Sci-fi authors you (and I) should NEVER read

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by radius

[SNIP]
Its possible that I am mis-remembering the book, but I believe that in Starship Troopers, any government service was enough to qualify someone for citizenship. It didn't need to be military service. Juan and his friends enlisted in the military, but there were other options. In fact, if you were unfit for service, the government was not allowed to refuse you the opportunity enter public service and would find some other kind of difficult job for you.

I think you could definitely argue that RAH felt you should participate in society in order to be allowed a say in it (was it RAH or Jerry Pournelle that wrote a story where Taxpayer was a separate class from Citizen?) but that is different from saying that only the military should be allowed a voice in government.

Actually, in Starship Troopers, the fact that the vote expanded from vets only to public service in general might show that RAH recognized you can't have government ruled only by military veterans.
[SNIP]

Somewhere in the book they discuss the hypothetical example of a blind wheelchair-bound person who happens to have exactly zero useful skills but who wishes to perform government service in order to qualify for the franchise. The summary was that the gov't would either (a) teach that person some useful skill and then have them use it for the duration of their service (clearly stated as the preferred option), or (b) invent some possibly-useless task that was within the person's capabilities and have them perform that task for their service period. The example I remember was "counting the fuzz on caterpillars by touch" (or something like that).

The point is that the government service thing was an absolute right for anyone who chose to exercise it -- regardless of skills, abilities, income, etc. At the same time, you had no choice about what you would do, only that you could quit at any time (and, by quitting, give up the possibility of becoming a voter).

The system in Starship Troopers was certainly not limited to military service. On the other hand, it's interesting to note that military service was the only useful thing that the protagonist was suited for -- he'd failed to prepare for anything else.

Xenophon

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

The system in Starship Troopers was certainly not limited to military service. On the other hand, it's interesting to note that military service was the only useful thing that the protagonist was suited for -- he'd failed to prepare for anything else.

Xenophon

Actually, if I remember correctly, military service was what Rico wanted. The Mobile Infantry was the only branch of the military service he was qualified for. I think he said something to the effect that if he couldn't qualify for that, then he didn't care if he was testing survival gear on Triton. or something like that.

--
Bill

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

That being said, does that necessarily mean that the person who is the victim is automatically excused from all fault despite knowingly taking actions that could be considered risky or provocative? If I decide to take a walk in a bad part of town after dark, then to a certain extent, am I not at least partly responsible?

NO. And blaming the victim is how we *keep* bad parts of town. It dehumanizes the criminals by implying there's some trait in them that makes them prone to attacking when a non-criminal would not.

If you saw someone like you walking around in a "bad part of town," would you mug the person? Would you think their presence implied a willingness to be mugged?

In what situations would you think "he was askin' for it" justified your violence?

Lets look at it another way. If I drive irresponsibly and get into an accident, then it is my fault, period. Why should I also not bear some of the fault if I irresponsibly take actions that provide opportunities for criminals to harm me?

Because criminals, unlike slippery roads or shoddy brake lines, have sentience and will, and can *decide* not to commit those actions.

Likewise, if I deliberately make obscene gestures or other wise provoke someone, why shouldn't also be considered at least partly my fault when they retaliate?

"Responsible for retaliation" is not the same as "to blame for what happened." Provocation of *some* response is not an invitation to *any* response, and the logic that says it is, implies that all people are basically children who can't or haven't learned to control themselves, who shouldn't be held responsible for understanding the difference between appropriate and inappropriate reactions.

If I push someone out of the way to get to a seat on the train, and he steps on my foot in retaliation, I'm to blame for provoking him. I am not to blame if he takes out a gun and shoots me; being responsible for an appropriate response does not make me at fault for a wildly inappropriate one.

To put it in simple terms, many murders that occur in the major US urban centers are essentially gang on gang violence. In these cases, where the victim and the perpetrator are both members of rival gangs, I think it is fair to say that the victim probably is at least partly at fault for their own death.

