What is the problem that Heinlein fans on these boards seem to have with Alexei Panshin? All I know about him is from one book I’ve read, Rite of Passage, which I found an enjoyable novel although pretty heavily influenced by Heinlein.
I used to be a great Heinlein fan, but I haven’t read anything of his for a while. So who is Panshin and what do Heinlein fans have against him?
Panshin wrote the first full-length critical study, Heinlein in Dimension way back in 1968. While he generally says good things about Heinlein’s writing, not all the book genuflected at Heinlein’s aura. Fans were outraged. Fans, then as now, are idiots.
However, in this case they were encouraged by Heinlein himself, who stupidly fought to suppress the book. Panshin gives the complete story - from his own viewpoint, of course - here.
The book in fact wound up winning that Hugo but Panshin was never forgiven. He later expanded his critical works to the entire field in SF in Dimension, but this received less acclaim. I haven’t heard his name mentioned in the field in years.
Given what’s been said about Heinlein in the years since, I can’t believe that anyone still remembers this book or cares.
I personally find Panshin’s work MUCH more interesting than Heinlein’s… and much better writing style. But, alas, not a huge output.
And now for the opposing view.
Bullshit. This is Panshin’s standard lie (anyone who disagrees with him MUST be a “Heinlein Idolator”) and I’m disappointed to see you parroting it.
I’d happy to discuss Heinlein’s works, pro and con. As much as I love his writings, I’ll be the first to admit that there are flaws and weaknessess in his writings, as in anyones. I don’t worship the Holy Text of Heinlein and I resent the implication that I do simply because I disapprove of Panshin’s admitted “hatchet job”
Panshin’s hatchet job A) attacks the man as much as the works, B) made stuff up out of whole cloth (he claimed that all Heinlein’s characters could be lumped into three categories despite the fact that they can’t, unless you’re going to say that most fictional characters ever written can also be lumped into those three categories.
On his website, he point blank states that the reason he wrote a his attack on Heinlein the man (as opposed to Heinlein’s writings) was because Heinlein refused to co-operate with Panshin, AFTER Panshin had (depending on who you believe) “conned” copies of private letters Heinlein had written to an old friend out of the friend’s widow.
(all quotes from this series of pages which are an attempted defense by Panshin):
Soooo…Heinlein was adversarial to a guy who’d been writing letters to all of Heinlein’s friends (including people who had no connection to Science Fiction/Publishing/writing, which would be semi-justified), BEFORE seeking out Heinlein’s cooperation. I would be too.
also
Panshin seems genuinely perplexed that somoene would object to having a stranger snoop through private corresponence even if there was nothing “incriminating” there. He’s oblivious to the concept of “it’s the principle of the thing”.
And regardless of the ethical/privacy issues involved, it doesn’t change the fact that Panshin, throughout the book can’t tell the difference between Heinlein the Person and Heinlein’s characters. He keeps insisting that all/many of Heinlein’s characters are just mouthpieces for Heinlein. :rolleyes: I wonder how he reconciles the wildly disparate views of, say…, Sam (from Starman Jones and the Captain of the Sisu (from Citizen of the Galaxy) and, oh…say…Jubal Hershaw.
Panshin’s later book The World Beyond the Hill was an excellent piece of scholarship and his Heinlein critiques in that book were thoughtful and defensible (even if I disagreed with some of his conclusions). Heinlein In Dimension, however, isn’t fit for toilet paper, despite the Hugos it won, IMO.
Finally, a website that started to do a critique of Panshin’s critique (the author hasn’t updated it in several years) is here
Fenris
You know, I went to my first Worldcon in 1969. I’ve been an active part of the sf community for over three decades. I’ve met hundreds of knowledgeable and congenial people in that time.
But when they slip into the phone booth and put on their fan personas they become idiots. This was true in 1969 and remains true today.
The OP asked why fans hate Panshin. I answered that question. They did not hate Panshin because his critical skills were marginal. They hate him because he had the temerity to criticize Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein’s stature among fans was incredibly god-like at the time. Both Knight and Blish had earlier received large amounts of rancor from within the community for having reviewing standards above the norm, but their main targets were marginal figures. Panshin’s was the first major bit of iconoclasty in the field. Naturally he suffered the usual fate.
