HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING NOTICE
Tim Morgan
WHEN: March 8, 2007, 9:00 PM EDT
WHERE: The usual AIM chatroom
TOPIC: The Number of the Beast and the World as Myth
For the next readers group chat, we're going to discuss The Number of
the Beast. There are a number of interesting facets of this book that
we can explore in our discussions. There was an earlier version of
this book that Ginny declared to be "unpublishable," so it was
shelved. Quite a bit of it was rewritten to form the version that
appeared several years afterwards. In July, we'll all have the chance
to see the original version of the book.
Heinlein is credited with introducing the "World as Myth" concept in
The Number of the Beast, a theme which links all of Heinlein's books
from the 1980s: Pantheistic Solipsism, that all myths and fictional
universes existing as parallel universes to our own and that persons
and beings from these various "worlds" interact with one another. The
"World as Myth" concept will be a focal point of our discussion.
Some questions to start everyone thinking about this topic: Do all
four of Heinlein's 1980s novels really fit into the World as Myth
theme? What other authors have used the World as Myth concept, and
how have they extended or adapted it? Please post your thoughts or
questions about this book to get the discussion going.
Sorry, The Heinlein Society won't be sending out free hardbacks of The
Number of the Beast this month, so you'll have to dust off your old
paperback copies, or buy new ones! Please do join us for the on-line
discussion.
One administrative note: so far no one has requested that we continue
having the readers group chats on Saturday afternoons, so for now,
we're going to have them only on Thursday evenings. We had quite a
good turnout last Thursday. However, if there's demand for it, we'll
certainly resurect the Saturday afternoon chats.
Tim Morgan, for The Heinlein Society
David Wright Sr.
@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com:
> HEINLEIN READERS GROUP MEETING SCHEDULED
> WHEN: March 8, 2007, 9:00 PM EDT
> WHERE: The usual AIM chatroom
> TOPIC: The Number of the Beast and the World as Myth
>
I think that "World as Myth" was present in a number of works long before
he explicitly showed it in _TNOTB_.
The earliest example that I can think of was in "Elsewhen" when Dr. Frost
spoke of the kinds of worlds that his students could 'reach' when
transferring, examples being, that Martha Ross, an orthodox Christian,
would remain in worlds similar to that she started from and came back to
them as a 'real' angel, whereas Howard would be severely limited by his
rigid way of thinking. This parallels Hilda's explanation about the kinds
of worlds that they could reach via the 'continua mover'.
This also ties into the frequent mentions of Solipsism.
_TNOTB_ ends with the 'Multiple-ego Solipsism' gathering.
_Beyond This Horizon_ had a scene similar to that of LL in _Time Enough For
Love_ where he was presented with a 'dream' or 'vision' that he was the
only player.
Included also here would be "They".
Most poignant of all his short stories, IMHO, is "All You Zombies" which
ends with the plaintive cry that he is alone and that all else appears to
be fantasies.
David Wright Sr.
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David M. Silver
"Tim Morgan" <morg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There are a number of interesting facets of this book that
> we can explore in our discussions. There was an earlier version of
> this book that Ginny declared to be "unpublishable," so it was
> shelved. Quite a bit of it was rewritten to form the version that
> appeared several years afterwards. In July, we'll all have the chance
> to see the original version of the book.
One feature of _The Number of the Beast_, the version actually
published, that I've always wondered about is whether it can be said the
book is truly one of the type Heinlein said he preferred to write, a
book of character development.
There's certainly character interaction between the four principal
characters, but can it really be shown to be development, rather than
mere chit-chat, however complicated and extensive? Who really develops?
How?
Let's consider the characters. You might even call them stock or
stereotypes when introduced.
There's Jake--the "mad scientist," brilliant, opinionated,
argumentative, lacking in people skills, and pretty much in need of a
keeper.
There's Deety--the "mad scientist's beautiful daughter," Jake's keeper
as we meet them, a devoted daughter taking the place of Jane, her
deceased mother, and so willing to advance her father's goals that
she'll seduce, by promise of marriage or otherwise, the man they mistake
as the only scientist capable of understanding Jake's invention.
There's Zeb--the gifted dabbler, enjoying his inheritance, but not doing
much at all with his life and skills, who faked his way to a degree,
playing poker to attain a certain goal, engaged in life in a casual way,
with not much in the commitment, insight, or understanding departments;
and little challenged in values. He's the perfect odd-man for a party,
but we don't know much else that he's worth, other than being handsome,
athletic, and bright enough to grab and snatch Deety as she dances
through his life.
And, then there's Hilda--the professional social hostess, just as much a
dilettante as Zebbie, plainly as much a sexual predator, a manipulator,
who mixes hypergolic guests to see how entertaining the explosion will
be at her parties, presumably to keep from being bored, in her
childless, spouseless, middle age. The prototype here is Pamela
Churchill Harriman.
Jake aside, these characters are superficially attractive social types,
but can we really say any of them actually profit during the story by
learning a lesson, or rising to heroism, or even establishing a
relationship of depth and significance with a mate?
Do they, really? What lesson? What rise to achieve what goal? How deep
is the relationship, and how convincing is it? Why? Tim? Anybody?
--
David M. Silver
http://www.heinleinsociety.org
"The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!"
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA '29
Lt.(jg), USN, R'td
David M. Silver
> There are a number of interesting facets of this book that
> we can explore in our discussions. There was an earlier version of
> this book that Ginny declared to be "unpublishable," so it was
> shelved. Quite a bit of it was rewritten to form the version that
> appeared several years afterwards. In July, we'll all have the chance
> to see the original version of the book.
>
> Heinlein is credited with introducing the "World as Myth" concept in
> The Number of the Beast, a theme which links all of Heinlein's books
> from the 1980s: Pantheistic Solipsism, that all myths and fictional
> universes existing as parallel universes to our own and that persons
> and beings from these various "worlds" interact with one another. The
> "World as Myth" concept will be a focal point of our discussion.
I'd say you might argue the "World as Myth" might have to be a focal
point since the story, or plot, goes to hell in a hand basket in _The
Number of the Beast_, pretty much mid-way through the book.
Let's look at the plot: without going into what Heinlein might have
originally intended in this story (we'll find out after July 7th) the
components of plot usually, assuming a linear plot that doesn't begin in
media res, look something like these:
1. Initial Incident. The beginning incident that makes the story start
to move.
Here, we have (after the oldest opening cliche in SF, the "mad
scientist's beautiful daughter") the story begin with a literal bang.
Somebody tries to kill Jake, his daughter, and--it turns out--destroy
his invention, time and multiverse travel.
2. Conflict or Goal. The goal the main character (or characters) have to
achieve.
There's three or four potential goals or conflicts here. First, there's
a little matter of immediately escaping the unknown enemies who are
trying to destroy the mad scientist and his beautiful daughter and,
incidentally, identifying who those enemies are. Second, there's the
mandatory Heinlein complication of "women and children first,"
protecting newly-wedded Deety and Hilda and their newly-conceived unborn
children by--it turns out--running and hiding. Thirdly, almost buried
amid the clutter, and ultimately forgotten is Zeb's family obligation to
"do something" about the murder of his cousin, Ed. Lastly, when it
appears that another species is the enemy, there's a goal of protecting
humanity, in all its time lines among the multiverses.
All this might be subsumed into a overall goal of defeating, once the
enemy is identified, the Black Hats, or eradicating them. But, how?
Running and hiding isn't exactly what I expect from Heinlein, nor is
forgetting about that obligation to do a little something about Ed.
Instead I expect it to end: "Puppet masters--the free men are coming to
kill you. _Death and destruction_." Or, at least, "So tomorrow we are
heading up that Glory Road, rocks and all. Got any dragons you want
killed?"
Was there something in the original novel, the unpublished and allegedly
unpublishable one (which we are told heavily involves Barsoom, the real
E.R. Burroughs version (in whatever story the "Panki" or Pankera
appear), and the Lensmen Universe of E.E. Smith) having to do with
meeting the potential goals rather than meeting up with the World as
Myth?
3. Complications. Identify the enemy, the Black Hats? Find out how far
they've spread among the multiverses? Seek out where the Black Hats come
from, and perhaps seek out allies? Meanwhile, choose the course you
plan? Do we run and hide? Do we reconnoiter and plan?
No, it seems, none of the above. We get side-tracked into the "World as
Myth"?
4. Climax. The high point of the story.
I'm sorry, but it never comes, unless L'Envoi is a climax. SF
conventions are a lot of things, but climax, unless they've decided to
award you a Hugo, isn't one of them.
5. Suspense. It arouses the interest of the reader.
There's no suspense, really, just a series of somewhat intriguing
episodes, rather like a picaresque novel. If it's Tuesday, this must be
Belgium, er, Barsoom. It's Saturday, so it's time for Lazarus Long.
6. Dénouement or Resolution - what happens to the character after
overcoming all obstacles/failing to achieve the desired result and
reaching/not reaching the goal.
They don't achieve any goal, primarily, I suppose, because one is never
defined. Instead, they fall into another story after another story--one
involving ultimately rescuing Maureen. Then they go to an SF convention
in the sky. Is this Heaven? Is this Hell? Shades of _Job: A Comedy of
Justice_.
7. Conclusion. The End of the story. An SF Convention in the sky. Well,
it could be "The Man Who Traveled in Elephants," but if "both Heinleins"
wound up there, I'll bet Ginny was kicking and screaming all the way.
What's with this plot? What's wrong with this plot? Why did whatever it
was get changed?
Filksinger
Well, I'll take a stab at it, though probably only a quick one. For the
most part, I'd say that Heinlein didn't give them a lot of time to show
the changes, but they were there.
Zebbie grew into the role of husband and soon-to-be father. I did get
the impression that he grew up a bit in the story, including his
willingness to serve well in the role of "crewman". He seemed more
mature by the end of the story, in my opinion.
Deety got a bit more serious, as she started looking forward to the jobs
of "wife" and "mother", but didn't change that much. I suspect that
taking care of Jake was a bit like both, anyway. :)
Hilda grew from a "social butterfly" to "Capt. Hilda". It is a role she
clearly was good at, but she had never done anything like it before.
This was a significant change in her character. She seems to have taken
to it even later than Zebbie, but she finally grew up.
Jake shed both arrogance and sexism in accepting that his old friend, an
now wife, who he always liked, but never really respected, the
fluttering "social butterfly", was better suited to the traditional
eldest male roles of family head and captain. Instead of having his life
run by women who pretended he was in charge to soothe his fat ego and
sexism, he finally admits that he's not the one in charge, and that a
woman, even the fluttery Hilda, can be far better at being a leader and
in charge than him on his best day.
--
Filksinger
AKA David Nasset, Sr.
Geek Prophet to the Technologically Declined
David M. Silver
> There are a number of interesting facets of this book that
> we can explore in our discussions. There was an earlier version of
> this book that Ginny declared to be "unpublishable," so it was
> shelved. Quite a bit of it was rewritten to form the version that
> appeared several years afterwards. In July, we'll all have the chance
> to see the original version of the book.
>
> Heinlein is credited with introducing the "World as Myth" concept in
> The Number of the Beast, a theme which links all of Heinlein's books
> from the 1980s: Pantheistic Solipsism, that all myths and fictional
> universes existing as parallel universes to our own and that persons
> and beings from these various "worlds" interact with one another. The
> "World as Myth" concept will be a focal point of our discussion.
>
> Some questions to start everyone thinking about this topic: Do all
> four of Heinlein's 1980s novels really fit into the World as Myth
> theme? What other authors have used the World as Myth concept, and
> how have they extended or adapted it? Please post your thoughts or
> questions about this book to get the discussion going.
>
> Sorry, The Heinlein Society won't be sending out free hardbacks of The
> Number of the Beast this month, so you'll have to dust off your old
> paperback copies, or buy new ones! Please do join us for the on-line
> discussion.
While we're all profoundly composing our thoughts on plot, and
characterization, there's always the other major component of fiction to
consider: theme.
What is the theme, or what are the themes of this somewhat disjointed
and disjoined tale?
Is it merely Pantheistic Solipsism (as Tim calls it), or Multiple-ego
Solipsism (as David points out it is called elsewhere)? Or are there
other things operating here?
What's all this business of "who's in charge" all about? Is that a theme
we should consider? Does it touch on a theme?
And solipsism as a theme in Heinlein was early subjected to the harshest
criticism. Let's review some bidding here: There may be a cue bid or two
that has been missed. It's 1979, and Heinlein has returned to active
writing after brain surgery. The first thing he does after or while he
"spins off" a little testimony about his surgery to a Congressional
committee or two is tie up a loose end. He takes an unpublished and
arguably unpublishable novel that has lain dormant a couple years,
hi-grades some parts from it, rewrites the rest, and sells it to Omni
for serialization and to CBS Publications (Fawcett) for the largest
advance in SF history. What was that? A cool half million dollars.
Return with me now to those days of yesteryear. You could buy a nice new
VW Rabbit for $4,000 in 1979. I did. Today, they cost more than four
times that. We're talking about a two and a half million dollar advance.
In his spare time that year, Heinlein spent a day with an English
professor who was writing a book on him. A little later that year, he
read over the proof of the "perfessor's" book, and corrected some errors
and even talked him out of a few points--to help him along so to speak.
_The Number of the Beast_ wasn't out yet, but Heinlein was kind enough
to provide the academic with a manuscript copy so he could review it and
include it in advance, instead publishing a criticism relying on a
publisher's advance publicity description as one idiot notoriously did a
number of years earlier.
Perhaps it was because this particular critic was the most widely
respected academic who bothered to review science fiction--a pioneer at
that, and his imprint, Oxford Press, was widely respected.
This academic critic then replied to the kindnesses by trying to slip
the final quietus into Heinlein's back by consigning, finally, most of
his writings including his latest _The Number of the Beast_, to what his
branch of political thought [1] considers the slag heap of the failed
historical concerns of 20th century America, those failed ideals of a
people, or culture "undergoing extreme stress and transformations," with
what this critic described as having "no chance for heroism and glory,
because all enemies are imaginary, all goals equally illusory, with the
only combat the battle of the sexes, where the prize is a papier-mache
relationship with a being one creates in one's own mind." Franklin, H.
Bruce, _Robert A. Heinlein: America As Science Fiction_, at 210-11.
The critic piled it on higher and deeper in his final screed: "In this
masquerade, one pretends that even death does not exist. ... Heinlein
here deprives his fiction of the force that animates his most powerful
and authentic moments, such as Delos Harriman living just long enough to
die on the moon, Karen Farnsworth dying in childbirth, the grief of the
immortal Lazarus Long when his 'ephemeral' wife Dora dies in old age,
Manny's loneliness after the 'death' of Mike in _The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress_. Even that great new frontier, Space, has turned out to be as
empty as its name implies. Neither death nor life has objective reality.
Trapped in its maze of solipsism and narcissism, the ego can find only
reflections of itself in the mirrors of its own fiction." Franklin, id,
at 211.
Heinlein's writings end in a "maze of solipsism and narcissism," eh?
Pretty good knife? Good try at the unkindest cut of all? This was the
culmination of a series of critical back stabbings and hatchet jobs that
had been going on since _Starship Troopers_ and surely at least 1967,
when a competitor who, perhaps, thought his own writings somewhat
undervalued, writing under a pseudonym, "William Atheling, Jr.," began,
and continued with renewed vigor certainly in 1968, when a rejected fan
turned stalker, Alexei Panshin, with the same writer's approving
forward, and egged on by Earl Kemp, fan maven turned convicted
pornographer who felt slighted by Heinlein, continued their attempted
muggings in _Heinlein In Dimension_.
So, what about this critique of theme? Is it a maze? Narcissism? Or is
it the dying rattle of 20th century American thoughts and values?
What do you think?
____________footnote_________
[1] H. Bruce Franklin, in 1979, described as a Maoist-Leninist-Marxist,
was then a professor of English at Rutgers University. Founder of The
Revolutionary Union/Venceremos Organization in 1969, in 1971, Franklin,
then a tenured English professor at Stanford University, led about half
its 500-odd members out of the organization, in a break over how long it
would take for the "armed struggle" to begin. Franklin's faction
insisted the revolution would begin within three years and that they
would begin acts of terrorism immediately, although later Franklin
claimed it was merely a disagreement over racial composition of the
organization--Franklin wanting to include blacks in what was mainly a
Chicano organization, he says. Franklin's personal revolution consisted
of leading a group of students in 1972 in an attempt to take over
Stanford's computer center, for which act the University fired him from
his tenured position and black-listed him for a few years. That wasn't
the end of Venceremos' revolution, however. While Franklin endured the
blacklist by suing Stanford, unsuccessfully, and teaching, according to
his c.v. at "Venceremos University," the Symbionese Liberation Army
(SLA) grew out of a "political prisoner support project" of Venceremos
in the late summer/early fall of 1973.
Briefly, the SLA commenced _its_ revolution when it murdered Oakland
superintendent of schools Dr. Marcus Foster and badly wounded his deputy
in November 1973, kidnapped Patricia Hearst on February 4, 1974, and
participated in a bank robbery in San Francisco in which two civilians
were shot. Thereafter its members fled to Los Angeles when radicals in
the Bay Area refused to continue to hide them. After a shoplifting and
shooting incident in May 1974, police traced the group to their
"safehouse" in Compton, surrounded it, and when orders to surrender and
tear gas was answered by automatic gunfire, a battle began ending when
the house caught fire. Two members of the SLA attempted to charge the
police out of the fire, guns blazing, and were shot to death; one member
committed suicide in the house; and the bodies of four others were found
huddled underneath the floor of the house in a crawl space while the
house burned down around them. The survivors of SLA who managed by their
absence from the house to avoid the shoot out returned to the Bay Area,
participated in a further bank robbery in which another civilian was
killed, and an 1974 attempt to to kill officers of the LAPD failed when
a bomb failed to detonate. In the period 1999 to 2004, most of the
remaining fugitives were apprehended, convicted of various crimes and
incarcerated for periods of four to twenty years.
Franklin, meanwhile, was co-opted when he received a tenured
professorship of English in 1975, and later, in 1987, an endowed seat as
John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies, at Rutgers.
Franklin has confined his revolution since to works he has published
extensively, including _The Essential Stalin_ (which he no longer lists
on his curriculum vitae), an 1972 attempt at rehabilitating one of the
worst despots of the last century.
See, http://www.btinternet.com/~fountain/stalin/index.html for
Franklin's 39 page introductory apologia to the greatest butcher and
tyrant in modern history.
In 1979, he arranged his one-day interview with Heinlein, during which,
famously, as he came in the front door, Lt.Cmdr. Virginia Gerstenfeld
Heinlein, USNR, who despised him and his politics, went "out the back."
David M. Silver
> The Number of
> the Beast. There are a number of interesting facets of this book that
> we can explore in our discussions. There was an earlier version of
> this book that Ginny declared to be "unpublishable," so it was
> shelved. Quite a bit of it was rewritten to form the version that
> appeared several years afterwards. In July, we'll all have the chance
> to see the original version of the book.
The unpublished version is referred to, we are told by former archivist
Patterson, without further explanation, as the "Panki-Barsoom" version
of "The Number of the Beast--" The title pages Bill prepared for the
remnants left in the archives contain that term. Gifford doesn't happen
to mention that phrase in his Reader's Companion.
A search of E.R. Burroughs' Barsoom novels fails to reveal the word
"panki" or what perhaps is its plural, "pankera."
Panki is the name of an administrative block (Palamu district,
Jharkhand) in India and a city and a lake (Ozero Panki) in Belarus. But
other than as a name, the word seems to exist only in Romany, the Gypsy
language, and as a word meaning "little pan" or "lordling" in Kashubian
dialect of Polish.
