The exchange spoke to the intensity of their relationship, although they had only met a handful of times. Heinlein had finished his new version of “All,” retitled Sixth Column, in which he clarified why the resistance against the Asian invaders took the form of a fake religion—“This will just look like any one of half a dozen cockeyed cults of the sort that spring up overnight in Southern California”—and attempted to tone down the racism. He wasn’t entirely successful, in part because he was a stronger writer, and he was unable to keep from investing his characters with rhetorical vigor as
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