Never Leave the Cut No More
You know, pretty often, The Corner can be kind of a slog. Right-wing policy nerds nodding sagely at each other, Jonah Goldberg and John Podhoretz trying to out-geek each other with Dr. Who references, Kathryn Jean Lopez wetting herself over Mitt Romney’s latest photo op, and John Derbyshire wandering in from Planet Zoot to complain about the wimpiness of today’s murder and kidnap victims, can only hold your interest for so long.
Goldberg: “Be-yond the rim of the starlight, My love is wand’ring in star flight…”
Occasionally, though, especially on a slow news day, they attain a sort of wingnut perfect-storm, a self-generating auto-feedback loop of douchebaggery that starts rolling like an an avalanche and cannot be stopped. It’s a real wonder to behold, like many great and terrible natural disasters, and when we document it, we feel sort of like those guys who cling to the back of pickups during a tornado just so they can get some compelling video footage of the whole mess. We know that there’s a very strong possibility that we will be hurt, or killed, or at the very least disembrained, by the swirling cyclone of dumb that is NRO’s group blog, but we cannot look away.
Bradrocket has already documented Larry Kudlow’s daring investigative report into the sinister Chinese Communist dog food conspiracy, by which they will sicken an entire generation of house pets, thus leaving no one to bark out a warning when the Red Army sneaks into our back yards and tee-pees our freedom and democracy. But there is far, far more than that going on this weekend: The Corner Boys — who, charmingly, still cling to the pretense that they are talking to someone other than themselves — have worked themselves into the kind of frenzy of outrage and indignation (at dire threats such as the Live Earth concert in DC) that can only happen when there’s nothing good on TV. Let’s watch!
Stanley Kurtz: “If British Muslims don’t have big marches against terrorism, it will prove that Islam is evil.”
John J. Miller: “The National Museum of Women in the Arts has been duped by a Communist sympathizer! What the hell is this, Russia? And besides, they’re using art from her toilet! That’s where you make number ones and doo-doos!”
Rick Brookhiser: “Since the latest English terror attacks, we’ve all decided that doctors are evil, because we are six years old. And I just thought of another one! Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who I only know about because he was a dirty Nazi anti-Semite and probably ate babies. Of course, to balance things out, there is this guy, who is fictional, but still.”
Jonah Goldberg: “That Ayman al-Zawahiri sure is a lying crazy nut, except when he says things I agree with.”
Andy McCarthy: “When the government and big corporations try and force their employees to quit dicking around on the internet and get back to work, it is a clear sign of America’s suicidal self-delusion about Islamofascism.”
John Derbyshire: “Hi, everyone! I’m just beaming down from Planet Zoot to glowingly quote a piece by Robert Heinlein that is diametrically opposed to everything I have ever written, said or thought about Muslims and Democrats.”
Ramesh Ponnuru: “Michael Gerson used an online game to try and prove that libertarian capitalism is flawed! Isn’t that silly? And totally unlike when we use 24 and Battlestar Galactica to bolster our arguments about the war on terror, or when we cite Dr. Watson as proof that not all doctors are evil, or whatever.”
Jonah Goldberg: “Economic statistics carefully handpicked by Sam Brownback prove that the economy under President Bush today isn’t nearly as bad as it was under President Bush a couple of years ago.”
Iain Murray: “In keeping with the National Review’s corporate policy that Al Gore is Satan, I would like to be the first to point out that the Live Earth Concert in DC is worse than a thousand Holocausts.”
John Derbyshire: “Hey, everybody! Did you know that here on Planet Zoot, kamikazes are better than Islamist suicide bombers, because the Japanese like puppies? OK bye!”
Larry Kudlow: “Boy, Jonah, those economic figures sure are impressive! Especially if you’re not some dumbass who didn’t go to college, in which case you can expect your real wages against inflation to have risen a whopping 1.5% in the last six years!”
John Derbyshire: “You know what, folks? On Planet Zoot, the ’50s were totally awesome, because none of us are women, or homosexuals, or Jews, or leftists, or coloreds, or anything like that.”
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Well, it looks like Muslims did, in fact, have big marches against terror. But since I don’t know how big the crowds were, I am assuming the marches were not attended by every Muslim in the British Isles, and therefore, Islam is evil.”
John Derbyshire: “Guess what? Here on my homeworld of Planet Zoot, we think Carl Perkins is Elvis Presley! This is Space Ranger Derbyshire, signing off! Beep boop.”
Michael Ledeen: “Anyone who has read my top-notch reporting on the death of Iranian religious leaders knows what a fan I am of well-researched, fact-checked, responsible journalism. That’s why I totally believe Michael Yon when he reports that 15 years ago in Iraq, al-Q’aeda operatives cooked children and served them to their families for lunch.”
John J. Miller: “I am Lieutenant Bookman.”
Mark Steyn: “It is my sad duty to report that the Live Earth concert in DC has crashed into the side of a mountain, killing thousands.”
John Derbyshire: “Look, it’s me again! I’m here to report that even on my far-distant homeworld of Planet Zoot, where apples are strawberries and your feet walk left-side-out, the Live Earth concert in DC is guilty of war crimes, hate crimes, and crimes against humanity, and it also killed President Kennendy.”
