Enjoy!

[james_davis_nicoll]

Sarah A. Hoyt is going to set you Heinlein-bashers straight!

[note: comments may contain some Nick Mamatas]

Comments

[nelc.livejournal.com]

But I thought the problem with Heinlein was that his physics was a bit dodgy? It's so hard to keep up sometimes.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

There are enough problems in Heinlein to keep a myriad of critics happy. He's in that sweet zone where he actually had the desire to excel while sometimes falling short.

He did get: Newtonian physics.
He did not get: Relativity (but he thought he did).
He may not have been aware of: Quantum Mechanics.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

I was tempted to point out that James' attempt to catalogue stories according to the gender of the characters really needed a "heinlein Heroine" category, for those female-gendered characters (currently largely found in urban fantasy stories) who's sex isn't so much male or female as it is frequent.

Generally speaking because of his massive degeneration towards the end of his career PLUS all his trunk stories getting published after his death, PLUS him being an american writer during a a very nasty and incoherent period in american history (I.E. any of it) PLUS his ability to be very good at presenting other people's views in a compelling fashion PLUS the fact that unless we take heinlein and repeatedly lock him in a box with a fish and time how long he takes to escape from it, it is totally impossible to say for a fact that he definately had any opinions of his own whatsoever, let alone be able to identify what those opinions actually ARE.

[dsrtao]

I'll just say I liked Hoyt's _Darkship Thieves_, including the Heinlein influences, and leave it at that.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Never read it, but I was darkly amused at her insistence that there was no sexual suggestiveness to the cover.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

What we need now is someone to rewrite all of RAH's books to make them pertinent to our times and current social correctness, and not to put them in context to when he wrote them. ( and who edited and bought them at the publishers)

The man is dead, you can stop now.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

As long as some people argue that Heinlein is enduringly great and everyone ought to read Heinlein and if you don't like Heinlein there's probably something wrong with you, then other people will argue that Heinlein has ism problems.

I find Heinlein unreadable, probably because I am So Very Much not the audience for whom he wrote. That's okay with me; I just don't read him. However, it's not okay to a number of other people, who have frequently tried to explain how misguided I am not to admire his books.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Saturn's Children wasn't warning enough why this is a bad bad bad idea?

[daev.livejournal.com]

Bullwinkle: Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Rocky: Again? That trick never works.
Bullwinkle: This time for sure!
Lion: RRRROAR!!!!
Rocky: Wrong hat!

[dancesontrains.livejournal.com]

I can't stop loling at the whiny premise of the main article long enough to offer any coherent opinions on anything else :')

(That, and I haven't read Heinlien for years if ever- I never quite glommed onto reading sci-fi.)

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

You didn't miss anything - the article didn't offer anything coherent enough to have a coherent opinion on.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Why is it so seldom mentioned that some of Heinlein's views changed over the years?

And why don't people who write about his views overlook the short stories written when sf was mostly a short-fiction field? I would think that "Delilah and the Space Rigger" is relevant to any discussion of his attitude toward women.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

And "Jerry Was a Man" is relevant to racism in 1947 . . .

[glaurung-quena.livejournal.com]

"changed over the years"

And quite dramatically, too - it's hard to see the socialist utopia advocated in "Beyond this Horizon" coming from the same person who wrote several long anti-welfare state diatribes in "The Cat who Walks Through Walls" and "To Sail Beyond the Sunset."

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

The thing about "Delilah and the Space Rigger" is that it was not all that unusual in the US of 1949 to espouse the view that women could do jobs, including technical jobs, for which they were trained; it took a good solid decade of government and business propaganda that maintained no, they couldn't, for people to forget.

Carlos already said it

[(Anonymous)]

http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2587854.html?thread=48449230#t48449230

"Reaching for the blowhard gun" is good.


Doug M.

[melindadansky.livejournal.com]

That was awesome. I may never stop giggling.

[rachel-swirsky.livejournal.com]

"note: comments may contain some Nick Mamatas"

Aw, man, but nowhere near enough.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Another little bit just went up.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I'm just not gonna read any Heinlein at all and stay out of the whole debate. So there.

[rosefox]

The blinkered notion that

*closes tab*

[cija.livejournal.com]

Really. I don't know that this is what you meant, but I can deal a lot better with people who take their ideas from Heinlein than I can with those who take their idioms from him.

[rosefox]

Also, your allergen warning needs to include a certain Mr. Wm. Shet.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't notice. Isn't he supposed to be a new person since the B12 thing?

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I sincerely think the proper way to deal with articles like this, is to post in all innocence "Who is this Henlin guy? Is he like, that guy on AM radio?"

And then when they give you the inevitable list of Heinlien introductory works is given, come back with "OMG this guy sounds like my grandfather! Who taught this fool how to write anyway? LoL!"

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

The annoying thing about this Tor conversation is that if people weren't getting stuck in the "is/is not" loop, there'd be way more room for actual conversation. < /obvious>

(I like Ohaygo, though.)