[Publius]

Ping.

[Billthedrill]

Thanks for the ping. The article is, unfortunately, so distorted by the author's ideological lens that its subject Heinlein is barely recognizable. Some *minor* omissions: he wasn't "blacklisted" from the Navy, he was discharged medically because he was tubercular and they didn't think he was going to live, and for that reason he wasn't likely ever to be allowed into the close quarters of a ship again. Like a lot of very intelligent people he went through a socialist phase - he ran for public office as a socialist - and like a lot of very intelligent people - Orwell comes to mind - he learned better. Because both men learned that the promise of individual freedom and human actualization that is one of socialism's most alluring jewels is a lie.

How anyone can imagine him racist is an indication that that individual hasn't read him very closely - the punchline to Starship Troopers was, after all, that its protagonist wasn't white. Farnham's Freehold is a brutally revealing read for anyone captured by contemporary progressive illusions, and it challenges their conviction of who is on the "right side" of history because that's exactly what it was intended to do. If you're shocked, you just might be part of the problem.

I won't expand on his late-life peculiarities in sexual matters because they really aren't all that significant to his body of work. At most, a distraction. How he felt about human freedom, though, is far more pertinent, IMHO, and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is a work that only improves with age. And then there is one, a juvenile novel of my childhood, Podkayne Of Mars, whose original ending was never published in his lifetime due to its intensity. You can find it in the posthumous Grumbles From The Grave. I think that the editor was mistaken, the book is far, far better with it even if it makes the kiddies cry. Highly recommended.