Pretty much anywhere where nerds congregate, I’d expect. Heinlein is not exactly an obscure author, and Podkayne is generally regarded favorably among his works.
Well, it’s a perfectly good name, suited to the context as you noted but not an invented head-scratcher.
It’s a regionalism for a plant known by many such localized names, and thus unfamiliar enough to be in line with invented names. I just don’t have much regard for the trope of naming characters alllllmoossssst a real name (Kathy, Katherine, Katy in this case… or Peter in “Peeta”'s case). It becomes more irritating and distracting than a… “Podkayne,” which you can at least put into its own slot.
No. It’s pronounced “hineline”. It’s a German name. In German, if you have a word with two different adjacent vowels, the first vowel is silent and the second vowel is long. If I told you my last name you’d understand how I know this. I’ve heard my last name mispronounced more times than I care to remember. It’s just another entry on my “You’d Be Surprised At What You Can Get Used To” list.
Yes, of course it is. Emphasis more or less equal on the two syllables but a stress on the first one is okay.
“Heen-leen” is an old in-joke, started by Spider Robinson IIRC. You can have a lot of fun in an sf crowd very seriously insisting that that’s the correct pronunciation. (At least, it used to be an effective shen. It may be too well known now.)
I hope Amateur Barbarian was joking, but in any case, your clarification is worth making. Of course, just because a name has a German (or any other language) origin doesn’t necessarily mean the person pronounces it the way it was originally pronounced in that language; but I’ve only ever heard “Heinlein” pronounced the German way—although I’m still not sure whether to stress the first syllable or to give both syllables equal weight.
ETA: Oops, I wrote this before seeing Amateur Barbarian’s reply, above!
If you’ll look at my post, you’ll notice that I didn’t claim that “Katniss” was a made-up word–simply that it’s a “WTF name” (like Podkayne). The origins/rationalizations of both names are given in their respective books. However, this doesn’t turn the names into ones that any intelligent parent would give a child (unless they have a little sadism in their souls).
In other words, the names are clunky, uneuphonious, and distracting. That they are “justified” in-text makes not a whit of difference.
OTOH, not *all *Martians should be named “Smith.”
The books are set centuries in the future, after multiple world wars, a complete collapse of civilization, and a rebuild by the few survivors into a dystopia, and you’re upset that some *spellings *have changed?
We’re set in a future almost 300 years later, after almost inconceivable change, a massive internal war, two or three global wars and several eras of technological revolution, and I have a name common among the Founding Fathers. I can only find a few names among those not still in common use.
One of the things I most love about the remake of Battlestar Galactica is that if they didn’t have to invent a weird name for something, they didn’t. Past the first few episodes, about the only strange-word is DRADIS, which is reasonable since they didn’t have the word *radio *to build RADAR from. (It was still *wireless *to them.)
Using strange names just 'cuz, or because the writer isn’t any more skilled at building a strange world, is a fairly amateurish technique.
Never read the book(s?) in question, but just looking at it I’d pronounce it the way 99% of the people here seem to. The real question is: Since there’s apparently no audio of the author saying the name and he’s no longer around to mock you if your pronunciation contradicts his own, why would it matter how you say it?
I checked, and I see that the book is available at Audible.com, but the sample available to listen to online apparently doesn’t include the word “Podkayne.” The narrator is Orson Scott Card’s daughter, so I would think that she would have enough of a connection to the science fiction community to be able to find out the “correct” pronunciation.
The clever thing about that is that there are a number of Polynesian languages, including Maori and Tahitian, in which that would be the correct pronunciation of Teatime.
Has anyone noticed that the question’s been answered since post #10?
Well, you didn’t provide a cite there. 
You realize that Heinlein didn’t die until 1988, right? People are still alive who talked to him directly. See post #10. They’re all over the field. And there are many more people who talked to the people who talked to him. Science fiction is a small world. Everybody talks to one another. They all go to the same conventions. (In the old days, they all slept with one another.) If some newbie started talking about pod-kah-nee or po-dekan-ee or smith-jones they’d get corrected.
There’s only one exception I can think of. Samuel R. Delany has been famous for more than 50 years, and yet half the world spells it Delaney. Dives me crazy.
Oh, I know. I don’t think there’s any doubt about how it’s pronounced; but I was interested in just how authoritative a cite we could dig up. The OP did after all ask for a way to hear it pronounced.
Heh. 
I’m with you on that one.
Bradbury’s Martian names were nice: Linnl; Werr. But then Heinlein wouldn’t have wanted to go in that direction. He wasn’t about poetry.
I saw that you said the author pronounced it that way, but you gave no explanation as to how you came to know this information.
Um… fair enough. I sometimes forget I attend this grand ball masked. 
For what it’s worth, take it from me, your somewhat friendly (I mistyped fiendly there and almost left it) barbarian…
…as Exapno says above, the pronunciation in fandom is universally ‘pod-cain’ and even these days there are sufficient fans left who knew Heinlein and heard him speak to correct anyone inventing a new pronunciation.
…I have heard Heinlein say the name; besides the audio record being a bit buried in my files at this moment, my only copy is on cassette tape and I don’t have any kind of cassette player with which to listen to it or transcribe it to a digital form. Other copies of that interview - the 1980 Butler “Heinlein Day” interviews - might be out there for review. (At least, I’m pretty sure that’s the audio source… I do have others.)
…to bolster my recollections I checked with a greater authority, who confirmed what I said above and noted that Virginia Heinlein pronounced it the same way.
Really. It’s “pod-cain,” no question. Now don’t make me draw my fiendly sword… however, Jonathan Chance can validate that I am in position to speak with some authority on the topic.
K’Boomch
Khajjjerrr
Rrringrrrilll
You’re right. Not very poetic.