Posted on 10/31/2004 8:57:04 PM PST by Lancey Howard
Reviewed by Marc Schogol
Glory Road By Robert A. Heinlein
If it weren't for 'Stranger in a Strange Land', Robert A. Heinlein probably would have been known only by science fiction buffs.
But with its out-of-this-world motifs, including a mind-melding, mind-bending communal lifestyle where everything - everything! - was free and shared, 1961's 'Stranger in a Strange Land' made Heinlein a Sixties counterculture icon.
The irony, as anyone familiar with Heinlein and his other works would have known, was that the late science fiction master's political and philosophical bent was very libertarian/anti-egalitarian. Like Jack Kerouac, who was never comfortable with his reputation as the spiritual father of the hippies, Heinlein (1907-1988) was not, and never wanted to be, a guru to the Woodstock generation.
(snip)
Originally published two years after 'Stranger', it ('Glory Road') has been considered a lightweight effort by many science fiction aficionados. But others loved it then and have found themselves enjoying periodic rereadings since.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Correction: "Stranger in a Strange Land" was published in 1961. The date for "Moon" is correct -- I just got the titles switched in my head.
Cool post BUMP
And I must confess, "Friday" fueled more adolescent fantasies than I can remember.
L
'Stranger in a Strange Land' was a satire, and a very biting satire. The novel lampooned almost every facet of our society, pointing out that many institutions are not able to look at themselves from the outside and be objective about their principles. Objectivity is a complementary aspect to faith, in that it allows people to determine if their actions are really achieving the desired results.
One of my all time favs is "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
I loved Time Enough for Love (the mom stuff aside), Glory Road, and Job. Job just got me - about the impermanance of material things and the eternal nature of love.
"Time Enough For Love" is my favorite, and far deeper than most people often get. The style of that book is literally (and to me, very obviously intentionally) on epic religious canon, and appears to have been patterned on Judaic mythology more specifically. In essence, he wrote a "Bible" built upon the axioms of his philosophy, and actually wrote it in the traditional style of such things. Great stuff.
Because of this, if there was ever a book that he wrote that could serve as the basis of a religion, TEFL would be it. Incidentally, my father is a theologian with a strong background in the Judaic religious mythology (read: "pre-Christian"), and I grew up hearing about the stories and characters. It is one of the primary reasons I recognized the close mappings.
Great precis of RAH's work.
"Pang?" inquired Buck.
No, the bet was between L. Ron Hubbard and A.E. Van Vogt.
Heinlein's Stranger was a satire on the excesses of society he saw developing. He was by no means attempting to start a religion.
I assume you mean this thread, and not my silly post, in which I can't get the Great Man's initials right.
Best to you,
(steely)
Does anyone else remember an illustrator for Astounding/Analog named Cartier who did very distinctive line drawings? Does anyone know what happened to him/her?
There is some interesting recent work in mathematics that essentially proves that socialism does not scale beyond a finite and rather small number of agents (e.g. humans) in terms of efficiency and utility. For a small number of agents, socialism is the more optimal form, but doesn't scale. Libertarianism highly optimal in the general case and scales very well, but can be outperformed in small population cases (under certain parametric assumptions that apply to things like families). The population limit for humans in which the socialist model is optimal appears to be on the order of 50 people plus or minus a couple dozen i.e. an extended family or tribe.
Think of it as two separate utility functions as a function of population. At some point, the functions intersect. For small populations the socialism equivalent model is more efficient, but degrades rapidly such that the libertarian model exhibits much higher general efficiency primarily due to the rapid decay in efficiency of the socialist function. I've elided the mathematics (which are esoteric), but it is a fairly straightforward proof in the broader topic of algorithmic information theory. Socialism beyond the family group isn't just stupid, it is provably stupid. People need to understand its limitations.
I stand corrected on the SIASL info. Thanks for giving me more info on that... BTW Puppet Masters and TMIAHM were both great.
Wow! Great post!
It struck me the other day that much of the RAH early work was "survivalist" fiction - Farnhams Freehold, Tunnel in the Sky, and others looked at a post-apocalyptic world where even making *rabbit soup* would be a necessary skill. Later works were interesting, but the last bits of his career was disappointing for hard-science readers, owing to his illness I suppose.
“Searchlight” I would say is certainly his best work, though a little short for most.
I suppose that in the end, the message you take away is both from the author and from yourself. (Oh, and I do keep a roll of silver dollars at home, after all, you can never tell...)
Thanks!
My favorite quote from Glory Road:
'Major Ian Hay, back in the "War to End War," described the structure of military organizations: Regardless of the T.O., all military bureaucracies consist of a Surprise Party Department, a Practical Joke Department, and a Fairy Godmother Department.' - Oscar "E.C." Gordon, Glory Road, (Robert A. Heinlein)
RAH was the master. RIP H
One of the things I noticed about SF from that era was how "New York City-centric" it was. At that time, many SF writers and other futurists actually thought NYC and Long Island would be where the inventors of the World of Tomorrow would go to work every day. Silicon Valley was a '60's (and '70's, and '80's) phenomenon.
I was a "member" of something called The Science Fiction Book Club from about seventh grade (1967) till well into college. Got exposed to many cutting-edge authors through that. I remember that, just before I quit it, it veered off into a number of counter-culture themes, particularly some involving the gay lifestyle, that were disturbing to me (as an adolescent, anyway). That was the zeitgeist at the time (early '70's), no doubt about it.
(steely)
Another good book(s) is Magic, Inc. and Waldo..
The original name and concept for "waldo's" ( pantographic remote handling devices ) comes from these books.
"Stranger In a Strange Land" is a favorite, as well as "Starship Trooper", "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", and....
"Methuselah's Children".. ( I actually prefer this to "Time Enough For Love".. )
"For Us the Living" was written before he wrote "Life Line" and shows some hints of the themes he would expound on much later in his career... including some of the characters such as Nehemiah Scudder. The book shows many flaws as a first novel usually does, especially one that did not have the benefit of a good editor, but it is vintage Heinlein and well worth the read.
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Heinlein fans can rejoice-the SF master's lost first novel, composed between 1938 and 1939, has been found! In 1939, Perry Nelson suffers a bad car accident, but when he wakes up, it's 2086. A beautiful girl, Diana, takes the confused man under her wing, and naturally, they fall in love, but when Diana's ex shows up and flirts with her, Perry hauls off and hits him. Next thing Perry knows, he's being deprogrammed to get rid of his irrational sexual possession and jealousy. As Perry learns about the new world around him, he receives lectures about economic systems, aircars, rockets, U.S. history, religion and more-and these, of course, are the point of the story. Heinlein creates a utopian world of unparalleled prosperity and personal freedom and sketches out, through Perry's teachers, exactly why it all works. Since Heinlein mined ideas from this novel for all his other works, much is familiar, from the frankly free sexual mores to the active role of women to the rolling roads. Although this book can't stand alone on its own merits as a novel, it's a harbinger of later themes, best read critically and in conjunction with Heinlein's more mature fiction.
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I posted above it was Arthur C. Clarke. I actually did some research and found that reference with a Google search. But Van Vogt kicked off a memory -- it sounded right -- so I searched a little more. I found the bet is said to have been with Joe Haldeman or Heinlein or John W. Campbell Jr. or??? Apparently no one can really pin it down. But now I recall reading years ago it was with Van Vogt. Remember "Slan?"
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