I admit I don’t spend much time thinking about Robert Heinlein, but when I do, I always have the same reaction, which is that shivery “Bleach! Get it off me!” response that the bug-phobic have to spiders and cockroaches.
There’s a reason for this, though.
I read Stranger in a Strange Land in high school, and liked it well enough. I no longer remember it that well, honestly. Then in college…
Well, see in college, there was this guy. He wanted me and my boyfriend to have a polyamorous relationship with him. Because he really wanted to have sex with my boyfriend, who he’d known for a long time, and he was interested in having sex with me. Okay, whatever. I knew I wasn’t suited to polyamory, but I was in my “I am a reed, bending in the wind, willing to do whatever I am told to do” phase, so I said, “I don’t know; let my boyfriend decide.”
That was an easy thing for me to say, on account of boyfriend was either A) really not bisexual at all, or B) chill with gay people, but really not chill with any gay feelings he may have felt. So he was not going to go for this polyamory proposal.
Indeed, he did not. This was conveyed to amorous guy. Who then decided that what was needed in this situation was more wheedling.
So he sent me a book.
The book was TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE.
Let me start by praising this book, as I remember it from when I was 18. It was funny. It was a fast read. It was involving. It had at least one fantasy I was super down with–I wanna be immortal like Lazarus Long. It had one memorable scene which I still recall, wherein Lazarus Long sits down with his descendents and explains the dangers of incest by means of a metaphor involving a deck of cards.
And then there was the polyamory. Specifically, there was a wide-eyed, subjectivity-less, hot-hot-hot female character named Hamadryad who nurtured others with her healing sexuality…
And all of a sudden? I was no longer wishy-washy bend-like-a-reed on the subject of polyamory. In fact, I was no longer wishy-washy on the subject of Heinlein. I now had a distinct opinion of Heinlein: read Heinlein, said this opinion, and lose your lunch.
I am not particularly interested in reading more Heinlein. Yeah, yeah, I know, “read the classics.” Well, I tell you what, in the event I ever get through reading every other book I want to read and should read, I’ll then go back and start reading the books by the guy whose novels were used to try to seduce me by proxy. Also, at the same time, you have to go read all the things you think are boring or obnoxious.
However, my experience of TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE may not really be representative of all of Heinlein’s work. I get that. A) He wrote lotsa books, and many may be less obnoxious, and B) When one is not being skeezily hit on, even the obnoxious portrayal in TIME ENOUGH may not be quite so “oh, please, godDAMN.”
I reserve the right to call the portrayal sexist, though. No matter how people argue to the contrary, this is actually an observation on par with noting structure and school–it’s a textual analysis. Was Heinlein himself sexist? No fucking clue, don’t really care.
Meanwhile, Heinlein? Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr getitoffme.
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*While writing this post, it occurred to me that I use Heinlein interchangeably to mean “the individual Robert Heinlein” and “the body of works by Robert Heinlein.” If I were to say “Heinlein is sexist,” I’d mean the latter. I wonder if this is the substance of some of the miscommunications b/w Heinlein-defenders and Heinlein-questioners; I don’t think I’m unusual in using the author’s last name to denote his body of work. By the same token, though, I wonder if people also react to observations/reactions to the body of work as if they are observations/reactions to the individual, so the potential for inappropriate condensation of writing and writer, as well as the potential for straight-up misunderstanding, abounds.
Yeah, Time Enough for Love killed Heinlein for me as well, although Stranger in a Strange Land started the process. Admittedly, this happened about 40 years ago, so I can’t cite specifics on why I gave up on Heinlein, but I know I did. I do remember that his juvenile sci-fi books entertained me and may well be less sexist because they were written for kids. Or, being 16 in a time where women weren’t supposed to work and the world was just generally sexist and racist may make my memories fonder than they should be.
I read much of Heinlein when I was about 30 or 40 years younger. And I liked almost all of it. But even then I thought Time Enough For Love was a little too much of Heinlein indulging his own personal sexual fantasies. I felt reading it was a waste of time.
Heinlein was quite progressive by the standards of his time, but by our own there’s really no arguing that his writings (nearly all of them, lets be honest) were sexist.
That said, what I find most interesting about Heinlein is the transgender thread that runs through his books. Just off of the top of my head I can name at least five examples that run across his whole career: Mike/Michelle/Adam Selene, the computer from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; Lazuli and Lorelei Long, transgender clones of Lazarus Long; Elizabeth Andrew Jackson Long from The Number of the Beast; every single character (or, well, the only character) in All You Zombies…; and pretty much all of I Will Fear No Evil. Granted, I may be a little biased here, but I’ve always nursed a little pet theory that Heinlein was a closeted trans person who coped with his writing. :P
I used to really like his stuff. Less so now. I can say it’s pretty clear that his ideas either changed over time, or he had a lot of conflicting ideas about how society should work. There’s no way that the characters in starship troopers and the moon is a harsh mistress would ever get a along.
Also, as far as sexism goes. He wrote a number or stories that treat the female characters as real people and not objects/plot devices or simple sex objects.
Hammywhatever is not an example of this.
Also, by the end of his career I think he’d had every previous character have sex with every other character, and both of the sentient computers. That’s okay though, they were all clones of Lazerous Long and thus it was just masturbation.
But even then I thought Time Enough For Love was a little too much of Heinlein indulging his own personal sexual fantasies.
This, and it gets worse in To Sail Beyond the Sunset.
I actually think this is a broad trend in sf/f: the longer a series goes on, the more likely it is to become an expression of the author’s personal kinks. Heinlein was particularly bad at this, but I think it happens with a lot of other authors as well.
Heh. Like you, I started with STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, but I never got as far as TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE. (And no one has ever tried to seduce me into poly sexxaytimes, with science fiction or otherwise. I would feel sad and neglected for this, if not for stories like yours which make me go OMGWTFTOFU.) For me it was FARNHAM’S FREEHOLD that made me throw up in my mouth repeatedly. I don’t know whether the book reflected Heinlein’s personal feelings about black people and women or not, and I don’t care. On its own the book advanced some of the most hideous racist, sexist, and even classist stereotypes I’ve ever seen in print, outside of white supremacist tracts. So like you, I’m not willing to give him, or his body of work, a second chance to backhand me in the face. I’ve had Heinlein afficionados pressuring me to try his juveniles, or whatever, for years. Fuck that. Never again.
Heinlein’s juveniles certainly served me as an entry into reading SF. At worst they were competent.
His more ‘mature’ stuff, though… Uh, yeah. Stranger in a Strange Land introduced new ideas to adolescents so it wasn’t a total loss. Time and, worse, Number of the Beast were offputting and horribly written. Number was particularly bad. The only way to know which character’s POV we were reading was to look at the beginning of the chapter.
There’s no reason I can think of to go and read his stuff now. Plenty of alternatives have shown up in the last three or four decades.
I read them all, backwards from The Cat Who Walks Through Walls which came out when I was 13. Our library didn’t have a lot of SF on the shelves, but they had all of Heinlein, complete with little planet stickers.
Most of them aren’t as icky as the last several (though, Number of the Beast comes to the awesome conclusion that the real Gods are…Science Fiction writers! Of course! Who else? Much like Dies the Fire tells you that the really competent people in our society are all festies and SCAdians). But the gender stuff is all in there, even in some of the books that don’t actually have females in speaking parts at all. I blamed it on the time they were written, until I went back and read literature from that same time period that wasn’t like that at all.
I wish I could go through and unread most of it – it would actually make a lot of modern SF more palatable, if I hadn’t ingested and then thrown up so much “golden age” stuff that I can see the references/resonances still.
A friend of mine who’s fifty reread Stranger, which she’d enjoyed as a teenager, and only just noticed the lines, “Nine times out of ten, when a woman gets raped, it’s partly her fault” and “The women were swift and efficient and did not interfere with the men’s serious talk.” Having had a more privileged upbringing, I noticed (and was squicked out by) those lines when I was a teenager. But I didn’t realize that The Puppet Masters was a celebration of anticommunist paranoia and violence: I thought it was satire. Only when I learned that Heinlein’d told Asimov “The Leftist Truman should be impeached” and seen his “Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?” ad (warning that with a nuclear test ban in the early Sixties, the Reds would take over) did I begin to understand his wingnutty side.
Just on aesthetic grounds, the quality of Heinlein’s prose diminishes partway through Stranger and never really gets back up to what it was in the Forties and Fifties. And OMG what passes for sexual libertarianism in his subsequent novels . . . oy.
Yeah, Heinlein is really annoying; and I say that as someone in a totally amazing poly relationship. I know he’s often seen as the poster writer for polyamory, but yeuuurgh I do not like him. I hope he doesn’t give anyone a completely bad view of polyamory <_<, it can in fact sometimes be pretty great and also not horribly sexist, amazing!
One of my uncles gave me Time Enough for Love when I was twelve, and the sex bits went straight over my head (yeah, on the re-read, I’m not sure how, either). I read his later works pretty constantly through my teen years, and they were eventually quite formative to my views of sexuality–not so much what I find appealing for myself (I have come to terms with having a sex life that bores everyone but the people involved in it to tears), but what I consider normal for people other than me. This was, in hindsight, a really big deal, since I was otherwise being mostly raised by my grandparents, who had frequently and vocally expressed Views on what was Acceptable Behaviour–which included gems like ‘piercing and/or tattoos==kinky sex and therefore visible piercings and/or tattoos==having sex in public.’
As I got older, I started to see the misogyny in the books (and, ohdeargod the racism), and read them more as thinly veiled male libertarian fantasy, and then they got really boring. But I still have a soft spot for them, since they taught me to shrug off a lot of things that my upbringing would have otherwise conditioned me to have serious issues with. This wasn’t always a good thing–I had my own encounters with a creepy polyamorous dude, and he probably would have gone away faster if I’d been a bit more freaked out–but, on the balance, I think I was more able to identify the stuff that just wasn’t for me because I’d had years and years of exposure to it already.
Heinlein is… an odd duck, even for sci-fi writers for his generation. As a lit student, I can see the value in his work–Stranger in a Strange Land, for example, offers a discussion of striptease and the role of the male gaze almost a decade before Laura Mulvey got to it–but man, there’s some skeezy stuff too. For me, the realization of the ickier aspect came with Friday, in which the female protagonist ends up marrying a man who, earlier in the novel, participated in a gang rape of her. She is kindly disposed to him, in part, because he seemed like the only one participating in the rape who seemed concerned about her pleasure as well. Ah-huh.
