Heinlein

[wayfriend]

Delaney? <picks up head, looks around, blinks> Did someone say 'Delaney'?

I love Delaney.

I loved Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand. I was very dissapointed that it was never finished. Also, Nova can be considered one of his bestest achievements. And, of course, Tales of Neveryon.

And -- oh my god -- The Ballad of Beta-2! Stunning!

There's far, far more to Dhalgren (I say after reading it about 10 times, the last 8 just because I love it so much) than "stream of living". It really is about something profound. But it's hard to express in words exactly what - it's more like, it's about how four or five profound things inter-relate.

Dhalgren is a mobius strip. The end can be taped to the beginning, so that the story is a continuous loop. The contents of "the" notebook, when you loop around, become the main narrative the next time around. Which allows us to explore, in some unusual ways, the relationship between a writer and what he writes.

Okay, I'll say one more thing. Delaney wrote Dhalgren (so I understand) on 3x5 index cards. One sentence per card. In pencil.

All 900 pages.

Which gives his writing a very unusual flavor.

Dhalgren is the result of some very creative ingeneous ideas about how a novel could be written. It's an experiment in many levels, and it's doom is that a lot of what was attempted was - just like Donaldson's mystery novels - nothing that too many people really wanted to read as it turned out.

I can recommend Delaney's "Straits of Messina" if anyone is interested in the author's explanation on what the heck Dhalgren is about.

[Creator]

.....

But then, I'm sure it's something that all of us have been affected by. The ruination of a good book by some inept screen-writer. I sometimes wonder if the people who make them even bother reading the books themselves. It often seems that the guy saw a title, liked the blurb, and made up his own story around just those elements.

Starship Troopers is a perfect example.

--A

Starship Troopers is HIGH ART compared to the worst sci fi adaptation of ALL time - Nightfall, a short story by Isaac Asimov was made into a movie - YUUUUUUCHHHHHH *pokes eyes out and deafens ears* (temporarily of course)

Read the Amazon reviews of the movie!

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/ ... d&n=507846


PS. I am a BIG heinlein fan. I liked "Moon is a harsh mistress" and of course "Starbeast". His young adult sci fi was GREAT!

[Avatar]

I had no idea that Nightfall had been made into a movie. The story is one of my favourite by Asimov. I'll definitley give the movie a skip.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of my best Heinlein stories, I like that whole "time-line" in fact. I also like the way that he maintains various "time-lines" throughout many of his books, all of which seem to come together in The Number of the Beast.

Speaking of which, I also really loved Job: a Comedy of Justice and The Cat who walked Through Walls. His whole idea of god and satan in Job is one I really liked.

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[taraswizard]

donning fireproof suit.

OK, this website www.enter.net/~torve/critics/lounge.htm Website referencing Alexei Panshin. In 1965 Mr. Panshin wrote a literary book about Heinlein's writing. Lots have the opinion Panshin's book was a hatchet job on the author. The site has lots of content about Heinlein.

[Variol Farseer]

However, as regards his ideas of "enlightened sexuality", while I agree that they are unrealistic, I think the point he was trying to make was that they are unrealistic because of the way humans view these things.

Yes, that was his point exactly . . . but he was wrong. We have a much better understanding of these things now. (For one thing, we no longer think of Kinsey's research as valid for the general population.) The trouble with any kind of polygamous marriage is that it requires (1) a strong pair-bond for each pair of spouses who are having sexual relations, (2) no jealousy between pairs of spouses who are not having sexual relations, (3) sufficient symmetry of pair-bonds to prevent the group from breaking up into smaller units.

If Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (excuse the dated pop-culture reference) get married as a foursome, it will only work out if:

- Bob loves Carol.
- Carol loves Bob.
- Bob loves Alice.
- Alice loves Bob.
- Ted loves Carol.
- Carol loves Ted.
- Ted loves Alice.
- Alice loves Ted.
- Bob is not jealous of Ted.
- Ted is not jealous of Bob.
- Carol is not jealous of Alice.
- Alice is not jealous of Carol.
- Bob and Ted are pretty good friends and can get along as housemates.
- Carol and Alice, ditto.
- Everyone's sexual and emotional needs are being sufficiently met so that nobody feels an urgent desire to commit hanky-panky on the outside.
- There are no 'teams': Bob loves Carol and Alice about equally, etc., etc., etc., so that no two partners have the impulse to split off and form a separate couple. (This is the normal way group marriages break down: by a kind of radioactive decay, emitting one couple at a time.)
- Everyone is sufficiently emotionally mature and socially skilled to handle living cheek by jowl with three other adults for years on end.

Now compare the requirements for a monogamous marriage between Dick and Jane:

- Dick loves Jane.
- Jane loves Dick.
- Their sexual and emotional needs are being, etc.
- Both Dick and Jane are mature enough and socially skilled enough to handle living with ONE other adult for years on end.

It's very, very difficult to meet all the requirements for four people to get together. (It gets even more difficult if some of the partners are having homosexual relationships as well, because of all the added possibilities for jealousy. If Carol and Alice are getting it on together, is Carol jealous of the time Alice spends with Bob?)

I mean, consider how hard it is to find one person with whom you can have a stable and happy marriage. Then try to find a whole group of such people who all meet each other's requirements and like each other. With each additional spouse, the benefit to the partners decreases (because, after all, how many spouses do you need?) and the difficulty of maintaining all the relationships increases. Tens of thousands of years of experimentation in the field have shown that you reach the point of diminishing returns very quickly.

There's a whole 'nother issue involved, which has to do with my contention that the marriage contract is actually a pact between men, in which women are involved only incidentally. But that is a highly controversial position, difficult to explain, and I won't go into it here.

[Avatar]

...no jealousy between pairs of spouses who are not having sexual relations...

Great post VF. While I agree with you completely, and think that you have laid out the basic variables extremely well and accurately, I think that the part of your post that I quoted is the most significant one from Heinleins point of view.

He was "satirising" or questioning the fact that our sexual relationships are based on jealousy. This has nothing to do with anything other than the ways our minds and emotions, probably specifically our emotions, are wired. In his stories, those variables are all present and accounted for. (Although admittedly, he doesn't offer any sort of explanation as to how they were overcome.) Everybody loves themselves, and each other, enough not to allow the mere fact of who is sleeping with whom to interfere with the way they feel about that person.

Unrealistic from our present emotional mind-set, but something that is, theoretically at least, overcomeable (is that even a word?). Provided that we entirely re-design the socio-emotional frame of reference that humanity has adopted. I think he was saying; if you love, and are loved, isn't that enough? Why must your security depend on anothers actions, if love is "unconditional".

Thanks for the link TarasWizard, I'll definitely check it out.

EDIT: And having done so, I found some very interesting debates on the subject, and this quote:

Heinlein's stated purpose in writing Stranger in a Strange Land, which he said "was to examine every major axiom of Western culture, to question each axiom, throw doubt on it -- and, if possible, to make the antithesis of each axiom appear a possible and perhaps desirable thing -- rather than unthinkable."

--Avatar

[Variol Farseer]

Unrealistic from our present emotional mind-set, but something that is, theoretically at least, overcomeable (is that even a word?). Provided that we entirely re-design the socio-emotional frame of reference that humanity has adopted.

'Overcomeable' will do. But 'socio-emotional' is not a word, for excellent reason. Emotions are not produced by social structures; they're biological. Everybody has 'em, and the same emotions occur in every individual in every society (except those individuals with major mental illnesses that make them incapable of certain emotions). You can't alter genetics or edit hormones by changing society; the most you can do is alter, within certain bounds, the ways they express themselves. To sneak in an SRD reference, jealousy arises from sexual attraction as Cable Seadreamer's muteness arose from the Earthsight, or Covenant's power (in the Second Chrons) arose from venom. You can't have one without the other. (I mean as a general thing; some people just aren't wired to be strongly jealous — I seem to be one of those — and some have suffered psychological damage that completely inhibits their ability to form a long-term pair-bond with a mate. But those are the exceptions, and fairly rare.)

I think he was saying; if you love, and are loved, isn't that enough? Why must your security depend on anothers actions, if love is "unconditional".

The thing is, love between the sexes is never 'unconditional'. At minimum, it is conditional upon being reciprocated. And if the one you love is free to go about having sex with others, the odds are very good that you will soon find yourself replaced. And the emotion of sexual love naturally promises, and demands, fidelity and exclusivity: look at the love poetry of any culture you care to name.

As I mentioned before, it's extremely rare for a group marriage to survive for more than a year. That isn't a consequence of any particular social structure: the experiment has been tried many times in many cultures over many centuries, and has never proved particularly successful. Even plain old polygamy generally requires a peculiarly repressive society to enforce it. (How many women are willing to be the second, third, or fourth wife in any society where women have civil rights?)

We're up against the bedrock facts of human nature. Contrary to much 20th-century thought, human beings are not infinitely malleable. We are all much more alike than different, and our differences are (in certain directions) sharply constrained by genetics. Heinlein was strongly philoprogenitive; he recognized that the principal function of any human institution or social structure is to take care of children until they are old enough to support themselves. A form of marriage that seldom lasts longer than a pregnancy can't possibly accomplish that. But since there were no useful data on these arrangements in Heinlein's lifetime, the dirty old man in him was free to imagine that they might work. They don't, any more than Marxism works as an economic system — not for human beings.

[Loredoctor]

Heinlein is a great author. I love Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers.
Did anyone read about how he told Arthur C. Clarke he was a traitor to American and Britain, so Clarke left the country for Sri Lanka?

[Avatar]

Emotions are not produced by social structures; they're biological. Everybody has 'em, and the same emotions occur in every individual in every society (except those individuals with major mental illnesses that make them incapable of certain emotions). You can't alter genetics or edit hormones by changing society; the most you can do is alter, within certain bounds, the ways they express themselves.

Hmm, I see your point certainly, but I'm not sure that social structures have no effect on the emotions of people, just as I'm not sure that emotions are the product (at least entirely) of biological functions.

Surely the environment in which you're raised will predispose you to certain emotional reactions? For example, a person raised/socialised in an ultra-conservative environment will have, or be inclined to, certain emotional reactions, which to a liberal would seem inappropriate?

I tend to favour the "nurture" part of the whole debate, I don't think that genetics play that much part in personality, beyond the physiological aspects of the brain, i.e. more endorphin receptors, and so forth.

How much of the failure of Marxism as a workable theory is down to the fact that the people involved weren't all committed Marxists? Although I suppose you point is that they couldn't be.

Now I'm certainly not saying that he wasn't wrong, in so far as "human nature" is concerned right now, but that is not to say that it is inherently impossible.

LoreMaster-- Check the link supplied by TarasWizard, full of interesting articles, some on that very subject.

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[The Dreaming]

Hehe, I pinned you as a Heinlen guy in the close, apparently I was dead on.

My favorite will always be Moon is a Harsh Mistress, But there are many that I love. I love Starship Troopers (adaptation aside), Stranger, Time enough for Love etc. There are hundreds aren’t there? I think my grandmother has all of them. (weird having a grandmother who was a sci-fi nut in the 50s)

Some other Sci-fi I love

Gateway by Pohl
Ringworld By Nivin
Ender's Game/ Speaker for the Dead by Carde
Foundation
Anything Vonnegut
Canticle for Leibowitz (sp?)
Dune by Herbert (a little overrated IMO)

[danlo]

Well Dream, if you like those books your will love Neverness!!!

[Dragonlily]

Danlo says everyone will love Neverness.

Btw, Danlo, I found the fourth book Friday, so I have the whole Neverness series now. Just need time to read it, as I have explained over and over to Fist.

[Avatar]

Yeah, thanks to Danlo, now I'm also looking for those damn Neverness books that everyone keeps talking about

Dreaming, you've mentioned some of my favourites there. Especially A Canticle for Liebowitz

Dune I thought was brilliant, although I felt slightly let down by the sequels, the first book is great. A combination of religio-political and social aspects that I thoroughly enjoy.

--A

[ChoChiyo]

Heinlein was one of the earliest SF influences on me.

Podkayne of Mars
The Star Beast
The Rolling Stones
Starman Jones
Tunnel in the Sky
Farmer in the Sky
Have Spacesuit, Will Travel (the first one, I think, I read. Either it or Podkayne)


In adult fiction, I liked Waldo Magic Inc., and Puppet Masters, and Stranger in a Strange Land, as well as others.

The most disturbing sexual thing in his adult books to me was the raising the child to then marry the child theme. It was kind of icky. Also, the male main character seemed to be spanking people alot. A little odd.

But I still enjoyed the stories.

Old Robert Heinlein pulled me through a rough adolecense and I'm very grateful for his help.



Oh, and about Tunnel in the Sky being a good antidote for Lord of the Flies--amen.

That was the most depressing book I've ever read, rivaled only by The Pearl. Man, I wanted to find a high building and jump off of it after reading both of those books.

[Avatar]

IIRC, the spanking thing was from The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, one of my favourites. And I'm not sure any actual spanking occured. Maybe once, but mainly they were simply threats.

As you say though, quite apart from anything else, they're damned good Sci-Fi. And some interesting socio-political apsects to them as well.

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[Condign]

Dont bother with "Triton". I was quite dissappointed with this after reading some of his other material.

[Avatar]

Thanks for the anti-recommendation, but I'll probably still give it a try. One day when I've nothing else to read at least. Still, as I said, after Dahlgren I doubt anything by him will meet my expectations.

--Avatar

[Avatar]

*Bump* for Ur-Bane.

--A

[ur-bane]

Well, not one single mention of Glory Road.

But apparently there seems to be a consensus among Heinlein's readres that his early works are far better than his latrer works. If that is the case, I am suddenly apprehensive about my purchase of Glory Road.

But based on everybosy's posts, there are a few titles that i think I'll grab. Anyone have a Heinlein recommendation that is a must read? (Believe it or not, I have not read a single book by Heinlein.

[Avatar]

Well, somebody did mention it earlier in the thread actually, but just a mention. I remember it as being good, if not as awesome some others.

Must reads? Easy:

Job
Time Enough For Love
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Double Star
The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
Starship Troopers
Revolt in 2100
Friday
The Number of the Beast (Maybe not a must read, but I liked it.)
The Puppet Masters
Magic Inc.
Waldo

Uh, those are my favourites of the top of my head. A few smaller ones fit in here and there, like a prequel to Time Enough called Methuselah's Children, and a requel to Friday that's really three shorts, volume entitled Assignment in Eternity.

The Cat is connected to Time Enough as well, and Number of the Beast shouldn't be read until after Glory Road, Stranger, Time, and Cat.

--A