Why Heinlein Really Ruled

[claywoman]

I've only been there in my mind, and yet, I can almost say with certainty, that I've been there. I can't explain it, when I was there, the villiage was alive with people living, breathing, and full of life. Aren't dreams wonderful? I have no idea where I got the idea for this book, but the characters seem to be writing themselves, and they are directing where they are going. Anyone who isn't a writer isn't going to really understand this statement.<br /><br />I'm now reading Heinlein's book, 'Expanded Universe' where he explains this rather well. A writer doesn't write because he wants to write, he writes because he HAS to write! I feel the same way, if I don't write, my day is ruined and I'm a grump. If I can close myself down and edge out the world, then I am the happiest.<br /><br />I have so many words within me that need to come out and live and breathe, I think this is what he was trying to say. He found out that like any other addiction, the more you do, the more you need to do to get that same feeling of self-satisfaction.<br /><br />I may grumble about classes starting and grumble because I have a 25-30 page essay due at the end of the semester, but I am looking forward to doing the research and sitting down and writing!!! I may spend night upon night perfecting this paper, and I will be at my happiest!!!

 

[lunatic133]

I am in the middle of reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and I really like it so far. True his description of "marriage" REALLY freaked me out at first but once you get past their interesting marital customs, it kicks some arse <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" />

 

[Grok]

claywoman,<br /><br />Let me tell you about the events that finally got me to Chaco. I was out on the U.S. Parks service website, and I just happened upon a picture of Pueblo Bonito taken from above. Something TOLD ME that I had to go there. It was like a spiritual mission, and I'm not Native American. <br /><br />I packed up my car and left the following weekend. I decided to make a vacation of it, so I headed out to Southeast New Mexico first and saw Carlsbad Caverns. Then I went up through Farmington and on to Soccoro New Mexico. My car broke down in Socorro, bad timing belt, so I wasn't able to go. I had to have my car hauled all the way to Albuqurque and I drove back to Texas with my head hung low.<br /><br />A few months later, a friend and I decided to take a road trip. I made it very specific that I had to go see Chaco. We started by going to Oklahoma and seeing the Oklahoma City bombing memorial, then cut over to Colorado and checked out Pike's Peak. The next day we saw the Royal Gorge, and then headed down to Santa Fe. In Santa Fe, my friend decides he wants to go home because he feels he's running out of money. I offered to pay for both of us for the rest of the trip if we could just go on to Chaco, but he was determined to go home. We were driving his truck, so there wasn't much I could do to deter him. That's the second time I missed Chaco.<br /><br />The third time was a charm. The following year, I drove straight to Chaco come hell or high water. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> My family and I loved it. The work that went into that place was amazing, millions of flat stones used to construct the various houses, the roads that go all the way to Mexico. There's a huge boulder that is roughly square in shape that fell off the cliff right next to Pueblo Bonito. It was gigantic, thousands of tons. I have a picture of my sons and I standing in front of it. They say that the stone had not fallen at the time the house was built, and that

 

[Grok]

lunatic,<br /><br />Heinlein had some really odd ideas about marriage and sex in general. I think he might of been a swinger, or at least liked the idea. I'm rereading Tunnel in the Sky right now.

 

[claywoman]

I know what you mean! Glad someone understands me...lol!!! When I'm writing this book, I see it as green, before the weather drastically changed in the SW, I see the hunting as good, and the corn growing and sustaining the people. I also forsee disease as the reason the villages are deserted, because so many died, there were few to hunt or to plant, thus in order to exist they had to move out of the area and find new people and create a new society. this is also when the climate changed and it became drier and harsher.<br /><br />This is based on historical AND anthropological evidence. I truly believe that disease introduced in South America by the Spanish is what killed the majority of the Indians. The common cold debilitated whole societies here in the US. Think of what smallpox or even the flu could do to a people with no resistance...<br /><br />Heinlein didn't have a warped sense of sex, if you really read what he writes, he actually is rather a prude. His characters are somewhat shocked in some circumstances at the mores of some cultures. I think he's projecting in his writings, what he sees the culture becoming in the future when we are NOT ashamed of our bodies. remember, some of his better known books were written near the sixties when sex was freer, and nudity wasn't all that uncommon (I think of the topless swimsuits some of us wore during that time). I think he was taking his characters to the NEXT level of evolution and someday, perhaps, we will get there unless we are further repressed.

 

[Grok]

claywoman,<br /><br />I didn't say his ideas were warped, but they are odd. Warped would imply something was "wrong" with them. I don't happen to think they are wrong but they definitely don't fit most sensibilities. I don't have a problem with that myself. I like writers who stretch societies boundaries, but I still recognize it is odd.

 

[lunatic133]

Yes he is in many ways much more prudish than Anne McCaffrey, who more or less states in HER writings that any woman who does not shamelessly sleep with every single man that comes her way without any emotional attachment whatsoever is old fashioned, destined to be a failure, good for nothing at all to society as a whole. I would have to say that the LEAST sexually promiscuous McCaffrey book I've ever read was Acorna the Unicorn Girl, which dealt with child prostitution. Even in the Pern series where women are second class citizens they are more or less expected to sleep around. But I'm getting off topic. In Heinlein they have very ... extended ... families but at least there is some structure to it. Of course in 1966 there was no concept of AIDS or other STD's so the system used in the book worked quite well while it would surely be impractical in the modern world.

 

[claywoman]

Lunatic, I've never heard any comments by Robt. Heinlein about AIDS and STD's although his death occurred after their 'popularity.' I have no idea what his thoughts on those various diseases would be, other then to take preventive measures. If you read most of his works, his characters slept around but usually with people they knew and they knew their personal habits, therefore in his mind, they were 'safe?'<br /><br />I've heard him called a sexist, I consider him a feminist, his women can dish it out with the best of them. They were feminine to the end, but if pushed, could shoot, or maim without batting an eyelash OR breaking a fingernail. None of them were the type that falls apart. To be weak would be to stay landside and not frittering away on some desolate planet where dragons, or other creatures could get you at any time.<br /><br />I think he wrote his men macho, and sometimes overly so, but I love it when the women let them know with no uncertain terms that isn't acceptable. His characters breathe, they live, and they bring the readers on their journeys with them. that's to me a great writer!