Slashdot Mirror
New Heinlein Novel
book_reader writes "It's hard to believe but the grand master of sci-fi is back - 15 years or so after his death. His first novel that he wrote in the mid 30's and long since thought lost was rediscovered and will be coming out in November! The thought of a novel he wrote so early in his writing career boggles my mind but who will be able to resist - not I!"
Never heard of him.
Spread the RC luvin'
The sci-fi gods of the past have come to reclaim the present and shape the future! RUN FOR COVER!
A blog like any other.
The finding and publishing of "For Us, the Living" by Deb Houdek Rule As of this writing, August 31, 2003, there are only about half a dozen people in the entire known universe who can accurately claim that they have read every novel Heinlein has written. For those of us who thought there would never again be another new Heinlein novel, the impossible has become reality . "For Us, the Living," is a brand new, never before published novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It is going into print now for the first time and will be in bookstores by the end of November, 2003. "For Us, the Living" was written by Heinlein about 1938-9, before he wrote his first sf short, "Lifeline." The novel, "For Us, the Living," was deemed unpublishable, mainly for the racy content. So racy is/was the content that in the 1930s the book could not even have been legally shipped through the US mail! For this reason, after a few publisher rejections, the novel was tabled by Heinlein, but the content was mined for his later stories and novels. A fellow named Nehemiah Scudder even appears in "For Us, the Living." It's important to point out that according to those favored few who have thus far read this long lost Heinlein novel, it did not go unpublished because it was bad--they say it's quite good, though clearly a first novel by the author (it has a two and a half page footnote!). It was unpublished because the mores and culture of the time would not allow it. "For Us, the Living," was put aside, and eventually lost. The Heinleins apparently destroyed all copies they had. And because at the time it was written Heinlein was not a member of the science fiction community, no other sf writers knew about it. He had let one or two friends read it, and it is by a long trail through one of them that this rarest of treasures was located. Robert James, Ph.D., Heinlein Society member and Heinlein scholar, had been researching Heinlein and his life, focusing on Heinlein's second wife Leslyn, when he came across a vague mention of an early novel, a copy of which one-time Heinlein biographer Leon Stover was supposed to have. Robert James went searching, and after serious hunting, finally located a forgotten copy in a box in a garage that had changed hands at least once since Heinlein himself had given it to a friend to be read. This copy had annotations written in the margin by Heinlein himself, with some in a second hand that was probably then-wife Leslyn's. Robert James presented the manuscript to the Heinlein Society's secretary, David Silver, who promptly contacted Arthur Dula, the representative of the Heinlein literary estate. As they told the tale, they only informed Art that they had a "surprise" for him. When they picked him up, and the three of them were alone in the car, they handed Art the manuscript of this never before seen "new" Heinlein novel. "...when I regained consciousness," Art Dula said, describing the moment, he knew at once this treasure needed to be published for the benefit of us, Heinlein's readers. Through Eleanor Wood, agent for the Heinlein estate, they arranged publication of "For Us, the Living," the first truly new Heinlein novel since "To Sail Beyond the Sunset," published shortly before his death. Heinlein's last novel is now his first. Virtually no changes have been made to the manuscript from Heinlein's original draft. The book, Robert James said, was not a first draft but a polished final draft. Only a very few minor edits and spelling corrections were made. There will be a foreword by Spider Robinson and an afterword by Robert James. There are two bonuses to this landmark event that bear mentioning. As most novels have dedications at the beginning, the dedication of "For Us, the Living" will be to us... to Heinlein's Children. The other bonus is another gift to us. The money earned by this novel will be going to directly and substantially support Heinlein's dream, and the dream we, Heinlein's Children, share. Earnings will be going to the advancement of human exploration of space. When you purchase "For Us, the Living" you are also contributing, in a real and meaningful way, the furtherment of this dream. Yet again, Heinlein 'pays it forward.'
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
I don't know whether to be elated or scared. It's kind of common knowledge that Heinlein's earlier works are better than this later works ... but if this is his first work, it might not be all that good. There might be a reason it wasn't published up until now ... there might be a reason Heinlein hid it away for all these years. I'll definitely buy it and read it, but I'm keeping my expectations low.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Free as a Bird anyone?
How much material has Tupac released since he died?
And all that crap that Tolkien's son claimed he wrote to make some money
Why, why, why do this to Heinlein as well?
Fours posts and I'm wondering if the Heinlein Society folks have time enough for A NEW SERVER.
Oy, that's too bad. *shake*
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Rich
He was _a_ grandmaster, but not _the_ grandmaster.
h tm l
http://www.steampunk.com/sfch/awards/nebula-gm.
Or, although it was written 80 years ago, is someone still making money off of this work? If so, who owns the copyright? and for how long?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I mean, really. A substantial chunk of artistry is knowing what isn't worth publishing. Now, we've got Douglas Adams and Heinlein releasing stuff from beyond the grave that they might not deem publishable, given the option.
Simply getting more of an artist's work is NOT necessarily a good thing. For instance, I got a hold of a bootleg of a bunch of old Pixies studio sessions. The stuff they released is good, but you know what?
The stuff they didn't release is crap. They wrote bad songs, recognized them as bad songs, and DIDN'T release them. There's a reason that stuff stays in the attic, and fans should be able to respect that, IMHO.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
death is often the best career booster for some people... take hendrix for example.
peace,
-Grokent
Wow, never say never...
Heinlein's got another book...
Celine Dion came out of retirement...
Cher had her comeback tour...
I'd given up waiting for a sequel of "From Justin to Kelly" but this story has nenewed my hope!
His last few novels were so tedious. Doesn't matter... I'm not an adolescent know-it-all utopian collectivist anymore... a new Heinlein novel doesn't get my interest like it once would have.
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
I found it down the back of a sofa that I bought from the ex wife of the cousin of the guy that fixed the car of Heinlein's dentist's cleaning lady.
You can have it for a million bucks. I'll donate the money to, uh, space or something.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
...the editorial process that keeps shit from reaching the marketplace gets thrown out after the artist's death. You have been warned.
"It's hard to believe but the grand master of sci-fi is back - 15 years or so after his death"
I'll bet he smells kind of bad.
I hear Shug Knight wants to bundle this with Tupac's twelfth post-humous release.
Does this satisfy the definition of ironic?
i will have to try and pickup a paperback copy when published...
Well, nowadays' motto is "all at once".
It'd have been better if our grandgrandgrandgrandgrandchildren were about to discover it in several centuries from now...
I guess somebody would not appreciate the loss of the copyright, had it been published later...
So, I'd say, some right holder was looking for easy money, found some essay, published it.