Your other points are totally irrelevant. However, just to respond:
I am not, by and large, a fan of Panshin’s criticism. I also haven’t read this book in many years. But having looked through it quickly, I find any number of points that I agree with. I also find his major argument, that the quintessential Heinlein hero is the Competent Man, to be both true and useful. (For example, you can analogously look at Zelazny’s quintessential figure as the Extraordinary Man. Whether either of them represent the author’s persona - wishful or otherwise - is anyone’s guess.)
Second, you do not need permission from an author to write a critique of his works. It is a courtesy to write to the author, but it is also a commonplace to do preliminary research first. Heinlein was completely within his rights to refuse to cooperate; he was wrong to put pressure on the publisher. He was within his rights to badmouth Panshin in the community. This certainly influenced many minds when the book itself appeared. But that is not the same as a debate on the nuances of critical analysis.
I have not the slightest interest in debating the quality of Heinlein’s works, or of debating the quality of Panshin’s. Again, that is a totally irrelevant discussion. You cannot seriously suggest that the animosity that Panshin created within the fan community was solely because he was a bad critic. He was assaulted because he demythified Heinlein. As an insider who published in fanzines, his was seen a worse betrayal than the eventual academic critiques of Heinlein’s (and Asimov’s and others’) works, but I assure you that those books and their authors were hammered as well. Quality had nothing to do with it; subject did.
As for the link you posted: unless there is a link on that page I missed, he says nothing there at all that would support his disagreement with Panshin. He does say, however, that he has “largely steered clear of critical writings” and he wants to write this “in the absence of other Heinlein criticism…” Even if he had said anything, why in the world would I take what he had to say seriously?
You are both well-read in and have a prodigious memory for science fiction, not to mention comic books, and I would respect your opinions on Heinlein, even if I suspect I would disagree with them. But this is not a matter of critical opinion. It is one of history and sociology. You’re going to have to make your arguments on those terms.
You raise a number of good points and not having been to a Worldcon (or any con, for that matter), and never having interacted (outside of on-line) with any segment of the Fan community I’ll take your word on why the Fans dislike(d) Panshin: you and I have discussed enough SF that I certainly trust you on this matter. I will say, however, that in the time I’ve been online, (early/mid '80s) from SF BBSs to rec.arts.sf.written, the vast majority of anti-Panshin sentiment has come from A) Panshin’s lack of scholarship and lack of ability to distinguish between Heinlein and his characters and B)The fact that Panshin proclaims that anyone who disagrees with him is a “Heinlein Idolator” and makes rather an ass of himself when he does (you can probably find some of his < cough > exchanges in Google Groups).
And as much as I love the bulk of Heinlein’s writings, I suspect that I wouldn’t like the man very much. I have no illusions about the myth of Saint Robert, as expounded by Robinson and others…there are too many stories of Heinlein ending friendships or worse based on disagreements and what I’ve read of his treatement of Clarke (who I firmly disagree with on the issue in question, by the way) was shameful.
And I agree with you (and Panshin) that Heinlein was fascinated by competent characters the way that Sheckley, say, was fascinated with incompetence and Laumer was fascinated with average characters in situations way out of their league. That said, Panshin (IIRC…to be honest, it’s been years since I read the book all the way through, too! 
) took it a step further and said that every male Heinlein character was one of three characters: young, strong and willing to learn, middle aged and competent and old and extremely wise. (He put it less charitably).
I do disagree with you on one point: Heinlein was perfectly justified in trying to get the publisher to not publish. I think it was a mistake, given the notority Panshin got from it, While criticism of an author’s work does not require the author’s consent, an author is not a public figure in the same sense that a movie-star is and is entiltled to some expectation of privacy. Given that from Heinlein’s POV, Panshin had gotten his hands on personal corespondence via dubious methods…
Frankly, every book of Heinlein criticism I’ve ever read has fallen into one of two camps: “Heinlein and his politics suk” or “Heinlein: Gawd among mortals.” I’d love to see a book that discusses the man’s works without getting into the “Heinlein the person: Evil or Saint” debate.
One last thing: I apologize for the tone of the earlier post. This tends to be a bit of a hot-button issue for me and I definitely was out of line and far more hostile than I meant or intended to be. Sorry.
Fenris
Exapno: I generally agree with most of what you said, Heinlein fan that I am, but Fenris does raise an interesting point.
How legitimate is it for a critic to try to get his hands on private correspondence in order to write a book? I would think that reading Heinlein’s works would be enough.
I think it’s a matter of time. And copyright. Cecil addressed that in an early column of his. It’s probably onjline, but I haven’t got the energu to search for it now.
