10 Quotes and 10 Books from Robert Heinlein

Here is part two of my article on Robert Heinlein.  The first part is here.

 Robert Heinlein’s was one of the finest writers to come out of the Science Fiction genre.  His writing was honed by years of writing to tight deadlines for small magazines.  He was a stylish and lucid writer, terse and elegant and his quick, engaging style allowed him to explore complex ideas in a way that ordinary readers could easily understand.

 His gift for elegance led him naturally to write pithy quotable lines.  Here are my ten favourite Robert Heinlein quotes.

 Quotes 

We each have a moral obligation to conserve and preserve beauty in this world; there is none to waste – Friday (1982)

Cheops Law:  Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget – Time Enough for Love (1973)

“Tanstaffl”  Means “There aint no such thing as a free lunch” The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

Ponse was not a villain.  He was exactly like the members of every ruling classi n history: honestly convinced of his own benevolence and hurt if it was challenged Farnham’s Freehold (1964)

We have a tradition of freedom, personal freedom, scientific freedom.  That freedom isn’t kept alive by caution and unwillingness to take risks.  Rocket Ship Galileo (1947)

Almost every thing about a human creature is ridiculous, except its ability to suffer bravely and die gallantly for whatever it loves and believes in. Job: a comedy of justice (1984)

A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness.  Bad manners.  Lack of consideration for others in minor matters.  A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot. Friday (1982) 

There are things which cannot be taught in ten easy lessons, nor popularised for the masses; they take years of skull sweat.  This is treason in an age when ignorance has come into its own and one man’s opinion is as good as another’s   Glory Road (1963)

Easy times for individuals are bad times for the race.  Adversity is a strainer which refuses to pass the ill-equipped.  Beyond this Horizon (1942)

Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a freee man, a man whose mind is free.  No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything – you cant conquer a free man, the most you can do is kill him.  If this goes on……  (1940)

 10 Novels by Robert Heinlein

Everything Robert Heinlein wrote is exciting, intelligent and beautifully written.  Everybody has their favourites, here are mine.

 Starship Troopers.

In Heinlein’s future, humanity is under threat of extermination by the Bugs, an insect race that have a single hive mind.  Outnumbered and outgunned, the human military has to resort to strategic cleverness and sheer courage.  All of this is told in the journey of one recruit, Juan Rico, from boot camp to battle-hardened officer.    

Starship Troopers explores, bravery, the value of adversity and aggression to the human race, the brotherhood of men, the nature of courage and how a man must lead.  It celebrates the courage and heroism of the military and has always been controversial.  Its insights into the true nature of men are perceptive and intelligent and beyond value.

 Get it in the UK here and the US here

Stranger in a Strange Land  

Michael Valentine Smith is an Earthman, brought up from babyhood on Mars by the powerful, virtually immortal Martians.  On his return to Earth he exhibits incredible powers which the US government wish to understand and exploit.  However Smith eludes the government and sets out to discover his native country.  However Smith’s greatest provocation is to setup a new religion of love and spiritual power, under the noses of the powerful.    

 Satirical, funny, blunt and provocative, Stranger in a Strange Land was a huge bestseller when it was published in 1961.  It supplied some of the intellectual underpinning for the emerging counter-culture, especially around the concepts of guilt-free sexuality and non-standard family types.  Read today, its outsider view of modern society is still very fresh and insightful.  A bold and original story.

 Get it in the UK here and the US here

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Luna is a penal colony, harsh and dangerous.  To survive takes intelligence, courage and quick wits.  When the tyrannical governor tries to tighten the screws on the already beleaguered colony a small group of Lunarians decides to brew a revolt, with independence the goal.  The ill-equipped group are Manuel O’Garcia Kelly, a computer scientist, Professor Bernardo La Paz, an activist shipped up from Earth many years before, Wyoming Knott, a beautiful freedom fighter and Mike, the only intelligent computer in the universe.

The desperate fight our heroes find themselves in is leavened by the warm, slightly crazy feisty lunarian lifestyles of their friends and family.  The question is how do you make a country and a fighting force out of radical individualists?  Answer: it is very difficult…..   

 Get it in the UK here and the US here

Glory Road

E.C. Gordon, freshly demobbed from South East Asia, is enjoying life on the Cote D’Azur in the early sixties.  Whilst enjoying the nudist colony of Ile Du Levant, he meets the most beautiful woman in the world.  She leads him from Earth into exotic adventures and in quick succession he fights Igli the giant, the Horned Ghosts and the Cold Water Gang.  Gordon finds out that he has signed up to rescue the great egg of the universe, the only problem being that it is a mission most deadly….   Heinlein serves up the ultimate hero fantasy with a slightly sardonic edge. 

Every man should read this book, it is all heart and all adventure.  Romance, glory and swordplay for grown men.  Just wonderful.     

Get it in the UK here and the US here

The Puppet Masters

A covert operations team discover that their enemy is a race of telepathic slugs that have the power to control individual minds and ride humans as puppet masters.  Robert Heinlein was never better at describing the loss of freedom than in this creepy, paranoid, violent story of alien invasion.  This is a story that starts fast and accelerates to a deadly conclusion.     