Now, it's being hyped and will make money.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Wow, science fiction from the 30's. It will be an interesting read just to see the perspective of someone in the 30's: By 1950 everyone will be driving flying rocket cars. By 1970 the world will be destroyed by war, by 1990 a new race of ape-people will take over the planet. By 2003 the war against the apes will have been won, and the whole galaxy will be colonized by humans! Cool!
Oh, I can't wait... *rolls eyes*
I had read that Heinlein *hated* his Nehemiah Scudder character (who later went on to form a really pleasant theocracy in "If This Goes On...") so much that he was not able to write about him. This should be interesting. :-)
Opinions are free, they're just not easy.
Semi-on topic: I listened to Starship Troopers on tape while commuting a couple of years ago. There are long polemics in it that are barely endurable - the responsibilites of citizens, blah blah. Then the other day, it came to me. Heinlein was talking about the Bush administration: power-suited chickenhawks gripping the levers of power without ever having had to personally defend those powers with their lives in combat.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Good advice given to new novelists is, of course, "keep writing'. While your first novel is making the rounds of getting rejected by the various publishers (a process that can take a couple of years), write your second and third novels. Start them on their rejection rounds and keep writing.
Most writers do not sell their first novel (or even their second and third). What they finally do sell is the novel that they have grown into by the practice of writing their previous works. Those previous novels are not up to par with what they finally do sell. Better advice then given to new novelists is "burn your trunk". 'Trunk' refers to all the writing you've done before you finally sell something. It is not up to the standards of what you are now able to produce and publishing it will lower the public's perception of your current talent.
I strongly suspect that this 'new' Heinlein novel is Heinlein's trunk. Likely he never had it published because he himself subscribed to the advice that one's trunk should be burned.
I will buy the book none the less, because Heinlein was by far the novelist who was the most influential on me in my youth. I will consciously remember while reading it though that this is his very first novel, something written in the thirties and not a book that he wanted published because he felt it to be inferior to what he was subsequently capable of.
Peter
Heinlein was into incestuous consensual patriarchal discipline dom-sum fetishism, fool!
Wait, I might be thinking about Stephen R. Donaldson. Which one sets their daddy-daughter fucking in rocketships?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Brian Herbert's books are cereal box covers compared to the depth of the originals turned out by Frank Herbert. Still though, I won't call this graverobbing until I read it.
Heinlein only has three posthumous novels- the original length "Stranger in a Strange Land", an autobiography, and this one. Ron Hubbard published at least 13- including the ten volume Mission Earth series. Toklein published at least 15, including the Allakabeth, Simarillian, a book of poetry, and the 12 volume History of Middle Earth series. Asimov had a have dozen in press that came out after his death. Gene Roddenberry had Final Conflict and Anromedea TV series, plus two more rumored in production. Frank Herbert partially completed 7th Dune volume, and an early edition of his origional Dune are supposed to be published in due course by his son.
The above list doesn't include continuations of earlier novels authorized by these authors estates. There have been a dozen of those. Herbert is the most prolific with the 5th New Dune novel due out next week and eight more planned.
Similar fact: Some time after his death, Philip Dick's son released Radio Free Albemuth. The site I link to doesn't reference the story that I heard / read (?) about this, that Dick had stipulated that the book was NOT to be published.
At any rate, it is a _fantastic_ book, and really fits as a key part of the Valis 'trilogy'.
astro
Heinlein is one of those authors who made science fiction. His chauvinism occasionally sets my teeth on edge, and his later works are preachy, but these are small blemishes on the body of work of a man, who above everything else, knew how to tell a story. Unlike much SF, his stories are always character-driven. I've often gone back to Glory Road or The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress for a good read that never gets old. Finding out that there's an unpublished Heinlein a few days after hearing about a new Zelazny collection? My cup runneth over!
My hat's off to the cranky old Grand Master who still makes me all sniffly at the end of Stranger in a Strange Land, almost 10 years after I read it the first time. Where can I place a pre-order?
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
I didn't even know he was sick.
Oh, yes I did know he was sick.
Why did he always have to change subjects in the middle of a book?
Good story...
And then I heard this big bang over my head, I thought it was the trumpet sounding, but it was every freaking character I had ever written about camping out in the place where I now reside.
Crap drug induced story to fill the rest of the book...
>Let the man rest in peace. Did he approve of the editor? Did he have any input in to it since 1930?
What editor? If you read the top, it was published with only minor spelling corrections. This is similar to the tack that was taken with 2 other works after his death. They were re-published the way HE wrote them, not the way they were first published.
Spider Robinson was a friend of his, and if he has some say in the matter (he did one of the forwards for this book), then it ought to maintain some integrity.
Mark me down as optimistic until I get a chance to review it. Most of his "so-called" hack work is better then 90% of today's writers anyway.
Yes, yes, yes ... I don't care if it's good, bad or ugly. He's a god and I look forward to reading anything he's written.
IMHO, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" is the ultimate Sci-Fi novel and he singlehandedly raised the bar so that Science Fiction wasn't simply regarded as pulp. Many people were inspired by his words and foresight. He contributed many revolutionary concepts and provided so many hours of entertainment that even the thought of anything new is interesting in the extreme.
Words to men, as air to birds.
The most entertaining thing about old sci-fi is the bad science. Well, it wasn't bad at the time but it's comically inaccurate now. Heinlein was good about writing in reasonably black-box style in later books so perhaps this one won't be too bad, but if you've ever read, say, 'under pressure' by Herbert then you know what I mean.
THe first tiem i read it, it made no sense. Upon rereading it, i found it interesting. Plus it figureing out where tamara hid the gun kept my brain occupied for a while.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
"Stranger in a Strange Land" has been optioned several times. In its day it was pretty riske- spoofing religion, free sex, and government. A first-year Star Trek episode "What about Charlie?" 'borrowed' part of the plot. I think the novel is soemwhat timeless and has merit as a movie.
Any more Heinlein novels to be movies?
Although it was in his teenage pulp scifi, I enjoyed when reading it in the 6th grade. I re-read it again when I was at M.I.T. and enjoyed the twist at the end- the hero wins admission to that college.
Stranger in a Strange Land is the first and only book I've ever thrown in the garbage after reading it.
Oh, wait, just a manuscript.
Nevermind.
KFG
I'd submit Heinlein's "Blowups Happen" and the similarly-themed "Nerves" by Del Rey. They both contain science that was unlikely when the stories were written, but timelessly great writing.
