Ignoring the Debt You Owe Heinlein
Posted on 27 August 2010
Over at Tor.com and SfSignal, there is some internetual (note useful new word!) discussion of Robert A. Heinlein and his legacy.
The ingratitude that hangs like a cloud of phosgene gas over the discussions I find as ugly and appalling as I do incomprehensible.
One writer opines, for example, that Heinlein was both a pro-feminist and a sexist pig. Me, because I harbor no illusions about what feminism truly stands for, I see no irony in that. I note that Hugh Hefner, pornographer, also was a pro-feminist and a sexist pig — this is the jarring combination is inevitable as long as modesty, femininity, chastity and fidelity are seen by feminists as enemies of equality for women rather than allies. Heinlein and Hefner perhaps sincerely believed in liberating women from the shackles of monogamy, and surely sincerely wish to liberate them all the way into a harem.
The topic is interesting. Nonetheless, the tone of ingratitude and supercilious condescension falling from the raised eyebrows and sneering lips of the leftward-leaning half of the commentators deters me from delving further into their conversation.
Heinlein was bold and defiant in insisting, for example, that the Jewish character would not be removed from ROCKET SHIP GALILEO. Here is a quote from one of his letters:
I have deliberately selected a boy of Scotch-English pioneer ancestry, a boy whose father is a German immigrant, and a boy who is American Jewish. Having selected this diverse background they are then developed as American boys without reference to their backgrounds. You may run into an editor who does not want one of the young heroes to be Jewish. I will not do business with such a firm. The ancestry of the three boys is a “must” and the book is offered under those conditions. My interest was aroused in this book by the opportunity to show to kids what I conceive to be Americanism. The use of a diverse group . . . is part of my intent; it must not be changed. . . . I am as disinterested as a referee but I want to get over an object lesson in practical democracy.
This (1947) was when Heinlein had no books published, and he did not have the clout or stature to make such a demand. It was a matter of pure principle and he could have ruined his career by swimming against the tide of the times.
Such principle, such idealism, such pure guts in a profession as uncertain and underfunded as ours is not just rare, it is heroic.
The only other writer I happen to have noticed making such principled stands is Ursula K. LeGuin. There are others, to be sure — please let none be offended that I cannot at once bring them to mind, for the nature of such heroes, if they are honest, is that they do not draw attention to themselves. I do not count Harlan Ellison being willing to go the wall for the “principle” of not removing the hyphen from mother-fucker, a word that graces his prose. Mere striking of poses is the opposite of taking a stand on principle.
Heinlein’s bravery kicked open doors otherwise nailed shut, and everyone in the SFF field owes him. Have you written, or have you read, a SF book with a Jewish hero, or a woman, a Black, or a homosexual? Heinlein was there first, and that book might have been aborted had he not blazed the trail, and made such defiance of the norms of the time seem normal.
Instead of paying the debt he owes to Heinlein’s bravery, one of these jeering, gargoyle-souled commenters (I prefer not to do him the honor of mentioning his name) sneers at him and call Heinlein’s love of American melting-pot inclusiveness “creepy.”
The commenter further complains that there are no disabled people or gays enrolled at the military academy in the Heinlein juvenile SPACE CADET — even though there is a wheelchair bound vet in the opening scene of TROOPERS, where it is explicitly stated that cripples may enlist, despite any physical disqualifications; and even though practically the first gays portrayed sympathetically in SF was in Heinlein’s TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE.
The commenter then sniffs that Heinlein did not include girls at the military space academy. This, even thought Heinlein was the first — do you hear me? — the first SF writer who put females at the helms of spacewarships in his justly famous STARSHIP TROOPERS.
He then pouts that there are no Muslims in the Heinlein novel SPACE CADET, even though there is a Muslim character very sympathetically portrayed in STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND.
The complaint seems to be, not that Heinlein was not the most inclusive, most diverse, most politically correct advocate for bigotry-free cosmopolitan universality in all SF writing, but that he did not somehow cram all of his messages into one slim juvenile in 1947-48.
The difficulty, even the folly, of having homosexuals in military boarding school for boys, or the stupid absurdity of including persons physically unable to perform the tasks military service required, seems not to touch the reality-proof brain of this particular commenter.
SPACE CADETS, for example, was published before the Korean War. A writer in that year (1948) would have had to spend the entire book justifying such a character, explaining at length before it would seem, to that generation, a reasonable science-fictional extrapolation.
There are even some honest folk of today who judge that the difficulties involved with integrating homosexuals or disabled in the military have not or perhaps can not be overcome. Heinlein was too good a writer to fall into the Leftist non-thought trap of supposing that merely because something should be done, it can be done, and at no cost, with no drawbacks.
