Would Heinlein's "Coventry" work?

Great Debates
101

From Heinlein In Dimension: *It is passages such as these from “Lost Legacy” and “Gulf” that caused me to think for a time that Heinlein was an authoritarian, but he is not. His characters ask no one to follow and obey them except from choice. Even the subordinates in Heinlein’s military stories are always volunteers. *

What Heinlein is, of course, is an elitist. Not only are his central characters Heinlein Individuals, and hence special, but Heinlein most often assigns his lead characters uncommon talents that set them even further apart…Heinlein’s elite is one of competence rather than of money or blood, and these special talents, by increasing competence, are added reason for the existence of the elite.
I don’t think Panshin is an anti-Heinleinist. I think he is a critic. On I disagree with on a number of issues, but entitled to his opinion and good at his job.

102

My take is different: I think Panshin is a very insightful, articulate critic who, at least when he wrote Heinlein in Dimension had a grudge against Heinlein and it showed. His later comments on Heinlein’s work (such as he made in The World Beyond The Hill which I highly recommend) are thoughtful and insightful. Heinlein in Dimension reads like a “Heinlein Suxxxxors!” screed to me.

And it’s NOT because I’m a (IIRC, Panshin’s term) Heinlein-Can-Do-No-Wrong acolyte. I’ve already commented on how little I like Cat and Farnham’s to name two. For me, the problems are twofold in Dimension:

  1. Panshin was pissed at Heinlein 'cause (IIRC again) Heinlein wouldn’t let Panshin do a biography of Heinlein.
  2. Panshin had come up with a silly theory that didn’t actually fit the facts and he therefore ignored every shred of evidence against his pet theory. (He also got a bunch of details wrong–I don’t remember what they were any more, but there were a bunch of just sloppy errors)

His “theory” was that there are only 3 male (and 1 female) characters in any Heinlein story: The young kid, just starting out and learning, the middle aged guy who knows how the world works and the old guy who not only knows how the world works but WHY it works that way–and somehow they were all Heinlein. (And his women are all matrons of the “Harold! How DARE you let this man talk to me this way!” variety. Um. Except Podkayne. But she’s a kid. And Peewee. And Star. And etc…)

The problems with this “theory” are twofold. #1) I can off the top of my head easily name a dozen characters who don’t fit that mold and #2) I can think of thousands of other characters who do. Most notably Gilligan, The Professor and the Skipper from “Gilligan’s Island”. Or Darrin, Uncle Arthur and Maurice from “Bewitched”.

Once he got over being pissed off, he offers up honest and generally thoughtful comments on Heinlein, but IMO, Heinlein In Dimension is just a rant.

103

Not nuclear weapons, but stream of plasma, IIRC.

104

Neither, I think. Didn’t they drop a rock like in the movie (or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?) Not that there’s much of a difference–except for the fallout–between dropping a nuke and dropping a large rock from orbit.

105

Not in the book. All it says is “smeared,” “destroyed,” “raided,” and the like.

Anyway, the book states that military conflict at some level with the Bugs had been going on since before Juan joined the MI, as Fenris noted previously. But they date the “start” of the war after BA got done unto.

106

I don’t have a copy of the book handy at the moment so I’m going off of memory, which of course may be fallible. I seem to recall that initially in the book it merely talked about Buenos Aires being destroyed, but later that plasma was mentioned.

Hey, if nothing else, this thread’ll get me re-reading two very good novels!

107

I don’t remember the plasma bit at all…my recollection is that they dropped rocks too…but that’s the sort of detail that I tend to be bad with, so… :wink:

108

Wow, this thread has gotten way off track, not that I mind the Heinlein discussion.

Infinity Hold, by Barry B. Longyear. The worst of the worst, incorrigible criminals, get rounded up and sent on a one-way trip to a close to unlivable planet. They have to cooperate to survive and along the way start developing their own society and laws. Some of the social commentary by the main character points out some blatantly unfair rules in the society they came from; a close analog of modern North America.

I personally like the idea of exile for two reasons: 1) It gives you a second chance; you have no choice but to start over, and 2) No one is being punished in any other way than removing them from a society whose rules they obviously cannot follow. I’d like the exile to be elective, in that they could choose imprisonment or death in lieu of exile. I also would not want any people permanently exiled for non-violent crimes.

