I have an article up today in AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review. Entitled “Arguing with Heinlein“, it’s more or less what it sounds like. There’s some stuff about Cory Doctorow and Joe Haldeman, as well.
And that’s all I’ll say about it.
Tag Archives: Robert A. Heinlein
Responses to Heinlein’s Starship Troopers
John Scalzi recently wrote a post for Tor.com about Starship Troopers the film, listing several reasons for watching it. The film is ostensibly based on Heinlein’s book of the same name, which, amongst other things, is often credited as creating the military science fiction genre.
My own reason for watching it, a couple years ago (or, rather, re-watching it), came from this AV Club post, which told me a lot about director Verhoeven and his intentions with the film I hadn’t picked up on the first time through. On the surface, it’s a crappy, brainless action movie. A little deeper, it turns out to be incredibly satirical, both anti-war and an intentional argument against the very ideas Heinlein put forth in the film’s source material.
Some might suggest he misrepresents Heinlein’s ideas in responding to them. For example, he’s clearly stated his belief that Heinlein’s imagined society was fascist, but this isn’t really a fair reading. Still, I’m of the school “everyone should read Heinlein, but never stop arguing with him”. So I appreciate the effort to refute him, even if Verhoeven does a sloppy job of it.
And I did get something out of re-watching the movie with a more critical eye; I even went back and watched Robocop for the same reason. But when it comes right down to it, I didn’t enjoy either one. They may only be pretending to be crappy, brainless movies — hiding deeper messages just below the surface — but really, what’s the difference between pretending to be and actually being crappy?
For that matter, the messages were pretty vague and simplistic. They’re anti-fascist, and? Can you get a little more specific with that? In the end, I suspect there’s only so much you can do with satire compared to a more detailed argument in a compelling story. That’s why Brave New World can’t live up to 1984. The former is satire at the expense of being real literature.
For that matter, I don’t need Verhoeven’s to refute Heinlein. It’s been done. The Forever War was written maybe 15 years after Starship Troopers, and is a clear, politically-opposite response, written by a veteran just returned from Vietnam, no less. Joe Haldeman had both the writing and military creds to challenge Heinlein, and in so doing may have exceeded his work.
In fact, even Verhoeven’s cheerleader, Scalzi himself, has done this. Old Man’s War is clearly aware of Heinlein’s work, challenges it, and is an excellent novel in its own right. Scalzi should just read his own book next time he feels the urge to watch Verhoeven’s film.
I guess the moral of the story (as I take it) is that even when something is arguably important as part of a body of critically relevant work, it may have few artistic merits of its own.
Book Review: The Green Hills of Earth & The Menace from Earth
The stories of Green Hills have that special just-can’t-wait-for-the-future sheen that science fictional works of the ’40s and ’50s tended to have. Luna City, colonies on Mars and Venus, a new class of adventurers and fortune-seekers rocketing to the outer planets to establish new outposts and write their own tickets. There’s opportunity for the taking, if you just have brains and gumption enough to get it!
Read my complete review on Revolution Science Fiction.
The Rest of the Big Three
I’ve already mentioned Asimov, whose most important works I’ve read, excepting his Robot series. He published over 500 books in his lifetime, however, so I’ll never really be done Asimov. When I see a second-hand copy of an out-of-print story or essay collection, I’ll always pick it up. But what about the other two writers comprising the “Big Three of Science Fiction”?
I think I can equally say I’ve read Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s most important stuff. The entire Rama series (the original works as a stand-alone but the later sequels are also minor gems, I think), the entire Space Odyssey series (which is solid enough, but of course the original, 2001, is the only must-read), one of his most well-known stand-alones, Childhood’s End.
Missing from that list is The City and the Stars, The Fountains of Paradise, and I’d like to read his last published book, co-written with Frederik Pohl, The Last Theorem. It started with Clarke’s outline but he got so sick that Pohl pretty much did all the heavy lifting himself. He finished a final draft, Clarke took a look and was happy with it, and died days later. So all three of those are on my list.
