Talk:Robert A. Heinlein/Archive 4

message: I just took a shot at rewriting the Future History article.  I moved everything that appeared to be original research to Talk:Future History.  I'm open to comments, criticism, advice, abuse, whatever.  Let me know what you think. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 04:27, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I approve of what you have done. Hu 07:11, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I've done some more edits to that article, trying to stick closely to verifiable statements cited to Heinlein heavies like Patterson and Gifford. I suggest we stop discussing this here, and discuss on that article's talk page.--24.52.254.62 16:02, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I consider both Patterson and Gifford to be authoritative, as they both have access to the UCSC archives.  Your edits look good so far; I've responded there. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 17:40, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite of [[Future History]] 

message: I have created an article about Clifford Geary, illustrator of most of Heinlein's juveniles. Hu 11:48, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks good!  Coincidentally, I just started this stub article: User:Jim Douglas/Heinlein juveniles.  It seems like there should be enough to say about the juveniles to justify an article.  The "Heinlein's Children" link at the bottom mentions Geary several times. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 15:51, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the juveniles are significant enough to deserve their own article. There is quite a bit of print criticism on them, too (Franklin, Panshin). Starship Troopers, which Heinlein considered a juvenile, is an FA. It would be interesting to have something on the extent to which they form a consistent, separately defined universe alongside of the Future History series.--24.52.254.62 18:13, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article is barely a stub, but I went ahead and moved it to Heinlein juveniles to open it up to editing by anyone who's interested.  I'll go back (soon) and flesh out the non-Scribner's sections if someone else doesn't get there first.  I was going to add that he considered a full scouting collection at one time; he had enough Puddin' stories planned (but never written) to create a collection; and Podkayne was Puddin's direct literary descendent (see Expanded Universe). Interestingly, while Heinlein apparently did not consider Podkayne to be a juvenile novel, Virginia Heinlein referred to it as a juvenile in Grumbles from the Grave -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 18:24, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

text: BTW, I also added preceded by and succeeded by references to each of the 12 Scribner's juvenile infoboxes (based on publication date). -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 18:28, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

text: (I moved a new discussion about whether these links should be included to a new topic at the bottom of the page.) -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 16:18, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Good.  Thank you for creating the Juveniles article.  And good work on the infoboxes.  I wonder about removing the English language tag out of the box (have tested it), since it seems redundant and ends up being clutter, but I don't mind either way. Hu 22:15, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Specifying "Language: English" on the English-language Wikipedia seems somewhat redundant to me too.  Is there some standard that we're supposed to include the language (even though English can be logically inferred)?  I notice that it seems to be specified everywhere: Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, Dune (novel), Foundation (novel), etc. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 22:25, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

text:  I haven't read this book myself, but Heinlein's Children: The Juveniles looks like it might be interesting. The introduction is available here -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 22:40, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Heinlein's Children: The Juveniles by Joseph T. Major (Advent, ) is a pretty complete account of the books--basically a set of summaries-with-comments. Not academic scolarship, but exhaustive and thoughtful. I'd say it belongs in the References lists here and in the "Heinlein Juveniles" article. RLetson 17:36, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I ordered it on Saturday; I probably won't have it for at least a week.  I didn't want to add it to the references without first reviewing it and including something from it in the article.  Did you want to go ahead and do that? -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 17:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clifford Geary 

message: *Added a short article for Off the Main Sequence (2005 collection) -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 22:19, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Off The Main Sequence: The Other Science Fiction Stories Of Robert A. Heinlein 

message: There was a paragraph in the Influence section that talked about his influence on specific writers. That paragraph always had problems with veering towards being an incoherent list of authors influenced by Heinlein. Most recently, it named only two writers, John Varley and Stephen King. It seems very doubtlful to me that those two writers are more important than any others influenced by Heinlein, or that his influence on them was particularly strong. I've rewritten the paragraph so it makes a more general case, while sticking to verifiable sources.--24.52.254.62 17:38, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good change; it improves the article.  We might also add Requiem as a reference; it includes several first-person testimonials about Heinlein's influence. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 18:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While it may not be necessary to name any particular writers influenced by RAH (paragraph 3 of this section is fine as it stands for this degree of detail), I'd point out that Varley is indeed specifically and strongly influenced by the Old Man, to the tune of at least four novels in the last 14 years directly inspired by him. And while the RAH influence is widely distributed across post-WWII SF, it's especially strong in the work of Joe Haldeman, Allen Steele, John Barnes, and Michael Flynn, all of whom have, like Varley, written novels directly indebted to RAH. Then there's Spider Robinson, of course, but Variable Star is a special case. RLetson 15:51, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm.  Disagree with this change.  The "incoherent list" label by the anon is about right - some really were completely non-notable, but deleting the likes of John Varley is a bit silly.  As RLetson notes, Heinlein is a clear (even name-checked) influence, and Varley is at least a notable author (he's even had a non-RAH-influenced short story/novel filmed - badly!).  Omitting such a specific mention in what's actually quite a long section on "influence" is a bit drastic.  That said, RAH's influence on Stephen King isn't clear to me at all, so perhaps I'm just blinded by being a fan.  Cheers, --Plumbago 16:12, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Influence