Last summer, I read an excellent biography about Karl Marx. I could not have been written, without the author reading Marx’s private correspondence to Engels.
So I think, yes, to write a biography, it’s quite legitimate to read and use private correspondence. However, the legal issues might be difficult, if the person that’s the subject is still alive, or recently deceased. Also, out of respect, I wouldn’t do it.
Then again, it depends on what your writing: “Heinlein - the succesful life as an author” or “The works by Robert A Heinlein.”
and my €0.02 - his male protagonist might not fit the mould, suggested by Panshin. But the female lead is always Ginny Heinlein.
The Cecil column doesn’t seem to be on-line, but it’s in The Straight Dope and Cecil sez (in brief) that if someone sends you a letter, you can treat the letter itself as your property (to sell or give away) but you cannot reprint the words without the author’s permission.
The problem for me isn’t that Heinlein’s characters fit the mold, it’s that almost every heroic character ever created fits the mold:
Take “Star Wars”, Luke, the young, heroic, but not wise type, Han the strong, worldy-smart type, and Obi-Wan, the “wise old man”.
Lord of the Rings: Frodo, Aragorn, Gandalf
The Belgariad: Garion, Silk, Belgarath
“Gilligan’s Island”: Gilligan, The Professor and Skipper 
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Ok: which one is Ginny in Farnham’s Freehold? The nice, but bland daughter? The nice but bland daughter’s nice but bland friend? Or the alcoholic wife? 
(I’m teasing here: I’ll agree that many of Heinlein’s better female characters seem patterned on Ginny. And based on reports from people who met and knew Ginny, Heinlein toned stuff down about her!!!)
Fenris
I’m usually pretty confident when getting into fights about sf, because plain and simple I know more about the field than you do. Or you, or you, or you, or you.
Um, but maybe not you, Fenris. And especially not about Heinlein. So I’m happy that we’re going to make nice.
I’m totally ignorant about what fans argue about on Usenet or its predecessors and successors, and to be honest I stopped thinking about Panshin maybe 20 years ago along with what I thought was the rest of the world. It never occurred to me that his first book was still an active object of derision.
As for what he says online – well, authors are often their own worst enemies. You can get disappointed real fast by meeting an author you admire – and I’m sure that’s true of Heinlein as well. He was beloved by many of his peers – and the rest knew enough to keep their mouths shut.
Just a couple of points further. John Clute, in the Encyclopedia of SF, gives praise to HinD.
Clute may have a bizarre vocabulary, but he’s read everything and knows his criticism. I’d trust his opinion over most.
The section in HinD that deals with the Heinlein Individual says this:
Maybe he says nasty innuendo elsewhere, but, man, this is unexceptional stuff, and hard to disagree with in Heinlein’s case. Nowhere in the rest of that section does he talk about Heinlein the person either.
One mea culpa: Panshin did not win a Hugo for this book. He won for Best Fan Writer in 1967, the first year that award was given out. Presumably he won for excerpts appearing in fanzines, although I can’t confirm this. He was nominated for Best Fan Writer in 1968 but withdrew his name.
In general, biographers and critics of the biography is destiny camp have a right to seek out correspondence pertaining to their subject. The rights issue is always complicated - J. D. Salinger, IIRC, got a publisher to stop a book on him by refusing to allow any of his letters quoted. But legitimately obtaining correspondence for background purposes is so commonplace that it doesn’t need to be commented on. “Legitimate” is the issue. I wouldn’t excuse an author for stealing personal letters, but I don’t think that’s the case here. And I think it would be hard to make a case in court that authors are not public figures.
And you know what? The book stops in 1967, with the The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the last novel Heinlein wrote before he went off the rails. I wonder if Panshin would be more reviled if the book has come out later with more nasty things about more books, or whether everybody would have just nodded in agreement.
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Ditto. And I really do apologize for the tone of the first post, though.
That said, I’m happy to talk about some of the issues raised.
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With me, it’s only because A) he still shows up from time to time on the Usenet and he annoys me and B) I hate that stupid “Heinlein can only write three characters” argument that (IIRC) Panshin created and that still does crop up like a bad case of athlete’s foot.
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Tell me about it. S.M. Sterling was a major asshole and a troll on rec.arts.sf.written (he point blank said that people who commit book-piracy should be raped and then killed, and he argued the position over several dozen posts) but from people who know him personally or from smaller forums think the world of him (and in fairness, now that Stirling has discovered the joys of the “Kill Filter”, he’s mellowed considerably and is a much more enjoyable participant!).
