Some of you know directly or recognize that I am a fan of Robert A. Heinlein’s writing. He is considered by many to be one of the best Science Fiction writers out there but I don’t think most people realize that a lot of that is due to his social commentary that is weaved throughout his stories that people may or may not recogize when they are reading it.
Anyway, start expecting a stream of Heinlein quotes over the next few weeks. I got a hold of a Heinlein book I had not seen previously (stuff like this is occasionally surfacing for me) read called “For Us, The Living A Comedy of Customs”. This book is extremely interesting to me as a Heinlein fan because it is where his mind first started to publicize his universe and you see the beginnings or in some case very full fleshed out ideas of his other stories all wrapped up into this one fairly short book. His agenda and commentary are very near the surface and the book is a very light gloss over it to simply serve as the vehicle to present something that might otherwise come from someone standing at a podium lecturing you on the ills of a society. This book is not well written in terms of character development and other common “this book is good” items so may not appeal to the folks not familiar with and enjoy Heinlein already. For those who are familiar and do enjoy though, this book is, in my mind, a must have.
I am away from home at the moment and started reading it on the plane during the horrific “lets sit on the tarmack” time frame up through the “yes folks, you can again turn on the electronic stuff that we tell you will crash us if you try to use during takeoff and landings” time. The time hasn’t been long (so far) but I have still gotten through about 105 pages and have dog eared 5-6 sections that I think have outstanding comments or quotes that I need to document separately at least for myself and probably for this blog as well so I have it stored two places and others can possibly enjoy it.
If you are a Heinlein fan, you must find and read this book. If you aren’t, I would suggest starting with something else and that specific something else depends on you and exactly how tight you button up and how seriously you take yourself. You can start with the one end which is very science fiction story’ish with a light dusting of social commentary or you can go to the other end in Heinlein’s later writings which some people have considered immoral and ridiculous as they are filled with concepts and ideas that don’t quite fit the “American” society and outright ridicule our prudish/conservative ways. Of course if you want a summary of Heinlein’s general thoughts on society, maybe you do want to start with “For Us, the Living”; just realize that character development and story telling aren’t as good as what he accomplishes in his later works.
My Heinlein theory is that he once engaged in a bet with L Ron Hubbard, that Hubbard couldn’t start a successful religion. Hubbard, of course, won, and as the loser, Heinlein had to make every book from that point on be either self-referential, refer to other books of his that were not previously connected, or head out into the more taboo areas of sexual behaviour. You can chart roughly when this happened – it’s about halfway through “Stranger in a Strange Land”, at the point where the astute reader wonders if there are some pages missing from his book.
Why is American in quotes? Joe, you slay me sometimes. I’ve never read Heinlein. Then again–and this is probably going to cause some people I know to throw up–I don’t read Science Fiction, preferring Science Reality (is there such a category? If not, there should!).
Science fiction is quite good Fred, you should consider it. Chunks of science reality come from science fiction. You probably want to avoid science fantasy. Google for examples of sci-fi that became sci-fact. Things like rockets and black holes and nuclear weapons, etc.
Alun, if you haven’t read the book mentioned I suggest it. The book was written in 1938 and the items you point out were already evident. Sexual repression in this country is one of the things that Heinlein definitely was trying to tackle but it was so incredibly taboo in the 30’s/40’s/50’s that it couldn’t be touched in a book without possibly backlash from the government which seemed to be firmly within the grasp of folks who feel that morality should be legislated.