Of course, in an SF book we can always imagine creepy sex-drive suppression drugs to prevent fraternization with the ranks of either sex. Likewise, incorporating cripples as pilots — perhaps quadriplegics wired as cyborgs into the ship’s control system would be an interesting if also creepy SF answer — but this also introduces difficulties in the plot and theme that would have to be answered in the plot and theme. But in either case, this would almost require an entirely different storyline and theme from SPACE CADET.
No offense, but the writer could not also stick a giant man-eating ten-eyestalked mind-reading dragonoid from planet Delgon into the midshipman class of that book as a minor character without changing what the book was about. (For those of you who forget, SPACE CADET took on the rather adult theme of how to keep the peace in an age of atomic weapons — a topic that some grown-ups, including grown-ups in Washington and Moscow, in those years had not yet faced.)
Some ideas, no matter how mindlessly loyal to the politically correct bullshit of the current fashion season, are bad storytelling ideas for a given story, especially a story written to last beyond the current fashion season.
I call it a “fashion season” because some of these ultra-new modern pieties, such as condescending concern for mascot Muslims, could not even have been imagined by the most progressive Progressive of 1948.
In 1948, the break up of the mighty Ottoman Empire was still within living memory. Thinking of Turks as oppressed would be like this generation called Russians oppressed. (Compare the time interval between 48 and 23 to the interval between now and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.) Pigeonholing the Muslims as an “oppressed minority” during years when Jim Crow was alive and well in the South, and the military was still segregating companies by race, and some real people were suffering real rather than imaginary injustices, when, in fact, there was not a single law in any jurisdiction in America denying any Islamic any Civil Right routinely being denied Blacks, and when the KKK were killing more Catholics than they were Islamics — such nonsense would have been somewhat off the mark, and unhelpful if not counterproductive to the Progressive Cause. (Not to those that have a Cause rather than follow a series of Fads, that is.)
The ingratitude of such retrograde Progressives toward their boldest, best champion (at least, the boldest, best champion in the wee SFF corner of the globe) sickens me: I cannot stomach it. I cannot read it. I have unwisely vaunted of my stoicism and Vulcan dispassion in times past: well, it has failed me here. A palpable nausea overcomes me when my eye falls on such words.
So, rather than make any further contribution to or detraction from that conversation, or paying it any further mind at all, allow me to repeat an article I wrote some years ago on this same topic, the ingratitude toward Heinlein — still timely, as nothing (apparently) has improved since then. If anything, it has gotten worse.
(It is a topic I touched on briefly in my recent comments here.)
Article below.
————————————————————————————
This is from a wikipedia article on Robert Heinlein’s STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, which I here quote at length:
To modern readers, some statements in the book may seem to convey a sense of misogyny or homophobia. For example:
…[Jill] had explained homosexuality, after Mike had read about it and failed to grok — and had given him rules for avoiding passes; she knew that Mike, pretty as he was, would attract such. He had followed her advice and had made his face more masculine, instead of the androgynous beauty he had had. But Jill was not sure that Mike would refuse a pass, say, from Duke — fortunately Mike’s male water brothers were decidedly masculine, just as his others were very female women. Jill suspected that Mike would grok a ‘wrongness’ in the poor in-betweeners anyhow — they would never be offered water.
Another passage concerns the mail that the man from Mars receives:
After looking over a bushel or so of Mike’s first class mail Jubal set up a list of categories: … G. Proposals of marriage and propositions not quite so formal … Jill brought a letter, category “G,” to Jubal. More than half of the ladies and other females (plus misguided males) who supplied this category included pictures alleged to be of themselves; some left little to the imagination, as did the letters themselves in many cases. This letter [from a woman] enclosed a picture which managed not only to leave nothing to the imagination, but started over by stimulating fresh imaginings.
One critic writes:
These days the “heresy” is centered more on the characters’ provincial attitudes towards gay men (“poor in-betweeners” whose “wrongness” denies them water-kinship) and all women (“Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it’s at least partly her own fault,” Jill says to Michael, when instructing him not to defend her too strenuously against such an assault). (Tasha Robinson, “Humanity, through a glass brightly”)
However, these passages both deal with the prudish character Jill, who is used as a dramatic foil for Mike and Jubal’s less parochial views. A major thread of the story is Smith’s gradual persuasion of Jill to grow beyond her inhibitions, embrace her previously suppressed exhibitionistic nature, and learn to understand other people’s sexuality (e.g., Duke’s interest in pornography). The passage about the letter deals with Jill’s inclination to shield Mike from it, and she is overruled by the wiser Jubal (additionally, the “misguided males” could be misguided only in that they are unaware that Mike is strictly heterosexual). The quote concerning “wrongness” in the “poor in-betweeners” likewise portrays the unenlightened character Jill’s speculation about what Mike would think of homosexuality, not Mike’s actual attitudes.