In reality, the exiling would only work for the first generation or so anyway. You couldn’t continue to exile people there because sooner or later the exilees would become numerous or powerful enough to tell you to go to hell. It’s important to remember that humans, no matter how crazy or how violent, are social animals. We’re not Reavers. Groups of people make social groups, and they make rules for their societies to live by. At first, it would be total chaos, but in a very short time groups would form for protection, or aggression, and out of those would come the seeds of a new society.

The “think of the children” argument is pretty pointless. Not to be overly fatalistic or anything, but we don’t do a whole lot for people born into abject poverty or crappy social conditions even in our own society. If you really cared and felt responsible for them, you’d be willing to take in disadvantaged, poor, or orphaned children, as many as you could afford to care for. You guys do that, right?

Children born into exile would be born into bad conditions, no question there, but would those conditions be any worse than an inner-city slum, or a war-torn African country? Depending on how the budding society shaped itself, the eventual conditions might not be that bad at all. At worst, they would probably match what you see in all too many places in the Third World.

Would we have a responsibility for the possible mistreatment of children born into that society? In my opinion, no more than we have responsibility for a child who was mistreated in our society. It’s not our collective fault that people suck. We’ve created the conditions for widespread poverty in the US. Does that mean that you are personally responsible if 14 year old Tyrone in South Central robs a liquor store and shoots the clerk?

109

(Spoiler alert)

Revisiting Tris’s comment about individualists:

I remember that one of the closing lines was a question from the “rugged individualist” (the protaganist) who escaped from Coventry. The question was, “What about the Secret Service?” So, maybe the set-up in Coventry did provide a legitimate (non-convict) way of acting out one’s fantasies of being rugged and independent of the nanny government.

110

Fenris:

I know everybody sees Heinlein in Dimension like that, but I have to admit that I didn’t, and don’t. Read it again – it’s not a one-note rant. There’s a helluva lot more than “all Heinlein’s heroes are the same guy” to it. It’s not a rant. There’s a lot of insightful criticism in it that I found fascinating when I first read it (long before I obtained my own copy). I suspect a lot of people first read the book knowing a lot of the basckground, and read that into it. It was clear to me that Panshin loved Heinlein’s work and had read and re-read it to saturation (who thec hell but a true fan digs up the magazine publications and contrasts them with the book versions?) That doesn’t mean that he unequivocally loves everyuthing about the books or the author, and he obviously doesn’t.

Spider Robinson’s essay to the contrary notwithstanding, Heinlein’s female charactwers strike me as unreal, and I can see the point of the “Heinlein’s heros as the three stages of man” argument. Just because not every character fits it doesn’t make it a legitinmate criticism. (I understansd that James Blish first raised the notion, well before Panshin, but I’ve never read his much briefer article.)

111

In the very midst of the sudden flurry of Heinlein fans, I posted a small contribution (#85) to the ideas in the OP. Calling attention to it here because non-fans might have skimmed that part and missed it. I’m not a fan; I started some novels of his that I never read very far. I read all of Stranger in a Strange Land, maybe more for the wider cultural significance, because that was the book the hippies all went for. I knew some hippies who had actually assimilated its ideas into their everyday lives, although they thought the Church of All Worlds, which institutionalized those ideas in the form of a religion, was a big mistake. As for political philosophy in novel form, my favorite is The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk—what happens when the utopia is invaded and occupied by the dystopia?

Hey, I just heard about this crazy dude, Osama Bin something or other. If we could just exile him somewhere, that would settle his hash, all right… It’s important to remember that humans, no matter how crazy or how violent, are social animals. We’re not Reavers. Groups of people make social groups, and they make rules for their societies to live by. At first, it would be total chaos, but in a very short time groups would form for protection, or aggression, and out of those would come the seeds of a new society.
[/QUOTE]
That’s why I brought an example of the OP idea from real life, or something analogous to it. In Morocco, the “land of disobedience” was high roadless terrain, that must have seemed too much trouble to the king to bother with sending law enforcement to, as he reclined on his carpets and cushions in the comfort of Marrakesh smoking hashish. Dissenters who fled to the land of disobedience would find it occupied by Berber tribes, who according to ancient tribal custom would provide refuge. Tribal control of the land would be the reason it wasn’t ruled by the state in the first place; it would be too much effort to subdue the tribes and occupy the rugged terrain. So you’ve made an important point, that there will always be some form of social organization, and exiles aren’t banished into a social vaccum

What the OP resolves to in the real world is a division of territory that’s as old as civilization itself, between the settled areas and the wild. Much of the history of North Africa was the result of the interplay of these two areas. The 14th-century North African historian Ibn Khaldun is credited with founding the study of sociology. He developed it largely based on how tribal structures form in the wild and how they interact with sedentary civilization. I wonder how Ibn Khaldun would have read America’s Wild West. There was a cultural link between the Moors and the Old West via Spain.

