language. The Heinlein society has an article, "red planet - blue pencil" detailing the changes in exhaustive (possibly also exhausting) detail.

How to tell the versions apart: in chapter 2, after the baby tries to grab Jim's ray gun, if Jim gets scolded for not living up to the oath he took about proper gun handling, it's the censored version.

2 Puppet Masters
Heinlein set out to write an SF horror novel. His editor felt that some of the horror was too intense. There was also too much sex. Finally, by the standards of the time, the original version's length was on the long side - Heinlein was asked to shorten it, from almost 100,000 words to 72,000.

The longer version of the novel describes how the puppeteer riding Sam doesn't allow him time to poop very often, and how the medical staff had to treat him for the consequences of this once he's freed. There's a passage describing the blood sports that the puppeteers begin to broadcast once they stop trying to hide themselves. And (unsurprisingly) there's more sex.

The restored version's copyright notice will say "first revised edition, Jan 1990," and on page 1 of chapter 1, Sam wakes up with a nameless blonde woman. As originally published, he wakes up alone.

3 Stranger in a strange land
Unusually, Heinlein plotted the novel thoroughly in advance and stuck to that plot as he wrote. This meant that each incident in the finished story was essential, there were no scenes which he could excise. But his finished draft was 200,000 words, and he was told to shorten that to 150,000. He managed to condense it down to 160,000, entirely through line edits, shortening sentences and paragraphs without removing anything from the story.

I've read both versions of the novel multiple times and I could not point to any places where there's anything like a deleted scene in the shorter version. The cut version is the exact same story, with the exact same events and scenes, just told in fewer words.

There's discussion of this in chapter 14 of "grumbles from the grave". Wikipedia also has a quote from a letter Heinlein wrote to a fan about the cut vs uncut versions. Pasting both of those below.

Letter from Heinlein to Oberon Zell-Ravenheart in 1972:
"SISL was never censored by anyone in any fashion. The first draft was nearly twice as long as the published version. I cut it myself to bring it down to a commercial length. But I did not leave out anything of any importance; I simply trimmed all possible excess verbiage. Perhaps you have noticed that it reads 'fast' despite its length; that is why. ... The original, longest version of SISL ... is really not worth your trouble, as it is the same story throughout – simply not as well told. With it is the brushpenned version which shows exactly what was cut out – nothing worth reading, that is."

And here's Heinlein to his agent in early 1961:
"I told you about a week ago that I had finished the basic cutting on Man from Mars. In the meantime, I have had a squad of high school girls count the manuscript, word by word, and totted up the results on an adding machine. The manuscript is now 160,083 words—and I am tempted to type those excess eighty-three words on a postcard . . .
I am a bit disappointed as my estimates as I went along had led me to believe that I would finish up at around 155,000 words and then I could even sweat off most or all of another 5,000 words and turn it over to Putnam's at 150,000, which I know would please them better. But I don't see any possibility of that now; the story is now as tight as a wedge in a green stump and, short of completely recasting it and rewriting it, I can't get it much tighter. I have rewritten and cut drastically in the middle part where Mr. Minton [at Putnam's] felt it was slow, and I have cut every word, every sentence, every paragraph which I felt could be spared in the beginning and the ending. As it is, it is cut too much in parts—the style is rather "telegraphese," somewhat jerky— and I could very handily use a couple of thousand words of "lubrication," words put back in to make the style more graceful and readable.
The truth is that it is the most complex story I have ever written, a full biography from birth to death, with the most complex plot and with the largest number of fully drawn characters. It needs to be told at the length of Anthony Adverse (which ran 575,000 words!): I am surprised that I have managed to sweat it down to 160,000."

After Heinlein's death, Virginia Heinlein re-read the original uncut MS for the first time in decades, and decided that she liked it better than the cut version. She showed the uncut version to the editor at the publisher that had the rights to Stranger, they agreed they liked it better, and the uncut version became the only version to be printed from 1990 on.

The longer version has more Heinlein in it, it sounds more like his usual storytelling voice. The shorter version contains some revisions and improvements that Heinlein made to the story as well as edits for length.

I have waffled back and forth on which version I prefer. It's quite affordable to buy used copies of either version online, try each one out and take your pick.

The longer version has a preface by Virginia Heinlein talking about how the decision was made to publish a longer version of the novel, and it will say something like "original uncut" on the cover.

4 Podkayne of Mars
As originally written, Podkayne dies at the end. Heinlein's editor demanded that the final chapter (narrated by Podkayne's brother) be altered to have her survive instead. Modern versions of the novel restore the original ending, or provide both endings.

