Sixth Column - Background

Background

The original idea for the story of Sixth Column was proposed by John W. Campbell (who had written a similar unpublishable story called All), and Heinlein later wrote that he had "had to reslant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line" and that he did not "consider it to be an artistic success."

Heinlein’s work on Campbell’s All was considerably more than just a re-slanting; Campbell’s story was felt to be unpublishable as it stood, written in a pseudo-archaic dialect (with occasional inconsistencies), with no scientific explanations for the apparently miraculous powers of the American super-weapons. (There are plausible discussions of the weapons, but by the PanAsians, concluding that their powers must be divine.) George Zebrowski, in his afterword to the story, speculates that Heinlein was parodying Campbell in the character of Calhoun, who goes insane and actually believes the false religion created by the Americans. The bulk of Heinlein’s work on the novel, e.g., the explanations of the weapons’ effectiveness and the strategy for the American’s rebellion, are missing from All.