In the Dollhouse thread, we started a discussion of the Heinlein influences in Firefly. Rather than continue to hijack that thread, I thought I’d start a new one.
Basically, the idea is that Heinlein’s work had a large influence on the writing of Firefly, and that the show contains many Heinleinesque characters and themes.
Tim Minear, one of the creative forces behind Firefly, is a big Heinlein fan. So much so that he has penned a screenplay for “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. So it’s not surprising that Heinlein would have worked his way into Firefly’s writing.
(Btw, googling this, I just found that Minear has put the script [url=http://socalbrowncoats.com/?p=28]online[/ur]).
Let’s look at the similarities:
A continuing theme in Heinlein’s universe was the notion that even in the space age, far-away colonies would resemble the old western frontier. Tractors break down and need gas - horses can breed and replenish themselves. Advanced technology needs an advanced society to maintain it, and travel between planets is expensive. So, you get stories like Heinlein’s “Tunnel in the Sky”, where the colonists are equipped with Conestoga wagons (suitably upgraded with titanium frames and such), pulled by mules.
Heinlein’s female characters were typically smart, beautiful, and often more competent than the men. Oversexed, yet practical to a fault. River Tam could be Friday.
Heinlein’s male characters were world-weary, sometimes battle scarred, and usually libertarian in outlook. Mal would fit right into a Heinlein novel.
Open weaponry. Heinlein’s characters often wore sidearms, even in a technological culture. Just as the characters in Firefly do.
The wise old man. Heinlein’s books often had a character or two who defied appearances and turned out to be someone with a very deep past, and who knew a lot of things about just about everything. Shepherd Book could easily pass for one of those Heinlein archetypes.
The spaceship. Many Heinlein stories centered around small spaceships operated by a crew of traders, or a family (The Rolling Stones, for example).
The Dialog. Heinlein had characters on the more backwards planets that spoke in simple dialects similar to the western dialect the spoken by Mal and his crew.
Basically, when I first saw Firefly, it immediately struck me as familiar because it felt so much like something Heinlein would have written. Did anyone else come away with the same impression? Any other parallels we can draw? Any similarities between the specific episodes and anything Heinlein wrote?
While it didn’t jump right out at me, I agree with everything you’ve said. I did particularly pick up on the frontier world using old western tech angle.
One of the most common objections to Firefly I’ve seen is the “Old West” flavor of a spacefaring society.
Was Joss Whedon and Tim Minear trying to tell us that the “rural, frontier colonists” of said spacefaring society would literally devolve to an American Western culture?
Or was that merely the theme and trappings they (Whedon & Minear) latched onto to show a largely American audience how such rural, frontier colonists might be culturally, at least as compared to the “civilised” Alliance core-worlds, in their (strongly) Heinlein-influenced tale?
I don’t think that there is much question of Heinlein’s influence in “Firefly.” The first time I watched “Firefly” I immediately though the same thing. When I heard about Tim Minnear’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” screenplay, I was not at all surprised. But I was a little surprised when I looked at the Serenity Visual Companion books and found that there is officially a moon or planet (I forget which) in the 'Verse named “Heinlein.” When I saw that I actually managed to love “Firefly” even more than I already, and I didn’t think that was possible.
Everything that you say is true. But I think that “Firefly” took a lot of ideas from Heinlein’s work and used them to make something very different. “Firefly” has some tribute to classic sci fi, Heinlein included, but Joss Whedon’s particular strengths and weaknesses make “Firefly” very much its own thing.
I think Heinlein actually handled exposition better than Whedon ever does, but all of Joss Whedon’s characters ring more true than Heinlein’s characters do. The flip side of this is that Heinlein’s work is not particularly visual or visceral. That may be why no good visual media has been made from his work. While he handles emotion reasonably well, his books take place entirely in the reader’s mind. Even when Heinlein writes from the first person, the world the character is in is made up of sights and sounds.
Joss’ work on the other hand is very visual and very visceral. We feel the characters and the characters create a distinct impression of the world for us. Joss’ worlds are made up of the feelings of his characters. For Joss the characters are the story and plot is almost secondary.
Heinlein was the opposite. Plot and ideas were the foundation of his work and he build his characters to fit. This approach made Heinlein a master of the mechanics of storytelling. But his characters were weaker. I think Heinlein built his characters upon common notions of how people are and then made what ever changes were necessary to make the story work.
Watching “Dollhouse” on Friday night, I was struck by all of the exposition that he put in, much of which was not really necessary. I think he could have afforded to let more of the world-building come out of the story, which is something that Heinlein did masterfully. All of Joss’ series had the same flaw at the beginning, including “Firefly.” All of his work takes some time to gel. Firefly didn’t really grab me until the end of “The Train Job.” Neither “Buffy” nor “Angel” really came together until their second season. Heinlein was so good at fabricating stories that as a reader I was always pulled in right away. I think Joss needs a zombie Heinlein on his writing team. Exposition would go much more smoothly.
I guess the largest similarity between the two works is the Libertarian bent that both have. Heinlein and Whedon both seem ambivalent about government and authority. But I need more time to think about their relative opinions before taking a swing at commenting on that.
So did I. It made me think of the opening of the juvenile Tunnel in the Sjy, which open with what seem to essentially be cowboys and herds of cattle being transported to colonized worlds, and Heinlein explaining exactly why that made sense. The same idea showed up in Fartmer in the Sky and Time Enough for Love. Although the idea of “Space as Western Frontier” (with settlements acting a lot like cattle towns of the Old West) waas a common meme in the 30s and 40s and into the 50s, Firefly definitely recalled Heinlein more than others.
That said, the characters don’t feel as Heinleinian as they do to the OP. The influence is there, but the series didn’t feel like Heinlein’s fiction translated to the TV.
One other similarity that just occurred to me: Heinlein’s future often had the Chinese and Americans coming out ‘on top’, and the culture tended to amalgamate the two together. This is especially prominent in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”.
That may be the only instance of that in Heinlein’s work. I know in the Future History series, Lazarus Long explicitly says that it’s too bad that China’s government kept its people from emigrating from Earth. I think that was towards the end of “The Number of the Beast.”
Wait! The Chinese are also mentioned as emigres in “Tunnel in the Sky” because they point out the complete impossibility of ever getting emptying China of its people, because of high birth rates.
Well, when you account for the lack of Jazz/Blues music, and that no one on Serenity was a bounty hunter (Jayne came the closest, and Spike would eat him for lunch), then yeah, maybe a case could be made for some similarity between Bebop and Firefly, in that they both had spaceships, were in a futuristic setting, and had distinctive visual and musical stylings.
Why would that surprise you? They sure managed to maintain here, at a time when America was as far from the “old” countries as the various worlds are from each other in most sci-fi stories (weeks or months).
