For Better or for Worse

[Mullins, Bill]

I've been doing some biographical research on Robert A. Heinlein late.
As part of it, I ran across some comments about _Astounding Science
Fiction_, the pulp that published much of his early work.  They censored
_everything_ that was remotely dirty, and apparently writers would make
a game of getting stuff in.  I read about alien names that were phonetic
matches for foreign cuss words, and reference to a "ball bearing rat
catcher" (nominally, a device that includes ball bearings, but the
in-joke was that it was a tomcat, i.e., it bears balls).


>
> Good for her! Media censors are so crazy these days that the
> only way to talk about anything may be to make it up. If a
> censor challenged this, she could double dare him: "Okay, if
> you think I'm using vulgar language, what does it mean?"
>
>