Foreword for my next book.

[fjm]

Posted here because the latest storm in the SFWA egg cup made me think it would be fun to post this.

Links are fine.
---
Heinlein. For Illinois University Press, forthcoming 2016.

Foreword.

Comments

[apostle_of_eris]

There seems to be substantial investment in oversimplifying Heinlein.* A personal rule of thumb is that any simple interpretation of Heinlein is wrong. There's no dispute that he bombed occasionally (and Farnam's Freehold is my candidate for the hotly contested Worst Heinlein Ever), but he was always thoughtful.
My take on Heinlein vs. sexuality is that he came a long way for an Edwardian farm boy . . . and then stopped in his tracks.

* I got slagged not too long ago for not going along with Starship-Troopers-is-fascist-but-the-movie-was-wonderful-satire. A 1959 sf novel with no Europeans, where everyone is a PoC, and Augustino Sandino is mentioned as a great hero is proto-fascist?

[kjn]

I think a large part of this is that not only is Heinlein oversimplified, but so is fascism. Starship Troopers the novel contains some deeply unsettling memes at its centre, like its reverence of the military, the way social and personal growth is tied to military duty, and that understanding between father and son is accomplished by being brothers-in-arms.

But fascist, no. It's hardly populist, not at all nationalistic, and while it has some palingenetic elements, it's hardly more than any other semi-utopic work. All it does is propagating some memes that fascist movements also has propagated, but so has plenty of other -isms and movements.

[fjm]

It seems to be modelled on the Napoleonic concept of the citizen army.

One thing people tend not to notice, is that individuals have the *right* to serve: they cannot be denied if they are paraplegic, homosexual, or female. That alone would have the Right quivering in their boots.

[kjn]

Yeah, and partly also on the American Civil War armies.

But there are things in Heinlein's veteran-dominated society that simply doesn't make sense when one starts to look more closely, like that they are running a forever war for survival with only a small part of their society mobilised. It's like the powers-that-be prefer to keep it that way (see also the Great War On Terror).

In a way, it's the contradictions that make Heinlein interesting, just like you allude to in your foreword.

[fjm]

Actually, that's still not unlike Napoleon's army, or even the Roman Empire: you have to keep moving in order not to starve.

I have the same problem tho with Kameron Hurley's God's War. In the end, you can have mass warfare for short periods (5 years seems to be standard) or small wars for 30-100.