I ran across this link a while back, and filed it away for future reference. Should have known that Slashdot would come through:
Heinlein Happens, by by Earl Kemp
It's a scathing expose of the "dark side" of Robert Heinlein, painting him as a Hugh Hefner wannabe with an ego the size of a god's, masking an inner insecurity the size of the Grand Canyon. It's hard to tell, though, how accurate Kemp's descriptions are, since he's writing from the POV of one of Heinlein's "disremembered" -- close friends who p***ed off the artist and were removed from his list of people worth acknowledging.
I'm curious how much is true, how much is exaggerated, and how much is just made up. I figure this is the place to ask!
As far as the literary side of the man... I've been a fan since I read "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" as a kid in the late '70s. The "Future History" stuff left me cold, but "Job" was a great return to form. The last Heinlein book I read (shamefully long ago) was the restored "Podkayne of Mars", with the original (downer) ending.
I haven't seen the "Puppet Masters" movie... and from what I've heard, I'm probably better off for it.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Another bombshell hit the beleagered Heinlen community today when....
ah fuck it, I'll just go back to the front page and wait for first psot!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Are you referring to "The Carpet People"? If so, that wasn't simply republished, it was extensively rewritten. As the introduction (approximately) put it, "this book was co-written by Terry Pratchett, aged 17, and Terry Pratchett, aged 42".
Also, it was neither naff nor an obvious ripoff of "The Hobbit".
Jurisprudence Fetishist Gets Off On A Technicality --theonion.com
who will put it up first?
It's hard to believe but the grand master of sci-fi is back
The only person deserving to be be called that is Isaac Asimov, publishing over 500 volumes of the best science fiction to date. Not to say that other writers (Heinlein, Lem, Strugatsky) didn't write good stuff in the same "league", but not with the same consistent quality in those amounts.
Er, "Stranger" and "Job" were both from the late phase of his career. The early phase consisted of "Have Spacesuit Will Travel", "Red Planet", "The Rolling Stones", "Starman Jones", "The Starbeast", "Citizen of the Galaxy", "Farnham's Freehold", "The Puppet Masters", "Tunnel in the Sky", "Starship Troopers" and so on. All of those novels were targeted at the "young adolescent" of the time, but were still entertaining, thought provoking stuff. They also included enough hard science to be dangerous.
His later phase, which began around the time of "Glory Road" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (now THAT should be made into a movie;), was more adult oriented and controversial - still with a stiff dose of plausibility and real science.
Say what you like about Heinlein and his social ideas, but fundamentally he was a freedom lover who wanted nothing so much as to see humanity grow up and move beyond the nest. He also had the ideas for several inventions including the waterbed and the "waldo" (remote manipulators used with hazardous materials). Very few of those who bash him have made a similar contribution to society.
I'm sure I'll read his "new" novel with quite a bit of enjoyment, whatever the quality of the work. :-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Quoted from the article :
"The other bonus is another gift to us. The money earned by this novel will be going to directly and substantially support Heinlein's dream, and the dream we, Heinlein's Children, share. Earnings will be going to the advancement of human exploration of space. When you purchase "For Us, the Living" you are also contributing, in a real and meaningful way, the furtherment of this dream. Yet again, Heinlein 'pays it forward.'"
Imho is particularly cool. As cool as a new book by RAH. How often do the proceeds of any artists work go back to a cause that the author would have approved of, instead of thier bloodsucking relatives?
Well, for some fans completism is part of it appreciating and author/artist. Personally, I feel that grandmaster or not, I like the missing work of someone like Heinlein to be published for me or for study- it'd be partly for the story, partly out of fandom, but something for study. Especially with early works, or partial works, you can learn about the process of your favorite authors.
If you take it in context, I think it adds a lot to appreciation of a subject. But its like an audio commentary, if you don't want it, ignore it. I personally to see the development of a writer in a full arc.
I'm not sure were the limit would be- like bad studio sessions or jazz album remasters, there's probably a limit to what you learn from extra releases. I don't think you should just shut the door on it though.
Well thats me. I'm going to sit here puzzling about "heinlein blood drives".
Unfortunately, I don't think there's any danger of this book being read by Slashdot posters as it seems they can't even be bothered to read the linked article about the book. In a nutshell, the book hasn't been published up until now for two reasons. The first is that it was deemed too racy for US readers by the publishers. The second reason it hasn't yet been published is because the manuscript was lost until now. Finally, nobody's "grave robbing" or "whizzing on a Picasso". The book as it will appear is exactly (with the exception of spelling corrections) as Heinlein left it.
Sorry bro, but you're referring to Tom Clancy (!= Robert Heinlein). Totally different genres :)
Not a huge discussion, but you get the impression of Heinlein as a brilliant but flawed personality. He was the first sci-fi I ever read, though, and will always occupy that niche, whatever his personal failings.
When I was younger I thought a few of his books were ok. I read "Grumbles From the Grave" a while back and learned why I never really because a fan. The only two books I like from him are "Friday", and "Starship Troopers".
Everyone who thinks they're "fans" should go read "Grumbles From the Grave". I think it would give them all a much better perspective about their cherished entertainer.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
How about "the throngs of Slashdot readers who don't give a fuck about skiffy, anime or the latest Pixar release, and who wish this stuff didn't get posted to the front page?"
For people like me, it is often more interesting to see the "failures" of recognized artists.
Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
...Brian Herbert's books are several times used toilet paper compared to his father's works. This said, I do believe that any author daring to right something on the "Dune" theme after what Herbert father did is either insanely stupid or desperate for money.
Anyway, I don't think that the case with Henlein is similar in anything with this kind of heritage. It's true that, as someone stated above, a possible reason that he didn't publish the book for so many years mey be the fact that he didn't find it good enough, but I will buy it, and damn those publishers if it's some nasty trick to make me use my wallet.....
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
...is that a fan enjoys reading everything his or her idol writes, regardless of whether it's much good.
Of course it isn't going to be any good.
Of course I'm going to read it.
People who say "his earlier stuff is better than his later stuff" are thinking of the forties and fifties,when he really hit his stride. His earliest stuff reads all too much like "Doc" Smith, to my way of thinking.
I don't expect very much from this, but it will be nice to have it.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I'd much rather read _any_ Heinlein than half the crap that he called fiction. Not to say that asimov didn't write some good stuff too, but anybody who cranks out the volume he did is gonna generate more than his fair share of turds.
Actually you're wrong on both counts. L. Ron Hubbard is the author you're thinking of. He realized long ago that generations of inbreeding is the only way to make enough stupid people to buy into Scientology.
Isn't anybody the least bit sceptical of this? Maybe the literary world didn't know about this first novel, but RAH and his wife (wives?) and whoever the original editor was and many other people certainly did. And whatever social mores kept it from being published originally were long gone well before his death... there was plenty of time for this thing to be published, had he wanted it to be, HAD IT EXISTED.