This is a drastic change in comparisons. Previous examples involved strangers, or relative strangers, not people with a pre-existing relationship. Marital rape was 100% legal in the US until 1976, and it's still treated differently from other rapes in 33 states.

(And geeze, this has gotten pretty far from non-recommended sci-fi authors. Can I add John Norman to the list?)

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

....

(And geeze, this has gotten pretty far from non-recommended sci-fi authors. Can I add John Norman to the list?)

+++

That's why I'm biting my tongue and not egging it on.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by EatingPie

As taught in my Science Fiction class, Heinlein was frustrated by his inability to fully serve in the military. Frustrated even further that he had very good ideas for military theory and strategy that he thought would benefit the country. But his illness cut his career short, and he didn't have the chance to gain a rank in which to properly convey his ideas.

With all due respect to you and your class, I think they got it utterly wrong.

I met Heinlein. I know people who knew him reasonably well. He was certainly unhappy about being invalided out of the Navy and unable to serve actively in WWII, but ST is not a product of his frustration.

The very point I'm making is that I do recognize the type of book he was writing! You are confusing "type of book" and "audience of book."

Nope.

You are confusing structure with theme, and do not recognize the type of book he was writing.

I say again, _Starship Troopers_ is a coming of age story. Johhny Rico is the spoiled only son of a wealthy manufacturer who assumes he will finish high school, go to college, and eventually inherit the family business. He signs up for a term of government service because his friends are and he wants to be with them and follow their lead. He certainly doesn't do so for the the abstract privilege of the right to vote. His own position in society makes clear that right is not essential to success or happiness.

The target audience was probably the YA market. And were I Heinlein, I would have thought that perfect! Young, moldable minds that he could influence with his notions of military theory. Certainly having a young soldier, and three (or so) short stories about his battles, make great YA fiction. But the military theory is still there, between missions.

Reread the book. Heinlein isn't pushing military theory (and the theory would be of dubious value if he were, because the concepts rely on technology unavailable when the book was written.)

Heinlein was pushing responsibility and the notion of citizenship. He's discussing what is required to be a member of a functioning society, and that the converse of rights is responsibilities. If you do not accept and discharge responsibilities, you will be unlikely to get or retain rights, because rights require a functioning society to grant them.

Johnny Rico grows up in the MI. He learns to be responsible, first for himself as a Trained Private, then for his mates as an NCO, and finally in part for the human race as a commissioned officer. It's a story of moral development, and Rico's growth and change can be charted by the different answers he gives to "Why we fight" at different parts of the book.

Essentially, Rico is a character in literature. He is presented with a challenge, and must either grow and change to meet the challenge or fail and possibly die. In his case, the challenge is a threat to the existence of his society and his species by an antithetical alien society, but the story is fundamentally about growth and change.

Note that what I am saying does not contradict anything said about Johnny Rico. The theme of personal responsibility is there, sure. But the military theory is there too. A (very politically minded) friend of mine loves to cite Heinlein's philosophy that only those who served in the military could vote or (I believe) hold office. You had to earn it, to prove your mettle, or to prove you cared.

Yes, you did have to earn the franchise. But the military was only one form of government service that qualified. What was essential was that you successfully completed your term. What you did while serving was another matter.

The difference lies in the source... or the purpose. Heinlein wanted to teach his military theory, and that's exactly what he does. And he takes those theories to their logical conclusion, so to speak.

If you think what he was teaching was military theory, you probably shouldn't attempt to read Heinlein, because you've completed missed his points. He's saying stuff that was sometimes covered in high school social studies classes. (Hopefully it still is, but I'm cynical about current education.)

Essentially, whenever people live together in groups, there must be agreement on what constitutes acceptable behavior, and what the ground rules of the society will be. There have been a wide variety of approaches to societies throughout human history, and ST touches on an assortment. But as ST makes clear, the one that exists in the world it portrays arose after the collapse of a previous one in the stress of a major war. It's hardly the only kind possible, nor is it necessarily the "best". But it passes the utterly pragmatic test: it works, and continues to function and provide a society most folks find acceptable.