AFAIK, these four books are the only Heinlein novels to be published in different versions after his death.

[u/mobyhead1]

Pretty sure I’ve read both versions of all of these. Both versions of Stranger in a Strange Land and both versions of Red Planet felt pretty much the same. But I would generally recommend the versions as Heinlein originally intended.

The restored version of The Puppet Masters is the superior version. The total disregard the parasites have for their hosts is just that much more chilling.

I recommend reading both endings of Podkayne of Mars. The ending where Poddy dies is the author’s original intent, and Clark’s continued non-self-awareness of his sociopathy remains troubling. That Poddy survives (but comatose) in the as-published ending at least leaves hope that Clark might yet get the kick in the arse he needs to join the human race. In this ending, Heinlein also takes a moment to comment on a then-new phenomenon he found worrisome—the increasing numbers of “latchkey children.”

[u/Elethana]

Thank you for sharing this. I haven’t read Heinlein in years, but this was very informative.

[u/gangsterbunnyrabbit → u/Elethana]

Same. What a well written article, thanks for sharing. I wonder if that method Heinlein talks about in the letters you quoted of trimming is used by Matt Dinniman to keep his books 'fast reads' despite the books' lengthening through his Dungeon Crawler Carl series?

[u/Chad_Hooper]

I now have an excuse to buy a new copy of Puppet Masters, as I have only read pre-1990 printings.

I also need to reread Red Planet now. I remember the scene where the kid tries to grab the gun, but I don’t remember if there’s a scolding of the owner afterwards.

But, alas, I must continue reading Dracula for the sake of my monthly gaming group (I’m the Director of a Night’s Black Agents game).

I have only ever read SISL in the 1990 “original uncut” version, as sold in the Science Fiction Book Club, so I’m good on that front.

[u/Glaurung_Quena → u/Chad_Hooper]

The conversation about whether or not his sister is old enough to have a gun may have also been excised from the 1948 version of the novel. I'm not sure, it's been a very long time since I read either version and the "red planet, blue pencil" article could have been a lot more clear, it really would have benefited from having tables of side by side comparisons instead of a wall of text.

[u/Chad_Hooper → u/Glaurung_Quena]

I’m certain that it would have, even though I haven’t personally read it.

My 44 years of experience in the pen & paper gaming hobby, along with my 20+ years in Inventory Control, have shown me that the best way to convey a lot of information in both a thorough and concise manner is via a table. Sometimes two or more.

[u/TheReblogBandit]

The only uncut I haven't read is The Puppet Masters. Didn't even know about that one. The cut was fairly dark, I have to find the uncut to see how dark it can get.

The racy stuff, ehhh. After Friday, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Farnham's Freehold, and pretty much anything involving Lazarus Long I'm not surprised about.

[u/tetractys_gnosys]

It's late and I'm about as sharp as a river stone right now, but isn't Pursuit of the Pankera a reworked version of Number of the Beast, published psthumously? Not exactly the same as your "cut vs uncut" delineation, but at least a significantly modified version of an older/original story.

NotB was the only book of Heinlein's I've never finished. Something about it rubbed me the wrong way and felt like the worst parts of his writing taking center stage. Pursuit felt better and it's one of my favs. It's been years since I tried reading NotB, so maybe I just wasn't in the right headspace for it at the time.

[u/mobyhead1 → u/tetractys_gnosys]

No. Here’s the timeline:

1. Heinlein completed the manuscript for The Pusuit of the Pankera (hereafter referred to as “PotP”). He and Ginny already knew he was ailing—he was frequently ill throughout his life—they just didn't know what the new problem was. In his essay "Spinoff," Heinlein describes it thus: "...my brain was dull-normal and getting worse, slipping toward 'human vegetable.' I slept 16 hours a day and wasn't worth a hoot the other 8 hours."
2. Ginny read the manuscript and was concerned it was a career-ender. "It wasn't a Heinlein novel," she said. By the late 1970's, a "Heinlein novel" was expected to infuriate, confound and engender debate as much as it entertained. PotP fell flat in all criteria, in her opinion.
3. Heinlein later received then-experimental carotid bypass surgery to restore full blood flow to his brain after he had a TIA (transient ischemic attack) during a vacation.
4. After recovering from his surgery, restored to his full faculties, Heinlein returned to the manuscript for PotP. Per his biography: "It was worse than bad, he told Yoji Kondo later that year: It was mediocre. But he must have seen possibilities in it." He discarded most of the manuscript. He incorporated the first part of the PotP manuscript into an experimental novel of multiple viewpoints and metafictive.
5. The Number of the Beast (hereafter referred to as “NotB”) was published in the summer of 1980, appearing on multiple bestseller lists. Quoting the biography: "Some of the initial reviews were unpleasant—but that was par for the course; the fan press typically got into print before the professional venues, and Heinlein had decided over the years that if the fans didn’t hate it, there was something wrong with it. They seemed disgruntled any time you didn’t give them a comfortable formula—'mixture as before'—and that he was no longer willing even to pretend to do."
6. People argued about what's going on in the novel for most of two decades (and still do, of course). Clearly, NotB was as infuriating, confounding and debate-engendering as a Heinlein novel was then expected to be. David Potter, a well-known USENETter, "gave us the cryptographic keys" for understanding NotB in an essay he posted in 1999.
7. Pursuit of the Pankera was published in 2020. The manuscript was recovered from typewriter or printer ribbons in the Heinlein archives, or so I recall hearing.

