In 1958 Heinlein had started a freakish juvenile—freakish because it had a teenage girl protagonist, and girl-oriented science fiction was impossibly outré. He had a third of Podkayne Fries: Her Life and Times already written—a story about a teenaged Mars-colonist girl on an interplanetary cruise to Earth and Venus. By the time he was ready to work on it again, it had evolved: It wouldn’t be the kind of girls’ Wanderjahr he had originally planned. Instead, when he finished the writing on January 14, 1962, he had crafted an important message about “latchkey kids” and parenting in the age of Sputnik and orbiting missiles.

All of Robert’s “first readers” loved Podkayne of Mars—except for the ending. Every one of them. And when it was submitted to Putnam’s, Peter Israel joined the chorus (Howard Cady had left Putnam’s in the interim, and Peter Israel was now Putnam’s editor in chief). Everybody hated the fact that he killed Poddy off. Heinlein felt this was a misread of the text:

“Podkayne was not a juvenile, but a cautionary message to adult readers—to parents and potential parents “too busy” to parent their kids. Podkayne—as originally written, the title character was supposed to die and her brother was supposed to have the ending all to himself … with the story over when his character change was completed. I weakened—because my wife, my agent, and both my editors, serial and trade book, just couldn’t stand to have me kill off such a nice little girl. The result was that practically nobody understood what I was driving at.”

Podkayne’s death was the direct result of her mother’s failure to parent—and Clark’s sociopathy, as well. The last five words of the book—Clark’s decision to join the human race—were intended to be the most poignant thing he had ever written… and it was set up by Poddy’s death.

Fred Pohl was interested—not for Galaxy, which couldn’t use a teenage girl protagonist either, but for Galaxy’s sister magazine, Worlds of If. Heinlein had not expected any serial sale for this manuscript and considered Blassingame’s (Lurton Blassingame was Heinlein’s agent) success in marketing it somewhat miraculous. He still didn’t think the change of ending everybody wanted was necessary—but everybody wanted it, so he agreed not to kill Poddy off so definitely. Blassingame and Ginny and Peter Israel passed his compromise ending, allowing the possibility that Poddy might recover, and he was done with Podkayne of Mars.

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better (1948-1988) by William H. Patterson Jr.