Heinlein was friends with Hubbard, and the earliest form of Dianetics first appeared in "Amazing Science Fiction" magazine, published by John Campbell... who I believe was already noted as Heinlein's editor for a while. So Dianetics was very much known to him, and while Heinlein may not have accepted the philosophy, it proved a good basis -- a bottom-floor philosophical framework -- to justify the military society.

Nope. That chain of logic is not strong enough to support that conclusion.

Yes, Hubbard published the first material on Dianetics in the pages of John W. Campbell's Astounding. He did it, among other reasons, to win a bet made at a party that he could con John Campbell. Campbell had a penchant for oddball theories. He was firmly convinced there was a military-industrial complex that was ignoring or deliberately burying promising ideas that didn't agree with the prevailing wisdom, and gave space in his pages to things like astrological weather forecasting and the Dean Drive (which appeared to violate conservation of energy. Hubbard told Campbell among other things that it would cure his chronic sinusitus, and Campbell bit. The result was runaway early success for Dianetics, which later morphed into Scientology after Hubbard sold his interest and retired to a yacht in the Mediterranean.

But I don't think you'll find much of Dianetics underlying the philosophy in ST. Dianetics is largely a straight rip of Freud, though Scientology is firmly against orthodox psychiatry and considers Freud an abomination. I suspect Hubbard was mostly filing off the serial numbers and preventing people from discovering where he got the ideas. But Freud had published _The Interpretation of Dreams_ in German in 1899, and it had been translated to English by 1911. It seems quite likely Hubbard was aware of Freud's work.
______
Dennis

[GlennD]

I'm trying to bite my tongue as well. Heinlein is one of my favorite authors and Starship Troopers is probably my favorite book ever. NOT a huge fan of Stranger in a Strange Land though.

I think Starship Troopers is far less a military theory treatise than an essay on personal responsibility. His classroom scenes delve into the results of a culture that deemphasizes personal responsibility in favor of the government being a 'caretaker'. The military setting of the book gives Heinlein an extreme example since a military officer has so much more responsibility both for himself and for his subordinates than most other situations most of us will encounter. He not only holds his own life but the lives of those reporting to him in his hands. Not to mention it was an interesting setting for his original target audience (teenage boys).

And I second adding John Norman to the list.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

NO. And blaming the victim is how we *keep* bad parts of town. It dehumanizes the criminals by implying there's some trait in them that makes them prone to attacking when a non-criminal would not.

Sorry, this does not follow from what I said.

1. I am not talking about blaming the victim instead of the criminal. What I am recognizing is that in some cases, the victim has knowingly and willingly placed themselves in dangerous situations. If that is in fact the case, the victim acted irresponsibly. (Now mind you there are plenty of times when the victim is not culpable of any action that provoked or enabled the criminal).

2. This does not in any way dehumanize criminals. It is still up to them to choose to commit the crime. This is all about personal responsibility here. There are times, even if it is a tiny minority of crimes where the victim can at least be said to have acted irresponsibly.

If you saw someone like you walking around in a "bad part of town," would you mug the person? Would you think their presence implied a willingness to be mugged?

I wouldn't mug the person, but then again, I am not a violent person nor inclined to theft. But if I were, then I probably would take advantage of the opportunity if it presented itself.

Let me ask you this; do you lock the doors to your home? If so, the reason is essentially the same as not walking alone in a bad part of town. You know that there are people in the world who would steal from you if you provided them the opportunity.

In what situations would you think "he was askin' for it" justified your violence?

This is not a question of the victim asking for it. Its about individuals being responsible for their own safety. If I am irresponsible about my own safety then to a certain extent I am enabling the criminals who take advantage of my irresponsibility. This doesn't lessen the guilt of the person who commits the crime, but I think we need to acknowledge that some times crimes could have been prevented if the victim had acted in a more responsible manner.

Because criminals, unlike slippery roads or shoddy brake lines, have sentience and will, and can *decide* not to commit those actions.