My one meeting with Larry Niven, he was suffering from Colorado’s high altitude (which can make you pretty sick if you’re not used to it and it’s worse if you get dehydrated) and was a major jackass and it’s still, all these years later, hard for me to read his stuff without thinking about that.
Just a couple of points further. John Clute, in the Encyclopedia of SF, gives praise to HinD.
Clute may have a bizarre vocabulary, but he’s read everything and knows his criticism. I’d trust his opinion over most.
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I don’t know that I agree regarding Clute. He knows his stuff, and he’s so much more well read than I am that it’s scary but he has some utterly insane positions and beliefs too and they often color his otherwise encyclopiac knowledge. Reading Clute is like (to me) reading modern James Hogan. He seems so rational most of the time but every now and again he’ll start babbling about how Velikofsky was right all along and evil scientific cabals are covering it up!!! Clute (along with Aldiss and Pringle) have this notion that Gernsback “stole” Science Fiction and polluted the thentofore pristine bodily fluids of SF with Gernsback’s crass tastes…and somehow made the entire world go along with him (presumably Gernsback used orbital mind-control lasers to do so. :rolleyes: ), and Clute, I believe has a strong dislike for “American” science fiction (the “brave new frontiers”/“boundless optimism about the future” sort of tone.) If that’s the case, of course he’s gonna like HiD.
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I’ll have to dig out my copy. Certainly the stuff you quoted is harmless, but I’d swear that somewhere around Starship Troopers (maybe earlier, around Double Star) Panshin really started the “This character says such-and-such, so Heinlein must believe it too” routine. The best rebuttal to that is that for years everyone knew that Heinlein was a Libertarian 'cause of Moon is a Harsh Misteress and everyone knows that Professor De La Paz is just a mouthpiece for Heinlein, right? Then Schulman published his '73 interview with Heinlein or The Cat Who Walked Through Walls (whichever came out first)came out and Cat contains a pretty stinging refutation of the proto-Libertarian society favored by De La Paz (in the Golden Rule Habitat scene and on the Moon) and despite some pretty desperate attempts by Schulman, Heinlein didn’t heap praise on Libertarianism in the interview. I just don’t buy the “The characters are the mouthpiece of the author” theory with Heinlein. L. Neil Smith? Yes. Ursula K. LeGuin (in her “Bad Ursula” mode)? Yes. Heinlein? Not so much.
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Salinger is exactly the case I was thinking of, and your IIRC matches mine.
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My understanding of the Non-Panshin side of it (and I’m only going by what I’ve heard: I’ve never seen Panshin’s letter to her) was that Panshin’s letter to What’shisname (Heinlein’s pal)'s widow strongly implied (or out and out said) that Panshin was writing an authorized book about Heinlein’s life. Which would contain one deception (Heinlein didn’t authorize it) and one out and out lie (it wasn’t a biography). Allegedly, whatshisname’s widow, when she found out that Heinlein didn’t approve of the book and didn’t want his letters shared, was pretty upset.
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I dunno. There’s some test about “seeking out the public spotlight” that I recall from a National Enquirer case from the '80s. It could be argued that Heinlein didn’t seek the spotlight and therefore should be entitled to his privacy. Certainly Heinlein resisted every attempt, from Panshin-esqe hatchet-jobs to gushingly adoring fans, to have a biography written, even one authorized and vetted by him.
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I dunno about that either. Apparently in one of Panshin’s later essays, Panshin goes and shreds Time Enough for Love on the basis of a few pages of promo material…because the book hadn’t been released yet! I’ll try to dig up the relevant book and/or a cite. I just saw the reference to this earlier today, dammit.
A-ha!
From here
In any case, not all of Late Heinlein was dreadful (though granted, some it was: Number of the Beast and The Cat Who Walked Through Walls are both pretty bad, IMO). Brian Aldiss (no Heinlein Idolator) has some nice things to say about Friday in The < Some Number> Year Spree and I think (for what it’s worth) that much of *Time Enough for Love was excellent, I loved Job and chunks of To Sail Beyond the Sunset were wonderful (the book as a whole is not, but parts of it are magnificent.)
