On The Slopes Of Vesuvius (short story)

On the Slopes of Vesuvius" is a very short story, a mini-shocker. Robert A. Heinlein sees the risks and potentialities in our potential futures so much more clearly than most of us. Vesuvius is the volcano in Roman Italy that famously exploded in A.D. 79, its eruption burying the nearby cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in molten lava and suffocating ashfall.  James Gifford states the story's history concisely: This short story, never published contemporaneously, was another try at 'world saving' in the vein of the articles Heinlein wrote in 1946, attempting to alert the citizens of the US to the dangers of a world wherein the atomic bomb is set loose. All of the articles failed; none were ever published prior to collection in Expanded Universe. ...

People often call this novelist "the dean of science fiction writers", one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of "hard science fiction."

He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the standards of literary quality of the genre. He was the first science-fiction writer to break into mainstream, general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, in the late 1940s. He was also among the first authors of bestselling, novel-length science fiction in the modern, mass-market era.

Also wrote under Pen names: Anson McDonald, Lyle Monroe, Caleb Saunders, John Riverside and Simon York.