# Heinlein's History of the Future:"The Crazy Years" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 19, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959 "2015-06-19T17:34:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/1 "2015-06-19T17:34:07Z")
I haven’t read heinlein in years. Anyway, he projected the future of the USA in a timeline-some point in the future was the so-called “Crazy years”. What went on during that time? When did it end? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/2 "2015-06-19T17:44:42Z")
[The 1960’s](http://www.scifiwright.com/2010/01/the-crazy-years-and-their-empty-moral-vocabulary/). > [@](#): > > One prediction that was remarkably prescient, however, was the advent of “The Crazy Years” described as “Considerable technical advance during this period, accompanied by a gradual deterioration of mores, orientation, and social institutions, terminating in mass psychoses in the sixth decade, and the interregnum.” > > He optimistically predicts a recovery from the Crazy Years, the opening of a new frontier in space, and a return to nineteenth-century economy. Copy of his chart in the link. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/3 "2015-06-19T17:50:33Z")
When I read Heinlein in the late 1960s I thought “yeah, right on the money.” Plus Nehemiah Scudder might be elected yet. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/4 "2015-06-19T18:04:17Z")
It’s a slippery notion that Heinlein himself slipped along regularly. If you look at the succession of Future History charts, the Crazy Years were ongoing when he created it ca. 1940, and due to end in a decade. As the decades went on, we were always sort of in the early years of the era. Way out at the end, he said some form of “Well, fuggit” and moved the Crazy Years back to the 1950s on a completely different (fictional) timeline. So, basically, quite a few would-be pundits and Spider Robinson to the contrary, there is no answer. The Crazy Years were a fictional time somewhere in one or more of Heinlein’s multiverse. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/5 "2015-06-19T18:13:22Z")
Heinlein had just lived through the Roaring 20s and the Great Depression. He was predicting the past. Every year is one of the Crazy Years. Of course it would apply to any time in the future. It never ends. It’s all purpose fuzziness to encompass anything he felt like including. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/6 "2015-06-19T18:19:29Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > He was predicting the past. Nailed it, damn ye. > [@](#): > > It’s all purpose fuzziness to encompass anything he felt like including. And he was the first to both fuzz it and make maximum hay from the fuzziness, and smile benignly when others did, too. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/7 "2015-06-19T18:38:22Z")
Margaret Atwood’s _The Handmaid’s Tale_ has a similar vibe. The rise of the Christian Right in the Eighties certainly had me thinking Heinlein wasn’t too far off the mark. Fortunately it never got THAT bad. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/8 "2015-06-19T18:39:06Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > And he was the first to both fuzz it and make maximum hay from the fuzziness, and smile benignly when others did, too. It’s a wonderful example of taking something seemingly obvious that is not recognized as such until it is named. And he used it correctly by putting it into the background to give verisimilitude to his future. Others would have tried to build the story around it without every making it crazy enough or, worse, making it so crazy as to lose creditability. He wasn’t Pohl or Vonnegut. He knew his strengths and kept to them. Until he fell off that cliff, of course. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/9 "2015-06-19T18:54:57Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Margaret Atwood’s _The Handmaid’s Tale_ has a similar vibe. Crazy Years? I don’t get that. It certainly has a very… prequel/sidequel to “If This Goes On–” and other Years of the Prophet tales. I asked Atwood about the influence once, but she replied that while she had read and admired some of Heinlein’s work, she didn’t recall any of it as influential on THT. > [@](#): > > The rise of the Christian Right in the Eighties certainly had me thinking Heinlein wasn’t too far off the mark. Fortunately it never got THAT bad. I have around here a 2/3-completed book analyzing Heinlein’s theocratic fears and fiction and the rise of the Reagan-Bush-Christian Right parallels. Fortunately there was never any need to finish it… ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/10 "2015-06-19T22:55:13Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Crazy Years? I don’t get that. It certainly has a very… prequel/sidequel to “If This Goes On–” and other Years of the Prophet tales. I asked Atwood about the influence once, but she replied that while she had read and admired some of Heinlein’s work, she didn’t recall any of it as influential on THT. > I have around here a 2/3-completed book analyzing Heinlein’s theocratic fears and fiction and the rise of the Reagan-Bush-Christian Right parallels. Fortunately there was never any need to finish it… If there **had been** you **wouldn’t have been allowed to**. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2015, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/11 "2015-06-19T23:15:16Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > If there **had been** you **wouldn’t have been allowed to**. It was booked with Samizdat Press of Scudderville. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2015, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/12 "2015-06-20T04:29:31Z")