Fenris
How may of you all out there have read Spider Robinson’s essay “RAH, RAH, R.A.H” ? It goes into a detailed description of a lot of the criticism leveled at Heinlein and his writing, especially by Panshin, and mounts a considerable defense. Robinson has enormous respect and liking for Heinlein’s work, and the man himself. But he states that he doesn’t worship the man , and has serious disagreements with some of his beliefs and opinions. Read the essay and Robinson’s quote from what Phillip K. Dick had to say about Heinlein, and you’ll get an idea of what he was like.
I tend to want to agree with Robinson’s opinions of Heinlein, and like Robinson, he was the first sci-fi author I read much of, back when I was in sixth grade. So you can take my admiration of Heinlein with a considerable grain of salt. But I don’t like all his books or characters(especially most everybody in Farnham’s Freehold). Nobody’s perfect though, and every writer has some clunkers.
Just to respond to the OP, in the manner in which it was asked. I’m a longterm SF fan and, yes, a Heinlein fan as well. I started reading in the 1950s and can remember with excitement when the paperback edition of Glory Road hit the supermarket book rack in our small town.
Somewhere in the early 1970s I discovered that someone had written a book about Heinlein, and was excited enough to order it in hardback, at a time when it was a drain on my budget. At that time, people just weren’t writing books about SF authors.
And when I read Panshin’s book, I was angry and disappointed. I had been hoping for insight, and what I got was deconstructionist psychobabble. His inability to distinguish the work from the creator and his laughable “3-stage Heinlein character” were a major disappointment.
I’m not a Heinlein fanatic. As others have pointed out, he has his warts here and there (“Her nipples went spang!” comes to mind) but he put out a helluva lot of great, sensawunda copy over a lot of years and had a lot of skill in making people think as well.
Near as I can figure, Panshin still owes me $24.95 (or whatever it was. I remember it was a small press of some sort and fairly expensive at the time.)
Baker
The best thing I can say about both Farnham’s Freehold and “Rah! Rah! R.A.H!” is that both author’s hearts were in the right place. Heinlein wrote a “the shoe’s on the other foot” novel and it just didn’t work…but (IMO) he meant well.
Robinson, as much as I agree with much of what he says, A) Overstates stuff in that article, B) Doesn’t cite his sources (where exactly was the “Juan Rico and his buddies wear ear-rings, they must be gay” article?) C) is just plain wrong on a couple of points. For all the nice things that Heinlein did do (his gift of a bunch story ideas to Sturgeon comes right to mind), he was also apparently a pretty…um…he apparently didn’t have any tolerance for debate. Clarke (who I do not like much as an author (with a few exceptions) or as a mouthpiece for most of his stated opinions) was apparently friends with Heinlein until they got into a (apparently LOUD) public disagreement about S.D.I.
Regardless of your opinion of S.D.I. , it’s a topic over which reasonable people can disagree, it’s not like Clarke was advocating orphan-beatings or something, but apparently Heinlein ended their friendship over the fact that Clarke felt that he had a right to express his opinion about S.D.I. despite the fact that he wasn’t an American (Heinlein felt it was none of his business: I share Heinlein’s feelings, btw, but at the same time, I can rationally realize that, despite my feelings, it’s a load of dingo’s kidneys).
And there’s enough other stories of a similar nature (there was another with Asimov that comes to mind), so it wasn’t just an isolated incident.
Robinson’s article, for all that he meant well, does make him sound like a (God help me) “Heinlein Idolator”. He wrote a much more…restrained article that was reprinted in Requiem that said much the same things as “Rah! Rah! R.A.H!” but without the hyperbole.
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In two more sentences, I doubt I’ll be able to say the same with any street crediblity.
I can’t believe I remember this.
In point of fact, her nipples went spung! in Number of the Beast.
I’m so ashamed. Does the fact that I recently reread it diminish my shame?
Fenris
It’s hard to hold a rational conversation about Heinlein. He is most certainly a major, if not the major, writer in modern sf. He was a marvel as a popular fiction writer, knowing his times and his audience and what buttons to push to make them want to continue reading.
I read everything he wrote in the first quarter century of his career. But I did that a long time ago. I stopped being able to read him sometime in the 70s. I don’t know if I could reread much of his work today. I recently reread The Door Into Summer because I’m putting together a course on time travel novels. The prose was smooth and readable and the 50s attitudes are an appalling example of everything that was wrong with 50s sf. The book is an engineer’s wet dream, but the characters are skin-crawlingly wrong.
