Robert A. Heinlein Trivia
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50 free Robert A. Heinlein trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Robert A. Heinlein trivia quiz covers the 'dean of science fiction writers' from Butler, Missouri, to the Grand Master award. It starts with the boy who lied about his age to join the National Guard, the fifty letters of recommendation that got him into Annapolis, the aircraft carrier where he served under Ernest King, the tuberculosis that ended his Navy career and gave him the idea for the waterbed, and the 1938 California Assembly race he lost by fewer than 500 votes before he wrote 'Life-Line' to pay the mortgage. The second half covers the writing: the Future History, the Saturday Evening Post stories that broke him out of the pulps, Destination Moon's Oscar, the Scribner's juveniles that came out every Christmas, the rejection of Starship Troopers, the Kipling roots of Stranger in a Strange Land, the words grok and waldo, the four Hugo winners, the 1980s novels, the wife Ginny who outranked him in the Navy, the round house at Bonny Doon, the blood-drive pledges, the asteroid and the crater on Mars. Questions range from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia article on Robert A. Heinlein.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two authors join Heinlein in science fiction's 'Big Three'?
Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke
Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke complete the trio. Clarke joined Heinlein in 1969 as a guest commentator on CBS's live coverage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
Q 02What nickname is Robert A. Heinlein often given?
The dean of science fiction writers
The dean of science fiction writers often ran ahead of the science: his 1940 story 'Blowups Happen' is set at an atomic power plant, five years before the first atomic bomb was detonated.
Q 03In which Missouri town was Robert A. Heinlein born on July 7, 1907?
Butler
Butler was his home for only a few months before the family moved to Kansas City, where he grew up. His widow Ginny later endowed the little town's public library.
Q 04Which political machine helped Heinlein win his appointment to the US Naval Academy in 1925?
The Pendergast machine
The Pendergast machine ran Kansas City, where he grew up, and later put Harry Truman in the US Senate. It wangled the Annapolis place after his year at junior college.
Q 05Aboard which new aircraft carrier did Heinlein serve in radio communications in 1931?
USS Lexington
USS Lexington was then one of the largest aircraft carriers in the world. Her captain from June 1930, Ernest J. King, went on to be Chief of Naval Operations in World War II.
Q 06Why was Heinlein discharged from the Navy in 1934?
Pulmonary tuberculosis
Pulmonary tuberculosis ended his naval career at 27. Constant seasickness aboard the rolling destroyer Roper had already worn him down, and he was retired on a small pension.
Q 07Which piece of furniture did Heinlein design during a long hospital stay and later describe in his novels?
The waterbed
The waterbed was his design as a long-term patient, but he never built one. San Francisco design student Charles Hall made the first modern waterbed in 1968.
Q 08Whose socialist End Poverty in California (EPIC) movement was Heinlein active in during the early 1930s?
Upton Sinclair's
Upton Sinclair's 1934 run for governor had Heinlein working on the campaign. Sinclair lost, but Heinlein stayed with the movement for a few more years and helped run its paper, the EPIC News.
Q 09Which office did Heinlein run for in 1938?
A State Assembly seat
A State Assembly seat, for Hollywood's 59th district, was the prize. He lost the Democratic primary, was left with a new mortgage to pay, and tried writing a story for money.
Q 10What was Heinlein's first published story, printed in Astounding Science Fiction in August 1939?
Life-Line
Life-Line, about a machine that predicts the day a person will die, earned him $70 from Astounding. Heinlein reportedly asked how long this racket had been going on.
Q 11Which editor bought Heinlein's first stories in 1939?
John W. Campbell
John W. Campbell edited Astounding, which printed Heinlein's first story in 1939. Two years later Campbell published the chart of his 'Future History', a term critics have used ever since.
Q 12Which two SF writers spent the war with Heinlein at the Philadelphia Navy Yard?
Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp
Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp worked with him at the Naval Air Experimental Station, where he was a civilian engineer. He also met his future wife Ginny, a Navy lieutenant, there.
Q 13Which mainstream magazine published Heinlein's 'The Green Hills of Earth' in 1947?
Q 21Which Heinlein story gave its title character's name to real-world remote-controlled mechanical arms?
