Talk:Robert A. Heinlein/Archive 2

message: I try not to revert things in this category without discussion, but it *is* widely held that Libertarianism cannot be plotted on the traditional left-right political spectrum; it's not POV to say that.  Recommend revert.--Baylink 22:53, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I reverted it first, and then saw your comment.--Bcrowell 01:30, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Hi -- I wrote the stuff you're talking about, and I think it's correct. The tone of the book is strongly ironic. There is very little actual injustice by the Warden before the revolution; the only portrayal of injustice is the Warden's ill-fated attempt to break up a meeting by an earlier revolutionary group, who are portrayed unsympathetically. I've changed the sentence so that it doesn't imply that the economic projections were the motivation of the rank and file. It now reads  In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, prerevolutionary life under the Lunar Authority is portrayed as a kind of anarchist or libertarian utopia; projections of economic disaster are the true (and secret) justification for the revolution, which brings with it the evils of republican government.--Bcrowell 15:12, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Libertarianism 

message: I recently rented Destination Moon from Netflix, and was surprised at how little it had in common with Rocket Ship Galileo, which it's supposedly based on. The only plot element I noticed that they had in common was the idea of taking off in defiance of a court order. I'm in the middle of reading The Man Who Sold the Moon now, for the first time in many years, and it really seems much closer to the movie: the project is headed by a rich industrialist, who insists on coming along himself. Although The Man Who Sold the Moon was published in 1951, the copyright date is 1949, which means it was probably written alongside of or even before the 1950 Destination Moon. Any insights? On the web, there are some statements that the movie was based on RSG, and others that it was based on both, which seems to make more sense to me.--Bcrowell 20:05, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Destination Moon]], [[Rocket Ship Galileo]], and [[The Man Who Sold the Moon]]

message: I've taken the liberty to remove this comment and centralize discussion at Talk:The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, simply so we don't have to track down threads across different pages. Anyone interested in this dispute can check there. — Phil Welch 05:32, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Heinlein's best book

message: Was Frank Herbert as good of a science fiction author as Clarke, Asimov and Heinlen, the so called Big Three of science fiction?--Moosh88 22:05, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: imo his technical skills were not as good and the plot interweaving the Big Three display, but that's just my opinion. Alf melmac 22:08, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

text: It doesn't really matter if we think so. The article is documenting what the general opinion was among SF readers. (But for the record, I don't think Herbert even comes close. A lot of his writing was just horrible, and a lot of it was just so-so.)--Bcrowell 22:38, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Sorry, I was unclear. I meant on both counts, plot and technical skills, for me, he was not as good as the 'Big Three'. Alf melmac 22:56, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

text: "Grand Master" is a specific award given by the SFWA, and Herbert is not on the list of recipients.  However, the award can only be given to authors who are still living.  Herbert died in 1986, at which time the only authors who had received the award were Robert A. Heinlein, Jack Williamson, Clifford D. Simak, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Andre Norton, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Brandon39 03:30, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Herbert 

message: This article is stamped with the 'very long' label.  More than a third of the article is comprised by the bibliography, notes and references.  The article itself does not seem overly long to describe such a prolific and popular author and the article itself is 'featured', indicating that it is of high quality.  Because of this, I believe that the 'very long' label is inappropriate.  In any good encyclopedia, many articles are sufficently described by concise summary, but where a subject is rich in detail which will likely be of interest or use to the reader, the text is correspondingly expansive.  The Wikipedia should develop more content, not only through breadth, but in depth as well.  I think the depiction of this article as overly long is a hint that the policies towards long articles should be revisited.  Thank you.   anon. Oct 2005.
:I agree that the article is not actually longer than it should be. Since there's been no further discussion on this since October, I'm going to go ahead and delete the marker.--Bcrowell 21:31, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disagreement that the Article is Overly Long 

message: I recently bought a 1949 edition of Red Planet as an exercise in nostalgia. The white-on-black illustrations by Clifford Geary really take me back to my childhood. Since Geary illustrated so many of the Heinlein juveniles, I thought it would make sense to have a Geary cover in the article to show his distinctive style, so I've replaced the image of Have Space Suit ... with a scan of the Red Planet cover.--Bcrowell 20:43, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Geary cover