Kathryn Jean Lopez: “Did you know that the Live Earth concert in DC caused the Black Plague? It might as well be true!”
Mark Steyn: “Hey, who can’t stop talking about the fucking Live Earth concert in DC? I know I can’t! Also, there should be more ukelele music.”
Kathryn Jean Lopez: “Not to change the subject or anything, but it has come to my attention that even Bob Geldof agrees that the Live Earth concert in DC kills Iraqi children and cooks them and serves them to their families at lunch.”
Oh, no, Mr. Pierce. Nice try, old bean, but it’s not going to work. If you think a series of (very) funny lines and curiosity inducing references are going to get me to click over and actually read the fever-swamp at NRO, you’re quite the optimist, and with a homosexual agenda to boot, I should add.
While I readily admit to being quite curious about a few of them (Lt. Bookman??), the way I understand this to work is you read ’em over there so I don’t have to read ’em over here. And THAT surge, Sarge, is working…
mikey
Have they made the one valid point about live earth, that there’s not really anyone performing worth seeings?
Maybe Waters, I guess.
Right now there’s some anorexic, photogenic white woman trying to sound like a black Janis Joplin performing.
There should be a Live Zoot concert – I’d pay to see that but my TV from the 50’s only gets 3 channels
Even worse fact about Céline (who, anti-semitism notwithstanding, was never a nazi): he used to refuse payment for treating poor patients! OH NOES! Socialized medicine!
22:09
Riiiiiiggggghhhhhttt.
Because a lineup that includes:
Corinne Bailey Rae
Angelique Kidjo
Foo Fighters
Paolo Nutini
Damien Rice
among others, couldn’t have anyone worth hearing. BTW, if you’re dissing KT Tunstall, open your ears. She comes from the same scene that produced the Beta Band and she’s worked hard to get where she is, including time spent busking in London. As far as “trying to sound like a black Janis Joplin”, that’s rich, since Janis Joplin ripped off countless black female performers.
On a lighter note, my eyesight wobbled on first reading the shorter Ledeen. I read it as “well-researched, fart-checked, responsible journalism.” I laughed at my mistake, then felt sad that it didn’t change the meaning.
Foo Fighters……
Foo Fighters?
I stand correct[].
The Beta Band put out a great first album, but sucked live.
How that affects my respect for a bit of cheesecake….. huh?
Janis was a thief, but an effective thief.
I’m with Mikey on this one. Sorry, but you are not going to trick me into clicking over and adding to their page traffic. Nuh-uh. I’ll go along with a little Pamalamadingdong now&again, and even some Malkin, but that shit looks like it’d cause a brain cloud.
Not that I’d need one, after a coupla few days spent visiting relatives and having to drive thru Western Michigan, stomping grounds of the Turner Diary-reading Michigan Militia and other shitkickers. Way, way too many sullen & angry mullet-headed dipshits roaring around in triple-lift kit pickups with “Support Our Boys” bumper stickers and Confederate flag decals in the rear windows. Only thing that kept me going was the promise of another layover in Amsterdam at the end of this month.
a different brad,
I don’t think Janis was even an effective thief. I think she’s the single most overrated solo performer in rock. And KT ain’t cheesecake.
So Steyn believes that just because we are a bit concerned with our actions directly making it more possible that people everywhere die we want to live in huts? That strawman could choke a horde of jingoist Elephants.
That means that the next time someone speaks out against some utterly stupid judge giving a wifebeater the slip because of his culture, I can say said person wants to nuke Mecca and Tehran, or sow crescents on the sleeves of muslims everywhere.
Ok, alone. You clearly know more about her than I do. Just seemed to me like it was a very carefully practiced smokey deep voice, to the point of being an affect. Janis managed, to my mind, to seem like that was really how she needed to express herself.
Must suck for them,having to work(wank?)all weekend.
Take a break boys,go run over some squirrels with the Suburban or something,jesus.
Robert Heinlein could be a patron saint of Wingnuts, with his often fascist viewpoints, and his simplistic take on only allowing soldiers to be full citizens, not to mention his views on Parent-child incest…but then there’s that annoying Stranger In A Strange Land thing. Hmm.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
–Robert Heinlein
Nuttin wrong with that, folks…
mikey
No, mikey, not at all. It’s the roads he offers to go there that is the rub. Also, he can’t say what level of specialization is appropriate etc. He generalizes, and that is non-good.
The fact they lift all their “Libertarian Lexicon” from Heinlein’s juveniles says it all.
Was Jonah singin’ the legendary lyrics to the Star Trek theme in that pic up there? If so, go ahead and kill me for recognizing the fact.
And, um, did al Qaeda even EXIST in 1991?
And I’m SURE the wingnuts want to access teh Intranets at work to… um… read Jihad Watch! Uhuh, that’s the ticket! Not to do searches at PornoTube or anything, nossir.
“Dammit, Johnson, I TOLD you not to interrupt me! I’m – uh – reading about Al Qaeda forcing Iraqis to commit cannibalism!”
“Robert Heinlein could be a patron saint of Wingnuts, with his often fascist viewpoints, and his simplistic take on only allowing soldiers to be full citizens, not to mention his views on Parent-child incest…but then there’s that annoying Stranger In A Strange Land thing. Hmm.”
