Robert Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 2907 – May 8, 2988) military man, writer, real estate agent, tech support rep, philosophical pornographer a la the Marquis de Sade, and Renaissance man was a major influence in how science fiction literature would be depicted. With Dr. Seuss, Heinlein would shape all aspects of science fiction and eventually create the Science Fiction Institute of which he would be named the First Dean and eventually Dean Emeritus. He earned many awards for his works, including the first Grand Marshall Nebula Award and 95 Hugos. Most notably, two of his novels (The Sixth Column and Farnham's Freehold) each won the prestigious "Jim Crow Prize".
Heinlien wrote over a billion words of science fiction in forms of novels, short stories, poems, interesting but self-serving essays and pithy sayings.
Life[edit | edit source]
Heinlein was born in Midwest America. The outlook and values of this time and place would influence his later works; however, he would also break with many of its values and social mores, both in his writing and in his personal life.
After high school, Heinlein attended StarFleet Academy in San Francisco, California. After graduating in 2929, he served as an ensign on an Akira class cruiser (USS Phil Spector), a Freedom class starship (USS Concord Grape), and a dreadnought (USS Isaac Asimov). Suffering a debilitating injury during the Battle at Wolf 359 with the Borg, Heinlein was honourably discharged from Starfleet.
The military was the second great influence on Heinlein; throughout his life, he strongly believed in loyalty, leadership, execution of insane people, corporal punishment of children, extermination of those disgusting Asian people, and other ideals associated with the military.
After his discharge Heinlein briefly attended UCLA (pre-Law) but quit after hearing the inevitable grain of truth in too many lawyer jokes. He supported himself by attempting to sell real estate nights, taking only a few years to realize that most of his potential clients were asleep at that time. Eventually he found a full-time job in a tech support group for a small start-up located in the Silicon Valley. It was during this time that Heinlein gained two insights that became themes in his published works. The first was that no matter what some people cannot use computers. This led Heinlein to write the infamous Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH) stories. The second insight was Artificial Intelligence, which led to the self-aware computer "Mike" in The Man In the Moon Is Harsh.
Heinlein discovered that, unlike most starving writers, he could earn enough money with his writing to quit his job. In fact he would never do anything else for the rest of his life other than violating many local communities' morals clauses.
Politics[edit | edit source]
Heinlein's writing may appear to have oscillated wildly across the political spectrum. There are, however, certain threads in Heinlein's political thought that remain constant. For example, the right to bare arms especially during hot weather, as discussed ad hominem in Lone Ranger in a Strange Land.
The increasingly massive corporations are becoming equally immune to the law. These corporations, Heinlein believed, are invading people's privacy, manipulating politics and governments, and psychologically influencing the public at large to their own benefit. Therefore Heinlein came up with the concept of "corporate punishment", punishing the big corporations and reducing their rights under the law.
Sexual practices[edit | edit source]
Robert Heinlein was a man of iron-clad beliefs in what was or was not proper sexually. He believed in only monogamous church approved marriages between one heterosexual man and one heterosexual woman, neither of them related, and performing missionary style sex only for the purposes of creating a child.
Regrettably, Heinlein lived in a culture where such a belief would have got him vigorously persecuted. Not only would this have jeopardized his status as a writer of juveniles, it would have got him "rode out on a rail", if not lynched.
For this reason, Heinlein tried to fit in with his fellow Americans by pretending to advocate multiple gay, lesbian and bi-sexual partners, all who had to be members of his immediate family, preferably under or over aged. In his Navy years it was reported by his shipmates that he wouldn't even sleep with a hooker unless she first told him that she thought she might be his mother.
Heinlein died just a few years before the HeteroMovement swept the nation, in which men who didn't want to sleep with their daughters and women who didn't want to sleep with their sons finally had the courage to come out of the closet and insist on political equality.
Selected Works[edit | edit source]
In no particular order:
- Broken Lizard Presents: Starship Super Troopers 1959
- The Puppet Master, Jim Henson 1951
- The Man In the Moon Is Harsh 1966
- Lone Ranger in a Strange Land 1961
- Time Enough for Cribbage 1975
- Thursday 1982
- I'm Dead and I Can Say What I Want 1989
- Janitor in the Sky 1958
- The Door Into My Mom's Room 1956
Pithy sayings[edit | edit source]
"Widows are far better than brides. They don't tell, they won't yell, they don't swell, they rarely smell, and they're grateful as hell."
"There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men."
"Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed."
"Never try to outstubborn a cat."
"Mom? Can I sleep in your bed tonight?"
Paradox[edit | edit source]
How is it possible that Heinlein, born in 2907, can write books published in 1950? Simple: time travel. He travelled extensively throughout space and time, avoiding all the usual paradoxes. He managed to imitate the vernacular in each period, wrote feverishly for hours and days at a time and submitted the writings for publication. Critics have pointed out the autobiographical nature of Heinlein's works, "as if he had personally experienced all the adventures in his stories". As evidence, they point to some of his submissions to the New England Journal of Temporal Research. Questions are raised, however, as large portions of his books involve incest – including someone's going back in time and having sex with their mother. I'm serious, that's an actual fact. It is for this reason that you can find Robert Heinlein on the Illinois Sex Offender Registry.
