"it's part of science fiction"

R.A. Lafferty, from "The Case of the Moth-Eaten Magician":

And another minus for SF is to be found in the apotheoses that are presented from time to time. Among the great bravura presentations that are somewhat controversial are the apotheoses. You like them or you like them not. I didn't like the apotheosis of the Roman Emperors that took place when I was around in my earlier manifestations; and I didn't like the apotheosis of this tedious pusher of fascism-for-boys (Oh, the twigs he's bent, the twigs he's bent!) which event took place in the Meuhlebach Hotel in Kansas City near the end of summer of 1976. This was in the main banquet hall, and it was as elaborate as it was stuffy. Perhaps it was appropriate that this master of fulsomeness and tedium should have a fulsome and tedious ceremony. But how were they able to draft such a crew to be fulsomeizers and tediumizers? I asked several of them about it later. “Oh, you have to go along with something like that,” they said, “it's part of science fiction.”

There were tributes and tributes and still more tributes, many hours of them. I slept and woke and slept and woke again and they were still going on. I remembered that at the apotheosis of Roman Emperors, the tributes went on all the time while the bulls were being caught and slaughtered and then roasted whole on giant spits, and that always took many hours until they were roasted through and through. So did this take many hours.
Most of the tribute-givers were arrant fools, but not all of them. Bob Tucker was up there. Alfred Bester was up there. How did they get such intelligent though roguish persons to take part in such concatenated and lock-step cheesiness? And the supreme tribute was to come after many hours of these lesser tributes. 

God Himself was to be involved in that supreme tribute, and the arrangers of the apotheosis believed, rightly or wrongly, that they had a commitment from God to play a part. Oh, a ceiling panel was to slide back at the climax of the ceremonies. The giant Hand of God was to come down through that opening, and the index finger was to touch this candidate for apotheosis. And then the Voice of God was to boom down through the aperture in the celing:
“This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” 

But it didn't happen quite that way. Wouldn't you know it, the panel in the ceiling of the main dining hall of the Muehlebach stuck. It rattled and rattled but it wouldn't slide open. There was a long and tiresome and uneasy moment but it still wouldn't slide open. So the Hand of God never did come down, and the Voice of God never did sound. 

This didn't really happen? Or it didn't really didn't happen? I tell you that more than half of the people in that dining hall were rolling their eyes up towards that ceiling and muttering “Oh God Oh God Oh God!” as the thing dragged on and on, and they were pale and twitchy and nauseated by the ecstasy of it all. And yet it ended up as ‘bad show’. 

This was probably the lowest moment in the entire history of science fiction, almost the lowest moment in anything. And yet the squalid apotheosis did take place, and now Heinlein is one of the Gods.

Documentary footage of The Apotheosis of Robert Heinlein: