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Well, Joe Haldeman is on the Heinlein society board of directors, so he's probably got some appreciation for Heinlein. :-) But I agree. I'd much rather see the money spent on bringing "The Forever War" to the screen, than "Stranger..."

But it's apparently in production, so it might still happen.

Merely highlighting another way in which the movies were drastically different than the book, both in tone and content.

want to know more ?
http://www.heinleinsociety.org...

The Year They Hanged the Lawyers In Beulahland, this momentous event occurred in 1965. It is never mentioned in the history books, and information about it is restricted. (The Number of the Beast)

http://www.heinleinsociety.org...

You know, you don't need full on techo world to get oppressive. Throughout our previously low tech history, dozens of regimes have oppressed / killed / kidnapped / jailed / tortured vast swaths of its citizenry without anything more complex than a walkie talkie.

All it has ever taken is someone to go 'Bob there - he's a terrorist' and there you go. No, I don't like the 'always on' society and it has the real chance of making our lives worse rather than better (really, who cares if Facebook puts your name on a photo - what does that get you?). But the No Sparrow Shall Fall scenario really doesn't sound plausible.

Although most of Heinlein's other dystopic futures have come true.

Many of Robert Heinlein works were truly Science Fiction. His characters' travels around the Solar System, for example, are described enumerating the challenges and details such travel are likely to have in real life. He also has several descriptions of human life outside of Earth — on Ganymede, on Mars, and on the Moon. None of the descriptions were patently unscientific, when they were written (knowing what we do now, he would not have described life on Venus as he did, of course).

He wrote many of such books for children (and published in children publications) or about children — so you can read them with/to your kids. The bonus is, such reading would not even seem like work — you are likely to truly enjoy it...

Many of Robert Heinlein works were truly Science Fiction. His characters' travels around the Solar System, for example, are described enumerating the challenges and details such travel are likely to have in real life. He also has several descriptions of human life outside of Earth — on Ganymede, on Mars, and on the Moon. None of the descriptions were patently unscientific, when they were written (knowing what we do now, he would not have described life on Venus as he did, of course).

He wrote many of such books for children (and published in children publications) or about children — so you can read them with/to your kids. The bonus is, such reading would not even seem like work — you are likely to truly enjoy it...

"Superiority" by Arthur C. Clarke
"The Power of Progression" by Isaac Asimov
"Time For The Stars" by Robert A. Heinlein, with particular attention to the "Long Range Foundation"

Someone has been reading his Heinlein. Gentlemen, Be Seated.

From the Heinlein Concordance:

connotation index

        A tool used to measure the emotional impact of a word or phrase: a "complex variable function depending on context, age and sex and occupation of the listener, the locale and a dozen other things." Psychologists used the index to gauge the effectiveness of propaganda.

sucking the teat of whatever corporations corner the next energy dependencies

I, for one, welcome our new Shipstone overlords.
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/concordance/S_HC.htm#shipstone "

When one pauses for a Coke, the deal is with Shipstone.

"

Thanks for letting me know Rod Walker was black. I never twigged. I found the confirmation here:
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/faqworks.html

It was very subtle, in my defense - it was a favourite trick of Heinlein's, the above source notes, to reveal or hint that positive characters were non-white late in the game (like Juan Rico), presumably to mess with racist's heads. I vividly remember my first Heinlein (at 9), Space Cadet, in a scene where a character is defending himself from a real charge of racism - against Venusians; he asks "Does it matter to any of us that Lieutenant Peters is black as the ace of spades?" This is long after Peters has left the scene and you must suddenly adjust your image of him. The novel's year: 1946.

By the way, you didn't get the vote in Troopers for combat duty: you got it for ANY FEDERAL SERVICE. Not everybody was good enough to be allowed into the forces, but everybody had a right to earn a vote. They would still find an unpleasant job for you, like testing new vaccines. But even a blind quadrapelegic could earn voting rights, even if they had to assign him to nasty make-work like "counting the hairs on a caterpillar by touch". I think only a minority of volunteers for public service were taken for combat training and didn't wash out. The rest had to wash bedpans or sweep streets or whatever.

It aggravates me that Heinlein never comes up (from the professors) in these "college course" lists; he's considered too commercial or maligned as fascist for ST or something. But over 20 years after he died, his books are still on the shelves; doesn't that prove anything to these academics.

I took an SF course in 1978; one book was "Voyage to Arcturus" by David Lindsay, which is considered all artful and deep and influential and so forth. I found it tedious and obtuse, and despite the rave reviews ("greatest novel of the 20th century"), defy you to find it anywhere but Amazon; I've never seen it on any shelf but the University bookstore in 1978.

I gather Dickens was considered a commercial hack in his time by the academics; but where are the academic superstars of his era now?

Bart

<Speculation>

If not, if the difference is the same as time or length in a dimension that we aren't able to consciously manipulate or see, then it is possible that we all are floating in roughly the same direction, but since the differences are very small it's impossible to recognize if we are in the same sector as when we started our lives.

All this since there are in theory dimensions that we can't see. Why they are invisible is a different question. It may be that we all are mentally and physically unable to "see" the dimensions or that they are "curled up" or "flattened" in a way that makes them immeasurable. This is just about the same question as if you are on a board (like our universe) on a completely friction-less surface where there is no perception of wind and no reference points. You have every perception of everything on the board, but you can't tell if the board is still or if it's actually drifting at the speed of sound with the wind. If you can't even "see" outside the borders of the board (the universe) you can't really tell if there are other universes out there.

And it's not even possible to say if the laws of physics are general or specific for a universe. It may well be that the laws of physics are the same in any given universe, and that we just are inside a bead of glass. (watch the end sequence of Men in Black to catch this idea...). Just "infinity" is hard to catch up, but it's like living on the surface of a globe - where is the end of the world? And if you walk a straight distance on the surface of a globe large enough - will you ever come home again or will you even recognize that as home?

I think that there is no straight answer, and that Keith Laumer in the "WORLDS OF THE IMPERIUM" may have one approach, and Robert Anson Heinlein had another in "Number of the Beast" (among others), but I think that Douglas Adams got really to the point in the statement "There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.". At least his statement will explain a lot.

But this is still in the area of speculation, and I think that it's hard for the human race to get outside the universe. But I don't say that it's impossible - there may be a discovery around the corner waiting to happen!

</Speculation>

What is most important is that we try to keep our minds open - there may be a grain of truth in every theory that at first sight may appear ridiculous. Notice that the continental drift was considered completely outrageous by many until the end of the 1950's. The continental drift is now a widely accepted fact (but there may still be those that doesn't accept it).

Gandhi once said "Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it.", and this still applies. If you do nothing nothing will be accomplished, and you will be sure that you are unimportant, but if you do something you may have the force to provide a stepping stone for something that will prevail for generations to come.

The End.

Any "Church" that charges for its teachings and also has them copyrighted to prevent free distribution is not a church it's a scam at best and a dangerous cult at worst.

Germany has stated that "...the chief purpose of Scientology is not religious, but economical in nature...", which is probably the closest thing to consider. And don't forget that both Tom Cruise and John Travolta are members of that outfit. (I wouldn't even call it Cult...)

And the myth as it seems that there was a wager between Heinlein and Hubbard about starting a religion, it seems to be half-true. But I don't think that Heinlein ever planned on catching up on starting a religion... He would probably gotten himself into FSF or some other outfit instead with his statement of "Pay it forward" if he had been born at a later date. (Today it's more than 100 years since Heinlein was born, he was born 7 July 1907!)

Especially the "Pay it forward" approach is important. Even if you do someone a service and that person isn't able to return the favor you can always set the "pay it forward" approach to the problem.

How shall we repay our debt to Robert Anson Heinlein?

I am tempted to say that it can't be done. The sheer size of the debt is staggering. He virtually invented modern science fiction, and did not attempt to patent it. He opened up a great many of SF's frontiers, produced the first reliable maps of most of its principal territories, and did not complain when each of those frontiers filled up with hordes of johnny-come-latelies, who the moment they got off the boat began to complain about the climate, the scenery and the employment opportunities. I don't believe there can be more than a handful of science fiction stories published in the last forty years that do not show his influence one way or another. He has written the definitive time-travel stories ("All You Zombies--" and "By His Bootstraps"), the definitive longevity books (Methuselah's Children and Time Enough For Love), the definitive theocracy novel (Revolt in 2100), heroic fantasy/SF novel (Glory Road), revolution novel (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress), transplant novel (I Will Fear No Evil), alien invasion novel (The Puppet Masters), technocracy story ("The Roads Must Roll"), arms race story ("Solution Unsatisfactory"), technodisaster story ("Blowups Happen"), and about a dozen of the finest science fiction juveniles ever published. These last alone have done more for the field than any other dozen books. And perhaps as important, he broke SF out of the pulps, opened up "respectable" and lucrative markets, broached the wall of the ghetto. He continued to work for the good of the entire genre: his most recent book sale was a precedent-setting event, representing the first-ever SFWA Model Contract signing. (The Science Fiction Writers of America has drawn up a hypothetical ideal contract, from the SF writer's point of view--but until Expanded Universe-- no such contract had ever been signed.) Note that Heinlein did not do this for his own benefit: the moment the contract was signed it was renegotiated upward.

You can't copyright ideas; you can only copyright specific arrangements of words. If you could copyright ideas, every living SF writer would be paying a substantial royalty to Robert Heinlein.

So would a lot of other people. In his spare time Heinlein invented the waldo and the waterbed (and God knows what else), and he didn't patent them either. (The first waldos were built by Nathan Woodruff at Brookhaven National Laboratories in 1945, three years after Heinlein described them for a few cents a word. As to the waterbed, see Expanded Universe.) In addition he helped design the spacesuit as we now know it.

Above all Heinlein is better educated, more widely read and traveled than anyone I have ever heard of, and has consistently shared the Good Parts with us. He has learned prodigiously, and passed on the most interesting things he's learned to us, and in the process passed on some of his love of learning to us. Surely that is a mighty gift. When I was five years old he began to teach me to love learning, and to be skeptical about what I was taught, and he did the same for a great many of us, directly or indirectly.

I think that you need to re-read the question. The OP seemed to be saying that he is, himself, a leftist who has noticed that his leftist friends are rarely nerds and his nerd friends are usually libertarians. As for myself, I'm old enough to have watched Armstrong step onto the moon on live television. I'm pretty sure that I was a libertarian well before I achieved any economic success, which I attribute to an early exposure to the works of Robert A. Heinlein.

Really? You're sure about your estimation of Heinlein are you?

Or Robinson for that matter?

Read this:

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/works/articles/ rahrahrah.html

Funny you should mention this. Spider Robinson wrote about this sort of response Heinlein seems to get from some women. (and remember, Heinlein's novels were largely written before 1980...hell, mostly before 1970. Attitudes have changed....and mostly seem to catch up with Heinlein, frankly.)

See his article "RAH, RAH, R.A.H." which you can find a copy of on the Heinlein Society site:

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/works/articles/ rahrahrah.html

The two relevant passages:

(2) "Heinlein is a male chauvinist." This is the second most common charge these days. That's right, Heinlein populates his books with dumb, weak, incompetent women. Like Sister Maggie in "If This Goes On--"; Dr. Mary Lou Martin in "Let There Be Light"; Mary Sperling in Methuselah's Children; Grace Cormet in "--We Also Walk Dogs"; Longcourt Phyllis in Beyond This Horizon; Cynthia Craig in "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag"; Karen in "Gulf"; Gloria McNye in "Delilah and the Space-Rigger"; Allucquere in The Puppet Masters; Hazel and Edith Stone in The Rolling Stones; Betty in The Star Beast; all the women in Tunnel in the Sky; Penny in Double Star; Pee Wee and the Mother Thing in Have Space Suit--Will Travel; Jill Boardman, Becky Vesant, Patty Paiwonski, Anne, Miriam and Dorcas in Stranger in a Strange Land; Star, the Empress of Twenty Universes, in Glory Road; Wyoh, Mimi, Sidris and Gospazha Michelle Holmes in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress; Eunice and Joan Eunice in I Will Fear No Evil; Ishtar, Tamara, Minerva, Hamadryad, Dora, Helen Mayberry, Llita, Laz, Lor and Maureen Smith in Time Enough For Love; and Dejah Thoris, Hilda Corners, Gay Deceiver and Elizabeth Long in "The Number of the Beast--. "[1] Brainless cupcakes all, eh? (Virtually every one of them is a world-class expert in at least one demanding and competitive field; the exceptions plainly will be as soon as they grow up. Madame Curie would have enjoyed chatting with any one of them.) Helpless housewives! (Any one of them could take Wonder Woman three falls out of three, and polish off Jirel of Joiry for dessert.) I think one could perhaps make an excellent case for Heinlein as a female chauvinist. He has repeatedly insisted that women average smarter, more practical and more courageous than men. He consistently underscores their biological and emotional superiority. He married a woman he proudly described to me as "smarter, better educated and more sensible than I am." In his latest book, Expanded Universe--the immediate occasion for this article--he suggests without the slightest visible trace of irony that the franchise be taken away from men and given exclusively to women. He consistently created strong, intelligent, capable, independent, sexually aggressive women characters for a quarter of a century before it was made a requirement, right down to his supporting casts. Clearly we are still in the area of delusions which can be cured simply by reading Heinlein while awake.

and

(2) "Heinlein can't create believable women characters." There's an easy way to support this claim: simply disbelieve in all Heinlein's female characters, and maintain that all those who believe them are gullible. You'll have a problem, though: several of Heinlein's women bear a striking resemblance to his wife Virginia, you'll have to disbelieve in her, too--which could get you killed if your paths cross. Also, there's a lady I once lived with for a long time, who used to haunt the magazine stores when I Will Fear No Evil was being serialized in Galaxy, because she could not wait to read the further adventures of the "unbelievable" character with whom she identified so strongly--you'll have to disbelieve in her, too. Oddly, this complaint comes most often from radical feminists. Examination shows that Heinlein's female characters are almost invariably highly intelligent, educated, competent, practical, resourceful, courageous, independent, sexually aggressi

"I am a Heinlein fan, and I think Number of the Beast is pretty bad. I heard from my father that Heinlein switched medications somewhere in the middle of this, which could account for its meandering nature and lack of resolution to any of the infinite silly plot threads it introduces."

Number of the Beast is bad because Heinlein intentionally wrote it that way. Read the following article and it really explains the entire book...

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/numberbeast.htm l

see Robinson's embarrassingly bad article "Rah Rah R.A.H."

It's up on the web here, for anyone who really does want to see for themselves. I think "embarassingly bad" is an undeserved insult, but "shameless fan-wanking" is pretty accurate so maybe I'm just splitting hairs.

I'm guessing he was a fan of Robert A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

Your conclusion is a bit off; for most of what you say, I reply: "Exactamundo." That last paragraph, though, is an environmentalist's wet dream and suggests a need for lessons in basic economics and engineering.

Where there is a demand there will probably be a supply. Given coal and the sun (and all the myriad ways of harnessing energy therefrom) as well as existing and severalpotential nuclear energies there is no reason to expect "mini-mansions", modern manufacturing nor "agri-business" to decline alongside petroleum and its' distillates. While I've taken blacksmithing as a hobby, I fully expect that my other hobbies, automotive repair, photography, welding, woodworking and programming (I don't sleep well) to continue to be inexpensive diversions for my sons and daughters well into the next millenium.

Perhaps you've been bitten by the year 2000 bug and not quite healed the infection, or, alternately you've spent too much time buried in your Foxfire books, or perhaps you've read Friday once too often. In any regard, there's not cause to worry that society is going to collapse any time soon. There's quite enough energy to keep us entertained and heated (or air conditioned) for a century or twelve, assuming we don't breed ourselves into extinction (albeit not necessarily as cheaply as you and I enjoy).

p.s. Strip-mining isn't necessarily an environmental nightmare. (Having grown up in Alaska fairly close to Healy, I was aware of Usibelli Coal Mine and their efforts, but I was shocked at the grammar of the page I referenced; what are they teaching those kids in Healy? I don't profess to be an english professor, but I am shocked!)

Are you thinking of the Long Range Foundation or the Howard Foundation?

Are you thinking of the Long Range Foundation or the Howard Foundation?

I don't have the exact quote handy, but Robert Heinlein said the first tool was not a weapon, it was a crutch.
http://heinleinsociety.org/

Opiates they may be, but good speculative fiction is what expands the mind to think of the world in new ways.

Not just a novel, where the mundane world is muddled through over and over. SF lets the mind play "What if?", which allows wondering if the mundane things around us can become more.

Two of my favorite writers, L. Neil Smith and Robert A. Heinline aren't (weren't) afraid of putting very real human motivations into extraordinary situations. I think those make the best stories.

Wells, Verne, Tolkien, their characters tend to be rather more than human, in the latter case litterally. Black and white without truly reacting to the situations around them.

Bad writing happens in any genre, it's too bad that the "fantastic" attributes of SF allow for bad writing to make money. (and I'm not going to mention that any Star Trek paperback goes best-seller merely because of being a Star Trek paperback. interesting phenomenon that.)