message: I removed the Oceanographer and Oceanography categories.  I don't think they can be supported.  If you have a reference to support it, post it here.  Hu 16:33, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not an Oceanographer 

message: Oceanographers direct or influence interdisciplinary oceanography research.
As a graduate from USNA, he's acknowledged as an interdisciplinary imagineer ... 
* USNA Class of 1929
Imagineers come in all forms; artists, writers, architects, landscape architects, engineers, model builders, construction managers, technicians, designers and a whole range of others.
* Horizons (Epcot) 
RJBurkhart 03:02, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Another perspective 

message: It is very true that Heinlein was an imaginative writer (and therefore thinker).  However, the term imagineer is specific and for all intents and purposes proprietary to Disney entertainment engineers.  Further, it is not sufficient for a person to just to think about things to become designated as a professional in the field.  If that were sufficient, then Heinlein would also be called a member of a hundred professions, which is ridiculous.  Also, graduation from the USNA does not automatically make a person an imagineer, not by any  definition of "imagineer", and it is not a prerequisite.  Heinlein was not an oceanographer. Hu 06:20, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Imaginative not Imagineer not Oceanographer 

message: I suggest that we separate out the bibliography (including filmography) as a separate article, because it is so extensive and it is making the main article over-long.  It is almost half of the real estate of the page (wide screen) and half of the Table of Contents.  I'm not in favor of condensing the main article at this time.  The important books are mentioned directly in the main article.  It is common for prolific rock bands like Pink Floyd to have a separate discography (Pink Floyd discography). Hu 21:31, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggest Separating the Bibliography 

message: FYI Starship Troopers is a current Featured Article Candidate.  If anyone wants to either vote on it, or make some improvements to the page, now's the time to do it. Palm_Dogg 21:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''[[Starship Troopers]]'' ([[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Starship Troopers|Nomination]]) 

message: I have read both these stories (several times) as well as almost of RAH's work and I fail to see any connection whatsoever between JOB and The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.  Suggest this either be removed, or if there is a recognised connection then a few words are inserted to explains this. 218.102.220.248 07:52, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Job is a fantasy about a man toyed with by powerful personalities beyond his comprehension.  tUPoJH is a fantasy about a man toyed with by powerful entities beyond his comprehension - but there's a substantial difference in the importance of the character.  In Job, Alec/Alex is a Job figure.  In Hoag, Hoag is the ugly duckling, the unknown prince, and is secretly one of the Powers himself.  Nevertheless, there are some subtle correspondences.  Perhaps you were looking too superficially? Eh Nonymous 11:20, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Job related to The Unpleasant Profession?? 

message: "He won seven Hugo Awards, three of them retrospectively, as well as the first Grand Master Award given by the Science Fiction Writers of America for lifetime achievement."
This didn't really seem clear to me, for the most part because "retrospectively" was used due to the title of the awards given, rather than the more appropriate word "retroactively." I made an edit to elucidate, mentioning the Retro Hugos and linking it. 66.229.227.175 03:53, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Word usage in intro paragraph? 

