The Interocitor

The reasoning is flawed and fact-challenged, but I must admit the style is very Heinleinian. And it certainly would not be unusual to find something I disagreed with in a Heinlein book.

"On all but one page, Spider Robinson has done a great job here of channelling the Master, and for the most part this book is extremely well done, both in the style and flavor of late 50's Heinlein,"

So, you're saying there's lots of sex with immediate family members? ;)

I find it tragically sad that Spider Robinson, who was such a devoted Heinlein fan that he wrote an article praising him (Rah Rah R.A.H.!) in the face of notable displeasure from some leading lights of the SF and SF critic communities, has so fallen to BDS that he would misuse the one chance given him to complete his idol's work for the purpose of pushing through MoveOn-style propaganda. Under cover of speaking in Heinlein's authorial voice.

I am disgusted, I am appalled, I am outraged. I am never buying this piece of tripe, and refuse to consider it in any way part of Heinleinian canon. And it will be a cold day in Hell when Spider Robinson gets another dime of my money.

I’m not sure I see the disconnect:

Robinson talks about very stupid (in his mind) reasons to go to war. Heinlein talks about pacifism being a null idea. Where’s the contradiction?

Heinlein would probably have been appalled at the religiosity of the Bush administration, but he was generally supportive of the US at war.

You do have to read the book to see just how out-of-the-blue gratuitous the quoted section is. Not only does it detract from the story, but it really has no place in it. It's kinda like Robinson was looking on a place to hang this rant, and he decided to stick it here.

Further, such a controversial statement does not belong in a book co-written with a dead author who died well before the events in question.

If I dig through my garage, there's a book of letters that contains a angry letter by Heinlein to John W Campbell, Jr (his editor) remarking on the poor form Campbell was showing criticizing FDR during WW2. The man who wrote that letter would not have written this passage.

These things seem to work pretty well, actually. I found the posthumous "new" Roger Zelazny and Frank Herbert novels quite enjoyable and generally up to par. In fact, the new Herbert books exceeded the originals in some respects.

Oh, I meant to add:

That said, Spider's view is pretty common. Stross has said similar things. In fact, I debated Stross on his site on these points (pointing out we were freeing Muslims not attacking them, and that opinion was moving toward democracy not away from it). He was so upset by my arguments and unable to counter, he actually deleted my posts and shut down the discussion board.

Writers do, in fact, live in their own little fantasy worlds, spinning zany visions of the future. But that's what we pay them for...

tall dave--

I'm not really objecting to the substance, just to it's placement in a posthumous work.

It's disrespectful to put such charged statements into another person's mouth.

It's worse to use the dead person's overarching reputation to further your personal opinion.

It's much worse when the other person quite likely would have objected, but can't because he's dead.

Fair point. Also, much of what he writes is simply inaccurate: for instance, Hussein was not remotely hostile to terrorism (just ask Israel) and was in fact funding Al Qaeda and keeping Zarqawi in Baghdad. But traveling in his circles, I doubt he realizes such a claim is even controversial.

It would not be unusual for Heinlein to object to a war--he seems to have thought U.S. involvement in World War I was a mistake, or at least though it arguable enough to put it in Lazarus Long's mouth--but I doubt he would have gotten the facts about what we're doing in Iraq so very wrong, nor believed the things you have to believe about the U.S. military in order to believe some of those things.

It never ceases to amaze me how opponents of the Iraq operation simply never even try to understand the thinking of those who disagree with them, and ignore any facts which are counter to their wordlview. I view it as a form of madness that will probably pass after Bush leaves office. Although how long after I'm not sure.

...and by the way, while a lifelong Democrat, Heinlein was a great admirer of Ronald Reagan, who was just as religious as Bush is. FWIW.

I don't recall Lazarus Long saying that US involvement in WWI was a mistake, merely that it would be a mistake *for him* to get caught up in it while time-travelling.

Besides, Lazarus Long most definitely had a wide divergence from Heinlein's own opinions on some political topics, specifically the issue of whether or not the United States was worth loving and defending with one's life.