On the other hand, just because some of these negative views of homosexuality occur in the thoughts and words of the characters, rather than coming from the authorial voice, that doesn’t mean that they were not intended to express Heinlein’s views. As Brooks Peck put it, “Heinlein loved to pontificate through the mouths of his characters,” and Jubal is clearly often acting as a mouthpiece for Heinlein’s own views. Also, the remark about “misguided males” is part of the book’s exposition, not its dialogue or the representation of a character’s thoughts.
Later chapters in the novel, depicting the workings of the Church of All Worlds, in fact have a number of references, some more obvious than others, that the sexual bonding that occurs between water-brothers is not limited to male/female. Ben, who has become a water brother but who has not received the training that normal church members receive, comments at one point that two men are kissing, but nothing about the act seems out of place or unmasculine. By the novel’s end, it seems to promote a kind of general bisexuality, implying that sexual bonding can occur between any water-brothers, regardless of gender. This is, however, not directly stated so much as implied, and other interpretations are possible.
End of Quote. My comments follow:
It is safe to assume that this passage was not written by someone on the conservative side of the political spectrum.
The mere fact that “modern readers” might find Heinlein “misogynistic or homophobic” is a sufficient clue that we are dealing with a Leftist archly dropping the hint that Heinlein has committed thoughtcrime. “Modern readers” is a code word for Leftist, who congratulate themselves on being the vanguard and inheritors of the future; “misogyny” means not being a politically correct feminist; “homophobia” (a technical term meaning a psychopathological fear of being alone) is here used to mean not being a politically correct pervertarian.
The problem is, of course, that Heinlein is a pervertarian: the greatest and clearest voice for sexual liberation, for the trashheaping of all sexual mores, comes from Heinlein, and, specifically, from this very book: a satire where a man from Mars shows how all human social conventions concerning sexuality and religion are bogus and uproariously absurd.
But Heinlein’s unambiguous support for libertarian, libertine, and sexual liberation in all its forms, is insufficient for the thought police of the modern age. The book is clearly and explicitly pro-fornication and pro-pornography. It is filled with hostility and mockery toward marriage, fidelity, or other norms of sexual behavior.
The book strongly hints at being pro-homosexual: there being a scene where Ben Caxton is sternly criticized for fleeing from the naked man trying to kiss him. The gentle tone with which the author discusses homosexuality, calling it a ‘wrongness’, but otherwise passing over it as if it were merely a mildly risible personality quirk, was about as strong and clear a pro-pervertarian message as could be managed or imagined in the time when the book was written. Remember that STRANGERS was penned before the Viet Nam war.
This book, indeed, was one of the great victories of the Culture Wars, bringing the norms and values (such as they are) of the counterculture to the forefront of American popular ideas. This book therefore should be reverenced by the sexual liberators, counterculturalists, and pervertarians everywhere: it is their Gospel, their clearest and strongest enunciation of their credo.
Good Lord, even cannibalism is praised in this book. Objections to feasting on human flesh are dismissed as neanderthal. One cannot imagine a more clearly antinomian tract. It is perfect in its opposition to all traditions of decency and norms of civilized behavior.
Instead this Gospel of the Left is condemned. By the Left.
This is a sad commentary on the Left, but it is not unexpected. Radicals are always replaced by radicals even more extreme, and the new radical condemns the old radical as reactionary.
Leftists are not known for their sense of gratitude.
The Leftist is in the unenviable posture of being in continuous rebellion against all authority figures, father figures, and establishments. The Left exist in an eternal “now” like an infant, and know nothing of history. It is always Year Zero to them.
This means that any victories, where their own philosophy becomes part of the establishment, are welcomed only with condemnation. A Leftist cannot make a mark on history, or establish a legacy, or begin a movement: because the next generation of Leftists will treat him with the same contempt and disdain he treated the generation before. Heinlein’s radical libertarianism in sexual matters, since it was not sufficiently explicit in its adoration of the perversion of homosexuality, is now condemned as a psychopathology; a ‘wrongness.’
The philosophy of eternal rebellion cannot be passed from generation to generation: it is self-defeating. Only a philosophy that teaches respect for prior generations can expect to be passed to the next.
