chapman@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Brent Chapman) (09/09/86)
In article <1076@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes: >In article <20812@styx.UUCP> mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch) writes: >>> [quotation from FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD in which the protagonist states, >>> inter alia, that the just-occured nuclear war had a few positive >>> effects, in that it killed off the fat, useless stay-at-homes rather >>> than the best & brightest young men; that it killed off the "stupid" >>> who did not plan for war, rather than the cream of the crop...] >> >> The fact that Heinlein's character (and I will allow that he speaks with >>the authorial voice, as many of RAH's heroes do) dryly notes some of the >>beneficial effects the war had compared with previous wars hardly marks hims >>as being in FAVOR of a nuclear war. I fear this passage, and the other one >>quoted, were a little too subtle for Mr. Maroney. > >When reason fails, there's always insult, eh, Mr. Berch? But I suppose I >should thank you for showing your true colors on the issue right off the >bat. Your statements are clearly emotional, not rational. Wait a sec, here.. WHO's being insulting? WHO's statements are emotional, not rational? I think I missed something... >Mr. Berch speaks with the fervent preconception of a fundamentalist >inventing excuses for the slaughter of the Midianites. Heinlein was clear; >he did not dryly note a few positive effects; he stated outright that the >nuclear war was "good for the country". Go back and check the quote if you >don't believe me (and I'll grant you, it's hard to believe). He then went >on to say that it had "turned the tide" toward the triumph of freedom, and >that the net effect would be to "improve the breed". Not hesitantly, not >dryly, not in passing - Heinlein states outright and enthusiastically that >nuclear war would be a wonderful thing! Mr. Maroney, are you capable of making the distinction between a fictional character and the real person (actor or author) behind that character? Granted, in many cases the character will reflect the artist and his/her views, but this is NOT a "given". >I know Heinlein is probably one of your heroes, Mr. Berch, but you simply >must face facts. The book says what I quoted it as saying, not what you >would like it to have said. And "Pie in the Sky" is even more unambiguous: >"There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of ours which >would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the Hiroshima >treatment." You can twist and turn and try to divert the issue into long >lists of irrelevant Heinlein statements on other matters (which you did, and >which I have omitted), but these are the things he said, and you can't >change that by wishing it away. Are you denying that there are bad things about our culture? Logicly, a nuclear holocaust would remove those "bad things" by removing the culture. That it might also create worse things is beside the point. That the process is abhorrent is beside the point. The issue is that it would do the job. >Moorcock's essay "Starship Stormtroopers", which you can get in the >collection "The Opium General", deals not primarily with the fascism of many >science fiction writers, but of the peculiar phenomenon of their support by >people who disagree with their views; Mr. Berch has given us a fine example >of this. While Moorcock makes no broad conclusions about the reasons for >this, I would speculate that it has to do with two chief factors. You seem to have the same attitude toward Mr. Moorcock as you accuse Mr. Berch (and will doubtless accuse me, too) of having toward Mr. Heinlein: that his words are gospel and therefore not subject to question or discussion. >First, we all started reading Heinlein at around age ten or earlier, before >the development of a real critical faculty. Ideas firmly implanted at this >age are very hard to dislodge later, as every organized religion knows. >(For me, the break with Heinlein was when, at sixteen or so, I tried to >re-read "Starship Troopers", which I had liked at twelve, and found it to be >perhaps the most appalling book I had ever read.) Second, science fiction >readers have a sort of siege mentality, reinforced through imbecilic >articles in Harper's and so forth on how awful the field is; and this >creates a predilection to view criticism of those authors generally viewed >as the bright lights of the field as an attack on the field itself, and to >respond to this perceived attack viscerally. Oh, how I love paternalism and holier-than-thou attitudes.. "Well _I_ can make the distinction between <this> and <that>, but we should protect those poor, innocent, uneducated folk who can't..." Bullshit. Do you happen to know Mr. Berch? I do. Mr. Berch is a (ex? You'll have to ask him) legal type. He seems to cringe at illogical, emotion-based arguments. His relatively rare postings tend to be reflect his legal background, in that they are invariably articulate, well thought out, well ordered, and well argued. Even if I don't agree with him, I have nothing but respect for his postings. Which is more than I can say for some people. >-- >Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot and Damn Proud of It Wonderfully appropriate signature.. I don't see the quotes from RAH's stories as an endorsement of nuclear war. I _do_ see them as a comment that such an occurrence is not strictly negative, which is something vastly different. I see these comments as a different expression of the same theme found in many of his other books: that the human race _AS A WHOLE_ (despite grave hardships to individuals and societies) will benefit from an exodus to space, or some other method of large-scale genetic selection. I don't necessarily agree with either the practicality or desireability of this theme, but he argues it well, and is as certainly entitled to his opinion as anyone else. On a slow burn, Brent -- Brent Chapman chapman@cory.berkeley.edu or ucbvax!cory!chapman
orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER) (09/09/86)
> In article <1071@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) writes: > >Because you demanded it, pilgrim, herewith the quotes proving Heinlein's > >support for nuclear war. > ^^^^^^^ > This is followed by an extended dialogue in which one of Heinlein's > characters notes that certain positive consequences might ensue from > a nuclear war. Even if you take this as Heinlein's own opinion, it is > vastly different from *supporting* nuclear war. > I can note that Nazi rule had certain favorable consequences for > 1930s Germany (e.g., it certainly get them out of their depression, > and built them into a world power in an extremely short time). Does > this mean that I *support* Nazi government. The only person I can think > of who might say that is... > > >Michael Moorcock [,who] wrote in the critical/political essay "Starship > >Stormtroopers", "It's not such a big step ... from *Farnham's Freehold* > to Hitler's *Lebensraum*." > > This seems a far greater overstatement of the truth than anything > Heinlein might have said. Can we say the same for histories of the > Third Reich, if they describe the increase in economic growth and > stability in the late 1930s? > > -- David desJardins I remember back in the 60's that Ramparts magazine had a number of excerpts from Heinlein's remarks in support of Vietnam, nukes, and a number of odious positions. These particular quotes are not the only ones in which Heinlein advocates unsavory views. I recall one of his stories in which he treats very sympathetically the carrying of lethal weapons, a more advanced type of gun, and conducting regular shootouts with them. Heinlein treated such vigilantism as if it promoted some sense of "honor". Then there is, of course, Heinlein's series on the "Methuselah Complex" in which a secret group of "genetically superior" people who have secretly crossbred to attain incredible lifespans are persecuted and envied by the mass of the "genetically inferior". The only of Heinlein's works which contradicts the usual right-wing stands of some of his novels is "Stranger in a Strange Land" which seemed to me at the time to approach positively the whole counterculture of the hippies of the 60's. But then Dostoevsky was a reactionary too. Such views do not necessarily negate the value of an artist's work. Personally, however I would take Dostoevsky over Heinlein anyday in terms of the depth of his writing and his attempt to present and come to terms with the paradoxes of life. tim sevener whuxn!orb
mtj@duke.UUCP (Mark T. Jones) (09/09/86)
In article <1071@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) writes: >Because you demanded it, pilgrim, herewith the quotes proving Heinlein's >support for nuclear war. These are taken from "Ghastly Beyond Belief", >an anthology of bad and embarrassing science fiction excerpts. > The fact that a character in a novel holds or seems to hold a belief does not necessarily mean that the author himself holds that belief. There are many rascist remarks and attitudes in Mark Twain's novels, but he himself was not a rascist. Also, a quote by itself has very little value, you can back up anything you want by taking small excerpts from a book. So I do not think that these two quotes *prove* that Heinlein supports nuclear war. If Heinlein himself said (and not one of his characters) that he supports nuclear was (no rational human being does and I believe Heinlein to be rational) then you would have proof. Maybe we could discuss some of the good things in SF, rather than try to pick on those we don't like. I sure would appreciate any good tips on new books and new authors. --Mark Jones
throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) (09/09/86)
> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) > Because you demanded it, pilgrim, herewith the quotes proving Heinlein's > support for nuclear war. These are taken from "Ghastly Beyond Belief", > an anthology of bad and embarrassing science fiction excerpts. Aaaaaah yes, the old "quote out of context" ploy. Most ingenious. ( Also, as is often the case, "This must be some meaning of 'proof' with which I am not familiar." Thank you, Arthur Dent. ) > First, from "Pie in the Sky": > > There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of > ours which would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the > Hiroshima treatment. I am not familiar with the context here. But note well, he does emphatically *not* (repeat *NOT*) say that the net effect would be beneficial. I would be unsurprised if the surrounding context of the excerpt made this clear. > Next, a typically didactic Heinlein monologue from "Farnham's Freehold", > a post-holocaust novel of which Michael Moorcock wrote in the > critical/political essay "Starship Stormtroopers", "It's not such a big > step ... from *Farnham's Freehold* to Hitler's *Lebensraum*." Oh, well, Michael Moorcock. That's all right then. It *must* be so. And he compared him to *Hitler*? Boy, that Heinlein must really be eeeeevil. My, oh my, how eeeeeevil he must be. Now that we've all had our little thrill of disgust, can we get on with it? Thank you. > Heinlein > expounds on the wondrous improvements in America created by letting man's > friend, Mr. Nucleus, have his way despite all this loose talk about the > death of the planet. [long quote omitted] Here, I *am* more familiar with the context, and, as I suspected, the quote in context is far less clearly nucleophilic. Consider: The quote explores the hypothesis that a nuclear war would cull the "unfit", and that hardy, freedomloving folk might selectively survive. (Even so, it is worth noting that again he did *not* say that the net effect would be beneficial.) In any event, "Aha! Thoughtcrime!" you say! But the quote comes from a portion of the novel before we find out the "true" result of the war. What was the "actual" reported result, (rather than the hypothesizing of one of the characters)? A canabalistic slave society. Real cheerful. Real pro-nuke. Riiiiight. Why are there so many bozos who seem to think that everything Heinlein characters *say* is what Heinlien himself *believes*? What nonsense. His characters (even the protagonists) *often* say or say they believe things that the actual events in the story contradict. Using such incidents to deduce what Heinlien himself thinks is like using the "nobody hurt, only a nigger killed" line to "prove" that Mark Twain is racist. Or Mel Brooks, for that matter. Sorry, Tim. I just don't find your "quote out of context ploy" very convincing. Hardly what I'd call "proof". -- Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. --- Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Wayne Throop <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw
barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) (09/10/86)
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney): >In article <20812@styx.UUCP> mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch) writes: >>> [quotation from FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD in which the protagonist states, >>> inter alia, that the just-occured nuclear war had a few positive >>> effects, in that it killed off the fat, useless stay-at-homes rather >>> than the best & brightest young men; that it killed off the "stupid" >>> who did not plan for war, rather than the cream of the crop...] >> >> The fact that Heinlein's character (and I will allow that he speaks with >>the authorial voice, as many of RAH's heroes do) dryly notes some of the >>beneficial effects the war had compared with previous wars hardly marks hims >>as being in FAVOR of a nuclear war. > >Mr. Berch speaks with the fervent preconception of a fundamentalist >inventing excuses for the slaughter of the Midianites. Heinlein was clear; >he did not dryly note a few positive effects; he stated outright that the >nuclear war was "good for the country". No, "Hugh Farnham" stated it. And he said "might be", not "was". And, yes, I know that HF is one of Heinlein's "mouthpiece" characters. But a mouthpiece is not necessarily a parrot. HF is a character in a book where the war has already happened. Moreover, it's naive to think the protagonists always speak for the author, and especially so when it's an author whose business is speculations on politics and sociology, as well as physics. Why do the protagonists of STARSHIP TROOPERS like elected government with the franchise limited to vets, while those of GLORY ROAD believe in monarchy, those in DOUBLE STAR believe in constitutional monarchy, and those of THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS are rational anarchists? Could it have as much to do with the reality within the book as with Heinlein's own precise opinions? FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD is one of the most pessimistic books that Heinlein (normally an optimist; maybe *that's* why he's popular, Tim) ever wrote, and Farnham is one of his least likeable protagonists. And one way to read it is to see it as showing Farnham was wrong. Heinlein shows us a *very* unpleasant far future (people raised for food, ala Wells' TIME MACHINE) coming out of the nuclear holocaust. Not the way *I'd* write it, if my purpose were to show the advantages of nuclear war. Rather than looking at Heinlein through the murky medium of fiction, let's look at a bit of his non-fiction. You chose to quote his non-fiction essay, "Pie From The Sky", in attempting to support your point: >"There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of ours which >would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the Hiroshima >treatment." You can twist and turn and try to divert the issue into long >lists of irrelevant Heinlein statements on other matters (which you did, and >which I have omitted), but these are the things he said, and you can't >change that by wishing it away. I'll make the generous assumption that you saw this quote somewhere, in isolation, and are yourself not intentionally quoting out of context. Let's read on, to see what the "improvements" are that Heinlein refers to: "There is that dame upstairs, for instance, the one with the square bowling ball"; "No more soap operas"; "No more alarm clocks"; etc. I doubt I need to clarify the concept of "irony" to YOU, Tim :-). But if anyone else is perhaps uncertain, let me add a quote from the close of "Pie From The Sky": "If you really want to hang on to the advantages of our slightly wacky pseudo-civilization, there is just one way to do it, according to the scientists who know the most about the new techniques of war - and that is to form a sovereign world authority to prevent the Atomic War." Heinlein is a political maverick, and has opinions to irritate almost anyone. Considering some of the consistent themes that run through most of his fiction (elitism, iconoclasm, extreme individualism), I don't think it should be necessary to jump on isolated quotes or theorize unlikely opinions (have any of you *ever* met someone who was in favor of nuclear war?) in order to argue with him. - From the Crow's Nest - Kenn Barry NASA-Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ELECTRIC AVENUE: {ihnp4,vortex,dual,hao,hplabs}!ames!barry
ndd@duke.UUCP (Ned Danieley) (09/10/86)
In article <1076@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes: >In article <20812@styx.UUCP> mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch) writes: >>> [quotation from FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD in which the protagonist states, >>> inter alia, that the just-occured nuclear war had a few positive >>> effects, in that it killed off the fat, useless stay-at-homes rather >>> than the best & brightest young men; that it killed off the "stupid" >>> who did not plan for war, rather than the cream of the crop...] >> >> The fact that Heinlein's character (and I will allow that he speaks with >>the authorial voice, as many of RAH's heroes do) dryly notes some of the >>beneficial effects the war had compared with previous wars hardly marks hims >>as being in FAVOR of a nuclear war. I fear this passage, and the other one >>quoted, were a little too subtle for Mr. Maroney. > ... >inventing excuses for the slaughter of the Midianites. Heinlein was clear; >he did not dryly note a few positive effects; he stated outright that the >nuclear war was "good for the country". Go back and check the quote if you >don't believe me (and I'll grant you, it's hard to believe). He then went >on to say that it had "turned the tide" toward the triumph of freedom, and >that the net effect would be to "improve the breed". Not hesitantly, not >dryly, not in passing - Heinlein states outright and enthusiastically that >nuclear war would be a wonderful thing! I thought that Mr. Berch's point was that we don't know that Heinlein believes this. Nothing that Mr. Maroney has said really speaks to that question. Instead of sniping at each other, perhaps we could find a way to prove one of these positions, or admit that a writer's actual beliefs are not always obvious from his writing. Ned Danieley duke!ndd
corwin@hope.UUCP (John Kempf) (09/10/86)
If you will read Expanded Universe by RAH, you will find a short story
titled (I believe) "Solution Unsatisfactory", as well as a couble of
articles that he wrote in an attempt to cause the public to be aware of
the threat of a nuclear war.
Those of you who have not read Expanded Universe realy should not talk
about his oppinions on the matter.
--
-cory
"Never believe that a wizard is truly dead, until you have personally
seen him die at least three times."
VOICE: (714) 788 0709
UUCP: {ucbvax!ucdavis,sdcsvax,ucivax}!ucrmath!hope!corwin
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USNAIL: 3637 Canyon Crest apt G302
Riverside Ca. 92507slj@mtung.UUCP (S. Luke Jones) (09/10/86)
> Because you demanded it, pilgrim, herewith the quotes proving Heinlein's > support for nuclear war. These are taken from "Ghastly Beyond Belief", > an anthology of bad and embarrassing science fiction excerpts. If you're going to run down literature, you ought to read the original rather than a collection of excerpts taken out-of-context by people who (as the title of their collection indicates) had an axe to grind. > First, from "Pie in the Sky": It's "Pie From The Sky" not "Pie In The Sky." > There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of > ours which would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the > Hiroshima treatment. This is nothing. He also says that a nuclear war would get rid of mothers in law, and put an end to special days like "National Tulip Day." But I'm amazed the editor(s) of _Ghastly Beyond Belief_ didn't catch the sarcasm. In fact, I suspect they did catch it, but ignored it in order to "prove" their point. It isn't hard to catch: all but the last page or so of the essay lists petty gripes people have that a nuclear war would get rid of. The last page says (sorry I don't have it with me, but I usually read for pleasure, rather than to refute deliberate disinformation) something like "But, if you're one of those softies who _likes_ indoor plumbing..." and there follows a list of the ammenities of civilization which would be absent after a nuclear war, "then you should run, not walk, and phone your congressman...." The entire point of "Pie From The Sky" -- if you read the story itself, rather than a collection of blurbs more misleading than anything you might find on the back cover of a paperback -- was to drum up grass-roots support for the U.N. The story was written after WWII when it looked to some as if the US might opt out of the UN the way it avoided joining the League of Nations at the end of WWI. (Since then, mercifully, Heinlein has come to the realization that a world government of the type the UN would be if it had any teeth would be worse than no world government. But that's not part of the story.) > Next, a typically didactic Heinlein monologue from "Farnham's Freehold", > a post-holocaust novel of which Michael Moorcock wrote in the > critical/political essay "Starship Stormtroopers", "It's not such a big > step ... from *Farnham's Freehold* to Hitler's *Lebensraum*." > > [ followed by the "typically didactic monologue" ] I can't believe this! The entire book catalogs, in detail, exactly what the horrors associated with a nuclear war would be. In the scenario in the book this includes having one's hometown (near Cheyenne Mtn in Colorado) smashed by an A-bomb, and, in life after the attack, the hero's daughter dies in childbirth because the civilization you accuse Heinlein of sneering at (above) is missing. I won't spoil any more, but only a complete *idiot* would call the post-war life in _Farnham's Freehold_ a cakewalk. Hardly a close step to "Lebensraum." But, in one conversation, the protagonist mentions how this [nuclear] war was different from all the others. (This was of course the one chosen for quotation out of context.) Hugh Farnham says the war might be better than previous wars, because the intelligent have a better chance of survival than in previous wars. Pacifists have been saying for hundreds of years that "if generals and politicians had to risk their own lives, there would be no more wars." Heinlein is stating essentially the same thing. And he says that this war, because it is a war of mass destruction, is the closest thing there's ever been to that. No-nukers have been saying since 1945 that the first atomic war would be the last, etc. etc. > To the reader who said that he had read this novel many times without > seeing any passage in favor of nuclear war, we award the 1986 Zinc Star > for fearless and incisive critical comment. Well done, well done, noble sir! > -- > Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot and Certified Catholic Theologian Thanks for the Zinc Star. For swallowing whatever gets shoved down your throat by writers more hopelessly biased than I was initially willing to believe and for mindlessly parroting it back to the net without checking it for yourself, you get the 1986 Red Star. You're wasted where you are; why don't you go work for the New York Times or the Washington Post. -- O "I used to bull-eye Womp Rats in my T-16 O OOO O in Beggar's Canyon back home, and they're OO O OO not much bigger than that." OOOO OOO OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO S. Luke Jones (...ihnp4!mtung!slj) OOOOOOOOOOOOO AT&T Information Systems OOOOOOO Middletown, NJ, U.S.A.
throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) (09/10/86)
> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) > he stated outright that the > nuclear war was "good for the country". Go back and check the quote if you > don't believe me OK. Let's do. He frowned. "Barbara, I'm not as sad over what has happened as you are. It might be be good for us. I don't mean us six; I mean our country." Hardly saying that "nuclear war is good for the country". He's sad, but not as sad as Barbara. It *MIGHT* be good (but he does *not* say outright that he thinks it is a net benefit). In fact, he equivocates quite a bit during the course of your quote: might be ... seems to me ... may have ... may be ... not every case ... it is cruel Also note that "he" is a character, and not unambiguously mouthing Heinlein's thoughts. Add to that the fact that he is trying to find silver linings to cheer up "Barbara", and the fact that the rest of the story proves him wrong in no uncertain terms, and... what was that you were saying about "proof"? > I know Heinlein is probably one of your heroes, Mr. Berch, but you simply > must face facts. The book says what I quoted it as saying, not what you > would like it to have said. I'm not Mr. Berch, and Heinlein isn't really high on my list of "heroes", but I think it is you doing the misinterpretation. > Moorcock's essay "Starship Stormtroopers", which you can get in the > collection "The Opium General", deals not primarily with the fascism of many > science fiction writers, but of the peculiar phenomenon of their support by > people who disagree with their views; Mr. Berch has given us a fine example > of this. While Moorcock makes no broad conclusions about the reasons for > this, I would speculate that it has to do with two chief factors. Well, I think Moorcock's (and, apparently, your) opinion of Heinlein have to do with three main factors. 1) Removing quotes from their context, 2) mistaking what characters say for what those characters beleive, and 3) (to a lesser extent) mistaking what those characters (supposedly) believe for what Heinlein believes. And I suppose I should make it clear that I'm not "supporting Heinlein". I'm simply offering criticism of a particularly silly argument against him. -- Nuclear war would really set back cable. --- Ted Turner A is for Atom; they are all so small, That we have not really seen any at all. B is for Bomb; they are much bigger. So, mister you better keep off of the trigger. --- Edward Teller, in an interview on PBS. -- Wayne Throop <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw
vis@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU (Tom Courtney) (09/10/86)
In article <974@whuts.UUCP> orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER) writes: >The only of Heinlein's works which contradicts the usual right-wing >stands of some of his novels is "Stranger in a Strange Land" which >seemed to me at the time to approach positively the whole counterculture >of the hippies of the 60's. There are other examples: Job, I Will Fear No Evil, The Man Who Travelled in Elephants, Waldo all come to mind.
crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) (09/11/86)
Oh, jeezus, Tim, did you get up on the wrong side of the bed or what? I wasn't going to reply to this, but I can't stand it -- and before you start pulling quotes out of context, you oughta write "I will always check my sources" 100 times. I just happen to have a copy of Heinlein's *Expanded Universe* right at hand; let's look at some of these things in context: >...These are taken from "Ghastly Beyond Belief", >an anthology of bad and embarrassing science fiction excerpts. Can you pass me a reference to this, by the way? Sounds like fun... I'm assuming they made the pull out of context, since I can't believe you'd pull something that low yourself. > >First, from "Pie in the Sky": > > There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of > ours which would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the > Hiroshima treatment. Okay, "Pie from the Sky," page 175 Ace edition of *Expanded Universe.* Let's quote the first couple of paragraphs to start with: Since we have every reason to expect a sudden rain of death from the sky sometime in the next few years, as a result of the happy combination of the science of atomics and the art of rocketry, it behooves the Pollyanna Philosopher to add up the advantages to be derived from the blasting of your apartment, row house, or suburban cottage. It ain't all bad, chum. While you are squatting in front of your cave, trying to roast a rabbit with one hand while scratching your lice-infected hide with the other, there will be many cheerful things to think about, the assets of destruction, rather than torturing your mind with thoughts of the good old easy days of taxis and tabloids and Charlie's Bar Grill. [okay, here it comes....] There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of ours which would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the Hiroshima treatment. There is that dame upstairs, for instance, the one with the square bowling ball. Never again would she take it out for practice right over your bed at three in the morning. Isn't that some consolation? No more soap operas. No more six minutes of good old Mom facing things bravely, interspersed with eight minutes of insistent, syrupy plugging for commercial junk you don't want and would be better off without. .... ... best of all, you will be freed of the plague of the alarm.... If you are snapped suddenly out of sleep in the Atomic Stone Age, it will be a mountain lion, a wolf, a man, or some other carnivore, not a mechanical monstrosity. It's too much work to copy the rest of the first, sarcastic section of the article -- but I'll catch a couple of high points: o Men who bawl out waitresses o The preacher with the unctuous voice and the cash-register heart. o People who censor plays and supress boooks. So let's go on to the second part of the article, the part where the voice changes and he is talking straight: ....In spite of the endless list of things that could be made of the things we are better off without I do not think it will be very much fun to scrabble about in the woods for a bite to eat. For that reason I am thinging of liquidating, in advance, the next character who says to me, "Well, what difference does it make if we are atom-bombed -- you gottas die sometime!" I shall shoot him dead, blow through the barrel, and say, "You asked for it, chum." Now for what I think is the clincher: the final paragraphs. If you really want to hang on to the advantages of our slightly wacky psuedo-civilization, there is just one way to do it, according to the scientists who know the most about the new techniques of war -- and that is to form a sovereign world authority to prevent the Atomic War. Run, do not walk, to the nearest Western Union, and telegraph your congressman to get off the dime and get on with the difficult business of forming an honest-to-goodness world union, with no jokers about Big Five vetos or national armaments... to get on with it promptly, while there is still time, before Washington, D.C., is reduced to radioactive dust, poor devil. --end-- These paragraphs PROVE to me, without a shadow of a doubt, that the person who exerpted that original quote was doing so having either not read the article, or was *consciously,* *purposefully* trying to assassinate Heinlein's character. Why? I don't know: I suspect it was from some ideological aim, but I don't have enough evidence to say for sure. And I know Tim personally -- while he is sometimes strident, I've never seen him be intellectually dishonest, so I assume it was not him. But I'd look really closely at whoever wrote that "Ghastly Beyond Belief" -- sounds to me like there is a subtext, a reason, behind the choices. Might as well claim that Abraham Lincoln was a Confederate Officer. -- Charlie Martin (...mcnc!duke!crm)
tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) (09/11/86)
>If Heinlein himself said (and not one of his characters) that he supports >nuclear was (no rational human being does and I believe Heinlein to be >rational) then you would have proof. Surely you could not have missed the obvious fact that Heinlein's character was delivering a polemic of Heinlein's, as always happens in Heinlein's books. The pedantic speechifying was obvious. -- Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot and Damn Proud of It {ihnp4,sun,well,ptsfa,lll-crg,frog}!hoptoad!tim (uucp) hoptoad!tim@lll-crg (arpa) I keep calling spirits from the vasty deep, but all I get are their answering machines.
orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER) (09/11/86)
> > First, from "Pie in the Sky": > > There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of > > ours which would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the > > Hiroshima treatment. > > > Next, a typically didactic Heinlein monologue from "Farnham's Freehold", > > a post-holocaust novel of which Michael Moorcock wrote in the > > critical/political essay "Starship Stormtroopers", "It's not such a big > > step ... from *Farnham's Freehold* to Hitler's *Lebensraum*." > > > > [ followed by the "typically didactic monologue" ] > > I can't believe this! The entire book catalogs, in detail, exactly what > the horrors associated with a nuclear war would be. In the scenario > in the book this includes having one's hometown (near Cheyenne Mtn in > Colorado) smashed by an A-bomb, and, in life after the attack, the > hero's daughter dies in childbirth because the civilization you accuse > Heinlein of sneering at (above) is missing. I won't spoil any more, > but only a complete *idiot* would call the post-war life in _Farnham's > Freehold_ a cakewalk. Hardly a close step to "Lebensraum." > > OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO S. Luke Jones (...ihnp4!mtung!slj) I read Farnham's Freehold and it certainly seemed to me to be more of a paean to "survivalism" than to actions to stop a nuclear war in the first place. The protoganist is praiseworthy for stocking up with everything from food to encyclopedias to prepare for the aftermath of World War Last. His major concern is protecting his survivalist fiefdom from looting by others who are starving and so forth. But that's OK, because we know that it should be "every *MAN* for himself" after any disaster, right? "Farnham's Freehold" is hardly a realistic view of the effects of nuclear war whatsoever. For example, because an all-out nuclear war would destroy the ozone layer, animals and humans without their eyes shielded would soon be blinded. Then of course there is the likelihood of the Nuclear Winter effect. Heinlein could be excused for not mentioning these since both were just discovered in the past decade. But then another effect should have been well-known to Heinlein which he never bothered to deal with in his paean to "survivalism". Namely the certainty than any all-out nuclear war would lead to massive firestorms, leaving those in shelters like "Farnham's Freehold" to be either cooked alive like those in Dresden, or else suffocated by the lack of oxygen consumed by such torrential flames. It has been a long time since I read "Farnham's Freehold" but I also don't recall much discussion of the pernicious effects of radioactivity- in the region around Chernobyl, a minscule incident compared to the effects of an all-out nuclear war, they have to strip off the top inches of thousands of acres of topsoil because it is excessively radioactive. If you strip off the top inches of fertile topsoil to avoid radioactivity, the soil left will be practically useless for growing crops. Nor do I recall Heinlein talking much at all about radiation sickness, leukemia, cancer, etc. The whole impression I recall from "Farnham's Freehold" was that nuclear war involved big terrific explosions but if you prepared your own survivalist holdout for yourself and you alone, that you could make it. Of course a required part of your survivalist gear is at least one gun, if not several, so you can shoot the few surviving humans left and assure your own survival. I.e. maintain the same idiotic mentality which has placed us in the current position of facing the imminent extinction of the human race at any time! I would say that as I recall Heinlein's story in "Farnham's Freehold" that it more closely resembles Reagan's Undersecretary of Defense, T.K. Jones statement that "we can survive nuclear war with enough shovels. Just dig a hole a few feet thick and jump in it." than any statement by pacifists or even people like Eisenhower or Khruschev ('the living will envy the dead') tim sevener whuxn!orb
tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) (09/11/86)
>Aaaaaah yes, the old "quote out of context" ploy. Most ingenious. It is highly questionable whether any quote eight paragraphs long can be reasonably said to be "out of context". >Here, I *am* more familiar with the context, and, as I suspected, the >quote in context is far less clearly nucleophilic. Consider: The quote >explores the hypothesis that a nuclear war would cull the "unfit", and >that hardy, freedomloving folk might selectively survive. (Even so, it >is worth noting that again he did *not* say that the net effect would be >beneficial.) YOU LIE!!! He said that the war would be good for the country in the very first paragraph. What the hell is wrong with you jerks, can't you read perfectly plain and straightforward English? Am I to be reduced to simply quoting him again and again while you deny that he said what he said in the very clearest possible terms? Tell me, what does it mean to you to say that something will be good for the country? That the country has been going downhill and that this will be the turning point? Tell me which particular word you don't understand and I'll be happy to define it for you. Oh, I forgot. HEINLEIN said it. Therefore, it can't say anything wrong. If it does say something wrong, just squint during that sentence. I notice not one of you Heinlein supporters has had the balls to include the relevant quotes I gave from "Farnham's Freehold", because if you did, the discussion would be over. -- Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot and Damn Proud of It {ihnp4,sun,well,ptsfa,lll-crg,frog}!hoptoad!tim (uucp) hoptoad!tim@lll-crg (arpa) Warning! Dogmatic responses will be ignored, or, more likely, insulted.