Maybe the galactic overlord popped in from another galaxy and planted it but I doubt it. This just feels like HOAX to me.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Ayn Rand's first novel, "We the Living" was published in 1937, one year before the new Heinlein novel was completed.
I wonder if Heinlein had seen Rand's novel when he chose that title, "For Us, The Living".
"Slapping people is fun." - Starla Grady
Letters Heinlein wrote to John Campbell in the late 30's make it clear that he was very unsatisfied with his earliest attempts at the short story, although he did not hesitate to sell them to lesser pulps than Astounding provided they were published psuedonymously. Therefore, I don't believe Heinlein would have approved this. I also think if Virginia Heinlein were still alive she would have put a stop to it immediately, even if she was the force behind the 'uncut' Stranger in a Strange Land.
However, none of this will stop me from devouring the novel once it comes out. He's dead, and he don't care.
The copyright clock starts ticking down from the the initial publication date. This work has never yet been published, therefore the clock has not yet started ticking.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
i mean, call me an idealist, but editing is editing.
When the copyright expires, can anyone please put the PDF online? ;)
As a kid in the 60s, I read every Heinlein I could. When I went back 10 or 20 years later and tried to reread them, even the very ordinary adventure ones, I couldn't, his political agenda kept on getting in the way, like he had to preach in everything he wrote, and even tho I agreed with a lot of it, I got tired of it, and gave up. To this day, I can't stand reading Heinlein, the preaching jumps out and obscures the story.
Infuriate left and right
here is a place to do a preorder, its $17.50: For Us, The Living : A Comedy of Customs by Robert A. Heinlein
pretzel_logic
It's in Robocop, but I think it's also in "The Roads Must Roll". I think Dick used it as well.
Any sci-fi scholars want to answer?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
And Emily Dickinson's complete works weren't published until after she'd snuffed it.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Just watch it when you see Johnathon Edwards (Crossing Over, on Sci Fi (never watched it, only saw ads and flicked past)) listed as editor or co-author.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Speaking of Scudder,
In "The Past Through Tomorrow" they have a timeline, and on the early side was an invention called, "the Douglas-Martin Power Screen," from the story, "Let There Be Light," apparently a short story. It wasn't in "The Past Through Tomorrow," and I've never been able to find it anywhere else.
Anyone have a pointer?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Three points:
1) Certainly most of Heinlein's female characters are as competent as the male ones, but the air of "don't you worry your pretty little head" that so many of his mouthpiece characters have, especially in his earlier works, drives me batty. "Sure, she can pilot a starship and shoot the center out of the ace of spades at 50 paces, and isn't it cute? She'll meet the right man one day and settle down, and then she won't have to because he'll take care of her."
2) There's also Heinlein's assumption that gender roles are as they should be--this was his opinion, and I strongly disagree with it, but overall it didn't detract much from his writing.
3) Finally, a lot of his female characters break under the slightest pressure and start crying. His male characters never do. Especially in the Future History, where sexuality and gender identity is supposed to be androgynous, this bothers me. Even Galahad in Time Enough for Love, (the most sympathetic portrayal an effeminate man ever got in Heinlein) never cries.
I can ignore sexism in most of the authors of Heinlein's generation and earlier (*coughAsimovcough*), but Heinlein himself was just so progressive in everything else that a lot of his gender politics show up as glaring flaws, when they would just fade into the background in works by other writers. Writers shouldn't have to be politically correct, and Heinlein was perfectly justified in coloring his stories with his opinion, but I find that it tempers my enjoyment of his works.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
I nearly slit my wrists it was so bad.
MUCH worse than what they did to Starship Troopers, and I thought THAT deserved to be shoved out the airlock sans suit.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
RTFA. Any monies from the sale of this manuscript are going to fund human space exploration, not to some bloodsucking estate.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
I was traumatized by "To Sail Beyond the Sunset". It was simply horrible, It took half a year before I could pick up another Sci-Fi book. I enjoyed "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" though and many of his other books/short stories were good, so I suppose there is hope....
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
People talking at Torcon is like a bunch of 14 year olds debating if the "Enterprise" would beat "The Death Star" in a fight.
Look, I love my wife, she's bright, but she wouldn't be a good judge of my creative work, and I would never put her in that position.
It should be published because (a) the man is dead, so he has no reputation to enhance or destroy (b) He is part of history, so his or his familie's wishes don't enter into it (c) He is dead
So in summary, if the novel is crap, its just another piece of history about the old coot.
Stop worrying so much. You're like an old lady.
I beg to differ. I was a Heinlein reader in my youth, but Asimov's Galactic Empire and Foundation series of novels are pure gold. And the way he tied together these unverses with his "Robot Detective" novels (Elijah and Olivaw) late in his career was pure genius. I love Heinlein, but Asimov was in a league of his own. And, oh didn't you know that many of those 500 books he wrote were either short story compilations (nightfall is a classic) or non-fiction (on subjections ranging from math to Bible)??
"There's no set architecture in Linux. All roads lead to madness" -Microsoft
He also had the ideas for several inventions including the waterbed...
;)
Which cannot be patented because of Heinlein's prior art.
Not only a great novelist, but a pioneer in IP law.
(I just remembered while reading your post that the MST3k movie Delta Knights ripped off Citizen of the Galaxy so badly it hurts. I'm going to go be simultaneously annoyed and depressed that I actually remembered that now.)
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
I was at a talk he gave in about '91, when he was in the process of doing the rewrite, and he said something like "I went back and read it, and I thought 'Oh, God, this was written by a 17 year old. Not only that, but it was written by a 17 year old who had just read The Lord of the Rings!'"
So that's not a totally unjustified comment...
It's not quite equivalent, as the original Carpet People had been published, but was out of print by the time PTerry became popular. Apparently people were borrowing it from libraries, and selling the library copy for big money on the used market (and paying the much smaller fine to the library)
....destroy all the copies of his very first novel? Is anyone else as curious about this statement as I?
Hopefully Heinlein's heirs aren't going to pull a "Hubbard" on us where dozens of novels never previously published are released posthoumosly.
I can't help but wonder if this couldn't be a glorious fraud by someone trying to live out "The Man Who Sold The Moon". Hmmmmmmmmm.....
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
Um, "The roads must roll". I know I've read the story, don't know in what, but the screen is the power conversion thingy that makes rolling roads feasible - cf "To sail beyond the sunset"
This came up at last night's LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society) meeting, and Dr. Pournelle said that Heinlein most emphatically did not want this to see the light of day and thought that he had destroyed all the copies. If Ginny were still alive, I'm sure that we wouldn't be seeing this, and I think that it's telling that this didn't appear until shortly after she passed away.