Go old skool:

Robert Heinlein juvenile novels

Wow, am I alone in being reminded of the classic Robert Heinlein story The Roads Must Roll?

The Heinlein concordance describes the Diego-Reno Roadtown

(It was a ) Motorized roadway that connected San Diego, California, and Reno, Nevada, on and around which a metropolitan area grew up; its terminal was called Diego Circle. The automated roads themselves were large enough to accommodate restaurants and other businesses, as well as the engineers' offices.

Wow, am I alone in being reminded of the classic Robert Heinlein story The Roads Must Roll?

The Heinlein concordance describes the Diego-Reno Roadtown

(It was a ) Motorized roadway that connected San Diego, California, and Reno, Nevada, on and around which a metropolitan area grew up; its terminal was called Diego Circle. The automated roads themselves were large enough to accommodate restaurants and other businesses, as well as the engineers' offices.

You're both right! According to the Heinlein Concordance he used both beanstalk and skyhook in Friday, and beanstalk also in Job.

You're both right! According to the Heinlein Concordance he used both beanstalk and skyhook in Friday, and beanstalk also in Job.

It is actually possible to make good time travel stories. I just read an amazing one in Axiomatic by Greg Egan. Others, like 12 Monkeys and Heinlein's "All You Zombies" are at also entertaining and well-conceived. What ruins Star Trek is just bad writing, not time travel per se. Read this paper if you're really interested in the conceptual issues in Time Travel. It will make you hate that cheapo Star Trek crap even more, because you'll realize exactly why that "second time 'round" crap they always pull with time travel is completely incoherent.

Become very, very, very rich.
Adopt a favored staff member.
Post-mortem involuntary brain transplants

As usual, Robert Heinlein was way ahead of us. In I Will Fear No Evil, the very very very rich character (Johann Sebastian Bach Smith) has his brain transplanted into his secretary's body (Eunice Evans Branca).

However, unlike your scenario, Eunice bit the dust unexpectedly (in an Abandoned Area), and Johann was quite disturbed to find he was now in her body. Fortunately, she was still there, and things worked out just fine until her (his/their) lover kicked the bucket and joined the happy couple in an out-of-in-body menage a trois (quatre, including the baby). Good late-phase Heinlein story, though it fell apart at the end.

Here (compliments of Locus

Nope, this one's legit. This one was just recently discovered, according to this article. While I admit that it's kind of cool that they found something like this and could publish it, I'm not sure of how good an idea it is - it was obviously unpublished for a reason. And according to a couple of reviews (particularly the one that this article mentions), that might be for the best... Of course, I'm still buying it. I have to round out my collection somehow.

Likely he never had it published because he himself subscribed to the advice that one's trunk should be burned.

Likely he never had it published because he himself subscribed to the advice that one's trunk should be burned.

instead of throwing out guesswork all the time? The article I just read said,

1. It's a good book.
2. It wasn't published in the 30's because it has some "racy" content.

Oh yes, I agree completely. The whole situation is very complicated and confusing. Let's rely solely on guesswork!

Several years ago a blocked artery led to oxygen starvation in part of his brain, with a resulting decline in the quality of his work. The blockage was finally repaired by a new technique in brain surgery.

"Mr. Heinlein says he realized he needed the operation when his wife and primary editor, Virginia, told him a new novel was a failure. He dotes on Virginia, whom he met while they were both in the Navy, and he credits her with his understanding of the market system. 'She cured me. I'd gotten fed up with the New Deal by 1938, but I was still trying to save the world, suffering from that nasty itch that characterizes socialists -- the sort of thing that makes them think that everything should be prevented or required.'

"The high quality of JOB: A COMEDY OF JUSTICE (1984) is evidence that the bypass was successful. And the author is undaunted by his ailments. Two years ago he went with Virginia on a Spartan cruise to the Antarctic, and last year the Heinleins went to the other end of the world, on a cruise that navigated the Northwest Passage.

And the cover really looks like a period piece too -- but not in a good way.

While going through the Heinlein Society homepage, I found this review of The Number of the Beast. I've never read the book (but will now), but it seems to imply that Heinlein intentionally wrote the book bad to show how a SciFi book should not be written.

The review is pretty interesting, and I think I'd like to read it just to see what they are talking about. Morbid curiosity maybe?