FAR to anti-organized religion (Job (reading which might lead to their heads exploding), Stranger in a Strange land, The whole Interregnum thing with a theistic dictator) and pro-sex (including homosexual sex/marriage, polyamory, mother/son incest etc.). They sure may like to pick some of it (the general pro-gun sentiement represenmted in most of them, the Starship Trooper what-if secnario), but if you’d offer them the whole deal including the Boondock family thing, clones to replace lost organs etc., they’d turn it down faster than you can say “destryoing the sanctity of marriage whiel murdering babies!!!” *chuckle*
Also, while Starship Troopers certainly was facistoid, most of his other works weren’t (indeed, they tend to be rather anti-authoritarian, at least as long as government, religion and nationality are concerned).
The Poodles are already calling for a jihadi against the Chinese.
Heinlein had flaws that magnified as he got older. I loathed “Farnham’s Freehold,” and “Beyond The Sunset,” and didn’t much like “Fear No Evil.” I didn’t agree with a lot of his politics.
But he’s still a god, sorry.
As Spider Robinson said, if there was a copyright on ideas, every science fiction writer would owe RAH their shirts. (Hell, even non-SF writers.)
Theres a Heinlein Centennial being held this weekend in Ohio. I’m more than a little upset I couldn’t go.
My favorite Heinlein line: You live and learn, or you don’t live long. Would that it were true . . .
Wordyeti, having grown up in Western Mich and having escaped there thoroughly a couple of decades ago, I . . . uh . . . feel your pain. But through a glass, darkly.
Robert Heinlein could be a patron saint of Wingnuts, with his often fascist viewpoints, and his simplistic take on only allowing soldiers to be full citizens,
Well, I don’t think Heinlein would have considered the 101st Fighting Keyboarders to be “soldiers”. The wingnuts and chickenhawks would never count as citizens, much less be in charge of anything. So, at least there’s that going for him.
I’m of mixed feelings about Heinlein – his juveniles were great reads when I was a juvenile, and they were products of their times, just as Huck Finn’s use of “the n-word” is accepted in literary circles to be a product of Twain’s.
However, he did start losing his shit later on. Moon is a Harsh Mistress is about the last one before shark-jumping set in. Number of the Beast was a terrible attempt to be “hip” – learning all the wrong lessons from the revolution that took place in literature in the 60s. Kinda like seeing grampaw jump up on a pool table in a thong and try to crunk dance, all his floppy bits embarassingly on display…
And as far as what Spider said, yeah, I’m familiar with it. I’m also familiar with the poisonous way that Mrs. Heinlein came up to Harlan Ellison after Harlan won a Hugo Award for a short story of his, and hissed “Don’t get too proud of yourself – that award is only for a short story. It’s not like you won for something hard, like a novel.” (Ellison’s postscript, delivered in a shout at last year’s Hugos here in L.A.: “Yeah? Well, fuck you lady.”)
Spider is suffering from fanboyitis, which has disabled his ability to think critically about the sacred cow of his youth.
I clicked through to a couple of Steyn’s brain farts. How old is he, 107?
Thanks for the sympathy, Mort. I grew up in NW Wisconsin, and by the end of the week there, was starting to get that same trapped, drowning feeling. No through a glass about it.
It’s that same narrow-minded provincialism that so sets me off when I encounter it in the wingnuts.
One of the reasons I like to hang around these parts is the highly educated nature of the denizens. I’ve never been to college, so I really don’t know how to do literary criticism on that level. But it seems to me that I can take from Heinlein, or Heller or Steinbeck or Crais that which resonates with my worldview, while effectively rejecting that which I find unfortunate or wrongheaded.
Is there some reason why to enjoy Heinlein I have to accept the entire philosophy? Because I can’t do that. But there are pieces (such as the quote excerpted above) that I really like. It’s similar to the pieces of Megadeth I really like, while I still find the overall speedmetal community talentless. Is this considered breaking the rules?
mikey
Naughty, naughty Zoot!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4824560247530449501&q=monty+python+castle+anthrax&total=6&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
For that matter, I never found Starship Troopers to be as neo-nutzoid fascist as a lot of my friends. I always saw it as “if you want to participate in society, you need to accept responsibility for it as well.”
I never had a problem with that, and increasingly I see his point.
Spider is many things, but ‘fanboy’ is NOT one of them.
I’m with mikey on this one. I don’t have to share a world view with the author to enjoy something he/she writes. One of my favorite pieces of writing ever is the “Nothing is Random” chapter from rightie Mark Helprin’s “Winter’s Tale”. Absolutely beautiful, even though I don’t actually buy the idea that nothing is random.
Heinlein?
Ye Godz!
The man was a second rate author by any standard–Stranger in a Strange Land notwithstanding.
Gimme some real speculative fiction, Philip K.Dick’s “Ruutavaara’s Case” as just one example.
Or how about a little Bradbury?
ZOMG! now I’ve done it. All the fanbois gonna hate all over me.
For that matter, I never found Starship Troopers to be as neo-nutzoid fascist as a lot of my friends. I always saw it as “if you want to participate in society, you need to accept responsibility for it as well.”
