Talk:Robert A. Heinlein/Archive 3

message: Why is the article under Robert_A._Heinlein%27s_Variable_Star instead of Variable Star? Everything appears to indicate the actual title of the book is Variable Star. Any objections to the change? --Lukobe 17:03, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: BTW, why aren't the titles in the box at the bottom of the page italicized? --Lukobe 17:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have the finished book, but on the title and copyright pages of my bound advance review copy it's just Variable Star. RLetson 18:21, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Variable Star 

message: User Norm mit added a section on linguistics, but I've deleted it. I think it's much too detailed to belong in this article, which is already very long. The article does already mention Korzybski and general semantics, and I think that's plenty on that topic.--WPIsFlawed 16:21, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Linguistics section

message: Having just read it, how does Double Star jive with the theme of "...the struggle for self-determination of individuals, rather than of nations?"  Admittedly, I'm a Heinlein neophyte, but the line near the end where Smythe says "...in order to let Bonforte live again, that seedy actor had to be supressed--completely" seems pretty telling.  Sure, it's his choice to become Bonforte and put on this 'ultimate work', but it's still almost a literal self-sacrifice (to crib from the Double Star entry) for the good of the extended nation.  I'll also mention the emperor's mentioning of becoming a shop foreman were he not emperor, as being somewhat in the same vein.  A contrasting study?
:I think this is more of a general theme throughout Heinlein's work: the tension between one's own freedom as an individual, and one's duty (to friends, family, tribe, nation, ...). There are a million different angles on this. Beyond This Horizon has the protagonist feeling that his society per se is anemic and not necessarily worth saving, but he's prepared to lay down his life to save its gene plasm bank. The first couple of pages of The Puppet Masters are another interesting take on this, from a completely different angle (and similar to Double Star, because there is a strong element of personal loyalty and respect, stronger than abstract loyalty to the nation-state). Although there are many different nuances to this, and it's a tension that helps to drive a lot of the plots of his books, I think the basic answer is that the individual has to choose what it's worth putting himself on the line for, and if he make a choice that involves self-sacrifice, it *is* an expression of his freedom as an individual. I've made an edit to the Individualism and self-determination section to try to reflect this; what do people think? --WPIsFlawed 16:35, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Individualism and self-determination

message: User 128.31.16.98 added the following:
:Heinlein's time travel stories, especially 'By His Bootstraps' and '-All You Zombies-', have been influential in philosophical discussion of the possibility of time travel; they are cited by David Lewis in 'The Paradoxes of Time Travel'. Unlike many such stories they appear to be consistent (the past never gets 'changed'), and they provide graphic examples of time travel 'loops': finite series of events in which each member is caused by one of the others, so that they appear ungrounded (see, for instance, the case of the notebook in 'By His Bootstraps').
I'm skeptical of the claim made by this paragraph, so I've cut it. Just because one person mentions them as an example in a book, that doesn't mean they're influential.--WPIsFlawed 22:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Without taking either side in this matter, I wonder if the David Lewis book by itself is important enough to warrant a mention, though? Hayford Peirce 22:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: edits by 128.31.16.98 

message: User Phrost made the following change:
:The book's main political idea is that there should be no conscription, but that suffrage should belong only to those who have served in the military.
to:
:The book's main political idea is that there should be no conscription, but that suffrage should belong only to those who have earned it through government or military service.
with this comment:
:ST's "Citizenship" wasn't granted only to those who served in the Military, but those who sacrificed by serving the whole of society.
I think this is a controversial point, and we might want to talk it over thoroughly and make sure we're getting it right. 
The article on the book (which is an FA) has a couple of apropos quotes:
:"the franchise is today limited to discharged veterans," ch. XII
:"people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted . . . and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears"
I recall that in one place, they say that if someone is blind, deaf, and crippled, they'll still let him qualify for the franchise, but the assignment might be something like counting the fuzz on the back of a caterpillar. I think the version before Phrost's change is probably not literally factually correct, but I'm not sure Phrost's version is better. The new version would seem to imply that you could volunteer to drive an ambulance, or work in a hospital back on Earth; however, my recollection is that that is not correct -- they ask Rico his preferences, but they don't give him the choice he asked for, assigning him to the MI instead. I also don't think you are told what duty you'll be assigned to until you've already signed up. IIRC, Rico signs up, they tell him he'll be in the MI, and they tell him that after that point, he can still fail to show up for duty without any penalty whatsoever, except that he'll miss out on the franchise.--24.52.254.62 23:04, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: conditions for franchise in Starship Troopers

