Heinlein question -- "Gulf" & "Friday" (open spoilers)

[BrainGlutton]

In Robert A. Heinlein's "Gulf" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_%28Heinlein%29) (1949), Hartley M. "Kettle Belly" Baldwin is the leader of an unnamed secret organization which is a sort of blend of the Howard Families and Mensa. Their goal is to create a superintelligent underground aristocracy by recruiting highly gifted persons and breeding within the group.

In Friday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_%28novel%29) (1982), Kettle Belly reappears as the head of Friday's unnamed espionage agency (so secretive that not even Friday knows whether it serves a government, or a corporation, or something else, let alone which one). When he dies, he leaves Friday an amount of money sufficient to buy her passage to a human colony world anywhere in known space. But his will stipulates she must not go to one particular planet -- Olympia, I think its name was -- and when Friday asks the lawyer about that planet, he says, "That's where all those self-styled supermen went." No further details are given.

So -- is Kettle Belly's espionage agency the thing into which his supergenius cult has evolved over the the passage of decades? Or an arm of it? Or, has he broken with that organization, and did its remaining members -- "self-styled supermen" -- colonize Olympia?

[Chronos]

Assuming there's a connection, it sounds to me like Kettle Belly regards his earlier activities as a mistake, and is now trying to distance himself from them.

Personally, I've always wondered if there was any connection between Friday's organization and the one in The Puppet Masters. They certainly have the same feel to them.

Is Gulf any good? I don't think I've heard much about that one.

[silenus]

I think it's pretty typical of the Heinlein of that period. Which means pretty good. Nothing ground-breaking, but a good story. Friday is better.

[BrainGlutton]

Is Gulf any good? I don't think I've heard much about that one.

I've seen it in only one collection: Assignment in Eternity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignment_in_Eternity)

[Tom Scud]

Is Gulf any good? I don't think I've heard much about that one.

I believe that's one of those stories that causes nerdrage in linguists, but if you're ready to overlook that, people who've read it seem to like it.

[cjepson]

I've seen it in only one collection: Assignment in Eternity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignment_in_Eternity)

I really like that collection, especially "Gulf" and "Lost Legacy". They're a bit different from the hard-science, space-fiction stuff that one often thinks of in connection with Heinlein. It was the space-fiction that first turned me into a Heinlein junkie when I was an adolescent, but it was interesting to discover "atypical" Heinlein, like this and the stuff in 6 x H (also called The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag).

[BrainGlutton]

I believe that's one of those stories that causes nerdrage in linguists, but if you're ready to overlook that, people who've read it seem to like it.

IIRC, the members of the genius organization can communicate faster and even think faster than anyone else, by using a constructed language designed to pack content into every phoneme, so that it might take just a few syllables to express what takes several sentences in English.

I don't know if that's actually possible.

[Chronos]

Oh, wait, I have read that one. I was thinking novels, not novellas. I do remember being baffled by the claim that all thinking is done in language, since I think nonlinguistically on a regular basis. And the absurdity of the constructed language is well-illustrated in the story, when the protagonist (before he learns the language) tries to relay what he heard someone say, but the listener can't make any sense of it, because of course he's missing some of the subtle nuances: A noisy or lossy communication channel is far from unheard-of, so you'd think they'd construct their language to be able to withstand that, like real languages (mostly) do.

[Skald the Rhymer]

I've always taken it that Baldwin's agency was distinct from and philosophically opposed to the Olympia colony. Why else would he forbid Friday from going there?

What I REALLY want to know is how Friday turned Aryan on the paperback book covers. :)

[Irishman]

Same way David Gerrold's protagonist in The War Against the Chtorr series turned from a Black mixed-race to a white on the cover of his books.

[BrainGlutton]

Same way David Gerrold's protagonist in The War Against the Chtorr series turned from a Black mixed-race to a white on the cover of his books.

Same way the Irish became white! (http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1287690379&sr=8-1) ;)