I think that if you carefully re-read that part of Time Enough For Love, you'll notice that Lazarus specifically suggests that everything went wrong for the United States once it involved itself in that war.

Check me on that, but I'm very confident. Especially because at one time I agreed with him (I don't any longer).

The problem with all this is that Robinson broke canon, I think. I refer you all to the postscript to _Revolt In 2100_, "Concerning Stories Never Written."

I suspect that Variable Star, like those stories he mentions there, was *never* supposed to see the light of day.

Be that as it may, Robinson screwed up royally. He says that the Terror Wars started immediately after the first successful flight to Luna. This absolutely contradicts everything else Heinlein wrote in Volume 2 and 3 of the Future History!

One of Heinlein's comments on the rise of Nehemiah Scudder, from the same post script:

"The first of these unwritten stories, 'The Sound Of His Wings', starts shortly before 'Logic Of Empire' and continues for several years beyonf the ending of 'Logic'; it would have recounted the early life, rise as a television evangelist, and subsequent political career of the Reverend Nehemiah Scudder, the "First Prophet," President of the United States, and destroyer of its Constitution, founder of the Theocracy."

Elsewhere in the series, he explains why this story will remain unwritten (but it's evidently been plotted out at the time of writing) forever. This is probably the passage that Robinson drew his source material from to justify his placement of "The Terror Wars."

The big problem is that he completely ignores something from three paragraphs earlier!

"This present Volume Three starts about seventy-five years later than the end of the last story in Volume Two - and a great amount of "Future History" has taken place between the two volumes [Volume 2 was 'Green Hills Of Earth', Volume 3 is 'Revolt in 2100' - edit mine]. 'Green Hills' ended with [pay attention now -] the United States a leading power in a systemwide imperialism embracing all the habitable planets."

Scudder's rise and the end of interplanetary flight came WELL after what Robinson proposes, and in addition, the Terror Wars directly contradict the history given in 'Green Hills.' Robinson broke canon. This passage needs to be edited out post haste.

There were no Terror Wars in the Future History.

Additionally: I just went back and reread the entire postscript - and I missed something. This further undermines Robinson's idea:

"I imagined Nehemiah Scudder as a backwoods evangelist who combined some of the features of John Calvin, Savonarola, Judge Rutherford and Huey Long. His influence was not national until after the death of Mrs. Rachel Biggs, an early convert who had the single virtue of being the widow of an extremely wealthy man who shared none of her religious myopia - she left Brother Scudder several millions of dollars with which to establish a television station. Shortly thereafter he teamed up with an ex-Senator from his home state; they placed their affairs in the hands of a major advertising agency and were on their way to fame and fortune. Presently they needed stormtroopers; they revived the Ku Klux Klan in everything but the name - sheets, passwords, grips and all. It was a 'good gimmick' once and it still served. Blood at the polls and blood in the streets, but Scudder won the election. The next election was never held." - R.A.H, _Revolt In 2100_, Postscript, page 335, second Baen paperback printing.

Spectre--

Yes, but the source for the novel was written in the early 50's and there are many other discrepancies between Variable Star and the official timeline.

You could well view this book as a bit down "tau" from bulk of the Future History. If Heinlein had published this book, much of the further History would have been rather different.

Revolt in 2100 was written in 1952, published in 1954. That puts it in the timeframe of the alleged Variable Star outline, so it's hard to argue that Heinlein was going to go in a different direction.

I'm also left wondering just how much was the outline and how much was Robinson's embellishments.

If Variable Star wasn't written by Heinlein, it was because he didn't want it written or discarded it as a bad idea.

Spider is a good writer and one of the finest men I've ever met. His persona as an author is at once down to Earth and of the utmost high class.

That said, he's not Heinlein, never was Heinlein and his writing bears no resemblance to Heinlein whatsoever. The marketing geeks who claim so are smoking crack.

I haven't, and don't intend, to ever read anything Heinlein didn't want written, that's been ghost written, even if by a really good author. We're looking at another Hubbard, here--book after book "discovered" and published after his death. It's ghoulish.

And this isn't the first time Spider broke canon, either. The intro he wrote for the last one (I read the intro) was rather telling, since it was full of Spider's anti-Republican politics, and without the grace and astuteness Heinlein tended to use in such commentary.