message: User Signinstranger did a bunch of cleanup to the punctuation, most of which was good, but in some cases he did British-style punctuation instead of US. I've reverted it in those places. I'm also not sure how to punctuate the titles of two of the stories, whose titles I believe actually include the quotes ("If this goes on" and "all you zombies"); it seems like it would look goofy to have quotes inside of quotes, so I've left them with a single set of quotes. Or maybe they should have single quotes inside double quotes?--WPIsFlawed 22:20, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The correct forms are "'If This Goes On--'" and "'All You Zombies--'" (singles inside doubles, with the -- being an em dash). RLetson 04:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Edited as indicated above and also followed US practice of placing commas and periods inside quotation marks. RLetson 05:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm no punctuation expert, but I think working links are more important. I used piped links to keep your punctuation but make the links work. Also, it looks like you missed a few instances. —Keenan Pepper 09:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm probably displaying my wiki-naiveté here, but why not fix the article titles to reflect the correct forms of the story titles? RLetson 16:10, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: “If This Goes On—” seems correct already. Should "—All You Zombies—" be moved to “All You Zombies—”? —Keenan Pepper 19:03, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what the Wiki style book would be on this--it depends on how article titles are to be formatted. In normal body text, a story title goes in double quotation marks, so for ITGO and AYZ (which start with double quotation marks, since they're utterances), you add double quotation marks and reduce the original doubles to singles. So if the article titles are treated as "normal body text," they need this operation/transformation; if they're acting like bare titles, then they don't. (Sorry to get so pedantic about this, but I spent a couple decades as a professional pedant, English comp division.) RLetson 19:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that means the articles should have double quotes, but the single quote versions should be redirects for ease of linking. —Keenan Pepper 19:33, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: It had never occurred to me that the Wiki style book would do something as silly as "splitting the difference" between US and UK punctuation. Now I'm waiting for the Wiki community to vote on the value of pi. (Yeah, yeah, I know, math isn't linguistic usage. But it still feels like letting comp students vote on grammar.) RLetson 00:25, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I was speechless when I read this a couple days ago.  Or, if not speechless, at least writing-a-commentless, hehe.  Verra weird! Hayford Peirce 01:22, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Okie, if that person reverts it, I'll revert it myself to keep you from having to do it.  Two, three, or more of us ought to be able to wear him/her down.  And after the 3rd revert we can maybe find an administrator to step in.  By the way, this Brit business brings another chain of thought to mind.  See new topic at the end.... Hayford Peirce 00:27, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I have no intention of reverting more than once, pending the conclusion of further discussion. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:05, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Punctuation 

message: I recall reading in more than one place that Heinlein as a taste is one that does not travel well.  That particularly in England his name is, if not mud, then at least seen on the level of cowboy-Ronald Reagan-typical American loudmouth.  A shoot-from-the-hip engineer whose stories are definitely inferior.  Does anyone recall the source of this?  It was certainly a very reputable one that might be worth a mention in the article: Heinlein as the expression of quintessential Americanism, or some such.... Hayford Peirce 00:52, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, Heinlein's quintessential Americanism is a big thesis of Franklin's Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction. A lot of his stories do depict space as the Western Frontier translated into outer space, from the 1776 retelling of Red Planet to the pioneer story in Time Enough for Love. In The Number of the Beast, there's a funny part about an alternate universe where Mars is part of the British Empire, which causes the protagonists severe indigestion.--24.52.254.62 02:25, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, interesting.  I've never read Franklin, however, so I so it somewhere else.  Probably 15 or 20 years ago.  It's probably a fairly well-known thesis, then.  It was probably a couple of book reviews by card-carrying Brits such as Kingsley Amis that I'm thinking of.  If I can track it down, I will. Hayford Peirce 03:46, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Heinlein as a veddy veddy American taste

message: User Homagetocatalonia added the article to the "American atheists" category. I don't really think that's correct, so I reverted it. Heinlein was hostile to fundamentalism, and sometimes to organized religion, but I hardly think the man who wrote the slogan "Thou art God" qualifies as an atheist.--24.52.254.62 02:03, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: American atheists category

