Happy Birthday Robert Heinlein

[Chris Grieb]

Robert Heinlein would be 100 today. His book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is regarded as one of the fiction works that introduced people to Libertarianism.

He also wrote the screenplay for the movie "Destination Moon" which inspired many people who worked on Apollo.

He was a committed American patriot and I have no doubt that he would strongly support America's fight against Islamic Jihadists.

[BaalChatzaf]

Robert Heinlein would be 100 today. His book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is regarded as one of the fiction works that introduced people to Libertarianism.

He also wrote the screenplay for the movie "Destination Moon" which inspired many people who worked on Apollo.

He was a committed American patriot and I have no doubt that he would strongly support America's fight against Islamic Jihadists.

I have three books dominating my shelf of alternate time line fiction: TMIAHM, AS and The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuinn.

My motto: TANSTAAFL - There ain't no such thing as a Free Lunch -- R.A.H.

I think he was going soft when he wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, but R.A.H. in his prime was incomparable. And he was a better writer than Ayn Rand.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Chris Grieb]

Bob; Emerson said consistancy is hobgoblin of little minds. You do have one way in which you are. consist. Being wrong! That's a respond to your statement that Heinlein was a better writer than Rand.

Edited July 7, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[Chris Grieb]

I did mention Stranger in a Strange Land because the book was cited as an inspiration for Charles Manson.

[Dragonfly]

Bob; Emerson said consistancy is hobgoblin of little minds.

No, Rand said that Emerson said that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds (and she added in her usual kind and benevolent way that Emerson himself was a very little mind), but she was lying, Emerson said that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds".

[Chris Grieb]

Dragonfly; I stand corrected. The word foolish does make a big difference.

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob; Emerson said consistancy is hobgoblin of little minds.

No, Rand said that Emerson said that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds (and she added in her usual kind and benevolent way that Emerson himself was a very little mind), but she was lying, Emerson said that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds".

Not lying. Mistaken. But that is hardly a first for Rand.

Heinlein was a better story teller than Rand. I was probably mistaken for saying he was a better -writer-, although he wrote well enough, RAH was into spinning yarns, many of them with a point. And RAH had a better handle on technology and science than Rand. RAH produced works of entertainment, not deathless fiction. RAH also was a warrior (U.S. Navy) and he had a better grasp and appreciation of the military, than did Rand. He makes this point well in -The Starship Troopers-. Puhleeze do not confuse the movie (a piece of crap) with the novel.

In terms of quality of writing, independent of the entertainment value, I think Ursula La Guin is a better -writer- than Rand. She had a way of getting into the minds of her characters. Read her Earthsea stories for example. Very Tolkienesque. I thought her novel -The Dispossessed- was an an excellent political novel. She pleaded the case for Syndical Anarchism rather well. But she had a rather un-Utopian view of Utopia. Think of Galt's Gulch with the usual interpersonal frictions and squabbles added. -The Dispossessed- won both The Hugo and The Nebula awards. It also received good reviews from reviewers who were not wired into the sci-fi speculative fiction scene.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed

Her collection of short stories -Changing Planes- is also rather entertaining. La Guin's short stories are rather good.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited July 7, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Dragonfly]

Not lying. Mistaken. But that is hardly a first for Rand.

But when the mistake was pointed out to her, she refused to correct it. And then it became a lie.

[BaalChatzaf]

Robert Heinlein would be 100 today. His book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is regarded as one of the fiction works that introduced people to Libertarianism.

He also wrote the screenplay for the movie "Destination Moon" which inspired many people who worked on Apollo.

He was a committed American patriot and I have no doubt that he would strongly support America's fight against Islamic Jihadists.

RAH was also a Very Busy Writer. This from the wiki article on RAH:

Main article is the Robert A. Heinlein bibliography.

Heinlein published 32 novels, 59 short stories and 16 collections during his life. Four films, two TV series, several episodes of a radio series, and a board game derived more or less directly from his work. He wrote a screenplay for one of the films. Heinlein edited an anthology of other writers' SF short stories.

