Robert Heinlein

[Guest]

 

[Stella_Omega]

Okay, he's come up in a couple of different threads, so I thought I would start one just for discussing his stuff.

I think he was pretty good at creating plots, lousy at the science part of science fiction, and a knuckle-dragging sexist.

That said, I enjoyed Time Enough for Love and Stranger in a Strange Land, loved The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and will have to find my anthology because the name of the novella where he skewers fundamentalist religion escapes me.

So, some good, some bad, some indifferent.

He was verbose, didactic, avuncular, masturbatory, and somehow very endearing- entertaining to read and embarrassing at the same time.

 

[AchtungNight]

The novel where he skewers fundamentalist religion is Job, and it too is good.

 

[RogueLurker]

He was verbose, didactic, avuncular, masturbatory, and somehow very endearing- entertaining to read and embarrassing at the same time.

I agree with your assessment. I read a few of his novels and enjoyed some, was unsettled by others and will always remember one - I Will Fear No Evil - that one really caught my attention.

 

[Guest]

 

[Recidiva]

I love his books. All of them, every one of them. Formed a huge amount of my thought, and directed me toward a ton of literature and art in the process.

 

[Guest]

 

[Tom Collins]

He was verbose, didactic, avuncular, masturbatory, and somehow very endearing- entertaining to read and embarrassing at the same time.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAA...

I didn't realize that that's exactly how I feel about him and his writing until I read that. I never could have put it so perfectly. Thanks, Stella. I love his writing. His fiction that is. His non-fiction, not so much. I like the way he manages to makes it feel like he's really speaking to you, rather than you reading something, in his articles and such, but I find them boring and, as you said, verbose.

I've read very nearly every story/novella/novel that he's written, and while I didn't like all of them, I certainly enjoyed the vast majority of them. If there's a piece of fiction of his that I've not read it's because I haven't been able to get my greedy, little hands on a copy of it.

 

[Recidiva]

No, no...there was a much earlier novella about the church founded by Nehemiah Skinner, who is referenced in several of his novels. I just can't for the life of me remember the title, and I'm not supposed to go lifting boxes of books right now. Pfui.

Sixth Column, Nehemiah Scudder.

 

[RogueLurker]

*squeak*

That's the one that OUTRAGES me!

He had the perfect setup to explore fundamental differences between men and women, and what does he do? Brings in a ghost to explain everything and turns the second half of the novel into who-am-I-gonna-boink-next?

What a CHEAP trick!

Yeah, but that was Heinlein.

But it was the ideas behind it which fascinated me. Male/Female .. what is the difference: physical, mental, internal, external. I usually got icked out by all the sex in his books, but I was probably a bit too young to be reading them in the first place (older brothers had his books).

PS Don't be mad at me because the book made an impression....

 

[Tom Collins]

No, no...there was a much earlier novella about the church founded by Nehemiah Skinner, who is referenced in several of his novels. I just can't for the life of me remember the title, and I'm not supposed to go lifting boxes of books right now. Pfui.

I could be wrong, but I think you might be talking about The Fifth Column. Let me do a little research and see if I can verify that for you, Jammiekins.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I love his books. All of them, every one of them. Formed a huge amount of my thought, and directed me toward a ton of literature and art in the process.

What art, 'Diva?

(I only ask because my artistic education came from completely different direction)

And without disrespect- I think I loved his geezer period the most. When he was most masturabtory. It was the first time in my life that I realised that a writer's work could be read as a portrait of that same writer...

 

[Guest]

 

[Recidiva]

What art, 'Diva?

(I only ask because my artistic education came from completely different direction)

And without disrespect- I think I loved his geezer period the most. When he was most masturabtory. It was the first time in my life that I realised that a writer's work could be read as a portrait of that same writer...

"Stranger" introduced me to Rodin, "The Rolling Stones" and grandma's teaching the kids introduced me to a list of things that would make you ignorant if you didn't know them in her estimation (I Hazel Stone)

I read everything carefully and would jot down artist names, books mentioned, and would hit them all in the library. Took me a trek to the San Francisco Library at the time to locate floccinaucinihilipilifitrix in a 50-pound dictionary and not just be told by the crew of the Gay Deceiver that it was a real word...

 

[Tom Collins]

I could be wrong, but I think you might be talking about The Fifth Column. Let me do a little research and see if I can verify that for you, Jammiekins.

ERK...nope...it's called The Sixth Column. Was close though.

 

[Guest]

.....

 

[Tom Collins]

Sixth Column, Nehemiah Scudder.

Diva's a smartypants.

 

[Stella_Omega]

"Stranger" introduced me to Rodin, "The Rolling Stones" and grandma's teaching the kids introduced me to a list of things that would make you ignorant if you didn't know them in her estimation (I Hazel Stone)

I read everything carefully and would jot down artist names, books mentioned, and would hit them all in the library. Took me a trek to the San Francisco Library at the time to locate floccinaucinihilipilifitrix in a 50-pound dictionary and not just be told by the crew of the Gay Deceiver that it was a real word...

Google is my friend! DAMN what a great word!
The "ix" suffix makes it a feminine estimator, I assume?

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Huh - I agree with just about everything said here, starting with all of Jammie's and Stella's adjectives! I liked "Fear No Evil," but understand and sympathize with Jammies on the "easy way out" he chose. The frontier pioneering story in Time Enough for Love (with Dora, the love of Lazarus's life, who as a baby he saved from a burning house) is perhaps the loveliest, most romantic story I've ever read. (A fave part: Having to ration carefully which books they would carry in the covered wagon across the desert to the promised land, they chose the complete Shakespeare. Result: For family entertainment in the lonely cabin, the children put on plays. The four-year-old remonstrating at an unwanted spanking: "Sire - Methinks thou dost me wrong!" )

To some extent I owe my political philosophy of libertarianism to Heinlein - I read him at the formative age of around 20, and his political attitudes appealed greatly to my rationalism and anti-authoritarianism. (Perhaps that's one definition of libertarianism: Rational anti-authoritarianism. )

 

[Guest]

.....

