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Heinlein
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htaccess
Posted 2010-05-14 5:41 AM (#2044)
Subject: Heinlein



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http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/12/heinlein-freaked-out.html
http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/05/robert-a-heinlein-algis...

Edited by htaccess 2010-05-14 5:43 AM
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dustydigger
Posted 2012-07-01 4:36 AM (#3548 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: UK		htaccess,thank you so much for this fascinating insight into Heinlein and his oddities.I am finally finding time to start trawling through earlier threads,and am enjoying your interesting offerings.
I love Heinleins early juvenile works,but have to admit to squirming with embarassment at some of the later stuff.I liked a lot of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,but some of it was embarrassing too,and I only got partway through SIASL.As for Friday !!!...... nuff said.
I particularly enjoyed the excellent discussions in the BoingBoing article,lots of interesting insights there
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htaccess
Posted 2012-07-02 6:56 PM (#3556 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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@dustydigger: my pleasure.

I know what you mean about Heinlein, I just finished "Time Enough for Love" which took it to the next level of creepiness, this review pretty much hits the nail on the head for me.

Out of his books I found "Double Star" the most enjoyable.



Edited by htaccess 2012-07-02 6:57 PM
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Rhondak101
Posted 2012-07-02 9:44 PM (#3558 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: SC, USA		@htaccess, Thanks for the great link. It made me laugh. i read Time Enough sometime back in the late 80s or early 90s. i don't remember loving it or hating it back then, but I do remember that it was very much as the reviewer said. I remember hating Starship Troopers (misogyny comes to mind, but I don't remember specifics). I also remember not seeing what all the fuss was about with Stranger in a Strange Land. I should probably try him again--starting with Double Star. Thanks again.
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dustydigger
Posted 2012-07-03 1:11 AM (#3560 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: UK		@htaccess.I loved the review too!.I had earlier posted something similar in perspective,(but much more tactful and without specifics! lol) when I condemned his later desperate attempts to get his books ''with it'' in style and content to the young authors of the 60's.I said he was like a middleaged man at a party full of young people, who is aping their dress,slang,and dancing,and oozing around trying to get off with the prettiest girls,rather unsuccessfully,to their derision and amusement.and with great embarrassment to the bystanders.He is still classed somehow with Asimov and Clarke as one of the Big Three,and in the GMRC list is up there as one of the most read.I am wondering if he just grates on females,or do his super John Wayne heroes taking on the world and getting it sorted really hit the spot with the guys? .Anyway,that review really made my day!

Edited by dustydigger 2012-07-03 1:16 AM
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DrNefario
Posted 2012-07-04 8:01 AM (#3570 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: UK		I've never much got on with his stuff myself, and I'm male. I haven't really read a lot, but generally I find it quite easy to read, with the colloquial first-person viewpoint, but fairly objectionable politically. I haven't read any of the later works. I still have Stranger in a Strange Land to read for the Hugo winners list, and I'm not really looking forward to it. (I also have Double Star to read, and I'm okay with that. It's way shorter, for a start.)

Edited by DrNefario 2012-07-04 8:02 AM
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dustydigger
Posted 2012-07-04 11:55 AM (#3576 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: UK		I was very young when I read Starship Troopers ,maybe 15,and I loved it,identified with the hero (as much as a Brit girl could anyway) and thought it very exciting.I knew nothing of political biases at that point,so unlike Rhonda,I enjoyed it.But I did nothing but cringe at SISL,and sypathise with Dr Nefario with having to read it soon!It has such a split in reactions,some loving it,some detesting it.Do you think it was the same sort of hippy audience who made Lord of the Rings such a hit?
I was working in the public library when the one volume edition of LOTR came out in 1968,and remember well the amazing fuss made of it.For a year at least it was de rigeur to be seen clutching that brick sized volume.And yes,I bought a copy,which I read and reread for a decade!
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Emil
Posted 2012-07-05 2:15 AM (#3582 - in reply to #3576)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: Grootfontein, Namibia		There is a lot more in Starship Troopers than the obvious. Of course, the movie has nothing on it, apart from the names of a few characters. The action scenes in the movie resembles that of Steakley's Armor. I still think this book is Heinlein's reaction to the atrocities of war in general, and Nazi-Germany in particular, with the a strong call to patriotism. I wrote a few notes back in May 2011:

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/blog.asp?view=plink&id=435

The first quarter of Stranger was compelling, but once that "Heinlein voice" took over, it was quite overbearing. I stand corrected, but I think there were two version of it published, and the shorter one was a better proposition than the extended version. Again, I stand corrected, but it was also the reduced version that ultimately won the Hugo. I guess we all must have labored through the extended version

I'm still very undecided about Double Star. I guess I found it a little ... juvenile?
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NateT
Posted 2013-02-09 8:54 AM (#4684 - in reply to #3556)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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htaccess - 2012-07-02 6:56 PM

@dustydigger: my pleasure.

I know what you mean about Heinlein, I just finished "Time Enough for Love" which took it to the next level of creepiness, this review pretty much hits the nail on the head for me.

Out of his books I found "Double Star" the most enjoyable.



Every so often, you find pure gold. I never thought I could laugh so hard at a mere review. Thanks for the link, HT :-)

I haven't quite figured out why I'm such a Heinlein fan. I completely agree with most of the people who call him creepy, but I just keep on reading his stuff. I do space it out a bit, though.
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NateT
Posted 2013-02-09 9:04 AM (#4685 - in reply to #3558)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Rhondak101 - 2012-07-02 9:44 PM

@htaccess, Thanks for the great link. It made me laugh. i read Time Enough sometime back in the late 80s or early 90s. i don't remember loving it or hating it back then, but I do remember that it was very much as the reviewer said. I remember hating Starship Troopers (misogyny comes to mind, but I don't remember specifics). I also remember not seeing what all the fuss was about with Stranger in a Strange Land. I should probably try him again--starting with Double Star. Thanks again.


"Misogyny" is an arguably fair label to paste on Heinlein in general. I read SiaSL abt. 20 years ago and read Starship Troopers shortly thereafter. I vividly remember the sexism in Stranger, but don't remember any in Troopers. Maybe it's because I'm a guy ... or maybe it's because my first love is military SF & that's what I focused on in Troopers.
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justifiedsinner
Posted 2013-02-09 10:12 AM (#4686 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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I'd love to read a similar review of "I Will Fear No Evil". I find that the creepiest of his novels. An old man has his brain transplanted into the body of a young female who then proceeds to have sex with anything with a pulse. Heinlein's really a super-sized Ed Wood - why stop at cross dressing when you can cross bodies instead.
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Darling
Posted 2013-03-28 7:12 AM (#4880 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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I've got to say, creepy isn't a bad description, though not the first that comes to my mind. I have, from time to time, signed off RAH to let my mind reset. I am positive that he would find me an insufferable prude, but then I find him to be a licentious letch, so I guess maybe we're even. In spite of that, I love reading his stuff and even though I leave it from time to time, I always come back in spades. I like your comments about Double Star, and have been toying with reading it again (for the third time).
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Darling
Posted 2013-03-28 7:14 AM (#4881 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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By the Way ... March marks the 50th anniversary of the completion of Podkayne of Mars
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dustydigger
Posted 2013-04-04 3:32 PM (#4906 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: UK		Heinlein is my ''author of the year'',as I try to read all the juveniles(8 out of 12 so far) and reread some others.IBack in days of old I tried Stranger in a Strange Land,and gave up after about 40 cringemaking pages.I have spent the last couple of weeks making a determined attempt, at it. and I HATED it.All Heinleins faults seemed to be there in spades,,plus the rants go on for pages and pages.The now oldhat free love/ ,communal life/promiscuity etc are just an embarrassment.The sexism,is rampant (one female seriously announces that in 9 out of 10 cases of rape,the woman is at last partly at fault.)An atheist will of course revel in the total ridiculing and denigration of religion,but anyone not of that persuasion will not be pleased..What is most ironic about this is Heinlein seems to want to have his cake and eat it,denigrating Christianity,then having his protagonist deliberately(even cynically?) become a martyr in a parallel to Jesus Christ's death.Add the excruciatingly cheesy humour and corny dialogue and the whole thing was a form of torture to me.WHY do I insist on reading anything of his written after 1960.I have an awful feeling that if I tried rereading my old favourite Moon is a Harsh Mistress,I may find it a bit of an embarrassment too..I have to read Farnham's Freehold later this month and ,since it is new to me,I have got to wonder what is going to be the provocative,at time of writing,scenario that will have me cringing now .
Coincidentally,my follow up read is also about redundant gods going out of fashion and being forgotten - Neil Gaiman's American Gods is 10 times more enjoyable than Stranger!