On the Tor site, anyway, the responses to the initial post all seem to be defending Heinlein in much the same terms you use, John.
Earl Wajenberg
Alas! Had only I been temperate enough to read them first, I would have saved myself much unnecessary spleen: a valuable lesson in philosophical equanimity. I am proud of my fellow science fictioneers that no one failed to contradict the essay.
I will leave my foolish essay aloft as a warning to others not to leap to conclusions.
Having read both your essay and the comments at Tor.com, I don’t find the former foolish at all. What various commenters said piecemeal and at random, you set in a solid logical and philosophical matrix. The comments were gravel; your essay is concrete. The gravel bounced off Mr. Wagner’s skull, as he made clear by his responses. The concrete might make a dent, or at least leave him with the awareness that he had butted heads with something more solid than himself.
I don’t mind saying that I left the combox with an improved opinion of every single one of Mr. Wagner’s interlocutors, and a dramatically diminished opinion of Mr. Wagner himself.
“I don’t mind saying that I left the combox with an improved opinion of every single one of Mr. Wagner’s interlocutors, and a dramatically diminished opinion of Mr. Wagner himself.”
It made me proud to be a SF geek. Right, Left, or Center, we rock hard. GO US!
I think you are unjust to a harem. For Hefner, children are best dead; witness that Playboy has always been a major funder of pro-abortion lobbying groups. For Heinlein, children are best talked about with great enthusiasm but kept entirely off stage.
A work like this would be straight out.
Mary, I must respectfully disagree.
Babies are found all over Heinlein’s work, being fed, burped, diapered, transported on spaceliners to Venus, sleeping, and saved from burning buildings. Some of these are even human babies. What you probably mean is Heinlein doesn’t spend a great deal of time repeating their dialogue or engineering skills because they don’t have much in the way of either.
JJB
I owe him nothing. I think I owe more to Peake, Harrison, Vandermeer, Barker, Valente, Calvino, Joyce anyway.
“I owe him nothing. I think I owe more to Peake, Harrison, Vandermeer, Barker, Valente, Calvino, Joyce anyway.”
Perhaps you are confusing your particular taste in literature, or the particular models you follow, with the debt you owe to those who created the atmosphere of freedom the publication world now enjoys — even a man whose work is not to your taste, if he does you a benefit, imposes a debt on you.
Say what you will, those who exercise the academic freedom before us make it easier for us. Remind me of the names of the black or fillipino main characters in James Joyce? Tell me again what he did which made it socially acceptable to make a minority figure the hero in a book, particularly a children’s book, published in America or England? Or do you think Peake or Vandermeer did more to loosen the airless orthodoxy that gripped YA literature in the English-speaking world 1950′s and 1960′s than did Bob Heinlein? Really?
In any case, I don’t have a dog in that fight. I am not one of those who rejoices in rebellion against authority; I am one of those who thinks the court calling Joyce’s ULYSSES indecent was correct. The dismal society I see around me, I see as partly a product of the inability of censors and public watchdogs to reign in the fashionable immorality and love of indecency of that generation. They did not try hard enough or win enough battles.
But those of you who are in the other camp, you who call licentiousness liberty, knowing that your children will treat you with the contempt and ingratitude you treat those who fought on your side in your father’s time, I wonder not only at your churlishness, but at your inattention to your own self-interest. After fighting the good fight for your side, do you want to be spat upon by your own people?
Our side does not fight that way.
Last I checked, Leopold Bloom was a Jew.
Consequent to what?
That was not the question asked.
There are sympathetic Jews in Shakespeare and Scott.
There are no real heroes in Joyce’s Ulysses, only anti-heroes, let alone Filipino or Negro heroes.
JJB
“Negro”
What year is this, again?
Oh my gosh, someone said ‘negro’! Call out the firing squad! And while you’re at it, save some bullets for the United Negro College Fund.
Either that, or, you know, address the point being made.
They were around during World War II. What’s your excuse?
“They were around during World War II. What’s your excuse?” — a Babeler with Dragons
And WWI as well. I would be suspicious if a work of James Joyce or RAH during the time he was writing for the slicks had an “African-American” character so labeled.
Yet, why shouldn’t one — specifically myself — use “Negro”? Are you implying a thoughtcrime has transpired on your watch?
Since I despise the solecism and reject parading myself as a “European-American”, why cannot I employ Caucasian/Negro/Asian/Amerindian/Australoid or white/black/tan/colored?
Why does the year matter?
Perhaps, the hypothetical individuals under discussion all prefer to be addressed as “Miss”.
JJB
Because it is 2010.