I suspect the Crazy Years peaked with Nehemiah Scudder and sort of faded away into The Prophet’s regime. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2015, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/13 "2015-06-20T15:02:40Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > The rise of the Christian Right in the Eighties certainly had me thinking Heinlein wasn’t too far off the mark. Fortunately it never got THAT bad. Again, Heinlein was looking at what was around him. There was a huge evangelical revival in the 1920s and 1930s, with figures like Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson giant national figures with huge followings. And he was living in California by then, which meant he was hip deep in religious and quasi-religious cults. In 1940, under the name H. H. Holmes, Anthony Boucher wrote a mystery called _Nine Times Nine_, featuring a cult called the Temple of Light that was a good illustration of the craziness. The detective was a nun, Sister Ursula. Heinlein certainly knew about the book and the cults it parodied. The only other Sister Ursula mystery was _Rocket to the Morgue_, a roman à clef about the Mañana Literary Society of Los Angeles, the sf group that Heinlein and Boucher both belonged to, along with Jack Williamson and Edward Hamilton and Cleve Cartmill and Henry Kuttner and L. Ron Hubbard, among others. They all appear in the book, disguised or combined, with Austin Carter being Heinlein. Not only is it the first and maybe the only murder by rocketship, but it’s the best memoir we have of what the early world of f&sf writing was like in California. For years I was thrilled to have the paperback, Phantom #1, the one and only book the company ever put out. Now, of course, you type it into [bookfinder.com](http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&ref=bf_s2_a1_t1_1&qi=K1oFMMjX4Pj3kMa97lI4Ajzo.pQ_1434812107_1:1532:5077&bq=author%3Dh%2520h%2520holmes%26title%3Drocket%2520to%2520the%2520morgue) and a dozen copies are at your fingertips. Anyway, my point is that Heinlein was a much better reporter on the world he lived in than a predictor of futures. That’s not always true for f&sf folks: some are awful reporters. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2015, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/14 "2015-06-20T15:28:10Z")
Quote breaked again… “H.H. Holmes” - the derivation of that never fails to crack me up. It was a pseudonym of the Chicago Exposition murderer, Henry Mudgett. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2015, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/15 "2015-06-20T16:00:27Z")
I think that all the future history timelines created in science fiction are either set far enough in the future that it’s impossible to tell if they will ever happen or already contradicted by what’s happened since the publication of the book. I personally like Olaf Stapledon’s books _Last and First Men_ and _Starmaker_ better than Robert Heinlein’s future history stories, but Stapledon’s timeline is already wrong, despite it setting up a timeline that lasts from when the first book was published (1930) to two billion years in the future. Science fiction is not about predicting the future. It’s about suggesting possibilities which we can choose from. Here are some future history series, incidentally: > **[SFE: Future Histories](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/future_histories)** > > Welcome to the fourth edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2015, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/16 "2015-06-20T16:10:20Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I think that all the future history timelines created in science fiction are either set far enough in the future that it’s impossible to tell if they will ever happen or already contradicted by what’s happened since the publication of the book.[URL=“[SFE: Future Histories](http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/future_histories)”] Actually, that was both the problem and the fascination of Heinlein’s string - it really was “20 minutes into the future” and seemed tantalizingly within our grasp, even as it and the real world evolved. There wasn’t the distance of the other authors who put stories in such a far-away time and distanced setting that we felt no connection. Most authors had much shorter careers, as well, and didn’t have to live with their notions quite as long as Heinlein… even those who wrote ‘future history’ early on and were still writing decades later had changed tack. Heinlein’s last book(s) were firmly anchored in the Future History and all its confusion and change. ---
**Author:** ![Fir\_na\_tine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fir\_na\_tine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fir_na_tine)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2015, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinleins-history-of-the-future-the-crazy-years/722959/17 "2015-06-21T23:21:53Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > When I read Heinlein in the late 1960s I thought “yeah, right on the money.” > Plus Nehemiah Scudder might be elected yet. Isn’t he one of the 224 declared candidates on a major party ticket this year? 😃