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Throwback Thursdays: Space Cadets and Starship Troopers: The Eagle Has Landed

June 26, 2014May 10, 2024torforge

Welcome to Throwback Thursdays on the Tor/Forge blog! Every other week, we’re delving into our newsletter archives and sharing some of our favorite posts.

In 2010, we published the first of a two volume biography of one of the giants of science fiction: Robert A. Heinlein. At that time, we had an idea: why not ask our authors about their favorite Heinlein novels? Tor editor Stacy Hill was our shepherd for this series, and updates us on our journey. Now that Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 2 has come out, we’re revisiting that series. We hope you enjoy this blast from the past, and be sure to check back in every other week for more!

From Tor editor Stacy Hill: Regular readers of Tor’s newsletter and our blog know that Tor has recently published an all-new biography of Robert A. Heinlein. Written with the blessing of Heinlein’s late widow, Virginia, the work was many years in the making and contains a wealth of interesting information, including never-before-published excerpts from Heinlein’s correspondence. Even if you thought you knew everything there was to know about the man, I can promise you there are surprises to be found within these pages.

So, in celebration of the man and his works, we asked a number of sf writers to tell us which Heinlein novel is their favorite, and why. We were lucky enough to get a host of great authors, including:

David Brin
David Drake
David G. Hartwell
L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
Rudy Rucker
Joan Slonczewski
Charles Stross
Michael Swanwick
Vernor Vinge

What’s Your Favorite Robert A. Heinlein Novel, Joan Slonczewski?

Have Space Suit—Will Travel was one of the more important books I read as a child. It starts with a bright teenager obsessed with getting to the moon, like I was. To get there, the teen has to win a space suit and get kidnapped by aliens, and escape with the help of two females—a child genius and an advanced alien—both clearly brighter than he is. Back then, bright females were scarce in any fiction.

In Have Space Suit, Heinlein’s ability to hook the reader draws us through a remarkable introduction in which an entire space suit is described at length. We keep turning pages through the teen’s course selection for senior year, as he takes up Spanish, Latin, calculus, and biochemistry—all of which later help him escape the aliens and worse. The book feels deceptively simple; its opening line consists of seven words of one syllable. Yet Heinlein weaves in concepts of mindboggling depth, from gas exchange in a space suit to linguistic development in the Roman Empire. Through it all, the humor is fresh and obvious to any reader. The Roman soldier even cracks a queer joke—imagine getting that past the juvenile censors in 1958.

From the protagonist’s teenage viewpoint, Earth-bound adults appear distant and preoccupied. The only ones who seem to be having fun are scientists. That, too, seemed familiar to me as the child of a physicist who worked on a Hal-like IBM 360. In the sixties, science was the stagecoach, the mule train heading toward the future’s ever-receding frontier. Have Space Suit was the kind of book that did that, a fictional journey driven by science.

Heinlein’s aliens are completely fantastic, yet somehow as real as a neighbor next door. Even the most advanced creatures are fallible, making mistakes that might doom an entire race. Yet the story begins and ends in small-town Ohio, near the home of the Wright brothers, and near where we raised our two sons. Today, this area still feels about the same. Any day now I expect to see those two alien space ships racing in.

This article is originally from the October 2010 Tor/Forge newsletter. Sign up for the Tor/Forge newsletter now, and get similar content in your inbox every month!

Author Features

Throwback Thursdays: Space Cadets and Starship Troopers: The Voyage Continues

June 19, 2014May 16, 2024torforge1 Comment

Welcome to Throwback Thursdays on the Tor/Forge blog! Every other week, we’re delving into our newsletter archives and sharing some of our favorite posts.

From Tor editor Stacy Hill: In August, Tor will be releasing an all-new biography of a singular figure in the history of the genre: Robert A. Heinlein. This will be the first-ever authorized biography, and it’s a fascinating look at a famously private man.

As our own little celebration of Heinlein and his works, we thought it would be fun to find out just how much of an impact Heinlein’s stories and novels had on a number of our—and your—favorite sf writers. We asked them a simple question—what’s your favorite Heinlein novel?

We’ve been posting their answers once a week as we head toward publication of the biography and so far we’ve heard from David Brin, David Drake, David G. Hartwell, and L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Additionally, we’ve been picked up by Tor.com and Boing Boing, and Cory Doctorow has been posting notes on the biography. In the coming weeks, you’ll see contributions from Michael Swanwick, Charles Stross, and many more.

Thanks to all of you who have jumped in to tell us about your favorites: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, Stranger In a Strange Land, and JOB are just some of the novels discussed in the comments so far. What other Heinlein novels do you all love?

What’s Your Favorite Robert A. Heinlein Novel, L.E. Modesitt, Jr.?