Get it in the UK here and the US here

Double Star

The story of Lorenzo Smythe, failed actor is a slightly different type of Heinlein.  Older than most of Heinlein’s other heros, Smythe is a rueful, sad man living in the shadow of his much more famous actor father, now deceased.  He is picked to impersonate a famous politician, John Bonforte, who is the target of radical political groups who wish to sabotage Bonforte’s  attempts to bridge Earthly and Martian civilisations. 

The characters in Double Star are very carefully drawn, as they rally around a man who they believe will successfully lead Earth into an alliance with the ancient Marian civilisation.  It is a novel of politics and personal growth, as the lowly Smythe finds the courage to grow in support of humanity’s future. 

 Get it in the UK here and the US here

Revolt in 2100

America in 2100 is a religious dictatorship in which the Church of the First prophet holds absolute power.  John Lyle is a young junior army officer, whose devotion to the church is troubled by the unholy behaviour he observes when he is assigned to the Prophet’s capital of New Jerusalem.  His beliefs shaken, john Lyle falls in love with one of the Prophet’s virgins and things really start to go wrong……

Events cause Lyle to join the resistance movement and the story plays to Heinlein’s strengths as he tells a tale of advanced military technologies and strategies.  Robert Heinlein’s faith in principled, intelligent people is at the heart of this story.  Revolt is a fast-paced future war story, with a determinedly cynical view of politics.  In Revolt Heinlein expands on Churchill’s dictum that Democracy is the “least worst” system of government.

 Get it in the UK here and the US here

Time Enough for Love

The story of Lazarus Long, a 2,300 year old man.  Robert Heinlein had explored longevity before, in the novel Methuselah’s children, where the Howard group of families have been (unbeknownst to them) bred over successive generations, for long life.  Lazarus Long is their most successful descendant.

 In Time Enough for Love, Heinlein uses Long’s outsider status to look at sexual politics, family life and American politics from a different angle.  Time Enough really consists of four novellas which allow Robert Heinlein to write about these subjects.  Woven around these novellas is the story of Long’s desire.  His hope is that by retelling his story he will find an inspiration that will bring newness into a life now filled with ennui.

 Towards the end of his life Robert Heinlein wrote a number of long novels that explored difficult metaphysical questions such as why are we here.  Time Enough for Love was the best of these, focussed, filled with the observations of one of the sharpest minds that America has ever produced.  Difficult and provocative, less story and more essay, Time Enough for Love rewards the reader who is willing to set aside judgement and consider original ideas.  

Get it in the UK here and the US here

Red Planet

This was an early novel and it establishes many major Heinlein themes.  The need for a man to have the skills and social understanding in order to thrive in a world dependent on technology.  The need to be manly and competent in a harsh environment (the book is set in ne of the first human colonies on Mars). 

 Jim and Frank are two boys in the process of becoming men.  They stumble upon a plot to enslave the free colonists of Mars.  The implications of the plot make it likely that the elder Martian race will be affected, with the potential for catastrophe for both races.  Red Planet was one of Heinlein’s first attempts at building an alien culture that was so radically different men would struggle to understand it.         

 Get it in the UK here and the US here

The Man who sold the Moon

A collection of short stories, The Man who sold the Moon is as relevant today as when it was published in 1951.  In the book as in the real world, the space race has faded away and one visionary businessman decides that only private enterprise can get man to the moon.  The stories follow the adventures of D.D. Harriman as he pursues his obsession to get to the moon.  The Man who sold the Moon is a funny, wry, swashbuckling paean to free trade and free men. 

 Get it in the UK here and the US here

Robert Heinlein

Today is the birthday of Robert Anson Heinlein.  As many readers will know Robert Heinlein was a science fiction writer whose heyday was in the fifties and sixties.  Like many Science Fiction writers of that time he wrote about a future where space travel and aliens were, if not commonplace, at least part of the known world(s).  Unlike those other writers, who have mostly faded into obscurity, Robert Heinlein is still read today and his ideas still have a currency that lends them to be debated.  In this respect he is almost unique.  I would like to share a few observations about why that is.  If it seems a little odd to be celebrating a science fiction writer on a web-magazine about men and style, then I have to say that Robert Heinlein had some very important things to say about men.  

I have read Robert Heinlein all my adult life and he shares a comparable place in my literary gallery with Ernest Hemingway.  Indeed there are some real similarities between them.  There is much to write about Robert Heinlein and it cannot all be contained in one article.  For now I will concentrate on Heinlein’s men.  I hope to write more in due course. 

Robert Heinlein

Robert Heinlein brought an intellectual maturity to SF and a willingness to make his stories explore complex and important ideas.  His stories inhabit a consistent future history, where starships, ray-guns and technology have taken men to new worlds.  However Robert Heinlein had a rare ability to use the SF form to write provocative novels about subjects as diverse as race, politics, the function of the military and the place of rituals in modern society.  In his later novels he turned to metaphysics and the hard questions of why are we here?, what happens after we die?  However his real genius was to write adventures that men could relate to, be excited by and enjoy.