Seriously!
I’m not poly; I’m very monogamous. Like, that’s just who I am.
But yeah, the view Heinlein paints of polyamory (in Time Enough) is that it’s about dudes getting lots of women. It’s not about the women participating or choosing or having identities or being equal, or finding men they want. It’s seriously gross.
But many polyamorists are not like that! But it took me a while to figure out that a lot of people genuinely hadn’t based their polyamory around the kind of sexism in Heinlein. Some of the poly relationships I’ve seen seem really great, and many don’t… I’d say the proportion of the latter compared to the former is indeed actually higher than with monogamous relationships I’ve seen (and I’m aware this may not match everyone’s experience, though it matches many people’s I’ve talked to), but this should shock no one, given that A) monogamy receives huge cultural support, which makes things easier, and B) we have long-standing cultural scripts for how to deal with monogamy, whereas people are still inventing the foundations of polyamory. Neither of those things says anything about morality or worth, just the practical situation on the ground, and I have enormous respect for people who are trying to evolve new, less kyriarchal forms of relationships and families and communities.
Actually, I learned from real, practicing, non-asshole polyamorists that monogamy as Americans practice it actually *deeply* squicks me out. Not the action of sleeping with only one person–I do that pretty easily. But the concept that our relationship is somehow supposed to be mainly formed around the fact that my vagina and his penis don’t go playing around with other vaginas and penises, and that if these conditions are violated, that’s supposed to invalidate the rest of our relationship. WTF? I’m not with my husband because I have sole access to his penis, I’m with him because I love him and he brings joy to my life. That won’t change if he fucks someone else. And ditto, me.
A friend of mine once said something I found really profound… she was in a fourteen year relationship, but a mutual friend of ours had a crush on her, and when she decided to make out with him (because why not?), she said, “Where I come from, men don’t own women.”
Right.
So our relationship involves sexual fidelity, but it isn’t based on sexual fidelity. Our relationship also involves, I don’t know, eating sandwiches while watching TV. But it’s not about eating sandwiches while watching TV. And if either of those conditions ever changes, whatever. As long as the real core of the relationship–love, joy, friendship–is working, cheers.
I go back and forth on whether or not squicky guy’s having introduced me to polyamory at 18 (when I might not have known about it for a few years otherwise) ultimately made me more or less resistant to figuring out that some polyamorists weren’t jerks. On the one hand, he definitely gave me a false impression I had to shake. On the other, having had some exposure to polyamory may have meant I didn’t react with a “What! Weird!” when I did make non-squicky poly friends. So, I don’t know.
I don’t agree with Coda that Heinlein was progressive for his time, not once you get into the ’60s. You might say that the sexism, etc., in Stranger was normal for its day, which was 1961. But not progressive (and when I first read it, in the early ’70s, it already seemed hideously regressive). And by the ’80s, with books like Number of the Beast, he’s downright reactionary. The women are little cardboard cutouts of antifeminism, for instance.
OTOH, he hardly gave me a bad opinion of polyamory, since I have always been convinced that polyamory has to involve human beings, and he couldn’t write any.
Yeahhhh. I had a pretty similar reaction to Heinlein, except the “one book” was Number of the Beast, which does not contain a single likeable character in its entire length. (I’m pretty sure there was sexism but I read it while I was pretty clueless, so all I remember is being upset at a female character insinuating she’d sleep with any man she met.)
And then, after my parents had insisted at length this was not representative, there was Job, in which a woman expresses surprise and amusement at the idea that she would ever disagree with the male lead in public.
I liked “All You Zombies”, but after those two I could never read much of his narrative voice without finding it unspeakable smarmy.
While he might have had, in the abstract, a very progressive attitude about women and sexuality… he was still writing pulp for arrested-development men and boys.
Heinlein was an idealist, with respect to the sexual revolution. He imagined that the future would be a world without jealousy or sexual possessiveness… hell, in his later books he dropped some earlier homophobia and made everybody bisexual as well. So everybody is having sex with everybody and lives in big, open, happy marriages.
But scrape away the idealism, and he was just a guy who wanted to screw lots of young, attractive women, and his writing was always about wish-fulfilment in this vein and others. So unless he’s writing a female protagonist, the women are in the story to get boinked and little else. Sure, he may write them as powerful, intelligent, heroic women… but their role in the story is still to boink the hero – he only makes them impressive because he fetishizes empowered women.
And yeah, his worship of military life and his libertarianism always seemed kind of contradictory to me.
No matter what, though, I still loved “Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, group-marriages and libertarianism and all.
“The Cat Who Walks Through Walls” is a sad read, because it gives you the clearest picture of who Heinlein was at the end of his life. It’s pretty much a mix of wish-fulfilment and autobiography, and gives you a very, very clear look at what Heinlein thought…. a military-loving Libertarian, a man who mixes futuristic beliefs about open relationships and group-marriages with sexual fantasies about having sex with plethoras of young women… a man who kind of wishes he was bisexual for idealistic reasons, but writes uncomfortably about male/male relationships. A man obsessed with manners, with an anachronistic approach to courtship in light of his other beliefs (act like her Dad to get into her pants).
And a man who was utterly terrified of dying, and angry at God or the universe or whatever about it.
That, and a bunch of pointless fanwankery about all his favourite characters, is what you see in that book. Otherwise, not a good read – but it gives you a damned good look at who he ended up being.
Basically, an even mixture of libertarian idealism and teen-aged fantasy. No wonder he’s so popular.
@squirrel
Yeah, I came up with that theory when Spider Robinson changed the setting of the Callahan books from a bar to a brothel.
As an aside, @Ampersand, I have to say that I absolutely love the little horizontal divider images between the posts. Those are freaking adorable.
Commenters at Tor indicate that Heinlein’s beliefs changed a lot during his adult lifetime, which sounds reasonable, which would possibly accommodate all three positions: that he was progressive re: women, that he was regressive re: women, and that he was about on par with his era re:women.
I’ve found that while a lot of people were introduced to the concept of poly after reading Heinlein, the ones who stay in the “OMG Heinlein haz best ideas evar!!!” do not, shall we say, end up being anyone you’d want to put on the recruiting poster.
I liked The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag. But I couldn’t finish Friday.
Heinlein is a long complicated topic….
One more for the transgender list: I Will Fear No Evil. A man’s brain is transplanted into the accidentally murdered body of a (young, beautiful, enthusiastic about sex) woman.
I don’t believe that anyone who’s revolted by Heinlein should read him, but there was sometimes more and better going on than the worst bits.
In Number of the Beast, Hilda (an older woman) takes charge of the continuum craft before she’s voted captain. And it’s clear that she deserves to be captain because she has both the will and the skills for the job.
In Glory Road, Star is Empress of Fifty Universes. And she breaks up with Oscar, the main character, because she’d rather have her job than him (he’s not capable of being happy at the center of civilization– there’s nothing for him to do), and it’s absolutely the right choice.
In Magic, Inc., Dr. Royce Worthington is black, and a professional magician from a tradition different from but as powerful as the European tradition of the white magicians. He’s paid for his work– he’s not just there to help the white main character.
In The Star Beast, Mr. Kiku is black and the bureaucrat effectively in charge of earth (he has an idiot white boss). He makes the right decision in a crisis.
What do polyamorists make of the collapse of the group marriage in Friday? It doesn’t fall apart because of intrinsic problems with poly, it’s venality, racism, and lack of courage that break it. (This fits with a general theme of moral insufficiency throughout most of Earth society.) I took it to mean that Heinlein had become more realistic about poly, though when Friday has a marriage later with two men (one of them the rapist mentioned upthread), there’s a considerable lack of detail about the relationship, so I think Heinlein never really described a poly relationship when it worked. I don’t think the line marriage in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress has enough emotional detail to count.
Well, and there’s an idealization of line marriage that would be ironic if anyone but Heinlein had written it. (I wish I could find the ‘polyamory translator’ that used to be posted at Our Little Quad: “I am intrigued by the idea of line marriage” means “I am intrigued by the idea of sleeping with people much younger than me.)
The women in his books remind me of a discussion in Plato where ‘Socrates’ notes that women shouldn’t be superior to men by any means, but should be capable and intelligent enough to be good mates.
The only Heinlein book I read that I’d recommend was Job: A Comedy of Justice. The other Heinlein books that I’ve read are Stranger in a Strange Land, Tunnel In The Sky, The Number Of The Beast, Red Planet, Podkayne of Mars, Friday, Time Enough For Love, The Puppet Masters, and Starship Troopers, and I was unimpressed by all of them. I think Heinlein had trouble with novel-length plots, and especially endings. Far too many of his books lack actual stories, and instead simply have characters and events that happen to those characters. There’s frequently no real resolution to anything. There may have been plenty of things in science fiction that he did first, but other people have done it a lot better.
Doug — but you thought Job was different? That’s a classic case of a book where stuff just happens to the characters.
I do recommend Star Beast and Double Star, two early books of his that don’t get enough attention. Nancy mentioned Kiku in Star Beast, above; it also has some interesting bits about gender and Othering. Double Star is very nearly as sexist as all his other works, but interesting reading for the politics and the Othering. Just as 9/11 wrecked many of our current U.S. SF writers, I think that whole McCarthy event wrecked many SF writers from that era; RAH may have been one of them. Just a theory. His writing got lots worse after that, anyway.
“Just as 9/11 wrecked many of our current U.S. SF writers”
E.g.?
I dislike the, “It’s a classic so you ought to read it,” argument. It feels like being required to participate in Stone Age culture– learn to knap flint, live without dental care, chase down and avoid being stomped on by megafauna– before getting permission to participate in my own. The conversation has moved on.
We don’t require that kind of thing on a smaller scale– I’ve never heard anyone say that you have to read all the Anita Blake books before you pick up Patricia Briggs. Why do it on a larger?