I’m certain, that, if asked, more than a few readers will list Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers as one of their favorite novels… and more than a few others will denounce it vigorously as a fascist military dystopia, no matter how the semi-libertarian Heinlein portrayed “our” future society. I’m one of those who happens to like it, because, after having been a military pilot and having served as a political staffer in Washington, D.C., Heinlein’s insights into both the military and into what supports workable government and what does not seem to me, at least, to be validated by what I’ve observed in politics and government over the past several decades. At its core, Starship Troopers examines what is required for effective and responsible government. For Heinlein, those who govern must pay a price for that privilege, and since he believes in broad-based governance, that means that every member of the electorate must pay through a term of military service. He doesn’t require military service, and no one is forced to serve, but if you don’t serve, you can’t vote, and you cannot be elected to public office. Interestingly enough, Heinlein does not suggest that this future society is optimal – only that it will work.

What is often ignored by those who criticize Starship Troopers is the fact that Heinlein was literally only fictionalizing the predictions of earlier scholars and politicians, such as deTocqueville and MacCauley, who predicted that any democracy would eventually fail because too great a proportion of the electorate would vote themselves greater and greater benefits without having paid for them in one way or another. Yet few criticize those who first made those points, which may also demonstrate why fiction is often more powerful than either scholarship or rhetoric directly from politicians.

What I also find amusing is that, in a sense, the military draft in place at the time that Heinlein wrote the book was in fact considered a price of “freedom” during World War II and immediately thereafter. In the Vietnam era that followed, however, the wide-spread use of educational deferments placed that price disproportionately on the less-advantaged males in American society, one of the factors leading to the abolition of the draft, in turn effectively repudiating any idea that citizens owed any moral debt to society, which was, of course, Heinlein’s point in his fictionalization of a future collapse of American government.

The other basic point underlying Starship Troopers is the idea that, like it or not, force in some form determines whether societies survive, and that any society that fails to understand that is doomed to fail. Heinlein was not, in fact, glorifying force, at least not as I read the book, but looking back through history and pointing out that such was the pattern human societies had exhibited from time immemorial. In presenting a biologically and socially very different culture in the “Bugs,” he was essentially postulating that any intelligent species would be both aggressive and territorial… and interestingly enough, I’ve recently read several scholarly articles suggesting the same thing, although the scholarly types use the term “predatory.” To me, that’s aggressive and territorial.

In the end, in Starship Troopers, Heinlein offers, if through a glass darkly, a fairly accurate picture of human faults, foibles, and virtues…and that may well be why some don’t like the book… and why I do.

L.E. Modesitt, Jr. can be found online at https://www.lemodesittjr.com

This article is originally from the August 2010 Tor/Forge newsletter. Sign up for the Tor/Forge newsletter now, and get similar content in your inbox twice a month!

Author Features

Throwback Thursdays: Space Cadets and Starship Troopers

June 12, 2014May 10, 2024torforge

Welcome to Throwback Thursdays on the Tor/Forge blog! Every other week, we’re delving into our newsletter archives and sharing some of our favorite posts.

From Tor editor Stacy Hill: Sometimes, a topic comes along that’s just too big for one article.

In August, Tor will be releasing an all-new, first-ever authorized biography of a towering figure in the history of the genre: Robert A. Heinlein.

So, as our own little celebration of the man and his works, we thought it would be fun to find out just how much of an impact Heinlein’s stories and novels had on a number of our—and your—favorite sf writers. We asked them a simple question—what’s your favorite Heinlein novel?

We’ll be posting their answers once a week as we build toward publication of the biography, and I hope all of you will jump in and let us know if you have any favorites, too.

But enough about us.

What’s Your Favorite Heinlein Novel, David Brin?

Heinlein and Beyond This Horizon

RAH was a question-asker.

I consider Robert Heinlein’s most fascinating novel to be his prescriptive utopia Beyond This Horizon. (A prescriptive utopia is where an author “prescribes” what he or she believes a better civilization would look like.) While Heinlein did opine, extensively, about society in many books, from Starship Troopers to Glory Road, it is in Beyond This Horizon (BTH) that you’ll find him clearly stating This Is The Way Things Ought To Be. And it turns out to be a fascinating, surprisingly nuanced view of our potential future.

Like most Heinlein novels, Beyond This Horizon divides pretty evenly into two parts and it is only the second half that I hold in high regard. Heinlein wrote the first half at behest of the famed editor of Astounding Magazine, John W. Campbell, who was then holding forth on one of his favorite themes…that “an armed society is a polite society.”

In pushing this strange notion, Campbell was behaving very much like his arch-nemesis, Karl Marx. A few anecdotes and a good just-so story outweigh a hundred historical counter-examples. But no matter. Heinlein did as good a job of conveying Campbell’s idea in fiction as anybody could. So much so that the first half of Beyond This Horizon has been cited by state legislators in both Texas and Florida, proposing that all citizens to go around armed! Naturally, this leads (paradoxically) to a wild shoot-em-up, in the first half of Beyond This Horizon…which RAH suddenly veers away from at the midway point.

