# On Re-reading all of Robert Heinlein via The Virginia Edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 14, 2012, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729 "2012-10-14T23:52:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 37
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/721 "2018-03-21T21:25:11Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I didn’t know there was any Finnish culture in it. Was that the model for the Free Traders’ marriage rules? The Free Trader ship names were in Finnish ---
**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:** [March 21, 2018, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/722 "2018-03-21T21:28:47Z")
> **[Sisu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu)** > > Sisu is a Finnish word variously translated as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness. It is held by Finns to express their national character. It is generally considered\[by whom?\] not to have a single-word literal equivalent in English (tenacity, grit, resilience, and hardiness are much the same things, but do not necessarily imply stoicism or bravery). > In recent years, sociologists and psychologists have conducted research on sisu, attempting to qua... > [@Andy\_L](#): > > The Free Trader ship names were in Finnish Not all of them - in fact, not many of those we’re told. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/723 "2018-03-21T22:17:26Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > [Sisu - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu) > Not all of them - in fact, not many of those we’re told. Fair enough. The ship that is the setting for a major section of the book has a Finnish name. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2018, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/724 "2018-03-21T22:42:51Z")
Fascinating. I’m told that “sisu” (or more precisely, “bisisu”) was my first word, except that in my case, it was a mangling of “big sister”. ---
**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:** [September 12, 2019, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/725 "2019-09-12T17:43:52Z")
Bumped. A few days ago I finished an audiobook of _Rocket Ship Galileo_ (1947), which I’d never read or listened to before. Laughable now just how (relatively) easily and inexpensively the Professor and his three teenage science-nerd sidekicks prepare their ship and travel to the Moon, but the book was good fun. And a secret Nazi lunar base? Eh, why not? Everybody’s favorite bad guys! I noticed a throwaway reference to there being 51 U.S. states, and when when one of the boys is looking at the Moon from space the first feature he mentions is the Sea of Tranquility, where of course Apollo 11’s LEM landed in 1969. Now listening to _The Star Beast_, which I read once before, back in high school. Not Heinlein’s best, but it’s not bad. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2019, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/726 "2019-09-12T17:48:53Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Bumped. > > A few days ago I finished an audiobook of _Rocket Ship Galileo_ (1947), which I’d never read or listened to before. Laughable now just how (relatively) easily and inexpensively the Professor and his three teenage science-nerd sidekicks prepare their ship and travel to the Moon, but the book was good fun. And a secret Nazi lunar base? Eh, why not? Everybody’s favorite bad guys! Holdout Nazis in the 1950s isn’t too bad, all things considered (there were hold-out Japanese soldiers into the 1970s, after the “holdout Japanese soldier” had been a joke trope for a decade or more). It’s the SF novels taking place in the 80s and 90s that still have WWII-era Nazis holding on to be villains that are really stretching the point (Pohl and Sawyer - I’m looking at you!) ---
**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:** [September 12, 2019, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/727 "2019-09-12T17:58:33Z")
Heinlein very carefully doesn’t mention in what year the book is set, but sometime in the late Fifties or even the early Sixties seems somewhat plausible (it’s long enough after WWII that mail rockets are in common use, and passenger and cargo rockets can be bought “off the lot” in Detroit). The Nazis had a hidden base somewhere on Earth, too, said to be a long U-boat voyage from Germany, but also otherwise unspecified. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2019, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/728 "2019-09-12T18:55:15Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Bumped. > > A few days ago I finished an audiobook of _Rocket Ship Galileo_ (1947), which I’d never read or listened to before. Laughable now just how (relatively) easily and inexpensively the Professor and his three teenage science-nerd sidekicks prepare their ship and travel to the Moon, but the book was good fun. And a secret Nazi lunar base? Eh, why not? Everybody’s favorite bad guys! I noticed a throwaway reference to there being 51 U.S. states, and when when one of the boys is looking at the Moon from space the first feature he mentions is the Sea of Tranquility, where of course Apollo 11’s LEM landed in 1969. > > Now listening to _The Star Beast_, which I read once before, back in high school. Not Heinlein’s best, but it’s not bad. As I’ve mentioned recently in another thread, I own the audiobook of this narrated by Spider Robinson (who does a great job), and it’s given me a better appreciation of the book, which I’d previously discounted. You could see that Heinlein was originally thinking about a YA series possibly involving these boys, and trying to figure out how to flesh out their characters and to include the engineering and scientific philosophies, along with his political ideas, and keeping it all interesting and entertaining. He wisely dropped any thoughts of continuing with these characters, and created a completely new set for the next juvenile, and for every one after. Your estimate of the time after WWII it’s set agrees with that of Joseph Major in _Heinlein’s Children_, his analysis of the juveniles. I was interested in the “51 states”, but also in the “Chihuahua Crater” that Heinlein tantalizingly names. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2019, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/729 "2019-09-12T19:38:49Z")
Huh. I should get back to this. I interrupted it for reasons I don’t care to share. But the time may be right to get back to it. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2019, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/730 "2019-09-12T19:40:28Z")
Damn straight. I believe the next book up in **The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress** , in fact. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2019, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/731 "2019-09-12T20:32:26Z")
I just finished re-reading _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_. Still my favorite Heinlein, and if anything it holds up even better today than it did at the time. Heinlein’s moon had people living in lava tubes and lava domes, mining for ice, and staying off the surface as much as possible. At the time it was written, lava tubes were only speculation, and the moon was considered to be bone dry. Today, we know of hundreds of lava tubes easily big enough for the society in Heinlein’s book, and we know there are hundreds of millions to billions of tonnes of water ice on the moon - not just in permanently shadowed craters, but within the regolith near the poles, and possibly in pockets inside the crust - just like in the book. His take on AI, while too anthropomorphized, is pretty good considering what we’ve learned about complexity and neural networks in the meantime. I like his take on how artificial intelligence might form (accidentally, from an increase in neural complexity past some threshold) better than some modern AI theories, which have a ‘designed’ intelligence being more likely. And one day after lunar development has really kicked off, someone is going to realize that the Moon is a hell of a weapons platform and there will be calls for regulation and oversight. Then we’ll probably see lots of references to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress again in the media. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Vorlon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@The\_Vorlon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Vorlon)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2019, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/732 "2019-09-13T05:44:08Z")
