FIRTH@TL-20B.ARPA (10/03/85)
From: FIRTH@TL-20B.ARPA
[ Moderator: herewith some comments on the excerpts from That Review.
As ever, please edit or condense at your discretion
]
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Disclaimer: I haven't yet read Luc Sante's review in full.
Nor am I prepared to comment on his lengthy verbiage quoted in this
forum, which seems encoded in a private jargon indecipherable without
the full text.
But facts are facts, and lies are lies. Here are some of both:
QUOTE
"Campbell was a tyrant who encouraged tyrannical views. His
guidance bore fruit in the works of such writers as Robert Heinlein
and L. Ron Hubbard. Heinlein's grandiose technocratic vision
approaches fascism in works like _Starship Troopers_ (1959) and
_Stranger in a Strange Land_ (1961), the latter once the bible of
psychedelic zealotry and a major influence on Charles Manson.
Hubbard, after producing acres of wordage for Campbell, tired of
writing science fiction, and decided to live it, a decision that
resulted in his pseudoscience, Dianetics, which had considerable
impact on science fiction before mutating into the pseudoreligion
Scientology."
END QUOTE
(1) Campbell was not a tyrant. In fact, he encouraged many kinds of
experimentation in Astounding. This is attested by Heinlein
(Expanded Universe) Asimov (Opus 100, Before The Golden Age)
and many others. There were a couple of problems with his
editorship: an unreasonable insistence on "human supremacy",
which Asimov documents well, and an unreasonable urge to
remove non-gratuitous sex, which seems to be attributable mostly
to Kay Tarrant.
(2) "Heinlein's grandiose technocratic vision" .. 'technocracy' means
"the rule of the skilled", and I can't find that in most of
Heinlein's major works. The issue of leadership (or, as an
Englishman should say, kingship) is discussed in many of his
novels, especially The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and I don't
think they support that conclusion. Indeed, in many places,
especially the juvenile stories (Space Family Stone, Have
Space Suit, will Travel) he indicates his sympathies are the
exact opposite: EVERYBODY should be as autonomous as possible;
even incompetents have rights and should be given the chance to
learn (or die)
Of course, Mr Sante' may be using "technocratic" to mean
"worshipping mechanisms and technology" - illiteracy among
the literati knows no nadir.
(3) "approaches fascism in Starship Troopers". Well that work
is not a grandiose technocratic vision in any sense: the
technology is the minimum necessary to sustain the plot, and
the invisible rulers are neither technologists nor particularly
efficient. Nor is it fascist: name one fascist state where
military service was voluntary and where even volunteers
could resign at almost any time (whenever not in actual combat)
See Spider Robinson's article Rah Rah RAH in Destinies vol 2
no 3 for more.
And, incidentally, what does all this have to do with Campbell?
Unless the limp, yellowing object in my hand is an hallucination,
"Starship Soldier" was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction.
[As for that common disease of the deracinated intellectual,
whose main symptom is an habitual sneering at courage, valour,
patriotism, and, above all, the profession of arms - Rudyard
Kipling analysed it a century ago. It is still with us]
(4) There is no technology in Stranger in a Strange Land. Even
space travel is kept offstage.
(5) "a major influence on Charles Manson". Well, bringing out the
standard book on this subject (Vincent Bugelosi & Curt
Gentry: Helter Skelter), I find no reference to Heinlein or
any of his works. The main influences on Manson seem to have
been Beatles lyrics and some Scientology notions - though
even the latter is dubious: Manson's claims to have become
a "beta clear" are unsubstantiated, and that certainly isn't
(as he also claimed) the highest stage in Scientology (op
cit, Penguin Books edition, pp 578..580)
(6) [L Ron Hubbard] "tired of writing science fiction, and decided to
live it". Even a cursory look at a Hubbard bibliography will
refute that. Hubbard continued writing SF through his
Dianetics period, and well into Scientology. Not to mention
Battlefield Earth. Moreover, leaving aside some of the wilder
claims of the OTO, most dispassionate observers conclude that
Hubbard himself didn't try to "live" his cults. See, for
instance, Stephen Annett (ed) The Many Ways of Being, Abacus, 1976.
(7) Finally, Scientology is
"a religious philosophy containing pastoral counselling
procedures intended to assist an individual to attain
Spiritual Freedom"
in fact, a pseudo-religion.
If a reviewer is so wrong about facts that can be checked, not in a
reference library, but in a poorly-stocked home library, of what
value are his opinions?
Robert Firth
PS: On re-reading the above, and scanning the archives, I feel I
was wrong about the "non-gratuitous sex" stuff. For example,
Poul Anderson's serials The Long Way Home and The Man Who Counts,
both published in Astounding in the '50s, contain plot elements
that involve "sex" in one way or another, and the latter especially
makes a very tough point.
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