Hakk'ni panki, also hokkani boro, hokkani bâro, or huckeny boro, is a
Romany ("Gypsy") expression meaning "great trick", which can be loosely
translated as "big con." [It's suggested the term derives from Church
Latin: "Hanc est meam panem" (This is my bread). It supposedly is used
for anything magical or not understood.]
You probably recall seeing a version of one possibility performed in the
movie "The Sting" involving a hankerchief, an envelop, and, supposedly,
a big wad of money. The Redford character keeps a maladroit con artist
trying to perform it from getting a beating, or worse, when the little
sting starts to go bad.
See, the English phrase, hanky-panky, as in something someone--perhaps
your teenager--is "up to."
I have one idea [and I've read the unpublished version, so I know how
Heinlein used the word(s), but I'm going to leave that a mystery here],
but I wonder if anyone else might have a thought on why Heinlein,
assuming he did, would refer to the version of Barsoon he creates (both
in the original and the rewritten _The Number of the Beast_) as a
"Panki-Barsoom"?
David M. Silver
"David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
> So, what about this critique of theme? Is it a maze? Narcissism? Or is
> it the dying rattle of 20th century American thoughts and values?
If you belief _The Number of the Beast_ is the dying rattle of 20th
century American thoughts and values, in 1980, then, of course, when
Heinlein wrote his next novel, which was _Friday_, you leap at the
chance to again express your thesis that American is dying by reviewing
it.
I wonder why any of us think of it. Here's H. Bruce Franklin's next
essay on Heinlein's work:
GENIUS AND SUPERGENIUS
Published: July 4, 1982, NY Times Review of Books
FRIDAY By Robert A. Heinlein. 368 pp. New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston. $14.95. By H.BRUCE FRANKLIN
YOU have to admit this about Robert A. Heinlein: He provokes strong
reactions. Whether or not he is still the most popular and influential
living author of science fiction, as he has probably been for four
decades, Mr. Heinlein remains the most controversial, with hordes of
fans and foes. "Friday" will convert few from one camp to the other.
One of Mr. Heinlein's self-images is that of a lone genius in the role
of a carnival showman, providing fun for the masses, money for himself
and deep truths for the select few who penetrate his disguise. So
"Friday" is meant to have something for everyone: laughs and tears,
thrilling adventures, titillating sex, delicious fantasies of power, and
profound messages.
Like most of Mr. Heinlein's heroes, Friday is a superbeing. Engineered
from the finest genes, and trained to be a secret courier in a future
world of chaotic ferocity and intrigue, she can think better, fight
better and make love better than any of the normal people around her.
The Earth she inhabits has become a nightmare in which some 400
"territorial states," including the tyrannical Chicago Imperium, the
madcap California Confederacy and the Mexican Revolutionary Kingdom,
endlessly struggle for the power actually held by the "corporate
states," gigantic multinational conglomerates that are all secretly
controlled by one interlocking interstellar cartel, originally founded
by "the most American of myth-heroes," a "basement inventor." The best
values the world has ever known - being, of course, the values of
Midwestern farming communities at the time of Mr. Heinlein's childhood
in the early 20th century - have been overwhelmed by the evils already
dominant in the late 20th century: too much government and too many
people, bureaucracy, alienation, welfare, cities, religious cults,
socialism, monopoly capitalism and, worst of all, mediocrity and
incompetence. As usual, the highest virtue is supreme competence.
Fighting to hold back the forces of evil is a mysterious organization
controlled entirely by the iron will of "the Old Man," Friday's crusty
"Boss," Hartley Baldwin. Friday, despite her mental powers, which dwarf
those of the most advanced computer network of this supertechnological
future, never discovers this man's true identity. But Heinlein readers
soon recognize him as none other than "Kettle Belly" Baldwin, leader of
the underground organization of genetic supermen who defeated Communism
and seemed destined to replace Homo sapiens in Mr. Heinlein's 1949
novella, "Gulf." Being one up on a superbeing is one of the rewards you
get for the price of admission.
Kettle Belly is still pontificating that "geniuses and supergeniuses
always make their own rules," the same words that he, and other Heinlein
wise men, have been using for decades. But Baldwin, perhaps speaking for
Mr. Heinlein, now renounces the belief in salvation through a genetic
elite, ruefully admitting, "When I was younger, I thought I could change
this world." He instructs Friday, when she is to make her inevitable
emigration to another planet, not to choose Olympia, where "those
self-styled supermen" went. Yet Baldwin has had Friday designed mainly
from the genes of two of the supermen who did save the world in "Gulf" -
a secret courier and a professional assassin.
Besides many references to Mr. Heinlein's oeuvre, there are lots of
other half-hidden meanings lying around. Friday herself suggests her
namesake, Frigg, the Norse goddess associated with marriage, motherhood
and sexual license - the ultimate gal Friday.
The bulk of the novel describes Friday's amours. Unfortunately, Mr.
Heinlein has a knack for the difficult task of making sex boring.
Neither Friday's sexual partners (as in effective romance) nor the
details of her sex life (as in effective pornography) are of interest.
Her numerous partners, male and female, are all interchangeable, and the
details are coyly vague, unlike the precise descriptions of her sexy
clothes, elegant meals and artful fighting techniques. Some readers may
decide to skip the sex to get to the good parts.
But the espionage plot is also disappointing, being a mere contrivance
to get Friday from one liaison to another as she moves toward her
ultimate goal. This goal, as always in recent Heinlein, is escape from
the world of the future or developing present to the world of the
middle-American mythic past - pioneering, rural or small-town. For
Friday, this means abandoning her supposedly exciting job and the
adventure plot, along with the Earth. She finally finds happiness as a
"colonial housewife" in a group marriage on a faraway planet, where she
can have her fill of sex while writing a cookbook and working in the
local town council, girl-scout troop and P.T.A.
Mr. Heinlein's latest apocalypse goes beyond all those practical best
sellers telling us how to survive and prosper amid the developing doom.
For him, the only place to hide is in a fantasy of the mythic past on a
faraway planet. His increasingly monotonic message is: Stop the world, I
want to get off.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
H. Bruce Franklin's most recent books are "Robert A. Heinlein: America
as Science Fiction" and "Prison Literature in America: The Victim as
Criminal and Artist."
Dr. Rufo
David M. Silver wrote:
> In article <1172470614.9...@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
> "Tim Morgan" <morg...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>There are a number of interesting facets of this book that
>>we can explore in our discussions. There was an earlier version of
>>this book that Ginny declared to be "unpublishable," so it was
>>shelved. Quite a bit of it was rewritten to form the version that
>>appeared several years afterwards. In July, we'll all have the chance
>>to see the original version of the book.
>
>
> One feature of _The Number of the Beast_, the version actually
> published, that I've always wondered about is whether it can be said the
> book is truly one of the type Heinlein said he preferred to write, a
> book of character development.
I've spent the past few/four/five days re-reading TNOTB in large
doses to assuage my Oscar night-time syndrome. These are some
dam-fine questions, Dave.
>
> There's certainly character interaction between the four principal
> characters, but can it really be shown to be development, rather than
> mere chit-chat, however complicated and extensive? Who really develops?
> How?
>
> Let's consider the characters. You might even call them stock or
> stereotypes when introduced.
>
> There's Jake--the "mad scientist," brilliant, opinionated,
> argumentative, lacking in people skills, and pretty much in need of a
> keeper.
>
> There's Deety--the "mad scientist's beautiful daughter," Jake's keeper
> as we meet them, a devoted daughter taking the place of Jane, her
> deceased mother, and so willing to advance her father's goals that
> she'll seduce, by promise of marriage or otherwise, the man they mistake
> as the only scientist capable of understanding Jake's invention.
>
> There's Zeb--the gifted dabbler, enjoying his inheritance, but not doing
> much at all with his life and skills, who faked his way to a degree,
> playing poker to attain a certain goal, engaged in life in a casual way,
> with not much in the commitment, insight, or understanding departments;
> and little challenged in values. He's the perfect odd-man for a party,
> but we don't know much else that he's worth, other than being handsome,
> athletic, and bright enough to grab and snatch Deety as she dances
> through his life.
Dave, we have variances in our appreciations of friend Zebadiah.
Zeb says in the text that he pretty much had to become a rich man
(through his own efforts) in order to "qualify" for his inheritance
at which point he became twice as rich. Regardless of how he EARNED
the necessary chinks, he EARNED them! That ain't a "dabbler".
After that, he indulged in academic fraud/dishonesty risible only
to those who have never attempted to stay the course in that
particular life-arena. A doctorate is, as Jake says in the text, a
"union card." It's obtained by an individual's demonstration that
s/he is capable of successfully fulfilling a demanding "academic
exercise". Nowhere, as I recall, is there any specific provision
that "practicality" enter the effort or be the result.
Academics who sneer across departmental or disciplinary lines have
existed since the establishment of separate departments/disciplines.
Sneering at academics has an equally long tradition (from at least
the 5th century before the Common Era in Greece). Or, if you like,
the ever-unpopular medieval English "benefit of clergy" (most
academics were in, at least, minor orders). This lessened a bit when
anyone who could read or pretend to read the <i>Miserere</i>-"neck
verse"-Psalm 51 and through that demonstration save him/herself from
swinging by the neck until dead, dead, dead.
Otherwise, as you say, Zeb is a charming conversationalist,
physically attractive and bereft of commitment.
>
> And, then there's Hilda--the professional social hostess, just as much a
> dilettante as Zebbie, plainly as much a sexual predator, a manipulator,
> who mixes hypergolic guests to see how entertaining the explosion will
> be at her parties, presumably to keep from being bored, in her
> childless, spouseless, middle age. The prototype here is Pamela
> Churchill Harriman.
I regret that I recall the name but not the likeness of your cited
prototype. I judge it ain't worth the Google.
You add above that Zeb and Sharpie are "sexual predators" to which
classification I demur. Sharpie, perhaps, is capable of using her
dinero to roll in the hay with whatever she wants; but recall she
repeatedly claims she only goes after "older men." Such choice may
reflect her lack of self-esteem in this area. The Napoleonic
domination she claims to exercise on campus may be the other half of
that lack of self-esteem.
She invites folks to her parties to watch them ignite on contact.
"Funny once" at the very best. She says she doesn't allow fighting
at her parties -- just displays of invective. I find nothing even
superficially attractive in such behavior by any such individual.
>
> Jake aside, these characters are superficially attractive social types,
> but can we really say any of them actually profit during the story by
> learning a lesson, or rising to heroism, or even establishing a
> relationship of depth and significance with a mate?
>
> Do they, really? What lesson? What rise to achieve what goal? How deep
> is the relationship, and how convincing is it? Why? Tim? Anybody?
Now I know that this may be just over the line and a little bit
tooooo outré for some of the audience; but here's a suggestion I'd
like run past you -- low, fast and across the inside corner.
"The Number of the Beast" is a Heinlein novel written specifically
with the intention of publishing a "Heinlein novel" without writing
a "Heinlein novel." RAH is presenting a "real-life" (what's "real")
example of Friend Zebadiah's doctoral dissertation.
RAH writes stories of character development.
There is no character development -- in any major character.
RAH writes of characters who learn a lesson.
There is no lesson learned -- by any major character.
TNOTB is a fugue on reality/imagination.
TNOTB is an imitative many-voiced composition in which a theme or
themes are stated successively and fully in each voice. ?;-)
Rufe
David M. Silver
Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
> > Jake aside, these characters are superficially attractive social types,
> > but can we really say any of them actually profit during the story by
> > learning a lesson, or rising to heroism, or even establishing a
> > relationship of depth and significance with a mate?
> >
> > Do they, really? What lesson? What rise to achieve what goal? How deep
> > is the relationship, and how convincing is it? Why? Tim? Anybody?
>
> Well, I'll take a stab at it, though probably only a quick one. For the
> most part, I'd say that Heinlein didn't give them a lot of time to show
> the changes, but they were there.
>
For a "quick stab," your reply is worth reading, David; but I've a few
questions as to it.
> Zebbie grew into the role of husband and soon-to-be father. I did get
> the impression that he grew up a bit in the story, including his
> willingness to serve well in the role of "crewman". He seemed more
> mature by the end of the story, in my opinion.
>
There's some things I think were missing for Zebbie to really develop in
character. For one thing, there's no one here, except brief walk-on
roles, to teach him. Hilda's too like him. Deety's too amenable. Jake's
got nothing for him to learn and a lot he should avoid in Jake's
character.
Zebbie needed more of the Lensman, or perhaps, the real J.C. of Mars, or
Lazarus unoccupied with Sharpie to learn from.
One of the problems in assessing character development, or anything
else, in this work is the shifting points of view. Here, we have
Heinlein engaged in some "New Wave"-ish experimentation, generally
unrecognized by earlier critics who wanted to maintain a high wall
between earlier writers and those identified as "New Wave," Moorcock,
Aldiss, Disch, Ellison, Le Guin, etc., et al.
Anytime you have a first person POV you have a problem of determining
whether that POV is reliable. Here you have four, all of whom have their
own axes to grind and secrets to hide, give and withhold information
based on their own biases. Changing points of view aren't really all
that new--the first novels in the form of letters, and many picaresque
collections, e.g., Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Boccascio's Decameron,
contain shifting narrators. And everyone in the 1960s was still agog
over the 1950 Japanese film Rashomon, which gave an account of the
ambush of a great samurai and his wife by a renowned bandit who kills
the samurai and rapes the wife, from four different characters' points
of view--with four significantly different stories unfolding.
The point of Rashomon is the impossibility of obtaining the truth about
an event when there are conflicting accounts. Any lawyer who really
thinks about it knows that. What the jury "finds" is simply a decision
in whom they choose to believe. "It's ain't necessarily so," isn't just
a lyric from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.
Probably the most unreliable here is Jake, who spends an awful long time
justifying himself and derogating the others; but all of the narrators
are somewhat self-conscious and seem to spend a lot of time trying to
convince the reader that they act solely or mainly from salutary
motivations. Frex, Hilda in Cp. VI: "We giggled, and talked with the
frankness of women who trust each other, and are sure no men can
overhear. ... I had better leave out our conversation; this memoir might
fall into the hands of one of the weaker sex, and I would not want his
death on my conscience." Hah-ha. Why don't you just tell us it's none of
our business, Hilda? Just as they try to convince each other. Hilda to
Deety, on whether she's ever had an affair with or been the recipient of
a pass from Zeb: "Piffle, dear. I don't have morals, just customs. I
don't wait for a man to make a pass; they fumble around and waste time.
But when I met him I picked Zebbie for a chum--so I gave him an opening;
he made a polite pass, I carefully failed to see it, and that ended it."
Yeah, sure. What else are you going to tell a bride the morning after
her wedding night? The real question is whether Deety bought that
evasion. This is 'naive' Deety, remember, who admits to sexual precocity
at around age twelve--oh, you missed that? She slipped it by pretty
quick. Read closely the part following her wedding night to Zeb where
she admits to the reader to having an affair with one of her instructors
three years earlier who taught her that she'd really learned very little
in the _seven_ years _prior_ to that. Fourteen-year-old Maureen Johnson
was a piker compared to our Deety.
> Deety got a bit more serious, as she started looking forward to the jobs
> of "wife" and "mother", but didn't change that much. I suspect that
> taking care of Jake was a bit like both, anyway. :)
>
Deety, to me, is at once the most attractive and the least paid
attention to of all the characters. She's seemingly the one with the
most potential, the most loyal, trusting (_not_ trustworthy), and
youngest.
She still believes in Oz, so strongly, that they wind up visiting the
place to satisfy her mind.
> Hilda grew from a "social butterfly" to "Capt. Hilda". It is a role she
> clearly was good at, but she had never done anything like it before.
> This was a significant change in her character. She seems to have taken
> to it even later than Zebbie, but she finally grew up.
>
"Command," or "leadership," even "management" has a lot to do with
manipulation, and skills used therein. As a Pamela Harrington clone, I
suggest she had highly developed manipulatory skills. Whether she
actually succeeded or not in successfully achieving a goal is something
I question. She seems to have overcome their difficulties on Barsoom,
and she seems to have negotiated Lazarus Long to a standstill; but ...
was that really a victory in the British Empire colony on Barsoom?
"... E.R.B.'s universe is no harder to reach than any other and Mars is
in its usual orbit. But that does not mean that you will find Jolly
Green Giants and gorgeous red princesses dressed only in jewels. Unless
invited, you are likely to find a Potemkin Village illusion tailored to
your subconscious... ." So saith Lazarus Long, conscious of the
"telepathically adept" Barsoomians. Where those humans they dealt with?
Or slaves? Or all Black Hats?
This is a manuscript originally titled by Robert Heinlein _The
Panki-Barsoom Number of the Beast_. The gypsy phrase is "Hakk'ni panki"
means "big con." Black Hats which turn out to anagrams of Robert or
Ginny Heinlein, or his pseudonyms. Lazarus Long allowing himself to be
defeated by a jumped-up social hostess?
I just wonder.
> Jake shed both arrogance and sexism in accepting that his old friend, an
> now wife, who he always liked, but never really respected, the
> fluttering "social butterfly", was better suited to the traditional
> eldest male roles of family head and captain. Instead of having his life
> run by women who pretended he was in charge to soothe his fat ego and
> sexism, he finally admits that he's not the one in charge, and that a
> woman, even the fluttery Hilda, can be far better at being a leader and
> in charge than him on his best day.
I don't trust Jake, the Ordnance Colonel, any more than I trust any of
his sort. Remember Colonel Calhoun, from _Sixth Column_. Give Jake a
chance and he'll start believing he's the Great God Mota, too. Well,
maybe that's harsh, but ... Hilda needs to keep an eye on him--always.
David M. Silver
Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
> > Jake aside, these characters are superficially attractive social types,
> > but can we really say any of them actually profit during the story by
> > learning a lesson, or rising to heroism, or even establishing a
> > relationship of depth and significance with a mate?
> >
> > Do they, really? What lesson? What rise to achieve what goal? How deep
> > is the relationship, and how convincing is it? Why? Tim? Anybody?
>
> Well, I'll take a stab at it, though probably only a quick one. For the
> most part, I'd say that Heinlein didn't give them a lot of time to show
> the changes, but they were there.
>
For a "quick stab," your reply is worth reading, David; but I've a few
questions as to it.
> Zebbie grew into the role of husband and soon-to-be father. I did get
> the impression that he grew up a bit in the story, including his
> willingness to serve well in the role of "crewman". He seemed more
> mature by the end of the story, in my opinion.
>
There's some things I think were missing for Zebbie to really develop in
> Deety got a bit more serious, as she started looking forward to the jobs
> of "wife" and "mother", but didn't change that much. I suspect that
> taking care of Jake was a bit like both, anyway. :)
>
Deety, to me, is at once the most attractive and the least paid
attention to of all the characters. She's seemingly the one with the
most potential, the most loyal, trusting (_not_ trustworthy), and
youngest.
She still believes in Oz, so strongly, that they wind up visiting the
place to satisfy her mind.
> Hilda grew from a "social butterfly" to "Capt. Hilda". It is a role she
> clearly was good at, but she had never done anything like it before.
> This was a significant change in her character. She seems to have taken
> to it even later than Zebbie, but she finally grew up.
>
"Command," or "leadership," even "management" has a lot to do with
manipulation, and skills used therein. As a Pamela Harrington clone, I
suggest she had highly developed manipulatory skills. Whether she
actually succeeded or not in successfully achieving a goal is something
I question. She seems to have overcome their difficulties on Barsoom,
and she seems to have negotiated Lazarus Long to a standstill; but ...
was that really a victory in the British Empire colony on Barsoom?
"... E.R.B.'s universe is no harder to reach than any other and Mars is
in its usual orbit. But that does not mean that you will find Jolly
Green Giants and gorgeous red princesses dressed only in jewels. Unless
invited, you are likely to find a Potemkin Village illusion tailored to
your subconscious... ." So saith Lazarus Long, conscious of the
"telepathically adept" Barsoomians. Were those humans they dealt with?
