# 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:** 38
**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, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/741 "2019-09-14T01:00:38Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > **Rocket Ship Galileo** , Vol.10 of The Virginia Edition I sometimes wonder if the space drive in that story (an atomic pile heading lead ingots for reaction mass) could actually work. ---
**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, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/742 "2019-09-14T01:10:45Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > I’ve actually chosen to read IWFNE because of its rep. I want to look at it with adult eyes and it’s probably been 25 years since I’ve read it. I look forward to having to organize my thoughts about it when I’m finished. My favorite passage was the wedding conducted by Eunice’s illiterate-but-Bible-memorizing black servant – what was his name? ---
**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, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/743 "2019-09-14T01:21:08Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Question: The tale of the rise of Nehemiah Scudder is, to me, a lost opportunity. I wonder if there might be room for such a story that portrays him as less than a ravenous ideologue and more of a sympathetic figure. It’s entirely possible to present a person like that as both A) a committed man who believes he’s doing right and B) a complete totalitarian dickhead. A description that would apply to a lot of real-life dictators – Cromwell, Robespierre (not Napoleon, he was just an egomaniac), Lenin, Stalin, Mao, perhaps even Hitler. ---
**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, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/744 "2019-09-14T02:13:19Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > But again, what this really is about is a man re-making himself as his own man after losing that part of himself. The journey of DB Davis feels real and true, even towards the end when his romantic life takes a left turn by using coldsleep to marry an 11-year-old (she ends up 21 when he wakes up) it still shows him establishing himself doing the things he wants to do in the way he wants to do it. See [Groomer](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Groomer). RAH did that a **lot** – not IRL, but in his fiction – as in “The Tale of the Adopted Daughter,” and Spider Robinson worked a kind of homage to the practice into [_Variable Star._](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Star) Then again, is anyone really all that creeped out by Grover Cleveland’s marriage to [Frances Folsom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Cleveland)? (Paging _Casey and Andy_ fans!) ---
**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, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/745 "2019-09-14T02:18:18Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > I remember reading “The Door into Summer” when I was about 10 years old in the mid 70s. I was really confused because I thought the opening story was set in the present day, but then it mentioned nuclear wars and so on. I was young enough that I didn’t understand that dates set in what would be the books future when the book was written could be in the past when I was reading it. So it was already alt-history. > > The interesting thing is how often science fiction authors of the 50/60s predicted radical social and technological changes in the upcoming decades. Yet it seems, here, in the far future of 2013 (2013!) that things haven’t changed so much. I guess living through the 30s and 40s will do that to you. War, peace, boom, depression, war, peace, boom. The changes in and shakeups from 1928 to 1958 are pretty mind-boggling. And so moon colonies in 1980 didn’t seem like such a stretch. Well, one thing has changed: Nobody today would think of naming a cleaning-robot “Hired Girl.” ---
**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, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/746 "2019-09-14T02:27:13Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Still, the reintroduction of Hartley Baldwin of _Gulf_ and the display of the failure of _Gulf’s_ attempt to introduce an almost Neitzchean superman to take over the world is worth reading. Here’s something I’ve always wondered: After Kettle Belly passes, it turns out he has left Friday enough money for passage to any colony-world – except for Olympia, that’s stipulated in his will. When Friday asks what Olympia is, she’s told, “That’s where all those self-styled supermen went.” Did Kettle Belly have some kind of falling out with the other members of his high-IQ organization, leaving them to found Olympia? ---
**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, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/747 "2019-09-14T02:38:27Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > I haven’t done ‘The Star Beast’ yet, but it will be an interesting contrast between John Thomas Stuart XI - a very passive and basically ineffectual character - and his girlfriend Betty - who is anything but passive. That’s a woman who knows how to define her goals and works to achieve them. And when he balks at going away with her under circumstances that might set tongues wagging, she’s the one who says “You and your nice-nice reputation!” A speculation about changes in social mores that, when you think about it, is not really very plausible at all. ---
**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, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/748 "2019-09-14T02:43:31Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Indeed, though I think there’s an argument to be made that Maureen