Robert Heinlein

[Huckleman2000]

...In his opinion, if you wanted to not just vote but to serve in public office you had to pay for that right. He took it one step further though. In his mind he thought that if you wished to serve in a position where you could be tasked with sending others into harms way, you should have been in those troops shoes. This would, as he put it, limit those with little dicks and big ego's from getting into areas where they could send our boys and girls into dangerous situations without good reason.

Cat

Admittedly, my experience with RAH is limited to Stranger In a Strange Land; maybe some others - Lazarus Long is a very familiar character name, but it's been decades since my SciFi jag.

If this isn't too far off topic, I'd just like to register an opposing view to the opinion that voting should be linked to public service. I understand the impulse to have an 'educated' votership, but there are many kinds of education, not all of them benign.

That said, I find it a lot harder to disagree with Cat's father's second point, that someone who sends soldiers into harm's way should have some first-hand experience. Oddly, I think Clinton shared this view on some level, based on his use of the military during his tenure in office. At least, he was sensitive to the argument. Contrast that with BushCo, which has not only managed to discredit the service of rivals in their own party, but has led to the coinage of a new term, Swiftboating, for attacking an opponent's military service despite having undistinguished history of it themselves.

/threadjack

 

[Seattle Zack]

RAH started selling short Sci-Fi stories to magazines like FANTASTIC and GALAXY in the early 1940's ...

Hmm, not too sure about that. I'm a real Heinlein buff, and I own several of the early magazines where his stories first appeared (including a 1947 Saturday Evening Post that I got off eBay for 67 bucks), but Galaxy and Fantastic were never even on my radar. He has several in Astounding Science Fiction under several different pseudonyms, but I've never heard of anything in Galaxy or Fantastic. Got any links for those?

Galaxy, if I recall correctly, was the one started by Gold in the 50s and the editorial duties were taken over by Pohl upon Gold's illness.

Fantastic, on the other hand, wasn't even published until the mid-50s, so it would have been pretty difficult to have a story published by Heinlein in the early 1940s, unless it was some kind of time travel mystery unbeknownst to the publisher.

There's a pretty comprehensive list of Heinlein's works at the Heinlein Society if you're interested.

I read Moon Is a Harsh Mistress at about age 8, and it was one of the books that I remember to this day. That whole concept of the gravity well -- potential and kinetic energy -- made a weird mathematical sense to me, in a way that I didn't quite understand. TANSTAAFL (which was a phrase my dad said weekly while I was growing up) was a concept that I really took to heart.

Yet, years later, when I asked him about it, my dad had never read the book. He explained that the slogan was a catchphrase of engineers at the time. He was a Boeing engineer, and they were sending men to the moon. TANSTAAFL meant that for everything they added, they needed to take something away. More thrust meant more fuel meant less weight in the capsule. You couldn't just add 600 pounds of oxygen to the payload and have everything work out the same.

Later, in college, when I re-read Harsh Mistress and its simplification of liberitarian ideals, I wondered how much that had contributed to my political philosophy. Stranger in a Strange Land, of course, was the utopian acid-fueled utopia embraced by the hippie idealists at the time. How many novelists have had an invented word incorporated into the popular lexicon? Grok. Not many, I'd guess. Hunter S. Thompson, Anthony Burgess, maybe a few others.

I met him once. Driving cab while taking classes at UC Santa Cruz about '86 or so. I picked up a journalist and her photographer from the airport bus, and we drove way the hell up into the Santa Cruz mountains. They were very secretive about who they were meeting, then finally revealed it was Heinlein. His house was a weird geodisic dome, powered by solar energy or something, where I dropped them off. I gave them my card, begged them to ask for me on the return trip, and asked if there was some way I could just shake his hand.

So, right at the end of my shift, the dispatcher says I've got a personal. I drive way the hell up there again, and this gal is waving me up as I pull up the driveway. I got out and went up there, kind of on the front porch of this funky weird house, and shook his hand. He had two canes, could barely walk, but his eyes were just bright as hell and he had a fierce grip. I felt like an idiot, mumbling how much I loved his books and how I wanted to write fiction and blah blah blah. Here I was, talking to one of the most influential authors of all time, and blathering like a moron.

He shook my hand and said, "Remember this, young man. Fiction becomes truth." Fucking A. How cool is that?

I ended up driving the journalists back to the SFO airport to catch their flight, fare was like $180. Returned my cab three hours late.

So, that's my Heinlein story.

 

[Weird Harold]

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.

Nehemih Scudder's story published as a standalone book under the name Revolt in 2100 consistng of the novellas If this goes on... and Coventry.

As far as being "sexist," that's a base canard -- RAH was the least sexist of any of the Golden Age Masters. He was for several decades the ONLY science fiction writer that assumed equality of the sexes in the future and wrote the ONLY female science fiction characters that weren't damsels-in-distress. He pushed the limits of what science fiction publishers would print as far as he could get away with in showing women as being capable of anything men were.