Waldo
Waldo is a 1942 story about a frail inventor in orbit who builds remote-controlled hands to do what his muscles cannot. Engineers took his name for the real devices.
Q 22In which 1951 Heinlein novel was the phrase 'pay it forward' popularised?
Between Planets
Between Planets has a banker on Venus hand its broke young hero some cash and refuse repayment: pay it forward, he says. The Heinlein Society runs its charity programmes under that name.
Q 23Which of these Heinlein novels won the Hugo Award for best novel?
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post ran it in February 1947. Its blind poet Rhysling later gave his name to the Rhysling Awards for science fiction poetry.
Q 14Which 1950 film, with story and co-script by Heinlein, won an Oscar for special effects?
Destination Moon
Destination Moon kept Heinlein on as technical adviser after he co-wrote the script. Half a century later, in 2001, it collected a Retro Hugo as well.
Q 15Which publisher issued Heinlein's juvenile novels once a year from 1947 to 1959, in time for Christmas?
Scribner's
The first, Rocket Ship Galileo, was initially rejected because a trip to the Moon was thought too far-fetched.
Q 16What was Heinlein's first novel published as a book?
Rocket Ship Galileo
Rocket Ship Galileo had been turned down by another publisher as too far-fetched, with its atomic rockets and Nazis on the Moon. It came out in 1947 and opened his run of yearly novels for young readers.
Q 17Under what title was Heinlein's 1959 Mobile Infantry novel first serialised?
Starship Soldier
Starship Soldier ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in late 1959. Heinlein wrote it in anger at a 1958 newspaper ad urging a one-sided halt to US nuclear tests.
Q 18Which of these was a working title of Stranger in a Strange Land?
The Heretic
The Heretic was the title on the draft he put down in April 1958 to write Starship Troopers. Other drafts were called A Martian Named Smith and The Man from Mars.
Q 19Stranger in a Strange Land began as a modernised version of which Kipling work?
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book gave his wife Ginny the idea in 1948: a human child raised by Martians instead of wolves. He worked on it on and off for more than a decade before it was published in 1961.
Q 20What is the root meaning in Martian of 'grok', the word Heinlein coined in Stranger in a Strange Land?
To drink
To drink is said in the novel to be the literal sense, on a Mars where water is scarce. In English the word came to mean understanding something so fully that it becomes part of you.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress won in 1967, his fourth and last best-novel Hugo. Its lunar rebels made a slogan of TANSTAAFL: there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Q 24Which Star Trek creatures so resembled Heinlein's 'flat cats' that the producers sought his blessing?
Tribbles
Tribbles, the purring furballs that overrun the Enterprise in a 1967 episode, breed as fast as his Martian flat cats. By the scriptwriter's account, Heinlein asked only for a signed copy of the script.
Q 25In 1975 the Science Fiction Writers of America named Heinlein its first what?
Grand Master
Grand Master is the association's honour for a lifetime's work. Its members never gave Heinlein their yearly prize, the Nebula, though he was nominated four times.
Q 26Which film is based on Heinlein's story 'All You Zombies'?
Predestination
Predestination keeps the 1959 story's paradox: through time travel and a change of sex, one person turns out to be their own mother and father.
Q 27What was the profession of Heinlein's third wife, Virginia 'Ginny' Gerstenfeld?
Chemist
Chemist was her trade, with a New York University chemistry degree and a wartime Navy commission. She later took over the business side of his career, freeing him to write.
Q 28What house number did the Heinleins choose for the home they designed in Colorado Springs?
1776
1776 Mesa Avenue was the home the couple designed themselves. Popular Mechanics toured it in 1952 as A House to Make Life Easy, because Heinlein wanted a home that took care of itself.
Q 29Why did the Heinleins leave Colorado Springs for California in 1965?
Ginny's illness was traced to altitude sickness
Ginny's illness was traced to altitude sickness, so the couple came down to sea level. They built a circular house of their own design at Bonny Doon, in the hills near Santa Cruz.
Q 30What did Heinlein organise at the 1976 World Science Fiction Convention, starting a tradition fans still keep up?
A blood drive
A blood drive was his thanks for the transfusions that had saved his life a few years earlier. The Heinlein Society still runs drives at conventions in his name.