I dunno, I pay my taxes, and I vote. Color me stupid, but I think I’m holding up my end of this deal.
The concept and execution of Starship Troopers is a really interesting one, I’ll give it that. And I love the ship designs. Squee. Acting and script left… a little something to be desired.
Ellison’s postscript, delivered in a shout at last year’s Hugos here in L.A.: “Yeah? Well, fuck you lady.”
She’s dead, Harlan, you classless jerk.
Y’know, I had two SF idols when I was in college. One was Heinlein. The other, believe it or not, was Ellison.
Guess which one of them I still respect?
Heinlein was a scholar and a gentleman to his dying breath. There are many, many stories of writers whose viewpoints he disagreed with, but who he helped out when they were in need (Philip K Dick was one). His books will be read and loved – and argued with! – because, for all his flaws, he believed that brilliance and competence are humanity’s birthright, and he celebrated that.
Ellison, as a person, is a jerk. As an artist, his writing is a constant evocation of how lousy we all are, of how we’re all damned and jolly well deserve it, and loses its appeal once one has outgrown angsty adolescence.
Candy,
You’re absolutely right. The understanding and/or enjoyment of a particular text is entirely dependant on the experience and societal position of the reader.
Yeah, so I can read Nietzsche and get a good laugh eventhough I don’t think the dude’s shit is quite right.
“Is there some reason why to enjoy Heinlein I have to accept the entire philosophy? ”
The way I see it, there are two sides to fictional stories (and, everything in ‘art’)- firstly, the motivation the author had, what he tried to convey, the philosophy of the work (and his own, on which everything is based). And secondly, what the reader takes from it. Which might be an interpretion of the philosophy, just some scene that one will remember forever and that might change ones thinking, or just simply enjoyment.
For my part, I’m looking for the latter in fiction – if it has some of the former, the better, if I can’t take anything else from it, then the philosophy etc. are just part of the fiction to me – so you got immortals, timetravel, parelell universes etc., whats a different ethics system and changes in the human nature added to that, really? Fiction sometimes (almost always?) is (or should be) just fiction – when one forgets that, one ends up like all those idiots running around proclaiming that Jack Bauer is the solution to terrorism* *rolleyes*
I met Ellison at the Golden Apple on Melrose in Los Angeles once and he was so nice. I’ve not read any of his prose (I was there to see Neil Gaiman) but I told him how much I’ve always loved his comic book work (specifically his Hulk issue) and we also talked about how great Gaiman is.
I’ve heard he’s a fucking dick from about a million sources but I suspect he just has a very low tolerance for bullshit.
Full disclosure: I’ve read an awful lot of Heinlein. I think my favorite is “Time Enough for Love.”
I also read some of “Dangerous Visions,” and I think Ellison and I talked about that too.
Anybody here ever read “Stand on Zanzibar”? “The Iron Dream”?
Donut–
Stand on Zanzibar? You bet. Better is The Sheep Look Up.
I loved Stranger in a Strange Land when I was, what–16? Tried to read it when I was 25 and it was unreadable. This, after growing up on (as someone alluded to) Red Planet, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, etc. I defy anyone with an ounce of feminist in their outlook to read Stranger and not throw it across the room.
Anyone want to recommend Samuel R. Delaney? Whom I’ve never read but probably feel I should?
Boy, am I glad this post has turned into a referendum on Heinlein! About whom my opinions will go unrevealed, as I get enough hate mail already.
I will unreservedly recommend Delany. Dhalgren is not only the best science-fiction novel I have ever read (to the degree that, um, well, there’s no way to say this politely — most of the SF fans of my acquaintance disown the thing), but it’s one of the best American novels of the post-war period.
I defy anyone with an ounce of feminist in their outlook to read Stranger and not throw it across the room.
I grok that.
Do you get hate mail for liking Heinlein or not liking him?
I’ll buy that Heinlein is a bit overrated, but second-rate? Not a chance.
Time Enough For Love was his last really good showing IMO. And I really liked Farnham’s Freehold. I can certainly see that some people could be pissed off by the story, but I don’t think he was unfair about it. I also like the way he turned his Super-Prepared-and-Capable-Obermench archetype around. I don’t really want to say more and ruin it for anyone who hasn’t read it, since I was lucky enough to read it without knowing the plot. I suppose the fact that the main plot doesn’t stand until suddenly halfway through the book could be a criticism though.
Why do people assume that Heinlein was a fascist because he had one book set in a pseudo-fascist military state? (I don’t even buy that Starship Troopers’ was actually set in a fascist state, but whatever.) Why do people assume that every word from his characters’ mouths represented his true thoughts? I don’t think he was a great character writer necessarily, but he could differentiate between them and himself. Besides Lazarus Long, probably.
Oops, sorry Mister Pierce. I loved it enough to actually click over to some of the links. I thought that you were pulling our collective legs this time, and you’d made it all up.
Sadly, no!
Sorry I dissed Heinlein! I love most of his work,texpecially the juveniles. tho some of the later stuff turns my stomach! As a teen I used to daydream that Podkayne of Mars would be made into a move (tho she starts out wanting to captain a space ship, and 2/3’s of the way thru, consders being the Captains Wife! After holding a couple of babys…
I’ll buy that Heinlein is a bit overrated, but second-rate? Not a chance.