As I said in another thread, I loved Stranger so much that as an 18-year-old college freshman I even pushed the book on a professor. Then I turned 19. Heinlein’s name came up even on The Greatest Books of All Time thread. That’s… that’s just a crime. It’s sad, it’s laughable, it makes me want to pull out what little is left of my hair. I guess I should be glad that science fiction has such an enormous impact on people’s lives, but we all have to turn 19 at some point.
Science fiction did. Heinlein did not. I think it is possible for serious adults to seriously discuss Heinlein, but you cannot do so in any conventional literary sense.
However, if you want to argue Heinlein and Panshin, then let’s start with what appears to be the core of the indictment against him: name the major male characters in Heinlein’s pre-1967 adult fiction that do not correspond to one of Panshin’s three stages in the life model.
[Oh my. I just found a web site that insists that Spider is Paul Robinson’s real first name. Fans.]
I disagree about Heinlein not being literary, unless by literary you mean “has verbal diarrhea”, “about a middle-aged professor who has a mid-life crisis and an affair*”. and “wouldn’t know a coherent plot or how to tell an entertaining story if the muse of literature bit him on the ass” :D. If Hemmingway can be considered “literary”, so can Heinlein.
One last point about true literary merit: Most of the books Heinlein published while he was alive (AFIK) are still in print. A friend of mine who’s a librarian says that Heinlein isn’t checked out as often as, say, Orson Scott Card by the teenage set, but he’s still one of the most popular writers. I’m not saying that popularity has a 1:1 ratio to quality (or 'Three’s Company" would be right up there with Shakespear), but the fact that books written 50 years ago are still popular, in print, being read and being debated can’t be completely dismissed as meritless. If art is what reaches people. Heinlein must have been doing something right!
But this gets us into a “What does “literary” mean, anyway?”, “Who decides?” and "Who cares if someone’s “literary anyway, as long as they’re good” series of discussions that’ll come down to “Is so”/“Is not” and I don’t know that I care that much. Do you? I’m willing to agree to disagree on this point if you are!
:: offers flag of truce and a laurel…and hearty handshake ::
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First, let’s define the three stages: I can’t find Panshin’s exact words, but this is close (and I’ll list a character that does match what he wants)
On the other hand, Tom, in Time for the Stars does NOT. He’s unhappy much of the time, he’s a seething cauldron of resentment, and the bulk of the book is him trying to heal himself from some fairly major emotional problems (I’ve never understood how it got past Alice Dagleish…it’s a dark book). Clark, from Podkayne doesn’t fit this mold either (he’s neither well-adjusted or naive). Caroline from Tunnel in the Sky fits this description far better than Rod Walker (who’s given to moodiness, pouting, brooding, fits of anger) does.
Refuting that, we’ve got A) The captain of the Sisu (from Citizen of the Galaxy) He’s competent, but henpecked and not all that bright (he’s got nearly as much screen time as Balsim and is a major player for 1/3d of the book, and Thorby thinks of him as a father figure, so…). We also have Mr. Kiku from The Star Beast. A nice guy but hopelessly ordinary who’s just trying to muddle through. In additon, we’ve got The Great Lorenzo from Double Star who (depending on how old you think he is) doesn’t fit into this category or the next one. The father from Farmer in the Sky. Roger Stone? He’s the ordinary one in the family and he throws tantrums to get his way. Hell, whatshisname…Dan? from Door into Summer: waaaay naive. Can you imagine Belle pulling the sort of con that she pulled on whatshisname with Sam? Or Richard from The Cat Who Walked through Walls? Or Hugh Farnham? Or Oscar Gordon?
James Bond quite nicely fits this category, as does Aragorn, Retief, Han Solo, the Bruce Willis character from the “Die Hard” movies, and so on. I would be amiss not to note that Mr. Panshin’s own Anthony Villiers fits this category, IIRC (it’s been decades since I read 'em).
And what do we do with characters like the Deacon from Tunnel in the Sky: the teacher who marries Rod’s sister? His age is stated (he’s under 40, but I don’t remember exactly), he’s the central figure who dominates the main character’s thinking as thoroughly as Mr. Dubios does Juan Rico’s (and with a proportionate amout of screen time). but he’s Heinlein’s wise old man. But at least 20-some years too young
Finally we’ve got the old man who knows how the world works, and why. AKA: worldy AND wise. The major examples of this is Jubal Hershaw and Mr. Dubois (from Starship Troopers).
