Posted on 11/13/2004 12:26:56 PM PST by WillRain
Calling for assistance from my fellow Heinlein fans here.
I'm an education student (and a Social Science major) who has an assignment which is related to using literature to teach Social Studies.
I'd like to use, for this project, an excerpt from Starship Troopers in which the political philosophy of earning the franchise through a term of service is most concisely described.
Do any of you know of an on-line source that makes reference to these ideas?
In the absence of that, can you specify for me the place in the novel which has the clearest and most concise reference to the ideas (I'm thinking of a passage in which Rico remembers a class in which his instructor described the reasoning behind the service for franchise system). I've read the book a dozen times but I'm having trouble finding the exact passage i want. I'm asking because it strikes me as the sort of think that might have been excerpted on some blog or other somewhere on the net.
Anyone have a suggestion? I'm on a deadline and the project must be completed this weekend.
Thanks in advance.
Really?
I must be misremembering the one or two of his I've read...or more likely confusing him with someone else (Greg Bear maybe?)...
For such a visionary, Heinlien did usually display a very provincial view of women...he especially had no trouble using them as sex objects, even when smart and capable. I write it off as the one place where he had trouble thinking outside his times.
One good representation of a girl, I think, is the short story "The Menece from Earth" though it, too, is limited by the fact that a man CAN'T altogether write in the "voice" of a girl...at least, it seldom happens.
I've read those Heinlein books. Citizen of the Galaxy was just always my favorite of them. Something about spy tales I always love. That book had me from the very first! That was why I chose that book to introduce the niece to Heinlein. Frankly, as you can probably guess, it just chaps my hide that they don't get Tolkien. That's okay, I think this niece will be wanting that "forbidden fruit" soon! :-)
I like the idea of giving her the Lovecraft book too. That way she'll get a mix of authors. This whole thing started because she'd visited me a few days 3 summers ago and discovered my delightfully varied library. At that time we read Island of the Blue Dolphins and she loved that as well. I am planning to keep introducing her to new authors and different genres and styles as she becomes older and if she stays interested. The only reason the Christmas gift turned into so many Heinleins was that I got a really cool deal on 11 old Heinlein paperbacks on ebay.
hehehe... I'm turning her into another book-loving-geek in this family of athletes!
"And how about that infamous line "Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's her fault." What the hell was he thinking??"
I always took that as a satirical comment on then-prevalent attitudes. Hell, I took the whole book as pure satire. But I could be wrong; it's been a long time since I read it.
Adult Swim is too busy ruining great shows by horribly dubbing them (but at least they don't try to remove all blood, booze and cigarettes, which gives some silly results).
Niven and Pournelle, together, are far better than either alone. But I can read Pournelle's single stuff, and Falkenberg's Legions was great. Ringworld... well, it was a really cool concept but the execution was flawed. Niven's best single stuff was "Crashlander" and "Flatlander", IMO. Especially "Flatlander".
A George Washington quote that Heinlein might have agreed with: "It's better to be alone than to be in bad company."
11, huh? Which others? Are they for you, or for birthday presents?
Someone upstream mentioned "The Menace from Earth". That collection, and the other two, will be vital for your niece in a few years. Sigh... I love the title story from that, and from "The Man who Sold the Moon", and from "The Green Hills of Earth." And I love "The Long Watch" and "We Also Walk Dogs" and "Requium" and "All You Zombies" and "The Man Who Traveled in Elephants" and "And He Built a Crooked House".... ok, so I'm an early-Heinlein sucker...
Throw-away-kids at the whim of the mother who only wants them when it is convenient for her. Or keeps them around until another meal ticket comes along.
The lack of maturity of some women with almost grown children is astounding.
Self obsessed, and should never have been put in a position of responsibility over children.
Sterilized...well, maybe you got sumptin' there.
Myranda's getting all the rest of the other new-used books except one. Since I gave away my copy of Citizen of the Galaxy - I get a replacement now. And, Myranda has her own home so she "needs" important stuff like this... and they are all duplicates of books I already have. :-)
You will like this news also, my new son-in-law is a Hitchhiker's Guide fan. I was pleasantly surprised at that. He is fitting into our bunch nicely! :-)
Hehehe... when I moved, I took the Heinleins with me. But they were all mine, either bought or presents, and I left half a dozen copies that I had replaced with new books for the brothers once they decide they're interested.
