(urth) [EXTERNAL] Re: Heinlein's Universe and The Long Sun

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes]

I have a better question.

Have *you* read *Starship Troopers*? Because you're making a false
statement about it. "Only people who have served in the military can vote"
- thanks for playing; come again. What is true is that those who have
performed *some sort of government service* can vote. What is also true is
that *most *of this is *not* military service - for example, there's the
guy who goes to work in an observatory on Pluto. The idea here is that the
vote has to be earned by showing that you are willing to serve the people
whom your vote will help govern.

*Farnham's Freehold* is a failed novel. His goal was to show that atomic
war would completely wipe out the kind of civilization we appreciate. As a
side issue, he also wanted to show that race prejudice is bad by flipping
it over and putting whites in the slave class. He screwed up by adding the
cannibalism thing, making the whole book so flawed that it can't serve its
intended purposes.

*Stranger*? Jubal doesn't know what he's talking about there. It is
strongly implied that Mike *does* have physical love with males as well as
females. And there's strong evidence that Heinlein at least experimented
with another man when he was young.

You're reading through your prejudices; the received wisdom is that
Heinlein was a fascist crank, and you're seeing what you expect to see.

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

*Maka ki ecela tehani yanke lo!*
*--*Tȟašúŋke Witkó


On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 8:04 AM Norwood, Frederick Hudson <
NORWOODR at mail.etsu.edu> wrote:

> Have you read Starship Troopers? Only people who have served in the
> military can vote. (Heinlein claims that, in this world, it has been proved
> mathematically that this is the best government.
>
> I love Starship Troopers.  It’s one of my favorite books. But it does
> glorify the military and, as Heinlein got older, his politics got ever more
> conservative. In Farnham’s Freehold the nice seeming Black people turn out
> to  be cannibals. One area where he did become more liberal was
> homosexuality. In Stranger in a Strange Land Jubal Harshaw expressed the
> view that Mike could never have sex with another man. By Time Enough for
> Love, gay sex is just fine. The story is that Theodore Sturgeon, who
> Heinlein loved and admired, took Heinlein aside and explained to him the
> facts of life.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Rick
>
>
>
> *From:* Urth [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] *On Behalf Of *Dan'l
> Danehy-Oakes
> *Sent:* Tuesday, January 28, 2020 10:32 AM
> *To:* The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
> *Subject:* Re: (urth) [EXTERNAL] Re: Heinlein's Universe and The Long Sun
>
>
>
> I think it is safe to say that Heinlein *never *"loved" or advocated a
> military dictatorship.
>
>
>
> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
>
>
>
> *Maka ki ecela tehani yanke lo!*
>
> *--*Tȟašúŋke Witkó
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 4:57 AM Norwood, Frederick Hudson <
> NORWOODR at mail.etsu.edu> wrote:
>
> Other Heinlein parallels/satires in The Land Across: Grafton is Heinlein’s
> classic “man who learns better” turned inside out. What Grafton learns is
> what Heinlein “learned” in his long career. Heinlein, like Grafton, starts
> out as a liberal, (who like Heinlein, loves travel) and “learns” to love a
> military dictatorship, with a mysterious Hitler-like dictator serving as
> Heinlein’s “grand old man”.
>
> Rick Norwood
>
>
>
> *From:* Urth [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] *On Behalf Of *Stephen
> Hoy
> *Sent:* Monday, January 27, 2020 4:47 PM
> *To:* The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
> *Subject:* Re: (urth) [EXTERNAL] Re: Heinlein's Universe and The Long Sun
>
>
>
> Appreciating the Heinlein connections noted by Gem and Gerry; a reminder
> that RAH is still relevant in the 21st century, as Christopher Nuttall
> might put it.
>
>
>
> The interesting bit about the conveyor belt roads of Heinlein's The Roads
> Must Roll is that it has a precedent, and a much better fit with TLA, in
> H.G.Wells' When the Sleeper Awakens (1899). Wells' title recalls a
> noticeable sentence in TLA Chapter One "Now it seems to me that I must have
> been asleep a long time before I got into bed" followed by several
> "awakenings" throughout TLA.
>
>
>
> Note that Wells and Wolfe each relate the struggle of a potential ruler of
> a dystopian society who gets caught up in a struggle between opposing
> factions. I don't think the parallels go much beyond this. It's a lot like
> Wolfe's choice of Baskin-Robbins as an allusion to Andromeda (Messier-31
> Flavors) in An Evil Guest, or the allusion to Boris Badenov in a
> conversation at a cafe in TLA, "I don't trust that conductor. Why is he so
> short?" to draw attention to Papa Zenon's lack of stature.
>
>
>
> Aramini's Black-Red-White trichotomy helps us think about a lot of TLA's
> mysteries, although I suspect there is a lot of cloning going on along with
> the imprinting of personalities. Imprinting is found in Home Fires, TLA, A
> Borrowed Man. There's cloning/imprinting of some sort in A Borrowed Man,
> and I think something similar is happening in The Land Across.
>
>
>
> - Stephen
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 27, 2020 at 10:21 AM Norwood, Frederick Hudson <
> NORWOODR at mail.etsu.edu> wrote:
>
> Another Wolfe novel, The Land Across, is, I think strongly influenced by
> Heinlein, and essentially a satire of Heinlein. This is just my opinion,
> I’ve never heard anyone else say this. But the Rolling Roads early in the
> novel, which play no other part in the plot, I take as a hint.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Rick
>
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