And you aren’t Caucasian. Stop pretending you are.
And you aren’t Caucasian. Stop pretending you are. — Babeler with Dragons
According to the US Government, I certainly am.
According to the the National Geographic Society, IBM & the Wellcome Trust’s joint Genographic Project, I am of African descent via the Sinai to Greece by evidence of my Y chromosome. My mitochondrial DNA may likely have taken an excursion through the Caucasus Mountain region. Those are the ones which predominantly populated Western Europe.
Stop pretending to knowledge you do not possess.
JJB
I’m not the one who said ‘negro’; I don’t need an excuse. And unless the UNCF needs an excuse, no one does.
I suggest you make at least an elementary effort to notice who you ’re talking to, and when a third party enters the fray.
As for your other comment, ‘It’s 2010’: What has that got to do with anything? Is this one of those rules like ‘no wearing white after Labour Day’? Or are you really thick enough to believe that the verbal tics and fashions of this moment are inherently superior to those of any other moment?
“What year is this, again?”
It is the year when the NAACP denounced the Tea Party movement as bigots; when M. Night Shyamalan was denounced as a bigot for not casting blue-eyed Eskimos to play roles in the movie LAST AIRBENDER; when the Arizonian law enforcing rules no different than those currently on the books on the federal level was denounced as bigotry; the year when a low-ranking judge overturned an voter-initiative amendment to the California State constitution defining marriage as marriage on the grounds that it was bigotry: it is, in other words, the year when the mere parochialism and stupidity of politically correct newspeak has finally defeated it. You, sir, merely have not gotten the message yet. Your way of talking, that smug inventions of new little catch-phrases and nonsense words in order to pretend a superiority to your superiors, is a fad whose time has passed.
As of this year, it is not only rude, it is unforgivable, to proselytize PC any longer. It is the year when it is no longer acceptable to criticize another for using inoffensive English words correctly.
We have gone back to the older standard of having people apologize for being rude. You have written something unforgivably offensive, and the new standard says you must apologize for it.
I suppose anyone still frozen like a bug in amber in the year 1968 can defy the new standard, but it will put them unbearably out of sync with the spirit and the fashion of the time.
It is the year when the NAACP denounced the Tea Party movement as bigots;
You mean to say they’re wrong, when World Net Daily is praising the methods of Adolf Hitler?
when M. Night Shyamalan was denounced as a bigot for not casting blue-eyed Eskimos to play roles in the movie LAST AIRBENDER;
I don’t think he’s a bigot for it, and I’m going to blame executives for screwing this up the way they tried to screw up Nova by Samuel Delany, but I’ll say casting white people to play people based on Siberians and Tibetans is akin to having a white man from southern… California… cast… as… Genghis… Khan… wait a minute.
the year when a low-raking judge overturned an voter-initiative amendment to the California State constitution defining marriage as marriage on the grounds that it was bigotry.
It was bigotry; in an ideal world there should be nothing in the constitution denying rights to groups of people. Fun fact: we’ve had gay marriage and no I will not put it in quotes for five+ years, society hasn’t collapsed, and no divine wrath has fallen upon us.
This is such a pathetic collection of smears I must respond.
First, a pathetic attempt at guilt by association. Pathetic because WND did not start the “Tea Parties” or advance them in any substantial way. Second, because you give no example of WND “Praising the methods of Hitler!”. Not even out of context, which should be easy. “Hitler said vegetables are good for you, you say vegetables are good for you, you are praising the methods of Hitler!”. Again, this is old at this point. We know how the game is played. Pathetic and sad…..
No, the roles were based on the Air, Earth, Fire, and Water tribes, which do not exist in the real world. Now, there are some very bigoted people (you would seem to be one) who believe that the “One Drop Rule” is not racist enough for them, there is a “One Thought Rule”, where any thoughts of an ethnic group that come to mind before the creation of an imaginary one forever taints it, and anything the imaginary group does is the responsibility of the “parent” group. Of course, to put this to paper is to show how bigoted and racist the idea is, and how insane the people pushing it (such as yourself) are…..
No, not bigotry. “Gays” have always been able to get married to the opposite sex, just like everyone else. They wanted to change that, which they are allowed to do, but to call their opponents bigoted is pathetic. Particularly pathetic, since, by your definition, “gays” are bigots. They, after all, have removed an entire category of people(the opposite sex) from their dating pool for no good reason, just because they “don’t like them that way”. I suppose you will next be telling us that “some of your best friends are black”. You pathetic bigoted racist…. I know that was all silly, but as Mr. Wright has pointed out, that’s what your side has been pushing down our throat for years now, and it’s a game both can play. I know you have had lots of fun turning the crank and cutting off feet to get us to fit on the bed, but now YOU get to lie on it…..