The idea of a new Heinlein novel makes me tingle in my pink parts. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress changed my whole idea of what sci-fi should be.
Uh, right. I'm a whiny twit because I have an opinion. How dare I.
:-P
Nice use of low-brow attacks too. Wow. You must have wowed them on the debate squad.
I'm far from a prude. I said I didn't like the sex in his books because it was... boring. Sexless sex. Meaningless sex. No "sizzle" to it at all. I yawned and turned to the next page...
Much like I yawn at your infantile post
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
I read 'Strata' by Terry Pratchett a long time ago, then I read Larry Niven's Ringworld.
All I can say is that when I read Ringworld I was puzzled. Either Pratchett was a brazen plagiarist, or it was an homage or something because Pratchett basically changed a few names, swapped a few characters round and made the world a disc instead of a ring.
I used to think 'Strata' was a great SF novella, now I know it to be stunningly unoriginal.
=#= Man, you are such a loser! Why can't you be an individual, like the rest of us?
Help, help [pound,pound] help help, someone get me out of this box.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, To Sail Beyond the Sunset is pretty much incest pr0n. As it turns out, I misremember Stephen Donaldson; I believe the daddy-daughter action is narrowly avoided, probably by Thomas Covenant slaking his lust by raping a passing penguin (clench, hate, clench).
I'm not sure that L. Ron Hubbard actually wrote about incest, he just appeared to be the product of it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Quite aside from you being confused about the whole time-line thing...
Shame-riddled? Job? What the hell are you smoking? Did you ever *read* the book or are you just basing your opinion on the cover art and title?
AFAIK he has had more books out since he died then your 3.
The unedited "Stranger"
"Grumbles from the Grave"
"Requim"
"Tramp Royal"
and now this 'new' book
Thats 5, and someone may republish the stinkeroos yet.
Every author has "trunk novels." They wrote them early in their career and tossed them in a steamer trunk, usually because the books stank. Book and magazine editors bounced them for a reason.
Sometimes these books get published when said authors are better known. Guess what? The books still stink once they're in print.
I'm not optimistic. Heinlein's early short fiction is good stuff. But it took him a while to build his writing chops up to longer works.
According to one of the Heinlein society people I spoke with at Torcon, the Moon is a Harsh Mistress has been optioned for a film, I think it was by SKG (Spielberg's company). Could be interesting.
I agree with you about Glory Road, although if it was produced by a Hollywood outfit it would have to be renamed Gory Road.
Keith
Has anyone else noticed this? I am not talking about Stranger In A Strange Land; I am talking about stuff before this.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
I can believe this was a coincidence however when I had my only personal encounter with Heinlein, it was disputing priority on the title "High Frontier" on a book by his associate General Danny Graham. Heinlein insisted that Danny Graham had every right to use that title even though Graham had a prior conversation with the author of the other "High Frontier" Gerard O'Neill in which O'Neill was invited, and refused, to join Graham's program of Reagan-era space militarization and development.
PS: The scene was rather amusing in some ways -- sad in some ways. I was the San Diego local support team leader for the Space Studies Institute in the early 1980s and as such was manning the booth for SSI at the annual space development conference in San Francisco. The table had the two "High Frontier" books laid out -- one labeled "The Real Thing" the other labeled "Cheap Immitation". I of course knew Heinlein had written the foreward to the "Cheap Immitation" and that a lot of folks were his fans around there. What I didn't know was that Heinlein would pompously show up and demand of me if I knew who he was -- as he shakily picked up Graham's book and pointed to his name in the foreward. I explained to him that Graham had had prior dealings with O'Neill and that Graham had to do better than to come out with a book by the same name. Heinlein said Graham was perfectly within his rights to use "High Frontier" as the title to his book even though he had previously met with O'Neill and was occupying much of the same intellectual turf within a few years of O'Neill's publication. I then pointed out to Heinlein that "High Frontier" was a registered service mark of the Space Studies Institute. This stopped him only for a moment and he said "I don't believe you." before walking off. Sad and amusing.
Seastead this.
"eagle scout" just sounds too harmless. Unless you know some eagle scouts.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Now I would guess that they probably did register it, unless they were unaware of this little-known quirk in the copyright law. But I find it interesting this quirk exists, and probably a huge number of unpublished works became public domain at the beginning of this year.
Yes, I am aware that asimov has published under every dewey decimal category. I have read a lot of both asimov and heinlein, and I think asimov put out a lot more _crap_ than heinlein did. the foundation trilogy was entertaining, the robot novels were (mostly) entertaining, but everything post 1980 was garbage. I'd rather read post-stroke heinlein. or even some of the garbage that king cranked out during the 80's.
I read "The Roads Must Roll" as a short-ish story in "The Past Through Tomorrow." I don't know why you refer to "To Sail Beyond the Sunset," unless because it makes a back-reference, because it was the last work, while "Let There Be Light" must have been an early one.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I didn't think he did weird stuff like incest, just good old fashioned animals-fucking-teen-sluts action. We should really get this straightened out.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"probably good reason why RAH didn't want it published"
How about you go back and RTFA and then re-think your post. Is wasn't published because of it's racy content not because he didn't want it to be.
And this was modded interesting? Come on.
Sheesh
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
An old Heinlein quote, "He talks about XXXX the way a virgin talks about sex, enthusiastically and ignorantly."
Heinlein was also prone to preach about how to raise children... though he was childless. His own quote applies to himself.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
for the kazaa version....
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Paganism is explicitly mentioned in Job: A comedy of justice (probably my favorite novel of his). From the content, I would assume it was written mid-career. Not one of those wacked out later novels.
I always thought that the robotic drafting table from "The door into Summer" was very creative.... Kind of like a CAD/CAM system and a plotter. Also, from the same novel, I believe they were called "Thorsen tubes"(?) which gave robots analog memory, and tolerance within the specifications. Great stuff.
I love the movie Starship Troopers. I love the book Starship Troopers. I find it an amazing coincidence that there was a movie with the name of a great book using similar character names yet none of the same plot! :)
You have the enjoy the movie for what it is, a silly sci-fi movie with really cool bugs.
I mean, how do you make a movie about a book and mock the ideals of the book?
I see them as two completely unrelated works that both stand on their own merits.
If you ever wanted to see a commentary on Vietnam set in space, you should see the movie.
Besides, it has Doogie Howser as a Nazi general!
Would you like to know more?
Alex
Most of his books are quite good, particularly the "Heinlein juveniles." The science is dated now in many cases, but they're great reads. Personal favorites include The Door into Summer, Citizen of the Galaxy, Starman Jones and The Past Through Tomorrow.
