I’ve heard (undoubtedly on this board) Heinlein’s works categorized as Juvenile, Adult, Senile, and Post-Senile. Personally, I’d consider TefL to be the last of the “Adult” category. Some of the things which made the later books so bad are already starting to show up, but they’re not dominant. Overall, I’d consider it a worthwhile read, but there’s plenty of Heinlein that’s better, if you haven’t read it yet. There’s rather more politics than in some of the other “Adult” Heinlein books, but not all that much sex, relatively speaking. It depends on one’s tastes, I suppose.
I repeatedly pick up Starship Troopers at the store, but then I begin to convulse as memories of that piece of turd Stranger in a Strange Land emerge. It seemed to me like a lot of characters were merely strawmen set up so Jubal could dispense “wisdom”. Like Jubal, someone should have told Heinlein to keep his pompous opinions to himself 
It seems that many people whose reviews I have read on amazon and other sites like the former and despise the latter, but I’m still afraid to pick up Starship Troopers.
Perhaps I’m like the OP and would like Starship Troopers. I’m going to keep my eye on this thread to see how it continues
Fenris I should have said “inexperienced” or “naive”, not “idealistic”
This guy talks about Heinlein’s characterizations and he says that there is a composite character called the “Heinlein Individual” that manifests in three stages and “is repeated in every Heinlein book in one form or another”.
The three types are 1) “competent but naive youngster” 2) “competent man in full glory, the man who knows how things work” 3) “wise old man who not only knows how things work, but why they work”
Hazel You’re right, Farnham was pretty tiresome. I don’t know where that star came from 
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Yeah. Remember above where I said that a jerk named Panshin came up with the theory to sell a book? You linked right to that asshole Panshin’s page. He’s made his career by shitting on his betters and then ripping them off.
His theory simply doesn’t hold up. It’s pithy, but it simply doesn’t fit the facts. Or can you tell me how Rod (leader, couragous, strong) Walker, Thorby (broken, naive, clever), “The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail” who was about the same age as the others when the story opened (Cynical, lazy, worldly), and John Thomas(Stubborn, not too bright, loyal) are the same person, other than the fact that they were written for boy scouts and so had to basically be decent people and that they’re all about the same age? (The kid from Time for the Stars is about as close as Heinlein could get to a tourtured soul, given the limitations of his publisher.
Or how Jubal Hershaw (honest, asexual) is the same as Lazarus Long (amoral, hypersexual) or Professor De La Paz (gentle, soft spoken)? Sure, they all pontificate. But if all Panshin sees is the fact that they pontificate but can’t tell that they all have entirely different personalities then his head’s further up his butt than I thought.
Anyone who can’t tell the difference between a sentece spoken by Peewee*, Betty Sorenson, Carolyn Mtsumbe(sp), Frances Nelson, and Hazel Stone isn’t worth considering as a valid source.
I note that the linked page is also upset that Heinlein’s characters use < gasp > slang! Horrors!
Or, if he’s saying that Heinlein features either young, middle-aged or old characters, then double-horrors so does every other writer that ever lived.
I’ve read Panshin’s drivel. His “theories” aren’t worth the paper they were drooled onto. I’m not saying Heinlein’s perfect (Panshin’s number one response to criticism is to accuse his critics of worshiping Heinlein.) or the best writer or anything else. I’m just saying that Panshin can repeat the “composite individual” lie all he wants, but it doesn’t make it true.
Fenris, who despises Panshin
*Who Panshin dismissess as “Not a real girl” because he can’t fit her into his bullcrap/
Fenris, please don’t hold back!
You see differences in RAH’s characters, I see them as variations on a theme. Am I wrong?
K364: IMO, Yeah, you’re wrong.
Here’s the problem with Panshin’s “theory”: either he’s saying they’re all the same character (or the same 1 of 3 characters, he’s said both) or he’s saying that they all fit onto some scale.
Therefore, either he’s an idiot (they’re clearly not the same character), or he’s a loon. The “Heinlein character continuumn” is so broad that every compent character ever written fits onto the so-called “Heinlein individual” scale.
Think of Star Trek: Sulu and Checkov, they can be fit onto the “compentent, naive youngster” part of the scale better than many Heinlein characters, Kirk and Spock fit onto the “competent man in full glory, the man who knows how things work” and McCoy is the “wise old man who not only knows how things work, but why they work”. Yet Heinlein never wrote an episode of Star Trek.