Vox Day says: “If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.”
… yeah.
You do realize how many leaps of illogic you’re performing here?
First, ‘Vox Day’ != World News Daily.
Second, ‘deport’ != ‘kill’.
Third, World News Daily != the Tea Party movement.
Fourth, pointing out that A is no more difficult than B does not constitute an endorsement of B.
Your logic gets worse with every attempt you make to continue the argument. No wonder you complain about ‘morasses of philosophical rubbish’. You seem to carry your own morass with you wherever you go.
“Gays can get married, but not to each other.”
is one of the most idiotic statements in the entire history of idiotic statements.
There’s nothing idiotic about it; logically, it makes perfect sense. It is also true that fluorine atoms can form ionic bonds — but not with each other. The nature of the ionic bond is such that it can only exist between electropositive and electronegative elements; just as the nature of the marriage bond, as generally understood throughout human history, is such that it can only exist between male and female persons.
Not only is the idea of gays marrying members of the opposite sex not idiotic, it is actually rather common. In fact, one of the favourite blood sports of a certain subset of the homosexual ‘community’ is ‘outing’ homo- or bisexuals who happen to be married to members of the opposite sex. John Maynard Keynes, a well-known and exclusive homosexual, married a woman at one time. I have read, too, that Aldous Huxley married a lesbian; and though the marriage was necessarily unconsummated, they remained happily married for many years due to the many other things they shared. For one thing, they had similar taste in women. These cases are scarcely unique.
Then why did you say it?
You said it to imply that I said it, which is, of course, not true. A “gay” man and a “gay” woman can, and have always been able to, get married. You want to allow those bigots who can not abide the opposite sex to redefine marriage to mean nothing more then a pointless crush, and accuse your opponents of being “bigots” for not accommodating your bigotry.
Ever read the Symposium?
Probably not. The people who like to tout the wonderful pro-homosexual Greeks usually don’t.
But one of the characters says, without anyone contradicting him, that homosexual men must be forced by law to marry and begot children.
You mean to say they’re wrong, when World Net Daily is praising the methods of Adolf Hitler?
Obviously I missed a bulletin from my Sooper Sekrit Right-Wing Overlords. When did World Net Daily become the official voice of the Tea Party movement?
It was bigotry; in an ideal world there should be nothing in the constitution denying rights to groups of people.
What, pray tell, is the purpose of marriage? What interest does the state have in regulating it? And if it is arbitrary to restrict marriage to ‘a conjugal union between one man and one woman’, which of those nine words is more arbitrary than any other? Consider those three questions seriously, and you may begin to understand why it is not bigotry to try to uphold the existing definition.
In any case, you have fallen for the classic Marxist fallacy: attributing rights (and guilt) to groups rather than to persons. Groups do not have the right to marry; they do not have the power to marry; only individuals have that. Moreover, no one has an actual right to marry. Millions of people are unmarried, not by choice, but because they cannot find a willing and legally acceptable spouse — and being of the same sex is just one of many grounds that make a prospective partner ineligible for legal marriage.
You cannot marry a close relative; you cannot marry a person who is already married; you cannot marry a minor below a certain age, or, above that age, without the permission of the minor’s parent(s) or guardian; you cannot marry a person who is mentally incompetent to enter into the marriage contract; etc., etc., etc. All these rules have their basis in the same legal and social view of marriage that also requires the parties to the contract be of opposite sexes. If you overturn one of the rules on the basis of an imaginary ‘right to marry’, you have no logical defence against those who would overturn them all. Such people do exist; and they are growing in numbers and influence due to the encouragement they have received from the success of the gay-marriage lobby.
Marriage is not a “right,” it’s an obligation. It is only the fact that Western institutions have already been thoroughly trashed that enables folks to play at marriage among the ruins. As for the collapse of society, it is too late to worry. Even the Catholic Church thought there was nothing to worry about when they loosened their rules back in the 60s; and it took thirty years for the catastrophe to hit.
The word “bigotry” actually means
1. A hypocrite; esp., a superstitious hypocrite. [Obs.]
2. A person who regards his own faith and views in matters of religion as unquestionably right, and any belief or opinion opposed to or differing from them as unreasonable or wicked. In an extended sense, a person who is intolerant of opinions which conflict with his own, as in politics or morals; one obstinately and blindly devoted to his own church, party, belief, or opinion.