Many feel that Heinlein's later books, after 1966, aren't nearly as good. They certainly get more self-indulgent and cheezy. To start out with, I would avoid the following books, because they're not really indicative of most of his work: I Will Fear No Evil, Time Enough For Love, The Number of the Beast, Friday, Job: A Comedy of Justice, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond the Sunset.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I said I didn't like the sex in his books because it was... boring. Sexless sex. Meaningless sex. No "sizzle" to it at all
Well, considering he was publishing these when he was, it's not surprising that he wasn't allowed to put in the 'sizzle'. It's up to you, the reader, to use your imagination to provide the sizzle. If you couldn't do that.... that's your problem.
IANA...whatever... But, :>
Getting it out is the easy part. Sorting it from the rest of the mess can be a bit of a chore, though.
http://www.rvt.com/~lucas/heinlein/faq/collections .html
A very interesting IP story written in 1940.
Most slashdot folks would like it. I will not post a spoiler here unless you want me too.
You think Bio and Xanth 1-42 are bad... try reading Anthony's book Firefly. This book eroticises an explicitly described sexual encounter between an adult and a five year old, trying to convince the reader it the "relationship" is consensual. Yech!
... from the Gettysburg Address.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
Most of the science in Heinlein's books was the best available at the time.
For instance, "Blowups happen" was written roughly around the time of the Manhatten Project. Think about that. How much info was available on nuclear power? Even the experts would have been hard-pressed to predict the final form it would take.
Likewise, the outdated visions of Mars and Venus in his books from the '50's was the best guess available at the time. This was before the Mercury program, after all: we were limited to observation by ground-based telescopes. Our knowledge has increased by orders of magnitude in the meantime.
I'm inclined to cut him a break.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Thanks, now I just have to find a copy.
I read "The Roads Must Roll" in "The Past Through Tomorrow." Wonder why other stories were published so many times, and "Let There Be Light" apparently only once, in spite of numerous references.
Maybe it's not that good a story, but I'd still like to read it for completeness. (I can't say that about "To Sail Beyond the Sunset.") I also once read "Fourth (or was it Fifth or Sixth) Column," another Heinlein oldie, perhaps better left buried.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
...anyone know when someone will 'discover' a manuscript for "The Sound of His Wings"?
This is a very good information. Where are mod points when you need them?
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Maureen Smith (That'd be Lazarus Long's mother, then), made a fortune on strip malls along the sides of rolling roads because Lazarus went back in time to tell her what happened. That's in "to Sail..." Said rolling roads were powered by DM screens. So, yes, back-reference.
or e-mail me unknown_poltroonatyahoo. com
I know the story, but i cant think of it off the top of my head.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
And as for my naff comment, well, it's a matter of taste but I will admit that it wasn't *that* bad of a book. Certainly not a patch on the really good Pratchett stuff though.
Rich
I've been thinking for a while that next year's Hugos ought to include a special award for Most Prolific Dead Author. The runaway winner would be Marion Zimmer Bradley, but it's nice to know that Heinlein would be in the running too.
I would have to amend that to state that he wasn't chauvinistic for the time. His women are all undoubtably super-capable, super-intelligent, super-athletic, and, of course, super-sexual and totally uninhibited. What it bakes down to, basically, is this: If a woman is a possession, why not possess a really really sharp, useful and dynamic one?
With that said, I will again say that his ideas and particular fancies were quite progessive for the times he lived in. At least he didn't expect women to be silent and in the kitchen (and baring offspring).
============
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I hope and pray Heinlen doesn't turn into the 'Tu-Pac' of geeks (i.e. ends up having 30 or more works 'discovered').
I'd prefer to hope and pray that he does.
Without any familiarity whatsoever with the work of "Tu-Pac", I'll state for the record that if someone were to find a box of unpublished Heinlein stuff (say, 20 or 30 shorts, or maybe a handful of novels), it would be a very wonderful thing for Science Fiction, certainly far better than the entire 2 seasons of ST:Enterprise has been.
You see what a fuss just one has caused.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
I just got through Time Enough for Love a couple months ago, and it blows away MiaHM in my eyes. There is stronger character development and it actually made some attempts to evoke emotional responses. I don't understand why people get so hung up on the sex issues. I think that, like another person posted earlier, Heinlein was just trying to show that its certainly possible to love more than one person with your whole heart. I think attitudes like yours show a lot about why Heinlein wrote these books. There's a lot more going on in them than just sex.
...for the first half, until it reunites with the plot from Number of the Beast at which point it starts sucking again. Now I've just started To Sail Beyond the Sunset and so far so good. Heinlein seems to write great books when he stays away from concentrating on technologies or events and instead writes about PEOPLE.
Now, that being said, a lot of post-MiaHM Heinlein is utter crap. The Number of the Beast is an excellent manual on how to do sci-fi wrong. The Cat who Walks Through Walls is great!
To any true fan of Heinlein, I would recommend Time Enough for Love without reservation. Try it again, maybe you'll get more out of it.
At least with the Puppet Masters movie the stuff they screwed up was unintentional: they were unable to convey any of the intellectual horror of having an alien rider (partly because that sort of thing is hard to portray without the first person perspective that a book can give you, and partly because they turned the aliens into comic objects from the first scene where one went "Indiana Jones" with it's tendril), and so they were left with a B horror movie.
With Starship Troopers, it was all intentional. The producer was one of those who thought the book is fascist, so he produced a parody of it. He must not have found it easy to parody, either, since he ended up having to present scenes and themes diametrically opposed to the book's messages to do so.
It's definitively mediocre, and very much like his other late books (most of which I have read, unfortunately). The heroes are beautiful people who say "floccinaucinauphilification" (and I sure hope I didn't spell that correctly from memory), take a vacation, expound at length on the virtues of nudism, have some boring sex, oh and come up with some brilliant plan that beats the bad guys.
I think you're being overly harsh, the post to which you were responding was written during the SEXUAL COUNTER-REVOLUTION. (currently in progress, started about 1982 when HIV was discovered).
.
I make no judgements either way. Both "movements" went too far in their respective directions. Both have their zealots, who really ought to be shot.
Funny thing is, back in college, there was this group of people I hung with, and these girls were like all googly over Heinlein, and how great his books were, and said that they based their lives off of "Stranger in a Strange Land" - etc. I read the book, and thought, wow, I'm freinds with these girls, they like this book, we party together all the time, yet none of them ever get naked. .
(it's the chicks who are into Gor books who will get naked).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Nice to see this one pop up in the discussion.
:D
I'd just learned how to read well enough to comprehend and retain- this was around second or third grade or so- and my dad gave me "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" to read. It was my first big book without pictures in it, and it blew my mind something fierce.