Or how 'bout Mark Twain: You can fit Huck and Tom onto the “competent, naive youngster” part of the scale.
Or Ian Fleming: James bond as the “competent man in full glory”…
Or Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin: the kid, Calvin’s Dad: the middle aged man, Hobbes as the wise old man (don’t believe me? Lookit Hobbes’s definition of heaven and then try to tell me he’s not wise 
)
Or Gilligan’s island (if you leave out the word “Competent”): Gilligan is the young one, The Professor the Middle-Aged one and the Skipper (and/or Mr. Howell) the old one.
The scale is too broad to be useful, and even then it doesn’t apply to most Heinlein characters.
Where do you put Valentine Michael Smith towards the second half of the book? He’s a youngster, but he’s certainly not naive.
How 'bout Juan Rico’s dad at the beginning of Starship Troopers? He’s certainly not the alleged stereotypical “Heinlein middle-aged character”.
How 'bout Ed Randall? Or Waldo? Or Joe-Jim? Or Potiphar Breen? Or Lowell Stone? Where do they fit on this scale? I can list exception after exception after exception after exception
The only grain of truth to Panshin’s droolings is that the vast majority of Heinlein’s characters are competent: Heinlein was interested in writing about competent characters the same way that Sheckley was fascinated by incompetent characters or Laumer enjoyed writing about “The average guy in over his head” theme.
You’re entitled to believe whatever you want. But frankly, Panshin’s gibberish has as much validity as $cientology and/or Velikofskianism (though less dangerous than both, of course).
Fenris
Fenris, while I usually agree wth you and your views on SF, I have to disagree on this.
a.) Number of the Beast may not be the worst SF ever written by far (yea, I’ve read Pel Torro), but it’s the worst Heinlein I’ve ever read (until I get around to reading his uncollected “stinkeroos”)
b.) I’ve read Alexei Panshin’s book Heinlein in Dimension, and think it’s a worthwhile study. Heinlein hated t, as is cear from a number of comments he’s made over the years,but who doesn’t hae his critics. Panshin’s book is wel-researched and well written, and it’s clear to me that , underneath it all, anshin likes Heinlein’s stuff. I don’t think he ever says that all of Heinlein’s characters fall into the three stages, but I’ve read and re-read a lot of Heinlein (virtually everything, in fact), and there is lot of truth to what h says about most of Heinlein’s protagonists. At any rate, Panshin is not a “hack”. His Rite of Passage has won awards, and his monumental history of science fiction The World Beyond the Hill (written in collaboration with is wife) is well worth reading. So are his other books. (I bought my copy of Heinlein in Dimension from Panshin himself, and he autographed it.) I don’t always agree with Panshin, but his comments are very illuminating.
It’s better than two of the “stinkeroos” and not as good as the third (“My Object All Sublime”), IMO. But I thought The Cat Who Walked Through Walls and I Will Fear No Evil were much worse. At least Beast had the charming Oz sequence, the big cocktail party at the end and a couple of other bits that I enjoyed.
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I disagree. I feel the opposite. From my reading, I don’t think he likes Heinlein or his work at all. Everything I’ve read of Panshin’s about Heinlein has the outraged tone of someone who wanted Heinlein to be one thing, only to be crushed that Heinlein wouldn’t conform to Panshin’s vision.
In addition, many of his comments are inaccurate, (IMO) silly (he spends a lot of wordage being outraged that Heinlein doesn’t go into excrucitating detail about the physical appearance of his characters. :rolleyes: ) Heinlein in Dimension, to me, reads like someone desperate to be “critical” and fishing around to come up with something…anything to be critical about.
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Ok. I’ll conceed “hack” was way too harsh and was inaccurate to boot. However, I thought Rite was a Heinlein pastiche and not a great one (I admit I’m outvoted).
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I’ve never read this, but from your comments, I think I should.
Fenris
divemaster: IMO, “Time Enough for Love” has two very good parts, “The Tale of the Adopted Daughter,” and “The Man who was too Lazy” (or something like that), and the collections of Lazarus Long’s sayings are pretty witty and pithy. However, the last third of the book is pure shit.
