Posted on 11/18/2018 6:15:19 PM PST by narses
When I think about it, Heinlein shaped me throughout my life. I loved sci-fi since I started reading. His Boy’s Life stories out of the 50’s are still favorites.
TANSTAFL is as Capitalist as it gets!
One of my favorites by him was The Door Into Summer!
I’ll tell you someone who DID change radically (for the worse) when they got older was Leon Uris. His Exodus and Mila 18 had their heroes scrabbling for weapons to use against oppressors and then he writes A God in Ruins, an anti-gun screed. Very disappointed!
What a load of crap
“Jeet Heer is writing a doctoral thesis on the cultural politics of Little Orphan Annie at York University in Toronto. He is co-editor, with Kent Worcester, of Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium (University Press of Mississippi, 2004).”
A Canadian who’s cv doesn’t list schools or anything else
Yeah. I read it, and wondered what they read.
“Starship Troopers” was a utopian novel; in the context of the fight for survival of humanity against an implacable alien foe, he depicts a more just and sustainable republic. Full citizenship is not granted as a birthright, nor on the basis of race, social status or property ownership. Rather, only those who demonstrate dedication to the common good by placing their lives on the line are trusted to vote. I think Heinlein had a very good point there, but the movie version missed it altogether.
I had enjoyed his books over the years.....in “Revolt in 2100” I believe, the protagonist uses a 1911.....Heinlein can’t be all bad!
My favorites for RAH were his series of somewhat connected short stories, “The Past Through Tomorrow”, and “Job: A Comedy of Justice”.
Thanks for posting the entire article.
I became a Sci-Fi fan when about 10. When I was 60, I donated 360 hardback books of Sc-Fi to the local library, but kept about 30-40.
One of the books I kept was Stranger in a Strange World, that I first read in the mid-’70s. Just a couple of months ago I read it again.
I was amazed at how my perception of what I read had changed in 40+ years! Now, I could quickly spot the liberalism, free sex for all and hatred of government control.
If anything, he became closer to pure libertarian than right-wing...read him voraciously over the decades and still occasionally grab one of his (and other great SCI-Fi pioneers) from used book stores...
You might be thinking of Hamilton Felix in “Beyond This Horizon”.
Bingo.
Heinlein was a very talented writer.
He was simply wrong about a great many things.
The author of this piece catches a lot of things, and he is wrong about a lot of things.
Starship Troopers authoritarian? Far less than socialist regimes today.
I found the bit about Heinleins peculiar sex life to explain much of his stunted worldview on sex, and perhaps why he never had children.
Imagine my surprise when I got old enough to figure out Heinlein’s “women” were actually men written as female characters.
I’ve long thought DS9’s Kira Nerys was crafted after the stereotypical “Heinlein woman.”
Tripe by a leftist.
This from the same people who believe actors should have political influence.
I can read Heinlein and enjoy the stories (and at times the political wisdom) without giving a damn who he slept with.
I think not. Science fiction goes back MUCH farther than H.G. Wells. Remember Jules Verne?? And if you check lists of public domain sci-fi category books, you will find a fair number of other authors.
I saw an interview with him years and years ago. He didn’t present as the person I expected. I read the last Foundation books that he added. They were not up to the trilogy standards. I had read later that he wrote them to fund a new marriage.
‘The Door into Summer’ was great,
As worthy as Verne was, he was more a Belle Epoque adventure writer than an author trying to establish and promote a worldview as Welles was. Verne of course died before WWI laid waste to European civilization and made its shattered nations susceptible to Communism, with Welles becoming remarkably popular in that era in spite of his often heavy didacticism. The point though is not to mark the beginnings of sci fi but to identify Welles as a major influence on Heinlein.
Exactly the point of this driveling "review" - it reminds me of the Left's incessant attempts to belittle Ayn Rand's works. They can't risk having any of their little captive minds hear alternative views.
If you read all of his work (starting with the barely readable “For Us the Living”) and including “Grumbles from the Grave” and a “Tramp Abroad” you will realize he never really changed, he just released the socialist “free love” that he believed in as societal mores changed to allow same and suppressed his more outward socialist tendencies. The early juveniles were heavily censored, that is why they read so differently from his later, sex soaked tomes that the libertines love so much.
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