Three non-fiction books and two poems have been published posthumously. One novel has been published posthumously and another, based on a sketchy outline by Heinlein, was published in September 2006. Four collections have been published posthumously.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I continue:

In addition to all this literary work, he invented the concept of the water bed which appeared in his novel -Stranger in a Strange Land-. He also grokked -the Waldo-, the remote extension of the human hand used for handling dangerous material. That is his baby.

On matters technical he was far in advance of Ayn Rand. In matters political he was a healthy right leaning thinker and writer, although he started off on the Left with the Social Credit Movement. To his credit he move away from that position. In some respects, RAH and Rand were on the same page politically. He had a healthy distrust of strong, centralized, powerful governments.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Chris Grieb]

While Heinlein graduated from Annapolis I understand he was not commissioned and never served. He had health problems.

[BaalChatzaf]

While Heinlein graduated from Annapolis I understand he was not commissioned and never served. He had health problems.

TB

[Richard Uhler]

...He was a committed American patriot and I have no doubt that he would strongly support America's fight against Islamic Jihadists.

As I recall (I don't have time right now to look all through Expanded Universe and Grumbles From The Grave for the exact quote) RAH's attitude toward the Russians was essentially "We're not safe with them around - let's conquer and rule them." I expect his attitude toward the Islamic world post-9/11 would have been the same.

[emb021]

Random comments about RAH.

I have long been an SF fan. In high school and early college, I would get into a particular author and if I liked him/her, wound up getting almost everything they wrote and read almost all of it. RAH was one of those authors, tho I got burned out with his later works (several I couldn't get into). TMIAHM was one I liked, tho it wasn't one that turned me into a libertarian (that took LNS, Ringer, Rand, Ditko, and Browne in my college years).

The movie "Destination Moon" was based on "Rocketship Gallileo", one of his 'juvenile sf' novels. (tho all are well written and can be enjoyed by both adults and kids. they are only 'juvenile' because the protagonist are youths (high school or early college), and there is no sex or bad words). While I have tried to see many SF movies, it was only recently that I saw this on tv. I found it very interesting that the movie showed a totally private enterprise to get to the moon, on the premise that the government could not do so in times of peace. (ie, mount a huge expensive operation).

FWIW, I could not read Dispossed. I couldn't get by the first couple of pages when one of the main characters made some disparaging remarks about the side arm worn by another character. It sounded too much like the anti-gun attitude that LNS put down in his works.

[John Dailey]

Dragon:

~ That AR was 'lying' in omitting "foolish" presumes that Emerson didn't mean it as a redundant emphasis, but, instead, as a sub-category, as if he considered there to be "non-foolish" consistencies. My reading of Emerson sees his use of "foolish" as being an emphasized redundancy, and her dropping of it in her referencing as being a paraphrasing or merely inaccurate quoting; ergo, I see no meaning lost or changed in her ref...ergo, 'lying' is a pretty strong word for something so easily checked (even before The Web) re 'quoting.'

~ I gather that you're a fan of Emerson (as Heinlein was of Rand)?

LLAP

J:D

[Dragonfly]

~ That AR was 'lying' in omitting "foolish" presumes that Emerson didn't mean it as a redundant emphasis, but, instead, as a sub-category, as if he considered there to be "non-foolish" consistencies. My reading of Emerson sees his use of "foolish" as being an emphasized redundancy, and her dropping of it in her referencing as being a paraphrasing or merely inaccurate quoting; ergo, I see no meaning lost or changed in her ref...ergo, 'lying' is a pretty strong word for something so easily checked (even before The Web) re 'quoting.'

I'm sure Emerson didn't mean it as a redundant emphasis. Very few people are against consistency in itself - that would mean that they advocate that you should always be inconsistent. What Emerson meant was consistency under all circumstances. When the Germans say "jede Konsequenz führt zum Teufel", they certainly don't mean that you never should be consistent, only that consistency does have its limits. Anyway, the phrase "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" sounds very different from "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". That Rand made an error is one thing (although it's sloppy if you use a quote for an article), but that she refused to correct it is much worse. If the meaning really wasn't different, then there would be no problem with a correction, would it? A refusal indicates that the correct quote wouldn't serve her purpose (to denounce Emerson).

