The Great Heinlein Juveniles Plus The Other Two Reread 10: Time for the Stars

[james_davis_nicoll]

In which archaic sexism and racism provide unwelcome distraction from dubious physics: Time for the Stars by Robert A. Heinlein


As ever, corrections will not be dealt with until I get home tonight.

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I did learn something embarrassing from this, which is that I have been conflating Beta Hydri and Beta Hydrae for years. FOR YEARS.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

This blog now has TV commercials. James, you're coming up in the world.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I am not in a position to watch that. What is it?

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

30 second advertisement for a "Zodiac of Love" mobile app.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Spam,then?

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

I'd say so. Funny-shaped can and little awkward key and all.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

The process is what gets me. Comment mentions "Beta Hydri and Beta Hydrae." саня варт posts astrological spam video within what, about three hours? Is саня sifting every damn comment on LJ?

Typo patrol ,delete after reading

[hazelchaz]

hostile, well-organized native.
s/b
hostile, well-organized natives.

Re: Typo patrol ,delete after reading

[hazelchaz]

just as irrelevant as the mutiny
s/b
just as irrelevant as the mutiny.

Re: Typo patrol ,delete after reading

[hazelchaz]

he telepathic communication
s/b
the telepathic communication

[(Anonymous)]

The one thing I remember from this is the way that the Pat-Tom dynamic turns out to be different than Pat (and the naive reader who takes Pat's narration to be fact) believes; particularly how Tom apparent victory in the competition to be allowed to go off into space is really Tom's victory, as he gets both to stay home where it's safe and comfortable, and get sympathy for being done out of his dream. I need to read this in the next few months since it will be a prime example in my next con talk, of how knowing equations doesn't mean you understand relativity.

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Dad would also protest the explicit subsidization of children through tax deductions?

In any case, a tax seems a lot less heavy-handed than an outright limitation of children, like you see in a lot of these "overpopulated Earth" futures.

[rozasharn.livejournal.com]

I noticed that he had a stamp for "Paid under Protest". How many things did he stamp with that?!

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

Everything, one assumes. Grocery receipts, electricity bills, diner tickets. Everything.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Since very similar character traits come up again in Have Space Suit and Stranger in a Strange Land, and since the character in Stranger who has this trait is not only supposed to be the voice of truth ex cathedra within the novel, but appears to be Heinlein's Mary Sue...

... was there one left in his effects, next to the brass cannon? Maybe something he ordered from an ad in a John Birch newsletter?

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

Was it I Will Fear No Evil where the protagonist stopped the action to complain about restaurant chairs, and explain to the reader that if you kicked up a fuss about every single thing people would see how right you were? I read it as a young teen, and that, and not any of the squirmy sex stuff, was the end for Heinlein and me. Even at the time I could tell that this was somebody who thought that his food tasted funny without the familiar tang of waiter spittle.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much of that is from Admiral King? Browbeat a subordinate until they do the job perfectly.

On the other hand, when Heinlein travelled, allegedly he learned the names of all the waitstaff and porters and so forth, and personally thanked them for their work.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

His ideal was to be a bigger asshole than he ever permitted himself to be? I'm not sure if that says good or bad things about him.

[(Anonymous)]

On the other hand he did that in South Africa - treating the porters, etc. more politely than they usually are, by SA standards, is not all that great...

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Except that his advice on travelling to Russia is essentially "Browbeat and insult everybody you meet".

[tandw.livejournal.com]

With the exception, IIRC, of the little old ladies who ran the hotel buffets.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

explain to the reader that if you kicked up a fuss about every single thing people would see how right you were?

Ooh, is that why the interet's unofficial motto is "Home of the Guys Who Go Off Like Car Alarms Until You Finally Stop Arguing With Them and They Can Declare Default Victory"?

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

A certain something about your comment makes me think that this is as good a time as any to say that, as a longtime reader of Mamatas' and a general admirer of his perception and rhetorical skill, it makes me sad when he gets like that. Watching him grind grimly on towards the last word, in a direction orthagonal to the larger conversation, is neither fun nor edifying, and in my observation it's worse when he knows he's on shaky ground. It was sloppy of him not to read the whole conversation before commenting, and his original comment on ello may have been satirical, but it wasn't particularly Swiftian.

He was wrong in more than one sense to call you stupid, which you certainly aren't. To be fair, you made a mistake about what he was referring to with the "Swiftian" thing, but the way he seized on it was closely argued, powerfully expressed, and ugly and stupid. I almost said as much at the time, but by the time I got back to the conversation you seemed to have taken it in stride and the thread had wound down. Perhaps I should have, sorry.