message: Use Shsilver added the following:
:His experiences on the world tour described in Tramp Royale may have influenced his outlook in darker ways. Corruption and a near-rape in Indonesia, along with the staggering population density there, caused him to declare in the final chapter that the world may have already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet, and that the future would bring attempts by the high-population nations to take over all remaining lands, specifically the comparatively under-populated United States of America.
Chapter X of Tramp Royale describes their visit to Indonesia, and does describe an incident in which a soldier snuck into Ginny's room on the ship, apparently intending to rape her. However, I think this text represents a vast oversimplification of the comments made in the last chapter of the book, and the part about "may have influenced his outlook" seems like nonverifiable speculation. It also seems unlikely to me that the experience in Indonesia was such a huge deciding factor in making him focus on overpopulation, because Farmer in the Sky (1950) deals extensively with these issues, three years before the trip. I've deleted these two sentences.--24.52.254.62 03:32, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Tramp Royale

message: Seems a little misleading to say that he originated the term moonbat. The Safire article at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/magazine/03wwln_safire.html?_r=1&oref=slogin (free registration required?) says that he was the first to use it in print, but he didn't use it in the sense in which it's currently used at all.--24.52.254.62 05:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Moonbat

message: A couple of people have been editing the lead. I think the lead did have two problems before their edits: (1) the third paragraph combined two unrelated thoughts; (2) one of the thoughts in that paragraph was basically uninformative, unverifiable, and POVish. So I more or less agree with the net result of the edits, except that I think the part about "grok" is the kind of thing that *does* belong in the lead. For a reader who's not an SF fan, and isn't going to read the rest of the article, it's the kind of thing that they're glad to know: "Oh, 'grok' is a word that this guy made up? OK, interesting." I've inserted it at the end of the paragraph that lists the awards he was given. To me, this new paragraph (awards+grok) seems like it has more of a coherent theme, which is to document his importance and influence.--24.52.254.62 23:54, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree 100% with your comments -- the previous version was awkward and disjointed.  On the other hand, "grok" IS a word that is used, or at least seen.  The other words, such as "waldo", can be mentioned much further down the article. (By the way, can anyone cite a mainsteam source in which "waldo" is used?  The National Geographic?  Time?  The New York Times?  Anything like that?  I've been looking for over 40 years and never seen it once.  This is a word that I don't think has really taken hold -- maybe The Journal of American Nuclear Power Plants uses it....) Hayford Peirce 00:12, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This might be a bit pedantic, but I still have a concern about the assertion that the language has absorbed "several words" from Heinlein's fiction. wiktionary:several says "more than 2 but not very many", which is about what my Random House Unabridged says.  Can we substantiate "more than two" significant neologisms coined by Heinlein?  Grok, to my surprise, actually does appear in my Random House Unabridged.  I'm not sure how mainstream it is, though; it's always struck me as more well known to SF fans.  I've always thought of 'waldo' as a fairly well known term for 'remote manipulator', but it might also be marginal.  TANSTAAFL never made it to the mainstream at all.  The William Safire article doesn't assert that the modern use of "Moonbat" can be directly traced to Heinlein.  And at this point, I can't think of even marginal examples.  If we can't substantiate at least 3 or 4 notable neologisms, I'm still not sure that this belongs in the header.  (That having been said, I've taken my shot at editing the lead, so I'm not going to make any more changes to it.) -- Jim Douglas 00:29, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Re "waldo:" http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=waldo+manipulator&btnG=Google+Search . TANSTAAFL is less well known, but is a shibboleth of the libertarian movement. "Moonbat" is weak, IMO, as I've opined before; I'd be in favor of removing it.--24.52.254.62 00:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Honestly, for all the spotlight, I don't think the language has really absorbed grok.  I think grok has had its day, come and gone.  It is an uncommonly used slang term, which was once part of the counterculture to a limited extent.  Waldo is the term which is more commonly used today.  I will work on a way of rephrasing that.--Wehwalt 00:58, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, "waldo" is a technical term that is securely ensconced in the vocabulary of 0.0001% of the population, and is never going away. On the other hand, "grok" is a word that I'd guess at least 10% of the population knows, even if they wouldn't say it in everyday speech.--24.52.254.62 01:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: lead

message: I created a Future History template, Template:Future History, since most of the short stories in the series have their own pages. It could use some work with the formatting by someone who's better at that than me. Hopefully you all think it's a worthwhile endeavor and a good starting point. mosesroth 04:57, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Moses and I have started a discussion about this on Talk:Future History. -- Jim Douglas 16:26, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Future History Template 

message: I added Take Back Your Government to the list and bumped up the count to five. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 17:45, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Robert_A._Heinlein#Posthumous_Publications]]