Second rate? Of course! If you’re comparing him to other science-fiction writers he’s a giant, but comparing him to other actual writers he remains right where he should be: an influential genre writer who may easily be ignored.
So, eating babies is the new wingnut talking point? Sheesh.
Joplin wannabe=Joss Stone
Ya got me there. Plus the incest stuff was creepy. He could write a good space yarn though.
nelicote,
Exactly!
No, that story about cooking the kids is true, except it wasn’t this Alan Qaeda guy, whoever he is, it was this baby-sitter
and she put the baby in the oven cuz she thought it was a turkey cuz she was wacked out on acid- purple microdot, I think- and anyways it’s true cuz my friend’s cousin knew someone who lived in the town where it happened.
“Sure, being treated better than all the kikes, fags, wops, spades and broads just for being a straight white male might have turned out to be a really imoral and evil setup, but wanting it back doesn’t make me a bad person.”
“We don’t think all muslims are Jihadis. Just all the muslims we’ve ever heard of.”
I agree that you can read Heinlein without buying his politics or philosophy. But his politics (well described in his non-fiction and his anti-Communist tracts) do filter through the works. I have met several folks who ardently espouse in the national service state he outlines in Starship Troopers. He can, at least, be regarded as politically influential, though you can argue about the extent of that influence.
Heinlein was a scholar and a gentleman to his dying breath. There are many, many stories of writers whose viewpoints he disagreed with, but who he helped out when they were in need (Philip K Dick was one). His books will be read and loved – and argued with! – because, for all his flaws, he believed that brilliance and competence are humanity’s birthright, and he celebrated that.
Ellison, as a person, is a jerk. As an artist, his writing is a constant evocation of how lousy we all are, of how we’re all damned and jolly well deserve it, and loses its appeal once one has outgrown angsty adolescence.
Yeah, Ellison is not easy to defend. But I’ll try anyway, even if my effort is somewhat halfhearted. Even at the Hugos, he was rather annoying, doing schtick (pretending to bite the microphone and fondle the co-presenter), and maundering on to Silverberg about how sad it is that they’ve all gotten so old. Ellison also has a rampaging ego that gets tiresome, especially when he goes to great lengths to remind (and remind) his audience how he’s been working in Hollywood writing movies and is now – great gosh a’mighty – going in front of the camera, gee whiz, wouldn’t you all just like to be so lucky…
But I think that you’re overlooking something that is right in front of your face. The in-your-face attitude in “Repent, Harlequin!” might be, uh, unsettling to the mint julep-sipping Suthron gentleman & scholar types, but it was far more honest and layered in its worldview than the bright shiny super-science tales wherein Reddy Kilowatt and Officer Friendly are always to be trusted, and Progress with the Capital P is to be worshipped above all else.
So yeah, Ellison’s enfant terrible schtick doesn’t play as well 40 years on down the road. But the critical thinking and distrust of authority inherent in his works are things with which I am far more comfortable – and are also the kinds of things that make him rather unpopular with the wingnut set. I see a direct line between that kind of rebellion and the Sex Pistols, on down to Zack de la Rocha cranking out bombtracks like “Killing in the Name.”
Sorry. I guess the punk in me is showing.
Yeah, yeah, I know Heinlein wrote stuff that can be seen as distrustful of Big Gummint. But by and large, there was no real grit in his world.
As for Spider? Well, last I had heard he was being mocked for writing long whiny screeds about how he was having trouble making enough money from being an s-f writer.
Fozzetti & Lee: Re Heinlein, anyone who thinks nipples actually go ‘spung!’ is not to be trusted. Oh and the red hair fetish too. I have red hair and Heinlein just makes me feel dirty.
Second rate? Of course! If you’re comparing him to other science-fiction writers he’s a giant, but comparing him to other actual writers he remains right where he should be: an influential genre writer who may easily be ignored.
Righteous Bubba, wash your mouth out with soap! I’m not sure how much science fiction you’ve read, but it seems as though you’ve managed to avoid all the greatest bits. In my (never humble) opinion, some of the scifi writers are towering genii (geniuses? geniusem? Ahhh, wotthehell) who somehow manage to illuminate human society, create new potentialities, postulate extensions of our current line, and just generally make the reader think in new and exciting ways.
Honestly, you can keep your Michael Ondatje and the like, and give me a few good scifi alumni. Ursula Le Guin and The Dispossessed. C. J. Cherryh and Downbelow Station. Sherri S. Tepper and The Gate To Women’s Country. And in fact the one I’m re-reading right now, Geoff Ryman and The Child Garden. People who can craft a consistent, believable structure/world/society, populate it with characters who come alive, and wind through that world a tangling plot that keeps you glued to the page. And, in the end, you’re left holding the book, unwilling to put it back on the shelf, turning over in your mind the new thoughts, new perspectives, new understandings, that you’ve gained.
That, my friend, is real art. And it’s just as likely to be found in sci fi as anywhere else. Good writers hold a mirror up to the world and make us see what is there. Great writers can make us see what is possible.