Maybe Nick will show up to explain that i'm wrong, and I can tell him this to his face.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I was very disappointed by his further explanation on ask.fm.

Did I "out" RH? Nope. I reported on her outing. Liz Williams had already been sending emails, as a way to warn recipients of the "shit-storm brewing" (that is, the one she was helping to brew) and once any such email got anywhere, it got everywhere.
Of course, everyone already *knew* except for the willfully ignorant. (1) (I don't mean that it was obvious; I mean that enough people knew as-a-fact from the beginning that eventually everyone found out. (2) We played the I-dunno game because it was fun to do so, and RH seemed to wish us to, as she played it with us.) This is also important. If there's a lesson it is this; never be so self-righteous that you are ever the subject of gossip but never the recipient of gossip. (3) You want to be approachable enough that people will tell you things, even if sometimes they only tell you because they know you'll tell others, including original sources.

1. "Liz Smith was telling people in her circle" did not mean "everybody knew", unless "everybody" is restricted to mean "people in publishing who knew Liz."
2. Where "everyone" is a tiny subset of what most people would call "everyone".
3. It's really her fault.

This is just sloppy reasoning, used to obscure an unpopular act.

e: Very belated HTML fix

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I guess he links to the ask.fm things on twitter, which I'm not on. I didn't see this until after the fact. I agree that it's disappointing, and weak sauce.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Whelp, now that you brought up Nick, no one will believe me, but I swear I was thinking specifically of film critic Simon Abrams and his behavior on Twitter when I said what I did.

Nick's rhetorical skill is highly overrated, by the way. He calls everyone who disagrees with him stupid, and no one takes his assessment of their intellect seriously. Further, he flatly lies, while calling others liars. It's all juvenile Usenet trolling. Take this part of that lengthy thread, where he clearly tells an anon that they have gone back and "deleted and reposted" their anonymous comment. Two people tell him that's impossible, at which point he claims he never told the anon she "deleted and reposted" her comment. He then goes on to imply James edited the comment for the anon.

It's ridiculous, unfair to everyone especially James, who was already getting stuff he didn't deserve on Twitter about the IP addresses of the anons. Nick does that kind of thing all the time. You don't notice it, I guess.

As long as people like you praise his "skill" and say "well, to be fair, you made a mistake" as some kind of rhetorical out whereby the person being intimidated, harassed, trolled and called names kinda-sorta deserves it on some level, he's happy. As long as people who never get on his bad side let the women Nick attacks -- and yes, start paying attention to gender ratios, and how often Nick threatens screencapping or brings up four-year-old tweets and six-year-old LiveJournal comments to women, and how often he does it to men -- do all the objecting while everyone else sits back and says nothing, Nick's happy.

And as we all know, Nick's happiness is of utmost importance.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

Of course you didn't deserve it on any level. I wasn't giving Nick a rhetorical out. I was pointing out the rhetorical lever he used to be an ass. I've never noticed what you say about gender ratios, I will start paying attention.

The thing is, this is how Nick does it: he was full of shit in the subthread you point out, but in the post you link to, he doesn't say, clearly or otherwise, that the anon went back and deleted and reposted their comment. In a parent comment to that one, he said he took a screenshot "on the off-chance you quickly edited," which is impossible except through a chain of hugely unlikely circumstances. Then he saved his ass with a bunch of technical what-the-words-actually-mean fancy footwork. This is, as I say, bullshit, and it's the kind he pulls when he's on shaky ground. And you're right that it was unfair to James, as well as to you. But he was actually telling the technical truth when he said he never told the anon that. He's very careful about that kind of thing, which is why he gets away with it. It is a certain kind of rhetorical skill, although not an admirable one. I do notice it. That's why I brought it up.

Next time I'll address this to Nick in the moment. As I say, I'm sorry I didn't. At the time I didn't want even more of the conversation to be about him, but in retrospect I was also wimping out.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Huh. No, actually, he very clearly says that anonymous comments can be deleted and reposted as long as the editing is done before someone has replied to them. He continues, to the same anon: "Not only are you likely to do it, you actually have done it."

If you want to think the use of the pronoun "it" makes things unclear and that, technically, Nick is completely right because he changed the meaning of "it" after the fact, thus saving his ass, that's your prerogative.

A final note: mme_hardy makes good points, and I'd just like to note that, in conjunction with her comments, all this screencapping and saving of links of things women have said was being done by the same guy who linked Sriduangkaew with her troll personae. And he admitted in his own words that he'd always told her to come out, and when she didn't, he took it upon himself to decide the situation was "getting dangerous" so he "stepped in" with his ello post. Then he went to great and sloppy lengths, as mme_hardy pointed out, to justify his actions as not outing.