Of his novels, I think “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” is by far the best. I also recommend “Glory Road,” “Double Star,” “Starship Troopers,” “The Rolling Stones,” “The Unpleasant Profession of Johnathon Hoag,” and “The Star Beast.”
Of his shorter work, I especially recommend the massive collection “The Past Through Tomorrow.” The short stories in this are some of the finest science fiction ever penned and you can see a more human, and much-better characterized, Lazarus Long in the short novel, “Methuselah’s Children.” I also recommend the novella “Magic, Inc.” and the collection Assignment in Eternity for “Gulf” and “Lost Legacy.”
I wouldn’t bother with any of his other works written after 1966 with the exception of “Friday” and “Job: A Comedy of Justice” Those two are all right; with the exception of TEFL, the rest are worthless.
Does anyone else think Heinlein has kind of a weird Nietszche uber-man thing in his later work? He doesn’t seem to be writing about merely competent people- all his main characters seem to be prefect, by his lights- strong, fit, amoral, horny geniuses, and all the women are gorgeous, and prefer older men.
The Oedipal(?) incestuous (yes, I know he didn’t have kids) wish-fufilment older man/younger woman thing particularly disturbed me when I got old enough to recognise it (look, I read Stranger in grade 9)
I like Heinlein, and have read pretty much everything he ever wrote (there are some speeches he made that I haven’t read, and some early early serials that Ginny won’t re-publish).
It’s all good, if you are flexible enough to bend with the author.
Some who like King, hate the Darktower series, and vice-versa.
RAH has the same sort of thing going for him.
As for the incestuous/oedipal/what-have-you… well, it makes sense if you think of the times it was written, and the philosophy of the characters. He also goes into detail in “Sunset” to say what can happen if you have that life and don’t maintain discipline…
and Fenris=Spider Robinson.
Hehehehee
TheGaspode targeted the truth about Heinlein’s stature, as far as I’m concerned. I’m a child of the 1950s, and I’m prepared to take the risk that TheGaspode wouldn’t – Stranger in a Strange Land was one of a number of influences that came along when “it was railroadin’ time” that shaped the rest of the century. It sounds like “hippy-dippy crapola” because Heinlein began it in the year that a University of Illinois professor was fired for daring to suggest that there might be rare occasions when sex prior to marriage might be condonable, and got it published it in 1960. Its influence on the generation that was rebelling against 1950s conformity helped to shape where that rebellion went.
Like Asimov and several other writers, Heinlein tried to bring all his disparate universes into a single coherent whole towards the end of his career. “The Number of the Beast…” was perhaps the finest effort at structuring a no-limits universe of discourse that I’ve ever seen – and one of numerous experiments he conducted in his later years at writing novels under new-for-him techniques – in this case, from five disparate viewpoint characters’ POVs.
I concur with Fenris about Panshin – Heinlein is positively scathing in his remarks on him in a private letter; the man never attempted to do any research that Heinlein was aware of, so “well researched” is a highly debatable question, unless you mean by it that he read everything Heinlein had written to date.
Tristan, prepare to be jealous – Fenris owns the originals of those three stories that Ginny won’t allow reprint on!
So that’s why I keep misplacing him in the Pacific Northwest instead of Colorado where he lives! Seriously, I agree – there are only two people on the planet whom I know I can trust the taste of regarding speculative fiction. Both are named in your quote.
OK, Fenris, fess up… How the heck did you get your hands on the Three Stinkeroos? I was under the impression that they were locked in a bank vault somewhere with orders to be destroyed after a certain date.
For those not in the know, Heinlein hated 3 (actually 5) of his short stories. Two of 'em (“Let there Be Light” and “Our Fair City”) were in circulation before Heinlein could do anything about 'em. The remaining three, Heinlein insisted never be reprinted period (so Ginny’s only following Robert’s wishes).
The three stories are: “Beyond Doubt” which was beyond bad. (It was also co-written by/with um…Elma Wentz (Premise: The Easter Island statues were political advertisments for Atlantis). It’s terrible. Thus, it’s the easiest of the three to find. “Pied Piper” is pretty flawed (Premise: A scientist in a country slowly losing a war kidnaps all the enemies’ children), and “My Object All Sublime” which is actually pretty good, if fluff (Premise: A guy uses an invisibility device to get even (in a “poetic justice” way) with people who annoy him. Very fun stuff.) is near impossible.