message: There's been some recent discussion in Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers about allegations that Heinlein was a homophobe. I've added a section on sexual liberation to the Heinlein article, and there's a long discussion in the Stranger in a Strange Land article of the relevant passages from that book. Let the flame wars begin! I think the discussion of incest could probably be improved (it's just what I was able to remember off the top of my head). In Time Enough for Love, do the brother and sister eventually have sex and have children, after genetic screening? Isn't there a scene in one of the books where Long and Libby experiment with homosexual sex, but find it unexciting? In The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, is there a positive description of sex between a boyscout and a scoutmaster, or is it two scouts? Does Long ever have sex with his own mother?--Bcrowell 18:03, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In The Cat' The lead had a homosexual experience he didn't find unpleasant - with a Boy Scout Leader. It's a long time since I read Time Enough. Alf melmac 23:31, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added some more text to the section. (Hee hee -- I still think Freud was a moron, but I did initially type that as "I've added some more sex...") Any comments? A lot of this is based on my imperfect memory of the relevant books.--Bcrowell 01:21, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Rounds the section off nicely now, good point at the end of the sentence too. Alf melmac 06:52, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Let me geek out on you all. There IS brother-sister sex in Time Enough for Love, but I'm not sure which plot element you are referring to (that book is really like a bunch of short stories...) The most interesting case from a psychological perspective are the two former slaves -- they are bioligically "unrelated" (thru some strange discussion I never quite get and my husband assures me is unlikely to ever work) but are raised as siblings. They end up marrying and having a passle of kids. Long's alter-ego makes sure there will not be a problem (not precisely genetic screening). Other exposition certainly states that incest (as we would consider it) does happen on Secundus (where most of the Howards went): there is a passage indicating that a geneticist might tell two completely unrelated people not to have kids and give the go-ahead to siblings. Plus there is that bit where Long's genetic twin "sisters" insist they have sex before he goes back in time.... To me that implied that it definitely happened. Long and Libby are implied to have had a sexual relationship occasionally in their travels around the galaxy. The experiment, find it exciting (and then go back to playing tennis!) is somewhere else .. I'm not sure it is even in Time Enough For Love. Might have been in The Number of the Beast (Jacob I think). Lazarus Long does have sex with his mother (after travelling back into the past). R343L 12:54, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is possible for fraternal twins to be genetically unrelated to each other. If I am correct in my math, the odds of fraternal twins sharing not even a single chromosome with each other are 1 in 70,368,744,177,664 (4^23).--RLent 20:47, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wouldn't the number in the exponent be the number of genes, rather than the number of chromosomes? Anyway, I reread the book recently, and story makes it clear that the twins are the result of genetic engineering.--Bcrowell 22:56, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In addition, there is the incident in To Sail Beyond the Sunset where Maureen's two teenage children (her last in the 20th century, as I recall), start having sex with each other.  When she is unable to stop them, she forcibly sends them to her ex-husband Brian.  They are never mentioned again.  Even though I'm one of those who think Heinlein's later books are deeply flawed, I take this as a sign that Maureen is yet to undergo the sexual liberation she will on Tertius.--Wehwalt 10:51, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: sex, homosexuality, gender roles, homophobia?

message: What does the term yocky mean? I can't find it in the dict. and a cursory google doesn't shed any light.:Murph 09:36, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the root is a yiddishism, "to yok," meaning "to talk, to gab," as in "Hey, I could be a lawyer, I can yok."--Bcrowell 01:55, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree that the periodization isn't clearcut, but any periodization will be imperfect. The publication of For Us , the Living shows that many of the themes that were typical of Heinlein's later work were in fact on his mind from the very beginning. In an article of this length, however, we need ways of breaking things up into smaller chunks that people's brains can organize. "... it is hard to argue that the late juveniles -- Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Citizen of the Galaxy, etc., are not on a par with the so-called "mature" novels." But I don't think anyone has argued that they're sub-par; in fact, one of Heinlein's stated purposes in the juveniles was to write juveniles that didn't talk down to kids. I'm skeptical of your claim that the later works are commentaries on the earlier ones, and even if it was true, it wouldn't vitiate the periodization--Bcrowell 21:41, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Early vs. Mature vs. Late? 

message: Perhaps it is merely my editorial shrew leaping for the food dish, but this article seems marred by the excessive use of parenthetical asides (particularly those that that ought to be statements in their own right, or set off by dashes (or delimited by commas if the aside is brief) or should simply be cut, since they break the flow of the article)  A useful reference in this regard is . Anyone feel strongly about style and voice edits to feature articles?
:I agree. Cleaned up a few in the Life section, there are also quite a few interesting but unsupported bits of trivia needing citation. Phil 19:04, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Phil -- Thanks for your help! I located a source for the statement about Ginny being a better engineer, and included the relevant footnote. Thanks for your addition of the footnotes about nudism and the bomb shelter. A minor quibble, but -- please make sure when adding footnotes to make them conform to the style used in the rest of the article.--Bcrowell 01:29, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How many parentheticals are needed to screw in a light bulb? 