Now, I'd be fascinated to see RAH's notes compiled, a la Tolkien's "Book of Lost Tales," AS notes, for a study.

But that's not profitable enough, apparently.

And I agree that the excerpt above is transparent in its purpose and highly inaccurate. You see it on both sides, but the Left is especially fond of quoting "experts" on a subject, while denigrating the people who've actually been there or done that as far as the issue under debate. Very aristotelean. Very not-RAH.

Actually, I find the Bushiana quite in accord with Heinlein's thinking. He is chastising the Christian Nation for not just coming down with both feet on the perps, but instead diddling about and making things worse. This is totally consistent with the philosophy of the man who had his character field a comment of "Violence never settled anything" with the retort, in Starship Troopers, "No? Go talk to someone from Carthage."

It seems to be NOT the war Mr Robinson objects to, but the complete blundering through lack of toughness and directness to bomb the crap out of Saudi Arabia, from whence came the bombers and the money, and for playing with Iraq instead of getting the first job done, of wiping out Osama Ben Ladn. I think heinlein would have blown a raspberry at the Bushies for their martial incompetence, and that seems to be what Spider Robinson is doing. Try looking at that quote in that light and you may see it really is quite true to Heinlein.

For those who suggest that Spider departs from Heinlein’s anti-pacifist philosophy with his oblique diatribe on the Iraq conflict -- I think if you read Heinlein's works more carefully, you'll see that his characters often criticized wars that were fought without a proper purpose or wars that were bungled. This implies but doesn't prove that Heinlein had misgivings about wars that were fought stupidly. For instance, Lazarus Long criticizes WWI for being a useless exercise -- but volunteers, all the same, to fight to win the approval of his family. And Oscar Gordon criticizes the handling of the Vietnam "police action". Moreover, Heinlein never passes up the chance to criticize military bureaucracies and foolish politicians.

I'm not arguing that Heinlein was in any way a pacifist, but his characters seemed to put a premium on the reasoned use of force. I doubt if Heinlein would portray the Iraq conflict in a light that would be flattering to the generals and politicians who got us into this mess. But he would undoubtedly praise the selfless heroism of the troops who have to make the best out a hellish situation.

Also, it’s important not to mistake the philosophical expressions of any particular character for Heinlein’s personal beliefs. For instance, you’ll see that the attitudes of his characters towards marijuana are strikingly different in IWFNE and TSBTS. Did his philosophy change and evolve as he grew older? Probably. Could he have purposely had his characters express controversial opinions -- ones that he personally might not have held? Probably. Personally, I get tired of people claiming to know what Heinlein thought about any given subject. I suspect that Heinlein’s real attitudes were often more complex than most people would give him credit for…

And, again, I am not saying that Heinlein wouldn't appalled at the incompetence that has let this war drag on so long. What I'm saying is that Robinson is using Heinlein's name and reputation to make statements that Heinlein would probably never have made.

Heinlein, as you point out, was no fan of incompetence. But he also believed that a citizen owed a duty to his country in wartime, and one of those duties was to shut up and support the war effort, barring the most serious of moral objections. He made this quite clear in several letters to his mentor, John Campbell, when Campbell derided Roosevelt for Pearl Harbor and the other losses suffered early in the war.

So, there is ample evidence to say that Heinlein would never have written a book criticizing his government's conduct of an ongoing conflict. Indeed he did not do so during Viet-Nam, which was a cockup of far greater proportion (57,000 dead and decade to recover economically), for far less reason, than this one.

So, to have such a tirade published under his name cannot help to be, as I said, controversial.

I just finished reading Variable Star, without having known anything at all about the book in advance, other than that it was an unfinished Heinlein juvenille that Spider Robinson had completed.

In the Afterword, Robinson recounts that Heinlein's contribution to the book was only seven pages of single spaced notes and a few boxes of 3 x 5 cards, and that the notes didn't contain an ending for the book.

I found it very apparent to, as someone who's enjoyed all of Heinlein's other works that other than the first half of the first chapter, the story is no Heinlein.