heinleinblog

No, no, no. No one found a forgotten manuscript or outline (except the one Spider turned into a book).

But Entertainment Weekly is discussing a link between Heinlein and the hit television show Lost:

What we know about Dharma is incomplete at best, utterly bogus at worst. According to a choppy ”orientation film” found in the hatch, Dharma founders Gerald and Karen DeGroot established a research facility on the island in the 1970s to conduct experiments in meteorology, zoology, electromagnetism, psychology, and parapsychology — a dubious science that believes the brain houses mind-over-matter powers. (Think X-Men, Jedi Knights, and sci-fi author Robert Heinlein, whose 1941 short story Lost Legacy is about kids realizing their psychic potential under the tutelage of — COINCIDENCE ALERT! — Ambrose Bierce.) Our theory is that intentionally or not, the Dharma team pulled loose psychic powers from one of its test subjects — skip to No. 5 for the answer about who that might be — with disastrous results. How? With fear. Where? Where else, down in…

Hmmm … I’m going to have to reread LL tonight.

Hat tip: Michael Cassutt at alt.fan.heinlein.

[tags]lost,lost legacy,Ambrose Bierce[/tags]

Via a press release:

ABC Television has picked up IDT Entertainment’s drama series “Masters of Science Fiction,� featuring works from some of the most well known authors of science fiction, the network announced today. Negotiations are underway to include works from Isaac Asimov (author of “I Robot� and “Nightfall�), Ray Bradbury (“The Martian Chronicles,� “Fahrenheit 451�), Harlan Ellison (“A Boy and His Dog,� “Jeffty is Five�) and Robert Heinlein (“The Puppet Masters,� “Stranger in a Strange Land�). IDT Entertainment, in association with Industry Entertainment, will produce a minimum of four one-hour episodes.

I don’t see how anyone could fit “Stranger in a Strange Land” into a one-hour telecast, especially with commercials. I’ve always thought that “The Puppet Masters” would be a good novel to turn into a television series, perhaps on the SciFi Channel.

Garrison Keillor, of all people, wrote this (r.r.) for Salon:

As you see the price to be paid for flabbiness and immaturity and narcissism and bad manners and lousy grammar, you appreciate the military more and you ponder the consequences of its isolation in American life. Fewer and fewer of our leaders have military service in their résumés. They prefer to sweep blithely along from one comfy perch to the next, cushioned in self-regard, promoting, puffing, spinning, hitting their talking points, building their skill sets. They slip into public office without ever having been yelled at by a bullet-headed black man with sergeant’s stripes and made to stand up straight in 95-degree weather and march back and forth across a dusty field and not ask why. This is a shame.

The way to put military service back in the picture is to pass a constitutional amendment requiring that a candidate for president have at least two years of full-time military service. It would be a boon to the country, to the military and to the young. It would confirm the importance of service. The 42-year-old governor who discovers that he wants to be president would need to go down to the recruiting office and enlist. It’d be a big moment, like when Elvis went off to basic training. Think of Newt Gingrich climbing on a bus and going off to have his head shaved and his individuality taken away and rebuilt.

Keillor, who created “Prairie Home Companion” for public radio, conceded that he unashamedly dodged the draft during the Vietnam War. Heinlein, of course, was strongly opposed to the draft. He said a society that needed to conscript slave labor to do its fighting for it doesn’t deserve to survive.

I am wondering if Keillor has read Heinlein, specifically “Starship Troopers.”

I will note for the record that most presidents have been veterans. Including Nixon.

Hat tip to William Hughes in alt.fan.heinlein.

While there is precious little unpublished Heinlein material out there — Spider Robinson is fleshing out an extensive outline for a book RAH never started — I am comforted that many of Heinlein’s Children are not only still writing, they have a ton of already published work that I haven’t gotten around to reading.

I just finished reading Spider’s “Time Pressure” last night.

It was a fine read. It started out as typical Spider — all folksy and a little scattered. The book is mostly about relationships and the basic decency of most people (I know people exactly like the Bents). It has a lot of sex, some of it a little graphic.

Of course, there are Heinlein references sprinkled throughout the book. Although it may be hard for people grasp, Heinlein and Robinson come from the same intellactual and philosophical DNA, and it’s apparent in this book.