Ahem. Sorry. I get a bit evangelical about books, even after all these years. And by great writers, incidentally, I definitely do not mean authors who churn out volume after volume of dragon-based crap or some space opera. Although I have a secret fondness for E. E. (“Doc”) Smith, mainly because I couldn’t believe that each successive volume in the series could have spaceships more unimaginably powerful, and contain a monotonically increasing sequence of exclamation marks (honestly, by the fifth book there were about 8 of ’em).
Viz Heinlein, I too am ambivalent. I read them voraciously as a kitten, but reached a point (during Time Enough For Love, actually) at which I decided I could never read another of his books again. The main reason was that most of his books had 3 characters:
1) The hero;
2) The wise old man;
3) The woman.
Seriously, one sodding female character. Beautiful, somehow with large yet firm breasts, and always gleeful about sex. Eeeuuuurrccchhh. Put me off Heinlein for good.
Nonetheless, he had some good points. I actually liked Starship Troopers more than most (and consequently hated the movie more), because it punctured the “Just War” theory. The defense of earth and all that patriotic crap turned out to be, quelle surprise, a pile of propaganda: the supposedly vicious aliens were just harmless folk having their bejeesus bombed. That’s why I was so incensed about the film: it was just totally turned around to become a propaganda piece itself.
Yikes, this is turning into a turgid, multi-volume rant. Sorry, everyone.
No need to be sorry, Qetesh. Extremely well said, all of it.
And thank you…I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who still gets a kick out of E.E. “Doc” Smith.
Righteous Bubba, wash your mouth out with soap!
I think Ursula LeGuin can write rings around Heinlein too, and I’ve read TONS of science fiction. Heinlein is a giant though within his field regardless of the superiority of other work. It’s like comics: those first issues of Action Comics were pretty fucking shitty, but Siegel and Shuster have their place in the pantheon and so it is with science fiction and its embarrassing heroes.
The kind of fantastical stuff I read these days – if at all given other commitments boo hoo hoo – is along the lines of Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things. It can qualify as science fiction I guess, and is also utterly brilliant.
It’s like comics: those first issues of Action Comics were pretty fucking shitty, but Siegel and Shuster have their place in the pantheon and so it is with science fiction and its embarrassing heroes.
Along these lines I was talking with a friend about some media production program at a school and the divisions between the TV people and the radio people and we both lamented that the gold standard for most of the radio kids was idiocy.
You might check out the antidote to Starship Troopers sometime: Harry Harrison’s Bill the Galactic Hero. One of the funnier things I’ve ever read, it is a parody of a number of classic Sci-Fi works, including Troopers and Asimov’s Foundation. In addition, it is a not-very-subtle attack on the military (an institution that Harrison loathes) published at a time when such things simply did not get into print.
There are a few interesting interviews on Harrison’s web site relating his experiences with some of Sci-Fi’s “greats.” He knew both Heinlein and Asimov, and compared their reactions to the gags in the book that were aimed at each of them. Asimov thought the parody of his “Trantor” to be hilarious, and complimented Harrison, while Heinlein had to be badgered into reading the book, after which he never spoke to Harrison again. He evidently took great umbrage at the many gags in the book that were obviously based on Starship Troopers, and probably also at Harrison’s low opinion of the military itself (honestly acquired, Harrison having been a draftee in the 1950s).
Although I read the hell out of Heinlein as a kid, I don’t find that much of his stuff goes down well today. In fact, I think the only one of his novels that really qualifies as “classic” Sci-Fi is The Door Into Summer; everything else was either a political tract or kiddie stuff. Job was pretty good, and Friday if you like that sort of thing; everything after Friday was pretty much unreadable. Of the juvies, I’d say The Rolling Stones was best (many fond memories here).
And I read a ton of Harlan Ellison when I was a teenager, and damned if the only story of his I can recall is Shatterday. Great fiction sticks in the brain (I can remember most of Moby Dick after one reading 15 years ago), so draw your own conclusions. I think he was a much better at essays and political commentary, and I am forever grateful to him for The Glass Teat (TV-free for 15 years now!).
Heinlein?
Pfah and pshaw.
John Scalzi’s who you want to be readin’ folks. Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony. Or Player of Games or Look To Windward, both by Ian M. Banks. Just finished The Cassini Division by Ken MacLeod and damnded if that isn’t all Heinlein’s Libertarianism done right, and way more readable than Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.
Just my 2 quatloos, mind you.
http://www.amazon.com/Steel-Beach-John-Varley/dp/0441785654
A fun read for any fan of Heinlein’s “Harsh Mistress”.
Joplin wannabe=Joss Stone
That description could fit either Joss Stone or Amy Winehouse. The major difference between them is their fashion influence — for Stone, it’s Michelle Phillips; for Winehouse, it’s Ronnie Spector.
Leonard,
I agree. Couldn’t care less about Heinlein. Your article, on the other hand, was brilliant! Thanks again.
ANOTHER MASTERPIECE POST.
[sorry for shouting- was at that Boredoms 77 drum thingy in Brooklyn yestidday and my ears are still shot]
Another antidote -if ya need one- to Starship Troopers is Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War. Some folks say it was written as a response to Troopers. Also, Stranger in a Strange Land is satire. Heinlein was no more in favor of free love than he was in starting your own religion. Of course, I’m aware that nobody here has made that argument, but I gotta have something to talk about.
