The Cat Who Walked Through Walls: major spoilers and some "gahuuuh?!?"

Cafe Society
41

Heh. Someone would pick up that reference, here. :wink:

Heinlein, though, who was famous for working out complex Hohmann orbits or spacesuit equalization mechanisms in order to support one or two sentances of text in a four hundred page novel, never would have let something like that slip by. But then, when you’re willing to let an entire billion-Earth-mass celestial structure slide into the sun by gross miscalculation or throw a character through the egosphere of a black hole with a gravity gradient so steep it would strip the electrons from an atom, what’s a counterrotating planet here or there? :smiley:

Stranger

42

I’d say Campbell did that - but I’m not knocking Heinlein. I’ve read Astounding for the entire Golden Age (1938 - 1945). You can see the vast improvement as Campbell got and trained new writers. But even of that sterling lot Heinlein stood out, almost always getting the top AnLab spots, or two at once if there was an Anson McDonald story there. The analogy that comes to mind is the Beatles in 1964-65.

I’ve really got to reread him in the proper order. Curse you, thread!

43

Oh, it gets better. In later editions, he corrected the Earth’s rotation, but even still, Ringworld consistently uses a value of g = 9.98 m/s[sup]2[/sup], instead of the correct 9.8. But what the hey… If Pluto is ten times the size it is in our world, who’s to say that Known Space’s Earth isn’t maybe a little bigger than ours, too?

44

silenus, I have, at one time, owned a copy of that, as well. And the only reason I knew to look for the blooper was because Larry, himself, was not shy about admitting his error.
Philosophically, I think that Heinlein’s biggest contribution (and to some, his biggest flaw) was that he always had, as an unconscious assumption for all his books, the belief that problems are soluble. The solution may not be easy, nor complete, nor necessarily survivable: but solutions are possible. He was also willing to write about complex engineering problems, without ever forgetting that what makes a story is the characters, not the engineering conundrum at the center.

He has his many flaws in his writing. But that doesn’t keep him from being one of the real fathers of SF, nor from being a great writer.

45

Well now…we don’t know the gravity of the Pak homeworld, so 9.88 m/s[sup]2[/sup] might be alright for them. But if you’re really going to nitpick Niven…the field is wide open; from orbital mechanics (Neutron Star) to evolutionary biology (Protector, The Mote In God’s Eye) to cosmology (“The Borderland of Sol”), Niven has made some grand blunders. But at least he has vision; The Integral Trees was brilliant in concept. I choked when it came to The Legacy of Heorot, and wish I hadn’t read The Ringworld Throne. And Destiny’s Road was simply intolerable.

But we were speaking of Heinlein…and his favorite of mine was The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, seconded only to …If This Goes On. I guess there’s nothing like a good revolution.

Stranger

46

Urg…9.98 m/s[sup]2[/sup]. Lest I be contributing to the error at hand.

Come to think of it, though…how would a species even have time to evolve in the volitile core worlds, where x-ray and gamma radiation from the core would sleet through systems like daggers? And the Ringworld…oh, never mind.

Stranger

47

Aww, I hate to interrupt a good Niven tangent, but I have to speak up.

There are two real Heinlein Stinkers: I Will Fear No Evil, and The Number of the Beast.

The Brain Transplant Book With Sex suffered mostly from his illness. If he had been able to cut a third of the dialog, it might have been a classic. Folks tend to forget he wrote it, when they list his adult novels-- Which really ought to include a bunch of the pre-1961 novels. Double Star was thought by some at the time to be a good tale…

As for “The Swiss Family Robinson meets Dorthy and the Tin Man”?

I dunno. Read this, I guess.

[sub](Obligatory Niven Content? Go re-read “Cloak of Anarchy” I haven’t read it in maybe 12 years, but I was thinking about the story a few weeks ago when folks had to move in to the Superdome. He nailed it.)[/sub]

48

I’m a die-hard fan. I enjoyed both of the books you pan. Beast is just plain fun and expands on the parallel universe concepts he had used much earlier.
I will fear no evil is flawed and light on Science Fiction. It is an interesting character study and he did seem to have changed his mind about homosexuals by this point, which fit more with his usual libertarian views. I thought the characters were interesting and the grittier future he outlined was one you could see from the trends of the late 60’s. Weak Sci-Fi but still a good if unimportant book.

49

Weird. I don’t want to disagree with you., but gosh. How about Glory Road…

Thats a story written by a man with a completeley different viewpoint than one in SIAASL or STroopers. And that’s too many, right?

“Friday” uses stuff from “I will fear no evil”, and nearly makes a real world of it’s leftovers. Robert had to

50

I hope you are okay.

Glory Road (1963) was right in the heart of his adult novels. No Juveniles in this period. I was not listing a complete list of books, just establishing my own break points for his career. Glory Road was done almost on a challenge. Someone suggested that fantasy may be harder for him to write.

51

Aww, I hate to interrupt a good Niven tangent, but I have to speak up.

There are two real Heinlein Stinkers: I Will Fear No Evil, and The Number of the Beast.

The Brain Transplant Book With Sex suffered mostly from his illness. If he had been able to cut a third of the dialog, it might have been a classic. Folks tend to forget he wrote it, when they list his adult novels-- Which really ought to include a bunch of the pre-1961 novels. Double Star was thought by some at the time to be a good tale…

As for “The Swiss Family Robinson meets Dorthy and the Tin Man”?

I dunno. Read this, I guess.

[sub](Obligatory Niven Content? Go re-read “Cloak of Anarchy” I haven’t read it in maybe 12 years, but I was thinking about the story a few weeks ago when folks had to move in to the Superdome. He nailed it.)[/sub]

52

The first half of the book was quirky and interesting. The fact that no one seemed to be doing anything didn’t really bother me because it was a fun adventure Heinlein was taking me on.