didn’t do that. She lived her live through the 20th century becoming MORE actualized and self-reliant as she aged, regardless of the men in her life. Frankly, I enjoyed TSBtS not for its SF plot, but as a literary portrait of life in the American Midwest in the Gay '90s and the Mauve Decade. The relevant chapters of TEfL for the same reasons. RAH really showed his roots there. Write what you know. He remarked that the Americans of that time and place regarded theirs as “a utopian way of life,” and probably they did, despite the primitive medicine and dentistry and pervasive racism. ---
**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, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/749 "2019-09-14T02:50:42Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > So when a character would approach a door and it would ‘dilate’, that’s all you needed to know. Which, when you think about it, is a kewl way to design a door, but otherwise has nothing going for it in practical terms. A door is not a camera-shutter. ---
**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, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/750 "2019-09-14T02:56:43Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > A similar example occurs at the beginning of **Time for the Stars** , where the hero refers to a famous saying about the Chinese people, if waling four abreast, would never pass a given point 9since births would expand the line more rapidly than the number marching past that given point, even if you include deaths). The idea was popularized by Robert Ripley in one of his _believe it or Not_ Sunday cartoons, which was subsequently widely reprinted. It could be that heinlein was inspired by some common source, but considering the popularity of Believe it or Not, I strongly suspect that not only was Heinlein inspired by the cartoon, he expected his audience to have seen it, too. I remember the same image being invoked in Cyril Kornbluth’s “The Marching Morons,” which probably inspired _Idiocracy._ (Actually, both are premised on a non-problem – see [Flynn Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect).) ---
**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, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/751 "2019-09-14T03:02:10Z")
> [@aNewLeaf](#): > > I didn’t know about Beany until this thread (ignorance fought!) . . . I did, but only as animation; did not know it had a puppet-show predecessor. ---
**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, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/752 "2019-09-14T03:06:38Z")
> [@aNewLeaf](#): > > Edit to add- today’s readers might also be surprised by J B Rhine and his experiments with scientific psionics. > In Heinlein’s earlier work, that was science fiction, and not fantasy. Attempts to replicate the results failed later (like cold fusion). See [_Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science,_](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fads_and_Fallacies_in_the_Name_of_Science) by Martin Gardner. After several elimination-rounds of testing subjects with his symbol-cards, Rhine wound up with a group of subjects who had guessed every card right every single time. Well, of course he did – that is exactly what would happen if they had no ESP but were guessing at random – every round would produce a group of winners, just by random chance, and the next round likewise, etc. But it **seemed** scientifically significant at the time. ---
**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, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/753 "2019-09-14T03:32:51Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > So, even though our POV character is sympathetic, being a literal stranger in a strange land (forgive me) it’s necessary for the author to make clear just out over-the-top his culture is. It’s a culture in which those tasks he lays out appear to be achievable goals. And, that’s the other side – the dark side – of the Midwest of Heinlein’s youth as a “utopian society.” Perhaps it was in some respects, but theocratic-racist fascism was always there as a potentiality. I recall one of his lines from _Expanded Universe,_ noting that “our national culture, as practical as sharp tools on one side, was never more than a few steps away from mindless hysteria on the other side.” If William Jennings Bryan had ever actually been elected president . . . well, he had some good points, perhaps – certainly the oppressed farmers of the Populist movement had some good points as against the Eastern money-power – but who knows if he might have turned out to be Nehemiah Scudder? ---
**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, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/754 "2019-09-14T03:48:30Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > One other interesting point…and this is to Heinlein’s credit…Alex never gets over his racism. It’s pounded into him too deeply. He can see THIS black person or THAT black person as an individual and an equal, but he never gets to the point where he can extrapolate to “…then ALL black people are my equals and individuals”. Which is sad, but realistic. One thing I have learned from the Dope is that back in the 1950s (and Heinlein’s racial attitudes would have been formed a lot earlier than that), a lot of white Americans supported the civil rights movement on the grounds that it is wrong to exploit inferior people. Their view was that blacks are “smarter than a dog, but not smart like you and me.” Indeed, that was a very old attitude. In the 1860s, most white **abolitionists** regarded blacks as a mentally inferior breed. Probably most blacks believed it too, having been told so all their lives, and never hearing a word in contradiction, and always