Or slaves? Or all Black Hats?
This is a manuscript originally titled by Robert Heinlein _The
Panki-Barsoom Number of the Beast_. The gypsy phrase is "Hakk'ni panki"
means "big con." Black Hats which turn out to anagrams of Robert or
Ginny Heinlein, or his pseudonyms. Lazarus Long allowing himself to be
defeated by a jumped-up social hostess?
I just wonder.
> Jake shed both arrogance and sexism in accepting that his old friend, an
> now wife, who he always liked, but never really respected, the
> fluttering "social butterfly", was better suited to the traditional
> eldest male roles of family head and captain. Instead of having his life
> run by women who pretended he was in charge to soothe his fat ego and
> sexism, he finally admits that he's not the one in charge, and that a
> woman, even the fluttery Hilda, can be far better at being a leader and
> in charge than him on his best day.
I don't trust Jake, the Ordnance Colonel, any more than I trust any of
his sort. Remember Colonel Calhoun, from _Sixth Column_. Give Jake a
chance and he'll start believing he's the Great God Mota, too. Well,
maybe that's harsh, but ... Hilda needs to keep an eye on him--always.
--
TheBookman
>
> Now I know that this may be just over the line and a little bit
> tooooo outré for some of the audience; but here's a suggestion I'd
> like run past you -- low, fast and across the inside corner.
> "The Number of the Beast" is a Heinlein novel written specifically
> with the intention of publishing a "Heinlein novel" without writing
> a "Heinlein novel." RAH is presenting a "real-life" (what's "real")
> example of Friend Zebadiah's doctoral dissertation.
>
> RAH writes stories of character development.
> There is no character development -- in any major character.
> RAH writes of characters who learn a lesson.
> There is no lesson learned -- by any major character.
>
> TNOTB is a fugue on reality/imagination.
> TNOTB is an imitative many-voiced composition in which a theme or
> themes are stated successively and fully in each voice. ?;-)
Are you suggesting that RAH wrote a literary version of a musical "round"?
Rtb
Dr. Rufo
Rusty:
From: http://www.answers.com/topic/round
Round: A composition for two or more voices in which each voice
enters at a different time with the same melody.
From: http://www.8notes.com/glossary/
Canon: Piece of music where one voice repeats the part of another,
throughout the whole piece.
From: http://www.answers.com/topic/fugue
Fugue: An imitative polyphonic composition in which a theme or
themes are stated successively in all of the voices of the
contrapuntal structure.
I was suggesting not a "round" but a "fugue."
Rufe
David M. Silver
"Dr. Rufo" <bay...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> David M. Silver wrote:
> > In article <1172470614.9...@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
> > "Tim Morgan" <morg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>There are a number of interesting facets of this book that
> >>we can explore in our discussions. There was an earlier version of
> >>this book that Ginny declared to be "unpublishable," so it was
> >>shelved. Quite a bit of it was rewritten to form the version that
> >>appeared several years afterwards. In July, we'll all have the chance
> >>to see the original version of the book.
> >
> >
> > One feature of _The Number of the Beast_, the version actually
> > published, that I've always wondered about is whether it can be said the
> > book is truly one of the type Heinlein said he preferred to write, a
> > book of character development.
> I've spent the past few/four/five days re-reading TNOTB in large
> doses to assuage my Oscar night-time syndrome. These are some
> dam-fine questions, Dave.
Why, thank you, although I wish I'd gotten some more responses. The chat
is only one day off, this Thursday. The thing about pre-chat posts is
the more the responses, the more ideas, the better the chat. I've tried
in these posts to not impose a view but to open areas of exploration
that are a little off the beaten path some may have been down before.
> >
> > There's certainly character interaction between the four principal
> > characters, but can it really be shown to be development, rather than
> > mere chit-chat, however complicated and extensive? Who really develops?
> > How?
> >
> > Let's consider the characters. You might even call them stock or
> > stereotypes when introduced.
> >
> > There's Jake--the "mad scientist," brilliant, opinionated,
> > argumentative, lacking in people skills, and pretty much in need of a
> > keeper.
> >
> > There's Deety--the "mad scientist's beautiful daughter," Jake's keeper
> > as we meet them, a devoted daughter taking the place of Jane, her
> > deceased mother, and so willing to advance her father's goals that
> > she'll seduce, by promise of marriage or otherwise, the man they mistake
> > as the only scientist capable of understanding Jake's invention.
> >
> > There's Zeb--the gifted dabbler, enjoying his inheritance, but not doing
> > much at all with his life and skills, who faked his way to a degree,
> > playing poker to attain a certain goal, engaged in life in a casual way,
> > with not much in the commitment, insight, or understanding departments;
> > and little challenged in values. He's the perfect odd-man for a party,
> > but we don't know much else that he's worth, other than being handsome,
> > athletic, and bright enough to grab and snatch Deety as she dances
> > through his life.
> Dave, we have variances in our appreciations of friend Zebadiah.
Don't be too sure we have variances. I didn't say I don't like the guy.
I'd have probably lumped him in with ROTC types from rich boy colleges
if I'd run into him in the service, but I had friends among those. "Some
of my best friends are Air Force ROTC types from the University of
Virginia." (Well, that's not true, but substitute USC for Virginia, and
it could be--so long as they let their loyalty to alma mater sucker, er,
blind them into making some really bad college basketball bets--I was in
college while Lew Alcindor played for Wooden; and, then, after Wicks,
Rowe, Bibby, Patterson and Vallely, came Walton. So I lose a little,
maybe, on the one football game I bet to keep them on the hook for
basketball. There's two basketball games each year.) It's just Zebbie's
capable of so much more than we see.
> Zeb says in the text that he pretty much had to become a rich man
> (through his own efforts) in order to "qualify" for his inheritance
> at which point he became twice as rich. Regardless of how he EARNED
> the necessary chinks, he EARNED them!
> That ain't a "dabbler".
A dabbler is a non-professional. I'll concede to have won the amount he
won playing poker, he was very probably a "pro" in poker and I'd watch
his hands closely if I lost enough of my mind to get in a game with him.
But would you really call him a professional at anything else? Where,
Rufo, were his "drops"? That's the big difference between him and Colin
Campbell, for example. Oscar, on his own scale, likely playing against
mainly sergeants, probably found it harder winning that pile--and
walking away with it in his pockets--while enshipped between Singapore
and Rome than Zebbie, against college boys and pilots who had the money
and lacked the good sense to play at the stakes he had to play to 'earn'
one million dollars in those few years. Ever play against sergeants?
Zebbie was skinning kids. Sergeants'll skin ya, and eat ya, if you give
them the chance, even if they can afford only dime chips.
What does he tell us he taught? Utility-infielding? Jack-of-all-trades
and master of none. They keep him around because he's amiable--like Ed
Masterson, and we all know how Ed ended up--Ed wasn't a "pro," he was a
politician. (We know how both Eds ended up here--and Zebbie's forgetting
about his little duty to "do something" about Ed troubles me a lot.)
> After that, he indulged in academic fraud/dishonesty risible only
> to those who have never attempted to stay the course in that
> particular life-arena.
They joke about piling it "higher and deeper," but I don't think those
who worked decently hard to achieve it tolerate superficial scholarship
or teaching in those who didn't. You know the ones who didn't work
decently. Slick, immensely popular with the students who take their
courses to earn the "mic" grade that goes with them, but denied tenure
after a few years, and now teaching at junior colleges, or--more
likely--doing something else. I remember one who taught an enormously
popular modern culture reading lower division course at UCLA--it was
called "Humanities 30" or something, and the lecture hall seated about
500. You turned in a project for your grade--a paper if you were anal,
but it could be a clay pot you'd slapped together and fired the night
before. Everybody got an "A." The shame of it all was on the reading
list was _Stranger_. They came out of his class wanting to grok and
share water with you. It was tempting, looking at some of the co-eds and
the spaced out competition, when I heard about it, for about three
seconds; but I wondered how I'd explain it to any subsequent teacher who
looked at my transcript. Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among
the sophomores when he was denied tenure a year later. But no one
thought of burning a bra or marching to take over Ackermann when it
happened.
> A doctorate is, as Jake says in the text, a
> "union card." It's obtained by an individual's demonstration that
> s/he is capable of successfully fulfilling a demanding "academic
> exercise". Nowhere, as I recall, is there any specific provision
> that "practicality" enter the effort or be the result.
> Academics who sneer across departmental or disciplinary lines have
> existed since the establishment of separate departments/disciplines.
> Sneering at academics has an equally long tradition (from at least
> the 5th century before the Common Era in Greece). Or, if you like,
> the ever-unpopular medieval English "benefit of clergy" (most
> academics were in, at least, minor orders). This lessened a bit when
> anyone who could read or pretend to read the <i>Miserere</i>-"neck
> verse"-Psalm 51 and through that demonstration save him/herself from
> swinging by the neck until dead, dead, dead.
> Otherwise, as you say, Zeb is a charming conversationalist,
> physically attractive and bereft of commitment.
> >
> > And, then there's Hilda--the professional social hostess, just as much a
> > dilettante as Zebbie, plainly as much a sexual predator, a manipulator,
> > who mixes hypergolic guests to see how entertaining the explosion will
> > be at her parties, presumably to keep from being bored, in her
> > childless, spouseless, middle age. The prototype here is Pamela
> > Churchill Harriman.
> I regret that I recall the name but not the likeness of your cited
> prototype. I judge it ain't worth the Google.
You judge wrong. She was a real piece of work. One of the legends.
> You add above that Zeb and Sharpie are "sexual predators" to which
> classification I demur. Sharpie, perhaps, is capable of using her
> dinero to roll in the hay with whatever she wants; but recall she
> repeatedly claims she only goes after "older men." Such choice may
> reflect her lack of self-esteem in this area.
Older men have money, sometimes die and leave all or part of it to young
wives or mistresses. Nicole Smith. How'dya suppose Sharpie got hers?
Maybe she inherited it--she seemed to have more than Jane while in
college--she employs legions of attorneys and accountants as the story
begins; and even Jane herself inherited a chunk that passed to Deety in
turn.
Jake's the only one who seems to have made financial success without
inheritance; and he's been aided by some very imaginative bookkeeping by
his daughter and, presumably, his wife before her. They're all tax
chiselers. The claim, we pay more tax than our salaries, means little
when the money comes from investments. I bet Mrs. Keithley pays more tax
than her salary too. And, while I'm at it, our new friend: Conrad of
Conrad.
> The Napoleonic
> domination she claims to exercise on campus may be the other half of
> that lack of self-esteem.
> She invites folks to her parties to watch them ignite on contact.
> "Funny once" at the very best. She says she doesn't allow fighting
> at her parties -- just displays of invective. I find nothing even
> superficially attractive in such behavior by any such individual.
> >
> > Jake aside, these characters are superficially attractive social types,
> > but can we really say any of them actually profit during the story by
> > learning a lesson, or rising to heroism, or even establishing a
> > relationship of depth and significance with a mate?
> >
> > Do they, really? What lesson? What rise to achieve what goal? How deep
> > is the relationship, and how convincing is it? Why? Tim? Anybody?
>
> Now I know that this may be just over the line and a little bit
> tooooo outré for some of the audience; but here's a suggestion I'd
> like run past you -- low, fast and across the inside corner.
> "The Number of the Beast" is a Heinlein novel written specifically
> with the intention of publishing a "Heinlein novel" without writing
> a "Heinlein novel." RAH is presenting a "real-life" (what's "real")
> example of Friend Zebadiah's doctoral dissertation.
>
About the same time he rewrote Number he also dictated to Baen the
expanded parts of Worlds of, that became Expanded Universe. There's a
passage in there about college education, reflecting poorly on the local
university, UC Santa Cruz, and college professors. Perhaps you're on to
something here; but I think possibly it's a little more than that.
There is, after all, the writing of a metanovel here. We have to pay
attention to those stories-within-the-story. Why write them in?
Simple homage? A farewell to old friends? Or, something else?
> RAH writes stories of character development.
> There is no character development -- in any major character.
> RAH writes of characters who learn a lesson.
> There is no lesson learned -- by any major character.
>
> TNOTB is a fugue on reality/imagination.
> TNOTB is an imitative many-voiced composition in which a theme or
> themes are stated successively and fully in each voice. ?;-)
>
All originally scored by RAH the writer (and the Black Hat), imitating
other writers, per omnia sacula saculorum, eh? Maybe so. Interesting
conceit.
> Rufe
David M. Silver
"David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > TNOTB is a fugue on reality/imagination.
> > TNOTB is an imitative many-voiced composition in which a theme or
> > themes are stated successively and fully in each voice. ?;-)
> >
Perhaps it would be useful here to ask: what are each theme--not only
those of the four POVs, but also each story-within-the-story?
What do you think?
Zeb: his theme?
Deety: her theme?
Jake: his theme?
Sharpie: her theme?
British Empire Barsoom: its theme?
Oz: its theme as portrayed by Heinlein?
Dodson: his theme as portrayed by Heinlein?
The Grey Lensman: his theme as portrayed by Heinlein?
Lazarus Long, Libby and the twins: their theme as portrayed here by
Heinlein?
Are they repetitious? Do they contrast or compare? Do they reinforce or
lead to a point of some sort?
And what's the theme of L'envoi?
>
> All originally scored by RAH the writer (and the Black Hat), imitating
> other writers, per omnia sacula saculorum, eh? Maybe so. Interesting
> conceit.
--
JaneE!
Forgive how I have jumped in here sort of willy nilly. I just
finished reading all 511 pages, in small print.
I am not surprised that this would be one of the either love 'em or
hate 'ems. I am looking forward to the chat tomorrow evening because
I have lots of questions.
I haven't completely formulated my opinion, I still must chew on a few
things. The writing style is definitely familiar. The choice of
presenting first person narrative with dialogue and then changing that
voice with each chapter was a bit disconcerting. I had to look up,
often, in order to be able to keep track of who it was.
Someone here in another thread complained about the endless
description of how to play a saxophone in Variable Star, I got a
little weary of the minutia of information relating to all forms of
math. Get on with the story, I would think. Where the hell are we
going!!!
Anyway, I plan to be there to gain some insights I hope.
JaneE!
Francesco Spreafico
> In July, we'll all have the chance
> to see the original version of the book.
I must have missed something important here! (And I can't seem to find
any reference to this elsewhere.)
You mean it'll be published?
Francesco
Francesco Spreafico
> I must have missed something important here! (And I can't seem to find
> any reference to this elsewhere.)
Okay, I'd just missed the newsletter that hasn't arrived here yet 8-)
Francesco
David M. Silver
"David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
> In article <ag.plusone-F0EE8...@individual.net>,
> "David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > So, what about this critique of theme? Is it a maze? Narcissism? Or is
> > it the dying rattle of 20th century American thoughts and values?
>
> If you belief _The Number of the Beast_ is the dying rattle of 20th
> century American thoughts and values, in 1980, then, of course, when
> Heinlein wrote his next novel, which was _Friday_, you leap at the
> chance to again express your thesis that American is dying by reviewing
> it.
>
I can't believe there were no bites on this review. Talk about a target
rich environment, the only explanation I can think of is everyone's
given up reading for Lent.
> I wonder why any of us think of it. Here's H. Bruce Franklin's next
> essay on Heinlein's work:
>
> GENIUS AND SUPERGENIUS
> Published: July 4, 1982, NY Times Review of Books
> FRIDAY By Robert A. Heinlein. 368 pp. New York: Holt, Rinehart &
> Winston. $14.95. By H.BRUCE FRANKLIN
> YOU have to admit this about Robert A. Heinlein: He provokes strong
> reactions. Whether or not he is still the most popular and influential
> living author of science fiction, as he has probably been for four
> decades, Mr. Heinlein remains the most controversial, with hordes of
> fans and foes. "Friday" will convert few from one camp to the other.
> One of Mr. Heinlein's self-images is that of a lone genius in the role
> of a carnival showman, providing fun for the masses, money for himself
> and deep truths for the select few who penetrate his disguise. So
> "Friday" is meant to have something for everyone: laughs and tears,
> thrilling adventures, titillating sex, delicious fantasies of power, and
> profound messages.
> Like most of Mr. Heinlein's heroes, Friday is a superbeing.
Only to the delusional critic: In the beginning, there was "Dr." Pinero,
graduate of a no where diploma mill in "Life-Line," who had one good
idea--maybe a not so good idea--because it soon got him killed; there
followed a dirt-poor hillbilly enrolled in a depression-era work
training program, who happens to have math skills beyond most
hillbillies which saves a few peoples' lives in "Misfit"; then, there
was a poor old rich man, who dies, having traded his life for an ideal
of space; and in his first published novel-sized work, _"If This Goes
On--"_ it was dumbjohn Lyle, a naive service academy graduate,
well-indoctrinated, who only becomes involved when he falls in love with
a similarly-indoctrinated naif he recognizes as Sister Judith. There
follows: two bright people in "'Let There Be Light'" who give away an
invention that might bring them an uncountable fortune so they can avoid
Dr. Pinero's fate; an engineer who avoids a 'union-problem' in "The
Roads Must Roll"; an idiotic english professor with little impulse
control in "Coventry"; a refugee from the Nazis who outwits a dictator
in "Heil" (or "Successful Operation"); and a father who finds a lady who
helps rescue his child in "Magic, Inc."
No men or women of steel up there. One old lady who turns out to be a
white witch, however, but she hardly wears tights with an emblem on
breast. "Wouldn't be prudent ..." in her community where she passes and
avoids dunking and the stocks as a nice old lady.
Let's go on: A group of survivors of a lost war of conquest who
successfully wage a guerilla war--they have a super-weapon, but that
weapon wouldn't have won their insurrection but for the propaganda
campaign to win minds they waged, in _Sixth Column_; a wacky architect
in "--And He Built a Crooked House--"; a drunk who finds himself
learning a lesson up-close-and-personal about interplanetary slavery in
"Logic of Empire"; some political operatives who hire the wrong guy in
"Beyond Doubt" and lose their campaign; a paranoid in "They"; a very
dumb apprentice engineer in "Universe"; a leader who has to become a
dictator and nearly destroy a world to keep it free in "Solution
Unsatisfactory"; and a long-lived malcontent who would rather fade into
the woodwork but who chooses to put his neck on the line instead in
_Methuselah's Children_.
Anyone there who can leap tall buildings at a single bound, more
powerful than a locomotive, faster than a speeding bullet? Nope. Closest
one's the guy who lived a long time--of him, more later.
Next up, we got a woman who can organize stuff pretty well in "'--We
Also Walk Dogs'" but she's hardly Lois Lane, let alone Wonder Woman; and
then there's the various forms of Joe who gets himself caught up in the
loops of Time in "By His Bootstraps." He winds up Diktor, thirty
thousand years in the future; but we haven't a clue what efforts
resulted in that, or what or who is the power behind the Dictator. Who's
the superman involved? "Lost Legacy" leaves us behind, scratching our
heads with the ape who suddenly developed a headache. Is that our
superman? The others have all left.
I could go on ... through the next forty-four years of writing; but I
don't find many supermen, or superwomen, or super beings. Oh, there's
Jonathan Hoag, whatever species he is, capable of scraping the canvas
bare and forcing the artist to restart--but he's a critic. Maybe that's
where critic Franklin gets the notion Heinlein's universe consists of
super-beings--Franklin of course probably is susceptible to the notion
that his own career field is populated by super-beings. After all, they
are the supreme arbiters of taste--that takes super something, although
I sometimes wonder what the something might be.
> Engineered
> from the finest genes, and trained to be a secret courier in a future
> world of chaotic ferocity and intrigue, she can think better, fight
> better and make love better than any of the normal people around her.
