heinleinblog

The news:

Author Robert Asprin died in his New Orleans home on Thursday at the age of 61. No cause of death has been announced.

“Bob passed away quietly in his home in New Orleans, LA. He has been in good spirits and working on several projects, and was set to be the Guest of Honor at a major science fiction convention that very week,” said his family in a statement.

Asprin is best know for his fantasy novels including ‘Myth Adventures of Aahz and Skeeve.’ He also co-wrote the ‘Time Scout’ novels with Linda Evans.

A blogger evokes Heinlein — and interestingly, the Bible — to defend the 2nd Amendment:

Most of us are aware that the heroic actions of a brave woman at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado a few days ago saved the lives of perhaps scores, or even hundreds, of people. However, her bravery would not have counted for much had she not been armed.

[snip]

The right and, yes, obligation of personal self-defense is entrenched in both Christian and American tradition. People who would deny citizens the right to arm themselves are either naively ignorant or deliberately duplicitous. As Robert Heinlein said, “An armed society is a polite society.”

America’s Founding Fathers agreed with Heinlein. Thomas Jefferson said, “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” He also said, “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

You can’t mention  Arthur C. Clark without mentioning Heinlein (and some other dude who’s a tad overrated in IMHO)

British sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke turns 90 on Dec. 16. Clarke penned the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was adapted into Stanley Kubrick’s big-screen freaky fav.

Clarke is also the last surviving member of the “Big Three” of science fiction authors (the other two members of the geeky coterie were Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein).

I’m not surprised that libertarian-leaning Reason magazine seems to ‘get’ Robert A. Heinlein:

Heinlein venerated the armed forces, most notoriously in his 1959 novel Starship Troopers, which celebrated an elite military order. Just two years later, he was publishing the counterculture classic Stranger in a Strange Land, with its simultaneously beatific, sexy, and heroic vision of Martian-inspired communal living. A rich mix of bohemian and straight-arrow values, Heinlein’s unique take on American individualism made him the bridge between such disparate ’60s icons as Barry Goldwater and Charles Manson.

Heinlein’s novels and short stories reflected the rough-hewn anti-government but pro-defense message associated with Goldwater and the conservative movement he sparked. At the same time, his writings exuded the communal desire to live in blissful togetherness, ignoring the repressive sexual and religious mores of bourgeois America. With a libertarian vision that appealed to individualists of both the left and the right, Heinlein not only set the template for the American 1960s but helped create the looser, hipper, more pluralist world of the decades since.

The previous post was about a review that suggested Heinlein was a fuddy-duddy sexist. Now he’s “helped create the looser, hipper, more pluralist world of the decades since.”

[tags]Heinlein,Reason magazine,libertarian[/tags]

Dwayne A. Day’s July 2 article for The Space Review:

With these concepts in mind, it is worth looking at a rather amazing memo that Heinlein wrote in 1945 advocating a rigorous American missile and space program. Heinlein wrote it soon after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. He argued that the bomb had changed the world and he believed that intercontinental rockets would also have a major effect on warfare. He wanted the United States to get out in front of this new development like it had with the bomb.

There are many interesting aspects to the memo, but what is unique about it is that it occupies a point precisely in the middle of the overlap between science fiction and current reality. Although Heinlein thought that he was discussing the world as it was-or was about to be-his own interests in rockets and spaceflight were biasing his projections. He was advocating solutions to current problems that were far more fantastical than practical. Heinlein was certainly not alone in this. Many people looked at the atomic bomb and made dire predictions that fortunately proved false. But Heinlein believed in rocketry and spaceflight so fervently that it led him to conclusions that were not well-grounded in the actual technical realities of his day. That is worth considering today, six decades later, when Heinlein is still held in such high esteem as a prophet for the NewSpace movement.

I am continuously amazed at how RAH is revered as a guru in the worlds of fiction, politics and science.