That one book did more to get me into reading than anything else before or since.
This is way better than say, someone hacking together something from some unfinished manuscript from after he started getting all demented.
You know, the only good thing about the death of Isaac Asimov is that he died young enough to spare us the senile ramblings of Heinlein in his waning years, or Clarke, now and presumably until Sri Lanka runs out of pretty young boys.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=chauv inism
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
it is because of you. I too party with these girls. They get naked with me!
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
Say what you like about Heinlein and his social ideas, but fundamentally he was a freedom lover who wanted nothing so much as to see humanity grow up and move beyond the nest.
First time I hear rooting for fascism described as freedom loving. Starship troopers, remember? Verhoeven's film poked fun at the book in a pretty hilarious way..
Never mind, he has some good stuff too, such as Job.
First, they say this novel was written before Heinlein's first published SF short story. It's been a while since I've read any Heinlein biographical material, but I thought the story (no pun intended) was that Heinlein read about a contest for amateur stories, wrote one, decided to submit it to a magazine instead, was accepted, and basically said "Whoa...how long has THIS easy way to make money been around?" and was off and running.
For him to have an unpublished novel from before this would mean that he was trying to be a writer before he did that first short. Furthermore, it would mean he was trying to start with novels, which is much harder. It was far better to break into the field with short stories in the magazines than to start with novels (especially since there really wasn't a market for SF outside the magazines). If Heinlein was actually planning on being a writer, I find it very hard to believe that he would not have researched the field.
Second, the novel being unpublishable in its day because of racy content does not strike me as very Heinlein-like. Sure, some people consider Heinlein's later works to be overly concerned with sex, but that at least made sense, both in the context of the times, and in the context of Heinlein's personal situation at the time. It would make no sense for him to be starting out with a racy novel--one so racy that it could not be published. (And, back to the first point, I have a hard time believing Heinlein would not know exactly what the limits were, and stay on the publishable side...he does not strike me as the kind of man who would go to the effort of writing an unpublishable novel)
"Let There be Light" is published in "The Man Who Sold the Moon"
Amazon link
The Shrub deserted the Air National Guard. Cheney may have been SecDef, but NEVER served in the military.
Me? Oh, just some disabled veteran who can't remember his Nick/Pass.
But I *swear* I read that it said differently. Oh well, thanks for the info.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Virginia Heinlein died last January. I blogged it here.
I believe RAH had some nephews who inherited everything. I certainly haven't heard of his estate being assigned to any college or fannish institution (such as Clarion). Perhaps someone else has details?
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
What was that people are saying about the erosion of our rights today?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Starship trooper was a cool movie.
Nothing like the book, but who cares? Hot babes, great weapons, killing space aliens.
Dude, its impossible to screw up a movie with that pedigree.
I'll bet you liked "Daredevil". Loser.
This is a very interesting observation here, and as I was a girl who read and enjoyed Heinlein and felt his books were a formative experience for her, and had acquaintances in college who felt likewise about Norman (whose only book I even started reading ended up in the trash can) - I can point to some serious irony going on here, as well as accurate observation.
;) not sure what, though...
Why is it, I wonder, that the girls who enjoyed the stories about women who were empowered by sex, enjoyed it, had it with the people they cared about whoever those were, and were happily married as equals to as many guys as they wanted, were less likely to want casual sex with buddies or to be sexually promiscuous, than the girls who liked stories about women who were uptight, overprotected virgins who were kidnapped, raped, and found they enjoyed being sex slaves?
Far be it from me to imply that the former are better adjusted and more sane, I think there's something going on beyond that...
But isn't it ironic?
Writing is the only socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. (E. L. Doctorow)
Robert A Heinlen is one of the fathers of sci fi.....i mean he is the spice of it all...
....and if anyone else has read it already...
;)
If the book will be out soon I would love to know when
Imagine its like digging up a treasure
---stalnia
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) and finished Heinlein's new novel while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, my iPod will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Safari is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8MB of ram running MS Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is faster than this 8600/300 machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
That's from http://www.heinleinsociety.org/conservativeview.h
Reminds me a little of something I heard Ross Perot did. He had a bunch of worthless land in Texas a ways from the city. So he donated a parcel to the city big enough to make a nice-sized airport, and donated enough land for a nice-sized highway. Sounds awfully nice of him.
He kept all the land on both sides of the highway, and made a killing on development rights as/after the airport went in. It was perfectly legal, though. I presume there was no identity-hiding, like Disney did when they quietly snapped up a bunch of unused land near Orlando.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Post some pictures of this con...we need to have a good laug^H^H^H^H understanding of the level of effort put into the costuming of the "attendees".
My personal title for that movie is "based on a script that at one time may have been in the same room as a copy of the book 'Starship Troopers' but likely never was".
Let's set the Wachowski brothers on it, shall we?
Alliance Airport ouside of Fort Worth, I believe.
Obviously, the decision not to publish wasn't his.
The novel, "For Us, the Living," was deemed unpublishable, mainly for the racy content. So racy is/was the content that in the 1930s the book could not even have been legally shipped through the US mail! For this reason, after a few publisher rejections, the novel was tabled by Heinlein, but the content was mined for his later stories and novels.
Lemon curry???
...you insensitive clod!
And for those who only saw "Starship Troopers" and never read the book, PLEASE don't judge the author by the movie, because that movie was truly horrendous.
...because the director didn't read it, either. He didn't want to "taint my vision of the film".
As I recall, Covenant raped a woman not related to him.
And then there's the pederasty in Gerrold's "A Matter For Men" (or one of its sequels).
Oh come on, that isn't an adequate explanation! It's a PENAL colony, not just a colony. That's like neglecting to mention that Frodo wasn't human in LoTR :-)
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!
I'd call that +1 Insightful
"I Will Fear No Evil" was written while he was dog sick, and completed by his wife and agent IIRC.
I also keep thinking of him in comparison to Hubbard;
L. Ron set out to design and build a religion, bent all his imagination and creativity to the purpose, and succeeded.
Well, for a value of "success" amounting to a pretty crappy excuse for a church.
RAH "merely" wrote stories, and accidentaly created at least 1 religion, and improved many peoples lives along the way.
I'd point out the Hubbard likely got the religion idea from one of RAH's offhand remarks.
_Overrated_!?! At +1?
Time to go metamoderate.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
I'd call it smart.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The same logic seems to apply to Starship Troopers.
There was a TV series called "Total recall". no I'm not thinking of the movie.
