lunatic

[freckles_and_doubt]

My love-hate affair with Robert Heinlein continues apace. Read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress yesterday, and was utterly charmed to realise that its narrative voice uses a Luna dialect which has dropped the use of the word "the". The word's only appearance in the novel was in the direct speech of Earth inhabitants or Luna inhabitants deliberately speaking formal Earth-speech, and in the title. I love sf that messes with language in a realistic, futuristic way.

I am also forced to conclude that the book was an instrumental influence in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series: it's a very serious investigation of politics, power and the economics of social control in the colonisation of a new planet. But, lordy, it's still Heinlein. Lunar society is a kick-butt, pragmatic, self-satisfied elite which, despite its convict origins, holds itself way above the seething, self-deceptive masses of Earth. Even within this elite group the main characters inevitably seem to believe that they are an enlightened hierarchy which absolutely needs to rule, and if necessary deceive, the bulk of the population for their own good, and my word are they smugly superior about it. Also, group marriage. What's it with Heinlein and group marriage? Honestly.

Apart from equal amounts of irritation and enjoyment, the book also gave me really weird dreams. The moon fell on Cape Town last night, after hanging around in the sky for a while like one of the alien motherships from Independence Day; it landed mostly in the sea but partially in the city, obliterating it utterly. Fortunately I could watch the whole thing from a random SCA event up in the mountains somewhere. One of those dark, lowering apocalyptic dreams, with added rubble but no actual sense of fear or loss. Weird.

Comments

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

I don't hate Heinlein, I just think he went mad in his later years. Perhaps it was the brain surgery.

[khoi-boi.livejournal.com]

"Join the SCA. It might save your life in case of Lunar Collision!" ...and there's next year's recruiting drive sorted :)

I loathe Heinlein. I may be a heretic for saying this, but the Starship Troopers movie is way better than the book, because Verhoeven nicely skewers all that libertarian zealotry that made me end up hating the book. Heinlein's just so fucking American in all the bad ways. Don't get me started on Friday. Heinlein has some nice ideas (like the language thing, also some stuff in StrangerIASL, but he rides some of his hobbyhorses to splinters.

heretic!

[first-fallen.livejournal.com]

If you didn't have such a cute bebbie, I would leave you.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I think my overall hatred of Heinlein could be summed up in one word. It's his smugness. He doesn't explore possibilities, or run political thought experiments, or look at interesting clashes of ideas - he simply bludgeons you to death with The One True Way, book after book. He's the fundamentalist bigot of sf. This is bad enough, even if it wasn't for the fact that the One True Way he's espousing is elitist, militaristic, fascist and horribly sexist under the loose cover of idealising the Dear Little Woman. Hell, I generally have no problem with polemic in sf, I read Sheri Tepper devotedly, after all; but even if Tepper hits you with feminism, ecology and anti-religious ideas book after book, she is at least capable of examining her own principles, varying their execution, and exploring possibilities and contradictions. Heinlein just sits there fatly, and preaches. Bleah.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

I direct you to the argument that Heinlein and Rand are both fascist wankers

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

In the case of Heinlein, a fascist, sexist wanker. Rand is just horrible. I loathe her, and all she represents, considerably more than Heinlein. At least his pretentious ideological dodginess is occasionally attached to an interesting story.

I honestly don't get why Heinlein is so revered. His philosophy is offensive, and his sf is largely mediocre. He may have been groundbreaking at the time he wrote, but we've moved on a long way since then.

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

Am I the only person who reads SF for the neat ideas?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Sexism, fascism and smugness are not neat ideas.

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

Technology ideas. What else?
"Steam! Steam shall save the world!"

[pinkthulhu.livejournal.com]

Dropping the article "the" would annoy me I think. It reminds me too much of lzy txt spk, which is already nearly an accepted dialect.

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

I have to respond, just for sheer geek value. There are languages already lacking the word "the", similarly "a" (ref: Rutherford and Nkopodi (1990) in reference to a local language in Malawi) resulting in difficulty in learning stuff in English. The example given refers to struggling to tell the difference between the sentences “carbon dioxide is the gas which does not support combustion” and “carbon dioxide is a gas which does not support combustion” (p. 445).

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

The missing "the" is actually not particularly irritating to read - comes across as clipped, to the point, very distinctive. A lot of inessential pronouns are also omitted, although not consistently. Examples:
I missed warning her, was new to conspiracy.
What use it was to bar Mike from talk-talk I could not see, since was a cinch bet that Warden's stoolies would be in crowd.
It works surprisingly well.