Podkayne of Mars was for over thirty years, the only science fiction with a female protagonist that was not only equal to but superior to males. It was a key element in my view of the opposite sex as people instead of servants.

Glory Road was basically my introduction to erotic literature -- even though there is only one scene that is really "erotic literature."

 

[Weird Harold]

If this isn't too far off topic, I'd just like to register an opposing view to the opinion that voting should be linked to public service. I understand the impulse to have an 'educated' votership, but there are many kinds of education, not all of them benign.

RAH was a big proponent of an educated electorate, but the main point of his "earned franchise" wasn't education but contribution -- He believed that people who only took from society shouldn't have any say in how it's run.

David Weber incorporates a similar concept into the Honor Harrington series -- citizens of the Star Kingdom of Maticore earn the Franchise by paying taxes; if they pay one cent more in taxes than they receive in government benefits, then they are able to vote.

RAH also said in several stories -- usually through Lazarus Long -- that "anyone who wanted the job of running a government should be automatically disqualified from public office at any level." He even wrote a short story around the idea of drafting the President and linking the president's pay to the economy during his term.

 

[Huckleman2000]

RAH was a big proponent of an educated electorate, but the main point of his "earned franchise" wasn't education but contribution -- He believed that people who only took from society shouldn't have any say in how it's run.

David Weber incorporates a similar concept into the Honor Harrington series -- citizens of the Star Kingdom of Maticore earn the Franchise by paying taxes; if they pay one cent more in taxes than they receive in government benefits, then they are able to vote.

RAH also said in several stories -- usually through Lazarus Long -- that "anyone who wanted the job of running a government should be automatically disqualified from public office at any level." He even wrote a short story around the idea of drafting the President and linking the president's pay to the economy during his term.

Interesting distinctions. Jerry Pournelle is another SciFi author with a decidedly Libertarian bent. Particularly in Lucifer's Hammer, an apocalyptic polemic with a strong, authoritarian, autobiographical central figure. I wonder what it is about the Libertarian viewpoint that attracts SciFi authors and software company executives? Perhaps the unwavering idea that the world would be perfect, if only everyone agreed with them, as they should because they're the smartest one.

 

[Weird Harold]

Jerry Pournelle is another SciFi author with a decidedly Libertarian bent. Particularly in Lucifer's Hammer, an apocalyptic polemic with a strong, authoritarian, autobiographical central figure. I wonder what it is about the Libertarian viewpoint that attracts SciFi authors and software company executives?

Oddly enough, I just bought anew copy of Lucifer's Hammer and finished re-reading it about 12 hours ago. I didn't see any Libertarian bias although the political references prior to "Hot Fudge Tuesdae" are a bit dated. There's a very strong secular conservatism bias and a definite anti-religious fantaticism warning, but Neither Lucifer's Hammer nor Footfall are particularly Libertarian. If anything, all three of the Apocalytic collaborations of Niven and Pournelle are strongly feudalistic in the post-apocalypse part of the story (Oath of Fealty is the third Appocalyptic collaboration.)

 

[Frederick Carol]

Thanks, everyone, for an interesting and educational thread about one of my favourite authors, and for pointing out to me some titles I haven't read, and should.

 

[Recidiva]

Heinlein is also one of the only authors who was really able to explain to me manners, social interactions, and how being different privately than you were publicly (sexually, politically, intellectually) doesn't make you two faced or a liar, it makes you a mannerly survivor.

"To Sail Beyond the Sunset" was a beautiful piece about relationships, social expectation and marriage.

"Whore in the bedroom, lady in public" was a revelation for me, not that you were required to be mannerly in public, I don't think that was his point. But that it was your choice to do so, and don't let anybody tell you any different.

What I loved from Heinlein was the intelligence required to make all the social choices and back them up with bluff, lies, anything...and still manage to be a decent human being and bucking for the good side. Jubal Harshaw became my hero. (So glad he and Hazel became friends)

 

[Lauren Hynde]

There's a site with ultra-condensed versions of several of Heinlein's books, for those who don't have time to read them. If you're interested in a laugh:


The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
by Robert A. Heinlein
ultra-condensed by David J. Parker

Robert A. Heinlein:
- I have a plan for the perfect revolution.

Reader:
- Interesting, tell me more.

Robert A. Heinlein:
- Step One: Live on the moon.

Reader:
- Uh....

Robert A. Heinlein:
- Step Two: Discover an omnipresent sentient computer.

Reader:
- *sigh*

THE END


Starship Troopers
by Robert A. Heinlein
ultra-condensed by David J. Parker and Samuel Stoddard

Johnnie Rico:
- I've joined the army. Watch my career.