message: Refer to A Political History of SF, by Eric S. Raymond. It looks like the paragraph recently added about description by indirection was copied verbatim. I've reverted the page to the version before that. I apologize if I have taken out someone's work. Tom Harrison (talk) 20:08, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible copyvio 

message: In case anyone's interested, I've (finally) sourced properly my addition of RAH to "Famous polyamorists", on the Polyamory page.  My edit comment suggested it was Spider Robinson, in the forward to FUtL; I was worng: it was Heinlein scholar Robert James, Ph.D., in the *afterword*.  I'll try to get an exact quote and page ref in this week.--Baylink 03:54, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polyamory 

message: I have made a series of small edits, several of which are copy edits or corrections of typos or link work.  More substantial edits are the following:
* I removed solipsism from the introduction because though it is important, it is not a social theme as the rest of the items listed are.  It is mentioned later in the article.  I made the Pantheistic solipsism link more prominent.
* I move the Future History material from the introduction to a more appropriate part in the Early Works section.  Also, the future history concept is not really a contribution to English language but to fiction writing.
* Spider Robinson is not a hagiographer.  He has been critical of Heinlein about some issues.  However, it is true that he has been greatly influenced by Heinlein and is a big fan.
:Hu 15:12, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not sure you using "Hagiographer" the way I would.  Spider identified at least one flaw, noting RAH's dislike of marijuana use, and criticized him for putting *in the mouth of a character* a disparagement of homosexuality (or intersexuality).  But if hagiography means ignoring or explaining and excusing the vast majority of faults, and then treating the subject as a saint, the claim is almost *literally* true.  RAH is Spider's venerated idol of SF.  "Rah Rah RAH" is not mere apologia, it is a "worshipful or idealizing" quasi-biographical sketch.  Looks hagiographic to me.Eh Nonymous 11:26, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copy Edits Jan. 7, 2006 

message: The Mature Work section says that Heinlein was opposed to positivism but the link goes to a disambiguation page and the article doesn't seem to clarify.  Could someone familiar enough with his life clarify this?  I'm curious about what is meant.  -- Zarvok | Talk 04:56, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Positivism (philosophy) --Bcrowell 01:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Positivism 