elg@usl.UUCP (Eric Lee Green) (09/11/86)
<munch>
Someone mentioned Mark Twain. Very fitting reference. Many of Twain's
characters were elitist, racist, etc. Twain used that as a device to
show just how ridiculous it is to hold such views, for example, two
aristocratic-types fight a feud like backwards hillbillies and have
wax fruit on their mantle (presumably, because they're wax people),
Huck Finn treating Jim as property while Jim would willingly give his
life and freedom for Huck, and so forth. One of Heinlein's characters
saying "Oh well, maybe there are some good uses for nuclear war", and
then seeing the eventual results of such an attitude, seems to be a
similiar device.
--
Eric Green {akgua,ut-sally}!usl!elg
(Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191, Lafayette, LA 70509)
" In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of
people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch) (09/12/86)
Well, I was ready to rush right over and get my licks in, but the rest of the community has done a pretty thorough job of chastising Mr. Maroney for emotional argumentation and the dangers of pulling quotes out of context. One thing that I missed on the first go-round is that Mr. Maroney apparently has not read FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD nor Heinlein's excellent book of essays, EXPANDED UNIVERSE, in anything near their entirety Anyone who has done so and could seriously entertain the thought that Heinlein is in favor of nuclear war is, simply, dealing in a different mental space than the rest of us. Evidently, Mr. Maroney has come to his conclusions about the "fascism" of American SF writers, RAH included, on the basis of an essay by Michael Moorcock, the noted British new-waver and ideologue. Interesting. I would also like to know in what way Heinlein and his colleagues are "fascists". My Merriam-Webster here defines fascism as "A political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation or race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition." (1977 edition, p. 416) This is most interesting. Obviously this closely resembles Robert A. Heinlein's political views! (:-) I wonder if Mr. Maroney would care to flesh out his thesis, or if he merely defines the word "fascist" to mean "anything I don't agree with." > Mr. Berch speaks with the fervent preconception of a fundamentalist > inventing excuses for the slaughter of the Midianites. [...] Not being a fundamentalist, I am not familiar with the slaughter of the Midianites. Will somebody enlighten me? > I know Heinlein is probably one of your heroes, Mr. Berch, [...] Of course he is. I am not ashamed to say so in any public forum, including this one. > [...] And "Pie in the Sky" is even more unambiguous: > "There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of ours which > would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the Hiroshima > treatment." Evidently Mr. Maroney both 1) did not bother to read the paragraphs surrounding the quoted material, and 2) is unfamiliar with the rhetorical device of irony. > [...] > collection "The Opium General", deals not primarily with the fascism of many > science fiction writers, but of the peculiar phenomenon of their support by > people who disagree with their views; Mr. Berch has given us a fine example > of this. Now you've lost me. Who said I disagreed with RAH's views? I am not a fascist, nor is he (see definition above). Mr. Heinlein and I certainly differed in our views about the nature and necessity of the Vietnam war, and probably disagree about a whole bunch of relatively important things, but are pretty much in sync otherwise. What gives? Michael C. Berch ARPA: mcb@lll-tis-b.ARPA UUCP: {ihnp4,dual,sun}!lll-lcc!styx!mcb
jeanne@reed.UUCP (Jeanne DeVoto) (09/12/86)
In article <1071@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) writes: [quotes which purportedly "prove" that Heinlein supports nuclear war] In the words of Spider Robinson, I grow weary of hearing someone I care about slandered. Let us examine Tim's charges: >First, from "Pie in the Sky": > > There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of > ours which would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the > Hiroshima treatment. Tim...this is called *irony*. The fact that it is not festooned with :-)'s may have misled you, but if you had bothered to read the article rather than taking an out-of-context paragraph from some anthology, I'm sure you would have caught the intended meaning. Herein the first paragraph of the essay in question (from _Expanded_Universe_, c. 1980 by Robert A. Heinlein, p175) "Since we have every reason to expect a sudden rain of death from the sky sometime in the next few years, as a result of a happy combination of the science of atomics and the art of rocketry, it behooves the Pollyanna Philosopher to add up the advantages to be derived from the blasting of you apartment, row house, or suburban cottage." Clearly RAH is in dead earnest here.(:-), for those who, like Tim, are afflicted with atrophy of the sense of (black) humor.) >Next, a typically didactic Heinlein monologue from "Farnham's Freehold", [condemnatory quote from critical essay of Michael Moorcock, followed by dialog between two characters in "FF" in which the hero states his belief that nuclear war would result in genetic improvement of the species through culling] Point the first: the opinions of the characters--even the opinions of the hero--cannot necessarily be assumed to be identical to the opinions of the author. This is a problem seen in a lot of criticism of fiction, and for some reason it seems to crop up especially often in discussions of RAH's work. ***Robert Heinlein != Hugh Farnham *** Point the second: which is that Farnham's statements are perfectly true. ANY disaster which results in widespread death and destruction, in which a person can improve his/her chances of survival by being prepared and other- wise exercising his/her intelligence, will bring about an increase in the average intelligence of the affected population. This is, as "Barbara" states, elementary genetics. But it is a far leap from accepting the idea that nuclear war would select for intelligence to espousing the proposition that such a war would be a desireable occurrence, and that's not something I can see either Hugh Farnham or RAH saying. So, considering the first point above, what do we *know* of RAH's opinion? Here he is, speaking in the first person, in the introduction to the article titled "Pie in the Sky" from which Tim quoted: "Here are three short articles, each from a different approach, with which I tried (and failed) to beat the drum for world peace. Was I really so naif that I thought that I could change the course of history this way? No, not really. But, damn it, I had to try!" (quoted from _Expanded_Universe_, pp146-147) This is *not* some critic's speculation on what RAH *really* meant, *not* Tim Maroney's interpretation of RAH, *not* what some fictional character said...this is straight from the horse's mouth, circa 1980. The defense rests. >Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot and Certified Catholic Theologian Tim, you have lived up to your .signature.
crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) (09/12/86)
Oh, come on, guys, let's try to use reality as a basis for the flames, okay? This is replying to Tim Sevener, not directly to Tim Maroney -- lost the attribution line somehow. > tim sevener whuxn!orb > >> In article <1071@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) writes: >> >Because you demanded it, pilgrim, herewith the quotes proving Heinlein's >> >support for nuclear war. >> >> >Michael Moorcock [,who] wrote in the critical/political essay "Starship >> >Stormtroopers", "It's not such a big step ... from *Farnham's Freehold* >> to Hitler's *Lebensraum*." >> >> This seems a far greater overstatement of the truth than anything >> Heinlein might have said. Can we say the same for histories of the >> Third Reich, if they describe the increase in economic growth and >> stability in the late 1930s? >> >> -- David desJardins > >I remember back in the 60's that Ramparts magazine had a number of >excerpts from Heinlein's remarks in support of Vietnam, nukes, >and a number of odious positions. These particular quotes are not >the only ones in which Heinlein advocates unsavory views. Good evidence here -- "unsavory views." Ghod forbid someone should have unsavory views. >I recall one of his stories in which he treats very sympathetically the >carrying of lethal weapons, a more advanced type of gun, and conducting >regular shootouts with them. Heinlein treated such vigilantism as if >it promoted some sense of "honor". Yep, he sure did write about people carrying weapons. It's called *Beyond This Horizon*, and in it he also promotes such unsavory views as living together without benefit of marriage, women who refuse to adapt their professional life to a husband's, governmental control of the economy, and men wearing mauve nail-polish. But let's think for a minute -- my handy desk dictionary does not define "vigilantism" per se, but it does define a vigilante as a member of a vigilance committee, and further defines a vigilance committee as "...an informal council exercising police power for the capture, speedy trial, and summary punishment of criminal offenders...." In BTH, the bearing of personal weapons is not part of some commmittee, and further there are clearly formal methods by which the law is enforced. Near the end of the book, citizens are gathered to fight an armed insurrection, but they are gathered by the government -- thus they are a militia, not "vigilantes." And RAH did *not* treat weapon-carrying as promoting a sense of honor -- there were plenty of dishonorable people carrying guns. What he *did* treat it as promoting was *courtesy*, which is a wholly different thing. > >Then there is, of course, Heinlein's series on the "Methuselah Complex" >in which a secret group of "genetically superior" people who have >secretly crossbred to attain incredible lifespans are persecuted >and envied by the mass of the "genetically inferior". > I guess the quotation marks are supposed to tell us that you don't accept the Howards as genetically superior; but the fact is that they *are* superior in the special sense that they have long lifespans. No other sense, but RAH makes the point more than once in *Methuselah's Children* that the Howards are *not* superior in any other sense, vide for example the time when Lazarus Long says something to the effect of "Bub, you are a perfect demonstration of why the Foundation shoulda bred for brains instead of long life." If you insist on finding a special meaning for this business of the Howards, how about as an allegory for the treatment of the Jews by most of Western Civilization -- a closed group which is envied for their "superiority" (financial, this time) and driven out by their more powerful "inferiors." Hell, RAH even *calls* this "the Diaspora." But of course, no "right-winger" would ever write something that treated a minority group sympathetically, so that can't be it. Can it? >The only of Heinlein's works which contradicts the usual right-wing >stands of some of his novels is "Stranger in a Strange Land" which >seemed to me at the time to approach positively the whole counterculture >of the hippies of the 60's. Son of a gun. This right-wing fascist wrote a novel in favor of free love and group sex and communal living and swimming naked. How do you explain that? First of all, check your dates: Stranger was written in the late 50's and published in 1961 -- he beat the hippies to the punch by 5 years at least. So he wasn't just *reacting* to the counter-culture, he was *proposing* a counter-culture. In fact, he was proposing one that came close to the late-sixties hippie mode, which I take it from your posting you approve of. So, what are these terrible odious views we've seen discussed? 1) A sovreign world-government with the power to stop wars started by *any* country (non-fiction: "Pie from the Sky"; fiction: *Space Cadet*, *Rocketship Galileo*, etc.) 2) Government control of the economy: *Beyond This Horizon*. 3) NO Government control of the economy -- in fact, no government at all: *The Moon is a Harsh Mistress*, others. 4) Violent overthrow of an oppressor: *The Moon is a Harsh Mistress*, *Between Planets*, the short story "Free Men," and many others. 5) Professional (wages, promotion, etc) equality of the sexes: *The Rolling Stones*, *"The Number of the Beast"*, etc.... 6) the evil of racial predjudice, and the idea that owning slaves is inherently corrupting: *Friday*, *Farnham's Freehold*, *Methuselah's Children*, and others. 7) Free love: the right to love and have sex with whomever is willing and with whom you care to, not withstanding marital situation, race, or gender: *Stranger*, *The Moon is a...*, *Friday*, the last two Lazarus Long books, etc. 8) Incest: Lazarus Long books. (I want a button that says "Lazarus Long is a motherf---er", [adroitly edited for the children reading this...].) Not to mention some trivial things: the essential evil of organized religion, the foolishness of Fundamentalist Christianity, men wearing makeup, prostitution as an honorable calling, dressing sexily because it's nice, and sleeping with your professors. Okay, I'm tired of this now. The point is made already, I think: RAH is one strange kind of right-winger. So if you all don't like his views, that's fine -- but let's not make things up, nor edit RAH's real views, so that he is properly Politically Incorrect so he can be reviled. It's not fair, it's not nice, and it make the refutation too easy -- who likes to shoot at sitting ducks? -- Charlie Martin (...mcnc!duke!crm)