I’ve read only Stranger in a Strange Land, at twenty-one on the plane to a grad school interview and then after, because I knew if I stopped reading it I would never pick it up again. Twenty-one is too old for that book. Too many monologues, mostly about things I already knew. Ooh, two pages on cannibalism in various cultures! How interesting, had I not done a project on that in eighth grade. And there wasn’t enough story to hold me. There just wasn’t enough book to justify reading it as anything other than archaeology.
My Heinlein has been limited to Stranger in a Strange Land, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, and Time Enough For Love, all read in my early 20s.
I initially thought the overt propagandist-military-complex in Starship Troopers was supposed to be a little bit satirical, but I read it not long after seeing the movie… so there might have been some residue from that.
I followed it with Stranger. I enjoyed the book at the time. But looking back, I can see how my youthful male-privilege glossed over a lot of the sexism (though I do recall the rape quote vaguely as a “Seriously WTF?” moment). I liked a lot of the other ideas presented in the book about the “secret unity of religion” and “complete understanding”= grokking and some other elements. But I was just embracing my Paganism at the time, so I’m willing to chalk a lot of that up to just being excited to find a sci-fi writer that was actually discussing those topics.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was the high-point for me in my Heinlein run. The logic behind why the society on the moon worked the way it did made sense. He actually explained the how and why of the ex-prisoner socio-dynamic (be polite to everyone… because you’re on the moon, and anyone who doesn’t like you can probably vent you into space with a minimum of fuss from anyone else at any time). And in that situation, the line-marriage seemed to make sense (at least in my mind at the time of the reading… ) from a “anyone can kill you, so best to have a well-connected family” POV. And the idea of freedom fighting/terrorism being two sides of a very similar, if not the same, coin… Just a lot of stuff that resonated with me in the grand scheme of things.
Though I recognize some elements as libertarian fan-wank, most of it just strikes me as “situation sci-fi”, if that makes sense. I don’t think he was necessarily pushing an agenda in that work as much as attempting to simulate one possible future situation (prisoner/slaves forming their own society and attempting to throw off their oppressors… with the help of a secret AI). But that may just be me.
And then I read Time Enough. I’ll admit that the prurient element of the whole thing did push it to the edge of my interest. And following TMIaHM it was a bit of a shocker. After that, I decided I needed a break from his work and I moved on to other authors.
When I mentioned that I was considering reading more of his stuff, most of the people that had much of an opinion made it pretty clear that they felt that I had hit all the really interesting bits and that everything else was a bit redundant.
So yeah. I definitely agree with the: “Don’t feel obliged to read people that make you go EEWWW!” But I also don’t think Time Enough for Love is a representative slice of Heinlein’s best (or even passable) work. Especially as your biggest squick-factor seems to be “some guy used this book to try to get in my pants and thought that I’d be okay with this (clearly inhuman) view of both polyamory and female sexuality.”
THANK YOU! Sheesh! I’ve been waiting and waiting for someone to say something about those!
:-P
You are right, Henlein is sometimes sexist, I felt the same thing several times reading his novels. He insists that every woman must reproduce as much as she can and LOVE IT. Nothing like babies and more babies for Henlein ;-) But I love his works anyway. His imagination is incredible. If you must never read another of his books, at least read “Moon is the Harsh Mistress”, it’s about revolution mostly and self-aware computer called Mike (I don’t reveal anything here, you’ll know as much after reading first two paragraphs :-)), not much sexist themes, although his alternate views on relationships are still visible. I think he really was polyamorous, I like that in him, I just don’t like his OBSESSION about babies.
The best thing I’ve seen about reading the classics was a bit of cognitive psych from Joanna Russ (probably in How to Suppress Women’s Writing): if a book is described as “good”, ask “good for who?” “good for what?”.
Some time later, I realized that it was pretty funny that classics were supposed to be timelessly excellent– except that most people needed to force themselves to read/watch/listen to them, and were expected to need education to appreciate them. Sometimes classics are of great value to some people, but timeless and universal doesn’t come close to describing the situation.
One more about Heinlein, women, and sex— some women read him as saying that women were obligated [1] to enjoy sex, and some women read him as saying that women were allowed to enjoy sex (not the most common message in the era). Neither reading was entirely false.
[1] That’s not quite the word I want, but I’m not sure if there is an exact word. In his later works, Heinlein presented a universe where a large and accommodating appetite for sex is as much an intrinsic part of women worthy of respect as is high intelligence or the desire to do useful things well.
Those last two are why I can’t say that Heinlein is completely awful about women. In Time Enough for Love, Maureen has a remarkable ability to do everything practical she sets her hand to. And the bit where she’s divorcing her husband and he’s having trouble grasping that her loyalty isn’t with him any more is a stitch.
I’m currently rereading Stand on Zanzibar. Brunner is pretty awful about women– worse than Heinlein in important ways– but he doesn’t piss people off as much, possibly because he doesn’t make pronouncements.
In particular, the book is an overpopulation dystopia. It’s common, though hardly universal, for women to be on the shiggy circuit– that’s women without homes who live with one man after another. With one exception, they’re all young and beautiful. Some of them have good jobs (and there are high status women in the book who aren’t on the shiggy circuit), but there’s a serious housing shortage in Manhattan.
I’m only about half way through the reread, but a lot of the book is about people being driven crazy because of not having enough territory. These women have no territory, but there’s no concern shown for them– nor about what’s likely to happen to them when they get older.
My first experience with Heinlein was buying a bunch of paperbacks for my grandfather to read after his first stroke. I picked up “Job: A Comedy of Justice” because the premise sounded interesting – I doubt my grandfather actually had the interest in sci-fi that I did, but the Biblical aspects would intrigue him, I thought. It turned out he never regained enough eye coordination to read, so I wound up reading the book instead.
I had no idea who Heinlein was, but I remember really liking the book because of the subversive “God is basically having tantrums and playing games with the universe” message. I read it a few times, in fact. It felt like it had things in common with other authors I liked – Mark Twain for one, and some of the comic fantasy books I liked, like the Xanth and Myth Inc. books. (both of which suffer from their own RAH type issues).
It wasn’t until years later that I connected this guy Heinlein whom everyone talks about, with the book I’d read. In retrospect, there was a lot that was problematic about it – the ultra-hot nymphette who becomes fanatically devoted to the narrator, lots of opportunities for them to wind up naked, some racist stereotypes sprinkled throughout, and of course the inevitable end in which Your Humble Narrator winds up the head of a polyamorous sex church or something. I have a feeling I wouldn’t like it as well if I re-read it.
In any case, I tried Stranger in a Strange Land, and was fairly keen on it until about halfway through the book when I just ran out of steam, because my god could there be a more juvenile wank-fest committed to paper and then given the Hugo?
Since that time, every committed RAH fan I know has turned out to be a guy who is into poly/open relationships because he doesn’t like having to make choices and set limits on his own desires and behavior. It’s a helpful warning, seeing stacks of Heinlein in a guy’s library – like a jar of spaghetti sauce with the little lid dimple popped up. “Beware of contents.”
I admit to having “The Cat Who Walked Through Walls” on my “to read” shelf but it’s been there at least 5 years, picked up when I was on a “read some more classic SF” binge inspired by Neil Gaiman’s “Adventures in the Dream Trade.” Got me wrestling with Bester and Delaney, at least, though I can’t say either of them really “took” as their books sit on that same shelf.
MisterMephisto @26, there was a real air of “Yes, line marriage is the best thing ever and is perfect and nobody has any jealousy!” which is nigh satirical, but he means it.
Elusis–for accessible Delany, I recommend Trouble on Triton (though for all I know, that’s what you’ve already got).
I recommend Delany’s [i]Nova[/i], or at least it’s a novel I’m very fond of– it’s cheerful proto-cyberpunk space opera with a lot of flash and glitter.
Or maybe [i]Babel 17[/i]– wild speculation about language and much else. The scene where space pilots with major body ornamentation do zero-g wrestling in a bar to see who’s better qualified for a job is a lot of fun.
In general, I’d say go for the short novels. It seems as though everyone but me loves [i]The Einstein Intersection[/i].
Unless you want something long and strange and not like conventional sf, in which case [i]Dhalgren[/i].
@Nancy Lebovitz
I think that’s part of it. While Heinlein’s women are pretty much inserted into the plot to provide something for the male protagonists to screw, I think a bit of the anti-sexism rage that Heinlein gets isn’t really fair… not because Heinlein isn’t sexist – of course he was. But I think he was less-so than most of his contemporaries.
I think a major reason that Heinlein takes flack for sexism from the world at large (not specifically from feminists) isn’t that his women were less than the male characters of his story… but that they were all (if you’ll pardon my foul language) sluts.
To a lot of people, that’s a bad thing. All the heroes in Heinlein’s stories like to have a great deal of sex with a large number of partners. That includes the female ones.
It’s simultaneously exploitive of women, and feminist. Exploitive because Heinlein was writing that because he wanted to write about having sex with lots of young women. Feminist, because Heinlein was trying to describe post-patriarchy societies, and he was writing while the sexual revolution was in-progress. He was imagining that, once the prudery of the past were wiped away and our repressive upbringing was gone, women would want to have as much sex with as many different partners as he did. I think it’s less about allowed or obligated, and more that he assumed that all women were the same horn-dogs he was and only were suppressing their sexual appetites for a wide variety of men because of a patriarchal upbringing.
It was a mixture of fantasy and extrapolation. Extrapolation in the same way that the moon landing in 1969 meant we’d colonize the solar system by 2050 – the free-love movement meant that everybody would fark everybody by 2050. Why? Because when Heinlein was a kid, airplanes were a recent invention, and sex was not spoken of. Look where we were in the ’60s when he was writing. And because oodles of sex in space is cool and a fun story for young men.
@ Elusis
Don’t read Cat unless you’re really interested in learning about Heinlein. It’s a lousy Mary Sue book, the story is a complete mess. The only appeal is the Mary Sue part – it’s a good look at how Heinlein saw himself and what he thought in his final years. Otherwise pretty worthless.
My recommendation, if you’re going for Golden Age SF, is Simak. I love Clifford D. Simak. His writing certainly contains the sexism of pop culture of his youth, but what Golden Age SF doesn’t? It’s an inherent problem w/ GASF. Simak wrote the same story over and over again, but I like that story. He summarizes his novels with the title The Fellowship of the Talisman.