message: I reverted a significant expansion of the Posthumous publications section, on the theory that the article is already very long, and there's no reason to include a detailed list of just the books that were published after 1988. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 23:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That assertion in this section that Robinson "is widely considered to be [Heinlein's] protege" seems a bit much--for one thing, the protegé relationship is generally between living people, at least at the beginning. Spider has a nice story about RAH sending him money when he was broke (if I recall correctly), but I don't think that makes him a protegé. I suggest cutting that line. RLetson 01:48, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, and done.  FWIW, I didn't add it, I just didn't catch it when I made the other change. I'm a little luke-warm about the "mixed reviews" thing too. Does anyone know if it's verifiable? -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 02:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added mixed reviews, based on having seen them.  I could hunt them down for citation, if you like.--Baylink 16:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I trimmed that section a bit more, and removed the "to mixed reviews" thing.  I don't feel really strongly about it, so feel free to reverse me if someone thinks it ought to be there.  And (slightly off-topic): Spider repeated that story on Sunday.  The story goes that there was a time when Spider was flat broke and didn't know how he was going to pay the rent.  Just when he needed it, a check arrived from RAH, equal to precisely the amount of his rent plus $100.  He asked Heinlein how he knew (a) that he was broke and (b) the precise amount, but he never got an answer.  That's when Heinlein told him "don't pay it back; pay it forward". -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 02:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

text: In a world where L. Ron Hubbard and V.C. Andrews continue publishing new books years after their respective deaths, I think posthumous publications deserve some comment on exactly how they do or don't fit into the canon of the author's work. It may be argued that the way I did it took up too much space in an already-long article (I have some serious doubts about arbitrary length limits; an article needs to be as long as it needs to be), but the current format, a lightly edited version of what was there before, is pretty incoherent; can we impose some order on it, please?Sturgeonslawyer 21:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't see what is incoherent about the current section.  The first paragraph is a bit dense (heavy with information), almost a necessity. Hu 22:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Posthumous publications 

message: This is a straw man proposal for restructuring the Robert A. Heinlein bibliography page:
:User talk:Jim Douglas/Robert A. Heinlein bibliography
My thought was that readers who are interested in specific categories of Heinlein's work can go directly to Future History or Heinlein juveniles. Because we have those pages, there's less need to break down the bibliography by categories.  This proposal just lists everything he ever published in chronological order. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 03:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Straw man proposal]] for [[Robert A. Heinlein bibliography]] 

message: I've had a look at the current bibliographic section for the biographical aspects of the article, and it appears there is as yet no in-depth, full-length biography of Robert A. Heinlein.  Does anyone posting here know if there is one about to appear — or currently in the works? Joel Russ 00:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This article by Bill Patterson is the best available until his book is published, The Man Who Learned Better:  Robert A. Heinlein in Dialogue With His Century.. I wouldn't be surprised to see the book published some time around July 7, 2007, but I don't think the publication date has been announced. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 02:36, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Cutting it by *half* (from ~700k words to ~350k) proved as difficult as you'd think; it did not come out in time for the Centennial, but I believe Bill said it was due by the end of the year.--Baylink 16:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Any known full-length biography in the works? 

message: There's mention of Heinlein's contributions to language; "grok", "TANSTAAFL", and "waldo", but no mention of inventions inspired by Heinlein, which would ideally include the waldo, and the water bed, to name two. Mikepwnz 17:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And, to be clear, Heinlein didn't "inspire" the invention of the waterbed, he *invented* the damned thing.  :-) --Baylink 14:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Actually, I have from time to time heard people (not acquaintances) use the word "grok" (infrequently, to be sure), and was thus pleasantly surprised to realize that it hasn't entirely disappeared from cultural memory. Presumably, people are still reading Stranger. Cgingold 13:12, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

text: "TANSTAAFL" can be heard in any first-level economics class, and I heard "waldo" all the time when I was in FIRST. Mancxvi 15:44, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the case is that unlike SNAFU, TANSTAAFL is most commonly spelt out word by word, rather than spoken as the abreviation, when given in speech, unlike in text. Grok is definitely out there, as witness the groklaw site for one. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. 22:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: contributions to society