message: Isn't this entire article dripping with cheerleading?
:I disagree in general. However, I think there is one place where it should treat Heinlein more negatively, and that's in the discussion of his late books. When I first started working on this article a long time ago, I unequivocally said they were of low quality, possibly because of his health problems, or time pressure from his publisher to get the books out for the Christmas market. The problem was that I didn't have any third-party critical opinions to back me up about their quality, and I didn't have any verifiable information to support the rumored/suspected reason for the books' low quality. Also, some other wikipedians disagreed with me about the low quality, so we ended up with the text we have here. I think it would be a big improvement in the article if we could put in a quote from a respected critic saying how bad one or more of those books were. I just don't have any good ideas on where to locate such a quote. I have some books on my shelf by literary critics about Heinlein, but they were generally published before the he started writing what I consider to be his sub-par work. Sure, we could google search and find something on the web by some fan or amateur critic trashing the books, but that wouldn't carry much weight.--Bcrowell 16:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that most of the late books are fairly useless.  If they'd had some good editing, they might have become v. good books.  But RAH, at that stage in his career, would never allow anyone except Ginnie to even *suggest* the idea of editing (what I really mean, of course, is drastically shortening) his stuff.  As I recall, the first of the lengthy ones, To Fear No Evil, was serialized in Galaxy, to which I subscribed at the time.  A few months later, when it was published as a novel, the Galaxy book reviewer, A.J. Budrys, I believe, wrote something like: "Now that Heinlein has got this enormous yawn of a novel out of the way, maybe he can...."  As you say, there was a lot of intense criticism over the years of his Yawners of books, but I'm like you, too lazy to try to track down the actual sources.  They're out there, though, and I thoroughly agree that they ought to be incorporated into this article.  (I actually think that his *last* book, the Sunset one, was probably the best of the bunch....) Hayford Peirce 17:23, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that his later novels (with the exceptions of Friday and Job) aren't up to par, and I have always understood the reason for that to be that he stopped allowing himself to be edited, as you mention. However, I have no idea where I learned that. This is important information, and should be in the article. So, please, somebody find out when, how and why he ditched his editors, add a link, and include that info in the Later Work section! -- Calion | Talk 05:01, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Well said, Ayesee. You seem to grok our NPOV policy well. =P Ideally, Wikipedia articles should contain no opinions except those attributed to specific notable people, or general trends that are objectively true. —Keenan Pepper 14:49, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't think the problem is that we're lacking positive criticism or negative criticism of the later books -- we're simply lacking *any* substantial discussion of them from well-known critics in the academic or print publishing world. All the print criticism I have on my bookshelf simply predates the the books we're talking about. I think what we have right now is reasonably NPOV, and won't be improved significantly unless we can locate some good sources.--Bcrowell 01:52, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: ... needs some rework, as it takes a POV that's hard to justify by reading of RAH's actual work.  I'm loath to just modify it without opening up some discussion, however, as I dn't think warring reverts would help.
Specific points:
* On the discussion of Farnham's Freehold, the notion that the treatment of the future african-descended dominant culture uses "african stereotypes" is mistaken: RAH gives it away by pointing out early on by Farnham describing a place in the West Indies where the blacks are cultured and sophisticated, and whites are feckless and shiftless.  He then plays out a traditional slave narrative with Farnham as the narrator.  It's not africans and caucasians, it's masters and slaves.
* Similarly, on "asian culture", the section misstates a coupole of significant points.  First, the "ray" isn't specific to people of "asian blood", it's tunable to different races, and in fact the tunability becomes essential to the denoument -- which also includes an American of Asian ancestry heroically, and selflessly, saving the others from the psychotic white man.  The character deserves a little better than the later, anonymous mention.  The reference that RAH found Sixth Column "an embarrassment" gives the impression that Heinlein felt the racial treatment was what was embarrassing, while the cited quotation is of Heinlein saying he's worked hard to eliminate the racist overtones of Campbell's original idea, but didn't feel it was an artistic success.
The net effect is to give a lot of wink-wink nudge-nudge implications of racism to someone who was agressively anti-racist and anti-racialist.
Charlie (Colorado) 05:35, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's been a while since I've read Farnham's Freehold; I'll have to go back and read it again. But I think the sentence you refer to  in the article is clearly bogus, especially without any counterpoint being offered. I've transplanted it into the Farnham's Freehold article, along with a paraphrase of your contrary argument. We've seen this kind of silliness before, with, e.g., one editor being determined to state that Heinlein was a homophobe, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.--Bcrowell 21:54, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I've done some more rewriting of the race section. I don't remember the story of Sixth Column very well, but maybe Charlie could amplify on that more in the article's text.--Bcrowell 22:15, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I so want to make some horrible pun using that phrase about "reslanting"... Charlie (Colorado) 23:30, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

text: If no one objects, I will insert an aside as I did before either into the pictures caption. I've received support as to the fact that this aside should be made. If no one objects, I'll take care of it within 24 hours. Speak now or forever hold your peace =) Ayesee 20:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see what happened. Keenan Pepper shortened the caption. But then when I saw the shortened version, I wasn't able to understand the point it was trying to make, so I deleted the text about the disguises. Now I think I understand that Ayesee was suggesting that the cover could have been portraying her when she was disguised as white. I think the point is a little too complicated to be crammed into a figure caption, and too arcane to be so prominently featured. I've replaced the figure with a collage of three covers showing characters with (arguably) the wrong race, and I've added a discussion in a footnote, giving a verifiable source (Gifford) for the skin colors of the characters in two of the books.--Bcrowell 20:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bcrowell, you are a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you very much for the equal argument. I wasn't trying to be a prick about it or one of those people that just forces an argument, but I honestly believe that the original caption gave an unfair (albeit unintentional) slant to the issue of race concerning Heinlein and his novels, and I simply wanted to make sure that was avoided. Your solution was concise and proper, and much more appropriate than my (admittedly novice) attempt to clarify it in an overly long picture caption. Well done. Ayesee 05:09, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was one of the most influential and, at times, controversial authors of "hard" science fiction. <--- that doesnt sound very npov --Fafnir665 05:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What's NOT NPOV about it?  He was certainly one of the most influential authors.  You dispute that?  And he was certainly one of the most controversial.  You dispute that?  I think, actually, that almost every source you can find would agree with those statements, whether the source likes Heinlein or not, or agrees with him or not.  So that makes writing it here NPOV.... Hayford Peirce 05:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm content with it as it stands.--Wehwalt 12:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section on Race 

