Almost as soon as he learned to read, Heinlein began reading science fiction, first the Tom Swift and Frank Reade stories, later Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Argosy magazine. In 1938, while casting about for a way to raise money to make a mortgage payment on his home, he chanced upon an editorial by John W. Campbell, Jr.,in Astounding Science-Fiction which suggested that readers try their hands at writing. Prospective authors were advised to consider story submissions as if they were contest entries; the winning writers would receive cash prizes and their entries would be published. Heinlein worked on a story for four days, liked it enough to send it first to a higher paying market (Collier's , where it did not sell), and eventually sent it to Astounding Science-Fiction (where it did). "Life-Line" (first collected in The Man Who Sold the Moon, 1950) appeared in the August 1939 issue, and Heinlein's career as a science-fiction writer had begun. In the next three years twenty-eight stories of varying lengths under a variety of pseudonyms were published, and all but four of these stories were published in Astounding Science-Fiction or Unknown Worlds, both edited by Campbell.
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