New at Reason

July 9, 2007

From our August/September issue, Brian Doherty looks at Robert Heinlein at 100.

Comments

|7.9.07 @ 12:42PM|#

I was never a huge sci-fi fan, that is until i read Stranger in a Strange Land and the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I believe these are two of the most overlooked books, by the public in large, of the last century.

D.A. Ridgely|7.9.07 @ 1:15PM|#

Good article. The first thing I ever read by Heinlein was Stranger in a Strange Land and it put me off Heinlein for years. It's a very uneven book getting worse as it goes on (theories abound as to why) and he was a very uneven writer, about whom the same might be said; that is, that his writing got worse later in his career.

OTOH, I forget where I read it, but Heinlein recounts taking a tour of the Soviet Union where the group's Intourist guide is taking them from one boring factory to the next extoling the manufacturing prowess of the USSR. All the while, Heinlein is taking careful notes, feigning rapt attention and asking the guide questions like "Did you say that cement plant produced 173,400 metric tonnes last year or 174,400?"

|7.9.07 @ 1:25PM|#

DAR---Heinlein's essays on his Soviet tourism are in his book EXPANDED UNIVERSE, a collection of stories and essays.

|7.9.07 @ 1:33PM|#

Heinlein got me started, that first deep hit of sense of wonder crack.

I was way ahead of the rest of my third-grade class in reading in 1978 and the teacher let me hang out in the library while everyone else were torturing phonemes. The librarian was wonderful and kept me supplied with books, but also upping the difficulty of those books every time I needed something new. After listening to me go on and on about Star Wars, she directed me to Red Planet by Heinlein. It was in the Scribner's hard back edition, with scratchboard illustrations. I devoured it and the other editions there and at the county public library.

I still love the juveniles and think, like many do, they were his best work. Here's a (disputed) list:

Rocket Ship Galileo, Scribner's, 1947
Space Cadet, Scribner's, 1948
Red Planet, Scribner's, 1949
Farmer in the Sky, Scribner's, 1950
Between Planets, Scribner's, 1951
The Rolling Stones, Scribner's, 1952
Starman Jones, Scribner's, 1953
The Star Beast, Scribner's, 1954
Tunnel in the Sky, Scribner's, 1955
Time for the Stars, Scribner's, 1956
Citizen of the Galaxy, Scribner's, 1957
Have Space Suit -Will Travel, Scribner's, 1958
Starship Troopers, Putnam, 1959
Podkayne of Mars, Putnam, 1963

|7.9.07 @ 1:33PM|#

The Heinlein Centennial was a pretty interesting event, even if the seminar "Heinlein and the Bomb" did get hijacked by a leftist moderator (Tad Daley) trying to push his own non-Heinlein-associated manifesto on nuclear disarmament. Overall, though, I thought the centennial was a well-done program.

Kudos to Reason for getting me my print edition last Tuesday so I knew about the event in plenty of time to go. Good times.

Jozef|7.9.07 @ 1:37PM|#

I'm sorry his novel Friday was not mentioned in the article. I guess a story that starts with the gang rape of the main character is not considered to be politically correct enough. Still, the backdrop to Friday was decidedly libertarian: the main character getting paid in grams of gold, or multi-member families one could buy into and leave with his/hers share of family profits. And let's not forget the beautifully split USA into a socialist California, corrupt Chicagoland and many more countries with their own, right-on personalities.

|7.9.07 @ 1:37PM|#

His Soviet recollections are pretty interesting. Some interesting tidbits:

He did some logistical exercise involving river traffic to estimate the population of Moscow, and came up with a much smaller number than the official figure.

He also happened to be near Star City when he ran into some very excited SRR cadets who were celebrating the launch of the first cosmonaut, years before Yuri Gagarin went up. Throughout the town they were touring there was a noticeable cheerful air of expectation. A local official had set up an appointment to meet with the Heinleins for an unusually long meeting that afternoon.

A few hours before the meeting, the Heinleins noted that everybody seemed to become very downcast, even despondant. When they met with the official, he lectured them with boilerplate Soviet propaganda and terminated the visit early.

Robert Heinlein was convinced to his dying day that on that day the Soviets tried to launch the first human into space and that the mission failed, killing the vehicle's occupant.

It would be interesting to know whether he was right...

edna|7.9.07 @ 1:50PM|#

"ignoring the repressive sexual and religious mores of bourgeois America"

interestingly, the article doesn't touch on heinlein's essential agreement with hayek- that although one might have a different private view than that of received social mores and customs, those mores and customs had to be paid their due. his characters always stressed the importance of having external appearances acceptable to 'society.'

LarryA|7.9.07 @ 3:32PM|#

What I always appreciated was the sheer breadth of Heinlein's writing.

Pick up a McCaffrey, and you pretty much know what you're getting into. Many other SF writers are the same thing, over and over, with some even proud of it. (Book Seventeen of the Chronicles of Whatever Artifact.)

But with Heinlein you just never knew. One of my favorites of his short stories was "The Menace from Earth," another was "Requiem." Day and night.

It isn't a quality amenable to pigeonholing, or to creating a movement around "What would Heinlein do?"

Amen, as far as life goes. But as a writer...

Robert|7.9.07 @ 4:55PM|#

Yes, enormous breadth. And depth. I think his writing actually got more thoughtful & challenging over the years, as if he'd been holding back earlier.

bill|7.9.07 @ 8:02PM|#

Starship Troopers was the first scifi book I ever read and it hooked me into the genre for years. I waited 30 years dreaming of the day they would turn it into a movie and then they go and FUCK IT UP!!!!! One of the greatest disappointments of my life.

|7.9.07 @ 10:51PM|#

LarryA wrote:

But with Heinlein you just never knew. One of my favorites of his short stories was "The Menace from Earth," another was "Requiem." Day and night.