Robert A. Heinlein is possibly less prolific than Clarke, and certainly much less so than Asimov. But I have the most catching up to do with him. I’m definitely considering reading every single one of his novels, which is probably why I’m much further behind than the other two.
His work is generally broken into early-, middle-, and late-period Heinlein. Early Heinlein includes the Golden-Age short stories in Astounding and other magazines (a good chunk of which I’ve read), and his juvenile novels for Scribner (plus a few non-juveniles written under pen-names during the same period). I’ve read about half of the juveniles, leaving perhaps five or six to go. His last book of this period is Starship Troopers, and also the most influential, but there’s a lot of good stuff in this period and it’s worth reading almost all of it.
Middle-period Heinlein includes what are generally considered his greatest works: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land were both written during this period of the 1960s and early 1970s. I plan to read all of these (excepting possibly his fantasy novel, Glory Road), but having read his two most important works, Moon and Stranger, the ones I really need to read next are Farnham’s Freehold and Time Enough for Love.
After a period of ill health, Heinlein began writing again in the ’80s. These last few novels generally aren’t considered his best work, tending to meander and proselytize a bit on his political beliefs. That said, while his plotting was less tight, some of those flashes of brilliance that make Heinlein great still occurred, at least by some accounts.
I haven’t read any late Heinlein, but plan on reading at least The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and we’ll see where I go from there. Job: A Comedy of Justice was, apparently, flawed, but also important, so we’ll see.
I should note, though, there have been far more than three important SF writers the last 70 years. I’m familiar with Pohl but not Bester, Silverberg and Haldeman but not Niven or Ellison, Bujold but not LeGuin. There’s still a lot of catching up to do.
Science Fiction to the Rescue in WWII
I reviewed the new Heinlein biography recently, which I quite enjoyed. It’s the first of a planned two-volume project, so I am also eagerly anticipating the second, particularly since by the end of part one, only Heinlein’s first couple of books had been mentioned (along with a few notable shorts).
This volume was surprisingly interesting given that the majority of it covered Heinlein’s life prior to his full-time writing career. After all, the reason anyone would want to read a bio of a famous author is because they’re interested in his work, but it turns out he was also an interesting man before he became an interesting author. Of course, he also lived in interesting times, and having now read several histories and biographies taking place in the first half of the twentieth century, I find I just can’t get enough of it. So much happened in the century of my birth.
One rather surprising tidbit came after the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated US entry into World War Two. Heinlein, though he had been forced to give up his first career as a naval officer due to pulmonary tuberculosis, tried absolutely everything to get enlisted again for the war. It seems the Japanese attack had an incredible galvanizing effect on US citizenry such that patriotic, able-bodied men (and women) were volunteering left and right, to the point that officers in charge of enlistment couldn’t keep up.
Though still medically unfit to serve, Heinlein was able to use a former officer contact to get in as a civilian engineer at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. His navy contact also requested that Heinlein, working with pulp giant, editor John W. Campbell, try to recruit — no joke — more science fiction writers to come do war work. In fact, in those early days of the new genre of science fiction, many of the writers did indeed have scientific or engineering training. Heinlein ended up bringing in a young Isaac Asimov (a recently minted chemistry PhD), and L. Sprague de Camp to work in the same research facility out of the yard as he.
Heinlein also ended up doing some minor engineering work that, unbeknownst to him, was related to the still top-secret development of radar technology. Across the pond, English SF giant, Arthur C. Clarke, was also working more directly on radar applications.
Pretty cool. When the world was in jeopardy, the allies called on their best genre writers to save the day. SF enthusiasts often claim their favourite authors can see into the future. When the Allies needed help, however, these writers were brought in to help create the future. Along with the bomb, radar was the top-secret, brand-new Allied technology of WWII. Future Nobel-winning scientists gave their best for the war effort, alongside future Hugo-winning sci-fi writers. Who’d have thought?