112

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard Isaac Asimov’s take on Heinlein’s politics. Asimov, who was really liberal, and Heinlein, had been friends, but then drifted apart, and Asimov’s opinion was that Heinlein was liberal until he married his second wife, who he blamed for turning Heinlein into a “rock-ribbed far-right conservative”. Does that sound plausable to you?

113

I guess I don’t understand how a person who could write “Stranger in a Strange Land” could be a “rock-ribbed far-right conservative”.

A frequent Heinlein theme is that only barbarians believe that the customs of their tribe are laws of nature. Civilized sophisticated people know how to adapt to local custom without believing it is anything more than adapting to local custom.

114

I think the Real answer is Heinlein did grow more conservative as he aged. But as he started out nearly a Socialist, this means he grew to be a moderate that was willing to explore ideas from all over the political spectrum. He was hardly a fascist or a “rock-ribbed far-right conservative”.

Jim

115

It’s likely that Virgina moved him to the right, but he was never all THAT far to the right, based on the little we know. Towards the end of his life he was very loudly in support of S.D.I. and got into a nasty fight with Clarke over it but other than that, we really don’t know how far to the traditional right he drifted. Certainly he was never a “religious right” type.

Keep in mind that Asimov drifted further to the left (and wrote about it) than Heinlein ever seemed to go to the right, including writing apologies for Stalinist Russia and scorning anyone who opposed the Soviets as (close quote) “Mindless cold warriors”. (He also wrote a really…pathetic, for lack of a bette word screed about how 1984 is just an anti-Soviet rant and not “true” SF at all. He really disliked anyone who was anti-soviet) Frankly both Heinlein and Asimov seemed to get a little weird in their old age. But Heinlein turned out either 2 or 3 good books after 1980 and Asimov turned out ( IMO) none.

As an aside, Clarke (who’s further to the left than Asimov in many ways) said that he attributed much of his and Heinlein’s disagreements to Heinlein being (IIRC) in pain and that they’d reconcilled at the end.

116

I don’t know. I liked The Robots of Dawn*, and also his Black Widower stories, a lot of which were post 1980. And I’ve read his essay on 1984, and don’t know if he’s entirely wrong…1984 is, as Asimov said, an anti-Stalinist book, and it isn’t science fiction in the way that Asimov is defining science fiction.

And I don’t think it’s fair to say that Asimov “really disliked anyone who was anti-soviet”. He disliked Reagan, and he was a big believer in detente. His argument was that the Soviet Union of the 80s wasn’t Stalinist Russia…that it had liberalized a lot in 30 years, and that by treating it like it was, and by being implacably opposed to it, all we were doing was risking nuclear war and discouraging the Soviets from further reform.

117

Without getting into the politics of Reagan and the '80s and the Soviets, my understanding is that Asimov was considerably more…outspoken in his “pro-commie”* stance in person than he was in his books.

That said, I’ll concede the Black Widower tales were post-'80s and they ARE good, so I’d fogotten those, but personally I loathed (YMMV, of course: I’m not trying to state an absolute here, just my tastes) Robots of Dawn. I hated the “Zeroth Law” concept a lot. And those points conceded, I’m respectfully bowing out of the 'politics of the ‘80s’ tangent that I started. :slight_smile:

I would be interested in discussing “1984: SF or Not” at some point though. I though Asimov’s criticisms were (to me) silly and it’s clearly SF.

*:wink:

118

Asimov pro-commie? You’re kidding, aren’t you?

119

Note the footnote.

120

Gotcha. :smack:

Come to think of it, one of Asimov’s stories had a preface in which he stated that the politics of the story were those that he definitely disagreed with. He said that the story just wrote out that way. Can’t remember the title of it but it was the one centered on a waste recycling plant operator.