Now let us suppose for the sake of argument that, upon calm reflection, some of the voters in California believed that it was right to define marriage as marriage, but not unquestionably right; and these same voters believed their opposition was reasonable, albeit mistaken, wrong, but not wicked. The word “bigot” would not apply in that case.
At last!
I hit the knowledge when college professors handed out “inclusive” standards and it was Orwellian by two standards: not only did “inclusive” exclude normal language that “exclusive” English included, they openly admitted that it was to prevent our being able to form thoughtcrime.
“Negro”
What year is this, again?”
I know exactly what you mean. There is this organization called the United Negro College Fund. I think it is to keep negroes out of college!
And Heinlein did open the field, and deserves respect for that reason, much in the same way George Lucas does.
And if a Filipino (1) is reading If on a winter’s night a traveler… then there is a Filipino in If on a winter’s night a traveler.
(1) Or for that matter, a Lithuanian-Persian-Thai.
Invisible Cities had Kublai Khan in it.
And if a Filipino (1) is reading If on a winter’s night a traveler… then there is a Filipino in If on a winter’s night a traveler.
(1) Or for that matter, a Lithuanian-Persian-Thai.
Invisible Cities had Kublai Khan in it. — Babeler with Dragons.
Neither of which were written by James Joyce nor titled Ulysses.
Excellent goal post shifting!
And, to be blunt, the reader of Calvino’s iterative, discursive second-person novel does not actually find the reader in it all, any more than in any other second-person narrative.
That is, most charitably, a mild delusion of a certain kind of gullible critic or, more bluntly, errant humbug by pompous elitists. In the cited case, a well accomplished parlor-trick nonetheless.
JJB
You’re turning this into a morass of philosophical rubbish.
Is a morass of philosophical rubbish worse than a thought-crime?
Worse even than the arch use of the terminology of the time at which the referenced books were written?
Twenty-three skidoo, kiddo.
Nah. Just having the bad taste to notice the morass you introduced with your claim.
You brought it up. I just said I owe him nothing because his writing is… unmemorable. I don’t think it’s as bland as Niven, but nowhere as lush as Peake or Vandermeer. I only read maybe half of Stranger and all of Starship Troopers (which I thought was satirical until years after I read it)
Whether you like the man’s writing or not, you owe him an IMMENSE debt — because he almost single-handedly created the mainstream literary market for genre sf. Most of the stuff you do like would never have been published had Heinlein not paved the way.
So, can I also blame him for Niven and Pournelle and Kratman and Ringo and all the other crap that’s oversaturating the market?
I see now. I used to think the Amazon forums being oversaturated with posts promoting their self-publihsed on kindle novel was a bad thing, but now I see that it will keep the Tolkien ripoffs in their place.
So, can I also blame him for Niven and Pournelle and Kratman and Ringo and all the other crap that’s oversaturating the market?
You can blame him for the existence of the market. Unless you are prepared to dismiss the entire body of science fiction published since about 1950 as crap, you must allow him credit as well as blame.
Name an sf author you like: chances are very good that that author’s sf would not have been published if Heinlein had not existed.
“I just said I owe him nothing because his writing is… unmemorable.”
Perhaps you are confusing your particular taste in literature, or the particular models you follow, with the debt you owe to those who created the atmosphere of freedom the publication world now enjoys — even a man whose work is not to your taste, if he does you a benefit, imposes a debt on you.
Har. Har. Har. It was your bait-and-switch that turned it into a morass.
“I just said I owe him nothing because his writing is… unmemorable. I don’t think it’s as bland as Niven, but nowhere as lush as Peake or Vandermeer. I only read maybe half of Stranger and all of Starship Troopers (which I thought was satirical until years after I read it)”
I do agree the Heinlein writes in sparse, unornamented journalistic prose, like that of Asimov or Niven, and does not attempt striking expressions, as one might find in Roger Zelazny, Cordwainer Smith, much less prose poets like Clark Ashton Smith, or true artists like Gene Wolfe.
I agree with you without reservation that Heinlein’s prose is unmemorable. Snappy, brisk, clean, clear? Yes. Memorable? No. I cannot think even of a single metaphor in his whole body of work. Milton he ain’t.
But it does not speak well of your insight into novels if you cannot tell the difference between satire and an earnest book (in my opinion, an over-earnest). That just makes you sound like someone who does not read “outside the herd” of what is politically fashionable. The less of his work you have read, the less credential for you have for your opinion of his merits. And if you also happen not to know the history of science fiction, you have little or no warrant for your dismissing Heinlein’s role in the formation of SF.