If not Simak, then Kornbluth. They’ve both got the style and the content that typifies their era. Simak had a lot more time, so he moved the boundaries a bit more than Kornbluth was able to do.
Coda wrote:
You may be right. Certainly he toyed with gender more than any of his contemporaries. If he was trans, then he wrestled all his life with self-hatred. Cheryl Morgan posited that _Friday_ was a trans novel, and I disagreed, here:
http://crossedgenres.com/archives/012/heinleins-friday-a-trans-novel-by-cheryl-morgan/
Confession: as a pubescent white person-assigned-male, I read most of what Heinlein wrote (all but what came after _The Number of the Beast_). I was uncritically voracious, and my memory was selective. It wasn’t until I re-read as an adult that I started seeing lots of problems. I can still read some of his work for enjoyment, but more and more I re-read something I remember fondly and find myself metaphorically scraping something off my shoe, muttering “I don’t remember THAT being there…”
Pedantka wrote:
Bingo. Life in Heinlein’s universe is fine if you are a member of the Libertarian Elite: highly intelligent, highly competent, highly sexed or not sexed at all, and trans only when the technology permits you to function reproductively in the target gender (see link referenced above for a longer discussion of that last criterion). You don’t fit one of those categories? So sorry; you’re screwed.
This is a wonderful fantasy world for people who have high opinions of themselves (and as a privileged white apparently-male, I was socialized to do so, and did). However, a bit of maturity from life experience will prompt most people to re-think the necessary result: the unworthy become the downtrodden, and they deserve it. We can gloss past the fact that they are unworthy because they picked the wrong parents and therefore aren’t ultra-intelligent, ultra-competent, and chromosomally “normal”. There’s an ethical issue somewhere in there, but Heinlein never could get a good look at it.
Silenced is Foo wrote:
Ah. Let me help. Those make perfect sense if you view them through the lens of Necessity. Libertarians often have a The Necessity of Tough Choices fetish. Heinlein had it in spades. Anything is acceptable if it’s The Best (and preferably The Only) Way To Get The Job Done, as long as The Job is itself A Noble Goal. In Heinlein’s view, the highest title one could possess is Defender of the Genome. In _Starship Troopers_, Earth’s military is fighting a war against a genocidal aggressor. In a situation, like that, You Have To Break Eggs to Make The Omelette ™.
Ultimately, Heinlein never escaped Social Darwinism. I am wracking my brains right now, and I can’t think of a single example of a main character who came to the defense of any other character who wasn’t a member of the Libertarian Elite.
Probably someone will now cite just such an example, and that’s fine. Part of what makes Heinlein discussions so fraught is that people like to speak in absolutes, and Heinlein was a complex person, with a large body of work spanning decades of life during which many of his opinions changed. You can probably find single examples of almost anything.
Grace
Grace, I’m that person. Lazarus long died (to the best of his ability) for an incompetent member of his squad in Time Enough for Love. “The Long Watch” was about dying to prevent dictatorship.
I’m working on a theory (I have a couple of examples) that a lot of the more bombastic statements made by Heinlein characters aren’t born out in his fiction, and in fact, that part of what makes his work attractive (to some, at least) is that he liked and valued a wide range of people. At some point, he said that he didn’t write villains. There were a very few exceptions, but for the most part, he didn’t.
Silenced Is Foo @34, it’s not that they’re sluts. It’s that they’re sluts as viewed by a middle-aged straight guy fantasy. Everybody farks everybody, but the female “everybodies” are hot and babealicious and no discernable taste in men and all want to have babies.
Besides the idiotic rape scene, Friday also had an idiotic scene that blew the premise of the book out of the water. The completely unsubtle theme of the book is that a bunch of preening folks who we’d now call “PC” have eliminated all (visible) prejudice, except against artificial persons like Friday.
And then Friday beats a man in an arm-wrestling contest he suggested, he feels totally emasculated by this, and Friday is completely forgiving. Because in a non-sexist society it’s understandable and reasonable for a man to be pissed that a woman is stronger than him? Okay, Bob.
For those traumatized by Heinlein, or afraid of giving him a try because they don’t wish to be traumatized: an important thing to remember is that 1930’s and 40’s Heinlein is quite different from mid career Heinlein, and 1970’s’s and later Heinlein is again VERY different from all of his earlier work.
In general, early and mid-career Heinlein might or might not be to your taste, but is unlikely to harm you. Late period Heinlein (ALL his novels published in the 70’s and 80’s, and SOME of his novels from the 60’s) should come with warning labels.
The 1970’s and 80’s novels are all pretty self-indulgent, with Heinlein’s fetishes and pet theories and prejudices (racial, sexual, and political) very much front and center. The 60’s were a transitional decade, with some brilliant novels (Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) some bad novels (Glory Road) and some “my prejudices, let me show you them” crap (Farnham’s Freehold, Podykayne of Mars).
For an example of Heinlein that’s unlikely to cause trauma, pick up one of his short story collections (“The Past Through Tomorrow” and “Waldo & Magic, Inc” are the best, IMO, the other collections are more mixed bags), or read one of his early novels for adults (NOT “Sixth Column,” which was written to spec for a racist editor) — I recommend Double Star and Beyond This Horizon, for example.
Nojojojo – Was Farnam’s Freehold the one where a bunch of people go down into a bombshelter and get catapulted into a far distant and browner future? The one where all the remaining white women want to fuck the main character/white patriarch? Including his own daughter, who would rather have sex with her father than with a black man?
Cause that was my first and last exposure to Heinlein.
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
Good to know you, Nancy. You’re right; I should have thought of “The Long Watch”. I always loved the ceremony of people in ranks answering for “the four”, which we saw in _Space Cadet_.
However, that’s someone doing something honorable in military service for an anonymous humanity, to prevent dictatorship. I don’t think I stated my original challenge well. I’m talking about an instance of a main character helping a specific character. Now that you rightly point out military service, I’ll acknowledge it as an exception which proves the rule. I think what I’m getting at is that Heinlein (almost?) never wrote stupid good people, and good people of average intelligence were pretty thin on the ground, too. Stupid bad people abounded. And yet, in real life, there are many people who are non-genius, completely undeserving in Heinlein’s narrow-minded Darwinian sensibility, who nonetheless have inherent worth and dignity, like all human beings.
I can’t help but think that Heinlein’s reply to that assertion would be either to wave it away as irrelevant or pointless, or to use it as a target for caustic commentary.
Grace
@harlemjd,
Yeah, that’s _Farnham’s Freehold_. It was the only book of his where even my credulous prepubescent self said, “What the hell?”
Obviously Heinlein’s work has issues, but if you’re at all interested, don’t judge him on one of his worst. Try _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_.
Grace
Ugh, I remember reading Stranger in a Strange Land and feeling like the women were all so…interchangeable. The scene where Valentine loses his virginity literalizes this by Heinlein not telling the reader who he fucks, so that it could be any one of the hot, nubile young women who’ve flocked to his side.
And I Will Fear No Evil. UGH. The voice of the protagonist is so condescending and grating.
The idea that Heinlein was a closet trans person is interesting in light of “And I Will Fear No Evil”. I didn’t manage to finish the book, so take the following with a grain of salt. There is a whole genre of “transfiction“, wish-fulfillment fantasy about gender changes. Most of it is, of course, badly written, but in a way that’s instructive: the badly-written ones make it clear what it’s doing for the authors. The authors clearly fantasize about turning themselves into attractive women and (usually) having sex, usually with men. They also often like to imagine being forced to make the change (by others or by biology), which then goes very easily, and then “gradually” coming to like their new gender. “And I Will Fear No Evil” fits right in (and in fact there’s amateur transfiction out there that’s better-written). Who writes all that amateur transfiction? It’s hard to say, Internet anonymity being what it is, but while some of the authors are transsexual women at various stages of coming out, some of it appears to also be the fantasies of men. Some of these men are probably cross-dressers, others would probably cross-dress if they dared. If “trans person” includes transvestism, I’m totally willing to believe that Heinlein was, or at least had impulses (though he surely also had some nasty issues queer people).
Note that I’m not implying that nobody else writes about trans characters or transition; Jeffrey Eugenides’ book “Middlesex” (about an intersexed character) is a good example – not that I know he isn’t trans in some way, but that his book doesn’t show the same signs of being written to satisfy fantasies. Heinlein’s does.
Grace @42, even though it’s one of his best, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is annoying because it’s not written satirically. The author really does believe that it is the bestest of all possible worlds and everybody is perfectly happy and only bad people don’t fit in.
I didn’t read it, but it seems like Farnham’s Freehold was a very screwed-up attempt to criticize racism by reversing its direction, making blacks the “evil slaveholders” and whites the “innocent victims of racism”. (This is a site making that claim.)
From what I can tell, Farnham’s Freehold was a failed attempt at writing a book with an anti-racist message: “How would it feel if YOU were the victim of racism instead of the perpetrator?” And it failed because, well, it’s also a story about a world where black people are evil.
(This is a site making that claim.)
Thanks for this. I’m half way through Stranger in a Strange Land right now, and I’m having a similar reaction.It’s a classic, it has a lot of really interesting ideas that are right up my alley; it is also unashamedly and dogmatically sexist. Several times Heinlein just takes time out to dictate essentialist doctrine and to directly state to the reader that if he (it seems, to me, that he does expect it to be a he) thinks about it properly about it, he will realise the truth of this, and that, really, all human interaction stems from the differences between the sexes, and how they interact with one another. He also has intelligent women who hold valued positions in society, but these are explicitly hot women, open to polyamory, and expected to be happy to go prepare food whilst the menfolk talk business. It’s a sexist book, and the direct authorial voice to the reader suggests to me that Heinlein actually was sexist, although he may also have been forward thinking for the time – many people assume that you cannot accept the latter if you assert the former, and I think that’s another mistake that confuses the matter further.
I think I sort of needed to read this to feel like I had permission to put down the book. It is a classic, and the basic story intrigues me, but the depiction of gender roles and sexuality makes me queasy, and is not good for my mental health, nor my perspective on how decent men view women.
Waldo & Magic, Inc? It was the one Heinlein novel in the YA section of my library that I never read. It’s not that I didn’t read it because I skipped over it for some reason. I tried to read it, I really did. I tried at least 15 times. I was never able to make it out of the first chapter. I don’t remember what was so unreadable about it but I do clearly remember attempting it over and over again.
