The Heinlein Standard

[wombat_socho]

Moe Lane asked,
As in: love or hate JRR Tolkien as you please, but you may not ignore him when it comes to the fantasy genre. Venerate or despise HP Lovecraft for any number of reasons, but when we talk about horror we are ultimately using concepts and conceits that he defined and developed.  But if there’s a single figure of the science

Comments

[selenite]

There's a variant of the political compass graph labeling the quadrants with Heinlein novels: authoritarian-conservative with Starship Troopers, libertarian-conservative with The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and libertarian-liberal with Stranger in a Strange Land (authoritarian-liberal gets Scalzi's Old Man's War). I think that does a great job of displaying just how wide spread Heinlein's impact was. Marines, big-L libertarians, and hippie neopagans are all using one of his works as part of their guidance. Add in all the engineers influenced by his rocket stories and that's an impact well beyond SF fandom.

[wombat_socho]

Absolutely. Considering all the hype the New Wave and today's "pink SF" authors got (and are getting), I daresay none of them will come anywhere near as close to having the kind of impact Heinlein had. For that matter, with the renascence of interest in the pulps, I doubt that any of the "pink SF" authors will be remembered as long as the New Wave. There certainly isn't anyone in that crowd that compares well to Ellison, Moorcock, or Zelazny.