message: I added a few tidbits to the new trivia section of the article. If anyone objects to them or feels that they would be better if simply slid under another heading in the article and stated in that context, please do so. As I stated before, I'm new to Wiki, so vocal feedback would be appreciated when it comes to edits I make, and if they are correct or incorrect. Thanks.
Ayesee 13:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi -- The article was already too long for WP guidelines, and we'd been struggling to cut it, e.g., by moving the books to the separate bibliography article. I'm going to delete the section. We can always bring it back if other people disagree with me. It's also conceivable that there should be a separate Heinlein trivia article; Gifford's Reader's Companion is full of that kind of stuff.--Bcrowell 16:52, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem at all... if you think it's necessary, I'd be happy to start putting together a Heinlein Trivia article, just depends on if you think it would be worth having. Ayesee 17:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trivia 

message: Although Heinlein most certainly popularized this term, he did not coin it. The exact phrase, "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch", was first seen in popular print in a June 1949 edition of the San Francisco News, which in fact, was claimed to be a reprint of an editorial from 1938. However, it is debatable as to wether Heinlein should receive credit for the use of the term as a word, as in, saying "Tanstaafl!" (tans-stay-ful) to someone in common speech. Either way, I feel that some sort of distinction should be made. Does anyone else agree?
Ayesee 13:44, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article only claims that he coined the word (i.e., the acronym), not the phrase.--Bcrowell 16:54, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Clarified. Thanks ya much. Ayesee 20:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Was the editorial from someone in EPIC?  It might have been a phrase he was associated with through them that he then coverted into an acronym. --Dunkelza 19:10, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  TANSTAAFL 

message: Someone added a link to a cool 1952 Popular Mechanics article on the Heinleins' house in Colorado. It's public domain, and I've added a photo from it to the WP article.--Bcrowell 21:20, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: new photo

message: The second sentence of the article says "Most of his works have been....".  I used to fight bitterly with a high-school English teacher about this.  I would write something like the above, he would correct it to "most of his works has been...." on the theory that the verb reflects the subject and that the subject here is "most" and that "most" is singular, not plural.  Therefore "has" rather than "have".  Most of the time I try to observe this rule, but do, even as a published, copy-edited writer, make occasional mistakes in the usage.  It seems to me that this Heinlein sentence is in error, but if one changes the "have" to "has", one then has to rewrite the rest of the sentence in subtle ways, and the ensuing sentence *sounds* wrong.  Is there a New Yorker copy-editor in the house who could set us right on this issue (or at least this particular case)? Hayford Peirce 18:56, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're the man, then.  I guess "most" can be plural by context.... Hayford Peirce 05:10, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that the subject is a compound noun:  "most of his works" is plural, so it should read "most of his works have been".  If the noun phrase was "most of his work" then the correct form would be "most of his work has been". Brandon39 05:19, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Expert dialectician and grammarian needed (non-Hungarian)

message: Just to close off this debate (hopefully).  "Dean" really just means "oldest".  Or maybe, even, "the first".  In French it's "Doyen," and it means the same.  "The Doyen of the Senat", for instance.  In S.F. I've seen book blurbs from the late 1950s in which Heinlein is called "the youthful dean of science fiction."  This is obviously meaningless.  In 1959, let's say, Murray Leinster, Clifford Simak, and Jack Williamson, among others, had predated Heinlein by a number of years and would be considered "deans" long before you would pick Heinlein.  As the years went by, Leinster and Simak died.  But Williamson is still alive today and wrote his last book only a year or so ago.  So Heinlein, in actuality, was *never* the dean of science fiction.  I think where the problem arises, is that many people have come to conflate the word "dean" with "best" or "old and great" or something of that nature.  In that case, maybe you *could* call Heinlein, at some point in his career, the "dean" or something or other.  But I myself am glad to see this word disappear from the article. Hayford Peirce 04:24, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Er, if you look up "dean" in a dictionary, you'll find that it means a church or educational leader, as in a department or division head.  It has nothing to do with age.  And if you google on "dean of science fiction", by far the most common hit is for Robert Heinlein.  Brandon39 11:09, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am not sure about the "by far the most common hit is for Robert Heinlein". Here are the actual Google results: Search "dean of science fiction" + heinlein = 13,000 matches, search "dean of science fiction" + asimov = 12,400 matches, search "dean of science fiction" + clarke = 34,000 matches. I am a pretty big Clarke fan and think that worldwide he has the greatest recognition (as also is apparent from the google matches). A straight up google search for "Robert A. Heinlein" has 1.62 million matches vs. 4.5 million for "Arthur C. Clarke". Jayanta Sen 16:17, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course, if either Heinlein or Asimov had survived into this era in which the Internet is widespread, your results would have been quite different, I'm sure.--Wehwalt 20:17, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

