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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.
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?
Rich
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.
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.
"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.
IIIRC, the standard term is presently 70 years after the author's death, so more than 50 years to go. And thats assuming that the US govt (proudly sponsored by Disney) haven't pushed for further extensions to prevent Mickey Mouse entering the public domain.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Does this satisfy the definition of ironic?
Work it out yourself.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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!
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. :-)
If so, who owns the copyright?
shh, your wake up SCO.
Opinions are free, they're just not easy.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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".
...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!
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.
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
70 years after death. Like I said.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh please. He got his soon-to-be-wife pregnant so he could claim a sole-provider exemption from the draft during Vietnam. When you look up chickenhawk, Cheney is the example picture. He's quite willing to send someone else's son into battle, but when his ass was on the line he chickened out. Not to mention that we know how the SecDef puts his life on the line all of the time (cf Robert McNamara).
A partial list of Vietnam-eligible Bush advisers who were granted deferments:
In all fairness, I will point out that William Jefferson Clinton was also a draft dodger. Of course, it was a bad thing when he did it, but only understandable when a Republican did it.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
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.
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.
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'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 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.
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.
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)
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.
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)
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.