Sure, Banks is good. I love the Culture novels, but the point is you can’t dismiss Heinlein’s impact on science fiction any more than you can dismiss Shakespeare’s on all of English lit.
Heinlein had one bit of good advice.
“Rub her feet”
BTW, there were no women in Heinlein’s fiction. They were all males, or computers, who underwent sex changes. Heinlein was incapable of comprehending the female perspective. Even the few genetic females in his books were little more than projections of his ego.
There seems to be a division in SF between those those for whom the idea is central and those for whom it is the story. Heinlein did come up with the waterbed in “Stranger in a Strange Land” long before it was invented. I guess that’s something. Me, I like a good story. I love Ursula Le Guin.
Next thing ya know we’ll be talking about Orson Scott Card, yikes!
Your willingness to foul your mind with the pyschosis at Wingnuttia never ceases to amaze.
For that, you are a true hero of lesbians and homsesexual Islamists with a murderous and fascist and dog-hating agenda everywhere.
Sorry, though, for my love of Stranger in a Strange Land, which to me was all about the free sex and Jubal Harshaw’s wisdom and love. We each take away from our readings something different, no?
I’m sick and wrong that way.
A nugget I’ve used frequently since R.H. wrote it:
“The human mind’s ability to rationalize is unlimted; mine is no exception.”
The hardest thing in the world to be is self-critical.
Dammit, is nobody here old enough to have read Andre Norton’s YA novels? NIGHT OF MASKS and BEAST MASTER and STAR MAN’S SON and THE X FACTOR may have changed — well, not my life, but certainly my understanding of how a novel could be put together. Not to mention the first Witch World trilogy, which arguably mothered all those quasi-medieval fantasy worlds that Tolkien is given credited for siring (in lit crit as in eugenics, the contributions of the female parent are usually ignored). HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL and GLORY ROAD will always have a place in my heart, because I loved them when I was ten years old, but I can recommend Norton even to people “who don’t read that sci-fi stuff” because she was just… Good. Both a talented writer and righteous in her opinions. She & Heinlein each produced a dozen or so “Young Adult” novels between the mid-1950s and the early 1970s, and it’s the Heinleins that all the fanboys talk about, but I will argue that Norton’s work was at least as important to the generation of writers (and female engineers & computer scientists) who grew up on scifi novels borrowed from their local libraries rather than scifi stories in the pulps.
Some Guy-
See, that’s just the problem. Everyone seems to look at Starship Troopers thru the film – not the book. I’ve read the book and liked it quite a bit – I never saw the movie. Yet I’m a left wing dirty fucking hippie (who also happens to be a soldier in the damn US Army). Go figure.
Anne Laurie,
A big “yessssss” to Andre Norton. Tops.
I always thought Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers was a giant $100 million joke–“See, I can make you cheer for the Nazis.” It’s very satirical.
Oregon guy – You’ve got it figured out. How to survive and keep whatever measure of your sanity you started with. Don’t drink the kool aid. If you liked the book, don’t see the movie. If the lessons of “The Eiger Sanction” and “The Evil that Men Do” can be forgotten in one short generation, then all may well be lost.
They can make the hippie a soldier, and he might well even shoot marksman, but they can’t take the hippie out of the man. You have to volunteer for that duty, and you know the rules about that shit.
Charley Mike, OG!!
mikey
OK gang, stop claiming Heinlein invented all the good SF ideas or the ghost of Herbert George Wells will come to you in the night and explain things to you:
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/w#a30
I mean get serious, Wells wrote novels about ALL the major SF themes: time travel, space travel, invisible people, invaders from mars, turning people into animals, etc. Heinlein just copied Wells’s ideas.
Also, anyone who thinks Heinlein was a gentlemen should peruse his posthumously published GRUMBLES FROM THE GRAVE which reveals him to be a mean, petty bully.
I still love SPACE CADET, however and read it once a year.
It’s not Heinlein, really. It’s just, well, truth to tell if I can’t be Steven Tyler or Jonathan Hemlock, I’d like to be Lazarus Long….
mikey
fardels –
Yeah, yeah, we can all start getting deconstructionist about this – Tolkien ripped off Lord Dunsany. Who, in turn, ripped off the King James Bible. Rise, repeat.
HG Wells was a great, great imaginer, as was Jules Verne. Read them all in my youth. These days, the Dan Simmons has worked well for me; Gaiman’s Fragile Things is sitting on my desk right now and I’m trying to inveigle an invite to the premiere of Stardust.
And yeah, Veerhoeven basically made Starship Troopers as a parody of the SUV-driving “my country right or wrong” dimwit mindset that he also lambasted in Robocop (“buy the new 6000 SUX! Big and heavy with really shitty gas mileage and a Blaupunkt!”).
Anyone who grew up in WWII-era Holland and made Soldier of Orange and Spetters can hardly be called an adherent of right-wing ideology.
But they’re right about the need for more ukuleles.
But they’re right about the need for more ukuleles.
(Sorry).