Prove it. She's genetically engineered all right--from ordinary human
beings. She has a certain intuitive ability to correlate data, a spark
that awakens her at night with inspiration stemming by her studies using
a computer system that reminds us of today's web, but is her intuition
any better than that of any bright man or woman? Who sez so? She's
stronger and faster--a real Lindsay Wagner of her time; but who sez her
capabilities aren't innate in any human? Lindsay's character had bionic
limbs, but what are they? Bending a spoon? Parlor trick. You have the
strength. Your fingers just won't stand up to the pain. Pick up a
teaspoon with two sets of vice grip pliers. Pick one your wife didn't
inherit from great-grandma. You can do what she did. You really don't
need the leverage the pliers give you, what you need are Fingers of
Steel. Call, call for Clark Kent. Consider also those karate masters who
smash through layers of brick. "Mind over matter"?
Make love better? Well, she's trained as a doxy. Anyone of your
daughters with the proper training--kept away from their mothers,
according to one of Heinlein's bon mots, probably can equal Friday.
Experience love? Not quite. She's a slave. That's the point of the story
that flies over H. Bruce's head.
> The Earth she inhabits has become a nightmare in which some 400
> "territorial states," including the tyrannical Chicago Imperium, the
> madcap California Confederacy and the Mexican Revolutionary Kingdom,
> endlessly struggle for the power actually held by the "corporate
> states," gigantic multinational conglomerates that are all secretly
> controlled by one interlocking interstellar cartel, originally founded
> by "the most American of myth-heroes," a "basement inventor."
Bruce wrote an early work, perhaps originally his dissertation, on
nineteenth century SF, _Future Perfect: American SF of the 19th
Century--An Anthology_, that involves a lot of basement inventors, among
other things, so he's a little strange on the subject of basement
inventors, who feature so prominently in nineteenth century fantasies
and SF. You might say Bruce is still caught up in 'Tom Swift and His
Electric Grandmother.' Bruce doesn't think US inventions from the
basement stand up next to Stalin's inspired proofs of actual well-known
first invention by Soviet or Russian scientists of such items as the
telephone, telegram, or, probably for that matter, Shakespeare in the
original Klingon.
> The best
> values the world has ever known - being, of course, the values of
> Midwestern farming communities at the time of Mr. Heinlein's childhood
> in the early 20th century
I'm tempted here to sing out, "I'd like to say a word for Farmer // He
came out west and made a lot of changes" but then I'd have to say a word
for the Cowboy, too, and probably quote too much copyrighted
Hammerstein.
> - have been overwhelmed by the evils already
> dominant in the late 20th century: too much government and too many
> people, bureaucracy, alienation, welfare, cities, religious cults,
> socialism, monopoly capitalism and, worst of all, mediocrity and
> incompetence. As usual, the highest virtue is supreme competence.
So. Your point is, Dr. Franklin, exactly what?
> Fighting to hold back the forces of evil is a mysterious organization
> controlled entirely by the iron will of "the Old Man," Friday's crusty
> "Boss," Hartley Baldwin. Friday, despite her mental powers, which dwarf
> those of the most advanced computer network of this supertechnological
> future, never discovers this man's true identity.
I didn't notice her search to do so--did any of you? Dorothy's Straw Man
isn't the only person here that needs a brain.
> But Heinlein readers
> soon recognize him as none other than "Kettle Belly" Baldwin, leader of
> the underground organization of genetic supermen who defeated Communism
> and seemed destined to replace Homo sapiens in Mr. Heinlein's 1949
> novella, "Gulf."
Defeated communism isn't exactly one of the claims Baldwin makes for his
organization down below while he was coercing, er, enlisting Joe Greene.
He simply notes the commissars have been gone over a hundred years,
without attributing the cause of their discorporation to anyone in
particular. But, then of course, considering Franklin's politics, anyone
associated with or possibly advocating the destruction of communism is
Pure 100 % Bonded Evil.
We'll break right now for a chorus of National Anthem of the Soviet
Union. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymn_of_the_Soviet_Union
At the bottom, or just put you copy of _The Hunt For Red October_ on
when they engage the silent caterpillar drive.
Back later ... .
Nohbody
Franklin's ego. But then again I'd probably have been somewhat more
crude about it, and not had nearly as many examples come to mind.
Now, onto the one thing my post-work ambition allows me to comment
about.
"David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> made an infinite number of
monkeys bang out the following:
> We'll break right now for a chorus of National Anthem of the Soviet
> Union. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymn_of_the_Soviet_Union
>
> At the bottom, or just put you copy of _The Hunt For Red October_ on
> when they engage the silent caterpillar drive.
Actually, what they're singing in that scene isn't the USSR nat'l
anthem, but "Hymn to Red October", which was written specifically for
the movie.
Lyrics (romanized Russian plus transliteration into English):
http://www.lyricsdownload.com/poledouris-basil-hymn-to-red-october-lyrics.html
And on a tangential note, when looking for the above link, I did find
something that might be of interest, in case you hadn't seen it already,
David.
Russian Anthems Museum: http://www.hymn.ru/index-en.html
(Or, if you want to read it in the original: http://www.hymn.ru/
Bunch of versions of the various anthems for Russia, including MP3
recordings of various versions of them.
Dan Poore
--
About the only difference between the wingnuts on each end of the
[political] spectrum is *which* civil right(s) they think we can do
without. -- Rowan Hawthorn, in alt.callahans (2/28/05)
TheBookman
> In article <ag.plusone-9B05B...@individual.net>,
> "David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Prove it. She's genetically engineered all right--from ordinary human
> beings. She has a certain intuitive ability to correlate data, a spark
> that awakens her at night with inspiration stemming by her studies using
> a computer system that reminds us of today's web, but is her intuition
> any better than that of any bright man or woman? Who sez so? She's
> stronger and faster--a real Lindsay Wagner of her time; but who sez her
> capabilities aren't innate in any human? Lindsay's character had bionic
> limbs, but what are they? Bending a spoon? Parlor trick. You have the
> strength. Your fingers just won't stand up to the pain. Pick up a
> teaspoon with two sets of vice grip pliers. Pick one your wife didn't
> inherit from great-grandma. You can do what she did. You really don't
> need the leverage the pliers give you, what you need are Fingers of
> Steel. Call, call for Clark Kent. Consider also those karate masters who
> smash through layers of brick. "Mind over matter"?
<Nitpick>
Those brick-smashes are not demonstrating "mind over matter", or even pain
control. They have sytematically restructured their bones for greater
density. If you or I tried to break a baseball bat with our shins, they'd
take us out on stretchers.
</nitpick>
Regards,
Rtb
(who needs to rebuild his .sig)
TreetopAngel
> In article <ag.plusone-9B05B...@individual.net>,
> "David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> In article <ag.plusone-F0EE8...@individual.net>,
>> "David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> > So, what about this critique of theme? Is it a maze? Narcissism? Or
>> > is
>> > it the dying rattle of 20th century American thoughts and values?
>>
>> If you belief _The Number of the Beast_ is the dying rattle of 20th
>> century American thoughts and values, in 1980, then, of course, when
>> Heinlein wrote his next novel, which was _Friday_, you leap at the
>> chance to again express your thesis that American is dying by
>> reviewing
>> it.
>>
>
> I can't believe there were no bites on this review. Talk about a
> target
> rich environment, the only explanation I can think of is everyone's
> given up reading for Lent.
>
Actually, I gave it the same interest and notice that I give any
"professional" critic or reviewer...none.
I'd much rather read the comments from friends and family.
E!
David M. Silver
As I said, back later.
> > Being one up on a superbeing is one of the rewards you
> > get for the price of admission.
I'm not quite sure there's any meaning in what Franklin suggests here:
Marjorie Baldwin ("Friday") isn't a "superbeing," she's a slave with
super low self-esteem, trying to please anyone, any family, any group,
any old bald man, so she'll be accepted. Told she's promoted from
courier to assassin, incredibly, the assignment that got both her
parents martyred, she stays around, rather than running for the door.
She tried to buy a family. She's willing to continue to sacrifice
herself for Baldwin, for Goldie, for anyone, so long as they'll let her
exist in the semblance of an association with them. Being "one up" on
Marjorie is a status the entire world enjoys. We didn't have to pay the
price of admission for that.
> > Kettle Belly is still pontificating that "geniuses and supergeniuses
> > always make their own rules," the same words that he, and other Heinlein
> > wise men, have been using for decades.
Forgive me, Dr. Franklin, but I thought that was Nietzsche speaking
since his 1883 _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_, of the concept of Ubermensch,
who, using will to power, will overcome the notion of Christian
conscience, destroy the God-centered morality and invent his own morals,
just as Communism will destroy God and invent its own morality free from
slave morality and master morality both. Maybe they didn't let you know
about Nietzsche at Stanford, but I doubt it. Perhaps you weren't paying
attention, busy as you were revisioning Stalin for we ignorant masses.
Let's talk about SF and supermen for a bit. The trope isn't exactly new,
certainly not by Astonding's 1949 "Gulf" in which Baldwin and Friday's
parents first appear. I've made the point before that the generation of
men and women who sacrificed their lives, some of them, and parts of
their careers to overcome three races who considered themselves
"supermen" in what Franklin undoubtedly considers the "Great Patriotic
War," World War II, had little use and less sympathy for "supermen."
This is significant, because by 1948 when "Gulf" was conceived, a
dialogue between viewpoints about supermen had been going on some time
in SF stories concerning them. As Bill Patterson points out, (in an
article entitled "One Diaschronic Conversation in the Odd
Genre"--diachronic is an academic buzzword that simply means "over
time") in the recent Volume 20, The Heinlein Journal, 52, two viewpoints
had clearly arisen. One, beginning with Olaf Stapledon's _Odd John_
posited the notion that Homo Superior should establish an identity,
gather together, create an "us," Homo Superior, and a "them," us, homo
sapiens, and, then, ultimately let evolution take its course. Where that
course might lead becomes problematical. Does Homo Superior simply
accept the reaction that homo sapiens will have: brown monkeys coming
naturally to destroy the red monkeys who stand out? Does Homo Superior
react to this danger and, possibly, strike first? Stapledon's Odd John
Wainwright gathers together those like him, retreats to an island (like
those who retreated to the planet Olympia), but then simply accepts the
pogrom that comes to destroy him and others like him.
There's an interesting character, a walk-on, in the novel _Friday_ named
Rhonda Wainwright. Tell me Heinlein, who recommended Stapledon as one of
the lights of science fiction, didn't name her a possible descendant of
Odd John deliberately. Rhonda is ready to fix everyone's wagon, first.
She's the one who arranges that all Baldwin's corps of associates are
left penniless when he dies, so she, hopefully, can sign them up for the
pennies they lack. Wainwright, of course, means someone who fixes your
wagon.
By 1948, two writers well known to Heinlein, former members of the
Mañana Society, Henry Kuttner and his wife, C.L. Moore, had developed
the theme a bit in their collection known as the "Baldy" stories.
Baldies are radiation-induced supermen, telepathic, physically marked by
their hairlessness, and they fear being mobbed by normal humans for
their differences. In the course of four novellas of the series written
before 1948, two groups of Baldies develop: one known as the
"not-insane," who are paranoid, who work to bring on the pogroms, and
one known as the "sane" who assassinate the "not-insane" to delay the
pogroms, and vice-versa. There's got to be a solution out there that
avoids this mutual madness; but we don't find it out from Kuttner-Moore
until 1953 when they wrote their fifth novella. [Racial warfare is
avoided in the fifth novella by a "Methuselah's Children"-like solution.
The Baldies offer telepathy to the normals.]
Baldwin, by the way, can mean, literally, in Anglo-Saxon, "bald man"
(see, e.g., Godwin, "good man," the meaning of Harold Godwinson's
father's name. "Win" is wine, literally, but in context, as in a name,
it can mean "man," just as "stock" can mean "man."), but it can also
mean "bold man."
Heinlein's "Gulf," and _Friday_ responds to that dialogue over time
about supermen. The answer, of course, is there are no two separate
races. Homo sapiens evolves into homo sapiens (current version, future
version, it's all the same, just this year's new model with new
styling); and Joe and Gail Greene die "for _all_ mankind." Sez so on
their marker.
Now, back to Franklin:
> > But Baldwin, perhaps speaking for
> > Mr. Heinlein, now renounces the belief in salvation through a genetic
> > elite, ruefully admitting, "When I was younger, I thought I could change
> > this world."
That's not exactly what he believed. He believed the new year's model
could help its own race by remaining within it, and weeding out the the
"not-insanes" who wanted to bring on the Armageddons like Mrs. Keithley.
> > He instructs Friday, when she is to make her inevitable
> > emigration to another planet, not to choose Olympia, where "those
> > self-styled supermen" went. Yet Baldwin has had Friday designed mainly
> > from the genes of two of the supermen who did save the world in "Gulf" -
> > a secret courier and a professional assassin.
The entire "home novis" ploy was an irony most readers and reviewers
missed. The 1948 generation couldn't continue to believe in supermen,
they'd seen the death camps with their forests of bodies. Baldwin
learned that lesson. He had to sacrifice Gail and Joe to weed out
Keithley. All some academics see, however, are trees, and fail to note
that while only one in a million trees in a forest might be called "homo
novis," together the trees are a forest named "homo sapiens." Franklin
missed the point of World War II, although he was ten years old when it
ended.
> > Besides many references to Mr. Heinlein's oeuvre, there are lots of
> > other half-hidden meanings lying around. Friday herself suggests her
> > namesake, Frigg, the Norse goddess associated with marriage, motherhood
> > and sexual license - the ultimate gal Friday.
Usually, the gal Friday doesn't marry you, doesn't bear your children,
however much she might rub the pain out of your back. She doesn't have
time. It's astonishing that Franklin misses the other "Friday," here,
that Carib slave Robinson Cursoe acquired in his travels.
> > The bulk of the novel describes Friday's amours.
Really? I thought it described Friday's efforts to find somewhere a
family, a spouse, a niche in which she could survive. Since shopping for
a spouse involves amours, I suppose some of that might be present, as in
any "boy-meets-girl" novel of character development; but Franklin
possibly is still hooked up here with Tom Swift and His Electric
Grandmother--no amours there.
> > Unfortunately, Mr.
> > Heinlein has a knack for the difficult task of making sex boring.
> > Neither Friday's sexual partners (as in effective romance)
Well, duh! Friday has a lot of trouble finding a satisfactory romance,
so no, her amours wouldn't be "effective" until she finds one.
> > nor the
> > details of her sex life (as in effective pornography) are of interest.
> > Her numerous partners, male and female, are all interchangeable, and the
> > details are coyly vague, unlike the precise descriptions of her sexy
> > clothes, elegant meals and artful fighting techniques. Some readers may
> > decide to skip the sex to get to the good parts.
Terry Southern's _Candy_ (1958) probably met Franklin's expectations of
effective pornography; but I wasn't aware that Heinlein was trying to
write effective porn. Another strawman without a brain. Funny thing,
though, _Candy_ was a satirical farce update of Voltaire's _Candide_,
centered on a curious college girl whose sexuality gets her involved in
many erotic situations. It's surprising that Franklin wasn't alert to
the possibility that other writers might be updating _Candide_ as well.
Maybe Heinlein should have entitled the story _Friday's Candy_ so
Franklin wouldn't have missed it.
> > But the espionage plot is also disappointing, being a mere contrivance
> > to get Friday from one liaison to another as she moves toward her
> > ultimate goal. This goal, as always in recent Heinlein, is escape from
> > the world of the future or developing present to the world of the
> > middle-American mythic past - pioneering, rural or small-town. For
> > Friday, this means abandoning her supposedly exciting job and the
> > adventure plot, along with the Earth. She finally finds happiness as a
> > "colonial housewife" in a group marriage on a faraway planet, where she
> > can have her fill of sex while writing a cookbook and working in the
> > local town council, girl-scout troop and P.T.A.
Just as Candide ends, cultivating his own garden.
> > Mr. Heinlein's latest apocalypse goes beyond all those practical best
> > sellers telling us how to survive and prosper amid the developing doom.
> > For him, the only place to hide is in a fantasy of the mythic past on a
> > faraway planet. His increasingly monotonic message is: Stop the world, I
> > want to get off.
> >
No, I'm sorry, but it's not, Dr. Franklin. Heinlein's message is "Il
faut cultiver notre jardin" the same as Voltaire's.
[snip]
David M. Silver
"TreetopAngel" <treeto...@bresnan.net> wrote:
> > I can't believe there were no bites on this review. Talk about a
> > target
> > rich environment, the only explanation I can think of is everyone's
> > given up reading for Lent.
> >
>
> Actually, I gave it the same interest and notice that I give any
> "professional" critic or reviewer...none.
>
There's a pretty harsh assessment there, Elizabeth, that I could take
rather poorly. Some of us read and write here to talk about Heinlein,
and that includes the reaction he's provoked over the years from
"professional" critics and reviewers. It is a matter of some concern.
> I'd much rather read the comments from friends and family.
If I knew where alt.friends&family was located I'd be tempted to point
you there after the above comment, if I took it poorly.
Chris Zakes
caused "David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> to write:
(massive snippage to hit a couple of quibbles)
>a father who finds a lady who helps rescue his child in "Magic, Inc."
Um... David? Are we talking about the same story here? "Magic Inc." is
the one where magic works alongside technology--cement trucks *and*
levitation. Archie Fraser isn't married and has no kids--they go to
the Hell universe to catch a rengade demon, not to find a lost child.
Are you perhaps conflating this with Anderson's "Operation Chaos"?
>No men or women of steel up there. One old lady who turns out to be a
>white witch, however, but she hardly wears tights with an emblem on
>breast. "Wouldn't be prudent ..." in her community where she passes and
>avoids dunking and the stocks as a nice old lady.
Wait a minute. Magic is common and accepted in that universe. Why
would Mrs. Jennings need to "pass" to avoid dunking or the stocks?
-Chris Zakes
Texas
Some people insist that "mediocre" is better than "best." They delight in clipping
wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.
-Robert Heinlein in "Have Space Suit-Will Travel"
Filksinger
Arguably a "super-human" genius, as he was described as having worked
out the rules for physics from Newton to Einstein in a matter of hours
given nothing but the starting points.
> ; then, there
> was a poor old rich man, who dies, having traded his life for an ideal
> of space; and in his first published novel-sized work, _"If This Goes
> On--"_ it was dumbjohn Lyle, a naive service academy graduate,
> well-indoctrinated, who only becomes involved when he falls in love with
> a similarly-indoctrinated naif he recognizes as Sister Judith. There
> follows: two bright people in "'Let There Be Light'" who give away an
> invention that might bring them an uncountable fortune so they can avoid
> Dr. Pinero's fate; an engineer who avoids a 'union-problem' in "The
> Roads Must Roll"; an idiotic english professor with little impulse
> control in "Coventry"; a refugee from the Nazis who outwits a dictator
> in "Heil" (or "Successful Operation"); and a father who finds a lady who
> helps rescue his child in "Magic, Inc."
>
> No men or women of steel up there. One old lady who turns out to be a
> white witch, however, but she hardly wears tights with an emblem on
> breast. "Wouldn't be prudent ..." in her community where she passes and
> avoids dunking and the stocks as a nice old lady.
I think you are confusing another story with "Magic, Inc." The
protagonist in "Magic, Inc." was a businessman, not a father (so far as
we are told), and goes to the white witch for help in protecting himself
and his business from magic-enabled thuggery. The white witch in
question was "passing", not to avoid the dunking stool, but because she
didn't have a license.
He isn't a "super-being", to be sure. She could be argued to be. She did
offer to go one on one with Satan, after all, and he backed down. I
don't know that she is a "super-being", but I can't really argue with
someone who chooses to take that as proof that she is.