~ I gather that you're a fan of Emerson (as Heinlein was of Rand)?

Never read a word from that man, apart from that quote. I wonder if Rand had read anything by him.

[Rodney]

From "Self-Reliance”:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Rodney,

That's one hell of an inspiring quote from Emerson. One way of summing up the basic message is: "Check your premises."

Hmmmm... I wonder where I heard that?

Michael

[Rodney]

Suddenly, I feel great.

[John Dailey]

~ I'd say that ashley's 'larger-context' quote supports *my* interpretation...and argument.

LLAP

J:D

[Rodney]

Exactly.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Maybe I am missing something.

I understand Emerson to be saying for a person to stay true to his reasoning mind and not be glued to an idea out of dogma or tradition, even if he believed that idea previously.

I understand Rand's interpretation to insintuate—strongly insinuate—that he meant that logic is pragmatic (i.e., logic need not be consistent). Then she crapped on him.

The word "foolish" clarifies this and leaving it out was a mistake.

Michael

[Rodney]

I understand Emerson to be saying for a person to stay true to his reasoning mind and not be glued to an idea out of dogma or tradition, even if he believed that idea previously.

That may be true, in a loose or generous interpretation. But a serious thinker knows that consistency is the guide at every stage of the reasoning process--it is the means of implementing "A is A"--and would not make such a pronouncement about it. (It was only a dedication to consistency that led me to discover hypercomplex numbers.)

[Dragonfly]

Ellen Stuttle wrote me the following (quoted with permission):

A lot of people get the quote wrong, and even among those who get it right I think that not many understand what he was talking about. I think his meaning isn't pellucid, either from the correct quote (with "a foolish" included) in isolation or from the full paragraph. The title of the essay is "Self-Reliance." He was warning against having one's reputation with oneself become entwined with one's imagined image in other people's eyes, so that one becomes afraid, if one's beliefs have changed, of expressing an opinion at variance with views one has formerly expressed.

Ironically, Rand herself provides a striking example of what he was counseling against in her claiming that the changes she'd made from the 1st to the 2nd edition of We the Living were all minor editorial changes. More widely, her whole self-proclaimed -- and apparently self-believed -- image of the unchanging-from-childhood thread of her views is an example of what Emerson was saying isn't the way to proceed.

Rand called Emerson "a very little mind", which was a nasty and petty remark, based on nothing but an incorrect quote, taken out of context. A good point to remember for people who claim that Rand was treated unfairly by her opponents.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Rodney,

Of course the rules of logic must be consistent. But I don't think Emerson was praising "Pythagoras, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton" because they violated the rules of logic. He was praising them because they sought the truth, even when that quest violated what the crowd thought and what they previously thought.

To me, that's a virtue called integrity.

Emerson was a poet and was talking about the human spirit, not about the rules of logic. He was seeking a unique way to express his message. That's what poet's do.

Michael

EDIT: My post crossed with Dragonfly's. I fully agree with what is written there.

[Rodney]

As a poetic expression of fearlessness, a psychological stance, the willingness to change one's mind, it's valid if one takes "consistency" to mean "unchanging" or "stubborn." This does not make for intellectual progress, however. And note that he includes "philosophers," so it's debatable what his exact meaning is. Would Emerson ever have a hope of forging the is-ought connection as Rand did? No. I can see why she considered him a little mind, in the properly intellectual sense.

I'm sure Rand had had exposure to his views, given his influence. It is obvious that she would have contemned them. And perhaps the quotation in question was sometimes used against her, when she insisted on definitions and logic in conversation. Emerson lives in aphorisms and epigrams apparently.

But even as a psychological approach to self-assertion, the quotation is dubious. There is no mention of any effort to reconcile and integrate what one thought yesterday with what one now believes. This would constitute full, healthy integrity.

So, as a poet, possibly big. As a mind (in the senses important to Rand), very little.