Just a couple things to think about.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I'm not saying Nick is "completely right". He does say that posts can be deleted and reposted, that's the unlikely chain of events I mentioned. The exchange after that is:

Anon: Though nice touch, trying to dismiss my credibility by implying that I'm likely to want to hide evidence, or change my words.

Nick: Not only are you likely to do it, you actually have done it, with your "stupid" schtick.

I don't think that's unclear, "it" refers to the back-and-forth about who said what was stupid, above that. He is implying that anon is capable of editing a reply if they could, which is a dick move, and he doesn't acknowledge that this would require James' extremely unlikely collusion, which is a dicker move, but he did not, technically, say that they did. Again, that's how he gets away with it, and that's why I think it's worth pointing out.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

LOL

Nah, man, Nick gets away with it because of his years and years of personal branding, his choice of targets, plus a host of reasons within the fandom that always come up during every kerfuffle, fail and scandal.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

What do you want to bet he was a non-tipper, and prided himself upon it, because the price paid ought to include service?

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

Did you ever see Palm Beach Story? "Tipping is un-American."

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

He must have been a lot of fun at parties.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

His beer glass was stamped PARTIED UNDER PROTEST.

[tandw.livejournal.com]

Snerk.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Great-uncle? About 12.5% shared genetics (assuming no inbreeding in between), which is the same as a first cousin. Marriage to the latter is squicky to some people, but legal in most of the world right now.

(Something that people often forget in SF/Fantasy where long lives/time dilation/time travel/whatever is involved: increasing the number of generations between people is equivalent to moving outward.)

[(Anonymous)]

It's not so much the degree of genetic closeness (and I presume time dilation took care of the age gap), but the "with whom he has shared an intimate mental connection since she was an infant" that is the source of the squick.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

I'd think that you'd _expect_ marriage sorts of relationships to arise from the intimate mental connection, and that the Long Range Foundation's ethics board having a bad case of the stupids because so many of the original telepath pairs were twins is the kindest explanation.

So I think it's plenty squicky but not especially for the marriage at the end.

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

You'd expect, but you'd probably be wrong. See the stuff on intermarriage amongst kibbutz kids. Being raised in close proximity tends to induce asexual sibling relationships, regardless of genetics. I'd expect the telepathy thing to do similar.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

The telepathy is not a peer relationship, and not a same-age relationship; the sibling detection wetware doesn't get triggered. (and never mind that probably has something to do with smell.)

You're basically plugging an infant into an eighteen year old. If the infant stays plugged in, they get influenced.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

Does any influence go the other way?

"Why shouldn't I poop whenever I feel like it?"

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Telepathy is sui generis so I have few expectations of it. You could get Westermarck effect, or you could not. As Gradyon says, no smell, no sight, no physical interaction.

And if it's an "intimate" mental connection... well, how intimate?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I remember being surprised about that when I applied for a marriage license. You can't marry your uncle or aunt in Massachusetts, but you can marry your first cousin. There are many US states where you can't, though.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

This actually came up when Judge Richard Posner struck down Wisconsin and Indiana's anti gay marriage laws. In destroying the statess argument they had an interest in biological reproduction, Posner pointed out that the state allowed sterile people and first cousins over the age of 65 to marry.

Listening to Posner simply run rings around the state attorney was great by the way: http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/08/27/listen_to_judge_richard_posner_destroy_arguments_against_gay_marriage.html

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

It's actually more in this case, as Pat and Tom are identical twins.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Oo. You're right. It would be 25%, about the same as a half sibling.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Except wait, she's actually a great-great-niece, I think. So 12.5 is right.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Or grandchild. :p

(Great-grandchild, given the correction.)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I didn't like the book much as a kid, but didn't realize why. When I reread it as an adult, it looked like it was a weird exception to science fiction because getting out into space was no fun whatsoever.

Offhand, I can't think of any other stories which made space so unappetizing except for Malzberg's astronaut stories. "Scanners Live in Vain" doesn't count because space is incidentally painful-- it's going to be good once the pain problem is solved.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Decades later, _Saturn's Children_ makes space travel sound like shit.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

And that was just interplanetary space. I can't see why the robots would want to colonize anything, except that nearly all of them seemed to despise each other.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, the robots had an excuse. "No, it's not really economic - but it turns out a lot of other things are dependant on colonize.dll and nobody's written a decent patch yet."