> Let's go on: A group of survivors of a lost war of conquest who
> successfully wage a guerilla war--they have a super-weapon, but that
> weapon wouldn't have won their insurrection but for the propaganda
> campaign to win minds they waged, in _Sixth Column_; a wacky architect
> in "--And He Built a Crooked House--"; a drunk who finds himself
> learning a lesson up-close-and-personal about interplanetary slavery in
> "Logic of Empire"; some political operatives who hire the wrong guy in
> "Beyond Doubt" and lose their campaign; a paranoid in "They"; a very
> dumb apprentice engineer in "Universe"; a leader who has to become a
> dictator and nearly destroy a world to keep it free in "Solution
> Unsatisfactory"; and a long-lived malcontent who would rather fade into
> the woodwork but who chooses to put his neck on the line instead in
> _Methuselah's Children_.
>
> Anyone there who can leap tall buildings at a single bound, more
> powerful than a locomotive, faster than a speeding bullet? Nope. Closest
> one's the guy who lived a long time--of him, more later.
As you didn't get back to him, I'll stop here to argue that LL does
qualify as being "super", in the meaning that he is super-normally
resistant aging and disease, and that his skill at survival in difficult
situations borders on superhuman, as otherwise that life he leads would
have finished him off long ago. That he is also human is not, so far as
I know, necessarily a disqualifier for being a "super-being".
> Next up, we got a woman who can organize stuff pretty well in "'--We
> Also Walk Dogs'" but she's hardly Lois Lane, let alone Wonder Woman; and
> then there's the various forms of Joe who gets himself caught up in the
> loops of Time in "By His Bootstraps." He winds up Diktor, thirty
> thousand years in the future; but we haven't a clue what efforts
> resulted in that, or what or who is the power behind the Dictator. Who's
> the superman involved? "Lost Legacy" leaves us behind, scratching our
> heads with the ape who suddenly developed a headache. Is that our
> superman? The others have all left.
The fact that they left hardly changes the fact that they developed
super-powers, by normal definitions. Of course, all of humanity had
super-powers by the time they were done, but super-powers they were by
our current standards, none-the-less.
> I could go on ... through the next forty-four years of writing; but I
> don't find many supermen, or superwomen, or super beings. Oh, there's
> Jonathan Hoag, whatever species he is, capable of scraping the canvas
> bare and forcing the artist to restart--but he's a critic. Maybe that's
> where critic Franklin gets the notion Heinlein's universe consists of
> super-beings--Franklin of course probably is susceptible to the notion
> that his own career field is populated by super-beings. After all, they
> are the supreme arbiters of taste--that takes super something, although
> I sometimes wonder what the something might be.
By most definitions, Hoag definitely qualifies as a super-being. I note
that Hoag, being a truly fair and honest critic who is careful and
meticulous in his work, apparently doesn't like less fair and honest
critics much, as he was the doorman for the critic's lounge on Tertius
in NotB. If this gentleman idolizes Hoag, I am sure the feeling isn't
mutual.
>> Engineered
>> from the finest genes, and trained to be a secret courier in a future
>> world of chaotic ferocity and intrigue, she can think better, fight
>> better and make love better than any of the normal people around her.
>
> Prove it.
Well, it was approximately what was written on the cover at one point,
so, right or wrong, it isn't his mistake. His mistake is in buying that
the cover blurb tells him the inner secrets of the book.
> She's genetically engineered all right--from ordinary human
> beings. She has a certain intuitive ability to correlate data, a spark
> that awakens her at night with inspiration stemming by her studies using
> a computer system that reminds us of today's web, but is her intuition
> any better than that of any bright man or woman?
Absolutely it is better. Kettle Belly tells us he has a team of experts
examining that data, and based upon her *initial* evaluation, he speeds
up what has to be a difficult and expensive operation by a significant
margin, when said initial evaluation disagrees with his team of highly
trained, and surely bright, experts. He obviously places extraordinarily
high faith in her "intuition".
> Who sez so? She's
> stronger and faster--a real Lindsay Wagner of her time; but who sez her
> capabilities aren't innate in any human? Lindsay's character had bionic
> limbs, but what are they? Bending a spoon? Parlor trick. You have the
> strength. Your fingers just won't stand up to the pain. Pick up a
> teaspoon with two sets of vice grip pliers. Pick one your wife didn't
> inherit from great-grandma. You can do what she did. You really don't
> need the leverage the pliers give you, what you need are Fingers of
> Steel. Call, call for Clark Kent.
Can you offer proof of this claim? I have serious doubts that it can be
done without the leverage by the average person, but I would be
interested in knowing the facts. I don't believe just having
pain-insensitive thumbs will do the job. I've heard years of rumors
about what people who don't feel pain can supposedly do, but they very
frequently aren't true. I have never heard of a reliable example of a
person who can flatten the bowl of a spoon, but then I haven't heard
much about failure to do so, either.
Besides, the ability to tap into potential everyone has, but nobody uses
or seems able to use, is itself arguably a super-power.
> Consider also those karate masters who
> smash through layers of brick. "Mind over matter"?
Years of conditioning to develop extreme toughness in the flesh that
makes contact, including major increases in bone density. If you
suddenly had a brain-writing device write into your head the complete
knowledge and skill of the world's greatest masters of karate, you
wouldn't be able to do it. Instead, you'd instantly learn not to even try.
> Make love better? Well, she's trained as a doxy. Anyone of your
> daughters with the proper training--kept away from their mothers,
> according to one of Heinlein's bon mots, probably can equal Friday.
> Experience love? Not quite. She's a slave.
I'd say she is an EX-slave, as she was explicitly freed well before the
story begins, but with a slave's conditioning still weighing down her
soul, in a society that considers her sub-human. Pretty bad, but no
longer a slave per-se. She serves "ol' Kettle Belly" out of loyalty, not
slavery. The conditioning doesn't make her a slave anymore; it makes her
an emotional wreck with low self-esteem.
It is true that she is desperately searching for people to make into her
"family", that her loyalty is easily bought by the worthy and unworthy
alike, and that her low self-esteem causes her to place almost all
others above herself, but I don't consider that to be truly slavery.
There are lots of people like this in the world, but very few of them
are considered truly slaves because of it. Emotionally dependent,
perhaps, but not slaves.
Some people, being not competent at too many things, think that
competence is "super-human". This is a large part of where this common
criticism of Heinlein comes from. Add in the few characters who arguably
are "super-human" (Friday is physically, as she can be clearly
identified as an AP by an expert just from being observed in combat),
and they see this as an overarching pattern.
>> Fighting to hold back the forces of evil is a mysterious organization
>> controlled entirely by the iron will of "the Old Man," Friday's crusty
>> "Boss," Hartley Baldwin. Friday, despite her mental powers, which dwarf
>> those of the most advanced computer network of this supertechnological
>> future, never discovers this man's true identity.
>
> I didn't notice her search to do so--did any of you? Dorothy's Straw Man
> isn't the only person here that needs a brain.
No, she never tried to find out. She didn't care who he was, except that
he was Mr. Two-Canes, the man who freed her, became the closest thing to
a father she would ever have, and thus earned her unwavering loyalty.
He does seem to have a few axes to grind, doesn't he?
TreetopAngel
> In article <ipednbU88fC2i2nY...@bresnan.com>,
> "TreetopAngel" <treeto...@bresnan.net> wrote:
>
>> > I can't believe there were no bites on this review. Talk about a
>> > target
>> > rich environment, the only explanation I can think of is everyone's
>> > given up reading for Lent.
>> >
>>
>> Actually, I gave it the same interest and notice that I give any
>> "professional" critic or reviewer...none.
>>
>
> There's a pretty harsh assessment there, Elizabeth, that I could take
> rather poorly. Some of us read and write here to talk about Heinlein,
> and that includes the reaction he's provoked over the years from
> "professional" critics and reviewers. It is a matter of some concern.
I find most "professional" critics and reviewers to be narrow minded and
vindictive. I frequently find myself at a loss for words and boiling
with anger over their statements. The most I can say and still remain in
polite company is "I disagree" and leave it at that.
>
>> I'd much rather read the comments from friends and family.
>
> If I knew where alt.friends&family was located I'd be tempted to point
> you there after the above comment, if I took it poorly.
I thought I had found a few friends and those I would like to consider
family here...
I guess I'm going to take this poorly.
E!
David M. Silver
Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
> >> Like most of Mr. Heinlein's heroes, Friday is a superbeing.
> >
> > Only to the delusional critic: In the beginning, there was "Dr." Pinero,
> > graduate of a no where diploma mill in "Life-Line," who had one good
> > idea--maybe a not so good idea--because it soon got him killed; there
> > followed a dirt-poor hillbilly enrolled in a depression-era work
> > training program, who happens to have math skills beyond most
> > hillbillies which saves a few peoples' lives in "Misfit"
>
> Arguably a "super-human" genius, as he was described as having worked
> out the rules for physics from Newton to Einstein in a matter of hours
> given nothing but the starting points.
>
Not exactly, after an hour he had "jumped into the idea of relativity
and non-rectilinear continium and was beginning to pour forth ideas
faster than he could talk." I'd question whether the examiner hadn't
influenced the derivation of these theories by suggestions inherent in
the nature of questions asked--how could the questioner using only a
physics textbook for a guide help but ask leading questions? Granted,
he's got an intuitive grasp of the relationship of numbers; but I'd
hardly claim an independent derivation based on that test described
without a full transcript.
And, what's a super-human genius that a plain genius isn't? 160 on the
Binot or some other scale rather than 135? There are many humans that
have been rated as high as 160. A super-being is something a little bit
more than a simple human genius--we got a lot of those, some of them
reading this newsgroup.
Dr. Koshchei or Jerry Farnsworth is a super-being. Valentine Michael
Smith (if you take the view he's the archangel on assignment) is a
super-being. Hoag is a super-being. The rest are nothing more than
bright, ranging up to quite bright humans.
>
> > ; then, [in "Requiem"] there
> > was a poor old rich man, who dies, having traded his life for an ideal
> > of space; and in his first published novel-sized work, _"If This Goes
> > On--"_ it was dumbjohn Lyle, a naive service academy graduate,
> > well-indoctrinated, who only becomes involved when he falls in love with
> > a similarly-indoctrinated naif he recognizes as Sister Judith. There
> > follows: two bright people in "'Let There Be Light'" who give away an
> > invention that might bring them an uncountable fortune so they can avoid
> > Dr. Pinero's fate; an engineer who avoids a 'union-problem' in "The
> > Roads Must Roll"; an idiotic english professor with little impulse
> > control in "Coventry"; a refugee from the Nazis who outwits a dictator
> > in "Heil" (or "Successful Operation"); and a father who finds a lady who
> > helps rescue his child in "Magic, Inc."
> >
> > No men or women of steel up there. One old lady who turns out to be a
> > white witch, however, but she hardly wears tights with an emblem on
> > breast. "Wouldn't be prudent ..." in her community where she passes and
> > avoids dunking and the stocks as a nice old lady.
>
> I think you are confusing another story with "Magic, Inc." The
> protagonist in "Magic, Inc." was a businessman, not a father (so far as
> we are told), and goes to the white witch for help in protecting himself
> and his business from magic-enabled thuggery. The white witch in
> question was "passing", not to avoid the dunking stool, but because she
> didn't have a license.
>
Yes, of course. I've conflated it with Poul Anderson's _Operation Chaos_
stories, deliberately written in the Magic Inc. universe. Sorry, Archie
Fraser was an ordinary sort of business man, a building supplies
contractor, getting shaken down by thugs who employed magic to do so who
needed to counter-employ magic to get free of them--and learn about
human politics, etc.
> He isn't a "super-being", to be sure. She could be argued to be. She did
> offer to go one on one with Satan, after all, and he backed down. I
> don't know that she is a "super-being", but I can't really argue with
> someone who chooses to take that as proof that she is.
"Offering" isn't the criteria; being able to survive and win might be.
That's why I mentioned her as the possible exception; but then again
Daniel Webster offered to go up against His Darkness in another story,
did so, survived and won, and no one claims he was a super being. By
some views, we all strive daily against Satan. Every saint must win; and
they're all human, otherwise they're not saints. No one claims the witch
isn't human, do they?
>
> > Let's go on: A group of survivors of a lost war of conquest who
> > successfully wage a guerilla war--they have a super-weapon, but that
> > weapon wouldn't have won their insurrection but for the propaganda
> > campaign to win minds they waged, in _Sixth Column_; a wacky architect
> > in "--And He Built a Crooked House--"; a drunk who finds himself
> > learning a lesson up-close-and-personal about interplanetary slavery in
> > "Logic of Empire"; some political operatives who hire the wrong guy in
> > "Beyond Doubt" and lose their campaign; a paranoid in "They"; a very
> > dumb apprentice engineer in "Universe"; a leader who has to become a
> > dictator and nearly destroy a world to keep it free in "Solution
> > Unsatisfactory"; and a long-lived malcontent who would rather fade into
> > the woodwork but who chooses to put his neck on the line instead in
> > _Methuselah's Children_.
> >
> > Anyone there who can leap tall buildings at a single bound, more
> > powerful than a locomotive, faster than a speeding bullet? Nope. Closest
> > one's the guy who lived a long time--of him, more later.
>
> As you didn't get back to him, I'll stop here to argue that LL does
> qualify as being "super", in the meaning that he is super-normally
> resistant aging and disease, and that his skill at survival in difficult
> situations borders on superhuman, as otherwise that life he leads would
> have finished him off long ago. That he is also human is not, so far as
> I know, necessarily a disqualifier for being a "super-being".
>
I would think "super-beings" are not human. Born on Krypton is something
else than born on earth of human parents, or even cloned from humans.
Odd John, and others, are posited as supermen; but are they really? That
is _the_ question, Nietzsche and others notwithstanding.
A "critic" who reviews based on cover blurbs? That's pretty near as bad
as one who reviews based on publisher's pre-printing publicity. And we
all know who did that, don't we, and has been laughed at ever since?
Alexei Panshi-- something or the other.
>
> > She's genetically engineered all right--from ordinary human
> > beings. She has a certain intuitive ability to correlate data, a spark
> > that awakens her at night with inspiration stemming by her studies using
> > a computer system that reminds us of today's web, but is her intuition
> > any better than that of any bright man or woman?
>
> Absolutely it is better. Kettle Belly tells us he has a team of experts
> examining that data, and based upon her *initial* evaluation, he speeds
> up what has to be a difficult and expensive operation by a significant
> margin, when said initial evaluation disagrees with his team of highly
> trained, and surely bright, experts. He obviously places extraordinarily
> high faith in her "intuition".
And Kettle Belly we know is never wrong and never lies--right?
"Intuition" is like lightning. It strikes where it strikes, sometimes
when a simple apple falls on one's head, sometimes elsewhen. The fact
she has intuition doesn't make her a super-being any more than Zebbie's
precognitions of danger.
>
> > Who sez so? She's
> > stronger and faster--a real Lindsay Wagner of her time; but who sez her
> > capabilities aren't innate in any human? Lindsay's character had bionic
> > limbs, but what are they? Bending a spoon? Parlor trick. You have the
> > strength. Your fingers just won't stand up to the pain. Pick up a
> > teaspoon with two sets of vice grip pliers. Pick one your wife didn't
> > inherit from great-grandma. You can do what she did. You really don't
> > need the leverage the pliers give you, what you need are Fingers of
> > Steel. Call, call for Clark Kent.
>
> Can you offer proof of this claim? I have serious doubts that it can be
> done without the leverage by the average person, but I would be
> interested in knowing the facts.
I haven't destroyed one of my wife's, ever, or my mother's spoons in
years, and don't intend to start doing so again at this late day; but it
can be done--I've reshaped the bowl shaped end of spoons in the past
using vice grips and like tools, from about age twelve on when I decided
to cast my own metal soldiers and other objects and needed spouted
containers to pour lead into molds. [I suppose I could have used one of
mom's very precious and fine heirloom tea spoons which were narrow
enough to use the pointy end as a spout, but she might have broken my
little butt for doing it--and I wasn't suicidal as a child.] There are
spoons and spoons. I suggest, if you wish to try it out, you pick a
spoon with a lot of silver or copper in it and that isn't industrial
weight stainless steel flatwear, unless you have all day.
> I don't believe just having
> pain-insensitive thumbs will do the job. I've heard years of rumors
> about what people who don't feel pain can supposedly do, but they very
> frequently aren't true. I have never heard of a reliable example of a
> person who can flatten the bowl of a spoon, but then I haven't heard
> much about failure to do so, either.
>
> Besides, the ability to tap into potential everyone has, but nobody uses
> or seems able to use, is itself arguably a super-power.
>
Until it becomes common-place, such as the ability to do mathematics, or
predict eclipses. Is Renshaw-ing a super power? Ask the gunners who
trained on the target recognition technique in World War II.
> > Consider also those karate masters who
> > smash through layers of brick. "Mind over matter"?
>
> Years of conditioning to develop extreme toughness in the flesh that
> makes contact, including major increases in bone density. If you
> suddenly had a brain-writing device write into your head the complete
> knowledge and skill of the world's greatest masters of karate, you
> wouldn't be able to do it. Instead, you'd instantly learn not to even try.
>
> > Make love better? Well, she's trained as a doxy. Anyone of your
> > daughters with the proper training--kept away from their mothers,
> > according to one of Heinlein's bon mots, probably can equal Friday.
> > Experience love? Not quite. She's a slave.
>
> I'd say she is an EX-slave, as she was explicitly freed well before the
> story begins, but with a slave's conditioning still weighing down her
> soul, in a society that considers her sub-human. Pretty bad, but no
> longer a slave per-se. She serves "ol' Kettle Belly" out of loyalty, not
> slavery. The conditioning doesn't make her a slave anymore; it makes her
> an emotional wreck with low self-esteem.
>
The distinction isn't a noticeable difference in her, until after time
passes she grows away from it. She's been conditioned. She stays
conditioned for a time.
> It is true that she is desperately searching for people to make into her
> "family", that her loyalty is easily bought by the worthy and unworthy
> alike, and that her low self-esteem causes her to place almost all
> others above herself, but I don't consider that to be truly slavery.
> There are lots of people like this in the world, but very few of them
> are considered truly slaves because of it. Emotionally dependent,
> perhaps, but not slaves.
>
Try it, perhaps you'll like it; and then you can tell me if the
difference is significant. Remember the fox Woodie finds with a broken
leg, heals and raises, and then tries to release?
Some people think the world is flat. I have little sympathy for
reasoning that adopts that position as arguably valid for anyone.
> This is a large part of where this common
> criticism of Heinlein comes from. Add in the few characters who arguably
> are "super-human" (Friday is physically, as she can be clearly
> identified as an AP by an expert just from being observed in combat),
> and they see this as an overarching pattern.
>
No, they search for a ground to criticize and see vague similarity as
identity. A critic is supposed to be able to think clearly and express
distinctions where present, not adopt, unthinkingly, invalid positions
because they suit his biases.
> >> Fighting to hold back the forces of evil is a mysterious organization
> >> controlled entirely by the iron will of "the Old Man," Friday's crusty
> >> "Boss," Hartley Baldwin. Friday, despite her mental powers, which dwarf
> >> those of the most advanced computer network of this supertechnological
> >> future, never discovers this man's true identity.
> >
> > I didn't notice her search to do so--did any of you? Dorothy's Straw Man
> > isn't the only person here that needs a brain.
>
> No, she never tried to find out. She didn't care who he was, except that
> he was Mr. Two-Canes, the man who freed her, became the closest thing to
> a father she would ever have, and thus earned her unwavering loyalty.
Just as Pangloss had Candide's loyalty and Crusoe had Friday's. The
difference is Crusoe had Friday's until death, when Crusoe ordered him
to draw fire of the savages, in the Further Adventures (DeFoe's sequel),
and Candide junked his reliance in Pangloss once he learned how foolish
it was. In Toowoomba, Marjorie doesn't tend Kettle Belly's garden any
more, she tends her own. She's left the caring for the other garden,
that inhabited by "supermen," to Rhonda Wainwright, who may be better
qualified by both temperament and ancestry, if she's intended by
Heinlein as a descendant of Odd John Wainwright.
