heinleinblog

The evidence is clear:

Via The Register:

Promoters in Las Vegas this week vied to offer the wildest ideas for a new super-fast mass transit link between the desert gambling mecca and Los Angeles. Plans were presented for a “railless” train which would fly through magnetic rings mounted atop pillars and a “sunlight bullet expressway” employing “large air-cushioned hovercraft”.

[snip]

Fans of the great Robert Heinlein will recognise some of these ideas. The late sci-fi master wrote long ago of America-spanning “road cities” powered by rooftop solar panels, and also of zooming airborne trains which would soar between tunnels bored through hills (beginning of Starman Jones).

Cool.

I was utterly unimpressed with the last Riverworld project that appeared on the SciFi channel. This clip gives me the impression the channel’s second attempt will be a little more faithful to the spirit of the series of science fiction novels written by Peoria’s own Philip Jose Farmer:

Cross posted to Peoria Pundit.

From the libertarian-minded Nolan Chart:

Robert Heinlein wrote in his novel, Friday (Ballantine Books, New York, 1982, p.242), “Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms…but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than a riot.”

I strongly agree with Heinlein, although I think he made one small mistake in his comment. Rudeness is not just a symptom of a dying culture when it involves a “lack of consideration for others in minor matters”. It also involves a lack of consideration for others in major matters.

Take, for instance, the case of South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson who so famously shouted out, “You lie!”, in the middle of President Obama’s address to Congress a little more than a week ago. Wilson wanted to dramatically make the point that Obama’s proposed policies encourage providing public health care for illegal aliens, contrary to what the President himself said. Unfortunately for Wilson, his point has been completely lost as a result of his outburst. Scan Google News or nearly any major newspaper or magazine’s article on the subject, and you’ll see scathing reviews about the comment itself, about his censure before Congress, about how the comment was racially motivated, and about a score of other points.

From PNTOneline:

If you could choose any three fictional characters to come alive and meet you, who would they be? Lazarus Long (from science fiction author Robert Heinlein) because he was presented in story form as the longest-lived human being at 4,000-plus years. His perspective would be interesting to explore. And Mike Callahan and Jake Stonebender (from author Spider Robinson) come out of the same story. One’s an alien, and one’s a human, but both work to improve the lot of human kind on an individual basis.

From Reason

More often, though, the conversion stories include unplanned encounters with books: the writings of Ayn Rand, Robert Heinlein, and Robert Anton Wilson; moldy old Reader’s Digest versions of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom; used-bookstore copies of Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty; unsolicited Laissez-Faire Books catalogs.

<y two cents: I can vouch for this. I devoured Heinlein as a teenager and a young adult. Burt I grew up in a working-class household. Eventually, Heinlein’s basically libertarian values won out and I rejected knew-jerk libertarianism. I still lean toward the liberal among other libertarians.

From the Telegraph, a survey of authors whose lost manuscripts get published after their death:

Sometimes posthumous publication is controversial, because no one can be sure that the author wanted the work to see the light of day. This includes Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse, Jack Kerouac’s first novel The Sea Is My Brother and Dr Seuss’s Daisy-Head Mayzie. Robert Heinlein tried to destroy all copies of his first novel, For Us, The Living, but made the mistake of leaving a manuscript in a friend’s garage. Mark Twain told his brother to “shove a letter in the stove” because he didn’t want any “absurd literary remains” published after he was “planted”. But 99 years later a collection of unpublished essays and stories came out. Vladimir Nabokov’s son defied the wishes of his father to bring out The Original of Laura. And Douglas Adams’s The Salmon of Doubt, put together from scraps of writing he left behind, led some fans to think it was clearly stuff he would not have wanted subjected to public scrutiny.

From Huffington Post:

Rose-colored glasses screen out the responsibility that comes with freedom and the power to make decisions. Problem: there is no such thing as responsibility-free living. Robert Heinlein said it in one word: Tanstaafl! (”There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.”) If you smoke cigarettes or weigh 400 pounds and get “free” health care, someone is paying for the extra resources you consume.

Now that you are free of newspeak, scotoma, and see clearly, you can grasp the probable results from ObamaCare, from adding a Government Insurance option to the mind-numbing morass of insurance choices and limitless paperwork.

I seem to recall old Doc Johnson from TSBTS taking chickens for payment.

Crossposted from Peoria Pundit. I must note that RAH dedicated Stranger in a Strange Land to Philip Jose Farmer.

Peoria Journal Star writer Jerry Klein today described Philip Jose Farmer:

“For all his international fame, he was one of the most humble people I ever knew. He wasn’t exactly celebrated in Peoria, however, like the prophet being without honor in his own country. He had the most incredible imagination. I hope that what he is experiencing now is wonderful beyond his wildest dreams.”

I agree with everything Mr. Klein said. But I wouldn’t use the word “humble.” Humility didn’t become Phil Farmer, who died in his Peoria home at age 91. Phil knew damn well that he was a giant in the field of science fiction. He was resigned to being that prophet who isn’t recognized in his home town. But there are too many stories out of Phil visiting libraries and book stores and re-arranging the shelves to give HIS books better exposure to believe he was “humble.”

Farmer was by all accounts pleasant and generous man. I know this because he kindly welcomed me into his home back in the summer of 1986, when I was an intern the Journal Star. I had tried to get boss Ed Lembeck to agree to let me do a story on Farmer. He was less than enthused. I got the impression the PJS administered Phil Farmer in small doses. After all, he wrote about, you know, s-e-x.

But my thinking at the time — and now for that matter — is when you have a creative genius who is also an accomplished writer living in your town, a smart newspaper ought to get the guy words in the paper as often as possible.

So, I called Mr. Farmer and said I’d like to interview him for a story that might or might not appear in the Peoria Journal Star. He agreed. Twenty years later, I now realize he knew damn well the PJS wasn’t to a run a just because interview with him written by an intern who was obviously a fan boy.

So one Saturday, I went over to his home and interviewed. I think it lasted an hour. I showed me his books and the modest desk where he did his writing. And the monstrous painting of him with a one of his creations sitting on his shoulder. He told me stories of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. He talked about Robert Heinlein. And Issac Asimov. And he told storied about John W. Campbell, the legendary editor of Astounding. We talked about how he borrowed Kurt Vonnegut’s fictional science fictiona writer Kilgore Trout as a pen name for “Venus on the Half Shell.”

He talked about the trends in science fiction, including cyber punk. He described himself as probably the first cyberpunk. I didn’t see it then, and I still don’t.

I started to write it, but never finished, knowing that there wasn’t a news peg that made it newsworthy. And since blogs hadn’t been invented …

I did keep the micro cassette tape, but after too many moved to count, it was lost. Too bad, because I would love to put that on the Internet now.

I didn’t see him again until August 2002 when Lakeview Library held the 50th Anniversary Celebration of The Lovers. It was apparent that Farmer was not really doing well, and I expected to not see any new work from him.

And I didn’t.

And unless there is an unpublished novel somewhere, I won’t.

Yes, it is FAR too long between posts. I’m going to have to establish some sort of official posting schedule,  for this and other blogs.