No. Each story was about someone suddenly put in a position of having to make The Choice, expecting to die as a result of their decision yet going ahead because living would be intolerable if any other option were taken.

This is the common thread in ALL Heinlein SF stories. Someone makes The Choice, and it's not always the hero.

Pinero made The Choice. The Smiths (Woody and Valentine Michael) made it. Friday made it and lived to tell her story -- her parents made it, leaving Hartley Baldwin to tell the story for them. Sam Anderson "ate what was put before him" and the Asgard was saved. Cowper, Grant, Rhoades, they all made it. Dahlquist made it, and "I answer for him, sir!"

RAH was more than a great respecter of people in real like who had made The Choice. He held them in awe. Read his comments at Annapolis . . .after talking about the nuts and bolts of writing, he used the last several minutes of the most important talk he would ever give to tell the story of a nameless, anonymous hobo who gave his life to save someone he had never met in his life, ending with "This is how a MAN dies. This is how a man . . .LIVES!

Chap|7.9.07 @ 11:31PM|#

Good introduction. (I must admit my fellow Navy background wants me to make that "Heinlein the Sailor", but I get the idea.)

Concur about that "Heinlein And The Bomb" panel--flat shame, that. There's a reason the man was a friend of Herman Kahn and predicted the atomic bomb during the war.

The "The Choice" thesis is interesting, but like the article says, Heinlein resisted pigeonholing. One counterexample is the story "...We Also Walk Dogs".

TrappedEastOfTheBigMuddy|7.10.07 @ 2:10AM|#

Each story was about someone suddenly put in a position of having to make The Choice, expecting to die as a result of their decision yet going ahead because living would be intolerable if any other option were taken.

Thanks, JGR. I knew that, in a way, but had never articulated it.

There are counter-examples, of course, but they only serve to highlight the consistency of the others.

Chap, replace "Each" with "So many" if you like...

|7.10.07 @ 5:43AM|#

What was The Choice made by Waldo Jone?

|7.10.07 @ 8:46AM|#

The first thing I ever read by Heinlein was Stranger in a Strange Land and it put me off Heinlein for years. It's a very uneven book getting worse as it goes on (theories abound as to why)

Indeed, the last 1/3 is so slapdash, it's hard to believe that Heinlein wrote it.

|7.10.07 @ 10:45AM|#

Citizen of the Galaxy is a book that I'll cherish until the day I die - it is so rich and full of the unexpected upon first reading and bears re-reading. Stranger isn't my kind of book, and I admit that I haven't read all his works, but the Juvies, in particular, "Time for the Stars" (my first Heinlein read), "Tunnel in the Sky", "Starman Jones", and "Farmer in the Sky" all stretch the imagination, and encourage youth that there's more to the world - and your ability to live in it - than may first appear.

Also, I have read in other recent celebrations of Heinlein that he ~coined~ the "no free lunch" phrase, rather than adopted it.

I have read in other comments on Heinlein

|7.10.07 @ 9:24PM|#

Trapped:

"Each" in that case specifically meant "Menace" and "Requiem."


Rex:

Waldo's choice was more subtle. Lay down and die or get up and fight. He fought by using his mind, then by taking the chance on giving up everything he knew about the world in hope that what he was about to learn was worth it.

Not all conflict is obvious.

Matt:

Nope. As near as has been tracked down, he was given the phrase by Robert Pournelle (Jerry's dad).

|7.11.07 @ 10:35AM|#

I realize this thread is dead, but I wanted to make one observation:

Troopers posited that a ruthless military was an inescapable aspect of human civilization, and it presented approvingly a society in which only veterans of public service could vote.

Heinlein's detractors ignored the fact that military service made up only a small portion of that public service.

I haven't read this book (saw the coincidentally-named movie, though).

Anyway, does it strike anyone else as odd that libertarians have good things to say about a book in which only government employees can vote? Or does "public service" here mean volunteer work in addition to your day job?

|7.11.07 @ 11:59AM|#

"only government employees can vote."

You mean only retired government employees. There is no contradiction, because voting is not a 'right'. When I step into the voting booth, I'm no longer exercising my personal liberties, but am instead wielding political power over others' liberties. I have no more 'right to vote' than I have a 'right to serve on a jury'. We rightly recognize that it is the criminal defendant, and the parties to civil disputes, who have the 'right to trial by jury (of their peers)'. Our 'right to vote' is really the right to have the laws (under which those juries will operate) enacted, either directly through initiative/referendum, or indirectly through elected representatives, by common men rather than an elite class of hereditary nobility, which tends to wield its power in a discriminatory way.

The question then becomes whether the subset allowed the franchise are more or less likely than the population at large to abuse that power. Heinlein thought that people who had volunteered to give a term of service to the government would be self-selected to be defenders of liberties rather than oppressors.

|7.13.07 @ 4:57AM|#

Bravo, well said. Good article.

|7.16.07 @ 4:08PM|#

Good article. It is the only one I can remember that does not have an agenda.
Yes, the panel on "RAH and the Bomb" was a "Comedy of Errors" due to the self righteous disarmament boob. I (the pony tail in the back) did, however, manage to point and laugh.
Overall, though, the con was very good. I hope many of you enjoyed The Heinlein Society's hospitality room.