Quote:
Originally Posted by EatingPie
Unconventional family structures? How about totally screwed up philosophies of life!
I submit as evidence a quote from Stranger in a Strange Land.
"...But I was coping with wolves when you were still on Mars. Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's at least partly her own fault. That tenth time - well, all right. Give him your best heave-ho to the bottomless pit. But you aren't going to find it necessary."
I am ashamed to say I read right over this, and it was not until a girl in my SF class expressed her anger at such a statement. Justifiably so. This is delivered in all seriousness, and it's difficult to conclude that RAH didn't really believe this was true.
Having read several Heinlein books, I cannot conclude anything but is an old-school scumbag. "That tenth time"? Give me a freakin' break.
Starship Troopers was not a novel, but his treatise on military theory -- again, espoused by a fictional character -- sandwiched between three short stories. He leveraged atheistic-Scientology as the philosophical backbone for a military society. I'm absolutely sure the movie had RAH spinning in his grave, which was the only reason I liked the movie!
Like L. Ron Hubbard, he is on my list of Golden Agers avoid at all costs (sad that I even have such a list, since that is my favorite era of SF).
-Pie
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Wow!
Wow!
I was planning a reply to Dennis saying that I agree not all of RAH's books were equally good, but that none were bad enough to say that overall he is an author to avoid entirely (ie: the topic of this thread) but it looks like you do feel strongly enough to avoid him entirely.
However, I think that you also have mistaken some of his characters' viewpoints for his own.
With respect to your quote from SiaSL, don't forget that in many, many other stories the women go about in extremely scanty, or even scandalous, clothing without the expectation that they might be raped, and that they deserved it if so.
The context of the quote that you seem to be ignoring is that most of Heinlein's protagonists believe that a) you need to be responsible for your own choices and actions, and b) you must take the universe as it is and not as you wish it to be. So in the above quote, the character is saying that behaving a certain way may make it more likely that a rapist may choose you as a target instead of someone else (ie: the world as it is) but this is entirely separate from saying that it is legally or morally your fault if that happens (ie: the world as it should be).
In the case of Starship Troopers, I don't believe that Heinlein thought that was any kind of ideal basis for society at all. In fact, in the novel itself I think one of the characters says that they stick with it because it works, not because it has any kind of theoretical basis for good government (again, take the universe as you find it...) I don't see any connection to Scientology personally.
Don't forget that there are many other kind of societies in RAH's stories as well. Some are slave-based. Some are quasi-monarchies. There is at least one theocracy. And so on...
How is this any different from, say, Margaret Atwood's work?