One "historical comparison" is the US following WW2. Jack Kennedy gathering Navy buddies and knocking on doors to ask people to vote for him. Dan Inouye and John Burns organizing veterans to take over Hawaii form the missionary families. In many parts of the South, one didn't get elected unless he had "worn the suit". i seem to recall that something similar happened in Canada and Australia.

__________________
"I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards." Philip K. Dick
No matter how strong, or brave, or pure of heart you may be; sometimes the dragon wins!

My pantheon isnt Heinlien, it is being correct. The kneejerk 'it's fascism' about Starship Troopers has never been correct. It is just the same as calling the Harry Potter books witchcraft.

You may want to go back and read the book again without the influence.

Starship Troopers is a story about joining the Army and why people do so, tricked out in futuristic doodads and with enough action scenes to keep people interested. Heinlein himself wrote that he was interested in exploring why men do such a thing, and how Johnny Rico, who joins up for adolescent reasons (trying to impress a girl), finds a satisfying logical and emotional rationalle for doing so after the fact. The story was written from this viewpoint and I see nothing wrong with that (Heinlein even got a couple of jabs in at his beloved Navy in the narrative).

For some reason his postulated form of government in this particular story hit a nerve, producing a response completely out of proportion to a decent if unspectacular story line (Johnny is pretty boring, really). I have to assume part of it was the particular time and place it was published; Stephen Gould's contingent facts of history. In a much superior novel, Double Star, he writes with seeming approval of a constitutional monarchy, with Emperor and all the trimmings, yet no one seems to get on his case for it. (We might have a discussion of that, to cleanse the pallate).

Or maybe the Competent Man myth so accociated with Heinlein. While there are some of those in some stories they tend to be less interesting, precisely because you know in advance they will win. Jubal Harshaw may be dyspeptic and amusing, but does anyone really think he can actually lose? On the other hand, Larry Smith (the Great Lorenzo), a self-involved, self-pitying jerk with a good memory, excellent balance and not much else becomes the ultimate Competent Man as a total fraud, an image created by the work of others (Heck, 'Adam Selene' may be the epitome of that, Max Headroom a generation early). Most of Heinlein's competent men (or women) are actually broken or incomplete, and the story involves their repair.

Like any successful writer, Heinlein took lots of viewpoints (Check out his views on world government shortly after WWII). So what? If they moved the narrative along and made you think he suceeded as an author.

__________________
The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

What he said, much better than I did.

As an aside, I noticed the VP is back. Do you change your avatar to fit each post

Replaced by request. I may cycle some others, but the Dickster seems to fit my vicious, no-holes-barred personality.

__________________
The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

To quote Larry Niven (who, entirely incidentally, seems to be a Heinlein fan): "We in the writing profession have a technical term for people who believe that the authors believe everything their characters believe. We call them 'idiots'."

Grant Hutchison

OT: it sure would be funny if a Niven *character* had said that. It gets into the ---"every rule has an exception" rule--could it be its own exception?--- type of circularity.

__________________
-----
Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

Well, there is no point in arguing against something that is so obviously true.

* Ave Imperator Rex! *

Actually, Heinlein had a lot of influence on my political thinking, because he made me think.
I disagree with many of his ideas though. (Except the one about constitutional monarchy.)

__________________
Join the Illuminati

Also completely out of proportion compared to the response to all the magically functioning socialist states commonly found in sci-fi. Hey, if you want to put a good, or at least within-plot-culture rationalized, face on bad forms of government why not cover all your bases?

__________________
http://amssolarempire.blogspot.com

LOL! A statement a proctologist or paranoid VP would be proud of!

Sure glad I have a viscous personality...

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

That was just a typo, I'm afreud.

__________________
The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Are you addressing me , sirrah?

Mr. ASEI I'm just curious, not fighting for socialism or anything, what do you see as a furturistic goverment?

__________________
Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

I was quoting Larry Niven, who was making a general remark about judging authors by their characters. I thought it was a pithy summary of the point mike alexander made in his post, to which I was responding. Niven's remark also has personal relevance because, speaking as someone who has some fiction out there in the public arena, I'd be strongly vexed if any of my readers imagined that I was like any of my characters.

BigDon, I don't actually know if you were attempting to judge Heinlein from his characters, or if you were remarking on particular themes in his fiction, or if you've read his non-fiction and were judging from that.
So, no sirree, I was not addressing you directly.

Grant Hutchison

Nope, I was just commenting on one of the myriad authors I read in my adolesence more than three decades ago.

My comment has been proven to be unkind, unthinking and influinced by the unaware.

__________________
Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

In one of Niven's essays, he states that he thinks Heinlein is much better when working with a good editor, but he got too famous and was able to ignore (or override) editorial changes later in his career.

Nick

__________________
Nick Theodorakis

Heinlein was (at least in principle) prepared to accept editorial feedback, if we can judge from number three in his Rules of Writing:
1) You must write.
2) You must finish what you write.
3) You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.
4) You must put it on the market until sold.

So I'd guess that it was a lack of editorial gumption that allowed him to indulge himself quite as much as he did in the latter parts of his later novels. (I quite enjoyed some of his self-indulgence, but I did often feel that I was suddenly reading a completely different novel from the one I'd started.)

Grant Hutchison

Speaking of Niven and editorial changes, I noticed a small difference between two different publishings of his story "Flight of the Horse." I wonder how kosher that was to let it pass without comment.

Nick

__________________
Nick Theodorakis

Yeah, right after I finish:

The Wheel of Time series. (! When is he going to end it? It must rival the Enclyclopedia Brittanica in size by now.)

The Harry Potter series.

The Red Wall series.

The Striking The Balance series.

And at least three novels Boo would like me to read.

Dang, Mr. Korjik it looks like I'm in the same boat NASA is in when folks suggest a mission to go look at Apollo landing sites to prove we went there. That and as I recall, it was the most boring sci-fi war story I ever read.

__________________
Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...