May 8th
May 8th is an underrated day. Probably not too hot, probably not too cold. A fair chance that it might be raining, but not a certainty. School is not yet out (which is good for everyone NOT in school), but neither are the mosquitoes (the insects… the kids are still in school, remember), or at least not in full force.
It’s also the day of the year that Robert Heinlein died in 1988. I’m not to suggest we should celebrate his death, of course. I just think its underrated as an opportunity to remember one of the foundation authors of modern science fiction. One of those rare breed of writers that can combine a good story with thought provoking social commentary and a technological prescience that can, from time to time, make your skin crawl. Not everything he wrote fits in to all three categories. Not everything he wrote is guaranteed to even fit into one category. The ones that do, though…
Yeah, he grew to be a very cranky, very horny old man. Who doesn’t? I fit that category right now and I’m under 30. Give me a wheel chair, a plaid blanket, and some nurses to bother and we’ll see how well I fit into an old folks ranch. I even play bridge.
Did he have some hot sports opinions? The hottest. Political systems, political thought, social behaviors, social conventions, social structures, economics, personal liberty v. social welfare, polyamory, polygamy, polygynandry. Oh, did he like the last three.
Hey, the guy went from being a (not so) closet communist to supporting Barry Goldwater in his lifetime. He covered the spectrum. He also described the idea of a waterbed in such detail, and so often, that decades after he wrote about it as US Court ruled that the waterbed was not a patentable invention.
I’m about to finish his book Friday. Certainly a controversial work, as pretty much all his later books are. Some people hate it, some people love it. I’ve thought that, so far, it’s been an enjoyable read that hasn’t really gone anywhere yet… at least not where I expected it to. It’s made some points about society that are worth thought… but that’s Heinlein. What is perhaps more worth note is the stunning degree to which characters use a communications network to research all manner of topics and can find information on anything.. even watch a live concert years after it finished. He also goes so far as to state in his book that once you put data into this system, it lives forever and can always be found somewhere.
Sound like anything you know? Sound like anything from 1982, when the book was published? The answers are yes and no, of course. While the internet did exist, it was essentially unheard of outside of military uses, and you’d have to be a sci-fi author to… ah.
Of course, he also includes flying anti-grav cars, interstellar travel at 18x the speed of light, super-ultra batteries that can power a house for forever, and a some crazy intercontinental travel system, so maybe 1 out of 6 isn’t all that great. Oh, and genetic engineering/design of human babies and partially human creatures… but maybe we don’t write that one off just yet.
Heinlein also does have some relevant commentary on energy supplies that, along with his depiction of the interweb, fits right in with today (Shipstone is the name of the guy who invented these super ultra batteries):
…Shipstone saw at once that the problem was not a shortage of energy but lay in the transporting of energy…. Those who spoke of “energy scarcity” and of “conserving energy” simply did not understand the situation. The sky was “raining soup”; what was need was a bucket in which to carry it.
It doesn’t take a sci-fi author to make this statement, but it does put it in a frame that most people do not (or can not) put it in. There is nothing special about the energy of oil. It has merely been congealed into a form easy to transport and convenient to burn. Same for coal, although you can’t push it through a pipeline. Natural gas is harder to transport… because its a gas and it takes up so much damn room. You can pressurize it and liquefy it, but that’s less convenient… less safe. The energy is the same in all of it, in the end.
By the way, Sandworms of Dune? Come on! Did Herbert die in the middle of that book and have a couple hacks finish it for him?
What’s that?
I was so disappointed by the palpable give up exhibited in the last 1/3 of that book it made me want to dig up an earthworm, mutate it until it became a sand trout and started turning earth into Dune, then wait until a sand worm grew and capture it, torture it and send the pieces encased in a giant bucket of water to Anderson and baby Herbert for their role in that farce.
Herbert and Heinlein… two cranky old sci fi authors with big opinions that are fun to read.
Poly want a cracker?
Stephanie Seymour