How’d I get 'em? False answer: I, with ninja-like tread and a time machine, snuck into the Heinlein home in Colorado Springs and took microfilm of them.
True answer? Luck and vaguely obsessive searching for the original pulps in which the stories appeared.
First, one of the three “stinkeroos”, “Beyond Doubt” HAS been reprinted exactly once.
If you click on this link, you’ll get a listing of people selling the Fredrick Pohl anthology Beyond the End of Time where it was collected: it’ll run you about $6.00. (People are selling it for as little as $2.00, but it’s worth spending a few extra bucks to get a copy in decent shape; the publishers were called “Permabooks”. They weren’t. Unless you want pages dropping out…)
“Pied Piper” only appeared in Astonishing, March 1942.
IIRC, I got my copy from http://www.oldsfbooks.com/ IIRC. He’s slower than hell (when 2 weeks goes by and you’re still waiting, take heart: he’s honest (in my experience), just painfully slow.)
- “My Object All Sublime” only appeared Future, Feb 1942)
This is the hard one to find, as [ul]
[li]Future had a LOW print run in it’s '40s incarnation [/li]
[li]This particular edition of Future has an unreprinted (and pretty good) Heinlein story [/li]
[li]AND this edition of Future has a beautiful Hannes Bok cover. [/li][/ul]
so you’re not only fighting other Heinlein collectors, you’re also fighting Hannes Bok collectors. I got lucky and got mine on eBay and it still nearly set me back a C-note. (and the twerp who was bidding against me sent me a poison-pen e-mail calling me a “fucker”, which…in a sad, vaguely evil sort of way made me feel even better about getting it. Schadenfreude. Ya gotta love it)
Does that help?
Fenris
That, my friend, is the nicest thing I’ve heard all week. Thanks!
But, just to be clear, I ain’t Spider, tho’ if you stood me next to him, we’d look like Mutt and Jeff!
BTW: Poly…doesn’t Robinson live on the Atlantic North East (Nova Scotia?) 
Fenris
Heinlein hated “Our Fair City?” Hell, I always thought it was a charming story. Terry Carr even reprinted it in A Modern Treasury of Fantasy.
I’ll be damned.
Hated was too strong a word. I was writing that from work and didn’t pay close enough attention to the terms I was using. Apparently he didn’t like it enough that he may have written it years before he put it up for sale and IIRC wasn’t fond of it. Same with “Let there be Light”. Apparently Heinlein didn’t like the slang.
But I agree: it’s a charming period piece.
“My Object All Sublime” has a very similar feel (though it’s not as strong of a story) and I’ve kinda wondered (in a fanboy sort of way) if they were set in the same world.
Fenris, abashed to have made that error.
Fenris I am deeply in awe of you. I have to admit, I’ve always sort of thought of myself and some friends as the ultimate fans, but I think you may have us beat.
Our claim to fame is making a trek down to Santa Cruz to see the old house. My friends grandparents lived in the property across the street (bonny doon road, actually) and handed out some things that had been previously owned by RAH.
Holding in my hands a Time-Life book on the moon that he had owned was a religous experience. Hehehehe…
Some day, I’ll embark on a journey to get copies. For now, I will have to wait, and develop fantasies about breaking into your house…
:eek:
That would be coooooool. I’m impressed!
I’ve often thought about driving down to Colorado Springs and seeing if I could find his old house here…but I’ve always resisted since I’d imagined all the other Heinlein fans doing the same and didn’t want to annoy the neighbors.
“Look Martha :rolleyes:”
“What is it John?”
“It’s another o’ them damned Hein-line fans. Y’can tell cause he’s drivin’ real slow and pointin’”
“ANOther one? That makes six today”
“Yup. Where’s my shotgun?”
My problem is not so much with the “incest” angle as his rather unsavoury interest in VERY young girls, as in “The Door into Summer”, the hero’s interest in his young (only about 10 I think) ward. This is echoed later in TEFL with Long’s interest in Dora. In both cases Heinlein indulges his wish fulfilment by letting his hero “wait for her to grow up”. Similarly there are hints of this in Friday with her relationship with her mentor, Dr Baldwin. There are probably others but I can’t remember - it’s been a while since I revisited Heinlein.