You know, oddly enough, that’s an angle I’ve put a lot of thought into.
and I think he may have actually been onto something.
See, there isn’t a magic switch and a woman only becomes sexually desireable. Heck, I visited my local High School the other day and felt like quite the dirty old man.
However, they do “grow up” and then it becomes ok, so, IMHO, it’s not a crime, nor wrong.
This books get’s the coolest concept/best title - worst execution award. He is the most annoying writer of all time.
And I thought I had problems with geography!
RAH and VGH lived in Colorado Springs from ca. 1948 to 1966, when Virginia’s worsening altitude sickness forced them to move to a lower-altitude location. They picked the Santa Cruz-Carmel area (see Tripler’s posts), living in another built-to-Heinlein’s design home (like the one in CS) until his health forced a move “into town.” After his death, Virginia entered a retirement home complex in Atlantic Beach, FL (this is referred to in Requiem (the book, not the short story) and Grumbles from the Grave and alluded to quite extensively in Callahan’s Key) and, unless her health has failed since then, still lives there.
Spider moved from Lawn Guyland to Nova Scotia in the late 60’s, met and married Jeanne there. But sometime in the last decade he moved from there to Vancouver, B.C. (I envision the two of them and Terri fleeing from a mob of enraged Haligonians and inhabitants of the Annapolis Valley and North and South Mountains whom he had parodied in his various books and stories – I used to know a man surnamed Bent who was related to the folks on whom he based some of his Nova Scotia characters with that surname.)
Re some Heinlein characters and their apparent pedophilia, I tend to agree with Tristan – they are not erotically aroused by the children but instead are romantically attracted to them as people to the extent they are willing to wait for them to grow up, at which point an erotic love develops and is not contrary to standard morality (not that they’d care). My youngest honorary grandson claims he’s going to marry me when he grows up – I love the little guy and I’m touched by the amount of love for me he shows in saying that. So I can relate to how they may feel, in a way, and see nothing sick about it.
Oh, and obviously I meant Tristan in both cases, not Tripler. Sorry for the misnomer!!
Second afterthought: When last spotted, Pixel had teleported himself to Chicago and was standing alongside the SD server, terrorizing the hamsters, who were cowering in fear instead of running their little cages, causing slowdowns in board activity. Just to clear up that little mystery…
S’ok. I’m smack dab in the middle of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress myself.
Tripler
Hell, even outside the conversation, I’m still loved. 
A) I think she’s more like 13, isn’t she? (not that it makes much of a difference)
B) The hero behaves in the most honorable possible way. He gets the hell out of her life and leaves her the heck alone, and lets HER find him if she so chooses…
C) What’s weird is that I can see my perceptions of this book changing as our society’s mores change. I first read the book in either late Junior High or early High School and Dan’s treatment of Rikki wasn’t even blinked at. As time goes by, I’m finding myself less and less comfortable with the situation, even though the hero behaves in an appropriate way.
Poly: I didn’t realize Spider moved!
Fenris
Returning to the OP: I read a bunch of Heinlein when I was younger, the early stuff mostly. Enjoyed it a lot. Picked up Time Enough for Love. Got halfway through it before I realized that I had put it down for a few weeks and didn’t care how it ended. Haven’t read Heinlein since.
The thing is, I feel kinda bad for letting that negative experience color my opinion. (For similar reasons, the last Stephen King book I read was The Tommyknockers. Utter shite, and I haven’t been back.) I know there’s plenty of good Heinlein still to read, but I just haven’t bothered, because Time Enough for Love was so dull and frustrating.
I’ll probably use this thread to re-strategize a new foray back into Heinlein’s canon. And my point for you is, if you hate TEFL, don’t let it spoil the author the way I let it spoil him for me.
going off tangent again, to ponder what Fenris wrote in his last post here.
Our mores change, as does the way they are portrayed. Look at the father in to comics - Dennis the Menace and Calvin and Hobbes. The father in Dennis is the typical commuting 50’s dad, coming home from work, reading the paper and smoking a pipe. Calvin’s dad participates in a much larger degree in the upbringing of the child (If I were in college, I might do a paper on this to comics, seing how similar they are on the surface).
The blurb on the back of my paperback of TEFL says:
[spoilerwarning]
“A man so in love with life, that he decided to become his own ancestor.” This clearly doesn’t connect with the actual story and even when I first read it, in the late 70’s, I found the incestous aspects of the last part of the book to be annoying and somewhat disturbing. I don’t know if it was to be provocative or if it was him being a dirty old man, but I still didn’t like it. He adressed the incestous allegations in the book, when LL was disturbed at being seduced by his daughters/sisters Lapis Lazuli and Lorelei Lee, coming to the conclusion that it was not incest, but narcisism. Still, the girls might be older in years, but retain the physical age of 16.
[/spoilerwarning]
TEFL is a long way from The door, and the American morale is that under 18 is a big no-no. Even 18 is a big no-no if you’re over 30, even though it’s legal.