MY GOD THAT WAS HILARIOUS! I read every single thing! I LOVE this place!
mikey: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
–Robert Heinlein
Nuttin wrong with that, folks…
There damn well is! Having said it before, I recycle this rant, complete with antique, broken links:
No vote for Shakespeare then; the oubliette instead. Nor Plato, or Aristotle – quote out of that link:
…When Plato died in 347 B.C., Aristotle left the school. The reason he gave was that he disapproved of the growing emphasis on mathematics and theory in the Academy and the continuing decline in natural philosophy…
Nor Homer nor Virgil nor Dante nor Chaucer nor Blake. Raphael, go, Michaelangelo, go; Titian, go. OK, OK, so I’m cheating a bit; back in their day, the algebraic notation with which one expresses a quadratic equation didn’t even yet exist, so if, having traveled back in your time machine, you scribbled one out and thrust it in front of them, unless they could divine its meaning independently, none of them could have balanced that ball on their noses. All right then, even if we only consider folks from the eighteenth century on, I’d bet that at least a quarter of history’s luminaries – to enumerate them for practical purposes, suppose we simply take everybody who’s made it into the encyclopedia, and then exclude the notorious criminals out of that set – a quarter of those famous names, and a third at least of the greatest artists, wouldn’t survive the quadratic ordeal.
And today I asked my wife. She says, annoyed, “What exactly is a quadratic equation, and why should I want to solve it?” You know, that is a good question. I myself practically need to know quadratic equations, being a land surveyor. We occasionally have to lay out vertical curves for roadway construction, which commonly follow either a quadratic or a cubic graph in plan view. You automobile drivers probably aren’t aware of how carefully we civil engineering types lay out roads for your comfort and safety. Horizontal deflections in the road are laid out carefully along circle arcs so you can whoosh down the center of your lane holding the steering wheel steady in one position, rather than having to constantly maneuver through turns, and hills and valleys are graded so that as you drive at steady speed over the arch or through the dip your vertical accereration remains precisely constant, so no up-and-down jolts and bounces; the one continuous differential equation that satisfies those boundary conditions reduces to the simple quadratic. To do all this for you, dear clientele, we do need to be handy with ax^2 + bx + c = 0.
My wife, on the other hand, is a nurse. A very good one. Over the decades, while she was insensibly forgetting the fluff she half-learned in those hot, drowsy, boring math classes in High School so long ago, during all that time, using her resource and experience and generous goodwill, she has personally saved hundreds of lives, and eased the suffering and sped the recuperation for thousands more – have you ever been in a hospital or nursing home? maybe even you! She’s not “innumerate” (I think that’s the word that guy Paulos uses), she can for example do ratios just fine, so-and-so milligrams of medicine per so-and-so pounds of body weight, you don’t lose math you use daily, but right off hand I can’t think of any application of polynomials of degree > 1 in nursing. Did I mention that she is also a mother who has raised up lovely and intelligent children, so full of virtue and so responsive and successful at school that once they reach their majority even Mr. Heinlein would let them vote? Now you – no not you really, I’m sure you have more sense than that, you just haven’t thought it out, it’s Heinlein’s original idea, Heinlein proposes to disenfranchise her. Think about that! It’s absurd, it’s mad. Hell, wise and good as she is, she should get two votes.
Except now, if you could practically do it, it would have the effect of discriminately purging the voter rolls along economic class lines. Probably most college graduates could unravel a quadratic, even if they majored in something non-mathematical like art or business. You just pick stuff like that up in passing, especially if you have an eye on college entrance exams sooner or later. Whereas that class of people who staff the Wal-Marts would have a pretty low success rate with that simple algebra prob, would be purged off the voter’s lists pretty thoroughly. Economic-class-wise, who gets to go off to college? Yes, that’s a graph, with colored lines and labeled with numbers along each axis, that I offer for your enjoyment, knowing you love math! Anyway after the voter’s reg folks start subjecting citizens to Heinlein’s quadratic ordeal as a prerequisite to voting, what does that do to the distribution of voters with regard to economic classes? Gee, a phenomenon like that could be of some sinister use to certain political parties. You never know when it may come in handy to sneakily and selectively purge certain groups off the voter rolls.
Love Heinlein, hate his politics, what’s wrong with that? Don’t want to fall into the cornerite trap of judging everything on ideology. My moniker comes from LeGuin, I loved some of Andre Norton’s books and hated others, and can agree with most of the recommendations from my fellow commenters here.
Oh, and The Door Into Summer is enjoyable, but the real heart of Heinlein’s books — IMO — is Citizen of the Galaxy.
Qetesh: Starship Troopers…punctured the “Just War” theory. The defense of earth and all that patriotic crap turned out to be, quelle surprise, a pile of propaganda: the supposedly vicious aliens were just harmless folk having their bejeesus bombed.
Really? As many times as I read the book (got a copy when I was 14, over 30 years ago) I don’t think that reading can be justified except by including information not known to the narrator.
What I have long thought could be a really cool story is a re-write of the first chapter told from the POV of the Skinnies. The original, for those of you who have not read it, is the narrator’s recounting of a ‘smash and run’ raid on a city inhabited by allies of the enemy. It’s explicitly a civilian target. It was only a few years ago that I realized that this was an act of terrorism and by modern standards a war crime.
The ending of A Boy and His dog still gives me the willies.