vis@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU (Tom Courtney) (09/12/86)
In article <1083@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes: >>If Heinlein himself said (and not one of his characters) that he supports >>nuclear was (no rational human being does and I believe Heinlein to be >>rational) then you would have proof. > >Surely you could not have missed the obvious fact that Heinlein's character >was delivering a polemic of Heinlein's, as always happens in Heinlein's >books. The pedantic speechifying was obvious. Surely you could not have missed the obvious fact that authors are not to be trusted with regards to intent. In "Stranger In a Strange Land" (and in Number of the Beast), Heinlein gives us an author who has no scruples about writing specifically for the market, without ever trying to put his own opinions into the writing. He's rather successful at it, too. Example 1: Robert Frost was once asked by the head of a poetry circle what was the true meaning of "Stopping By Woodside On A Snowy Evening". He replied that it was about stopping by woodside on a snowy evening. The head of the poetry circle went away, secure in the knowledge that he now knew what the poem was about. A question is, did he? I think it is more important to look at individual works on their own merits, not without worrying about this "author's intent" issue. The questions you raise then turn from "Is Heinlein in favor of nuclear war" to "Is Farnham's Freehold an argument for nuclear war?". Example 2: Many years ago, on my English AP, I was asked to write an argument. There were 2 philosophy teachers at my school who incessantly argued over how to teach kids. I answered the question by writing down a typical conversation between the two. Either part of the conversation could easily have been called "Courtney polemic mode", although I only agreed with one of the views. I think both sides of a discussion tend to use authoritarian voice, in everyday life. I think the correct conclusion is not that Heinlein has"mouthpiece" characters, but that lots of his characters argue this way. Example 3: In the "Summa Theologica", Thomas Aquinas uses a pretty strict form of argumentation: he makes some attempt at convincing the reader of a straw dog position of some form, then shows it to be false, then presents a new position which he thinks must really be the case. I think the section of "Farnham's Freehold" you cited is simply the straw dog section of the argument. Seeing the results is the grim proving this position to be in error. Tom Truth in advertising section: I've read and enjoy lots of Heinlein. Ditto for Gordy Dickson, Larry Niven, Spider Robinson and Philip Dick. I'd have read a lot of John Meyers Meyers if there were a lot of John Meyers Meyers to read.
jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre) (09/13/86)
In article <1071@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) writes: >Because you demanded it, pilgrim, herewith the quotes proving Heinlein's >support for nuclear war. These are taken from "Ghastly Beyond Belief", >an anthology of bad and embarrassing science fiction excerpts. > ..... >Next, a typically didactic Heinlein monologue from "Farnham's Freehold", ..... > stand a far better chance. Not every case, but on the average, > and that will improve the breed. When it's over, things will be > tough, and that will improve the breed still more. For years the > surest way of surviving has been to be utterly worthless and > breed a lot of worthless kids. All that will change." I can't represent myself as knowing Heinlein's views on nuclear war but I think it is important here to not identify a character with the author. The character may, at the begining, see nuclear war as having desirable consequences but the book does NOT. When they finally are contacted by and taken into the post war society I think you will have to agree that it is not represented as an improvement on current day society. They are slaves in that society and make every effort to escape. (Flash! Heinlein promotes slavery in his books :-) In fact when that same character is sent back to his own time he tries to do everythink in his power to change that future. The book doesn't tell us if he is successful. This is not exactly the socio-genetic house cleaning that Farnham predicted. So, you can either represent Heinlein's views with the statement of one of the characters or as the overall plot of the book. Given that this is a work of fiction it is not reasonable to do either but certainly the overall plot and ending should be taken as more representitive of the ideas promoted by the book. My impression was that the ending showed the folly of that "survival of the fittest" attitude. Quotations of quotations has got to be the height of taking quotes out of context. Have you read the books you are quoting or just someone else's pre-digested interpretation of what they mean? And no, Heinlein is not one of my favorite authors. Jerry Aguirre @ Olivetti ATC {hplabs|fortune|idi|ihnp4|tolerant|allegra|glacier|olhqma}!oliveb!jerry
chapman@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Brent Chapman) (09/13/86)
In article <1084@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes: >>Aaaaaah yes, the old "quote out of context" ploy. Most ingenious. > >It is highly questionable whether any quote eight paragraphs long can be >reasonably said to be "out of context". > WHO LET THIS (SELF-ADMITTED; CHECK HIS SIGNATURE!) IDIOT OUT OF HIS CAGE! Will someone lock him up before he wanders onto a freeway or something? Yes, the quote is 8 paragraphs long. Call it two pages. HOW long is the book it is quoted FROM? Call it 200 (I'm guessing; the book's at home, but I'm mad _NOW_!). Lessee, 2/200 == ~1%. From a 1%, non representative sample, you are going to draw a conclusion? By the way, have you even bothered to READ the WHOLE of either of the two works you seem so bent on quoting? I hope not; if you have, that makes you guilty of deliberately and maliciously trying to pass off misleading information. Perhaps you let someone ELSE talk you into this position, and now are too "proud" (read: "dogmaticly convinced that you're always correct, right from the start") to back down? >>Here, I *am* more familiar with the context, and, as I suspected, the >>quote in context is far less clearly nucleophilic. Consider: The quote >>explores the hypothesis that a nuclear war would cull the "unfit", and >>that hardy, freedomloving folk might selectively survive. (Even so, it >>is worth noting that again he did *not* say that the net effect would be >>beneficial.) > >YOU LIE!!! He said that the war would be good for the country in the very >first paragraph. What the hell is wrong with you jerks, can't you read >perfectly plain and straightforward English? Am I to be reduced to simply >quoting him again and again while you deny that he said what he said in the >very clearest possible terms? Tell me, what does it mean to you to say that >something will be good for the country? That the country has been going >downhill and that this will be the turning point? Tell me which particular >word you don't understand and I'll be happy to define it for you. You have demonstrated to my satisfaction (and probably to many others, as well) that you are utterly incapable of COMPREHENDING, much less RECOGNIZING, the distinction between a CHARACTER and the artist BEHIND that character. > >Oh, I forgot. HEINLEIN said it. Therefore, it can't say anything wrong. >If it does say something wrong, just squint during that sentence. I notice >not one of you Heinlein supporters has had the balls to include the relevant >quotes I gave from "Farnham's Freehold", because if you did, the discussion >would be over. FOR THE THIRD TIME: the quotes you gave from Farnham's Freehold are taken completely out of context. Including them would be a waste of space. The book's actual "moral" is the exact antithesis of what you seem so dead set on believing (which leads me to ask again: HAVE YOU READ THE BOOK? Or are you flaming just because one of YOUR heroes (Moorcock, perhaps? I couldn't say; I haven't read much of his work.) said "THIS is the WORD: I am RIGHT. HEINLEIN is EVIL."...). How can a book where the RESULT of a nuclear war is shown to be a cannabalistic slave society, where one of the main characters dies during childbirth, where, as someone else so aptly summarized, "life is definitely NOT a cakewalk", be accused of being PRO nuclear war? We'll not even go into your twisting of "Pie From the Sky", a piece whose STATED PURPOSE is to convince people to take action to PREVENT a nuclear war. Are you deliberately trying to smear Heinlein, or are you just shooting off your mouth with too many opinions, too much speculation, and too few facts? >-- >Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot and Damn Proud of It Every time I see that signature, the comment becomes more self-evident and appropriate. Brent -- Brent Chapman chapman@cory.berkeley.edu or ucbvax!cory!chapman
barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) (09/13/86)
Warning: *SPOILERS* of FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD below. From: orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER): >I read Farnham's Freehold and it certainly seemed to me to be more of >a paean to "survivalism" than to actions to stop a nuclear war in >the first place. The protoganist is praiseworthy for stocking up >with everything from food to encyclopedias to prepare for the aftermath >of World War Last. His major concern is protecting his survivalist >fiefdom from looting by others who are starving and so forth. >But that's OK, because we know that it should be "every *MAN* for himself" >after any disaster, right? Even though I consider FF to be one of Heinlein's worst books, it does have an interesting ambiguity. Is Hugh Farnham praisewrothy? On first inspection he seems a pretty typical Heinlein protagonist: competent, self-confident, independent, smart and tough. But, what happens to him? His fancy, expensive bomb shelter gets blown through time by some unknown side effect of a direct hit. Farnham is saved not by his own foresight, but by incredible luck. When he attempts escape from the tyrannous society he finds in the future, it's a flat failure. He's caught, and only the generosity and curiosity of the tyrant allow he and his to eventually return to their proper time. Not, however, before he also fails to save his son from castration. He's also a failure in his personal life. His wife is a useless alcoholic, and his son a worm. Finally, the typical Heinlein hero ends up very well off by the end of the book. Head of a company, head of a planet, hero of a war, whatever. Farnham ends up with a few acres surrounded by barbed wire and mine fields. Is this a fief, or a prison? I don't know what Heinlein intended, but whatever his intent, I think one can read FF as a story about the limitations of self-sufficiency and not its virtues. >"Farnham's Freehold" is hardly a realistic view of the effects of >nuclear war whatsoever. I've excised your documentation of this because I agree. I don't think FF is in any real sense about nuclear war. The war just sets the stage for a story that ends up being an allegory of racism, and a study of extreme individualism, among other things. It is an unusually bleak book for RAH, and the protagonist is not a terribly likable fellow. He's often more querulous than commanding, and lacks the knack that other Heinlein heroes have for being right when it counts. If one must ask what the book's message about nuclear war is, I think it portrays nuclear war as a very bad idea. But that message is not central to the story. - From the Crow's Nest - Kenn Barry NASA-Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ELECTRIC AVENUE: {ihnp4,vortex,dual,hao,hplabs}!ames!barry