I especially appreciated Spider’s observation that reading science fiction is essentially a way to prepare for time travel. Cool.

Then about three fourths of the way through, the novel turns into a sequel to a Spider book I hadn’t read called “Mindkillers.”

I’ve read sequels before I’ve read the original. But I usually do it knowing it’s a sequel. There wasn’t any warning on the cover.

So this is going to make it hard for me to pick up and read “Mindkiller,” now that I know how it ends.

But as they say, the journey is at least as important as the destination. Spider is usually a real hoot to read and I’m sure that even though I know the plot to “Mindkiller,” Spider is sure to go many entertaining tangents.

[tags]Spider Robinson,Time Pressure,Robert Heinlein[/tags]

There’s the beginnings of a good discussion on that question in alt.fan.heinlein.

Commenters insist the book is shock full of examples of characters in the Federal Service without being in the military. However, James Giford writes (PDF format) that there is no specific example of someone being able to earn Citizenship except through uniform-wearing military service. Gifford cites examples of clerks, technicians, scientists who clearly were “civilians” even though they worked for the military. And the novel clearly states that civilians did not earn the right to vote.

I am going to have to re-read the book and keep a highlighting pen handy. But Gifford seems to make a few good points here. It seems to be that there are examples of people who could not serve as fighting soliders who were instead given jobs within the military. That doesn’t imply they didn’t get uniforms or weren’t made subject to military discipline. Again, a critical reread on my part is necessary.

It’s an ipmporant question because the premise of the book is that only veterans were allowed to vote. It’s this premise that leads critics to incorrectly conclude that Heinlein was a “fascist.” It’s important to remember that Heinlein wasn’t necessarily advocating anything other than government comprised of people who understood and were accustomed to taking responsibility. Heinlein saw that personality trait among those who proudly served their country in war. There’s nothing fascist about that.

This charge was made in the 1960s, when anything to the right of center was dismissed as reactionary and being in the military meant you were a baby burner. Political opinions forged in that crucible do not die easilly. That is why this specific slur against Heinlein refuses to die.

NOTE: Of course, I might have to wait until I finish up Charles Sheffield’s “The Nimrod Hunt.” I haven’t figured out who the heros and villains are yet. And I have been wanting to delve into Spider’s “Time Pressue,” which I found in a box after I moved.

NOTE 2: I read the book again tonight. It’s still moving and thought provoking. And I used a highligher to mark every single passage in which the nature of Federal Service is discussed. While enlistees often though non-combat jobs, and enlistees who wanted to fight often found themselves serving in non-combat roles, there is NO PASSAGE anywhere that says you could enlist in Federal Service and be considered anything other than military.

So, I think we can put to bed the myth that it’s a myth that only military veterans had the right to vote in “Starship Troopers.”

An article on a Web site based in “occupied Iraq” hauls out the tired old argument that Robert Heinlein was a fascist.

How long has it been since you watched Starship Troopers? Perhaps you should again. I caught some of it last week on television, and I was surprised at how reality has outpaced it. I don’t mean the space travel and the giant bugs; I mean the abandonment of democracy and dutiful dissent and the remodeling of America into a martial society. The bugs, of course, were never bugs anyway. They’re the eternal, dehumanized other that needs only extermination. (The original title of 2002’s giant spider movie Eight Legged Freaks was “Arac Attack.”)

Paul Verhoeven’s film is smart enough to satirize Robert Heinlein’s rather straight-ahead authoritarianism (for instance, citizenship is a privilege of those who sign up for “federal service”), though satire seems a hard thing to grok for those who were disgusted by the story of “Hitler Youth in love.”

Besides expounding principles of governance which could arguably be described as fascist, Heinlein was also – again, arguably – a student of the occult, and a familiar of the principals of the Babalon Working: Jack Parsons, L Ron Hubbard and “the Scarlet Woman,” Marjorie Cameron.

How typical of the left to equate anything military with fascism.

In an example of guilt by association, the writer goes on to link Heinlein to the writer of the white supremacist manifesto “The Turner Diaries.”