One of these days they'll be sorry I left.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22require+each+person+who+wishes+to+exert+control+over+the+state+to+wager+his+own+life%22&btnG=Google+Search
Copy/paste that string into Google... OR page 182-185 in the recent paperback edition (263 pages in length).
"These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value---the fallacy from which the entire magnificant fraud of communism is derived--- and illustrates the truth of the common sense definition as measured in terms of use . . . nevertheless, the disheveled old mystic of Das Kapital, turgid, tortured, confused, nurotic, unscientific, illogical, this pompus fraud Karl Marx, nevertheless had a glimmer of a very important truth. If he had possesed an analytical mind he might have formulated the first adaquate definition of value . . .and this panet might have been saved endless grief."
***
"...perhaps you can tell the class whether value is a relative or an absolute?"
"An absolute" I guessed.
"Wrong. A value of a thing is always relative to a particular person..."
***
He had been still loong at me and added, "If you boys and girls had to sweat for your toys the way a newly born baby had to struggle to live you would be happier...and much richer. As it is, with some of you, I pity you the poverty of your wealth. You! I've just awarded you the prize for the hundred meter dash. does it make you happy?"
"Uh, I suppose it would."
"No dodging please, you have the prize...you value it, or don't you?"
"You know darn well I placed fourth!"
"Exactly!The prize for first place is worthless to you because you haven't earned it!
David Gerrold discusses in his book about the creation of that episode. He admits with some chagrin that the whole "fluffy critters who eat many times their own weight" concept had to have been inspired by "flat cats" (he's a Heinlein fan), but states that he didn't consciously rip them off. Frankly, he did such a nice job on the episode as a whole that I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"It's raining soup!"
Been doing...I think I'm closing in...
Use "The Borg" from Star Trek, better idea.
Can't excerpt a film...
But you should really read the whole thing.
I have. Many times. I'm looking for a particular passage that I don't remember exactly in which chapter it appears...
Google is your friend.
Spent three hours with Google this afternoon...Google was not nice to me...thanks for the link.
Okay, the passage in the book that I found is a later one when Rico is in OCS, chapter XII, maybe halfway through the chapter.
Just closed in on that scene...it may be what I'm looking for. Good to have it confirmed, thanks.
Just as a side - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of my all-time favorites. I'm inspired to read it again.
My favorite Heinlein work. Did you know the Tim Miner (late of Firefly) was working on a script for a potential movie version?
No need to fear it'll turn out like ST did - if you've ever watch Firefly you know it has a VERY Heinleinesque style and RAH is reported to be Miner's hero.
I tell you three times: Read the book!
I tell you three times I've read the book every few years for more than two decades. I'm just looking for a particular concise passage and I am having a harder time than I anticipated hunting it down. Thanks for your recomendations but the nature of the assignment requires an actual excerpt from the book, not a discussion of it.
So now we're supposed to do people's homework too?
Um...there's considerably more to the assingment than producing the passage in question. But thanks for the help. ;)
"Under our system, every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage. And that is the one practical difference. He may fail in wisdom, he may lapse in civic virtue. But his average performance is enormously better than that of any other class of rulers in history."
That IS it then? I just arrived there last hour and my only point still in doubt was if there was a better statement further on. Good show. Thank you.
I would also recommend his anthology Expanded Universe, where he makes an interesting string of recommendations for who should actually get the franchise.
Agreed. Hadn't thought of that. But since the nature of the assignment implies fiction, ST is probably a better fit.
You're behind the power curve. Shoulda bought a copy, read it, and did your homework sooner.
I don't mean to appear snappy, but this is like the 5th time this has come up...are ANY of you scolders reading my post? I said I had read the book a dozen times. I've not been without a copy in my possesion for 20 years. My only problem is I had assumed I'd quickly find the part I was looking for and it has taken me long enough to concern me some. It's not, after all, the only thing a senior is compelled to read. I knew I could count on SOME of my fellow Freepers to come to the rescue, and they have.
Don't mistake the words that an author puts into a character's mouth for his actual opinion on the subject. In The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, the Lunar society lynches rapists on the spot.
As I recall, the "rape" quote when read in context is more a warning for women to take charge by not getting into situations that would devolve into rape. One of RAH's recurring themes is that if a woman (or any human) demands respect, she'll get it. But, if she consents to disrespect, she abdicates control.
I'm forever changed.
Thankfully!
Very true. Unless the author "lives" the story it is very hard to write from the other sex's mind.
People always say that, and I, frankly, don't get the connection. Were there many female characters who fit the "sex object" bill?
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