That stupid quiz

[beowabbit]

Grrr. It told me I should be in

You belong in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. You
value freedom above all else. You would fight
and die for your family and your home.


Which Heinlein Book Should You Have Been A Character In?
brought to you by Quizilla


I guess it could have been worse; that's one of his least annoying books. I have this love-hate relationship with Heinlein and his books. There's his casual, unexamined sexism -- yes, it's not as bad as lots of more mainstream authors, but the fact that he doesn't see it and that he thinks he's painting a better world makes it bother me all the more. But mostly, there's his utterly naïve, childish ultra-libertarianism. In real life, any of the societies he sets up and presents as sympathetic would be a fascist (literally so defined) totalitarian police state within fifty years. And he's fond of droning on that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch (TANSTAAFL)", but his protagonists all get free lunches: they're almost all lucky enough to be born rich, beautiful if female, intelligent (not that you'd know it from how they narrate), powerful, and respected. Okay, once in a while you're told that they acquired their wealth and power before the start of the book through hard work, but that's just hand-waving, and there's nothing in their character to support it. So Heinlein thinks there's no free lunch for the unwashed masses, but his protagonists get one. Grrr.

Not that I don't read and enjoy his books, mind you. (Well, most of them. I started out really liking The Number of the Beast, and then when it abrubtly changed course I felt cheated, like I'd gotten halfway through the book and discovered that the second half of the pages were blank. I like silly fantasy quite a lot, actually, and I like hard science fiction. But I don't want to start a hard science fiction novel and then have it turn into silly fantasy. I'd have been entirely happy with either whole book, but having the beginning from one book and the end from another was not a satisfying read.

Have I said "Grrr" yet? Just in case, let me say it now. Grrr.

Comments

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Well put. I adored Heinlein when I discovered his books in my early teens, but rereading as an adult - whoa. I really hadn't picked up the rampant sexism when I was a kid. I still really enjoy TMISHM (and, to be honest, his other works) - I agree, that is one of the less-annoying ones.

[krikket.livejournal.com]

But mostly, there's his utterly naïve, childish ultra-libertarianism.

FWIW: Heinlein wasn't a Libertarian as many people belive. Honestly. He was a member of either the Democrats or Republicans. (I don't know which, that information was never made public. He started out as a member of one of those parties, then realized he was in the wrong party and switched.) He even wrote a wonderful (non-ficiton) book on how to get involved in politics, and why you should do so. (Without actually going into the issues, this books is about the mechanics of how politics work. Town/City/Ward committees, structure within the party, phone trees, etc etc etc.) The inormation is a little dated (I think it was written in the 50's) but there is still a *lot* of good information. Regardless of your political beliefs.

If you're interested, I'll dig out my copy to pass the information on...

[beowabbit]

That's why I didn't capitalize it. (John Silber is a Democrat, but he's no democrat.)

[missdimple.livejournal.com]

Ok, Ok, Ok. But, can we try to remember that his books were mostly written in the middle of the 20th century when the independence of women was LITERALLY joked about? The idea of a woman defending herself, making her own decisions about her sexuality, and living independantly would have been mocked. LOUDLY. Women for a long time have been nothing but the pets of men. He STARTED writing books around WWII. People are usually the product of their times. The world you grew up in is not the world he grew up in.

*Dimple climbs off of her soapbox*

[beowabbit]

Well, that's part of why the political theory bothers me more than the sexism. But Heinlein was writing well into the '80s, and his later stuff strikes me as no better than his earlier stuff. (Well, I guess that's arguable. He has lots more women in the later stuff, but that means there are lots more opportunities for him to annoy me with the sexism.) Basically, what bothers me about him is that his thinking seems ossified and unexamined. In a writer of potboiler mysteries or romance novels, that wouldn't bother me, but in a science fiction writer it strikes me as a significant failing. And it undermines my admiration for the stuff he says that I do agree with to feel like he must have stumbled across it by accident.

Basically, I think he wasn't really a product of his time, and that's why people who admire him admire him so much. But I don't have a sense that he ended up where he ended up by careful, ongoing reflection, but that he happened to have a different set of prejudices and myopias than the prejudices and myopias of the society around him, and never really examined them. (Some of them, like being somewhat sex-positive and having no truck with racism, I share. But since I don't really respect his thinking, it's hard to feel much satisfaction in them.)

All of that said, he sure can tell a fun story. (And Stranger in a Strange Land is pretty important and interesting on much more than a superficial level.)

I definitely don't hold the cultural prejudices of his juvenilia against them. (In fact, those are some of the books I like the most, because they tend to have less of his politics in them.)

Disclaimer: I've read a decent chunk of his work, especially his later work, but by no means a representative sample of all of it. If he actually was learning, rather than becoming more crotchety, I'd love to hear about evidence to that effect.