[tags]Heinlein,Robert A. Heinlein,space flight,rockets,Space Review[/tags]

From a letter tothe editor in the LA Times:Re “L.A.’s Nostradamus,” Opinion, July 1

I confess to being more than a bit amused by the glowing tribute to one of the world’s greatest science fiction writers, Robert Heinlein. Sadly, it shows just how much the truth can be twisted and omitted when the mood fits. Just one example of how far California is from Heinlein’s view of how free people should live is the insane gun laws that have been adopted. Heinlein firmly believed that “an armed society is a polite society” and felt strongly that no good could come from barring individuals from the right to own and carry arms.

Heinlein also was disgusted by the use of race for promotion or consideration in society. The hair pulling and tantrums of the loony left would have only served to sadden this great man. I find it troubling that just as the left has reinvented the stars of communism (Hugo Chavez, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and the like) it is now trying to reinvent such icons as Heinlein to fit its view of the world. For a more accurate view of how Heinlein might have seen California, one should read all of his books as well as “Grumbles from the Grave,” published by his widow after his death.

KEITH H. MCGRATH

Pueblo, Colo.

From fredericksburg.com, has a long and glowing article about RAH written by National Reviews’s John J. Miller. The article focuses on the stuff about Heinlein conservatives would like, and pretty much glosses over the stuff about Heinlein the liberals like. There’s apparently a longer article you can get if you subscribe to National Review.

This Star Trek casting news is Heinlein-related, I guess, since he was a fan of the show:

Things are apparently moving forward quickly with Star Trek XI — IESB.net is reporting that at the L.A. junket for Transformers, screenwriter Roberto Orci told the roundtablers to expect some major announcements (presumably about casting) at this year’s ComicCon. He said the casting process is going on right now, and that some significant decisions are going to be made soon. He also told the journalists that the film is scheduled to begin shooting in November. Up to now, there has been nothing more than educated (and uneducated) guesses about who could possibly lead this thing. Names that have been bandied about include Matt Damon, Gary Sinise, Jennifer Garner and James McAvoy, but nothing solid has developed.

[tags]Star Trek.movie,Comics-Con,JJ Abrams[/tags]

Anyone remember Paul Lemmen from alt.fan.heinlein? The Fayetteville Observer has an article on him:

Paul Lemmen says he is a retired Air Force general, a veteran of combat in Vietnam and years of intelligence work.

Former friends say he has also told people that he was an officer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army who cut a deal that landed him in the United States.

Both versions of his life story raise questions. Air Force records provide no evidence that Lemmen was a brigadier general. Lemmen denies ever connecting himself to the IRA.

But despite huge holes in his stories, Lemmen managed to talk his way into a contracting job in Iraq. He spent part of his time there hanging around Special Forces soldiers from Fort Bragg, getting close enough that he flew back for the funeral of one who was killed in action.

Overall, Lemmen traveled to Iraq at least four times working for Blue Iraq, a communications and information technology company with military contracts, according to Lemmen and e-mails from Ryan Lackey, the owner of Blue Iraq.

Jaimie Brehler, a Durham-based investigator who checks out military imposters, said that Lemmen was the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. Chris Grey, a CID spokesman, said only that the command started an investigation of a contractor posing as a military officer in August 2005 and completed the probe in January. No results have been announced from that investigation.

It is a violation of federal law to wear military decorations without authorization.

The article mentions several a.f.h. regulars.

Hey, don’t take my word for it. Read what the New York Times’ William Safire has to say in this column about the language of the Blogopshere:

So that was the coinage, right? Wait — a late entry comes in from Matt Rudary of the Heinlein Society, which has a concordance of the works of the pioneering sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein. In his 1947 short story “Space Jockey,� he named the third stage of a rocket to the moon the Moonbat, and in another story a year later, “The Black Pits of Luna,� one Heinlein character was the scoutmaster of the Moonbat Patrol.

[tags]William Safire,Moonbats,The Black Pits of Luna,Space Jockey,Heinlein[/tags]