[fjtorres]

An author's importance, especially in a field like SF, is not determined solely by their popularity with readers. (Something anybody familiar with classics is familiar with.) Their role in the history of the field at the time and their influence over other authors is at least as important as whether or not the masses liked his works at a particular time. Many a popular author fades in significance while "lesser" authors endure through the decades or even centuries.

Heinlein, Clark, and Asimov stand among the greatest of the field in the 20th because they each in one way or another molded it into what it is today. Asimov brought in cold rationalism, Clarke brought in discipline and scientific rigor (even when extrapolating), and Heinlein brought in narrative sophistication. Whatever you may think of the man and his politics none of his stories was ever simple, much less simplistic.

To appreciate his importance, try reading stories from before he exploded on the scene (ASIMOV'S BEFORE THE GOLDEN AGE is a good anthology for this) and then read THE ROADS MUST ROLL. In a field dominated by high concept and straight forward (sic) narratives he brought in an unreliable narrator. He met the requirements of the market and then hit the reader with a reveal that flipped the reader's perception of good guys and bad guys, dropping the reader into a world where simple black and white, good vs evil, didn't work. His worlds more often than not are, like the real world, complex messes of conflicting agendas. That was new. Also new was the fact that his stories filled out a common multigenerational timeline, his Future History. And how often do we see that today? All over.

Heinlein was, like ERB, a successful commercial writer who wrote to the norms of the market and submitted to the demands of the establishment. Judging him solely by today's mores misses the point that if he didn't fit the market he wouldn't have been published at all. But for all that he still pushed the envelope here and there. Early on, in small ways. Later, as he grew more powerful, in bigger ways. Eventually, he became too big to edit and lost his discipline but still...

It is not surprising that STARSHIP TROOPERS bounced. At the height of the McCarthy era he wrote of a filipino boy from a unified Earth with a government headquartered in Buenos Aires? Not Washington or Chicago? No way was the establishment of the day going to be comfortable with that.

Or how about the political undertones of THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS where a group of disaffected "third world rabble" types replay the American "Revolution" on the moon against an oppressive first world regime, right around thectime when "liberation movements" sprinkled the planet.

Look closely at STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND and look past the sex and you see a question of the role of religion in societies. Or how his focus on cannibalism might be taken as a metaphor that for societies and cultures to evolve they need to eat their past and move on, not embalm it and worship it. (Think of the "atheist" soviets and Lenin.)

There is subtlety and slyness in Heinlein as he fought the establishment which was lost once he won his war. He literally became just a bit too big.

(By the way, the Big Three aren't the only writers that molded the field. There's several unappreciated masters from the 30's to the 50's and 60's that rank just behind them that don't get their due. Whole other rant, though.)