chapman@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Brent Chapman) (09/14/86)
In article <977@whuts.UUCP> orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER) writes: ... >But then another effect should have been well-known to Heinlein which >he never bothered to deal with in his paean to "survivalism". >Namely the certainty than any all-out nuclear war would lead to >massive firestorms, leaving those in shelters like "Farnham's Freehold" >to be either cooked alive like those in Dresden, or else suffocated by >the lack of oxygen consumed by such torrential flames. >It has been a long time since I read "Farnham's Freehold" but I also >don't recall much discussion of the pernicious effects of radioactivity- >in the region around Chernobyl, a minscule incident compared to the >effects of an all-out nuclear war, they have to strip off the top >inches of thousands of acres of topsoil because it is excessively >radioactive. If you strip off the top inches of fertile topsoil to >avoid radioactivity, the soil left will be practically useless for >growing crops. Nor do I recall Heinlein talking much at all about >radiation sickness, leukemia, cancer, etc. ... > tim sevener whuxn!orb I believe that Heinlein sidestepped this whole issue in one of the basic premises of the story. If I remember correctly, Farnham & Co. survived _because_ they were basicly at ground zero for a blast, which conveniently knocked them several hundred (thousand?) years into the future. Without this convenient little "trick", there would have been no story. Brent -- Brent Chapman chapman@cory.berkeley.edu or ucbvax!cory!chapman
radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) (09/15/86)
In article <977@whuts.UUCP>, orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER) writes: > > > Next, a typically didactic Heinlein monologue from "Farnham's Freehold", > > > a post-holocaust novel of which Michael Moorcock wrote in the > > > critical/political essay "Starship Stormtroopers", "It's not such a big > > > step ... from *Farnham's Freehold* to Hitler's *Lebensraum*." > > I can't believe this! The entire book catalogs, in detail, exactly what > > the horrors associated with a nuclear war would be... > I read Farnham's Freehold and it certainly seemed to me to be more of > a paean to "survivalism" than to actions to stop a nuclear war in > the first place. The protoganist is praiseworthy for stocking up > with everything from food to encyclopedias to prepare for the aftermath > of World War Last. His major concern is protecting his survivalist > fiefdom from looting by others who are starving and so forth... > tim sevener whuxn!orb This is getting more and more ridiculous. I haven't read Farnham's Freehold in years either, but unless my memory is much worse than I think, the book doesn't concern the direct effects of nuclear war AT ALL. You see, once the bomb hits, the protagonists are transported through time to a period hundreds of years after the war ends. Far from his major concern being "protecting his fiefdom from looting", the hero believes for many months that they are the sole survivors. About half the book concerns the events after they are discovered by the post-holocoust society, and is mainly about racial discrimination, not nuclear war. There's about five pages at the end that's slightly more relevant to the direct effects of the war, after the hero and heroine manage to travel back in time to just after the war. All sides in this discussion would do well to actually read the books they talk about, recently enough to remember them. Radford Neal
throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) (09/15/86)
> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) >>If Heinlein himself said (and not one of his characters) that he supports >>nuclear was (no rational human being does and I believe Heinlein to be >>rational) then you would have proof. > Surely you could not have missed the obvious fact that Heinlein's character > was delivering a polemic of Heinlein's, as always happens in Heinlein's > books. The pedantic speechifying was obvious. Surely *you* could not have missed the *very* obvious fact that everything that this character says in this "pedantic speech" is proven *wrong* by the events that follow? Or perhaps... you didn't read the book? -- A little ignorance can go a long way. --- Solomon Short {quoted by David Gerrold} -- Wayne Throop <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw
throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) (09/15/86)
> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) >> throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) >> The quote >>explores the hypothesis that a nuclear war would cull the "unfit", and >>that hardy, freedomloving folk might selectively survive. (Even so, it >>is worth noting that again he did *not* say that the net effect would be >>beneficial.) > YOU LIE!!! Good greif, Tim. Take it easy. You're getting spittle all over your terminal. And you're wrong on this point, to boot. First, very trivially, almost every time Hugh Farnham proposes a "benefit" of nuclear war, he equivocates, saying "could be", "might be", and so on. And every time Tim requotes (other than the reproduction of the quote from the book), Tim removes these equivocations. So, in a trivial sense, I am not lying, and Hugh didn't say what Tim keeps saying he said. More fundamentally, the analysis that Hugh uses to show his hypothesized "benefit" makes it clear that he is comparing nuclear war to some *other* disaster that would kill hundreds of millions of people. Thus, he is talking about a *relative* benefit of a disaster that kills millions of "unfit" people relative to killing millions of people completely at random. I'm appending the original quotation for those who didn't save it, so they can see for themselves. Further, my subsequent argument didn't depend on my parenthetical remark about what Hugh Farnham was saying. That argument is just as valid if we assume that Tim is right about Hugh's statements, which was why I made it a parenthetical remark in the first place, and *not* part of my argument. Let's see what Tim left out of his "rebuttal". > It is highly questionable whether any quote eight paragraphs long can be > reasonably said to be "out of context". Hardly. It is *trivial* to show that this quote was butchered by removal from its context, and that Hugh Farnham is *not* Heinlein's mouthpiece character in this quote. First, the context is a novel that details in no uncertain terms the evil results of a nuclear war. The few survivors, we find out, are enslaved and bred for docile servility, sex, and meat for hundreds of years. The quote stating that the US might reap some benefit comes before this result is revealed, and is thus out of its proper context. Second, since the events in the book are controlled directly by Heinlein, when what some character says conflicts with those events, that character cannot be echoing Heinlein's thoughts. The "benefits" Hugh Farnham hypothesizes (mostly increased intelligence and freedom for the survivors) are *directly* and *repeatedly* contradicted by the subsequent events. Hugh Farnham *clearly* erected a straw man, which Heinlein then demolishes in the remainder of the novel. The fact that Tim, for the purposes of his rebuttal, chopped off my argument at a trivial in-passing point that wasn't part of what followed might well have Charlie Martin spinning in his netnode. Charlie vouched for Tim's character in an earlier posting. Waddaya say, Charlie? Still think this... this hypocritical hoptoad is "honest"? > Warning! Dogmatic responses will be ignored, or, more likely, insulted. Oh dear, oh dear. Tim will think this posting is "dogmatic" and will insult me. Wherecaniturn, whocanicall? I know! I'll take it to *Court* !!!!! STUPID PEOPLE'S COURT !!!!! ( Judge Moriarty Wapner, presiding. Pat. pend. Void where prohibited. This end up. Your mileage may vary. North Carolina residents add 10% sales tax. (That's not the tax rate in NC, but I pocket the difference, y'see...) ) You listening Jeff? Can Mighty Judge Wapner spare a court date? -- The seeds of crime bear bitter fruit. --- Dick Tracy -- The quote from _Farhnam's_Freehold_ He frowned. "Barbara, I'm not as sad over what has happened as you are. It might be be good for us. I don't mean us six; I mean our country." She looked startled. "How?" "Well - it's hard to take the long view when you are crouching in a shelter and wondering how long you can hold out. But - Barbara, I've worried for years about our country. It seems to me that we have been breeding slaves - and I believe in freedom. This war may have turned the tide. This may be the first war in history which kills the stupid rather than the bright and able - where it makes any distinction." "How do you figure that, Hugh?" "Well, wars have always been hardest on the best young men. This time the boys in the service are as safe or safer than civilians. And of civilians those who used their heads and made preparations stand a far better chance. Not every case, but on the average, and that will improve the breed. When it's over, things will be tough, and that will improve the breed still more. For years the surest way of surviving has been to be utterly worthless and breed a lot of worthless kids. All that will change." She nodded thoughtfully. "That's standard genetics. But it seems cruel." "It *is* cruel. But no government has yet been able to repeal natural laws, though they keep trying." She shivered in spite of the heat. "I suppose you're right. No, I *know* you're right." -- Wayne Throop <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw
crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) (09/15/86)