hearing their masters speak in words and concepts that they could not (for lack of education) understand. The abolitionist position was, essentially, “They might be stupid, but that does not warrant treating them as property.” Or, as one abolitionist put it, “Sir Isaac Newton might have been superior to his fellows in reason, but he was not therefore lord of the persons or property of other men.” Or, as Lincoln put it, “You say the negroes should be slaves because they are dark? Have a care! By that argument, you are liable to be enslaved by the next man you meet who is fairer than you! Oh, you might then say, it is not because of their color, but their lack of reason? Have a care! By that argument, you are liable to be enslaved by the next man you meet who is better endowed with reason than 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 14, 2019, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/755 "2019-09-14T03:49:14Z")
> [@kirkrapine](#): > > I sometimes wonder if the space drive in that story (an atomic pile heading lead ingots for reaction mass) could actually work. Zinc, not iron (p. 80 of my edition of _RSG_). ---
**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, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/756 "2019-09-14T03:53:49Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > I love Job and agree it’s Heinlein’s best late book, and among his best overall (maybe top 20)… but the evolution of Alex from moralistic prig to Heinlein Hero is utterly unconvincing in motive, timeline and development. He just flips a switch on all prior cultural conditioning because he meets a hot cheesecake Danish. Wouldn’t you?! ---
**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, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/757 "2019-09-14T04:03:59Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > The Alaska option for the Negro problem. As a Floridian, I should think it would be the **Florida** option for the Negro problem – they are a tropical race, after all, and we white folks never should have tried to live south of the Mediterranean, it’s bad for our skin. See Robert W. Chambers’ [“The Repairer of Reputations”](http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/RepaRepu.shtml) and its reference to “the independent negro state of Suanee” (a river in Florida – Suwanee, not Swanee, and fuck Stephen Foster and Al Jolson). ---
**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, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/758 "2019-09-14T04:14:15Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > One last quick hijack…(sorry Jonathan! I promise I’ll stop) > > Apparently Alice Dagleish actually published stuff beyond “little girls and horsey” books. She got several Newbery\* Awards including one for a book I vaguely remember plodding through in Elementary School: _The Courage of Sarah Noble_ about a little (like 6) girl from Boston who moves to “the wilderness” with her dad and mom but is terrified because her friends tell her how the savages will eat her and chop her head off. She’s able to manage her fear because her mommy gives her a phrase to repeat when she’s scared…something like “Remember your courage, Sarah”. Some “good” Indians show up and she realizes that they might be human. For some reason (I really don’t remember what) the kid ends up having a sleep-over with the indians (who apparently live alone–there’s no tribe, no society, just a mommy Indian, a daddy Indian and three (?) kid Indians). She plays games and has fun and decides that…maybe…they’re people. She comes home the next day and mom freaks out that she was allowed to do a sleepover. The book ends with Sarah talking about how their “good” Indians will protect them from the “bad, Northern” Indians. > > It’s written at about a 2nd grade level–if you’ve ever read the “Little House” books, _Courage_ is written at a MUCH lower age level. > > There’s an interesting discussion of it here. (Interesting=a lot of people with differing yet valid viewpoints and a few hypersensitive ninnies.) Great Grandpa was a big man He washed his face in a fryin’ pan Though the times were young, and the Redskins mocked And he said his prayers with his shotgun cocked! What, didn’t you all sing that song in elementary school?! ---
**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, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/759 "2019-09-14T04:24:59Z")
> [@Reno\_Nevada](#): > > Despite the fact that I am a fan of (early) Heinlein and a HUGE fan of Cabell, I have never read **Job**. Following this discussion I will rectify that lapse. **Fenris** , I strong recommend you read **Jurgen**. It’s really not worth it. ---
**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, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729/760 "2019-09-14T04:29:16Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > I’m now rereading _Friday_ (inspired by the discussion here) and a couple of thoughts so far (I’m up to the part where she’s with Ian, Georges and Janet and all the crackpots claiming credit for that coup/attack) : > > 1. There’s another clue that Friday’s world is Jerry’s (from _Job_) world beyond the “beanstalk” thing. In Jerry’s America, Christians (presumably including Catholics) are a semi-persecuted minority. Same with Friday’s world although we’re only shown Catholics being persecuted. (“Uncle Jim” in one of the pre-rape chapters–there are hushed whispers that he might be \ a papist…or beyond that, \ a priest). _sigh_ **If only!** Death to all Papests! (I say that being an alumnus of Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729.md?page=37) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-re-reading-all-of-robert-heinlein-via-the-virginia-edition/637729.md?page=39)