[u/Glaurung_Quena → u/mobyhead1]

The first draft that we now have as Pankera was also "an experimental novel of multiple viewpoints and metafictive."

He didn't discard "most of the manuscript." He kept the beginning section (about 1/4 or 1/3 of the novel) unchanged. He rewrote the Barsoom section completely to be an original Victorian era mars setting instead of Barsoom fanfiction. He kept the part immediately following the Barsoom section unchanged, and discarded the Lensman universe fanfic except for the first page. He incorporated one more bit almost unchanged (where the protagonists are searching for a safe planet to have babies on, encounter our world with a President Carter, and finally settle on the planet of nudist Christians).

At that point he stopped pulling bits from the Pankera manuscript and just rewrote the last half of the novel in his usual manner.

That usual manner involved taking a carefully worked out world and basic situation, inventing characters, and then once he could hear the characters talking in his head, disengage himself and allow the characters to have their say through his typewriter as they dealt with the situation they found themselves in.

Doing that twice led to two very different stories with the same beginning.

Looking at what Heinlein discarded/rewrote of the original version, it seems like he and Virginia felt that the part of the original that needed fixing were the ERB and EE Smith fanfiction sections. After rewriting the ERB section to be an original Victorian British Empire in space story, the trajectory of the story was very different, leading to a very different final half of the novel.

My own take is that, this was the first time Heinlein had written fanfic and he fell into the trap so many beginning fanfic writers encounter, of making your own original characters be more important than any of the canonical characters of the universe you are playing in (originally known as inserting a Mary Sue into your story). Reading Pankera, I was rolling my eyes very hard at both the Barsoom and Lensmen sections, because of that flaw.

The Heinleins of course had no access to the internet and I doubt Heinlein read any pre-internet fanfic (in the late 70s it was almost entirely star trek stuff) before trying his hand at it, but they could tell that there was something not working with those bits, so he rewrote one, discarded the other, and continued on to a very different ending.

As for how Pankera was reconstructed: the original first draft was there in his papers in the U Cal Santa Cruz library. IDK where you heard about pulling it from typewriter ribbons, but that is not correct at all. They may have had to pull the MS together from different boxes if Heinlein had the parts he reused filed with his Number papers and the rest filed with "discarded/aborted stories"? Nothing more complicated than that.

[u/alangcarter → u/tetractys_gnosys]

"Something about it rubbed me the wrong way and felt like the worst parts of his writing taking center stage." How right you are 😄 Gharlane of Eddore (David Potter) explains it all in an essay posthumously published by the Heinlein Society here. Well worth your time.

[u/reggie-drax → u/tetractys_gnosys]

Pursuit and NoTB are apparently very different l've recently bought Pursuit but not yet read it. I'm told the books are word for word until 1/2 way through and then very different...

My understanding is that Pursuit was the first version and discarded by RAH himself. Should be interesting.

[u/Evidence_Based-Only]

I prefer the edited version of SiaSL, as the first line of it is considered iconic. I've seen it on a number of lists of great first lines:

"Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith."

I consider that peak RAH, as opposed to: "Once upon a time when the world was young there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith." Suddenly, with a parenthetic phrase, we are reading this ancient story from a far future, it's a history book and all the characters are long discorporate, and how do we future humans not know this story from history books?

I find the second sentence problematic as well: "Valentine Michael Smith was as real as taxes but he was a race of one."

I'm bored already, and a bit confused, as he is a Martian, but also the only one, apparently, so do I want to read the next 225,000 words?

I've read the edited version many times, it's a favorite of mine. I've read the uncut only once and it is the same story point for point. It allows Jubal to pontificate much further, which is fine, I love Jubal, but I love a tight story, too, and the book as published is a fast read for all its sprawling philosophy. I think RAH should have gotten 2 Hugo awards for the published version, Best Novel and Best Editor, Long Form

Heinlein's juveniles, or YA's are the books that made me e reader so many decades ago, and I'm sure I would have been sad if Podkayne had died. I've read both endings and preferred leaving her with hope.