I have read every book, short story, and musing and column that Heinlen ever rote.
From that perspective and having served in the Navy with and under Naval Academy grads I can give some perspective.
– Heinlein was looking forward to a carreer as a Naval Officer but was put out on medical dissabilty for Chronic symptoms of Tuberculosis after only a few years. If you view his writings with this knowldge firmly in place with his ideology you can see the result of the irresistable force of ideology with the immovable object of health. This caused a lot of deep seated self hatred.
– Heinlen was a died in the wool American western self reliant pioneer Libertarian. You can call this soft social Darwinism. To his thinking compassion should not be included in any governmental decision higher than family level.
– Heinlein had an incredible soft spot for fertile women. It was fertility not attractivness that was the deciding factor. To prove this you have to dig into some of his less well known short stories. He wrote more than one tenderhearted story of women who were written as physically less than common standard physically attractive.
– Suvival is king. To Heinlein if it not good for starvation lifeboat culture then it is not good at all. He iscommitted to his self hatrd of his disability and doing his best to make the reader hate all disability that does not pay its own way.
His idea, cash up front, You are either usefull or useless.
See if you can find Heinleins address to the graduating class of the Naval Academy. He spells out his morality in detail. It is the best understanding of his ideological formula.
That just makes him sound really, really frightening?
Edit: And it makes me pity him. But it does not really inspire me to read his books, unless it’s out of political curiosity.
Quotes From Heinleins address to the Naval Academy
In this complex world, science, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going. If we blow ourselves up we will do it by misapplication of science; if we manage to keep from blowing ourselves up, it will be through intelligent application of science.
***************
Patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man’s evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.
****************
I now define “moral behavior” as “behavior that tends toward survival.” I won’t argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word “moral” to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define “behavior that tends toward extinction” as being “moral” without stretching the word “moral” all out of shape.
****************
Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won’t even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.
*********************
The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for your own immediate family. This is the level at which six pounds of mother cat can be so fierce that she’ll drive off a police dog. It is the level at which a father takes a moonlighting job to keep his kids in college — and the level at which a mother or father dives into a flood to save a drowning child … and it is still moral behavior even when it fails.
************************
Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.
The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called “patriotism.”
********************
I said that “Patriotism” is a way of saying “Women and children first.” And that no one can force a man to feel this way. Instead he must embrace it freely. I want to tell about one such man. He wore no uniform and no one knows his name, or where he came from; all we know is what he did.
In my home town sixty years ago when I was a child, my mother and father used to take me and my brothers and sisters out to Swope Park on Sunday afternoons. It was a wonderful place for kids, with picnic grounds and lakes and a zoo. But a railroad line cut straight through it.
One Sunday afternoon a young married couple were crossing these tracks. She apparently did not watch her step, for she managed to catch her foot in the frog of a switch to a siding and could not pull it free. Her husband stopped to help her.
But try as they might they could not get her foot loose. While they were working at it, a tramp showed up, walking the ties. He joined the husband in trying to pull the young woman’s foot loose. No luck —
Out of sight around the curve a train whistled. Perhaps there would have been time to run and flag it down, perhaps not. In any case both men went right ahead trying to pull her free … and the train hit them.
The wife was killed, the husband was mortally injured and died later, the tramp was killed — and testimony showed that neither man made the slightest effort to save himself.
The husband’s behavior was heroic … but what we expect of a husband toward his wife: his right, and his proud privilege, to die for his woman. But what of this nameless stranger? Up to the very last second he could have jumped clear. He did not. He was still trying to save this woman he had never seen before in his life, right up to the very instant the train killed him. And that’s all we’ll ever know about him.
This is how a man dies.
This is how a man … lives!
Doug S.,
The problem wasn’t specifically that the black people were evil, it was that they were stereotypes, and Heinlein inflicted them on his readers even as his characters preached against racism. If Heinlein had managed to create a fictional, futuristic society of black people who were people, I might have accepted that he was trying to get some message across. But instead he reinforced the idea that black people are always savages (cannibals) no matter how “civilized” they become; that black men lust for white women as sex objects; that black men emasculate (literally) white men; that black people love to use drugs; that black women are promiscuous (granted, it’s clear Heinlein thought all women should be promiscuous, but he apparently gave no thought to the layered negative sociocultural implications of depicting women of color that way; typical second-wave white feminist failure to acknowledge the differences that racism creates); that black people have no sense of loyalty or honor; blah blah blah. On top of that, he played explicitly into one of the root fears of racism — the idea that if black people ever get a bit of power, white slavery and “payback” are sure to follow. There are ways to tackle this idea in a nuanced, thoughtful way — Steven Barnes’ Lion’s Blood is an example — but Heinlein… didn’t.
FF pretty much said, “Yeah, if black people ever gain power, of course they’ll do unto us as we’ve done unto them. But it’ll be worse because they’re black, and we know what those people are like — they’ll be eating us, castrating us, and screwing our wimmins!” …So whatever textual message he meant to convey, or verbal message by means of the characters’ dialogue, is lost beside the unspoken example of his worldbuilding.
And I think the review you linked fails to make its point because it doesn’t address this matter of stereotypes, or explain why Heinlein chose to use them.
ETA: Fixed semicoherency, sorry.
Apart from literal eating (I’m sure one could make a rather long argument about how calorie-deprived slaves were having their labor eaten, and thus their metaphorical selves eaten, by wealthy whites) as far as I know, this is not exactly stuff that didn’t happen.
I’m not disagreeing with you. Just mentioning that the “it’ll be even worse!!!” furor sometimes fails to even comprehend how bad it actually was.
Mandolin,
Ah, but — at least when I grew up, in the Seventies, the standard bullshit was still in place re slavery: it wasn’t that bad, the slaves at least got free food and shelter, they were part of the family, blah blah blah. (The standard bullshit is still in place, but at least most people laugh at it now.) Nobody ever talked about why so many descendants of slaves were light-skinned, or if they did it was always in the context of love affairs between slaves and kindly masters who later freed them. So I suspect that to Heinlein’s target audience, who I’m guessing weren’t the most well-read on slave narratives and the like, the world of FF seemed worse.
If you want to some up Heinlein to fewer words thebn you should then this is as accurate picture as you can get from a short Bio.
He was Very cynical about ALL forms of society
He was very Cynical about Business but even more about Government
He figured most people were running a scam but that didn’t stop them from being complex and good in other parts. But only the part you were dealing with mattered.
His patriotism was tied to his self worth, and morality and his judgement of others. Loyalty was important.
His view of religion was ther was probably a kernal of truth to spiritualism but almost all organized religion was a scam, but some were so artfully run and dignified as not to be offensive, while others were pure criminal filth, but freedom of religion was the better choice nontheless.
As I said, I didn’t read it, so I can’t make comments any more sophisticated than “he tried to write an anti-racist book but failed miserably.” And I do pretty much agree with you about it.
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Re my comment about US SF writers being ruined by 9/11 — I guess I was thinking of OSC, mainly. Not that he was ever exactly a bastion of liberal thought, despite his own belief to the contrary — since 9/11, though, he’s clearly gone over the edge.
But there are also a number of writers published by, for instance, Baen Books who have slid wildly into some Right-Wing Fantasy land; and writers like John Barnes and John Varley, who I did love, whose last/most recent books have been sadly reactionary.
Steve, where do you see self-hatred in Heinlein’s work?
Interesting discussion & site /blog.
I grew up as a big SF fan & bookworm reading and loving many of Heinlein’s books.
I thought and still think Friday, Glory Road & ,Stranger in A Strange Land among others are pretty awesome. Yes, there are some problems and, yes, Heinlein was a product of his (more sexist & racist) age & upbringing but I don’t see him in that negative a light because he expressed forthright, honest, unPC views.
Heinlein did have strong women heroines -Friday & Star & Gillian (Jill) Boardman to name just a few. Women could be “Fair Witnesses” whose observational skills were held in the highest regard, they were leading characters worked, they were able to achive some amazing things, they weren’t just “maidens in distress” or suchlike tropes. So what if they were (mostly) positively assertive sexually and promiscious and so forth. I’m not sure why your caning him for that. A few odd lines reflecting the odd cultural hangover or personal lack of understanding when it comes to some feminist hobbyhorses doesn’t outweigh that In MyHumble Opinion Naturally.
Heinlein also had alien cultures and ideas and at least one good Muslim character (Dr. Mahmoud ) that show he wasn’t just racist & was open to seeing other cultures and ethnic groups in a positive light. I do think some people here are being far too harsh.
I haven’t read the Farnham’s Freehold one (that I recall) but knowing his other work I’m prepeared to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was probably being satirical or trying to get an anti-racist message across and the book was misconstrued by others.
Finally :
@ 13. Person of Consequence says: [8/17/2010 at 4:30 am]
Well, its more than just that. Friday doesn’t kill him initially because he allowed her to use the toilet rather than forcing her to wet her pants as the villain wanted – and then he redeems himself for the earlier incident (in which he was one participant of many most far worse than him) by helping her escape and effectively saving her life. I agree you can argue the merits of this & that its a bit problematic but there’s more to it than just what you said.
I’ll also note that Heinlein isn’t alone here – there are are comparable situations in various genre eg. Spike rapes Buffy yet remains a tainted ambiguous hero. Plus for a really extreme case in SF -far worse than anything Heinlein described – look at Stephen Donaldson’s Gap series where Angus Thermoplye is a heroic villain who does some horrendous things (incl. multiple rapes) to that series heroine yet also comes across as somewhat redeemed hero by the end.
MTU:
You are making at least two poor arguments.
One: No one is “caning” Heinlein. Typed words are not physical implements, and the poor man is dead for goodness sake, so perhaps you ought to leave corporal punishment out of it.
Two: The fact that other writers have written things as bad or worse has no particular bearing on whether or not Heinlein’s work is questionable on race or sex.
Nancy
I will admit that self hatred may be a little too strong. I have read his autobigraphical snippetts where he was very derogatory of his own status being according to him completely non productive. This was back in the thirties. He was thrilled when his first story was published because he could be usefull. By the way he never had a story rejected by a publisher only bounced back for rewrite or clarification.