I never would have watched based on the name, but I happened to tune in at the begining of the episode. IT was about a android and human detectives. I watch the whole thing thinking they had turned the robot detective books into a tv series. It was on very late, and it was great sci-fi. and it was real sci-fi. It dealt with issue that would come up because of technology, not just 'another cop show' where one of the cops was a robot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
of all the pen names he used?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Clearly, this is a reference to Starship Troopers. I'm beginning to wonder if all of you read the same book I read.
Someone else wrote something to the effect that "the point of restricting the voting franchise was simply because it worked."
This completely glosses over the point he was trying to make.
The reason "it simply worked" was because Human history is littered with examples of power hungry leaders that put their own interests ahead of society, and their respective nations.
In Starship Troopers, the voting franchise was restricted to Veterans (Either Military veterans, or Veterans of Federal Service) because they had demonstrated a willingness, and an ability, to put the interests of society above that of their own well being. It was this demonstrated quality that entitled a person in ST to vote, and that's the reason "it simply worked."
That's the point of the whole story, not the overly simplified "soldiers are better people than everyone else." It is not the act of soldiering that qualifies a person... It is the virtue of assuming responsibily for the preservation of the culture, society, and ultimately, the species.
Unfortunately, the greatest similarity I saw between the book and the movie was the title. I thought it was a decent movie, but only if you didn't pretend it was Heinlein...
for one welcome our newly back from the dead overlord.
Heinlein as planetary dictator? I could think of people with worse ideas on how to run things.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
The only thing that stuck in my head about the book as memorable was that these two people were stuck in some sort of shielded spacecraft and hated each other and somehow wound up having a lot of sex. I was fifteen, what can I say. But it says something about the vitality of a series if the author manages to make sex tedious.
Do all prolific F/SF authors have a point where they just keep writing when they haven't anything more to say? Or rather, keep writing when they've got an axe to grind, but rather than griding the axe couched in some good story, they choose to have a flimsy story and bludgeon the reader over the head with the axe.
(Credit is due to the person on the dendarii.com list who came up with the axe analogy many years ago...)
As I recall, in To Sail, Maureen invests heavily in the company that invents the Sun Power Screens, because Lazarus tipped her off about it while visiting from the future.
:)
I apologize to anyone who hasn't read those books, as I'm sure this post looks like nonsense.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
Apples and Oranges.
I find it difficult to compare them when they are so different. For example, RAH deals a lot with hard science while PKD avoids it, yet both produce memorable, readable SF.
"Let There Be Light,"
It's a short, I have it in an anthology. Good old style RAH.
In addition to the other comments, practically everything we have of Kafka's writing was published after his death contrary to his express wishes. And I happen to like seeing the bootlegs and weird dregs of musicians. You know it's not meant for broad consumption, and that's okay.
This new/old novel may not be very good, but it puts Heinlein once again in the public eye. At least the SF public eye. I think the real intent is not to draw attention to this particular novel, but to draw attention to the already known body of work Heinlein did publish. I read the unedited version of Stranger in a Strange Land and I saw why it was edited.
Grumbles from the Grave gives an excellent insight into the life of the writer. And Tramp Royale his around the world tour book has material for some of his later works including Stranger. But again it puts Heinlein in the public eye and helps to build a lasting legacy.
Though there seems to be some religious debate in what direction for the Heinlein faithful to pray to Butler, Mo, his birthplace; Annapolis, MD where he went to the U.S. Naval Academy; or UC Santa Cruz Library where his papers are housed (I've seen them, interesting stuff).
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
The movie did a much better job getting accross the nature of their militaristic society. It's not just a screen adaptation of the book, at that it failed drastically. If you view it as an exaggerated parody, which it certainly is, it's actually quite insightful. The book, however, actually had characters with depth and feeling.
So, think of Starship Troopers as a movie about world government set during an epic interstellar war, and a book about people and interstellar conflict set upon a less exaggerated fascist government. A faithfull screen adaptation of the book would have been so difficult, I'm glad they didn't really try.
were the whole point of "Starship Troopers"!
Verhooven missed that, entirely, so he threw in a bunch of sadism (DI sticking a knife through a recruit's hand for _no_reason_), fascism (service == citizenship commercials) and sex (Dina Meyer) that were absent in the book, I guess to keep the teenagers interested?
Heinlein's Federal Service did NOT advertize. Instead they made gruesome examples of disabled vetrans to _discourage_ rash youth from enlistment. One percent of the enlistees completed basic training, most left voluntarily. All were free to resign at any time (other than during an actual engagement). Doesn't sound like any fascist society I've ever heard of.
Then Verhooven left out the powered armor. Idiot. Would you like to see more?
I gave the book to the SO's seventeen-year-old, the opening chapter grabbed him firmly by the imagination and he read it in about a day. (Only thing I ever saw him actually read, besides the D&D, MechWarrior, and CyberPunk manuals). I never quizzed hin on the H&MP so I don't know if he understood that. But I did learn how to get these young kids' attention: Mechs!
<rant>
It's not as if there _aren't_ fine RAH stories with plenty of sex and violence, and into which Mr. Verhooven could easily have patched a hottie like Dina and additional sex if he had wanted. How about "Glory Road"? Cripes, it has nude beaches! Or "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls"? Indeed, even something as intellectual as "Beyond This Horizon" has sex, socialism, human genetic engineering (to outrage the fascism theorists), a couple of gunfights (one of which could be amplified, just a tiny bit, into a _major_ shootout on the scale of "Invasion USA" if desired), and men who wore nail polish. Shit, how about "Friday"? Additional gratuitous sex could be added at random to many Heinlein stories, with no damage. Instead he picked about the least appropriate one to pump sex into, and used it to replace the central theme, which he obviously failed to understand (if he was _trying_ for a sarcastic parody, he failed miserably IMHO, and would have been much better off to just go with a straight adaptaion of the book)!
</rant>
"A hack-and-slash-hero-gets-the-bitch-flick"? Exactly. With "RAH's Starship Troopers" for a title, I expected better. I also expected powered armor.
Somebody up there remarked that he liked the book, and the movie, and the coincidence that they shared the same title and major characters' names. There, however, the resemblence ends.
I, OTOH, thought the movie was rather lame, and would have paid very little attention to it if it were not for that title. I'm outraged that someone did _that_ to ST.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
...CAt who walks through walls sucked BAD...
And that's the consensus here.
I don't remember it being half bad, at least not until very late into it when, like "The Number Of The Beast", it merged back into the Lazarus Long story. It was always going there, but the trip was quite enjoyable, with a lot of the flavor of "juveniles" like "Have Space Suit...", up until its destination was achieved.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Yah, but I think he was after his daughter or she was after him.
Oh, come on. Asimov did some sublime work, but also produced a fair amount of filler. Look at, for example, the anthology "Gold". You would think some of the stories were written to hit a 2000-word deadline.