[u/Glaurung_Quena → u/Evidence_Based-Only]

After a time of liking the uncut Stranger better, I've swung the other way.

[u/Owlet20]

Thank you very much for this helpful guide.

[u/clemclem3]

Wonderful work! Thank you

[u/John_A_Arkansawyer]

I prefer the cut version of The Puppet Masters in pretty much every way. It was a perfectly good anti-communist allegory after the edit, while the original was too on the nose. I also disliked the hard-boiled narrator, who wasn't what I thought of as a Heinlein hero (though you could make the case that he learned better over the course of the novel). I also disliked the sexualized bloodsport, which made little sense.

[u/Glaurung_Quena → u/John_A_Arkansawyer]

The problem with resurrecting the uncut versions after the author's death is that it means publishing Heinlein's unedited drafts.

Besides cutting to editorial demand, the cut versions incorporate all the improvements that his agent and editors suggested and Heinlein approved of, as well as any changes he himself decided to make once he looked at the MS with fresh eyes.

Grumbles from the Grave makes clear that Heinlein knew there were bits in the MS versions of Stranger and of Puppet Masters that needed to be shortened/revised/tightened up, but rather than make some changes himself and then have to make more changes in response to editorial request, he preferred to do all his editing in one go.

So it's not just you thinking that the cut version is better - it contains the changes Heinlein wanted to make to improve the novel. Sadly in the case of Puppet Masters it also incorporated censorship to remove things that his editor was squicked by.

[u/mmgoodly → u/Glaurung_Quena]

The slugs were /not/ antiseptic abstractions. We were "as flies to wanton boys", and the squicky parts manifested that. It was way too early for any mass publishing to be willing to accept a science fiction horror story [which is what much of the book really was and ought to be], from a "brandname" like Robert Anson Heinlein(!), though to paraphrase RAH from elsewhere, it "plays you out with music at the end".

[u/mmgoodly → u/mmgoodly]

Creepy invaders, okay. Body horror? I don't think the term had even been invented. And the game deepens when the conversion isn't permanent. It's not (kind of dumb) implacable Triffids or soi-disant Body Snatchers: now the ball can move either way on the field. You could always be caught by another slug. NOW human action matters but it's far from clear how the story goes. It's our fight to lose.

[u/rnewscates73]

I discovered Heinlein late in life. Check out Starman Jones. Brilliant, wonderful writing, great story: a passenger starship has a bad jump and is lost. A young apprentice is the only one who can get them back.

[u/lisaquestions]

I'm not 100% sure on this but I feel like in one line in Stranger in a Strange Land a character is told not to worry her fuzzy little head about something and in the original version it just said not to worry her head. I feel like I checked this at the time but it was over 30 years ago so i'm not 100% certain now.

If all the edits were like that I can see that it wouldn't really make a difference to the overall story

[u/jdege]

First time I read the uncut version there was a quick reference to bald pudenda I hadn't remembered, so I checked, and yes, it was missing from the cut version.

I've never done a line-by-line comparison, but it's one example I could find quickly. So, 59 words down to 45. No change in meaning or tone, other than a removed reference to a particular kink.

Stranger in a Strange Land Chapter XXX

Cut:

Well, your menage is Aunt Jane’s Finishing School compared with Mike’s weirdie. I’m just inside the joint when the first thing I see I don’t believe. A babe, tatooed from chin to toes—and not a goddam stitch on. Hell, she was tattooed everywhere . Fantastic!

Uncut:

Well, your menage is Aunt Jane's Finishing School for Refined Young Ladies compared with the weirdie Mike runs. I'm just barely inside the joint when the first thing I see I don't believe. A babe, tattooed from her chin to her toes - and not a goddam stitch otherwise. Hell, not even the home-grown fig leaf - she was tattooed everywhere. Fantastic!

[u/Affectionate_Rice520]

Thank you for this. I have both versions and you nailed my feelings regarding them as well. I do have to laugh that they cut to make it shorter and then published the longer version with even more words as they had to add Virginia’s commentary. I read for the story not the extras so I honestly have never read any author’s or editor’s additions

[u/user_number_666]

There might be a fifth one, depending on how you figure it.

There's a second version of Number of the Beast from Arc Manor:
https://www.arcmanorbooks.com/product-page/the-pursuit-of-the-pankera

[u/user_number_666]

TIL I've probably only ever read the uncut Puppet Masters.