"Robert Heinlein Remembered"

Lever Action Essays ^ | 1988 | L.Neil Smith

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

I've been loving the Lazarus Long quotes; I better get a book with him in it I guess.

No kidding. Here's one I just found here:

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss.

[FreeLibertarian]

I've been loving the Lazarus Long quotes; I better get a book with him in it I guess.

"The Notebooks of Lazarus Long" is an excellent source for starters but continue with "Methuselah's Children" and "Time Enough For Love", etc. to get an understanding of Lazarus.

[FreeLibertarian]

A very important Robert A. Heinlein item that isn't on your list is the introduction to "High Frontier - A Strategy For National Survival" by General Daniel Graham.

This was the book that defined the goals for the Strategic Missle Defense Initiative.

[FreeLibertarian]

Thanks - I'll put it on my list.

[FreeLibertarian]

..as long as I have my calculator......

I know the feeling!

If you ain't makin' waves, you ain't kickin' hard enough! -- Lazarus Long

[FreeLibertarian]

One more for today;

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent---it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills. -- Lazarus Long

[redrock]

"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of -- but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."
----Lazarus Long

[flashbunny]

Make sure you pick up the unabridged version. The one that was originally published was trimmed and censored somewhat to keep the publishers happy. Didn't read the original, but it supposedly suffers from the cuts.

I've just started to get into Heinlein's works. The unabridged Stranger may seem long, but it flies by much faster than something like Atlas Shrugged - a book that is a great concept, but to be honest, Ayn Rand really needed an editor to help with pacing and trimming.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Oh, no! Please don't get my started on Rand. This has been such a pleasant thread...

[mdmathis6]

I agree....though I don't think the Star Ship Troopers movie was a total loss. It really needed more of a mini series touch..say a sci-fi channel type where more of the book's elements and plot could be explored in a more leisurely fashion and the maturational processes in the central characters described with more finesse. The movie was a "McDonald's happy meal" when it needed to be a full 9 course meal. The action and special effects were awesome and I loved Michael Ironside as the lieutenant. The basic training camps were pretty close to what I pictured in the book. But the movie needed fleshing out..I heard they ran short of funds and had to cut corners. Still, there still seems to be quite a cult following regarding the movie.

[6ppc]

"I admit that if I didn't feel bound by the Non-Aggression Principle, there wouldn't be a church left standing above its own ashes west of the Mississippi."

I think you are taking him a bit too seriously. That statement is obviously a bit of tongue in cheek hyperbole, and intended to be humorous (kind of like how I threaten my daughter when she is purposly yanking my chain).

[FreeLibertarian]

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier. -- Lazarus Long

[FreeLibertarian]

Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excssive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into the machinery that does not work too well at best.

Lazarus Long in Time Enough For Love....The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

[Swordmaker]

Ah, Woodie, who would have thought you could become so famous...

Woodrow Wilson Smith, born November 12, 1912, Died ????

AKA Woodrow Wilson Smith, Ernest Gibbons, Captain Aaron Sheffield, "Happy" Daze, His Serenity Seraphin the Younger, Supreme High Priest of the One God in All His Aspects and Arbiter Below and Above, Proscribed Prisoner No. 83M2742, Mr. Justice Lenox, Corporal "Ted" Bronson, Dr. Lafe Hubert, Lazarus Long, et al?

[Roscoe]

"Ah, yes, the 'unalienable rights.' Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What 'right' to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of 'right'? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is 'unalienable'? And is it 'right'?"

"As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost."

Colonel Dubois in Starship Troopers

[redrock]

"...who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives."

So did every single person who took the Oath upon enlisting in the Armed Forces.

Sadly...most have forgotten.

redrock

[sadimgnik]

Have Spacesuit Will Travel sounds like a perfect fit.
She gets a copy tommorrow.

---

She read it yet?

I laughed when I saw the recommendation ... because it caused me to think about what Spacesuit taught me around age 8. (*)

The primary lesson was that 'no-one likes a smart-aleck' [Kip contemplates copying entry-forms for a competition, which would be within the letter of the rules, but not the spirit. His father advises him against it, based on the lesson outlined above. I seem to remembr an analogy with a skunk was used.]

It also pointed out to me that the neighbourhood cop (in the form of the Mother Thing) owes their highest loyalty to the system, not to me.

I'd be interested to see what your daughter got (gets) from it.

Regards

Sadim

(*) I always got (and get) more than one 'lesson' from every Heinlein story I read - and they are sometimes contradictory lessons :-)

[sadimgnik]

That one sounds like "I Will Fear No Evil", generally conceded to tie "Number of the Beast" as his worst novel.

---

Or Friday ... which is considered by many to be one of his finest.

The funny thing about Heinlein is tht most people love _either_ his early or his late works.

Me? I reckon that The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is an excellent novel .. as is Number of the Beast (well, except for the last chapter of NOTB which had too many pop-culture references that I simply didn't get).

And that Stranger in a Strange Land is a masterwork .. but that so is Tunnel in the Sky.

Sure, he wrote some stuff that I didn't like (I found Job to be too 'shrill' for my taste, and thought Johnny Rico in Troopers was a gormless twit who agreed with the last person he met) ... but RAH _always_ made me think.

I wish the same could be said for most other writers.

His politics is somewhat different to Heinlein, but I like Kim Stanley Robinson's stuff for the same reason, and think that authors like Gregory Benford show potential.

Unfortunately most writers fall into the Michael Crichton / Jonathon Kellerman / Steven King mould, and write formulaic pap :-(

Oh well.

Even bad literature is better than no literature :-)

Sadim

[bert]

My son ran off with most of my Heinlein books and my urge to reread generated by the recent thread sent me to the library where to my dismay most of his books were gone....to another library.

I went to the store and bought "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" and am reading it now.

What a great treat this is...... Free Republic and Robert Heinlein.

[bert]

...I think the older he got, the worse a storyteller and better a seer he became......

He got hungup on the chatty dialogue. I thought I would never finish Friday, but was fascinated by the divisions of the North American continent.

I believe in them strongly and look for the strains that produced them and that are so evident as we discuss the world's problems here on Free Republic.

Hell, if it weren't for New Hampshire, all of New England could be ceded to Quebec.