This division between halves is typical of Heinlein novels and it makes reading them an interesting, multi-phase experience. Generally, RAH was a master at starting his tales–in fact, I recommend that all neo writers study carefully the first few pages of any Heinlein tale, for his spectacularly effective scene-setting and establishment of point-of-view. (The opening scene of The Star Beast is the best example of show-don’t-tell that anyone can find.) Alas, most of his novels reach a vigorous climax, concluding part one…and then peter out disappointingly in the last half, amid a morass of garrulous talk.

But this is where Beyond This Horizon reverses all expectations. Sure, part one is action and part two is talk, as usual…only in this case, the action is silly and the talk is terrific! In fact, this is where Robert Heinlein displays how broad his intellectual reach can take us.

Here we see the clearest ever expression of his political philosophy, which is demonstrably neither “fascist” nor anywhere near as conservative as some simpleminded critics might have us think. Indeed, his famed libertarianism had limits, moderated and enriched by compassion, pragmatism and a profound faith that human beings can improve themselves, gradually, by their own diligence and goodwill.

I was amazed by many other aspects of this wonderful book-within-a-book, especially by Heinlein’s startlingly simple suggestion for how to deal with the moral quandaries of genetic engineering — what’s now called the “Heinlein Solution” — to allow couples to select which sperm and ova they want to combine into a child, but to forbid actually altering the natural human genome. Thus, the resulting child, while “best” in many ways (free of any disease genes, etc), will still be one that the couple might have had naturally. Gradual human improvement, without any of the outrageously hubristic meddling that wise people rightfully fear. It is a proposal so insightful that biologists 40 years later are only now starting to discuss what may turn out to be Heinlein’s principal source of fame, centuries from now.

When it comes to politics, his future society is, naturally, a descendant of the America Heinlein loved. But it has evolved in two directions at once. Anything having to do with human creativity, ambition or enterprise is wildly competitive and nearly unregulated. But where it comes to human needs, the situation is wholly socialistic. One character even says, in a shocked tone of voice: “Naturally food is free! What kind of people do you take us for?”

None of this fits into the dogma of Ayn Rand, whose followers have taken over the libertarian movement. If Robert Heinlein was a libertarian, it was clearly of a more subtle kind, less historically or anthropologically naive, more compassionate… and more interesting

But here’s the crux. For the most part, with Robert Heinlein, you felt he wasn’t so much lecturing or preaching as offering to argue with you! His books let you fume and mutter and debate with this bright, cantankerous, truly American soul, long after his body expired. And this joy in argument–in posing and chewing over thought experiments–is the very soul of what it means to be a writer or reader of science fiction.

This article is originally from the July 2010 Tor/Forge newsletter. Sign up for the Tor/Forge newsletter now, and get similar content in your inbox twice a month!

What's New

Starred Review: Robert A. Heinlein, Vol. 2: In Dialogue with His Century, 1948–1988; the Man Who Learned Better by William H. Patterson

May 20, 2014May 15, 2024torforge

“The research for this biography was clearly both a labor of love and a labor of Hercules, and the result is what must be considered the standard for biographies of a man who in turn must finally be considered a major American writer.”

William H. Patterson’s Robert A. Heinlein, Vol. 2: In Dialogue with His Century, 1948–1988; the Man Who Learned Better got a starred review in Booklist!

Here’s the full review, from the May 15 issue:

This second volume of the authorized biography of arguably the most notable American science-fiction writer covers the second half of his life. In these years, Heinlein was continually exploring new approaches to old sf themes and then pushing the boundaries of the entire field steadily outward with new themes. This phase of his career began with Stranger in a Strange Land (more than 10 years in gestation) and continued to the end of his life. During that period, he battled censorship by stuffy editors, Hollywood directors of questionable ethics, and overly zealous or downright incompetent critics. He also battled a series of health problems that make harrowing reading, and that would probably have had most of us bedridden at an age where Heinlein was taking a cruise through the Arctic’s Northwest Passage. In all his enterprises, he was indispensably partnered with the remarkable Virginia Heinlein, wife, helpmate, organizer, business manager, corresponding secretary, and altogether worthy of a biography in her own right. As is inevitable in an authorized biography, some controversial subjects (such as Heinlein’s politics and his classic Starship Troopers) are presented in the most favorable light, but author Patteron also presents strong, factbased cases for those interpretations. The research for this biography was clearly both a labor of love and a labor of Hercules, and the result is what must be considered the standard for biographies of a man who in turn must finally be considered a major American writer.