Robert A. Heinlein:
- Blah blah blah POLITICS blah blah blah ORDER blah blah blah PHILOSOPHY blah blah blah MILITARY ORGANIZATION blah blah blah I HATE THE MILITARY OF MY DAY blah blah blah WAR blah blah blah CITIZENSHIP blah blah blah VOTING blah blah blah MORAL PHILOSOPHY blah blah blah MATH RULES blah blah blah -- Story? We don't need no steenking story!

Reader #1:
- I am overawed. You are a god, Robert A. Heinlein.

Reader #2:
- I am overawed. You are a doofus, Robert A. Heinlein.

Reader #3:
- I'm hungry. What's on TV?

THE END


Stranger In a Strange Land
by Robert A. Heinlein
ultra-condensed by David J. Parker and Samuel Stoddard

Valentine Michael Smith:
- You people would cure all society's ills if you'd just "grow closer" to your friends.

People:
- You sick dog. *stone him*

Valentine Michael Smith:
- I don't get it. Truly, I am a STRANGER in a STRANGE LAND. *dies*

THE END

 

[Guest]

If you read "Grumblings from the Grave", the book he wrote for his wife to publish after his death so as to avoid estate taxes, you'll find he didn't consider himself an artist or a scientist, but a writer. A journeyman , "It needs only be good enough to sell" writer. That's a pragmatism writers need to some degree.

I've actually been thinking of re-reading him. I heard once, that you understand writers better if you read them when you are near the age they were when the wrote the book.

a knuckle-dragging sexist.

And bless 'em.

When he first started writing, his market was Sci-Fi digests. Their audience was largely boys. The sex dragged them in. The ideas that seeped into his books despite his focus on commercialism, expanded their minds.

I'm still a little in love with Friday!

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

RAH was a big proponent of an educated electorate, but the main point of his "earned franchise" wasn't education but contribution -- He believed that people who only took from society shouldn't have any say in how it's run.

David Weber incorporates a similar concept into the Honor Harrington series -- citizens of the Star Kingdom of Maticore earn the Franchise by paying taxes; if they pay one cent more in taxes than they receive in government benefits, then they are able to vote.

RAH also said in several stories -- usually through Lazarus Long -- that "anyone who wanted the job of running a government should be automatically disqualified from public office at any level." He even wrote a short story around the idea of drafting the President and linking the president's pay to the economy during his term.

I love that Honor Harrington series. Another exciting space opera series featuring a virtuous, strong woman protagonist is Elizabeth Moon's Kylara Vatta series. Heinlien would highly approve of that series' contract-based merchant system! It's laissez faire by necessity - there is no force capable of policing galactic spaceways, so in an example of Hayekian "spontaneous order" a system of intertwined contractual relationships serve as the "galactic UCC," with reputation being as important to those traders as it is to Ebay traders! Bottom line, though, is that like Heinlein's works it's a terrific story with a wonderful main character.

 

[Guest]

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Hmm, not too sure about that. I'm a real Heinlein buff, and I own several of the early magazines where his stories first appeared (including a 1947 Saturday Evening Post that I got off eBay for 67 bucks), but Galaxy and Fantastic were never even on my radar. He has several in Astounding Science Fiction under several different pseudonyms, but I've never heard of anything in Galaxy or Fantastic. Got any links for those?

Zack, I had to search this, but this is what I found,

"While not destitute after the campaign — he had a small disability pension from the Navy — he turned to writing to pay off his mortgage, and in 1939 his first published story, "Life-Line," was printed in Astounding magazine. He rapidly became acknowledged as a leader of the new movement toward "social" science fiction. He began fitting his early published stories into a fairly consistent Future History, a chart of which editor John W. Campbell published in the May 1941 issue of Astounding, and which was later reprinted in his collection The Past Through Tomorrow."

This was published after his unsucessful stint as a wannabe politician.

Interesting note, RAH attended UCLA for a short time to study Math and Physics and gave up. Not surprising that his stories shy away from the tech explainations.

 

[impressive]

Heinlein is also one of the only authors who was really able to explain to me manners, social interactions, and how being different privately than you were publicly (sexually, politically, intellectually) doesn't make you two faced or a liar, it makes you a mannerly survivor.

*nods*

Until I cracked open my first Heinlein, I thought I was utterly alone in my views on relationships. I used to go to sleep at night praying to wake up in his universe. I didn't view him as sexist at all, especially given the context of the times in which he wrote.

Though I can't say he influenced me as a writer, he definitely gave me some much-needed validation in my teens.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Heinlein is also one of the only authors who was really able to explain to me manners, social interactions, and how being different privately than you were publicly (sexually, politically, intellectually) doesn't make you two faced or a liar, it makes you a mannerly survivor.

"To Sail Beyond the Sunset" was a beautiful piece about relationships, social expectation and marriage.