Yet, when a girl is 15-16, and maybe even a few years younger, it’s quite possible to get a glimpse of the woman she’s about to turn into. Colleeen McCullough did exactly the same thing in Thorn Birds, where Father Ralph[?] waited and even broke his vows in the end.
My guess? Both authors are adressing a slightly forbidden theme, to make an interesting and provocative story. Heinlain was perfectly aware, as is Howard Stern (no other comaprison), that morale outrage increases sales. In almost ervery story after Stranger sex is very much a part of the story and the main charcters needs. Manny get’s into the revolution to pick up girls, Scar is seduced (mentally) on a nude beach. I won’t go into Farnham, since the whole book is soooo annoying. Eunice is clearly into sex in a big way. Friday and Job also deals quite a lot in sex. And to round it off, The number of the beast (swingers scene), Cat (almost pedophilia, complete with some spanking) and of course, the whole oedipal theme in To sail clearly shows that RAH went for sex from 1961 and on.
Was it his own dark perversions? Was it calculated to be provocative - and bankable? Or was it his interest in social mores that led him to explore the most private sides, as the world around him changed?
My own take is that it was a mix of all. He was, also, writing during the era of Erica Jong, rather than the chaste and explicit era of Candace Bushnell. To me, this is reflected in his works.
Have to disagree with you Gaspode. Manny gets into the revolution because Mike tells him the Loonies actually have a 1:7 chance of winning. I would say Manny’s dislike of the Lunar Authority is established very early in the book, but he would not rebel unless he knew his side had a chance of success. I would also note he acted like a perfect knight toward Wyoming after their first meeting and apparently slept with her only after she married his family.
Scar may have been seduced, but I would think sexuality played only a small role in the Empress’ decision to go after him. She needed the Egg far more than a stiff dick. Job does deal with sex quite a bit, but Heinlein spends far more time mocking Christian fundamentalism.
Frankly, I think sex has always reared its lovely head in Heinlein’s work from a very early stage. See “Deliah and the Space Rigger,” “The Menace from Earth,” “Methuselah’s Children,” and “If This Goes On—” from The Past Through Tomorrow. Granted, there are no graphic descriptions in those stories, but he was portraying frankly sexual beings at a time when most science fiction would not even hint at S-E-X. I agree with you that he opened up more beginning with Stranger simply because the nation’s mores were changing and he could get away with kinkier stuff. However, I think sex was there almost from the very beginning.
I think he realized he had enough “stature” to get away with examining the ultimate taboo. Look at the sub-stories that are told: The Tale of the Twins that Weren’t goes into (frankly too much) detail about the genetic components of incest, “The Tale of the Adopted Daughter” (possibly Heinlein’s best work) touches just slightly on Father/Daughter incest. The bit with Laz and Lor again deals with the issue from another perspective. And look at the structure; First we get the “Daughter” story, where they’re not really related. Then we get the “Twins” story, where they are…sorta. Then we get the Laz/Lor thing which is just a reprise of the gimmick in “All You Zombies” without the time-travel (is it mastubation or incest?). THEN we get to the Lazarus boinks Mom scene. Everything’s a build-up to that moment.
I believe it was Heinlein’s intent to get the reader to that moment and have the reader “set up” so that as he’s reading, he says “Isn’t that nice!” and then does a double-take, realizing what he’s said.
I also think Heinlein failed if that WAS his intent. The Maureen/Lauzarus scene just falls flat for me. And if the book was an examination of incest, it badly fails as it shows no negative consequences to incest (other than the dreaded ‘genetics lecture’ and that only shows the physical consequences, not the emotional ones).
I like Time Enough for Love a lot, I love “The Tale of the Adopted Daughter”, but I don’t think the whole novel exceeds the sum of it’s parts. I’ll give Heinlein credit for an ambitious try, and parts of it are astounding, but I can’t call the whole “novel” a success.
Fenris
Then again, The Peyote Coyote, Manny does get interested thtrough Wyoming Knot. He’s more interested in bedding her, than in the Revolution, in the beginning. He’s also the hardest to convince about starvation ASF.
Star might need the egg, but scar wants to get laid. I Still say that Heinlein uses sex as a motive force quite often.
Fenris. I Agree. And always do an (omitted) with the genetics disussion when i re-read TEFL.
The idea about the book, apart from the incestous aspect, is really interesting (and mirrored in Strata which is why I did that Hainlain and Pratchett thred). But the theme of aging is lost about half-way through the book.
It is. And I think you just put your finger on exactly why the book as a whole isn’t a success. Heinlein skips the hard parts. On the incest theme, he doesn’t tackle the bad stuff (other than the genetics lecture), on the aging theme, bunches of the hard bits about getting Lazarus interested in life again are " (omitted) ", and so on. He sets up tough questions, but assumes the answers rather than showing them.
Fenris