Just a head’s up–there is a new book coming in March 2020–written in parallel with ‘The Number of the Beast’, it follows the first third of the book, then deviates. Apparently is has been pieced together from the RAH archives. ---
**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:** [September 13, 2019, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/733 "2019-09-13T18:15:07Z")
> [@The\_Vorlon](#): > > Just a head’s up–there is a new book coming in March 2020–written in parallel with ‘The Number of the Beast’, it follows the first third of the book, then deviates. Apparently is has been pieced together from the RAH archives. Hadn’t heard about that. Is this what you mean?: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/612713154/robert-heinleins-unpublished-novel](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/612713154/robert-heinleins-unpublished-novel) ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2019, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/734 "2019-09-13T18:46:26Z")
I just threw $79 at that project. Worth it if it’s new Heinlein. Even second-rate Heinlein. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Vorlon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@The\_Vorlon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Vorlon)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2019, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/735 "2019-09-13T18:52:24Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > I just threw $79 at that project. Worth it if it’s new Heinlein. Even second-rate Heinlein. So did I. I consider it well spent, and probably the last new stuff we will ever see, since Spider has hit the brick wall of life, not that I blame him. Getting some Ebooks in the deal makes it all the sweeter, since the typeface in my 45 year old paperbacks are getting mysteriously smaller. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2019, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/736 "2019-09-13T19:02:08Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > First, he made the protagonist black. It’s never said outright but there are several subtle hints in the text that indicate it. The largest of which comes at the end where Rod Walker, speaking to his sister, refers to a girl who is described earlier as a ‘Zulu’ as being ‘She looks a lot like you’. That implies that his sister is black and therefore so is he. We don’t learn until the last page of _Starship Troopers_ that Johnny Rico is Filipino – which is flatly implausible, when we consider how, back in basic, he was utterly astonished at the karate bout between Zim and Shujumi – any Filipino would at least know about that sort of thing. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2019, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/737 "2019-09-13T19:23:43Z")
I don’t have the book handy, but I don’t recall Johnnie being astonished at the fact of the bout between Zim and Shujimi so much as his wonder at the fact that Zim knew _what he was doing_. (Being trained by Shijumi’s father will do that.) We are also dealing with a future society. Who knows what they know then, or what is common knowledge? We also don’t know where Johnnie’s family was living. Certainly not in the Philippines. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2019, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/738 "2019-09-13T22:51:53Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’m not sure I buy the parallels between _Space Cadet_ and _Starship Troopers_. In the latter, it’s accepted that a significant fraction of society will want to join the service, and the service bends over backwards to find a job for anyone who wants in. In the former, though, the Patrol has very clear and very strict standards, and if you don’t meet those standards, you’re out, that’s it. > > The Patrol also seems much more morally-justified than the MI. In _Space Cadet_, it’s really drilled in that the Patrol is _necessary_, and that it’s necessary that the young men in it be nothing but the best of the best. Their job really is what so many militaries claim, to keep the peace. In _Starship Troopers_, though, the service exists just because it has existed in the past, and bureaucracies at rest tend to remain at rest. There’s no attempt made to justify it, beyond the fact that it’s there, and it works. No, it is there because, in the worldview expressed in ST, interstellar life is a Darwinian struggle for _Lebensraum,_ and the species that loses its warlike capacity will go extinct. Peaceful coexistence is not an option. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2019, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/739 "2019-09-14T00:09:37Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > The Black Pits of Luna - From The Future History of Robert Heinlein Vol. 1 > > Another story that mentions Harriman, this time in the guise of a person who represents ‘The Harriman Trust’. By this time travel to the moon is so humdrum that a man might take his wife and children, one of the quite small, on a business trip there. Amazing. > > At this point in the future history, the moon is getting populated and children and being born there. Off camera, and for story purposes necessary, a senior member of the trust has his young daughter around so that the POV family can borrow her suit for their youngest to take him to the surface. > > Two things stand out in TBPOL. First, another appearance of ‘The Heinlein Matron’, a woman who is so used to comfort that she’s quite unwilling to enjoy the excursion. She’s the mother of the family and apparently frequently frustrates the younger narrator. > > But what this really shows is the division, in Heinlein’s mind, of those who want to pioneer and those who don’t. Of the family, at the end of the story (which revolves around the youngest getting separated and lost on the moon and his older brother tracking him down) neither of the parents are seen as the ‘pioneering’ type while the elder boy is. In fact, he’s specifically invited to return when he grows up. What more could a boy want? > > Hell, _I_ certainly wanted that at his age. > > So we’re seeing that an age of exploration is dawning and the division in the human race between those who want to go and those who want to stay home. It won’t be the last time this pops up. ISTM the division is more between the kind of people Heinlein respects and the kind he despises, the latter apparently having no right to live. If any character ever inclined me to hate RAH’s guts, it’s Clyde Leamer in TEFL. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2019, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/740 "2019-09-14T00:38:04Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > It’s a variation of Gandhi’s saying, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” [Misattributed.](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#Misattributed) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729.md?page=36) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729.md?page=38)