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I see why you don't understand him. Heinlein never wrote science fiction.

Heinlein wrote characters dealing with real issues of politics, religion, relationships, taboos and so on. Ok, granted, he wrote them in sci-fi settings but his books were never about the technical details of Bug like vehicles for transportation on Venus. (Arthur C. Clarke) Even there there was plenty of sci-fi in his work. Time enough for love was about, secondarily anyway, time travel. As was The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.There is plenty of science in ALL his works. He just never saw fit to try and impress his readers with technical specs for everything.

Heinlein had a different approach to discribing technology of the future that I have a great appreciation for; he described it as if the reader had one in his/her garage and already knew all about it. Or in some cases let the dialogue of the characters put it to rest. In fact one of the best passages I ever read in a Sci-Fi novel came from Methuselah's Children. Lazarus Long (one of my long time heros) has just hi-jacked a huge space ship to transport the Howard Families away from Earth. Knowing that the ship can't out run space fighters and frigates from Earth, Lazarus enlists the help of genius Andy Libby to find a way of making the ship faster. Libby shows up ready to take the ship to light speed and beyond with a small box that he attaches to a bulkhead on the bridge with an alligator clip. Long asks him how it works and Libby simply says, "Lazarus, I could spend the next hundred years explaining it to you and you still wouldn't understand."

Heinlein didn't bore you with the technical details, he got you interested in the story and made you think for yourself. THAT is what made RAH a multiple Hugo winner.

I always viewed Time Enough as a history of the U.S. writ on a galactic tablet, and have heard The Moon is a Harsh Mistress described as a retelling of the American Revolution.

 

[Tom Collins]

I see why you don't understand him. Heinlein never wrote science fiction.

Heinlein wrote characters dealing with real issues of politics, religion, relationships, taboos and so on. Ok, granted, he wrote them in sci-fi settings but his books were never about the technical details of Bug like vehicles for transportation on Venus. (Arthur C. Clarke) Even there there was plenty of sci-fi in his work. Time enough for love was about, secondarily anyway, time travel. As was The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.There is plenty of science in ALL his works. He just never saw fit to try and impress his readers with technical specs for everything.

Heinlein had a different approach to discribing technology of the future that I have a great appreciation for; he described it as if the reader had one in his/her garage and already knew all about it. Or in some cases let the dialogue of the characters put it to rest. In fact one of the best passages I ever read in a Sci-Fi novel came from Methuselah's Children. Lazarus Long (one of my long time heros) has just hi-jacked a huge space ship to transport the Howard Families away from Earth. Knowing that the ship can't out run space fighters and frigates from Earth, Lazarus enlists the help of genius Andy Libby to find a way of making the ship faster. Libby shows up ready to take the ship to light speed and beyond with a small box that he attaches to a bulkhead on the bridge with an alligator clip. Long asks him how it works and Libby simply says, "Lazarus, I could spend the next hundred years explaining it to you and you still wouldn't understand."

Heinlein didn't bore you with the technical details, he got you interested in the story and made you think for yourself. THAT is what made RAH a multiple Hugo winner.

Exactomundo, Dran.

You hit the nail squarely on the head. The reason I've always hated Asimov and his ilk is because they explain in detail how all their gizmos and widgets work. It's dry as ten year old hay, and incomprihensible to me no matter how well they explain it because my eyes glaze over, literally, and I stop being able to read the story.

RAH, on the other hand, is writing about persons, pure and simple.

 

[Recidiva]

Indeed.

As for art, Heinlein discusses art in several books, but his discriptions and explanations of Rodin's Caryatid Fallen Under Her Stone, She Who Was the Helmut Maker's Wife and The Little Mermaid immediately come to mind. Heinlein understood what art really is, evoking emotion.

I have a reproduction of Caryatid, it's the only piece I've bought, but I got my love for it from him.

 

[Guest]

.....

 

[SeaCat]

Robert Anson Heinlein,

A man of many talents including the ability to make the reader think. (Not too mention the ability to piss off so many people.)

Yes he did write Sci-Fi, but he did it in a manner that was new. He did it from the point of view of his characters. (Thanks Dran for mentioning this.)

Yes many people do think he was a racist, citing his book "Farnhams Freehold" as proof. Think though, what race was he against? (Please don't fall back on that age old ploy of I can tell he's a racist because I'm _____________ (Insert your favorite PC Race here.))

What he did best though, in my humble opinion, as to make people think about their ideas and their society. He showed us a type of non utopian society, one created entirely in his mind. One in which a person who strove, who thought and acted on his thoughts could maybe get ahead even if they were not born into the ruling class. Shocking ideas for the time when he wrote. He also referenced the idea of equality, again reference his book "Farnhams Freehold".

Yes he did write a story about a Theocratic America. It came out in his anthology as Sixth Column and was again printed in his book Revolt in 2100. (Hint, this story was a follow up to his story "Stranger in a Strange Land".)

As much as many people dislike him, we all have to admit he was one of the founding fathers of his Genre along with Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. (All of them highly educated men.)

Few people can come close to these authors in their scope of writing. In my not so humble opinion very few can be called true Sci-Fi authors. In most cases they fall into the catagory of fantasy. (They take it way too far and have no grounding in any of the sciences. Remember Sci-Fi used to be called Speculative Fiction.) One of my favorites in the newer authors is one called William Gibson, the father of "CyberPunk".

Cat