David M. Silver
Chris Zakes <dont...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you perhaps conflating this with Anderson's "Operation Chaos"?
>
Quite so.
>
> >No men or women of steel up there. One old lady who turns out to be a
> >white witch, however, but she hardly wears tights with an emblem on
> >breast. "Wouldn't be prudent ..." in her community where she passes and
> >avoids dunking and the stocks as a nice old lady.
>
> Wait a minute. Magic is common and accepted in that universe. Why
> would Mrs. Jennings need to "pass" to avoid dunking or the stocks?
Give me a better explanation for why she does, then? Maybe generations
of conditioning about "suffer not a witch to live" still affects her and
those of her craft.
Joe Bednorz
<<ag.plusone-D3CAF...@individual.net>>:
>Bruce wrote an early work, perhaps originally his dissertation, on
>nineteenth century SF, _Future Perfect: American SF of the 19th
>Century--An Anthology_, that involves a lot of basement inventors, among
>other things, so he's a little strange on the subject of basement
>inventors, who feature so prominently in nineteenth century fantasies
>and SF. You might say Bruce is still caught up in 'Tom Swift and His
>Electric Grandmother.' Bruce doesn't think US inventions from the
>basement stand up next to Stalin's inspired proofs of actual well-known
>first invention by Soviet or Russian scientists of such items as the
>telephone, telegram, or, probably for that matter, Shakespeare in the
>original Klingon.
>
"Curtis Pitts: The Greatest Cold War Hero You Never Heard Of, or
An American Crop Duster Sends Some Soviet Engineers to the Gulag"
By John Ross
<http://www.john-ross.net/curtis.htm>
--
Links to Gigabytes of free books on line, emphasis on SF:
<http://www.mindspring.com/~jbednorz/Free/>
All the Best,
Joe Bednorz
David M. Silver
Joe Bednorz <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Mar 2007 19:21:10 -0800, David M. Silver wrote in
> <<ag.plusone-D3CAF...@individual.net>>:
>
> >Bruce wrote an early work, perhaps originally his dissertation, on
> >nineteenth century SF, _Future Perfect: American SF of the 19th
> >Century--An Anthology_, that involves a lot of basement inventors, among
> >other things, so he's a little strange on the subject of basement
> >inventors, who feature so prominently in nineteenth century fantasies
> >and SF. You might say Bruce is still caught up in 'Tom Swift and His
> >Electric Grandmother.' Bruce doesn't think US inventions from the
> >basement stand up next to Stalin's inspired proofs of actual well-known
> >first invention by Soviet or Russian scientists of such items as the
> >telephone, telegram, or, probably for that matter, Shakespeare in the
> >original Klingon.
> >
>
>
>
> "Curtis Pitts: The Greatest Cold War Hero You Never Heard Of, or
> An American Crop Duster Sends Some Soviet Engineers to the Gulag"
> By John Ross
>
> <http://www.john-ross.net/curtis.htm>
Heh!
Filksinger
> In article <YcZIh.11588$Jl....@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
>
>>>> Like most of Mr. Heinlein's heroes, Friday is a superbeing.
>>> Only to the delusional critic: In the beginning, there was "Dr." Pinero,
>>> graduate of a no where diploma mill in "Life-Line," who had one good
>>> idea--maybe a not so good idea--because it soon got him killed; there
>>> followed a dirt-poor hillbilly enrolled in a depression-era work
>>> training program, who happens to have math skills beyond most
>>> hillbillies which saves a few peoples' lives in "Misfit"
>> Arguably a "super-human" genius, as he was described as having worked
>> out the rules for physics from Newton to Einstein in a matter of hours
>> given nothing but the starting points.
>>
>
> Not exactly, after an hour he had "jumped into the idea of relativity
> and non-rectilinear continium and was beginning to pour forth ideas
> faster than he could talk." I'd question whether the examiner hadn't
> influenced the derivation of these theories by suggestions inherent in
> the nature of questions asked--how could the questioner using only a
> physics textbook for a guide help but ask leading questions? Granted,
> he's got an intuitive grasp of the relationship of numbers; but I'd
> hardly claim an independent derivation based on that test described
> without a full transcript.
It might have been too long since I read it, and, truthfully, I agree
with your assessment regardless. He was influenced by how the
information was given to him. But I believe it was possible to claim
that this was the case from the description in the text.
> And, what's a super-human genius that a plain genius isn't? 160 on the
> Binot or some other scale rather than 135? There are many humans that
> have been rated as high as 160. A super-being is something a little bit
> more than a simple human genius--we got a lot of those, some of them
> reading this newsgroup.
>
> Dr. Koshchei or Jerry Farnsworth is a super-being. Valentine Michael
> Smith (if you take the view he's the archangel on assignment) is a
> super-being. Hoag is a super-being. The rest are nothing more than
> bright, ranging up to quite bright humans.
That is *your* definition of a super-being. I submit that the usage by
the critic in question clearly shows his definition is different.
Otherwise, he couldn't possibly have mistaken Friday for one, as she is
not remotely a super-being by the standard you put forth.
Your definition of "super-being" categorically denies that Friday is
one. The critic's definition clearly does not. You could argue that your
definition is better, but arguing that Friday isn't a "super-being"
because she doesn't meet your definition is pretty pointless when his
definition isn't the same. Its true, but what does that have to do with
what he is saying?
Unless your point is that his *definition* is wrong-headed, then arguing
that he is wrong because Friday doesn't meet *your* definition of
"super-being" serves no useful purpose. It is no better than arguing
that some law does or doesn't infringe on "freedoms" when you don't even
agree on what "freedoms" are. Pointless.
However, to make myself clear, I do not believe that his definition,
despite the impression I may have given below, is that competence alone
qualifies you for "super-being" status. I simply think that he conflates
the two unconsciously when he makes the claim that most Heinlein heroes
are "super-beings".
No, but Daniel Webster didn't offer to go up against Satan one-on-one in
a test of sheer power, nor do saints as a rule. Webster's contest was
limited to a court of law, albeit a highly biased one, and saint's
contests are limited to maintaining their own morality and belief in God
in the face of temptation.
It does appear that she, however, did offer to go up against Satan
one-on-one in a test of sheer power, and he backed down. Maybe that
isn't what she was saying. Maybe he was severely limited by some
restrictions of which we are unaware. Maybe her maintaining her morality
in a saint-like fashion against his temptations gives her the personal
support of God Almighty. Or maybe his backing down was about the same as
my refusing to battle a kitten.
However, in my opinion, none of this was said or clearly implied. It
appeared to me that she offered to go toe-to-toe with him in a duel of
sheer power, and he preferred not to out of respect for what it would
cost him to win, at the very least. This might not make her a being
equal to Satan or an angel, but it implies an awful lot of power.
Is it? The critic isn't arguing about what defines a "super-being", he
is applying his definition to Friday. Arguing that this definition is
wrong doesn't tell us whether or not any of his observations are wrong.
If I defined the word "apple" to mean "an orange fruit with a thick rind
grown in California and Florida", telling people that this wasn't what
an apple was doesn't tell anyone whether or not my observations about
oranges are true. It only means I am using the wrong word.
If your definition was the definition being used by the critic, then I
would agree that Friday was not a "super-being", though I do not believe
that that is a better definition than the critic appears to use. By that
reasoning, I could somehow become the full equivalent of God Almighty,
omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, and yet not be a
"super-being" because my parents were human, and because I, too, once was.
Regardless, the quality of your definition doesn't matter, as that isn't
the definition *he* used. To use a different definition and declare him
wrong because Friday doesn't match *your* definition of a "super-being"
isn't fair.
Now, if you want to argue that his *definition* is a bad one, well,
that's a different matter. Or, if you want to argue that even by his
definition most Heinlein characters aren't "super-beings", then I would
definitely agree with that, unless his definition is pretty wacked-out.
Oh, agreed, agreed.
However, while that is true, I'm not certain that he can be fairly said
to have done so. I don't believe he critiqued the book based upon the
cover blurb; I believe that he came to the conclusion that the cover
blurb was accurate, possibly because he was influenced by the cover
blurb to think so.
And I'm not certain he was truly wrong, though I think that is overdoing
it a bit. I would argue that the only part of that section you quoted
above that was questionable was the "make love" part. She *was*
engineered from the finest genes, according to Kettle Belly. She was a
secret courier. The world was chaotically ferocious and full of
intrigue. She could think better than normal humans according to Kettle
Belly. She clearly fought better than "normal people", considering that
even a team of prepared trained assailants who struck from ambush still
lost two or three members (I forget which) trying to take her alive.
The only part we don't know is true is the "makes love better", as the
only evidence we have is A) gallant statements by males who have bedded
her, and B) the suggestion that the men in her S-group preferred her bed
to the bed of at least one other woman in the S-group. I will admit that
this casts doubt on this claim, but I could see concluding that the
entire paragraph was an accurate description.
>>> She's genetically engineered all right--from ordinary human
>>> beings. She has a certain intuitive ability to correlate data, a spark
>>> that awakens her at night with inspiration stemming by her studies using
>>> a computer system that reminds us of today's web, but is her intuition
>>> any better than that of any bright man or woman?
>> Absolutely it is better. Kettle Belly tells us he has a team of experts
>> examining that data, and based upon her *initial* evaluation, he speeds
>> up what has to be a difficult and expensive operation by a significant
>> margin, when said initial evaluation disagrees with his team of highly
>> trained, and surely bright, experts. He obviously places extraordinarily
>> high faith in her "intuition".
>
> And Kettle Belly we know is never wrong and never lies--right?
I'm sure he does. But I can't imagine why you would think that he was
doing so here.
Why take Friday, tell her to do research using an apparently expensive
data connection, give her special guidance on what to research, ask for
her opinion out of the blue on a subject, then lie about thinking she
might be right? Kettle Belly could certainly lie, but he didn't seem the
type to play silly mind games for no point, and he certainly doesn't
seem the type to waste valuable resources without expectation of
reasonable return. What would be his purpose in giving Friday this task,
other than what he claims, and what is the point in lying to Friday
about the real purpose or his opinion of her results?
> "Intuition" is like lightning. It strikes where it strikes, sometimes
> when a simple apple falls on one's head, sometimes elsewhen. The fact
> she has intuition doesn't make her a super-being any more than Zebbie's
> precognitions of danger.
"Intuition", despite what most people seem to think, is not a psychic
"out of the blue" strike of sudden knowledge. It is one's subconscious
working out answers based upon what you know, and as such is much like
any other form of genius, just partially or fully outside your
awareness. Kettle Belly clearly showed that he expected that he could
push her to study certain things, give her time and resources to do the
research, then demand answers to extremely complex problems and have
something worthwhile come out. He seemed to find it to be a fairly
clear-cut thing to make her produce according to a set plan, and
certainly wasn't relying on a "lighting strike" of knowledge to just
happen to hit her.
Now, you could argue that this doesn't make her a "super-being", and by
your definition, you are right. Whether or not it does, in full or in
part, by the critic's definition is another matter.
>>> Who sez so? She's
>>> stronger and faster--a real Lindsay Wagner of her time; but who sez her
>>> capabilities aren't innate in any human? Lindsay's character had bionic
>>> limbs, but what are they? Bending a spoon? Parlor trick. You have the
>>> strength. Your fingers just won't stand up to the pain. Pick up a
>>> teaspoon with two sets of vice grip pliers. Pick one your wife didn't
>>> inherit from great-grandma. You can do what she did. You really don't
>>> need the leverage the pliers give you, what you need are Fingers of
>>> Steel. Call, call for Clark Kent.
>> Can you offer proof of this claim? I have serious doubts that it can be
>> done without the leverage by the average person, but I would be
>> interested in knowing the facts.
>
> I haven't destroyed one of my wife's, ever, or my mother's spoons in
> years, and don't intend to start doing so again at this late day; but it
> can be done--I've reshaped the bowl shaped end of spoons in the past
> using vice grips and like tools, from about age twelve on when I decided
> to cast my own metal soldiers and other objects and needed spouted
> containers to pour lead into molds. [I suppose I could have used one of
> mom's very precious and fine heirloom tea spoons which were narrow
> enough to use the pointy end as a spout, but she might have broken my
> little butt for doing it--and I wasn't suicidal as a child.] There are
> spoons and spoons. I suggest, if you wish to try it out, you pick a
> spoon with a lot of silver or copper in it and that isn't industrial
> weight stainless steel flatwear, unless you have all day.
How did you eliminate leverage from the equation? If you used vice
grips, then you automatically had significantly improved leverage. It is
difficult to hold vice grips so as to avoid the extra leverage, and
doing so would place your thumbs in such a position as to negate the
advantage of using the vice grips. Just about any way you might hold
them gives you a much greater advantage than you might think, and it has
little to do with reducing pain.
>> I don't believe just having
>> pain-insensitive thumbs will do the job. I've heard years of rumors
>> about what people who don't feel pain can supposedly do, but they very
>> frequently aren't true. I have never heard of a reliable example of a
>> person who can flatten the bowl of a spoon, but then I haven't heard
>> much about failure to do so, either.
>>
>> Besides, the ability to tap into potential everyone has, but nobody uses
>> or seems able to use, is itself arguably a super-power.
>>
>
> Until it becomes common-place, such as the ability to do mathematics, or
> predict eclipses. Is Renshaw-ing a super power? Ask the gunners who
> trained on the target recognition technique in World War II.
As far as Renshaw-ing goes, that could depend upon whether or not it
actually worked or could work as well as Heinlein described, which is
subject to some controversy. However, that isn't really relevant.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, I knew so much about esoteric martial
arts techniques that I could catch bullets with my unaided teeth, put my
hands directly through three feet of solid concrete, and turn invisible.
Suppose, further, that anybody who knew enough and trained enough
could do the same. I submit that, by most standards, I would qualify as
"super", even though my "super" powers were within human limits.
Or, suppose every human has the potential to become powerful and capable
on the level of Jerry Farnsworth, just by knowing how. All they needed
was to be told the secret, and *poof*, they have the power of gods. Does
that suddenly make Jerry *not* a "super-being"?
I submit that what is or is not "super" is not so easily dismissed or
defined. So long as you and this critic use different definitions, then
he can claim Friday is a "super-being", you can claim she isn't, and you
are both right, each according to the definition you have chosen.
>>> Consider also those karate masters who
>>> smash through layers of brick. "Mind over matter"?
>> Years of conditioning to develop extreme toughness in the flesh that
>> makes contact, including major increases in bone density. If you
>> suddenly had a brain-writing device write into your head the complete
>> knowledge and skill of the world's greatest masters of karate, you
>> wouldn't be able to do it. Instead, you'd instantly learn not to even try.
>>
>>> Make love better? Well, she's trained as a doxy. Anyone of your
>>> daughters with the proper training--kept away from their mothers,
>>> according to one of Heinlein's bon mots, probably can equal Friday.
>>> Experience love? Not quite. She's a slave.
>> I'd say she is an EX-slave, as she was explicitly freed well before the
>> story begins, but with a slave's conditioning still weighing down her
>> soul, in a society that considers her sub-human. Pretty bad, but no
>> longer a slave per-se. She serves "ol' Kettle Belly" out of loyalty, not
>> slavery. The conditioning doesn't make her a slave anymore; it makes her
>> an emotional wreck with low self-esteem.
>>
>
> The distinction isn't a noticeable difference in her, until after time
> passes she grows away from it. She's been conditioned. She stays
> conditioned for a time.
I'm not entirely certain that she is bound enough by it to meet my
definition of slave by the time of the story, but as I note below, I
might be willing to admit that you have a point.
>> It is true that she is desperately searching for people to make into her
>> "family", that her loyalty is easily bought by the worthy and unworthy
>> alike, and that her low self-esteem causes her to place almost all
>> others above herself, but I don't consider that to be truly slavery.
>> There are lots of people like this in the world, but very few of them
>> are considered truly slaves because of it. Emotionally dependent,
>> perhaps, but not slaves.
>>
>
> Try it, perhaps you'll like it; and then you can tell me if the
> difference is significant. Remember the fox Woodie finds with a broken
> leg, heals and raises, and then tries to release?
Been there, done that, to a degree that I don't like to think about,
though probably less so than Friday. Not willing to go into it. But,
yes, I would consider it different.
At what point does "eager to please" or "attaches loyalty readily"
change to "willing slave"? Maybe your point of change from one to the
other is different than mine, but by mine, Friday was a bit short of
being a true slave because of it.
Or maybe not. I have been thinking of her reactions to those she
attaches to later in the story, and forgetting about how she reacted to
George's accepting her despite knowing the truth about her. At first,
she might still have been a slave by conditioning, but I think she was,
though not well, not nearly that far gone by Kettle Belly's death, or
she would have tried harder to follow her girlfriend into battle a short
while later.
But that isn't what I was suggesting. I was suggesting that his
incompetence colors his view of Heinlein's heroes, not that this
constituted a valid definition.
>> This is a large part of where this common
>> criticism of Heinlein comes from. Add in the few characters who arguably
>> are "super-human" (Friday is physically, as she can be clearly
>> identified as an AP by an expert just from being observed in combat),
>> and they see this as an overarching pattern.
>>
>
> No, they search for a ground to criticize and see vague similarity as
> identity. A critic is supposed to be able to think clearly and express
> distinctions where present, not adopt, unthinkingly, invalid positions
> because they suit his biases.
I wasn't suggesting that this was a *reasonable* position, by any means.
I was describing how they got there, not suggesting that it was in any
way not irrational, petty, and foolish.
>>>> Fighting to hold back the forces of evil is a mysterious organization
>>>> controlled entirely by the iron will of "the Old Man," Friday's crusty
>>>> "Boss," Hartley Baldwin. Friday, despite her mental powers, which dwarf
>>>> those of the most advanced computer network of this supertechnological
>>>> future, never discovers this man's true identity.
>>> I didn't notice her search to do so--did any of you? Dorothy's Straw Man
>>> isn't the only person here that needs a brain.
>> No, she never tried to find out. She didn't care who he was, except that
>> he was Mr. Two-Canes, the man who freed her, became the closest thing to
>> a father she would ever have, and thus earned her unwavering loyalty.
>
> Just as Pangloss had Candide's loyalty and Crusoe had Friday's. The
> difference is Crusoe had Friday's until death, when Crusoe ordered him
> to draw fire of the savages, in the Further Adventures (DeFoe's sequel),
> and Candide junked his reliance in Pangloss once he learned how foolish
> it was. In Toowoomba, Marjorie doesn't tend Kettle Belly's garden any
> more, she tends her own. She's left the caring for the other garden,
> that inhabited by "supermen," to Rhonda Wainwright, who may be better
> qualified by both temperament and ancestry, if she's intended by
> Heinlein as a descendant of Odd John Wainwright.
Friday, in the end, became her own person and went on to live her own
life. However, I'm not certain that Kettle Belly didn't have her
loyalty, even then. The two are not mutually exclusive. As he didn't
charge her with continuing his quest, and she didn't have the resources
to do so even if he had, she could go on with her life, no longer
serving him, without giving up that loyalty.
Besides, giving what he said to her near the end, both in life and in
his final letter, I'd say that the greatest loyalty she could show him
and his last wishes was to accept her humanity and live her own life.
This is, in essence, what he told her to do in the end, is it not?
Filksinger
> In article <nap8v25n2f0tbisve...@4ax.com>,
> Chris Zakes <dont...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Are you perhaps conflating this with Anderson's "Operation Chaos"?
>>
> Quite so.
You know, I knew the story, thought of it, but until this was actually
said, I simply could not remember that the final battle in that story
was to go after the protagonist's child. I kept dismissing Operation
Chaos without properly considering the question, and wondering why I
couldn't remember the correct story. Doh!