Sigh, and you will notice at no point have I argued that the criminal is in any way less responsible for their actions. Responsibility is not something that is necessarily lessened if it is shared.

Lets use an analogy -- If I know someone is an alcoholic who is struggling to get clean, but I pour them an unsolicited drink, the alcoholic is responsible for taking the drink, but I am also responsible because I took actions that provided them an opportunity to take that drink.

"Responsible for retaliation" is not the same as "to blame for what happened." Provocation of *some* response is not an invitation to *any* response, and the logic that says it is, implies that all people are basically children who can't or haven't learned to control themselves, who shouldn't be held responsible for understanding the difference between appropriate and inappropriate reactions.

No, the logic that says it is does not suggest that all people can't or won't control themselves, it is a recognition of the fact that there are some people who can't or won't control themselves.

Every time we provoke someone else, we are taking a chance (hopefully a vanishingly small one, but still a chance) that their response will be disproportionate to the offense given.

If I push someone out of the way to get to a seat on the train, and he steps on my foot in retaliation, I'm to blame for provoking him. I am not to blame if he takes out a gun and shoots me; being responsible for an appropriate response does not make me at fault for a wildly inappropriate one.

So you are willing to be responsible for the response only if you believe the response is appropriate?

Lets remember, that the appropriateness of a response is determined by many different factors, including cultural ones. As late as the 19th century, things that we would consider very minor offenses were often considered to be grounds for duels.

This is a drastic change in comparisons. Previous examples involved strangers, or relative strangers, not people with a pre-existing relationship. Marital rape was 100% legal in the US until 1976, and it's still treated differently from other rapes in 33 states.

(And geeze, this has gotten pretty far from non-recommended sci-fi authors. Can I add John Norman to the list?)

Lets remember, I wanted to remove rape from the discussion here. Members of different gangs can be total strangers to each other (particularly considering how large some gangs are). Sometimes being recognized as a member of a gang is enough to get someone killed. But my point here is that there is a continuum here. Even the person stepping on your foot could be considered assault, but you were willing to acknowledge responsibility for that level of retaliation. The fact that the response may have been appropriate, doesn't change the fact that it might be against the law nor the fact that you are the victim of that assault.

--
Bill

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by kennyc

+++

That's why I'm biting my tongue and not egging it on.

I suppose if I jump into a thread with heavy political/social thoughts, I should actually participate in the topic, as well. Hmm.

There's a problem with that. I'm horribly undiscriminating when it comes to sci-fi. There are authors I don't read or recommend for political reasons (Card, Norman), and a number whose styles I don't care for but know they're good anyway (Gibson tops the list), but almost nothing I actively *disliked* reading.

There are books written more than about 40 years ago that I don't like or recommend because of the social themes in them, because racism and sexism were commonly accepted when the books were written. They make me wince, and I can't recommend them to people today. But that's not at all the same as "badly written." There are authors I'm avoiding because of the author's political or social beliefs, but again, that doesn't seem to be the kind of non-recommendation going on here.

I suspect I'd think Hubbard's sci-fi was badly written. But I suspect that, if I got it in the right mood, I'd enjoy it just fine. (Okay, I suspect I'd put it down half-written and never get back to it; my reading time these days is limited and I want to spend it on stuff I'll actively enjoy. When I run out of Baen books and 150k-word fanfic novels is plenty soon enough to consider authors I know I'm not going to love.)

I loved everything by Heinlein. Even the stuff I vehemently disagreed with. I loved Dune and the first several sequels; I didn't like Chapterhouse but couldn't say if that was because it had gotten complex in ways I didn't care about. I like the Wheel of Time series; recognizing that they could probably edited to half their wordcount and have the same impact doesn't change that. I liked the Earl Dumarest series by EC Tubbs, and I'm sure they were formulaic tripe.

I like it all. I have trouble wrapping my head around the purpose of this thread.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by GlennD

I'm trying to bite my tongue as well. Heinlein is one of my favorite authors and Starship Troopers is probably my favorite book ever. NOT a huge fan of Stranger in a Strange Land though.