One could argue, perhaps, that the general public moved so firmly in the Progressive direction that science fiction would have been dragged along even without a Heinlein, playing catch-up with the general field, by the time of Michael Moorcock’s “New Wave” if not earlier; in such a case, we would owe the laurels due a trailblazer to someone else, perhaps Ursula K. LeGuin. But that is not the argument you made. You argued that Heinlein dragged science fiction from its literary roots in Wells and Verne into a less literary direction.
Not that I necessarily disagree with your opinions of his literary worth, mind you. I read, understood and hated Heinlein’s preachy message as expressed in STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. I am not a defender of his. I don’t even like the guy. I think he was someone who lied to children for money.
But that does not change his status in the annals of Science Fiction, which I humbly suggest is worthy of respect, whether you or I happen to like his books or not — and whether you have read his books or not.
I’m a great fan of Heinlein and always will be. He was a complex man with a complex body of work. What more can be said? He did enjoy being the Apple of Discord. And you can almost hear him laughing right now.
“He did enjoy being the Apple of Discord.”
You said it! He was provocative, but he was trying to provoke a rousing good debate.
One of his least-known ploys:
The protagonist of TUNNEL IN THE SKY is a young black HS senior. In the 1950s, he was able to employ certain hints that go over the post-modern head.
At one point Rod describes the clearly black Zulu girl Carole to his sister as ‘kind of looks like you, sis.’ In the 1950s this could not mean solely that she was deadly with a knife.
At another point, when the marooned kids are pairing off, some of them express surprise that Rod and Carole have not, because they make a “natural” pair. Again, in the 1950s, this was a dead give-away. It had to mean that Rod too was black.
Note that he waited until very late in the book to pop these give-aways, because he wanted his readers to “identify” with the protagonist and then only then be faced with the fact.
… Wow. I think I missed that one, and I don’t normally consider mine to be a ‘post-modern head.’ Not too surprising, but it is still depressing that I missed the clues in that, one of the few Heinlein books I can still remember with fondness.
I missed it also. (Of course, to be honest, I am the least racist and least race-conscious person I know or can imagine, since I neither care what skin color a person is, nor can I be, no matter how the odd anti-bigoted bigots of anti-racial racism scream and scream at me, be made to care. A man should be judged by the content of his character. A Christian preacher said that once.)
Well, at least I wasn’t the only non-post-modern to miss it.
Thanks for putting me some knowledge.
Likewise, incorporating cripples as pilots — perhaps quadriplegics wired as cyborgs into the ship’s control system would be an interesting if also creepy SF answer — but this also introduces difficulties in the plot and theme that would have to be answered in the plot and theme.
There’s a whole series on it– “The Ship Who _____” by Anne McCaffrey, sometimes with other authors.
The Ships or shell-people are kind of a sci-fi version of the iron lung, but more so.
Yes, McCaffrey is the author to whom I was making an allusion about cyborg pilots wired into their ships. The author who proposes the other idea (sexual suppressants issued to servicemen) if my memory serves, is Joe Haldeman.
I left this on Mr. Wright’s live journal page as well in response to a poster’s boast of writing a better, unfinished, book than Heinlein. I upbraided him for being an ungracious braggart who has the effrontery of a non-writer, not an unpublished one.
It is from Frederik Pohl’s blog http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/05/working-with-robert-a-heinlein/ For those of you who don’t know, he was the long time editor of Astounding Stories, Galaxy and If magazines, was the agent for a large number of the Golden Age’s top authors, has a host of Hugo and Nebula awards, and is a Grandmaster. If I am not mistaken, I believe he is the last of that generation, that were there at the very beginning, to be still ticking.
Of his time as editor of Astounding Stories with THE John W. Campbell, he has this to say of his relation to the young Heinlein, Circa 1940.
>> “In this case, that was incorrect. It happens there is a member of my immediate family who exemplifies the Pohl–Heinlein relationship of that period more accurately. Her name is Milly. She is a nine-year-old Jack Russell, and at every meal she sits at my feet, waiting for me to finish so she can lick the crumbs off my plate. This well describes how things were between Robert and me around 1940. Everything he wrote went at once to John Campbell. The few stories that John rejected went to me — to be run only under a pseudonym, to be sure, because that was how John had decreed it.”
If anyone here can achieve 1/100th that, at the beginning of their career, speak, otherwise, speak no more, and show your respect.
Campbell did far more harm than good.
I’d love to respond to such a supported argument. But, from what I can tell, you’re a troll.
Ignoring the Debt You Owe Heinlein | John C. Wright’s Journal…
Ignoring the Debt You Owe Heinlein | John C. Wright’s Journal:……