Editing Sixth Column (section)

== Background ==
The idea for the story of ''Sixth Column'' was proposed by [[John W. Campbell]], who had written a similar unpublished story called "All" (it would eventually be published in the anthology ''[[The Space Beyond]]''). Heinlein would later write that he "had to reslant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line" and he also wrote that he did not "consider it to be an artistic success."<ref>Robert A. Heinlein, foreword to "Solution Unsatisfactory" in R. A. Heinlein, ''Expanded Universe''. Ace Books, 1981, p. 93.</ref>

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 (sometimes inconsistently), and provided no scientific explanations for miraculous powers of the American super-weapons, which the PanAsians have no explanation for other than to conclude that weapons' powers must be divine. Science fiction writer-critic [[George Zebrowski]] believed that Heinlein intended the novel's Calhoun, who, after going insane, believes the false religion created by the Americans, as a parody of Campbell himself.<ref>''The Space Beyond'', Pyramid 1976, p. 284.</ref> The bulk of Heinlein's work on the novel, e.g. the explanations of the weapons' effectiveness and the strategy for the Americans' rebellion, is not present in "All".