>>> No men or women of steel up there. One old lady who turns out to be a
>>> white witch, however, but she hardly wears tights with an emblem on
>>> breast. "Wouldn't be prudent ..." in her community where she passes and
>>> avoids dunking and the stocks as a nice old lady.
>> Wait a minute. Magic is common and accepted in that universe. Why
>> would Mrs. Jennings need to "pass" to avoid dunking or the stocks?
>
> Give me a better explanation for why she does, then? Maybe generations
> of conditioning about "suffer not a witch to live" still affects her and
> those of her craft.
According to the book, she has no degree, and never bothered with a
license. Thus, she is like a highly-skilled herbalist and healer who
doesn't admit to practicing medicine, because she isn't technically a
doctor. She doesn't admit to practicing magic for the same reason I
wouldn't admit it if I took money to give people advice on the law.
David M. Silver
Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
Sounds possible, but, it's funny, my mental recollections of reading are
until I read about Anderson's Ginny Greylock in the "Operations" novels
I don't know licensed female witches actually exist in this magic
universe. I'll have to reread it.
Don't believe I've read them in at least four or five years, much longer
ago than the two Anderson novels--looking I see it's nearly six
<http://www.heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/AOL_04-13-2000.html>; and
the last time I read them Poul was still alive--before the chat we had
with him and Karen about them, arguing a reread for all of them
together.
David M. Silver
Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
> >>>> Like most of Mr. Heinlein's heroes, Friday is a superbeing.
Franklin picked the word "super-being"--he didn't coin it, even if he
didn't spell it in a way that passes my spell checker. What I am using
is not *my* definition.
When used with a classificatory division (e.g., with "being," or
"human") the suffix "super-" means "of a higher kind." The
classificatory division here is between "humans" and other beings.
Oxford American Dictionaries, Machintosh version 1.01.
That means two approaches to definition are valid. Quickly and directly,
since "human" is not equal to "of a higher kind" it, therefore, cannot
be equal to "super-being." Thus, if it's human, as Marjorie Baldwin is,
then it cannot be a "super-being." Q.E.D. The other approach is to
define beings as either "human" or "of a higher kind" than human. List
the higher kinds we know about (or think we know): gods, angels, devils
(fallen angels), and aliens from other universes possessing powers to a
great or extreme degree greater than humans. List equivalent kinds to
humans we postulate: other species of other planets or our own of
closely or even roughly equal powers. List others: other species we know
or think of as possessing powers (not merely, I remind you, "knowledge")
to a great or extreme degree lesser than humans--e.g., dogs although I
better not bet on cats.
Koshchei, Farnsworth, Jerry's brother with the Yiddish accent, and Hoag
are plainly super-beings. The Glaroom is a super-being--absent some
other explanation for his powers that humans cannot emulate--and the
fact he's got his own section in both Stranger and Job indicates that
there is no human equivalent or possible usage of his power. Foster and
Digby, having been promoted after death to angelic powers, are also
"super-beings." Ditto the angels encountered in Job:ACOJ. There are the
Jockaira (or Zhacheria, as some prefer) and their gods that Slayton Ford
encountered. The Jocks aren't but those gods, their Masters, may or may
not be super-beings, bearing in mind Lazarus' plans to check back on
them and ask them what they can do that he, with advanced knowledge,
cannot. Their powers may simply fall into knowledge a human may someday
employ (bearing in mind that Heinlein posits some humans may naturally
employ telepathy); just as the Little People's knowledge does fall
therein. The Little People are _not_ super-beings, having roughly equal
powers since we can use their math and biology once it is explained. The
Puppet Masters are not super-beings, any more than the Jock's 'gods' may
not be. Lummox's race is not, even though they possess greater science
and swing a much bigger club. The Martian Old Ones may be super-beings,
but, cf. Michael, if Michael is viewed as a human, and the disciples he
teaches who reach the Ninth Circle, Jill, Ardent, etc., then their
powers may be matched or used by humans, and, thus, they may not be
super-beings. Michael however comes rather close to super-being by
virtue of his role, Christ figure, Filius Dei, a super-being by
definition. Witches and wizards, however named, are not super-beings as
they simply use skills, or as Her Wizzy puts it, mathematics that we
non-instructed do not yet understand. They are humans. Whether the
undine in Magic Inc. is using a power that humans can use is debatable,
and so, therefore, is whether it is a super-being.
Finally, none of these (except Michael himself) are even loosely
speaking "Mr. Heinlein's heroes." Jerry comes the closest, hazarding
Koshchei's displeasure to cure an injured volitional; and a tour with
the Glaroom for that act of noblesse oblige by a super-being seems a
quite serious punishment.
So, yes, I argue that the definitional error by Franklin is so serious
that it renders his critique meaningless by deliberately blurring
distinctions between human and super-being to little more than nothing.
He could blur the terms "good" and "bad" and do no less damage. The Red
Queen is wrong in my view. Words don't mean what she decrees. In my view
Franklin's done so deliberately, deliberately and deceitfully
"wrong-headed," to use your word, as an illegitimate argument technique,
so much so that his review serves no useful purpose except to confuse
and confound discussion, a form of deceit. Aristotle condemned this,
"fraudulent confusion of the general and particular," or that the
"improbable is probable," as the last of his ten invalid forms of
argument in his _Rhetoric_. The technique is that old.
[snip]
--
TheBookman
> "David M. Silver" wrote:
>
>> In article <ipednbU88fC2i2nY...@bresnan.com>,
>> "TreetopAngel" <treeto...@bresnan.net> wrote:
>>
>>> > I can't believe there were no bites on this review. Talk about a
>>> > target
>>> > rich environment, the only explanation I can think of is everyone's
>>> > given up reading for Lent.
>>> >
>>>
>>> Actually, I gave it the same interest and notice that I give any
>>> "professional" critic or reviewer...none.
>>>
>>
>> There's a pretty harsh assessment there, Elizabeth, that I could take
>> rather poorly. Some of us read and write here to talk about Heinlein,
>> and that includes the reaction he's provoked over the years from
>> "professional" critics and reviewers. It is a matter of some concern.
>
> I find most "professional" critics and reviewers to be narrow minded and
> vindictive. I frequently find myself at a loss for words and boiling
> with anger over their statements. The most I can say and still remain in
> polite company is "I disagree" and leave it at that.
For all of me, use the words you need.
>
>>
>>> I'd much rather read the comments from friends and family.
>>
>> If I knew where alt.friends&family was located I'd be tempted to point
>> you there after the above comment, if I took it poorly.
>
> I thought I had found a few friends and those I would like to consider
> family here...
Have faith, my dear. I'm still here, FWIW.
>
> I guess I'm going to take this poorly.
No comment.
Hope all is well on your homefront.
Regards,
Rtb
<lazy, and still without .sig>
Chris Zakes
caused "David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> to write:
>In article <nap8v25n2f0tbisve...@4ax.com>,
> Chris Zakes <dont...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Are you perhaps conflating this with Anderson's "Operation Chaos"?
>>
>Quite so.
>
>>
>> >No men or women of steel up there. One old lady who turns out to be a
>> >white witch, however, but she hardly wears tights with an emblem on
>> >breast. "Wouldn't be prudent ..." in her community where she passes and
>> >avoids dunking and the stocks as a nice old lady.
>>
>> Wait a minute. Magic is common and accepted in that universe. Why
>> would Mrs. Jennings need to "pass" to avoid dunking or the stocks?
>
>Give me a better explanation for why she does, then? Maybe generations
>of conditioning about "suffer not a witch to live" still affects her and
>those of her craft.
That seems improbable in a world where magicians get degrees from
Harvard and advertise in the Yellow Pages. She *is* known as a
fortuneteller, but considering that she's "ninety years older than
Santa Claus" it's far more likely that she's mostly retired and only
does serious magic under special circumstances.
Chris Zakes
caused "David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> to write:
>In article <YcZIh.11588$Jl....@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
(snip)
>> I think you are confusing another story with "Magic, Inc." The
>> protagonist in "Magic, Inc." was a businessman, not a father (so far as
>> we are told), and goes to the white witch for help in protecting himself
>> and his business from magic-enabled thuggery. The white witch in
>> question was "passing", not to avoid the dunking stool, but because she
>> didn't have a license.
>>
>
>Yes, of course. I've conflated it with Poul Anderson's _Operation Chaos_
>stories, deliberately written in the Magic Inc. universe.
But *is* it the same universe? Heinlein's version didn't have things
like the Caliphate or the Johannine Church. While Heinlein mentions
magic carpets, the only time someone rides a broomstick is when they
go into the hell universe In Anderson's version, brooms are very
common (it may also be worth pointing out that in Heinlein's version
the broom flies bristles-first, while in Anderson's they fly
handle-first.)
It's certainly a similar universe, just as the "Lord Darcy" stories
are in a similar universe, but I'm not sure it's the same.
David M. Silver
Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
> David M. Silver wrote:
[snip]
> >> GENIUS AND SUPERGENIUS
> >> Published: July 4, 1982, NY Times Review of Books
> >> FRIDAY By Robert A. Heinlein. 368 pp. New York: Holt, Rinehart &
> >> Winston. $14.95. By H.BRUCE FRANKLIN
[snip]
> >> Like most of Mr. Heinlein's heroes, Friday is a superbeing.
> >
[snip]
>
> Well, it was approximately what was written on the cover at one point,
> so, right or wrong, it isn't his mistake. His mistake is in buying that
> the cover blurb tells him the inner secrets of the book.
>
By the way, I took your word for it; but a glance at it shows neither
the jacket cover nor flyleaves of the Holt, Rinehart & Winston hard
cover, which listed a price of $14.95, which I still own, bears the word
"super" or "super"-anything, David. Presumably, he reviewed a copy of
the edition his review cites? I don't happen to have a copy of the
soft-cover, assuming one existed on July 4, 1982, so I can't tell what
drivel may have been printed on it.
[snip]
>
> He does seem to have a few axes to grind, doesn't he?
I like the phrase "increasingly monotonic message" applied to Franklin's
works. The _Essential Joseph Stalin_ is also an apt title.
Robert A. Woodward
"David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
> In article <YcZIh.11588$Jl....@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
>
> > David M. Silver wrote:
> [snip]
> > >> GENIUS AND SUPERGENIUS
> > >> Published: July 4, 1982, NY Times Review of Books
> > >> FRIDAY By Robert A. Heinlein. 368 pp. New York: Holt, Rinehart &
> > >> Winston. $14.95. By H.BRUCE FRANKLIN
> [snip]
> > >> Like most of Mr. Heinlein's heroes, Friday is a superbeing.
> > >
> [snip]
> >
> > Well, it was approximately what was written on the cover at one point,
> > so, right or wrong, it isn't his mistake. His mistake is in buying that
> > the cover blurb tells him the inner secrets of the book.
> >
>
> By the way, I took your word for it; but a glance at it shows neither
> the jacket cover nor flyleaves of the Holt, Rinehart & Winston hard
> cover, which listed a price of $14.95, which I still own, bears the word
> "super" or "super"-anything, David. Presumably, he reviewed a copy of
> the edition his review cites? I don't happen to have a copy of the
> soft-cover, assuming one existed on July 4, 1982, so I can't tell what
> drivel may have been printed on it.
>
The Del Rey paperback (dated Aug 1983) has a review quote on the
back cover that refers to Friday as a superbeing, care to guess
whose review they were quoting?
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>
David M. Silver
David M. Silver
"Robert A. Woodward" <robe...@drizzle.com> wrote:
Last two (of three) guesses don't count, right?
Filksinger
> In article <qL7Jh.126522$_73.5...@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
>
>>>>>> Like most of Mr. Heinlein's heroes, Friday is a superbeing.
>
> Franklin picked the word "super-being"--he didn't coin it, even if he
> didn't spell it in a way that passes my spell checker. What I am using
> is not *my* definition.
You didn't create it, but you chose it. A quick perusal of the term's
usage, definitions, and related terms such as "superman" clearly show
that there is more than one definition of what a "super-being" is. I
found probably *more* modern usage that resembles his definition than
yours, including, obviously, the cover blurb for the book itself.
> When used with a classificatory division (e.g., with "being," or
> "human") the suffix "super-" means "of a higher kind." The
> classificatory division here is between "humans" and other beings.
> Oxford American Dictionaries, Machintosh version 1.01.
From the full OED Online via my library, under "super-" : "c. In recent
(often nonce) formations after SUPERMAN, used to designate a person,
animal, or thing which markedly surpasses all others, or the generality,
of its class: e.g. {sm}super-being".
Using this definition, Friday arguably *is* a super-being, as were some
other clearly human Heinlein characters, including pretty much every one
we argued about. They all markedly surpassed the generality of their
class, at least, and Lazarus, for example, "markedly surpasses all others".
And, as best I can tell, in modern usage, this definition is at least as
common, and probably more common, than yours.
I believe that the technique of using the same words as your opponent,
but using definitions which are different, and implying that your
opponent is wrong because his claims don't match the definition supplied
by you is, itself, at least as old. :)
Your view of the term "super-beings" as a term meaning only beings like
angels, devils, and gods, or their equivalent may be a common usage with
a long history, but it is hardly the only one. You yourself pointed out
some of the history of the alternate view in science fiction and philosophy.
Further, own investigation into current usage of the term leads me to
believe that, in modern usage, his usage is more common. Aside from the
definition in the OED Online, one obvious example is to search for
"super-being" on Wikipedia, and you will find it leads, not to angels,
devils, and other non-human beings that are beyond human, but to
superheroes, who are, with rare exceptions, definitely not
"super-beings" by your definition. Frankly, I think that redirect is
screwed up big time, but it does help show what sort of usage is common
today.
Now, if you want to claim that his definition isn't a good one, that it
is so limited in its extent beyond simply "human" as to mean nothing,
then on that you might be right. I, personally, would probably not refer
to Friday as a "super-being". This is a solid and valid point.
However, much of your prior argument used the different definition *as
if he was also using it*, and as if you could thus prove him "wrong" by
showing that *your* definition didn't match *his* claim. This was, IMHO,
unfair, and completely unnecessary, as his claim failed when *his*
definition itself didn't match the facts. He was dead wrong without the
switch.
That debating tactic, IMHO, simply does not work well. I've seen this
tactic used many times in arguments and debates, and in my opinion it
never adds anything useful to the discussion, except to "win" an
argument. In other words, it just makes the other person *appear* wrong,
but doesn't show anything worthwhile about their claims. Useful in cases
when "winning" is itself important (for example, a lawyer would find it
very useful :) ), but not necessary here.
This guy's works, including this review, are just too screwed up to
require such tactics. YMMV, of course.
--
Filksinger
> In article <YcZIh.11588$Jl....@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
>
>> David M. Silver wrote:
> [snip]
>>>> GENIUS AND SUPERGENIUS
>>>> Published: July 4, 1982, NY Times Review of Books
>>>> FRIDAY By Robert A. Heinlein. 368 pp. New York: Holt, Rinehart &
>>>> Winston. $14.95. By H.BRUCE FRANKLIN
> [snip]
>>>> Like most of Mr. Heinlein's heroes, Friday is a superbeing.
> [snip]
>> Well, it was approximately what was written on the cover at one point,
>> so, right or wrong, it isn't his mistake. His mistake is in buying that
>> the cover blurb tells him the inner secrets of the book.
>>
>
> By the way, I took your word for it; but a glance at it shows neither
> the jacket cover nor flyleaves of the Holt, Rinehart & Winston hard
> cover, which listed a price of $14.95, which I still own, bears the word
> "super" or "super"-anything, David. Presumably, he reviewed a copy of
> the edition his review cites? I don't happen to have a copy of the
> soft-cover, assuming one existed on July 4, 1982, so I can't tell what
> drivel may have been printed on it.
I am afraid that I don't have a copy, and never did, of that particular
edition, most likely. The blurb on mine may well have come from this
particular author, as I owned a paperback edition that I am sure now
came later.
However, by the OED Online's definition of "super-being", Friday fits.
The remainder of that paragraph is, with the possible exception of
"makes love better", pretty much a statement of the facts of the book as
given. I'd still have to say that, while "super-being" isn't a term I
would use, it isn't *wrong*.
In fact, I would argue that the fault in it being brought into use here
is not this critic's, but Heinlein's himself. He's the one who used the
term "super-genius" in "Gulf", defined it, then brought it into /Friday/
and applied it, directly or indirectly, to Friday herself.
> [snip]
>> He does seem to have a few axes to grind, doesn't he?
>
> I like the phrase "increasingly monotonic message" applied to Franklin's
> works. The _Essential Joseph Stalin_ is also an apt title.
--
David M. Silver
Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
It seems to me established now, judging from Mr. Woodward's post, the
usage certainly comes from Franklin's own review, as quoted on the cover
Mr. Woodward has. Franklin can hardly have been misled by his own
review, so that excuse for his imprecision, weak as it had been conceded
to be, is gone.
> as I owned a paperback edition that I am sure now
> came later.
>
> However, by the OED Online's definition of "super-being", Friday fits.
> The remainder of that paragraph is, with the possible exception of
> "makes love better", pretty much a statement of the facts of the book as
> given. I'd still have to say that, while "super-being" isn't a term I
> would use, it isn't *wrong*.
>
Since I don't subscribe to the OED, its noting a third most-common usage
as you've elsewhere quoted isn't something I can check; but I don't
doubt it. A third most common usage is commonly a misusage slowly
creeping into the language until *common* misusage obviates the precise
former distinctions. Then, we need another word coined for those of us
who prefer precise choice of words--and supposedly precision is a
hallmark of an academic's writing. Do you happen to have the date OED
began to note this common misusage? Was it before or after 1982?
> In fact, I would argue that the fault in it being brought into use here
> is not this critic's, but Heinlein's himself. He's the one who used the
> term "super-genius" in "Gulf", defined it, then brought it into /Friday/
> and applied it, directly or indirectly, to Friday herself.
>
Your argument might be a little weak, actually, since I consider factual
precision to be a virtue of argument. In "Gulf," he put the word
"superman" or "supermen" five times in the mouth of Harley Baldwin in a
3-page conversation where Baldwin equates it with "homo novis" because,
so he sez, "Supermen are super-thinkers; anything else is a side issue."
"Gulf," from Assignment in Eternity, pp. 56-8 (Baen paperback). Now, I
quickly glanced over "Gulf" this morning, but I didn't see the word
"super-genius" anywhere in it; but I could be corrected by reference to
a page cite. That is, Heinlein neither uses nor defines that word in
"Gulf," so far as my quick review can tell.
"Supergenius" appears to be Franklin's own word--noting again the
unhyphenated version doesn't float by my spell-checker, coined for his
own review of _Friday_.
Let's look at the conversation in which Baldwin uses the terms
"supermen" and "superman." It's used after the "down-below" conversation
between Baldwin and Greene, after Greene's been forced down into the
priest's hole being told "You're covered and outnumbered. ... we'd just
have to kill you" if he doesn't go. Down there the films Baldwin
intercepted are destroyed (which means Joe will forever be an outlaw to
it because he can never return them to his agency) and Joe realizes he's
past the point of no return, he can't back out of his association with
Baldwin. That cellar priest's hole in the foundation of Baldwin's
headquarters could just as easily be a dungeon with bodies buried. After
time to let that point sink in, Baldwin continues the conversation
telling Greene he's the head of this particular branch of "supermen,"
self-styled; that he, Baldwin is, of course, a "superman"; and that he
thinks Greene might be a "superman" himself, "in a sloppy, ignorant,
fashion." Coercion and flattery. This recruiting technique, posing a
challenge to an insulted candidate, sounds to me much like what was done
to SS recruits at their academy in Bad Tolz in period 1937-45, until
Patton's troops drove past it--or for that matter, done in training by
any organization that claims elite status. We took over their academy
and used it for 7th Army headquarters and a few other things including
an NCO academy in 1960 when I attended it. Very swank post for an Army
school. Baldwin dangles the elite position and its challenges before
Joe--and Gail's attraction for him; and so the story goes on until Joe
and Gail die "for *all* their fellow men."