I apolgize for sloppy writing, I am at work in between other time cricital tasks.
I’ve really enjoyed reading the comments here. I know Heinlein has been criticized a lot in recent years for all of the reasons listed, but I have fond memories of reading Have Spacesuit Will Travel and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. I remember Stranger in a Strange Land as being interesting and full of what seemed like new ideas when I was a teenager in the early ’70s who had mostly read only comic books and SF. I got increasingly uncomfortable with his later books and haven’t even heard of some of the titles I’ve seen mentioned here, and from the comments made I don’t feel like the decision to stop reading his new books was a mistake. I’m not sure I want to re-read his earlier titles anymore for fear of dismantling fond (if vague) childhood memories. I’m sorry to hear that a current reading of Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar doesn’t hold up too well, but then I think most older SF can’t help showing its age these days. The amazing advances being made in nano-technology, computing technology, and other areas makes many older stories quaint, at best (ah, for the days when it was futuristic to have the crew race to do the lift-off calculations with their slide rules quickly enough to take off in time for whatever). The only Delaney I think I’ve read was Dahlgren which was assigned in a college SF English class (it seemed interesting to start and then just meandered endlessly and pointlessly for the last half of the book). I find myself reading mostly fantasy lately (advances in magic have not made many spells obsolete :-), but it is frustrating how some really hack and/or offensive writers get lots of praise and attention while others who I think do better work are not noticed as often.
And I also love the comment and post separators, Barry. I’m really looking forward to the expanded version of Hereville.
MTU, it’s hard to take your comments seriously when you’re willing to dismiss others’ critiques of a book you haven’t read. That makes me think you’re not actually interested in having a legitimate critical discussion; you’re really just here to defend — sometimes even sans data or other ammunition — an author you admire.
Also, please note that saying things like “he’s a product of his time” doesn’t exactly excuse him of racism, sexism, etc. Effectively, you’re affirming his racism/sexism, since the times in which he was writing were blatantly so. What would be remarkable is if he’d successfully defied the thinking of those times, and depicted women and people of color in his work as three-dimensional, important, active and complex human beings. He tried, I’ll grant him that, and he deserves some credit for the effort. But IMO, ultimately, he did not succeed.
Have same ‘ick’ reaction to Heinlein now as OP. Read a LOT of Heinlein as a teenager and missed much of the squick at the time but many of his works do have an odd to deeply misogynistic attitude towards women. Abandoned all his work when re-reading Stranger I discovered the ‘thanks for coming to rescue me from the attempted rapists but you shouldn’t always come when I call, sometimes a girl deserves to be raped’ bit. (I paraphrase.) Come on. How many people actually think they deserved to be raped? Book throwing time.
I do miss things like Space Family Stone (where the women were only sidelined and frivolous) but there’s plenty of better stuff out there to read so I have no plans to get back to RH any time soon. I like Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow (contemporary) and Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy (if you want something from Back When).
You know, we’re all adults here. It’s not necessary to tiptoe around terms like “sexist” and “racist” by using euphemisms like “unPC”.
To nojojojo
If you reread Farnams Freehold objectively you will see parts of where early in the book the daughter is critcized by the father for her attitudes towards the black character.
I took away from this book was that anyone can and is Racist often and nothing can excuse that. Remember that Heinlein was a deep Cynic. He trusted no one and nothing. His idea is that all human groupings and institutions will always abuse power to the degree they are allowed.
In his time he pushed anti-racism (not lack of racism) as far as it could go and still be popular and read in his time.
Remember he treated everyone equally – a potential enemy.
He treated every Cause as a means to power for the leaders of that cause.
The better a cause sounded, and the better it made people feel the more he distrusted it.
He distrusted safe places because he viewed them as fortresses to launch attacks.
He also said
“Of course the game is rigged, but if you don’t bet you can’t win.”
So what? Are you saying that because there was an anti-racist statement early in the book, criticizing anything else in the book, regardless of how racist it is, is inappropriate?
It would be good if you didn’t imply that Nora, an accomplished writer and critic who works with words for her living, was incapable of an “objective” reading. It either implies that your reading is better than hers because she is black and you are presumably not (I don’t think this is what you meant), or that your reading is better than hers because she is not as good a reader of Heinlein as you are. I expect some gentle version of the latter was your intention, and I’m sure you didn’t mean it to prickle, but it sort of does. Your readings may clash, but it would probably be better to establish the merit of yours by providing textual support as evidence, not by simply calling your reading objective and consequently implying hers is not.
steve,
I don’t believe that anyone reads objectively. Fiction is art; it’s inherently subjective. For example, you read Heinlein as a fan of his, which predisposes you to idealize his work and apparently overlook the flaws I’m pointing out (or at least, you’re failing to address those flaws; maybe you did notice them and have just chosen not to talk about them). And of course you bring your race, gender, and other facets of identity into everything you read, same as everyone does.
I read Heinlein not only as an anti-racist and feminist, but also as a fellow writer — which means I read everything critically, because I’m studying another artist to see what s/he/har has done well, and what they could’ve done better. Like I said, I think Heinlein could’ve done a lot of things better.
You do raise (well, imply) a good point, though, which is whether Heinlein could’ve been as popular as he was if he’d been truly progressive. Especially given that his target audience was ostensibly white men, who have no vested interest in the kinds of progressivism we’re talking about (though they may choose to commit themselves to feminism or anti-racism). If he’d written his black society in FF without resorting to racist stereotypes, or his female characters as something other than a white man’s sex fantasy, would his readership have continued to read his work? I can understand if he asked himself those questions and then opted to do the “safe”, less progressive thing. All writers make those choices. But I still think we should call a spade a spade and be clear on the fact that choosing the safe option is not progressive. Certainly not for “his time” — because he wrote that book (FF) at the height of the civil rights movement. All he had to do was read some of the popular writing of the time on equality, agency, feminist and anti-racist theory, even just some of the feminist SF that was cropping up around that time. That was progressive. By comparison, Heinlein was just more of the usual.
Granted — he did buck trends by actually including women and PoC, which many writers didn’t bother to do at all. But that’s just not very much, especially when balanced against his use of stereotypes and objectification.
To nojojojo
You seem to have captured the aim of my statement.
Mandolin
I apologise if some of my statements caused anything other than a desire to critique Heinlein and his writing. I do NOT enjoy side arguments over perception of the discusssion at hand that derail the discussion. I myself do not offend easily and sometimes forget that others are not the same. This is Amps playground not mine and I do often have a radically different view then the other frequent posters here.
I trust Amp to blow the whistle on me if he sees a problem.
This is Mandolin’s playground too; she’s a moderator. (And this is her thread, so it’s doubly her playground.) If you aren’t willing to adhere to Mandolin’s whistle-blowing, then you can’t post here. Period.
I myself do not offend easily and sometimes forget that others are not the same.
Passive-aggressive suggestions that those who disagree with you are just too darn sensitive aren’t really helpful either.
steve,
The aim of your statement was that Heinlein wrote sexist, racist stuff and wasn’t actually progressive? Wish I’d realized you were agreeing with me in your previous comment; I wouldn’t have wasted time responding to it, then. Oh, well.
Ok
And yes, I admit it is me!
Not passive aggressive, I really do not see things emotively as quickly or astutely as others often do.
Again apologies if I offended.
I’m very late to the party, but I notice nobody’s mentioned For Us, The Living, which was his first written book but was not published until 2003, and is fairly close to the opposite of the libertarian-glorification of his later writings, being a somewhat plot-lacking description of a successful socialist egalitarian society and social credit/universal welfare economy.
It was surprising to see Heinlein spout anything but the irritating elitism-of-self-reliance usual garbage; on the other hand, there are definite hints of what’s to come: the time-transplanted 1930’s Successful Man with his sensibilities is very like his later heroes, and ends up quickly taking a leadership role in dealing with technology a century ahead of him, giving the impression that his individualist Real Man background gave him a huge and necessary advantage over the society-coddled citizens of the future.
The economy/society explanation that dominates the book, however, is really quite interesting. It’s been a couple years since I’ve read it, but it seemed like the Holy Grail of socialism at the time—an economic system that was built to serve the people, not that manipulated and screwed over people to serve itself—complete with detailed explanation of the mechanics of how it functioned and how it came to exist.
Also interesting in contrast with the society in Starship Troopers—where ST constructed citizenship in opposition to civilianship, with military service necessary to have citizenship and voting rights, FU,TL creates a culture where warmongering is sharply curtailed by making a referendum the means of declaring war, with a yes vote doing double duty as agreement to enlist, and a no vote meaning one was among the last to be drafted (abstainers/undecideds in the middle).
It’s definitely got its barf moments, but it’s also really interesting, not only for the ideas it presents but for the experience of a reasonably smart and inventive adversary playing, for once, on your own side.
@61Mandolin says:
Well (1.) my use of the word “caning” is a metaphor which I thought would’ve been obvious. I’m not accusing anyone here of digging up Heinlein’s body and giving it it “a durn good thrashing” Basil Fawlty style! ;-)
What I am saying is “hang on a minute!” (No, not a literal minute – just pause & think … mmmmk?) “I think folks here are being too harsh in their criticism of a writer who, yes, I’ve got fond memories of.”
(2) I am suggesting that the words ‘context’ and ‘perspective’ need to be considered here.
By the standards of our current decade which has a very different set of values from past ages, almost all writers have sexist and racist views because they were the “norm” back then. I think Heinlein is being singled out rather unfairly. I think you need to put his work in the context and perspective of his time & what he was trying to do. Heinlein was at least thinking of these issues and while he may not always have got his message across as clearly as today’s Commissars of Political Correctness would retrospectively demand he was a thought-provoking, pro-femist, anti-sexist writer.
Heinlein frequently had strong female heroes – as I mentioned – he criticised racism. He made people think and consider other societies, other political systems, other possibilities which is part of the point of the science fiction. He was basically on your side folks! Sure he was a bit old-fashioned at times, sure his way of thinking was a little bit right-wing on occassion but is that really such a crime? I’m not saying Heinlein is without flaw -but I am saying be fair and reasonable and put him and his work in context and in perspective.
Does he really deserve the (metaphorical!) beating your handing out? I don’t think so.