Refuting this, we’ve got Lazarus Long (who’s normally assumed to be the pristine example of the archtype…but Lazarus isn’t wise. At all. He’s an arrested adolescent. He’ll lie when the truth will do, for the fun of it, even if it increases his risk, he’ll do stupid things on a whim (go fight in WW1 for example), etc)…but that’s post '67. Pre '67, we’ve got the character from “The Man Who Travelled in Elephants” who is a nice, ordinary guy, but certainly possessed of no special wisdom or worldliness. Professor De La Paz is another oft-cited one, but he’s as naive about things as a babe in the woods. Note that the Professor’s neo-libertarian ideas look like they won’t hold up to human nature by the end of the book (and Heinlein savaged 'em in the Schulman interview as well as in The Cat Who Walks through Walls) I know there’s others but I can’t think of 'em off the top of my head.
He also claimed that all Heinlein’s females were of one type (he didn’t use the phrase “hyper-sexed Wonder Woman” but that’s what he meant)…oh…and he allowed an exception for “The Heinlein Matron”, who’s the fat, fussy lady who’s the type who demands to be let out of the spaceship (halfway to the moon) because a waiter was rude to her. Except that there’s Peewee, Podkayne, the villianess from “Gulf”, the woman from “Jerry is a Man”, the wife in “Unpleasant Profession”, and so on.
I could go on and on, but hopefully this is enough to get started.
Fenris
*rec.arts.sf.written in-joke. If you don’t get it, don’t worry.
PS: I never knew what Spider’s real first name was!
Hijack.
Fenris: Is there a link for that Schulman interview on the web that you know of?
I’ve always assumed that Heinlein wasa libertarian of a sort ( i.e. not necessarily a *Libertarian libertarian, but strongly inclined in that general direction ). It seems to suffuse so much of his writing, up to a point. And I’d thought I remembered Clute referring to him in that vein before, as well.
But admittedly, I’ve never read an interview with the man ( I only weakly and intermittently followed the community or fanzine/magazine scene - I tended to let subscriptions lapse because they piled up unread ). Now I’m curious.
It’s available for sale, either in an e-book format here, or in a paper edition here: If someone’s posted it somewhere, they’ve done it without Schulman’s permission.
It’s fascinating and frustrating at the same time. On one hand, it’s the most direct discussion of Heinlein’s actual POV (as opposed to his characters) I’ve ever read. It clearly put to rest the idiotic canard that Heinlein’s characters are all mouthpieces for Heinlein. In the interview, Schulman spends pages trying to get Heinlein to admit that Heinlein that Heinlein is a “Anarcho-Capitalist” (which seems to be more-or-less interchangible with Libertarian…I don’t think the name had been fully adopted yet …but given that Schulman references books by Harry Browne when he’s discussing "anarcho-capitalists, there’s no doubt who and what he means.)
Heinlein point blank says that he puts “anarcho-capitalists” into exactly the same boat as Karl Marx: “I’m inclined to evaluate those things about private protection agencies and how protection could simply be provided by the marketplaceabout equal to Karl Marx’s notion that after perfected socialism the state would wither away.” (note that Professor De La Paz, who’s one of the four characters regularly accused of being Heinlein’s mouthpiece* was a “rational anarchist” which is pretty damned close to a libertarian.)
Later Heinlein says that he’d like a Libertarian government (a la Ayn Rand) that has police, a military and courts and not much else, but it’s clear he’s only indicating his preference.
The frustrating part is that Schulman talked to Heinlein for three and a half hours and got it all on tape but he spends far too much time talking about everything but Heinlein’s books. It’s nice to see Heinlein talking politics, current events, etc. but I’d have enjoyed a lot more “What are your favorites of your books”, “How did < such and such > come to be written?” type questions too. (And there are some of them…but somehow Schulman keeps bringing the conversation back to Libertarianism.)
One last aside: Schulman asks Heinlein if any characters are mouthpieces for Heinlein, who responds that they all are. Sometimes they’re devil’s advocates. sometimes they’re the author playing with an idea that he’ll reject, but since the author writes all the words…
Fenris
*The other three are Lazarus Long, Mr Dubois and Jubal Hershaw. But given that they all have wildly opposing viewpoints and politics…hell, the only thing the four characters have in common is that they’re male, over 40, and like to pontificate. And given that, in less than 5 years, I’ll become a Heinlein mouthpiece! :eek:
Thanks Fenris.
I guess I’ll plunk down some change for it ;).