Tim Maroney: I am going to assume that someone has snuck onto your account and is purposefully posting these amazingly vapid and stupidly inflammatory notes under your name while you are too busy to catch up. You probably had better change your password. It may seem like an amazing conclusion to reach, but I know the real Tim personally, and while he and I don't necessarily agree, I don't think he would resort to the tricks and blatant fallacies used by Fundamentalist preachers and pro-censorship rabblerousers to try and force people to agree with him without thought. So the rest of this note is addressed to the piratical psuedo-Tim; please don't take it personally. My love to Pam, and congratulations on the *Locus* job. Now: psuedo-Tim: >>Aaaaaah yes, the old "quote out of context" ploy. Most ingenious. > >It is highly questionable whether any quote eight paragraphs long can be >reasonably said to be "out of context". It is even more questionable that eight paragraphs out of a 100,000 word book would completely encode the meaning of the book. I notice that *you've* conveniently ignored the fact that your "Pie from the Sky" quote was made clearly ironic by THE VERY NEXT SENTANCE. Not to mention the fact that the article it was quoted from stated in so many words that a nuclear war would lead to an atomic stone age, and that it would be a bad thing. *Farnham's Freehold* objectively includes the following events (at least): 1) A nuclear war that completely devastates the US; it leaves Hugh Farnham so despairing that the only reason he has to live at the beginning of the book is to take revenge on the Soviets who started blew up his home. Farnham has a wife, a son, a daughter, and an expensive house with houseboy who is attending business college in his off time. Also with them is a friend of his daughter's from the college. He finds little pleasure in anything except bridge, and is trapped in a despair-filled marriage to an alcoholic wife by leftover love and a feeling of honorably fulfilling a promise. After the first few bombs fall, Farnham believes he is going to die. Talking to Barbara (the daughter's college friend) he says he thinks the war may have the good effect of weeding out the stupid or unthinking preferentially. 2) A particularly powerful event which transports the entire fallout shelter into a different context (which we will later see to be the far future.) 3) They are apparently alone, and must learn to live without the luxuries of civilization: Kotex, running water, and milk products, among others. They succeed *partially*, but Farnham's marriage finally breaks up, his daughter dies, and they are all in real trouble. 4) They are rescued by a technologically advanced but decadent culture in which it happens that the dominant "race" is black, and in which the white "race" is submissive and owned as property. This society is explored through about 1/3rd of the book. In this, we see Farnham's ex-wife and son make the transition to being housepets and chattels, see the household workings intimately, and see the black houseboy make the transformation to being a slaveowner rather than a submissive house servant. 5) Farnham attempts to escape but fails. Rather than being immediately killed, they are used as experimental animals, and transported back in time to just BEFORE the atomic war. 6) They survive the war and manage to survive the time afterwards. However, the time afterward is so dangerous that using landmines around your home (with a warning sign) is apparently acceptable, or at least not illegal. In that synopsis, only *one paragraph* applies to the quote: and I had to mess with the "scale" to fit it in. Now, how is it *possible* that eight paragraphs out of an entire books (let's say nominally 30,000 paragraphs) could be taken out of context? Let's assume that I am writing a fictional story in which a Jewish character says in eight paragraphs, while trying to keep up his spirits in the face of the German annexation of the Suddeutenland, says that maybe Nazis won't be so bad -- maybe they'll at least be better than the current government has been. Let's say further that in the rest of the book, his wife leaves him and marries an SS officer; his son joins the SS as well, protected by the step-father; his daughter is raped and killed by a squad of German army; and he and his new love are used in experiments from which they barely escape with their lives. Have I written a pro-Nazi book? Not bloody damn likely. Not unless you assume that the ONE eight-paragraph part saying it might not be too bad is my "auctorial voice" and the rest of the book is camoflage. The real Tim is an admirer of Aleister Crowley I know: psuedo-Tim, find him and ask if Crowley couldn't have an eight-paragraph chunk exerpted from something he wrote and made out to be a greatly evil man. > >>Here, I *am* more familiar with the context, and, as I suspected, the >>quote in context is far less clearly nucleophilic. Consider: The quote >>explores the hypothesis that a nuclear war would cull the "unfit", and >>that hardy, freedomloving folk might selectively survive. (Even so, it >>is worth noting that again he did *not* say that the net effect would be >>beneficial.) > >YOU LIE!!! He said that the war would be good for the country in the very >first paragraph. Psuedo-Tim: this wasn't me, but I came to the same conclusion: call me a liar to my face and see how I take it. This IS NOT a very pleasing or useful rhetorical device. Ignoring the abuse (look up the "ad hominem abusive" sometime), even if he did say unequivocally that nuclear war was good for the country in the first paragraph -- he didn't: he said it *may* be good -- the rest of the book pretty clearly shows it was good for the country in only a very rarified way. It may have been good for the RACE, but it was utter destruction for the country. And as it turned out, it wasn't all that good for the race either: a large part ended up bred for food and slavery, and with the desire to disobey authority bred out. >What the hell is wrong with you jerks, can't you read >perfectly plain and straightforward English? >Am I to be reduced to simply >quoting him again and again while you deny that he said what he said in the >very clearest possible terms? Tell me, what does it mean to you to say that >something will be good for the country? That the country has been going >downhill and that this will be the turning point? Tell me which particular >word you don't understand and I'll be happy to define it for you. Tim, have you heard of Aristotle? He wrote a very nice book called the Rhetoric which would be of great help here. > >Oh, I forgot. HEINLEIN said it. Therefore, it can't say anything wrong. >If it does say something wrong, just squint during that sentence. I notice >not one of you Heinlein supporters has had the balls to include the relevant >quotes I gave from "Farnham's Freehold", because if you did, the discussion >would be over. > Well, if I'd have saved the FF messages, I would have quoted them: as I said before, you seem to have conveniently ignored all the people who showed the "Pie from the Sky" quote to be blatantly out of context, and carefully chosen to distort a strongly ANTI-nuclear-war article into a pro-war one. This is at LEAST as reprehensible as the clowns that say that Wicca is Satanism, and then persecute Wiccan witches on the basis of Malleus Malleficarum. For me, I've got to say, I don't think I find > YOU LIE! and > ...you jerks... convinces me of anything except that the person writing can't come up with any more convincing arguments; it makes me think they are trying to force me or threaten me into agreeing with them for fear that they will abuse me, call me a "fascist" or a "jerk" -- and if they can grab the power, put me in jail or shoot me if I dare to disagree. PsuedoTim, you're entitled to think that way, but if you try to enforce it against *me*, expect trouble. For me, I'm with Thomas Jefferson: "...I have sworn eternal hostility toward all forms of dominion over the mind of Man." -- Charlie Martin (...mcnc!duke!crm)
royer@savax.UUCP (royer) (09/16/86)
[ Miscellaneous comments leading up to this ...] > > I read Farnham's Freehold and it certainly seemed to me to be more of > a paean to "survivalism" than to actions to stop a nuclear war in > the first place. The protoganist is praiseworthy for stocking up > with everything from food to encyclopedias to prepare for the aftermath > of World War Last. His major concern is protecting his survivalist > fiefdom from looting by others who are starving and so forth. > But that's OK, because we know that it should be "every *MAN* for himself" > after any disaster, right? > > "Farnham's Freehold" is hardly a realistic view of the effects of > nuclear war whatsoever. For example, because an all-out nuclear war > would destroy the ozone layer, animals and humans without their > eyes shielded would soon be blinded. Then of course there is the > likelihood of the Nuclear Winter effect. Heinlein could be excused > for not mentioning these since both were just discovered in the past decade. > But then another effect should have been well-known to Heinlein which > he never bothered to deal with in his paean to "survivalism". > Namely the certainty than any all-out nuclear war would lead to > massive firestorms, leaving those in shelters like "Farnham's Freehold" > to be either cooked alive like those in Dresden, or else suffocated by > the lack of oxygen consumed by such torrential flames. > It has been a long time since I read "Farnham's Freehold" but I also > don't recall much discussion of the pernicious effects of radioactivity- > in the region around Chernobyl, a minscule incident compared to the > effects of an all-out nuclear war, they have to strip off the top > inches of thousands of acres of topsoil because it is excessively > radioactive. If you strip off the top inches of fertile topsoil to > avoid radioactivity, the soil left will be practically useless for > growing crops. Nor do I recall Heinlein talking much at all about > radiation sickness, leukemia, cancer, etc. > The whole impression I recall from "Farnham's Freehold" was that > nuclear war involved big terrific explosions but if you prepared > your own survivalist holdout for yourself and you alone, that > you could make it. Of course a required part of your survivalist > gear is at least one gun, if not several, so you can shoot the few > surviving humans left and assure your own survival. > I.e. maintain the same idiotic mentality which has placed us in the > current position of facing the imminent extinction of the human race > at any time! Let's try and separate our *CURRENT* understanding of the effects of nuclear war from those accepted at the time this book was written. When Heinlein wrote "Farnham's Freehold", the prevailing wisdom really was that all we had to do was hole up and wait it out and we'd be OK. The book actually advances the idea that that wasn't so, that there were things about civilization that really were necessary to support life as we knew it. "Farnham's Freehold" is a very depressing book, especially when compared with other Heinlein work. If he wrote it now and included things like nuclear winter, etc, I'm not sure what would come out. > I would say that as I recall Heinlein's story in "Farnham's Freehold" > that it more closely resembles Reagan's Undersecretary of Defense, > T.K. Jones statement that > "we can survive nuclear war with enough shovels. Just dig a hole > a few feet thick and jump in it." > than any statement by pacifists or even people like Eisenhower > or Khruschev ('the living will envy the dead') > If you feel that way, it would be better to sum it up saying that T. K. Jones holds an attitude which is thirty or so years out of date (about as old as "Farnham's Freehold") and not to extrapolate that feeling to Mr. Heinlein. > tim sevener whuxn!orb *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** -- The opinions expressed here will no doubt come as a complete surprise to my employer. Tom Royer Sanders Associates MER24-1283, CS2034 (603)-885-9171 Nashua, NH 03061-2034
jrw@princeton.UUCP (Jeffrey Westbrook) (09/16/86)
In article <573@dg_rtp.UUCP> throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) writes: > > He frowned. "Barbara, I'm not as sad over what has happened as > you are. It might be be good for us. I don't mean us six; I > mean our country." > >Hardly saying that "nuclear war is good for the country". He's sad, but >not as sad as Barbara. It *MIGHT* be good (but he does *not* say >outright that he thinks it is a net benefit). In fact, he equivocates >quite a bit during the course of your quote: > > might be ... seems to me ... may have ... may be ... not every > case ... it is cruel > >Also note that "he" is a character, and not unambiguously mouthing >Heinlein's thoughts. Add to that the fact that he is trying to find >silver linings to cheer up "Barbara", and the fact that the rest of the >story proves him wrong in no uncertain terms, and... what was that you >were saying about "proof"? > Holy God, there's a deconstructionist on the net! Somebody send him back to France!