Man Alone

Heinlein’s men are heroes, though they do not start out that way.  In Double Star, a failed actor becomes a double for a politician under threat of assassination, and inadvertently becomes the bridge between humans and an ancient and sophisticated Martian culture.  In Starship Troopers, Juan Rico is a spoilt rich boy who finds his manhood as an infantryman in a war against a genocidal race of alien bug creatures. 

 Robert Heinlein believed passionately in self-reliance, the need for an individual to avoid conformity and follow his own ideas and visions.  He coupled this with a intelligent and worldly understanding of modern western society, characterising it as technically dependent and with a need for conformity.  His ability to write elegant lucid stories with a mature adult sensibility brings these two contradictory worlds together in colourful and provocative adventures.

 We read his stories because they ask the question “How does a man live in a world he has not made?”  It is the same question we ask ourselves.

 I think that one of the reasons we read him is that he never cheats us.  His future societies may have starships and rayguns but they are realistic, they suffer the same problems that every complex society has, bad laws, stupid people, natural upheavals.  The effects of these societies feel real to the protagonists, and they feel real to us.  Heinlein’s men have to understand their society and decide what their moral principles are.  Which we all have to do. 

 For Robert Heinlein never gives his heroes a free ride.  They have to form themselves mentally and morally, usually while getting caught up in a plot to enslave all human colonists on Mars (Red Planet), freeing a future America from a religious dictatorship (Revolt in 2100) or trying to stop an invasion of alien mind parasites (The Puppet Masters).  With Heinlein it’s always running and putting your jacket on at the same time.  I believe this is one reason why he is still so readable.  The stories have a breakneck excitement, complex ideas are explored in prose of Hemingwayan terseness and every mistake the hero makes could cost him his life.  The hero’s resources are his skills, his moral principles and his self-reliance.  It could as easily be us as the hero.

Real men and real communities

Heinlein’s view was that government was a necessary evil.  The societies he approves of, (the ones he imagines in his books) are American in spirit, filled with free thinking individuals, intelligent decision makers and a desire for progress that is joyous and unafraid.  In “The Moon is a harsh mistress” he came the closest anyone has every come to describing a working libertarian community.  His luna is a penal colony, filled with convicts and ex-convicts, all transported by the governments of Earth.  Their fight for independence from a tyrannical Earth, is funny, inspiring, heartwarming and exciting.  Nearly fifty years after its publication The Moon is a harsh mistress remains an inspiration for libertarians. 

Here is the great contradiction in Robert Heinlein’s writing.  He is utopian enough to want good government but knows the price of it.  He writes perceptively of the need for good communities, for shared moral principles and good manners, for hierarchies of abilities and the need to recognise the importance of critical knowledge and skills.              

However shared values are among the things that deny his heroes their freedom.  In Stranger in a strange land, his best-selling tale of an Earthling raised by Martians and taught great powers, Robert Heinlein asks the question how do you build a society when each man has the power to stand outside of it, or destroy it.   

 For Heinlein politics is a necessary evil but definitely evil.  He values liberty over government, is scathing about politicians (he was a political activist before becoming a writer).  He saves the worst of his venom for repressive societies that destroy the human spirit, communism being the foremost amongst them.  Time of course has proven him right but in the sixties novels like Starship troopers, The Puppet Masters and Revolt in 2100 were a crusade against socialist conformity.

 Heinlein sees humanity’s best hope as free people tolerating (at best) a weak government, a kind of federated universe.  Even here he knows that freedom will be constrained.  In Glory Road, The Moon is a harsh mistress and Farnham’s Freehold, Heinlein makes it plain that freedom is on the frontier, where civilisation and its rules have not yet encroached on life.  No-one has written more perceptively about the innate contradictions between men and their community.  Real men assert themselves for justice and the community resists this.  Heinlein knew this and makes heroic stories out of this.     

Men and magic

But we do not read Heinlein for his socio-political shading, gripping though that is.  We read him for his men.  Juan Rico and his journey from spoilt kid to courageous and honourable fighting man, the actor Lorenzo Smythe,an unlucky man who gets a second chance late in life and has the courage to take it,  “Oscar” Gordon, the man who does not fit in, who answers a newspaper ad starting “Are you a coward?”, who gets the chance to slay dragons.

Men and magic and adventure

These novels are men’s adventures, from a tradition that goes back thousands of years.  Robert Heinlein may be a master of political thought, hard science and military history but it is the adventure that is the thing.  One man against the world.  His heroes are modern Francis Drakes, D’artagnans, and dragon slayers. 

 The simple truth is that Robert Heinlein’s books are a joy to read.

 Robert Heinlein says it better than I can.  I have the following excerpt from Glory Road pinned up in my office:

 “I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom.  I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me ,  “The games afoot!” I wanted to float down the Mississippi  on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.

 I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake.  I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon.  I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid.  I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be – instead of the tawdry, lousy fouled-up mess it is.   

Robert Heinlein’s men are risk-takers, lovers and fighters.  Great men have that sense of wonder.

 What did I learn from Robert Heinlein?  Adventurers have the best lives. 

Thank you Robert Heinlein.