BRIAN DOHERTY: “The science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein was born in Missouri, and his fiction was mostly set in the future and on distant planets. But there’s no question that Heinlein—born 100 years ago this week—was one of Southern California’s great prophets. . . . In a sense, the industrialists, pilots and dreamers who gathered at California’s Mojave spaceport in October 2004 watching SpaceShipOne win the X Prize for sending a private craft to space and back were living out Heinlein’s dream.”