text: "Dean" has nothing to do with chronological age, but it does refer to tenure in a position, in addition to its other meanings.. No one would argue that Heinlein held an administrative academic position vis a vis Science Fiction writers. It comes down to what material we should include in this article. "Dean" is a notable epithet that has been applied to Heinlein. If we can attribute it we should include it. -Will Beback 11:18, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, if you want to be ridiculous about it.  Yes, dean means a guy in an administrative place in a school, etc., plus he can be a religious-type guy.  But let's stipulate that we're not using any of these meanings to describe Heinlein.  Or, if we are, then we're all idiots.  So let's go on to the *next* meaning of the word dean, as defined on page 319 of my 11th Edition of the M-W Collegiate Dictionary.  That definition (in caps) is: DOYEN.  Okie, so we turn the pages to page 377 and we come to DOYEN.  Doyen is defined as "the senior member of a body of group; a person considered to be knowledgeable or uniquely skilled as a result of long experience in some field of endeavor; the oldest example of a category."  I would say that Heinlein could, mistakenly, be taken to fit any of those definitions, at least if one were a blurb-writer for a book.  Yes, yes, I know, he should have said: "Heinlein is the doyen of science fiction."  But then he wonders if everyone will understand what he means.  So he looks up Doyen and is referred back to DEAN.  So he uses Dean instead.... Hayford Peirce 16:48, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Originally, the term "Dean of Science Fiction" refers to Murray Leinster, a phrase which was used in his life time and also in the New York Times obituary for him in 1976. It also appeared as the title of John Pierce's introduction to The Best of Murray Leinster in 1978. It has since begun to be used for Heinlein, Asimov, and Bradbury. Shsilver 17:00, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The dean of science fiction

message: I propose we remove the sentence "He was among the first authors of bestselling novel-length science fiction in the 1960s." from the first paragraph. The meaning of the sentence is not clear. It can mean:
1) Heinlein was among the first authors of bestselling novel-length sci-fi. And his work was done in the 1960s.
2) Among the best-selling sci-fi authors of 1960, Heinlein was one of the first.
If the meaning is 1) then the statement is inaccurate as best-selling writers like Wells, Verne and Bradbury preceeded him by quite a few years. If the meaning is 2) then there is nothing special about the 1960s (compared to, say the 1950s or 1970s) to make this information important.
Jayanta Sen 21:14, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest that there is a third meaning: that Heinlein was the first writer of S.F. best-sellers in the *modern* mass market era.  Verne and Wells had been a *long* time before and were considered "classics".  As for Bradbury, I seriously doubt if he had ever achieved actual bestseller status before the 60s.  I could be wrong on this, I admit, but I don't have that impression.  What the paragraph is trying to say is that Heinlein was the first to break out of the S.F. genre, which had traditionally (and only for a few years, at that) sold maybe 5,000 hardbacks.  Some clever person here ought to be able to encapsulate this in a concise sentence that admits of no possible vagueness of meaning. Hayford Peirce 21:24, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks Hayford for your comments and thanks "24.52.254.62" for the rewrite. I think "modern mass-market era" sounds much better than "1960s". And if "24.52.254.62" logs in, it would be a bit less impersonal than a number! Jayanta Sen 17:28, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove sentence 