66mythago says:
8/19/2010 at 11:08 am
Well the description of “un-PC” has the virtue of being shorter and more inclusive. Euphemism? I’d call it a description. We are living in diferent times with values and understandings that have come a long way. Socio-cultural norms and acceptable ways of thinking about and expressing opinions have changed greatly – the work of Heinlein is arguably partof that given the cultpopulaoty of, for instance, Stranger in A Strange land which expressed a strong preference for something like Cultural Relativism and starred – like many of Heinlein’s works – female heroes such as Jill Boardman.
I think we owe Heinlein some gratitude for advocating against sexism and feminism not derison for being part of an earlier society where sexism and racism were more common and more accepted. I think this thread is a bit of an ungrateful unfair attack on somebody who did challenge the socio-cultural norms of the time and introduce many of his readers (& wider society beyond them) to then very “far-out” and alternative ways of thinking about and looking at the world.
As for :
So .. what its not “legitimate discussion” to try and defend someone whose novels I have – & still – enjoy here? As for “dismissing others views” isn’t taht what you are doing to me?
Look, I’m saying, okay I haven’t read that specific book but having read lots of Heinlein’s other works I find it very hard to believe he’d write something advocating racism because he opposes it strongly elesewhere and suggesting that maybe itwas satire a la Swift’s Modest Proposal albeit not avery successful one perhaps.
Well I disagree that that’s so. On the contary I think it is clear he opposed sexism and racism. I don’t think saying I am “affirming” racism & sexism by noting it was explainable by the context of the times.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say RAH was trans. I am certain though that he was very close to someone either trans or intersexed.
Re: “All You Zombies”; how many people know that such medical conditions actually exist? Most natural sex-changes are from female-looking at birth to male-looking later (due to 5ARD or 17BHDD syndromes), and only the male form is fertile (sometimes). Persistent Mullerian Duct Syndrome is really rare, but it happens – and that might possibly be responsible with only a little poetic license.
Neither condition had been described in the medical literature at the time, and for that matter, nor had 47XXY (Kleinfelter syndrome), which is what one can assume Elizabeth Libby-Long had. Most such people are just guys with some medical issues, but there are a few girls lumbered with a mostly male body amongst them. I know a few who had that fixed.
The most amazing thing though is that he got our feelings right. I’m one of the few protandrous (ie female) dichogamous pseudohermaphrodites, but MtoF transsexuals are indistinguishable psychologically from us, as far as I can tell.
Yes it is “so much better”, but only if your neurology is set up with the right device drivers. FtoMs report the same thing from their mirrored experience.
When I was young, and thought I was lumbered for life with a mostly-male body, I made plans for neural cryonic suspension. Yes, you get severe freezer-burn, but nothing a good pattern-matching algorithm couldn’t solve, given high-grade-magic level nanotech – which you’d need to rebuild the body anyway. I’d still like it, having a female puberty at age 47 that sterilises you is better than not having it, but not as good as having a normal one at 12.
MTU @78: yes, “un-PC” is a description, just as “racist” is a description. “Un-PC” is also a euphemism, because instead of a negative, it flips around the description to be a positive – political correctness is bad, rigid, reflexive, so isn’t it much nicer to be “un” that?
You’re arguing that other people saying “I have read [book] and it’s racist” are wrong not because you have read that book and have a different take-away, but because you like RAH’s writings a lot and didn’t see racism in any other book. That’s not much of an argument.
You also seem to confuse criticism of Heinlein with saying that he was a bad, evil person who couldn’t prose his way out of a paper bag.
Messier Tidy Upper, could you please avoid referring to people you disagree with as “Commissars of Political Correctness”? In general, this is a blog where we prefer to avoid name-calling.
Regarding “the context of the times,” Heinlein published Farnham’s Freehold in 1964, the same year as James Baldwin’s “Blues for Mister Charlie,” and a decade after Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. To Kill a Mockingbird — while arguably racist in some ways — is still much better racially than Farnham’s Freehold, and that was published in 1960. So there were other writers of Heinlein’s era who did a much better job of dealing with race and racism in their work.
I agree with you that Heinlein intended Farnham’s Freehold as an anti-racist novel. But intent isn’t as important as results when discussing a book (and it is the books, not the author, that we’re discussing — a distinction I’m not sure you’re making). Heinlein wanted to write an anti-racist novel, but he pretty much failed; the novel uses too many racist tropes, and fails to make clear to readers that the tropes are being used satirically. I don’t know (or care) if this failure was due to Heinlein’s internalized racism (most white people, even anti-racist white people, have issues of internalized racism to deal with), or due to him not being a good enough writer to pull off the trick he was attempting. But the failure does exist, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to pretend that it doesn’t.
As for gratitude, first of all: Oh, please. There are so many writers and activists of the 1960s who took real risks and did a thousand times more for fighting racism and sexism than RAH ever did. But even if we did owe Heinlein gratitude, I don’t think that “gratitude” requires that we not read Heinlein’s works honestly. In fact, I think RAH himself would have had contempt for the idea that we owe him a dishonest reading of his works, or that works should be judged not by what’s on the page but by what we think of the author.
MTU,
So .. what its not “legitimate discussion” to try and defend someone whose novels I have – & still – enjoy here? As for “dismissing others views” isn’t taht what you are doing to me?
It’s not legitimate discussion to defend a novel you haven’t read, no, especially if you’re not going to provide any evidence to back up your defense other than “I like him” and “he meant well.” That’s not a defense, that’s a sermon, and I’m dismissing it because it’s irrelevant to my points.
I’m not saying people can’t like Heinlein’s work. I like plenty of works that contain gobs of racism and sexism; hell, I don’t have much of a choice, given the canon of English-language literature. I’m saying I don’t like Heinlein’s work, and why. And I’m not saying he meant to be racist and sexist with Farnham’s Freehold. The man’s dead and I couldn’t read minds while he was alive, so I have no idea what he meant. I’m saying he didn’t succeed in sending an anti-racist or feminist message, whether he meant to or not, and I explained how he failed in specific. A legitimate discussion from your end could include a rebuttal of my points, and I would welcome a discussion on those grounds. Maybe there’s something about FF that I didn’t know, which a different perspective can provide. Can you offer that? (I’m guessing no, at least not without reading the book.)
Well I disagree that that’s so. On the contary I think it is clear he opposed sexism and racism. I don’t think saying I am “affirming” racism & sexism by noting it was explainable by the context of the times.
::skritches head:: Okay, I’m trying to follow your reasoning here. FF was written and published during the Jim Crow era — one of the most blatantly racist times in American history, short of slavery itself. Just about every white American who wasn’t actively taking a stand against Jim Crow was, by inaction, supporting and perpetuating it. That’s the context you want me to consider? And during this time, Heinlein writes a book in which the black people are vengeful treacherous oversexed cannibals lusting after white women. And somehow the context of Jim Crow, plus the fact that he wrote something so offensive, is supposed to make me think he’s not racist?
::facepalm:: Help me out here.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s had someone use Heinlein as an attempted means to make me more sexually compliant. (Didn’t work in my case either)
Even as a teenager, which is when I read Stranger in a Strange Land, there were plenty of WTF moments, and that’s probably one of his less offensive books overall. About the issue of women and promiscuity, I’m not sure if I agree that he believed that in a more evolved society women would just naturally turn into horn dogs so much as that he was just fantasising. I’m not convinced that he was sufficiently capable of empathising with women to understand what might have stopped them from sleeping around in his time. But even if we took it as assumed that his idea was that in a less sexist, more equitable society where women would suffer less negative consequences for promiscuity we’re still left with 2 problems.
1. The baby thing. This is a huge red flag along the “this man has no empathy” lines because surely it might have occurred to him that one of the reasons women were less inclined to casual sex than men in his era was the fear of pregnancy? But apparently he completely missed that aspect of the women being less keen on casual sex thing and jumped right to “all women want lots of babies”.
2. He seems to think that in his non-sexist utopia all women wouldn’t just be promiscuous, they’d also be delighted to fuck pretty much any alpha male who asked. The idea that women, like men, may display a preference for people who are conventionally attractive seemed to be totally beyond his comprehension. He consistently wrote as if women do not in any way filter their choices of which men we do and don’t want to fuck based on looks, similar age, etc.
Put those two factors together and you have a writer whose writing is really really sexist, even though it’s clear that he didn’t intend it to be. If he was indeed trying to write in a non-sexist way he failed miserably.
I’m sorry I came to this thread late as the subject of Heinlein has been a hotbutton one for me lately. I think it’s unequivocal that Heinlein was a misogynst and when he wrote the aforementioned Friday it pretty much clinced it; I mean, woman falls in love with her rapist — how obvious can you get? I think it’s no quite right to just say ‘Heinlein was sexist because every other 50s male sf writer was’. There’s a gulf, I contend, between conventional sexist assumptions mid-20th century writers may make versus outright misogyny.
Yes, he was a classic writer and he’s credited with establishing themes and good writing — it both I think he’s overrated, particularly since he seems to garner more attention than his equally talented contemporaries. Yes, he has great stories and ideas, too.
As an aside, my personal frustration with him is politics, his own absurd version of libertarianism. When I first read Starship Troopers 30 year ago I was so incensed I covered the book with red ink marginal notations (reward people with voting only if they served in the military -oh year, that’ll make a peace loving nation for sure). (Ok, put the political time period in for perspective. I supposed you could argue it had an effect on me, and therefore was ‘good.??) Thus, if you take an academic approach, yes, read him because he’s a classic, but if you want to read classics because they’re good, don’t feel forced to read Heinlein, ‘just because.’
Harry,
It’s not above debate, but I think that the political ideas expressed in his books often conflict with each other. In additional to military states and libertarian utopia he also shows a fully functional communist state, a technocratic state, and a gerontocracy all in a positive way.
About the only form of government he clearly hated was theocracy. Even in his boy’s life stories he was pretty hard on religion. Brutal in his later books.
Also, fwiw a number of my female friends thought “To sail Beyond the sunset” did a very good job of sounding like a woman wrote it. Would love to know if anyone else who has read the book agrees with that.