djo@ptsfd.UUCP (Dan'l Oakes) (09/17/86)
In article <1076@hoptoad.uucp> Tim Maroney writes: >Mr. Berch speaks with the fervent preconception of a fundamentalist >inventing excuses for the slaughter of the Midianites. And you say Berch descends to insult? >Heinlein was clear; >he did not dryly note a few positive effects; he stated outright that the >nuclear war was "good for the country". Go back and check the quote if you >don't believe me (and I'll grant you, it's hard to believe). He then went >on to say that it had "turned the tide" toward the triumph of freedom, and >that the net effect would be to "improve the breed". Not hesitantly, not >dryly, not in passing - Heinlein states outright and enthusiastically that >nuclear war would be a wonderful thing! > >I know Heinlein is probably one of your heroes, Mr. Berch, but you simply >must face facts. The book says what I quoted it as saying, not what you >would like it to have said. Nor does it say what you would like it to have said. The book does not say that the war is a good thing; it says (quoting from memory) that the war may have been good for the country. May have is a subjunctive that casts a possible doubt on all that follows; and good for the country is not an absolute "good" (unless you suggest that the author of, among other things THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST ("we put no faith in princes"), and FRIDAY regards the good of any one political unit as an absolute good). Semantic analysis can go only so far, of course, and next I will suggest that while Farnham meant all he said, _Heinlein_ is speaking ironically. And "Pie in the Sky" is even more unambiguous: >"There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of ours which >would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the Hiroshima >treatment." You can twist and turn and try to divert the issue into long >lists of irrelevant Heinlein statements on other matters (which you did, and >which I have omitted), but these are the things he said, and you can't >change that by wishing it away. > And that passage is precisely where I claim Heinlein is being ironic. It is the classic form of irony -- indeed, to speak in such a blithe and childish manner, of such a serious subject, is one of the classic markers of irony. If the irony is not obvious, blame your lack of classical education, not Heinlein. Not that I suggest that Heinlein is entirely sarcastic; no, this is the much more difficult trope of irony; Heinlein is indeed saying that there are a great many things wrong with modern civilization. But the main problem is that you seem not to have read the essay. Heinlein goes on to name several of the things that the "Hiroshima treatment" would free us from -- then goes on to name a greater number of awfulnesses that would result from it. If you had read the damn essay, you would know that it was intended to wake people up, to tell them that they'd damn well better do something to PREVENT an atomic war. But, no. You, who are full of accusations of hero-worship, took the quotation directly out of context as it was presented to you, and believed those who told you how it was intended. Think for yourself, buddy. That's what Heinlein's been trying to tell us all for years and years -- and that's what politicians, on BOTH sides, left and right, don't want us to do. Come on... Please... The Roach Without Fear aka djo@ptsfd "I was born in these streets. They called me darebug...it was a nickname, but they didn't know what it would come to mean...I WILL NOT BE DESTROYED! I'm coming, lynchpin...I'm coming..."
crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) (09/17/86)
In article <977@whuts.UUCP> orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER) writes: > >I read Farnham's Freehold and it certainly seemed to me to be more of >a paean to "survivalism" than to actions to stop a nuclear war in >the first place. The protoganist is praiseworthy for stocking up >with everything from food to encyclopedias to prepare for the aftermath >of World War Last. His major concern is protecting his survivalist >fiefdom from looting by others who are starving and so forth. >But that's OK, because we know that it should be "every *MAN* for himself" >after any disaster, right? And a fat lot of good it does him, too. > >"Farnham's Freehold" is hardly a realistic view of the effects of >nuclear war whatsoever. For example, because an all-out nuclear war >would destroy the ozone layer, animals and humans without their >eyes shielded would soon be blinded. Then of course there is the >likelihood of the Nuclear Winter effect. Heinlein could be excused >for not mentioning these since both were just discovered in the past decade. Okay, my first reaction was "Good CHRIST, Tim, this was written in 1964" -- but at least RAH "could be excused" for not being prescient or omniscient. >But then another effect should have been well-known to Heinlein which >he never bothered to deal with in his paean to "survivalism". >Namely the certainty than any all-out nuclear war would lead to >massive firestorms, leaving those in shelters like "Farnham's Freehold" >to be either cooked alive like those in Dresden, or else suffocated by >the lack of oxygen consumed by such torrential flames. Just as a young soldier named Vonnegut was suffocated in a cellar in Dresden, then cooked, cutting off a fine writing career before his first publication. Uh, it didn't happen that way in MY universe. >It has been a long time since I read "Farnham's Freehold" but I also >don't recall much discussion of the pernicious effects of radioactivity- >in the region around Chernobyl, a minscule incident compared to the >effects of an all-out nuclear war, they have to strip off the top >inches of thousands of acres of topsoil because it is excessively >radioactive. If you strip off the top inches of fertile topsoil to >avoid radioactivity, the soil left will be practically useless for >growing crops. Nor do I recall Heinlein talking much at all about >radiation sickness, leukemia, cancer, etc. Check the book, Tim. CHECK THE TEXT DON'T BABBLE WITHOUT EVIDENCE. Excuse me, I get excitable at night. Full moon, all that. The nice pleasant land occupied for most of the book was 2000 years -- TWO THOUSAND YEARS -- after the Big War. The war *completely wiped out* Farnham's dominant civilization: culture, religion, the whole balance of the ecology changed. The only records left were some pretty minimal things -- a quote: "There are only two other copies of the *Encyclopedia Britannica in the world today -- and those are not this edition and are in such poor shape that they are curiosities rather than something a scholar can work with...." -- "Ponce" to Hugh Farnham, pg 176 of the Berkeley 1980 printing. There are some extremely pretty gardens in Hiroshima, and it's only been 40 years. >The whole impression I recall from "Farnham's Freehold" was that >nuclear war involved big terrific explosions but if you prepared >your own survivalist holdout for yourself and you alone, that >you could make it. Of course a required part of your survivalist >gear is at least one gun, if not several, so you can shoot the few >surviving humans left and assure your own survival. You really should talk to a therapist about this abnormal obsession with guns. Yes, you can point guns at people -- you can also shoot deer etc with them. The Indians wanted guns not to shoot at the whites with, but because it made hunting so much more efficient. Dramatically, I'm not at all satisfied with the way things went in the first parts of FF -- but having guns in the shelter, given that you are going to try to survive, is the right decision. >.... >I would say that as I recall Heinlein's story in "Farnham's Freehold" >that it more closely resembles Reagan's Undersecretary of Defense, >T.K. Jones statement that >"we can survive nuclear war with enough shovels. Just dig a hole >a few feet thick and jump in it." >than any statement by pacifists or even people like Eisenhower >or Khruschev ('the living will envy the dead') > > tim sevener whuxn!orb I have the book in my hands -- well, on my desk next to me -- and I don't think the text supports that, at least not completely. In any case, FF *does* reflect the state of our understanding in 1964. I was trained as a shelter medic and radiation officer in 1970 and it reflected our understanding of the thing THEN. We've found out about the other stuff (other than firestorms, about which you are simply and provably mistaken) since. So it's not RAH's fault. Look, unless I'm really provoked, I'm not going to reply on this topic again. As it stands, it's pretty clear that I and others have proven by reference to the publications that Heinlein *hates* the idea of atomic war, went to some lengths to get a strong compelling UN Peace Authority instead of the debating society with caviar budgets we have, and then wrote stories and books specifically to point out how awful it might be. (Read "Solution Unsatisfactory" -- in which he points out that a world empire led by the United States would be just as tyrannical, just as evil, as any other. He also points out what the radiation effects on a population would be, come to think of it.) On the other hand, you and the person posting under Tim Maroney's name have used quotes that are BLATANTLY out of context (contradicting the whole meaning of the article from which they are taken, sometimes contradicted by the next *sentence* when the original text is examined) to argue the opposite. You refer to your vague recollections of Farnham's Freehold -- but the vague recollections are not supported by the text. So I want, once more, to repeat what I said a few days ago -- you may not agree with Heinlein, you may want to argue against him -- but it IS NOT FAIR NOR IS IT MORAL to make up things, nor take out of context quotations which do not reflect the author's meaning, nor to use your vague recollections as evidence, especially after others have pointed out using the actual text that you are simply wrong, just to argue that someone is a bad and Evil Person. Joe McCarthy did it, and he was wrong. Adolf Hitler did it, and he was wrong. Jerry Falwell does it all the time, and he is wrong. And as long as you and the other Tim keep doing it, you are equally wrong. -- Charlie Martin (...mcnc!duke!crm)
boreas@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP (The Mad Tickle Monster) (09/18/86)
>... >There's about five pages at the end that's slightly more relevant to >the direct effects of the war, after the hero and heroine manage to >travel back in time to just after the war. >... > Radford Neal Actually, to just before. Remember Farnham's commentary at the start when some stranger shows up at his door, and his daughter quips that he was her date? And at the end, when Farnham and his wife (or girlfriend, or whatever you want to call her, as they weren't formally married) decides it isn't the same universe since the car is now a stick-shift instead of automatic, while they drive to the mountain mine to hide from the coming holocaust? As long as I'm writing, I may as well add: Tim Maroney et al would be well-advised to read net.jokes for a while to learn about satire. Even though it's rare there, it nonetheless does occasionally show up. And it's even marked with smileys (:-) to help distinguish it. (Barring that, try Voltaire or Swift, or maybe some Twain). After all, that's what "Pie from the Sky" was. . . . -- Michael -- +-------------------------------------------------------+ | Michael Justice (:*P | | definite address: BITNet: cscj0ac@bostonu | | "Perhaps it was a result of anxiety." -- _Mad_Max_ | +-------------------------------------------------------+