Stranger in a Strange Land

It's a damn classic. Even though Heinlein was a sexist twat, I love this book and a bunch of his others.

 

Man, this thing rattled my head when I was a kid. Really did me a good turn. I've been a RAH fan ever since.

 

I grok.

 

Brother

NICE comeback

Much but only much. of what you say may be correct.

The last thing i read from him was 666..
he basically said women are tools.. i read between the lines

what say you?

 

Heinlein's character "Star" in Glory Road was a very strong woman who could not only fight "like a buzz saw" but was practically immortal. "If I were only five hundred years younger," she muses at one point. I liked the romanticism of that book, and in fact I borrowed his space/time travel idea for my short story Cibola which is here in Writers Forum.

 

Please don't judge Heinlein by 666, that has got to be his worst. In fact, even though I could be called a Heinlein fan, I barely got through that one. That one must have been written for the rent money.

 

Besides the Communist Manifesto and Annie Proulx's novel The Shipping News, this was the closest thing to a Bible I had when I was an adolescent. Everyone should read this book at the age of 16 like I did. The world would definitely be a groovier and more interesting place.

 

Brother

Fair cop
Yes Heinlein had his moments. As a technologist to be at 11 i was enthralled by starship troopers. I give it to him that he was a character.
A good guy to waffle on with in conversation.
But he was left behind.
Like clarke who had 'the sentinal' turned into a spiritual dogsbody...Troopers was used to make a toung in cheek sendup.

Who lives with us now?

Phillip K Dick

In SF he has most titles turned to film EVER.
If you doubt. I can remember it for you wholesale.

Occam

 

No
I read 1984 at age 8 [and wells time machine]
NEVER trust one who uses the word 'should'
Scan all my posts . i say should ..zero times

 

You just said "should" twice in this post:

 

Condemning heinlein because of 'his' sometimes sexist attitude is not only wrong, it is ignoring a lot of what he wrote.

His writings recognize the fact that (especially when he wrote them) society views women as inferior, but was just as clear that women were just as (and in some cases) more capable then men.

The only issues I ever had with what he wrote are his views on incest.


In general, he has some great ideas.

Above all... he advocated reason above blind faith in everything.

 

Incest? What did you have in mind?

 

It's a common theme in his writings. It doesn't show up in stranger in a strange land (that I recall) but in quite a few of his other books it does.

Oh, I didn't phrase that very well in my last post. He writes about incest as a positive thing across a few different books, including parents and their kids, and I really disagree with the idea that it is any way positive. If you ignore that whole theme though, I think he had some good ideas in a lot of other areas.

 

I think he was being sarcastic in those novels. Or curious to see if people would follow him blindly into that train of thought.