The title character in “Friday” wasn’t human and had some… shall we say, “confused” ideas about normal human sexuality. (There’s a short segment in the novel in which she wonders how people learn to have sex without the formal training she went through. She goes on to speculate that perhaps people learn from their parents, which would mean that the incest taboo was only about talking rather than doing.) So given that she’s not a psychologically normal human and doesn’t react in the same way a human woman would with regards to sexuality in particular, it makes sense in the context of the fiction.
And there are people in the real world who don’t have, and are confused by, the standard visceral reaction to rape:
But, yeah, that part of Friday is still pretty much fucked up.
—–
On another note, I added Farnham’s Freehold as an example under Broken Aesop on TvTropes:
Did I sum it up properly?
The baby thing seems true. But I have to second what Doug S said.
I also don’t know if I agree with the “alpha male” claim. Examples from possibly-unreliable memory:
Lazarus Long does live with a lot of attractive women who want to have sex with him — because they all voluntarily joined a project to make him want to live. It seems like the (ha) mother of all selection bias. Moreover, those running the show have two plausible and individually sufficient reasons to want him alive (besides simple humanitarianism and respect for their elders). The planetary ruler who starts the project wants to benefit from LL’s millenia of experience. The doctor or geneticist wants to run traditional combining experiments on the genes that helped him live for millenia. She seems to hope that with more Longs to examine they’ll find some clue as to why he even lived long enough to get life-extension treatment.
Then we have the first example that came to mind, really the only one I can think of now with a man who doesn’t seem at all “conventionally attractive”. (Manny the Loonie did lose an arm, and whatsisname – got it, Colin Campbell – lost a leg, but that actually ties into my point here.) The writer Jubal Harshaw in Stranger seems like an obvious reference to Heinlein himself. Jubal has many attractive women around him and ultimately has sex with some, at their instigation. He also attempts suicide. Combined with what steve said about self-hatred back in comment # 50 (8/18) this makes think none of the examples here really count as a “Mary Sue”, and I don’t know if I’d call them alpha males. Maybe Heinlein just told the truth about his own situation as he saw it. I don’t know what that says about the daft guy in the OP.
Quote from Time Enough for Love:
“She’s a great healer. That is what she is doing now, healing a young couple who lost their baby – nursing the mother who had a rough time physically, sleeping with both of them. We all sleep with her; she always knows when we need her. Lazarus needed her then, she felt it, and stayed with him until he was well.”
The above quote is the only reference I could find in Time Enough for Love that concerns “healing sexuality.” The woman referred to in this quote was not Hamadryad but Tamara. In the paragraph immediately before the above quote Tamara is described as:
“Her bio-age and appearance was around 80… Tamara looked old and every white hair was an asset. Lines in her face, little round potbelly, breasts pendulous, varicosities.”
At no point in the book is it expressed or implied that Hamadryad healed anyone, with or without, her sexuality.
Yes, I was probably being very literal. That seems reasonable.
I love when a provocative post like this one, kicks up a fuss and gloms large numbers of emotional comments; mostly in sympathy with the thrust of the original post, but occasionally newcomers objecting fiercely.
As a long-time reader of science fiction—and occasional writer of science fiction—I have many Heinlein books in my library, and his writing has been an influence on my own fiction.
Hell, I didn’t read at all, until one day in Junior High I was wandering among the shelves-of-useless in the tiny library, and on a whim pulled out I ROBOT, read the first short story ROBBIE and cried. I read and re-read that book, then hunted for anything “Asimov.” Shortly, I discovered other science fiction authors that I enjoyed, particularly Bradbury and Heinlein. Eventually, I discovered that the fiction didn’t have to be science fiction for me to love it; and that non-fiction could be just as compelling.
My personal take on Heinlein is that much of his writing is deliberately provocative; that he pushed the limits of science fiction, exploring themes and situations no other writer would dare to handle. Maybe while he was writing the first draft he had a wild gleam in his eye and a devilish smile on his face! What other science fiction author of Heinlein’s Period included ANY SEX AT ALL in their books? By comparison, R.A.H. went full-tilt-boogie on sexual themes, in the science fiction field which is the most sexually-conservative branch of literature!
Was Heinlein a sexist? Was Heinlein a racist? Well, hell, he was an old white guy, writing nearly half a century ago, so YES, he couldn’t avoid being so, especially by 2013 standards of PC. I’m a white guy; Generation X & Y both think I’m a Doof. Judge me by 2070 standards, and I’ll be trashed as sexist, racist, homophobic, botphobic and extraterrestrialphobic.
My POV? From the Sixties on, Heinlein’s writing became experimental; having become “Big Enough” to write whatever he pleased, exactly as he pleased, and still make money, he proceeded to push against plotting, character, modes of story-telling, etc. In other words, Heinlein’s books did for readers what the original blog post here by Mandolin did: kicked up a fuss! Also, I try not to judge R.A.H. too harshly for a single sentence here or there in his work, or for his own prejudices. Our flaws fuel our greatness; no flaws, no greatness. I also find it interesting, because Heinlein’s novels are so varied, the particular R.A.H. novels different readers choose to HATE and attack, or to LOVE and passionately defend; almost as if that tells me more about the lover/hater than the author. I find most of Heinlein’s early work to be cleanly plotted stories which I enjoy from start to finish. Heinlein’s middle to end period work, I find uneven; I tend to re-read only my favorite parts of the books. For instance, once Mike and Jubal win against the government in STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, the novel bores me, and I stop reading.
Bradbury “owned” short stories, and thrilled me; Asimov “owned” robots, and thrilled me; but who are we arguing about now, here, at http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2010/08/16/time-enough-for-heinlein-or-not/ – Heinlein!
@hg47
@Harv Griffin:
I haven’t read any book-length Heinlein (much to my shame) so I can’t address the level of explicitness in his books, nor do I really know what was going on in the early parts of his career. Certainly by the late 1960s you have e.g. The Left Hand of Darkness, with its quite unusual sexual practices, and I’m a fan of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama (published 1972, a year before Time Enough for Love), which includes polyamory (people who work in space often have multiple families, one on each planet) and a gay couple. It’s actually kind of charming, because he’s clearly trying to be very egalitarian and yet his imagination isn’t quite up to the task–it’s like he can see that these relationships will be more accepted in the future, and that women will have larger roles, but he can’t quite think through all the implications of that. But those were both quite a few years after Stranger in a Strange Land, for example, so they’re more following-in-the-wake-of than contemporaneous.
I am unclear on why discussing one author means that other authors are not being discussed at other points.
Also, the canon you propose is irksome; I have more interest in Tiptree than Asimov, Bradbury and Heinlein combined. (Nothing in particular against Bradbury, but he’s no Tiptree.)
Yeah, it reads that way to me, too. Which is laudable on the one hand sort of, but I still feel icky about reading it.
Yes. Tiptree. Even as an inexperienced reader, I knew there was something special about Tiptree.
For an earlier era of SF, I love Simak. Talk about consistency and you’re talking about Clifford D Simak. You’re also talking about someone who was entirely a product of their time. In fact, Simak is a good comparison to Heinlein. They were contemporaries (Simak was 3 years older). Simak is clearly sexist & racist when judged by modern standards, yet he’s not a complete ass about it. Where Simak’s work reflects those beliefs, Heinlein’s work glories in enforcing those beliefs. There’s a stark difference.
Thank you for correcting me, Harlequin.
I haven’t read Ursula K. Le Guin’s THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS; or Clarke’s RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA (but I think I have a copy of it somewhere in my library). I’m inclined to argue that Heinlein broke through the sci-fi sexual door, fell down, injuring himself; allowing other authors to follow through with their sexual work—but I’d better just write that Heinlein was one of the leaders in this area. Is that fair? @hg47
Oh, sorry, wasn’t meant to be a correction, just an extension of dialogue–and as I said, those works are published years after works in which I believe Heinlein discussed sexuality; I’m not that knowledgeable about pre-1970s SF so I can’t address what was going on in the early part of his career.
(I really enjoyed Rendezvous with Rama for what it was, but as Mandolin says above, that’s not a universal opinion! But The Left Hand of Darkness is definitely worth checking out if you have the time.)
I think Theodore Sturgeon’s Venus Plus X was considered pretty scandalous at the time (1960), but I haven’t actually read it, and my knowledge of science fiction from that time period is pretty shallow.
20: me
I was wrong about Worthington getting paid. (see below)
28: I think there’s a point in RAH’s career where he decided that every woman (possibly every man, too) wanted huge numbers of children, but this isn’t a theme in his earlier works.
39: Glaurung
I reread “Magic, Inc.” and it’s very much worse about African-Americans (Royce Worthington is African, and so is Mr. Kiku from _The Star Beast_) and women than I remembered. There’s a couple of paragraphs about women being unfit for politics that I’d completely missed on previous readings, but at least there’s also a capable woman politician. There are no exceptional African-Americans.
The thing is, I wasn’t noticing the race and gender stuff because what’s that compared to having a salamander (fire elemental) dancing on your hearth?
And Heinlein was right (in 1940) about politicians not having enough time to read the bills they’re signing.
Royce Worthington doesn’t actually get paid, but I don’t know how you’d count the situation. He’s much higher status professionally and academically than Alex, the protagonist. When Alex offers to pay him, he turns down the money because he owes a mutual friend a favor.
47: Doug S
There’s even more about real-world racism in _Farnham’s Freehold_ than is mentioned in the link you give. For example, Joseph puts up with racist jokes (bad dialect jokes) from Karen, who he likes and who he doesn’t consider to be bigoted…. but he’s the houseboy and it’s more trouble than it’s possibly worth to challenge her. Heinlein noticed that microaggressions exist and are a problem.
Offhand, I can’t think of anyone else in sf who was writing about real-world racism (not using allegory) at the time. And there were (and still are) damned few high-tech black dominant cultures in sf.
I think FF was written to answer one particular racist argument– that there’s such a thing as a natural slave race. This doesn’t excuse the cannibalism, though.
92: Harlequin
Sturgeon and Farmer wrote about sex relatively early in sf’s history, but I’m not sure how their chronology compares to Heinlein’s.
Heinlein was a treasure of my childhood and adolescence– I think I noticed some of the sexism, but in a vaguely disquieted way rather than being actively revolted. I think the attraction for me was that he saw the world as an interesting place, full of good details and possibilities.