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

Well, that's because it is. We had two generations of romanticizing the business itself plus totally unrealistic depictions of the accommodations the typical traveler would enjoy en route (I'm looking at you, Star Trek.) I suspect that in part space travel looked appealing to a lot of people back then because of background it implied, which was very, very wealthy.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Ben Franklin was the youngest boy, not the youngest child. FUCK YOU, HEINLEIN.

[monte davis (from livejournal.com)]

it would be obvious the star would not last long enough for complex life forms to appear

Ummm... based on your sample size of how many star systems with complex life forms? We do not know enough to form a sensible opinion about whether our planet was precocious or rode the short bus... nor enough about the range of extremely specific possible star + planet histories (even for F, G and K stars) to make a good estimate of when the clock starts.

[glaurung-quena.livejournal.com]

There's also the way that SF back in the 50's tended to be completely innocent about matters of stellar types and lifespans. Writers plunked stars into stories based on the aesthetics or symbolism of their colour, or based on how harsh and hostile the sunlight was to visitors from Earth, with no regard for how the star's color was linked to its lifespan.

Heinlein's stories were no exception -- the Mother Thing in Have Space Suit, Will Travel, for instance, comes from Vega, which is a type A0 with a life span of well under a quarter billion years -- the Mother Thing's people must have set the galactic record for the speed of their evolutionary development.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Maybe someone terraformed the world?

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Given the implied technology of Mother Thing's people,they may well have decided to freeze Vega it at a certain state in it's lifespan.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

Depends if you believe in the mediocrity principle: there's no reason to assume that there is anything unusual about the way complex life evolved on our planet (very slowly), so it's a stretch to assume "much faster" would be commonplace.

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

What the principle of mediocrity says is that most people who employ it will turn out to be more or less correct. It does not say that any given person can safely assume themselves to be representative in any way; that's generating information from nothing[1]. So, say, a subsistence farmer could reason that most people are like them, and they'd be right (as would most people would be in general) by virtue of the fact that most people are still subsistence farmers (I know this is no longer strictly true, but you know what I mean). Somebody with a college degree living in the first world and owning multiple computers, laptops and smartphones could not . . . even though personal experience says otherwise.

This, btw, is one of my strongest justifications for a space program: you don't actually know until you go out and look. Is life common as dirt, or a once-in-a-galaxy occurrence? Is life a property of organic chemistry, or can you make it out of any old stuff -- silicon, arsenic, magnetic vortices, neutronium and whatnot? Is a precondition for multi-cellular life aerobic respiration, or will something more modest suffice? These aren't the sorts of question, imho, that are amenable to anthropic reasoning or appeals to the principle of mediocrity. You have to get your ass up out of that chair and take the trouble to go out and look for the answers instead of handwaving them into existence.



[1]Which has been pointed out many times to the anthropic types who like to go on about stuff like Boltzmann .

[monte davis (from livejournal.com)]

Emphatically This. So much writing on exobiology, SETI, etc. begins well by nodding respectfully to the unknown unknowns, endorses caution in generalizing or extrapolating -- even catalogs the weaknesses of the old Drake equation -- and then can't resist bounding from the far end of a range to the near end of an error bar like Eliza crossing the Ohio.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Beta Ceti is a red giant. At just over two solar masses, it would have spent about 2 billion years on the main sequence, and the red giant phase will last about 100 million years.

Things to like

[(Anonymous)]

There are some.

-- The pacing is weird, but it means we get to spend a lot of time on the ship, and that's actually kind of interesting. Heinlein did manage to give a feel for how a mixed civilian-military expedition crowded in together would feel.

-- The inhabitants of Elysia are almost Lovecraftianly creepy. The bit with the big? "It wasn't a mouth that got him. I don't think it was a mouth." That was downright disturbing, and very well done.

-- The future shock is depicted with a few deft strokes -- women without hats, ruffly around the ridge, and so forth.

-- It never gets pointed out, but the kill rate was crazy high in this book, I think less than half of the named characters make it to the end. Not sure if it sets the record for Heinlein generally -- I think maybe yes? -- but it's certainly by far the most lethal of the juveniles. As a young person, this gave me a bracing sense of unpredictability.


Doug M.

Re: Things to like

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I remember that as a naive young kid, I was shocked by the death toll. But mainly I remember that the "we are just a mathematical abstraction" line left me really unsatisfied.

Re: Things to like

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Women without hats! Dogs and cats living together! Kids on my lawn! And I can't turn off this damn automatically shaking cane!

Re: Things to like

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

An auto-shaking cane seems like the sort of thing that would be just perfect for Futurama.