I think Starship Troopers is far less a military theory treatise than an essay on personal responsibility. His classroom scenes delve into the results of a culture that deemphasizes personal responsibility in favor of the government being a 'caretaker'. The military setting of the book gives Heinlein an extreme example since a military officer has so much more responsibility both for himself and for his subordinates than most other situations most of us will encounter. He not only holds his own life but the lives of those reporting to him in his hands. Not to mention it was an interesting setting for his original target audience (teenage boys).

And I second adding John Norman to the list.

And I'll third John Norman to that list, EXCEPT for the first three (maybe four) GOR novels, which was exactly what I was looking for after Burroughs.


Don

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

And I'll third John Norman to that list, EXCEPT for the first three (maybe four) GOR novels, which was exactly what I was looking for after Burroughs.

You could potentially go as high as the first six. Book 7 was the first time he attempted to write from the female point of view, and that's when it fell apart. I'd never consciously compared them to Burroughs, but now that you mention it, there are some similarities.

[EatingPie]

Eternal thanks to bill_mchale, Xenophon (nice tux!) and Elfwreck (nice... er... hat!) for adding summations of Starship Troopers. You saved me from having to read that piece of crap again!!!

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

With all due respect to you and your class, I think they got it utterly wrong.

I met Heinlein. I know people who knew him reasonably well. He was certainly unhappy about being invalided out of the Navy and unable to serve actively in WWII, but ST is not a product of his frustration.

Hey, I'm flexible. So then product of "unhappy about being invalided out of the Navy." Works just as well.

BTW, that's pretty cool you got to meet him. Hope you got a book signed! Be worth a frickin' mint today!

You are confusing structure with theme, and do not recognize the type of book he was writing.

I say again, _Starship Troopers_ is a coming of age story.....

Stories, not story. I stand by my assertion. And I don't see anything in your explanation (cut for brevity but up there ^ ) that contradicts what I said. I even admitted it functions as a coming of age story. That's just not the be-all, end-all of the book.

The structure is important because the didactic elements (I refuse to say "theme" because it's heavier hande) appear interspersed between the stories.

Reread the book.

I once again would like to thank Xenophon et. al.!

Heinlein isn't pushing military theory (and the theory would be of dubious value if he were, because the concepts rely on technology unavailable when the book was written.)

Heinlein was pushing responsibility and the notion of citizenship. He's discussing what is required to be a member of a functioning society, and that the converse of rights is responsibilities. If you do not accept and discharge responsibilities, you will be unlikely to get or retain rights, because rights require a functioning society to grant them.

Technology is irrelevant because I'm not speaking of "how you use weapons" when I speak of "military theory." I am speaking of how things are structured, the social and political structuring as it were, and some of the strategies employed. That is what the sergeant spends a lot of time teaching in the classroom.

Also, what you are including here would be a part of what I'm calling "military theory." The emphasis in the book was on the military, how the military should be structured, and how society should be structured when considering the necessity of a military. It's "social theory" at the end of the day, but I am using the term "military theory" to key in on what I saw as Heinlein's emphasis. How the military should be structured, and how society should be built around that.

Johnny Rico grows up in the MI. He learns to be responsible, first for himself as a Trained Private, then for his mates as an NCO, and finally in part for the human race as a commissioned officer. It's a story of moral development, and Rico's growth and change can be charted by the different answers he gives to "Why we fight" at different parts of the book.

Essentially, Rico is a character in literature. He is presented with a challenge, and must either grow and change to meet the challenge or fail and possibly die. In his case, the challenge is a threat to the existence of his society and his species by an antithetical alien society, but the story is fundamentally about growth and change.

All good and fine. That all occurs in the short story portion, not in the classroom portion, which is the (IMHO) thinly disguised teaching-the-reader-how-things-should-be section. As I have argued previously.

If you think what he was teaching was military theory, you probably shouldn't attempt to read Heinlein, because you've completed missed his points. He's saying stuff that was sometimes covered in high school social studies classes. (Hopefully it still is, but I'm cynical about current education.)