message: I just got an email from SFWA announcing the first winner of the Heinlein Prize (incidentally, I think a prize of $500,000 offered by the estate of a writer is extraordinary enough to merit inclusion in the main article, not merely a link to a Website -- think how much capital is needed to generate that much income every year).  In it, he says: "Robert Heinlein published over one hundred novels, short stories, and articles. He won six Hugo awards and has had his work adapted into four movies and five television series. The most prevalent theme underlying all his works is the practical benefit of man's activities in space. The majority of his works were published long before Neil Armstrong first set foot upon the Moon, writing against prevailing opinions of the time that declared such an endeavor as both impractical and impossible."  Do 4 movies and 5 TV series sound right? Hayford Peirce 00:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree about the quality of RAH in other media.  On the "Out There" series, since it was an anthology series with stories by several different authors, it seems reasonably fair to count them individually. -- Charlie (Colorado) 21:35, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How many movies and TV shows were made from his works? 

message: The War of the Worlds (novel) says,
: Robert A. Heinlein took up the same theme, in a bit more humorous way, in his The Number of the Beast where the heroes visit several different versions of Mars. One of them is the home planet of Martians who managed to hold on to the conquered Earth. The heroes encounter tribes of humans living in the Martian wilds, descendants of captive humans who had been transported to Mars by the conquerors and there managed to escape. Also on Mars, the wild humans still speak cockney English — while the Martians' obedient slaves seem descended mainly from upper-class Englishmen.
While The Number of the Beast (novel) says,
: ... An attempt to visit Barsoom, curiously, takes the quartet to a different version of Mars, seemingly under the colonial rule of the British Empire. Afterwards they discover that they had in fact been to Barsoom, the "colonial Mars" being an illusion imposed on them by the telepathically adept Barsoomians.
I don't remember either the enslaved-humans-on-Mars timeline or the telepathically adept Barsoomians. But it's been a long time since I read the Beast and I don't have a copy to check. Are these actually there? —wwoods 01:55, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, no.  They really only went to one version of Mars and part of it was under British colonial rule (it was a prison colony) and part of it was under Russian rule.  The obedient slaves they talk about aren't even human.  They're Mogs (I think) semi-human thingies.  As to the illusion from the Barsoomians... There was no mention of that at all in the book itself anyway.   Shonsu 04:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Close, and helpful.  On Barsoom, the Brits had as slaves what they referred to as "Wogs" (see derogatory phrases, Raj, India) which I would describe as the weak British form of the N-word in America.  They had very bendy knees and were effectively subhuman in intelligence.  By putting one in knee splints, however, Captain Burroughs and her crew were able to approximate the "Fake Ranger" who had scared them out of their own home and world.  "Wogs" are not human.  Wogs were slaves.  Incidentally, the interpretation above, "an illusion imposed on them" is quite possibly correct, but was far from clear to me at the time I was first reading it. Eh Nonymous 11:34, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Number of the Beast 

message: The article claims that Heinlein had a wife before Leslyn, and says: 'Heinlein's biography, as given on the Heinlein Society web site, endorsed by his estate, says about his first wife, "We do know her name and other information on her life (we helped track down her and her fate) but are withholding it until Bill Patterson presents the material in his upcoming biography on Heinlein (so don't ask, we won't tell)'.
This biography, at the Heinlein Society website, does not contain those words, nor any other mention of a wife before Leslyn. Tagging as citeneeded accordingly.--Calair 00:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: About 15 seconds of Googling sent me to this page on the Heinlein Society site, which does include the copy in question: http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/FAQrah.html. I'm reverting the deletion, with a small fix to the source reference. RLetson 02:43, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A bit later: The Heinlein Society FAQ page includes this small print: "©2003 D. A. Houdek Rule - no reproduction or distribution without consent of author. This material may not be copied and put on another website without permission." So maybe it's better to include the information and a link without quoting the language. (Though I'd call it fair use, my own self, and would not hesitate to quote it in any print piece I wrote. But who wants to stir up the Society's lawyers?) RLetson 05:05, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just fixed it. RLetson 05:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Apologies for not Googling it; I assumed that the bio was the most appropriate place for that info, so if it wasn't there it wouldn't be anywhere on the site. Obviously I erred :-) --Calair 11:16, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Three wives?