I’ll do the guy a favor: Next time you want to leap to conclusions, you might want to mention Heinlein’s short story “Free Men,” which is about a bunch of red-neck gun nut survivalists who attempt to overthrow the legitimate government of the United States.

[tags]heinlein,fascism,turner diaries[/tags]

Via Sci-Fi.com: Babylon 5’s Katsulas Dies

Andreas Katsulas, the character actor known to SF fans as G’Kar on Babylon 5 and a familiar face from Star Trek and other SF&F TV shows, died Feb. 13 of lung cancer in Los Angeles, his agent, Donna Massetti, confirmed to SCI FI Wire. He was 59.

Katsulas, a longtime resident of Los Angeles, played the Narn ambassador G’Kar for five years in the syndicated cult TV series Babylon 5, starting in 1993. He reprised the role in subsequent Babylon 5 telefilms.

Katsulas was also no stranger to Trek fans, playing Romulan Cmdr. Tomalak in Star Trek: The Next Generation. His last appearance in a Trek series was as a Vissian captain on an episode of Enterprise.

He also was the one-armed killer of Richard Kimball’s wife in the Harrison Form movie version of The Fugitive.”

He was a damn fine actor … the best on the set of B5.

A message from the Heinlein Society:

Dear fellow THS members,

I hope all is well with each of you. I’m writing because I have an
urgent need for help with an upcoming blood drive.

We will be running the Robert Heinlein ‘Pay it Forward’ Blood Drive at
Minicon for the second year. The convention is located in Minneapolis
and takes place over Easter weekend, April 14 – 16, with the drive
being on Saturday the 15th. I’m looking for volunteers to help with
the drive. It’s a great opportunity to get together
with other THS members and to tell others about the society while
helping to save lives.

If you are available to help for one or more days, or you know someone
reliable who can, please let me know as soon as possible. We plan to
staff the table from about 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.

Please don’t let this drive fail for lack of staffing!

Thanks for paying it forward.

Regards,

Mike Sheffield
Blood Drive Chair

[tags]blood drive,minicon,pay it forward,heinlein[/tags]

The author of this article and I have something in common:

Emboldened by boredom, I decided to venture around the wall that separated the kid’s books from the library proper. As fate would have it, the science fiction paperbacks were just around that corner and I pulled out three or four before a cover caught my eye. It was Heinlein’s Friday, the one with the Michael Whelan illustration of the buxom butt-kicking sex-kitten on the cover. I read the first 50 pages while leaning against the shelves and ignored the raised eyebrows of the librarian as she scanned it and my card. In the intervening 25-ish years, I’ve read it 20 times at least. This story of a genetically engineered galactic courier is like comfort food to me. Despite my adult interpretations (and, honestly, misgivings about) of some of the larger Heinlein canon, I own every last book the man wrote. Plus, I can’t turn my back on Friday. She was my first — and best.

Friday did it for me, too. Everyone once in a while I see a model or actress whose face and figure remind me of the lovely Friday.

From Spider Robinson’s Web site:

I’ve delivered the novel VARIABLE STAR by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson to editor Pat LoBrutto at Tor Books, more than two weeks before deadline; hardcover publication is scheduled for September 2006. Based on an outline Robert created in November 1955 (when I was 7), it will be his 53rd book, and my 33rd. Eleanor Wood of Spectrum Literary Agency represents both of us. My new friend David Crosby, a serious Heinlein fan, is presently composing a tune for some lyrics in Chapter One called “On The Way To The Stars.�

Being privileged to write this book has been the greatest honour and the most terrifying challenge of my career. Its creation has been a thrilling and deeply moving experience. I received nothing but support and encouragement from Robert’s family, friends and fans. I am very happy with the way VARIABLE STAR turned out. I think Robert is, too. And I hope you will be.

Damn you, Spider. DAMN YOU! I must now wait six months for new Heinlein.

Imagine being addicted to happy pills. Imagine these are good happy pills that make you smarter. Imagine they ran out of happy pills. Imagine someone made some more happy pills, but they are keeping them locked up for no good reasons for six months.

That’s the situation in which I find myself.

Actually, six months is also too long to have to wait for new Spider Robinson as well ….