Edited by dustydigger 2013-04-04 3:37 PM
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Scott Laz
Posted 2013-04-04 3:55 PM (#4907 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: Gunnison, Colorado		I was a still a teenager when The Number of the Beast came out. He hadn't published a new novel for a while, so I was excited to read the NEW Heinlein. I wasn't that big a fan of his earlier works, but of course his reputation at that time was gigantic. I still remember the experience of reading it, but wish I didn't. Even at that age, I knew there was something very very wrong about it......!
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dustydigger
Posted 2013-04-05 4:00 AM (#4911 - in reply to #4907)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: UK		Lol! Scott,I still have Job,and Friday seared in my mind after decades.And dear old Lazarus Long should have been drowned at birth,instead of living for centuries and insisting on regaling us with all his exploits...in full detail..(shudder)
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Scott Laz
Posted 2013-04-05 2:07 PM (#4913 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: Gunnison, Colorado		The Number of the Beast put me off reading more Heinlein at an early age, so I never read any of his later novels (and most likely never will!). I did recently read The Puppet Masters for the first time, and appreciated the paranoid Cold War vibe. It was an effective novel, but he couldn't resist having the body-snatching parasitic aliens attach to people's backs, so that everyone had to become accustomed to being publicly topless (!), in order to prove they weren't alien-controlled.
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dustydigger
Posted 2013-04-06 4:23 PM (#4916 - in reply to #4913)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: UK		Lol! I remember that,Scott,and quite a few went totally naked.Good job it was a hot summer,dont know what they would have done in the winter.It did work though, to out the aliens.In a similar situation in Star Trek,(was it Operation Annihilate?),everyone was decorously dressed,with dire results.Even Mr Spock ended up with a nasty critter on his back! ;0).You cant keep a good idea down.
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dustydigger
Posted 2013-05-05 1:40 PM (#5016 - in reply to #2044)
Subject: Re: Heinlein



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Location: UK		Just completed Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold,and thought it was an extremely odd book.It starts out looking like a standard nuclear war survival story,as a VERY dysfunctional family,a woman friend and a black servant cram themselves into a nuclear survival shelter and after three bombs shake up and tilt the tank shelter they come out to find themselves in a landscape topographically the same but apparently untouched by humans,which finally proves to be in the future.Now we have a pioneering tale as they have to scratch for a living and use all their leader,typical Heinlein authority figure Hugh Farnham's, skills.Then just as we get used to this story,soldiers of the future turn up and make them slaves.Its a world where blacks are supreme,all whites,(mostly neutered) slaves - and food for their owners!.Farnham tries to escape with his girlfriend and their twin babies,but finds that they have been totally manipulated by the overlord who then sends them back to their own time with instructions to leave a time measuring device that will be unearthed in theoverlords future .Cue some cute little minor time paradoxes,and a cheerful happy ending.Totally bonkers!.I very much disliked the early part of the book with its would be trendy sexual revolution details (book written 1964),liberal views on race by Farnham which today look very patronising,enough condescension towards women to have feminists foaming at the mouth,and excruciating dialogue. Plus the repulsive son who liberally denigrates the servant and copiously uses the ''N'' word.It was a major relief in the second half of the book when he and his alcoholic/seconal chewing mother are sidelined,and we see something of the future world,cannibalism and all as a major improvement!
Oh,and the nakedness factor is here again It gets very hot in the survival tank,Farnham insists on everyone going naked,and threatens to shoot dead the puritanical servant when he wants to refuse.Whatever happened to the Heinlein of those great short stories of the 40s,and the fun juveniles of the 50s?.Very strange
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