It sounds very much like you have a monopoly on "what Heinlein means" here. I completely missed his points? Even the times when I have agreed with you? As I clarified above, it is military-social thought. And I felt that the classroom settings really obviated Heinlein's intent.

Let me provide a citation...

<http://www.amiannoying.com/(S(uzrrkh45qjz1cqntc1hbquau))/view.aspx?id=11266&collection=286>

His novel, 'Starship Troopers,' was criticized because its strong militarist content oriented to young readers, earning him the reputation of being a fascist....
Starship Troopers' inspired a popular game in 1976, based upon his own knowledge in military strategy, and today is considered a cult piece of collection in memorabilia items.

Yes, it's a YA "coming of age story." But it's also heavy on the "military theory." Both things. Not just one or the other. Note that I never intended to argue that it was exclusively "military-social theories" just that it was primarily a vehicle to teach said theories.

Essentially, whenever people live together in groups, there must be agreement on what constitutes acceptable behavior, and what the ground rules of the society will be. There have been a wide variety of approaches to societies throughout human history, and ST touches on an assortment. But as ST makes clear, the one that exists in the world it portrays arose after the collapse of a previous one in the stress of a major war. It's hardly the only kind possible, nor is it necessarily the "best". But it passes the utterly pragmatic test: it works, and continues to function and provide a society most folks find acceptable.

Now, here, you sound very much like you are agreeing with me!

Nope. That chain of logic is not strong enough to support that conclusion.

Yes, Hubbard published the first material on Dianetics in the pages of John W. Campbell's Astounding.... [Cut again for brevity.]

I'm not sure how you're disproving that Dianetics influenced some of the philosophies in Starship Troopers. Well, actually, you didn't.

My point in citing Campbell was to give evidence that Heinlein was aware of Dianetcs. And that this certainly lends credence to the notion that it made its way into Starship Troopers.

Kind of like...

But I don't think you'll find much of Dianetics underlying the philosophy in ST. Dianetics is largely a straight rip of Freud, though Scientology is firmly against orthodox psychiatry and considers Freud an abomination. I suspect Hubbard was mostly filing off the serial numbers and preventing people from discovering where he got the ideas. But Freud had published _The Interpretation of Dreams_ in German in 1899, and it had been translated to English by 1911. It seems quite likely Hubbard was aware of Freud's work.

Yep! The "awareness" argument! Same one I gave about Heinlein/Dianetics!

I'm trying really, really, really hard not to pull out ST and re-read some stuff. I so hated the book. So, instead, I will cite a site.

<http://www.amiannoying.com/(S(uzrrkh45qjz1cqntc1hbquau))/view.aspx?id=11266&collection=286>

He[inlein] was friends with writer L. Ron Hubbard and applied his theory of dianetics in several works.

Not conclusive, since ST isn't listed explicitly. But it certinaly lends merit to what I've been saying... and keeps me from reading that thrice-damned book again!

-Pie

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I suppose if I jump into a thread with heavy political/social thoughts, I should actually participate in the topic, as well. Hmm.

There's a problem with that. I'm horribly undiscriminating when it comes to sci-fi. There are authors I don't read or recommend for political reasons (Card, Norman), and a number whose styles I don't care for but know they're good anyway (Gibson tops the list), but almost nothing I actively *disliked* reading.

There are books written more than about 40 years ago that I don't like or recommend because of the social themes in them, because racism and sexism were commonly accepted when the books were written. They make me wince, and I can't recommend them to people today. But that's not at all the same as "badly written." There are authors I'm avoiding because of the author's political or social beliefs, but again, that doesn't seem to be the kind of non-recommendation going on here.

I suspect I'd think Hubbard's sci-fi was badly written. But I suspect that, if I got it in the right mood, I'd enjoy it just fine. (Okay, I suspect I'd put it down half-written and never get back to it; my reading time these days is limited and I want to spend it on stuff I'll actively enjoy. When I run out of Baen books and 150k-word fanfic novels is plenty soon enough to consider authors I know I'm not going to love.)

