Archive for July, 2009

Heinlein rises from the grave (and finds himself in good literary company)

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 But 99 years later a collection of unpublished essays and stories came out.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.

Heinlein on national health care: TANSTAAFL

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.