But I think it was when Bill, a semi-major character, was abandoned, turned back into a rogue thug, and then killed all for no apparent reason I began to say “huh?” Then a few pages later he mentions Time Travel for the first time, which suddenly becomes the entire focus of the book from here on out despite the fact that there was no whiff of time travel being at play at any point prior to this.
That made me again go “huh?” Only a tad louder as sound doesn’t travel that well in space and i wanted to make my voice heard.

It was then I realized again what I realized all along: these characters aren’t doing anything! Only in the bad way. And each page brought them closer to the end of the book and each page my dread of none of the mysteries getting solved became more and more entrenched.

With about 60 pages left I was thoroughly confused but it was at this point I resolved that I MUST finish this book…if only so I could have bitching rights afterwards. And so here I am!

Jonathan Chance your offer is most kind and I believe I will take you up on it. I’ll e-mail you my info tomorrow. Thank you.
what exactly are his “juveniles”?

53

What would be called “Young Adult” today, aimed at preteen/midteen readers. It should be noted, though, that Heinlein’s juveniles are head and shoulders above most of the dreck that passes and has passed for adult science fiction.

54

A generally accepted list:
Rocket Ship Galileo (1947)

Space Cadet (1948)

Red Planet (1949)

Farmer In the Sky (1950)

Between Planets (1951)

The Rolling Stones (1952)

Starman Jones (1953)

The Star Beast (1954)

Tunnel In the Sky (1955)

Time for the Stars (1956)

Citizen of the Galaxy (1957)

Have Space Suit Will Travel (1958)

Starship Troopers (1959) (Although I consider the politics behind this one to be very adult in nature)

All of them excellent. My favorites are Tunnel, Farmer, and Stones, along with Troopers.

55

That is to say, the protagonists are all teenagers (and except for Podkayne, boys), and with regard to graphic sex and violence…essentially, there is none. You could publish the books in Boy’s Life, and indeed, I think a couple of them may have been in one form or another. But he didn’t dumb down the novels to fit the perception of “juvenile” sensibilities (though he did have to accept some editorial censorship to match the moral strictures of the time and audience.) There’s very little difference in terms of style or content, though, other than the age of the protagonist, between his juvies and his “adult” short novels/novellas of the same period (Double Star, The Door Into Summer, et cetera.) If you like one, you’ll probably like the other. Heck, Lazarus Long wasn’t much more than a big obnoxious kid himself, especially in Methuselah’s Children.

Stranger

56

I grew up on Heinlein’s juveniles as well - Red Planet was the first novel I ever read. But as Stranger noted you left off Podkayne of Mars :).

My least favorite is Troopers, the weakest of the juveniles IMHO, but still entertaining. My own favorites ( if I have to pick three ) are Citizen, Tunnel, and Have Space Suit.

However I came in to mention the collection The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag. All the stories are good, but the title story in particular is thematically somewhat atypical for Heinlein and genuinely creepy at times. It’s always been a dark horse favorite of mine.

  • Tamerlane
57

I agree, Tamerlane that The Unpleasant Profession is genuinely creepy, but my favorite story from that collection is “The Man Who Travelled in Elephants.” Which is just as atypical as Profession, but in a completely different direction.

58

“Sez you!
– The Galactic Overlord”

Given the premise advanced in The Number of the Beast and expanded on in Cat, this supposed unexplained practical joke in The Rolling Stones has an interesting point. (BTW, this is the chronological first appearance of Hazel Meade (Gwen Novak, Sadie Lipschitz) Stone, who reappears in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and both the abovereferenced books.)

59

That was Stranger in a Strange Land (a decade later), not Cat. Details available in Grumbles from the Grave if you’re sufficiently interested.

60

Well, you know, we all want to change the world! :wink:

The point to Cat which makes it so annoying as a casual-read novel and IMO so important in Heinlein’s canon is that it defines from the very title what it is attempting to do, and then we get annoyed when it actually does it.

We want our fiction carefully wrapped, with no loose ends (unless they’re set up for a sequel). Real life isn’t like that.

Worse, according to modern indeterminacy theory, the fricken Universe isn’t like that, with things that are not only not known but unknowable. Indeterminacy, quantum theory, collapsing of quantum indeterminacy.

“Pixel is Schrodinger’s cat.” Somebody (Jane Libby?) says that explicitly in the book. Is Schrodinger’s cat alive or dead? Under the setup of the thought experiment, you can’t know – until you open the box after the experiment. And that is exactly where Heinlein leaves Pixel – and the protagonists.

What about all those loose ends? From Enrico Schulz to Bill the Galactic Derelict to Rabbi Ben Ezra? (and yes, the puns are intentional, and not, I suspect, mine but RAH’s) Heinlein makes a half-baked attempt at explaining some of them via Uncle Jock and Jubal, but intentionally leaves several unexplained.

Just like real life.

Back in Number of the Beast, there’s a discussion between the four lead characters on the distinction between “random” and “chance” and whether anything is “pure chance” that still leaves me sleepless occasionally.

Heinlein’s creed was that all problems have solutions.

Quantum theory and indeterminacy, along with Godel, say that not only do not all problems have solutions, but we cannot possibly know the answers even if they do.

To a man of Heinlein’s makeup, this abdication of scientific inquiry into a sort of vague mysticism was unconscionable.

So he devoted an entire book to saying, It won’t work; it isn’t true. There is an answer. Here’s why it’s so much BS.

If the book leaves you vastly unsatisfied, that’s precisely his point. As Jake Burroughs says, in so many words, in that discussion in the Dora that Lazarus’s bad temper (where’d he get that from?) ends.