heinleinblog

Israpundit invokes Heinlein to argue against leaving Iraq to defend itself against an insurgency:

We see; Saddam Hussein and his murderous sons were stabilizing forces. Well, Robert Heinlein pointed out that concentration camps are quite peaceful (because the inmates lack the means of resistance).

At the risk of being accused of being too self-referential, I am linking to my own post about a blogging controversy in Orange County, Calif. There IS a Heinlein connection: The blogger uses the pseudonym “Jubal.”

According to the author of the column I commented upon: “The name Jubal is, significantly, drawn from Stranger in a Strange Land, the novel by sci-fi writer and right-wing kook Robert Heinlein.”

Charming. It lands the writer in the category of “uninformed.”

Still, one would think an anonymous blogger/Heinlein fan would choose “Simon Jester” as a pseudonym.

Discovered at this site.

I should point out that not only is this a new Heinlein novel, but also a new Spider Robinson novel, which is something that also makes me shout out in glee.

I would kill to know something about the plot.

I have always thought that some of Heinlein’s material might be suited for comics, Still, I’m not a comic based even partially on the Starship Troopers movie is good news.

Although some of the artwork—especially the bugs—look to be very influenced by director Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 Starship Troopers film adaptation, Lee said that the movie didn’t inspire the comics. “[The inspiration was really] the [television] series Roughnecks, which was an amalgamation of the … film and book,” he said. “For source material, however, it was [the novel]. I wanted the book and the graphic novel to be as close as possible.”

Verhoeven’s movie is absolutely loathed among true Heinlein fans. Roughnecks had some grudging admirers. So there is a possibility this comic book might not be bad.

Heinlein Society member and alt.fan.heinhlein regular Tian Harter is running for the U.S. Senate from California. He’s running on the Green Party slate.

Now this is my kind of lady:

It’s super-librarian Nancy Pearl, of course. She writes the popular series “Book Lust� and “Now Read This� as well as commentary on literary matters for magazines, newspapers, broadcasting and the internet (www.nancypearl.com). Nancy Pearl appears at 7 p.m. on April 10, in a special evening at the Fairview Park Public Library.

[snip]

Pearl’s prominence in the field led to her winning the Women’s National Book Association Award in 2004 and regular timeslots on National Public Radio and Seattle-area cable television. The “Book Lustâ€? franchise, with its recommendations on volumes in different genres and specialties – from Walter Mosely to Robert Heinlein to railroad history to Sri Lanka – is now spun off into diaries and wall calendars.

Heinlein took special care to keep librarians happy. He knew their recomendations, especially to young readers, can mean future loyal readers.

Myself, I discovered Heinlein in junior high school thanks to the cover to the paperback edition of “Friday.”

Talk about book lust.

Heinlein is invoked in this review of Michael J. Cavallaro’s Cybernetica:

From Ursula K. LeGuin to Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard to Phillip K. Dick, there is a broad array of ideological and sociological discussion at play in most science fiction (whether conscious or not). In contrast to the many tales of robots run amok, Issac Asimov calmly interposed his three laws of robotics, arguing that fears of killer robots (or HAL, for that matter) were little more than the contemporary version of Frankenstein’s monster or the ancient tale of the Golem. Regardless, science fiction has always served as a vehicle for displaying our culture’s fears (and occasionally its loftier aspirations as well).

Beings with artificial intelligence often were characters in Heinlein novels, but he never really got into the social or political ramifications, as I recall.