I loved everything by Heinlein. Even the stuff I vehemently disagreed with. I loved Dune and the first several sequels; I didn't like Chapterhouse but couldn't say if that was because it had gotten complex in ways I didn't care about. I like the Wheel of Time series; recognizing that they could probably edited to half their wordcount and have the same impact doesn't change that. I liked the Earl Dumarest series by EC Tubbs, and I'm sure they were formulaic tripe.

I like it all. I have trouble wrapping my head around the purpose of this thread.

I think (what a slippery term), that this thread was started to talk about writers and writing that people found stylistically inferior. Too wordy, didn't hold together, didn't entertain, ect. When you only had so much reading time, what was worth skipping to get to the "good stuff".

What we ended up with was a heavy philosophical discussion on certain writer(s), who some feel shouldn't be read for philosophical reasons. Sort of delivery versus content, with the content discussion drowning out the delivery discussion.

<Shrug> All fiction is a pack of lies. It says so on the label. Much factual information and research may be embedded in the work, but it's still a pack of lies, written to entertain. Every fictional world is unreal, whether we're talking In Cold Blood or The Man of Bronze. Many of these worlds are similar to the world at the time they were written, some weren't. But as times and societies change, they become more and more unreal to the world of now. For example, Tom Sawyer is as alien an environment as Neuromancer to me, reading today. And as the world portrayed shift further and further away from current mores, they tend to become more and more at odds with the current mores.

I'm minded very much of the ending of Niven and Pournelle's Oath of Fealty. There's a lot of ways to be human. Part of reading fiction (especially science fiction) is learning to enjoy the differences, and understanding that when you get angry at something you read, it's defining your mores, and other people and other times had (have) mores that don't match yours. Part of being an adult is learning this fact, and learning how to thrive in a world that doesn't necessarily match your mores.

I think my byline sums it up quite nicely. Please look down and read it.

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

I think the key here is this; most of the other authors are being criticized based on whole books, or in some cases lots of their books. In contrast, you take a single quote out of an author who had a rather large body of work, often filled with strong, competent women....

Well, we are focusing on one quote, that's true (no, really! ). But this was the pinnacle of my ... distaste ... for the H man. Here's how I started my original post...

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.

I dislike Heinlein for the same reasons that Moorcock dislikes Heinlein. I find what he says, what he seems to believe -- his themes, his "teachings" -- quite distasteful (Moorcock finds them distasteful for the opposite reason I do... and I imagine him finding me distasteful too!).

The quote that nailed it for me is the one we're hammering hard on now. But it's not just the quote, it's that the quote's the epitome of all that I see wrong with Heinlein.

I would also point out that his work is so central to the genre, that it is really hard to understand the genre without being at least somewhat familiar with his work.

I agree, and this makes me want to cry like a big Michael Moorcock shaped baby!

Then again, I actually liked Piers Anthony's Blue Adept books. I still have nightmares that I'll be running for President and Perez Hilton will ask me "Did you ever enjoy a Piers Anthony novel?"... and oh the media firestorm that will follow! *shudder*



-Pie

PS Is "Moorcock" his real name? I mean, seriously!?!

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

You could potentially go as high as the first six. Book 7 was the first time he attempted to write from the female point of view, and that's when it fell apart. I'd never consciously compared them to Burroughs, but now that you mention it, there are some similarities.

Now that you remind me, I remember how atrocious that 7th book was. Attempting to write from the female point of view was a HUGE mistake for John Norman (or John Frederick Lange, Jr), considering his vast "insights" into the female psyche.

I may go back now and try to re-read one of those later novels, just as soon as I can find a military-grade gas mask.

Don

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Now that you remind me, I remember how atrocious that 7th book was. Attempting to write from the female point of view was a HUGE mistake for John Norman (or John Frederick Lange, Jr), considering his vast "insights" into the female psyche.

I may go back now and try to re-read one of those later novels, just as soon as I can find a military-grade gas mask.

Don

Better make it a full hazmat suit......