"Whore in the bedroom, lady in public" was a revelation for me, not that you were required to be mannerly in public, I don't think that was his point. But that it was your choice to do so, and don't let anybody tell you any different.

What I loved from Heinlein was the intelligence required to make all the social choices and back them up with bluff, lies, anything...and still manage to be a decent human being and bucking for the good side. Jubal Harshaw became my hero. (So glad he and Hazel became friends)

I loved "To Sail Beyond the Sunset." It was so touching; I got all choked up.

Good observations,

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

As far as being "sexist," that's a base canard -- RAH was the least sexist of any of the Golden Age Masters. He was for several decades the ONLY science fiction writer that assumed equality of the sexes in the future and wrote the ONLY female science fiction characters that weren't damsels-in-distress. He pushed the limits of what science fiction publishers would print as far as he could get away with in showing women as being capable of anything men were.

Podkayne of Mars was for over thirty years, the only science fiction with a female protagonist that was not only equal to but superior to males. It was a key element in my view of the opposite sex as people instead of servants.

Glory Road was basically my introduction to erotic literature -- even though there is only one scene that is really "erotic literature."

Thank you for this.

I think Podkayne was the second RAH book I read, and the first I selected, since the first was handed to me by a college roomate with a strong recommendation.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

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.

"If This Goes On-" I think is the novella you are looking for.

ETA: Oops, should have read more of the thread...

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Zack, I had to search this, but this is what I found,

"While not destitute after the campaign — he had a small disability pension from the Navy — he turned to writing to pay off his mortgage, and in 1939 his first published story, "Life-Line," was printed in Astounding magazine. He rapidly became acknowledged as a leader of the new movement toward "social" science fiction. He began fitting his early published stories into a fairly consistent Future History, a chart of which editor John W. Campbell published in the May 1941 issue of Astounding, and which was later reprinted in his collection The Past Through Tomorrow."

This was published after his unsucessful stint as a wannabe politician.

Interesting note, RAH attended UCLA for a short time to study Math and Physics and gave up. Not surprising that his stories shy away from the tech explainations.

I always thought "The man who was too lazy to fail" was slightly autobiographical in a literal sense and precisely so in a good character sense.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I wonder what it is about the libertarian viewpoint that attracts SciFi authors and software company executives?

Superior intellect and character, I think.

( )

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Heinlein had a strong influence on my religious views. I was already a nonbeliever, but may not have figured out yet that this was not only a rational position but a moral one. (It's been a long time; I forget precise details and sequences.) I just know that when he went all curmudgeonly on organized religion I stood up on my chair and cheered.

 

[Recidiva]

I always thought "The man who was too lazy to fail" was slightly autobiographical in a literal sense and precisely so in a good character sense.

My favorite part was memorizing algorithm tables for efficiency's sake.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

My favorite part was memorizing algorithm tables for efficiency's sake.

Time Enough for Love?? I think that section is autobigraphical too.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Between Planets
Beyond This Horizon
The Black Pits of Luna
Blowups Happen
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
Citizen of the Galaxy
Coventry
The Day After Tomorrow
Delilah and the Space Rigger
The Door Into Summer
Double Star
Farmer in the Sky
Farnham's Freehold
Friday
Gentlemen, Be Seated!
Glory Road
The Green Hills of Earth
Gulf
Have Space Suit — Will Travel
I Will Fear No Evil
If This Goes On—
It's Great to Be Back!
Job: A Comedy of Justice
Let There Be Light
Life-Line
Logic of Empire
The Long Watch
The Man Who Sold the Moon
The Menace from Earth
Methuselah's Children
Misfit
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon
The Number of the Beast
Ordeal in Space
Orphans of the Sky
Podkayne of Mars
The Puppet Masters
Red Planet
Requiem
The Roads Must Roll
Rocket Ship Galileo
The Rolling Stones
Searchlight
Space Cadet
Space Jockey
The Star Beast
Starman Jones
Starship Troopers
Stranger in a Strange Land
Time Enough for Love
Time for the Stars
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
Tunnel in the Sky
The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag
—We Also Walk Dogs

I have to admit that I have read everyone of these, some more than once, when I was a teen and then again as a young adult. I always found him fasinating and entertaining.

 

[amicus]

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. Th and e 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. )

[/I]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you Roxanne, you brought about a similar awakening from me early days at the public library where as a pre teen, I read everything on the science fiction shelf and loved everything Heinlein wrote, well said about rational anti-authoritarianism, ole Lazarus Long was certainly one of them critters...

be well...


amicus...

 

[Sean]

He could spin a good yarn, can't argue with that. I loved Tunnel in the Sky when I was a kid. His politics and sexism sucked monkey bollocks though. A quote from Friday(apologies if it's a bit out, it's from memory): "rape isn't so bad if the guys breath doesn't stink"