Comments on Heinlein's Children

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Not to worry.

Check out Spider Robinson's internet stuff sometime.

posted by majroj on November 1, 2006 at 9:33 PM | link to this | reply

I'm delighted, Majroi...

Sorry for the misunderstanding!

posted by arGee on November 1, 2006 at 6:44 AM | link to this | reply

Quite the contrary! When I was called up for DESERT STORM,

I brought "Glory Road" and "Starship Troopers" in my duffel. That copy of Troopers I later sent to Bagdhad.

My first "Young Adult" library book, at age nine, was "Have Spacesuit". I can't stand the movies so far especially "Troopers". I can only hope they do a better job when "GLory Road" eventually gets made...maybe they can use Jerry O'Connel as Evelyn Cyrus Gordon.

I enjoy the Forties and Fifties pieces also, and I recently saw one of them back in print...forget which one.

Well, "Dum Vivimas, Vivamus" and "Ars Longa, Vita Brevis".

posted by majroj on October 31, 2006 at 8:26 PM | link to this | reply

You appear, Majroi...

Not to care for Heinlein. Of course, you have a right to your opinion, but you seem to have missed what he did best: to set forth a life style that incorporates the best of libertarianism and independent, self-sufficient living. He taught youngsters how human societies govern themselves, and how they should, and he gave all his readers an insight into science as no other SF writer before him.

Personally, I found his writing magnificant.

posted by arGee on October 31, 2006 at 9:15 AM | link to this | reply

Heinlein did fantasy, magic, and tried a little horror.

Glory Road was conscious sword and sorcery, with a pun thbrown at the Ring trilogy ("Don't make a hobbit of it"). He did a series of short stories, among them "The Unpleasant Profession of Johnathan Hoag" and "Magic, Inc.". Others seemed scientific, but were sheer flimsy speculation (mostly very early in his career and disowned by him later).

Re-reading his work as an adult can yield insights into your mind as a youngster, and into his writing as well. He borrowed material from classics, and his style in shorts changed to meet the market in his early postwar years.

You might be surprised to know that the plotline for "Citizen of the Galaxy" was ripped off for the first part of a "B" movie which included David Warner called "The Quest of the Delta Knights" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107910/plotsummary).

posted by majroj on October 30, 2006 at 8:35 PM | link to this | reply

Heinlein has been a part of my life, Saul...

Since my early teens. I raised my son on Heinlein, and even now, I find myself rereading one or more of his novels from time to time.

posted by arGee on October 27, 2006 at 8:44 AM | link to this | reply

I'm a huge Heinlein fan, arGee. I loved Starship Troopers and Glory Road,

all his "juveniles, and his short stories. I was a naive and backward teenager in West Virginia, so my golden age occurred, I'm sure, a few years behind the norm, which is when I read most of the Heinlein I've ever read -- my mid and late teens.