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.
Yes. Panzerblitz in spacesuits, when you got down to it.
Some christians think LOTR and tolkien is wrong because there are wizards in it.
What might reassure him is that Tolkien sees his wizards not as supermen that a child might become by casting spells, but as angels come to earth to help men...
HOwever, unlike Harry potter, where children are encouraged to "develop" their psychic powers, in LOTR, one very strong theme is that such powers are forbidden, and that if one uses such powers even to do good, one will become corrupted to evil in the end...
The whole point of Frodo is that he is humble enough not to seek power, and he is well aware of his weakness as a lowly hobbit so that he is not tempted as a man might be to use the ring to become powerful and rule over men...
And the great men and elves, such as Aragorn, recognize their temptation to the ring and refuse to accept it...(This was brought out nicely in the movies, even more than in the books, that even good men like Boromir could become corrupted by the desire of the ring to do good--and as a result fall into sin)...
Frankly, all of his later books were pretty lousy. I read them all out of nostalgia for his wonderful earlier stuff, but some were pretty rough sledding.
Bisexuality and incest (not to mention bisexual incest) just aren't my cup of tea.
Podkayne of Mars would be my first choice to give a girl, but any of the juvenils novels Heinlein wrote would work including Red Planet, which they made a cartoon about in 1994 see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216502/
Heh, I didn't know I *had* a Heinlein ping list!! I don't ever even recall seeing a Heinlein thread before today! But, I will keep your name in mind should I ever see another Heinlein thread. :-)
Yes it does. It emphises small unit tactics, and loyality to one's unit. Because you value your shipmates skin as much as your own.
Yes, it certainly does!
I'm glad to see it on a required reading list!
Regards,
Thanks. I sent my copy of SST over to a certain Troop in Iraq last year.
That book should be more widely advocated because some of it's tenets simply make so much sense.
Yeah, Space Cadet would be another good one to get my niece. The author who most shaped my youth was Tolkien, but since I'm not allowed to give them Tolkien, I figured Heilein would suit just fine.
I don't see my brother & family but maybe once or twice a year. It would be really cool if I got to see this niece more often and talk with her as she reads these books. I think I'd enjoy it almost as much as she's going to!
Here's a real old Heinlein thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/798543/posts
Regards,
I changed careers 3 years ago and started teaching at a college. What's really surprised me is that I've not had any students come through my classes who have read any of those books that I so loved as a teen. It's very sad. Both my daughters loved the same books I did and now this niece and my oldest granddaughter are as well. I liked the premise of this thread in order to expose kids to some really good stories!
Shortly after Number of the Beast was published, he had a "Transient Ischemic Attack," which is, essentially, a precursor to a stroke. Looking back at that book, it's easy to see that he was having problems while writing it.
Is this true?
Yes. The Commandant also had Orson Scott Card's novel Ender's Game on the required reading list for a while.
Orson Scott Card is the Nora Roberts of Sci-Fi. Books padded out to 10 times the number of pages necessary in order to cash in. He rips off classic sci-fi ideas and respins them with tortured moral relativism. Some books read like children's stories with an insidious omnipresent (and BORING) PC background music track. Not an original idea in his head.
I like Niven also, but you can't get any further apart in the Sci-fi spectrum from him than Card.
-R
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is also a very political novel. Take away the moon and he "awake computer" and it is a rewrite of the aAmerican Revolution. Starship Troopers and Moon were very much the beginning of my political thinking. If you want to give a kid some Heinlein books go to his kids series.
HOwever, unlike Harry potter, where children are encouraged to "develop" their psychic powers, in LOTR, one very strong theme is that such powers are forbidden, and that if one uses such powers even to do good, one will become corrupted to evil in the end...
I believe this is a misreading of Tolkien.
"Magic" in Tolkien is morally neutral, it is merely the Middle Earth equivalent of todays science and technology. It can be used for either good or evil, although certain types of "magic" are inherently evil, just as certain types of scientific research are. For instance, those that would require experimentation on unwilling human subjects.
Gandalf, the other good wizards and the elves routinely use magic without it inherently leading to evil. All of the elven kingdoms of The Silmarilion are based on what we would call magic. The implication is that the men of Numenor were also great magicians, otherwise how could they have defeated and captured Sauron? (Even if his submission was partly feigned.)
What is portrayed in Tolkien as inherently and always evil is the desire to dominate other sentient beings, crushing their God-given free will. This is true whether the method used is military force or "magic."
Domination is so against the will of God that even Tolkien's "angels" or demi-gods, the Valar, refuse to go down such a path, even when it is the only way to prevent great evil. If truly superhuman entities such as the Valar cannot dominate others in a righteous way, how can those who are merely human do so?
(Hobbits, ents, elves and dwarves are all on the same plane as Men in Tolkien. Some "species" or individuals have differing powers, abilities or destinies, but it is clear that none are superior beings in God's eyes.)
I think what gives people the idea that Tolkien portrays magic itself as evil is that he portrays the One Ring as inherently evil. But I believe that is because the Ring was made to dominate, not because it used magic.
Inscribed on the Ring was, "One Ring to rule them all. One Ring to find them. One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them." As precise a definition of evil as Tolkien could come up with.
This built-in obsession with domination was what made the One Ring evil. After all, the three elven Rings were good (although perhaps misguided), the seven Dwarven rings were portrayed as more or less amoral, and the nine Rings of men were evil perhaps only because the one Ring had collected and dominated them and their bearers.
Tolkien was making, I believe, a much more important point than that "magic" is evil. After all, very few of us will ever have to resist the temptation to use "real magic."
OTOH, the temptation to enforce our own opinions and beliefs on others, perhaps in the belief that we are "right," crushing their God-given free will, is a temptation any of us might face.
Even, perhaps especially, sincere Christians.
Podkayne of Mars is a very sexist and unsuitable story for a modern girl. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was young, and my teacher told me that girls could only be nurses, teachers, mommies or -- if they were really stupid -- secretaries. Heinlein echoes this primitive and demeaning opinion when Podkayne debates becoming a starship captain "that nobody will hire" or confining herself to managing the nursery in a starship, a suitable job for a girl. Hard to believe that in the far future we will still run into this kind of piggery cramming us back into our biological role and that alone!
My first Heinlein books were "Tunnel in the Sky" (survival school on another world) and "Time for the Stars" (an experiment in which twin telepaths are used as communication equipment aboard a spacecraft.) The former was quite good for its time and showed girls equally good at managing daily life without amenities.
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