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1. I’d love to participate via Skype if there’s still room.

   Comment by David Moldawer — October 24, 2005 #

2. Looking at the Skype website, looks like my system could handle it… so, I could maybe participate on Sunday ( I have to work on Saturday) depending on the time. (I’m in VA.)

   Comment by tim callender — October 24, 2005 #

3. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Robert Heinlein’s novels. I loved his kid-lit. I look back fondly on Have Spacesuit Will Travel and Farmer in the Sky. However, his adult literature is a different animal. His beginnings are great; they pull me in like a vacuum. His middles are fair, and his endings are abysmal! Now, I haven’t read them all (and I really loved Starship Troopers), but it’s certainly the case with Time Enough For Love, Friday, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and Stranger in a Strange Land. I finally read it about two years ago after purchasing it as a gift for a relative (promise you won’t tell ). I loved the beginning. Heinlein sets his world up well. The characters are intriguing and the pace is swift. Then, everything starts falling apart. The whole “magic act/circus” thing is strange… And I’m not sure I really understand it all (an English degree doesn’t help you with everything you read ). For his time, when certain areas of the human experience (insert the word “sex”) were taboo, Heinlein took some pretty bold steps. I applaud him for that. I would say to anyone reading a Heinlein novel to just read half the book and set it aside… And like Stephen King says, near the end of the Dark Tower series, if you read further, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

   Comment by Steve — October 25, 2005 #

4. Just my two cents worth.

   I have attempted to read three Heinlein novels, Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough for Love.

   I finished Starship Troopers. I never finished the other two. I maybe got half-way through them. Why? I think he hates women. It seemed to me that the women always had these powerful roles, but he still held them up as bits of fluff for the men. Just my opinion.

   I have often heard people talk about Stranger in a Strange Land, and I think I should go back and try to finish it, but honestly, I don’t have the time to force my way through a book that doesn’t grab me.

   Comment by Pavlina — October 26, 2005 #

5. I must respectfully disagree with you, Pavlina. Heinlein didn’t hate women - if anything, he is unapologetically in favor of vive la difference. He believed that men and women were complimentary but not equal. Yes, a woman can work orbital equations as easily as a man, but she couldn’t lift the giant rock blocking the doorway. For Heinlein, that’s just a physiological thing, not a cultural bias. (Ironically, that stance is a cultural bias, of course.)

   Take away any references to genitalia in his prime characters, and I think you’ll find that they’re all cut from the same cloth: Hazel Stone is no different than Lazarus Long, Podkayne no different than Johnny Rico.

   But put sexuality - or even romance - in the picture, and I don’t think he knew any other way to write it.

   Comment by Pavlina — October 26, 2005 #

6. OH POOP!!!! I pasted Pavlina’s name in my post above. And there’s no way to edit it!

   I AM SO SORRY!!!

   the post above belongs to me, tim, idiot of the day.

   Comment by tim callender — October 26, 2005 #

7. Sorry, I think he hates women. And that is my opinion. I didn’t put that in there to bring it on, just stating my opinion.

   I don’t know who Hazel Stone or Podkayne are because like I said, I haven’t finished 2 of the three books I read. I’m sure the only reason I finished Starship Troopers was because it is such a short book. It really did seem to me, like I said above, that he would give them these powerful roles, but then find some other way to reduce them back down.

   Maybe I am just a neo-nazi feminist.

   Comment by Pavlina — October 28, 2005 #

8. Not read much Heinlein, but I found Stranger compelling. One thing, however, always puzzled me: How come Valentine Michael Smith had all those amazing powers, given that he wasn’t actually a Martian, but only a human adopted by them?

   Comment by PaulJ — October 28, 2005 #

9. Pavlina, I hope you understand that I wasn’t trying to “bring it on”…I was simply responding to your opinion. No hard feelings, I hope.

   Having just finished re-reading Stranger, I’m sure it would cement your opinion.

   Hazel and Podkayne appear in other Heinlein works not on your list.

   Comment by tim callender — October 28, 2005 #

10. Pavlina, Heinlein definitely had some seriously misogynistic tendencies in his non-ya fiction. I noticed a pattern where his women would start out as independent thinkers and strong on their own, and by the end of the story end up happy hanging on the arm of a man cooing about wanting to have tons of babies, or having fallen into the “damsel in distress” cliche. Least that’s what it seemed like to me, which made me think that he thought that perhaps all strong women wanted was to be understood by a sensitive strong guy, and when that happened they’d be happy to conform to the social stereotypes they’d managed to not fall into all their lives up until that point.

    As for why Smith could do all that, I thought it was pretty clear that by being raised in an “alien” environment, he wasn’t subject to the restrictions of expectations and designs of the human experience. Because of that, he was able to adapt his mind to doing things that Earth-raised humans would first believe as impossible… one of the reasons that other followers were able to start doing some of the same things after training. Ever heard the posit that all humans have the potential to possess what we now classify as paranormal abilities, it’s just that we don’t train our brains to use them (or worse, convince kids that demonstrate some of these abilities that they’re just making things up and should stop telling tales?)

    That part wasn’t as hard for me to believe… I’m still re-reading it, and it’s bogging down for me… reminding me of some impressions I had when I read it the first time around 15-20 years ago.

    Comment by Summer — October 28, 2005 #

11. I just finished reading it today.

    Summer, I think your observation is correct… and maybe because I’m male that I don’t see that as hatred toward women but merely an antiquated and inappropriate view? (Not trying to beat a dead horse, I’m just fascinated - it’s an opportunity to take a fresh look at some of my own conceptions…)

    And it plays into a general observation I’ve made about Heinlein’s characters in general. the protagonists are extremely capable survivalists: they can handle a weapon and a whisk with equal aplomb. Everyone else are dolts waiting to be lecured by the heroes.

    In Stranger, this is especially evident: Ben Caxton, Duke, and Larry are completely interchangeable as characters. Ben lectures Jill early on about government and Jubal lectures Ben about social mores. Take character names away, and the tone, the words, the cadences are identical.

    Stranger In A Strange Land is perhaps Heinlein’s biggest and most famous soap box. He’s completely blatant about it. Perhaps the bits with the discorporated Foster and Digby are his way of trying to step outside and let you know he knows he’s preaching, but I’m not sure.

    Comment by tim callender — October 28, 2005 #

12. I recently listened to this one on audio. Now, I’ll admit that I’ve liked some Heinlein. This one, however, was a self serving, self-rightious, down-the-nose-preaching if I ever heard one. Mike Valentine was supposedly viewing the world from outside eyes and seeing everything that was ‘wrong’ with the world and did everything to make it right. This included orgys, underage sexual encounters, a total re-creation of the church, and rambled on for far longer than it needed to.

    All this and there was no friggin plot to the story. Again I classified this one under WTF as much of Heinlein’s work prior to this was brilliant. He had short stories that made you thing. YA Sci-Fi (called Juvinile sci-fi) that was intelligent and captivating. Then he started down the road with sex-filled sci-fi that fell flat after the first few chapters. Look at Friday, Number of the Beast, and any other door stop he put out in that era. He turned the page from sci-fi author to dirty old man in the span of a few years.

    But I digress. He was always preachy. In each YA novel he did, he was very heavy handed about the state of the youth and how if they didn’t change their ways…

    Back to stranger. The end, for me, was predictable, but didn’t hold any punch. Perhaps I’m too cynical to let loose my moral beliefs, but I had a hard time suspending my disbelief that Mike was in league with ‘God’ or gods.

    Comment by J.R. Murdock — November 2, 2005 #

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