Early on in the conversation, Joe's reaction causes Baldwin to say he
will drop usage of the term "superman" as "it's overused and misused and
beat up until it has mostly comic connotations." Id, at 56. Baldwin
claims he's not going to define the term, that he'll leave it up to
posterity to do so and decide whether or not Baldwin and his group fit
within the scope of the term.
I suppose, if you wished, you could say that's quite a definition by
Heinlein, eh? Written by a weasel, or a lawyer, I'd say; and you know
what profession I've retired from. We don't know what posterity said,
but we do know Baldwin went to jail for a time and when he came out
there was no more mention of homo novis, except that bunch of targets
that fled to Olympia.
The entire conversation is ironic. It's an inversion of the Devil's
temptation of Christ on the Mount. Cf., MATTHEW 4: 1-11 and LUKE 4:
1-13, and briefly mentioned in MARK 1: 12-13. How can you trust a
definition that occurs amid such an irony?
Now, let's see. The term homo novis never appears in the novel _Friday_.
I don't know where "super-genius" might appear, if at all; and I'd
appreciate a citation since I don't have time this morning to read
through its 368 pages in hard back (so give me the chapter if you're
using a paperback), but I suggest if used, it was used by Baldwin in the
same way he again used "supermen," in a derisive or sarcastic manner, as
he described the red monkeys grouped together to present such a nice
target on Olympia.
Usage and application of the term to Friday may not be *wrong* in _your_
opinion, but its usage is disingenuous by an academic who is charged
with the ability to employ precision in written expression. One doesn't
use rhetorical falsity to argue and not expect those falsities to be
pointed out in academia--why should Franklin get a free ride simply
because he wrote his review in the New York Times?
> > [snip]
> >> He does seem to have a few axes to grind, doesn't he?
> >
> > I like the phrase "increasingly monotonic message" applied to Franklin's
> > works. The _Essential Joseph Stalin_ is also an apt title.
--
David M. Silver
Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
> From the full OED Online via my library, under "super-" : "c. In recent
> (often nonce) formations after SUPERMAN, used to designate a person,
> animal, or thing which markedly surpasses all others, or the generality,
> of its class: e.g. {sm}super-being".
>
> Using this definition, Friday arguably *is* a super-being, as were some
> other clearly human Heinlein characters, including pretty much every one
> we argued about. They all markedly surpassed the generality of their
> class, at least, and Lazarus, for example, "markedly surpasses all others".
>
> And, as best I can tell, in modern usage, this definition is at least as
> common, and probably more common, than yours.
Uh, "markedly surpass" means you can see or measure it. By parity of
reasoning, every daisy that grows a bit higher in the field than other
daisies is a "super-daisy," and should be lopped off by the rest of the
daisies, lest "super-daisies" become the standard. Forgive me while I go
find a super-sized container in which to super-barf.
David M. Silver
Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
> Your view of the term "super-beings" as a term meaning only beings like
> angels, devils, and gods, or their equivalent may be a common usage with
> a long history, but it is hardly the only one. You yourself pointed out
> some of the history of the alternate view in science fiction and philosophy.
>
Arguments in either philosophy or SF that some men can become
super-beings are highly disputed. World War II was fought against some
who considered themselves Übermensch, those men who were to replace
god(s) as supermen. An argument is hardly a fact in common acceptance,
certainly not as commonly accepted as the notion of supreme beings to
whom the term super-being are ordinarily applied.
> Further, own investigation into current usage of the term leads me to
> believe that, in modern usage, his usage is more common. Aside from the
> definition in the OED Online, one obvious example is to search for
> "super-being" on Wikipedia, and you will find it leads, not to angels,
> devils, and other non-human beings that are beyond human, but to
> superheroes, who are, with rare exceptions, definitely not
> "super-beings" by your definition. Frankly, I think that redirect is
> screwed up big time, but it does help show what sort of usage is common
> today.
We're told a lot of things are "common" today, including lower standards
of education and expectation. So your solution is you'd let an argument
that Chuck Norris is a super-being just slide? That's what one Wiki
citation claims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris_Facts
Franklin is an academic critic writing, one charged by his profession
with a greater obligation than a mere reviewer to be precise in his
expression and argument. His reviews presumably carry greater weight as
a matter of ethos. His responsibility and obligations to the public are
higher. I don't see ceding to him the rhetorical falsity a valid
position, any more than I would cede that position to any other speaker.
Filksinger
Actually, it is the third sub-usage of the sixth stated usage of
"super-", but the only stated usage of "super-being" itself. Super-being
was only the first of a long list of other related usages of the
"super-" prefix with this definition.
As for the date, the OED claims that "super-being" was used in this
fashion in 1930.
>> In fact, I would argue that the fault in it being brought into use here
>> is not this critic's, but Heinlein's himself. He's the one who used the
>> term "super-genius" in "Gulf", defined it, then brought it into /Friday/
>> and applied it, directly or indirectly, to Friday herself.
>>
>
> Your argument might be a little weak, actually, since I consider factual
> precision to be a virtue of argument. In "Gulf," he put the word
> "superman" or "supermen" five times in the mouth of Harley Baldwin in a
> 3-page conversation where Baldwin equates it with "homo novis" because,
> so he sez, "Supermen are super-thinkers; anything else is a side issue."
> "Gulf," from Assignment in Eternity, pp. 56-8 (Baen paperback). Now, I
> quickly glanced over "Gulf" this morning, but I didn't see the word
> "super-genius" anywhere in it; but I could be corrected by reference to
> a page cite. That is, Heinlein neither uses nor defines that word in
> "Gulf," so far as my quick review can tell.
I believe that I may have gotten it wrong about "Gulf" on this point.
"Gulf" used superman, which many equate to superbeing, but did not use
supergenius. Supergenius was used in /Friday/ by Baldwin, not "Gulf".
> "Supergenius" appears to be Franklin's own word--noting again the
> unhyphenated version doesn't float by my spell-checker, coined for his
> own review of _Friday_.
It is possible that I am mistaken in its use in "Gulf", but Kettle Belly
himself tells Friday that she is a supergenius in /Friday/, using that
precise term. Whether it was introduced in "Gulf" or /Friday/, it is
Heinlein who was initially responsible for the "super-" prefix being
applied to Friday. "Don't be pert. You are a supergenius, but you are a
long way from realizing your potential." Page 223 of /Friday/, Heinlein,
Robert, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982, unless I am
seriously mistaken.
As it was Heinlein rather than Franklin who initially used the prefix
"super-" to apply to Friday herself, I don't think I am likely to agree
that Franklin's use of the term was clearly "rhetorical falsity". Nor
would it be necessary to do so; the rest of his claims are trash,
anyway. Arguing that Heinlein said "superman" and "supergenius", but not
"super-being" is too much splitting of hairs to make an unnecessary point.
>>> [snip]
>>>> He does seem to have a few axes to grind, doesn't he?
>>> I like the phrase "increasingly monotonic message" applied to Franklin's
>>> works. The _Essential Joseph Stalin_ is also an apt title.
>
--
Filksinger
> In article <MOSJh.12649$tD2....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
>
>> From the full OED Online via my library, under "super-" : "c. In recent
>> (often nonce) formations after SUPERMAN, used to designate a person,
>> animal, or thing which markedly surpasses all others, or the generality,
>> of its class: e.g. {sm}super-being".
>>
>> Using this definition, Friday arguably *is* a super-being, as were some
>> other clearly human Heinlein characters, including pretty much every one
>> we argued about. They all markedly surpassed the generality of their
>> class, at least, and Lazarus, for example, "markedly surpasses all others".
>>
>> And, as best I can tell, in modern usage, this definition is at least as
>> common, and probably more common, than yours.
>
> Uh, "markedly surpass" means you can see or measure it. By parity of
> reasoning, every daisy that grows a bit higher in the field than other
> daisies is a "super-daisy," and should be lopped off by the rest of the
> daisies, lest "super-daisies" become the standard. Forgive me while I go
> find a super-sized container in which to super-barf.
"In a marked manner; distinctly, definitely, notably." This is the only
definition of "markedly" found in the OED Online. I'd say that this
implies considerably more than "a bit higher". Significantly higher, at
least.
Besides, not one definition of "super-" as a prefix I can find in the
OED defines a required amount higher, greater, etc. that something must
be before it is "super-", whether said definition is relevant to our
discussion or not. You obviously prefer a considerable difference before
it can be called "super-", but I can find no definition that requires it
in the OED.
This seems no more worthwhile as a point than arguing that "Superman"
wasn't a man, and thus wasn't a superman, by a particular definition
that one prefers over some other definition by which he would qualify.
And, truthfully, I have seen people use a different definition of a word
as a way of gaining a dishonest point in a debate too often for me to
like it. YMMV, of course, but it seems to me to be a way to "win" the
argument, rather than a worthwhile point. Useful in a debate or a court
of law, but not necessarily in finding any sort of objective truth or
honesty.
Filksinger
> In article <MOSJh.12649$tD2....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
>
>> Your view of the term "super-beings" as a term meaning only beings like
>> angels, devils, and gods, or their equivalent may be a common usage with
>> a long history, but it is hardly the only one. You yourself pointed out
>> some of the history of the alternate view in science fiction and philosophy.
>>
>
> Arguments in either philosophy or SF that some men can become
> super-beings are highly disputed. World War II was fought against some
> who considered themselves Übermensch, those men who were to replace
> god(s) as supermen. An argument is hardly a fact in common acceptance,
> certainly not as commonly accepted as the notion of supreme beings to
> whom the term super-being are ordinarily applied.
I wouldn't say that the term "super-being" is *ordinarily* applied at
all. It is a pretty rarely used term. However, and I'll admit that I
don't know for certain either way, it appears to me upon trying to find
it in use that the more common usage of the term would put you into the
minority. I believe that it is more common to use the term "super-being"
for, say, super heroes than for gods. I may be mistaken about this, but
I don't believe that your usage so surpasses the other that yours is
inherently superior.
However, even if it is, that wouldn't in any way obviate my claim that
it gains us nothing to "prove" his claim about the common status of
Heinlein heroes wrong by using a different definition than he uses,
especially when his claim is wrong using *his* definition.
>> Further, own investigation into current usage of the term leads me to
>> believe that, in modern usage, his usage is more common. Aside from the
>> definition in the OED Online, one obvious example is to search for
>> "super-being" on Wikipedia, and you will find it leads, not to angels,
>> devils, and other non-human beings that are beyond human, but to
>> superheroes, who are, with rare exceptions, definitely not
>> "super-beings" by your definition. Frankly, I think that redirect is
>> screwed up big time, but it does help show what sort of usage is common
>> today.
>
> We're told a lot of things are "common" today, including lower standards
> of education and expectation. So your solution is you'd let an argument
> that Chuck Norris is a super-being just slide? That's what one Wiki
> citation claims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris_Facts
No, it doesn't. It claims that a joke website and a running joke on the
Internet known as "Chuck Norris Facts" claimed this, this. That is
hardly the same, and is in fact true.
> Franklin is an academic critic writing, one charged by his profession
> with a greater obligation than a mere reviewer to be precise in his
> expression and argument. His reviews presumably carry greater weight as
> a matter of ethos. His responsibility and obligations to the public are
> higher. I don't see ceding to him the rhetorical falsity a valid
> position, any more than I would cede that position to any other speaker.
Actually, I didn't suggest that you should, though I am not completely
convinced that you are correct. I only suggested that, regardless of the
"correct" definition, proving him wrong by using a different one than he
uses does nothing for us. If I used the word "apple" in a way that its
definition was actually the fruit known as an orange, the incorrect
usage would be a perfectly good reason to reject my scientific research
on "apples". This would not, however, make my claims about said fruit,
other than the name itself, false. If someone wished to prove my
research wrong, rather than merely unpublishable, they would have to
prove it was false of the actual fruit used, regardless of the name I
used for said fruit.
David M. Silver
Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> boiled down what he thus
far wrote to this:
> As it was Heinlein rather than Franklin who initially used the prefix
> "super-" to apply to Friday herself,
Once, by Baldwin, who was hardly immune to using hyperbole to flatter
and manipulate people and enlist them to his aims.
> I don't think I am likely to agree
> that Franklin's use of the term was clearly "rhetorical falsity". Nor
> would it be necessary to do so; the rest of his claims are trash,
> anyway. Arguing that Heinlein said "superman" and "supergenius", but not
> "super-being" is too much splitting of hairs to make an unnecessary point.
Only if you believe that all words beginning with the prefix "super-"
mean the same thing. While you make that argument, I'm going to go water
my super cat, Bob, who is a super-cretin intellectually, which makes him
smarter than some super dogs, who were only super-morons intellectually,
that I once let share my home. Then, I'm going to serve him a
super-sized portion of cat food, because he's been a good boy.
A "super-being" is something imagined, if you're someone like Laplace,
believed in as a matter of faith or revealed, if you're religious, that
may exist or exists beyond nature, i.e., supernatural, but incapable of
proof today. [Unless you want to count two rock bands, one from
Vancouver known simply by that name and one from Texas, known as "Fruit
Cake-Superbeing."]
We're now in agreement that Heinlein didn't use the term in either
"Gulf" or _Friday_, but Franklin did in his review of _Friday_.
A "super-man" is something, possibly human, possibly not, that has been
argued possible but not proven, in philosophy, and imagined in comic
books, SF, and video and other games played at leisure.
We're now in agreement that Heinlein used the term a handful of times in
one conversation in "Gulf" and possibly a like or lesser number of times
in _Friday_, but Franklin eschewed the term in his review.
A "super-genius" is a human on the way out far, far end of the bell
curve where people like Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein live or
lived intellectually.
As you noted, Baldwin once flattered his 'daughter' Marjorie with the
term to get her to study something or the other he wanted her to study.
The term was used by Franklin to title his review, "Genius and
Supergenius."
If you think they're all the same, perhaps you need an appointment with
an optometrist. :)
Filksinger
I understand your definition. I merely disagree that failure to use your
definition constitutes dishonesty on Franklin's part. I find that
assuming dishonesty, even in dishonest people, tends to distort the truth.
> We're now in agreement that Heinlein didn't use the term in either
> "Gulf" or _Friday_, but Franklin did in his review of _Friday_.
>
> A "super-man" is something, possibly human, possibly not, that has been
> argued possible but not proven, in philosophy, and imagined in comic
> books, SF, and video and other games played at leisure.
>
> We're now in agreement that Heinlein used the term a handful of times in
> one conversation in "Gulf" and possibly a like or lesser number of times
> in _Friday_, but Franklin eschewed the term in his review.
>
> A "super-genius" is a human on the way out far, far end of the bell
> curve where people like Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein live or
> lived intellectually.
I have no problem with your definitions. However, I do not believe that
failure to use your definitions makes Franklin dishonest in this
respect. Your definitions do not have sufficient claim to the "one true
definition" for me to accept it as being that simple.
However, let us suppose that it did. That still doesn't address the core
of my disagreement with what you said.
When Franklin claimed that Heinlein's protagonists were mostly
"super-beings", you set out to prove that he was wrong. However, in
doing so, you used a definition for "super-being" that clearly wasn't
the one he was using, and *failed to note that this was the case or that
his definition was "wrong"*.
Now, your purpose in doing so may have been any number of things, but,
deliberately or not, in doing so you used a debating tactic I have
always despised. This likely is simply because you do firmly consider
your definition the "right" one, but the end result was something else.
You changed the definition of a word he used, then presented his claim
in such a way as to make him appear either dishonest or a fool because
the new, redefined word didn't match the facts, by showing that
Heinlein's protagonists were not "super-beings" by *your* definition,
without mentioning that it wasn't the same definition as his.
When used as a deliberate tactic, I find it dishonest. When used
unintentionally, as it frequently is, it almost always breeds
misunderstanding and arguments, in my experience. Either way, I hate it,
and will always call someone on it.
And, since you proved him wrong even using his own definitions, it was
completely unnecessary.
> As you noted, Baldwin once flattered his 'daughter' Marjorie with the
> term to get her to study something or the other he wanted her to study.
> The term was used by Franklin to title his review, "Genius and
> Supergenius."
>
> If you think they're all the same, perhaps you need an appointment with
> an optometrist. :)
Not at all. I simply believe that your definition of "super-being" is
not so superior to others that failure to use it constitutes dishonesty.
Franklin's review is sufficiently dishonest that one hardly needs to
reach so far to prove it.
TreetopAngel
>
> Hope all is well on your homefront.
Which home? I don't even pack a suitcase anymore. I have my own
dresser drawers and a shelf in the bathroom in Colorado. Had to do an
extra couple of weeks as my sister's kids got the chickenpox and there
was no way she could go help Mom. I'm still reserving my vacation time
for July.
So, between work and Mom's, I've had a total of zero hours to myself.
Good thing C! can cook and do laundry.
Off to bed for the next round of fun.
Hugs,
E!
David M. Silver
Filksinger <use...@filksinger.mailshell.com> wrote:
You'd like me to compromise, wouldn't you? What we have here is the
contrast between schools of dialectics: Hegelian and Marxist. Dialectics
seek to produce synthesis from among competing thesis and antithesis.
Hegelians believe that there is no rigorous way to derive a synthesis,
and therefore while there may be valid synthesis, there are just as
likely, if not more, to be invalid synthesis. That's very like my view
that if I think someone is deliberating distorting meaning I say so
versus your view that doing so in all but the more clear cut cases
weakens argument, presumably on the theory that sympathy arises against
the possibly misunderstood writer or speaker who may have misused or
misconstrued a fact, however unlikely that may be. To quote grandma, "if
you can't say something nice [or nicely]," you know how it ends.
I say Franklin is deliberately misusing the terms, reflecting his bias
against Heinlein to misconstrue his writings. You say that Franklin,
while surely mistaken, is using imprecise or definitions that are far
from common and, therefore, might be honestly generating confusion.
Marxists view dialectic as merely a way to transform a given Marxist
proposition into the mind of another by using antithesis after
antithesis after antithesis to produce synthesis after synthesis after
synthesis, because the ultimate synthesis is always valid, regardless of
what intervenes, because truth's development into Marxist philosophy is
historically inevitable if so used. If Marxist philosophy is the end,
then since all antithesis used for the nonce are valid, to quote
Machiavelli, "the end justifies," you know how it goes.
I won't agree to a synthesis that I believe is false, David. It's the
difference between Neville Chamberlain and Winnie.
> > We're now in agreement that Heinlein didn't use the term in either
> > "Gulf" or _Friday_, but Franklin did in his review of _Friday_.
> >
> > A "super-man" is something, possibly human, possibly not, that has been
> > argued possible but not proven, in philosophy, and imagined in comic
> > books, SF, and video and other games played at leisure.
> >
> > We're now in agreement that Heinlein used the term a handful of times in
> > one conversation in "Gulf" and possibly a like or lesser number of times
> > in _Friday_, but Franklin eschewed the term in his review.
> >
> > A "super-genius" is a human on the way out far, far end of the bell
> > curve where people like Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein live or
> > lived intellectually.
>
> I have no problem with your definitions. However, I do not believe that
> failure to use your definitions makes Franklin dishonest in this
> respect. Your definitions do not have sufficient claim to the "one true
> definition" for me to accept it as being that simple.
>
> However, let us suppose that it did. That still doesn't address the core
> of my disagreement with what you said.
>
> When Franklin claimed that Heinlein's protagonists were mostly
> "super-beings", you set out to prove that he was wrong. However, in
> doing so, you used a definition for "super-being" that clearly wasn't
> the one he was using, and *failed to note that this was the case or that
> his definition was "wrong"*.
I didn't view it necessary, using the most-common and accepted
definitions of the words Franklin used to write his review, since I
believe the contrast and reasons therefor were evident to most readers.
Good Lord, what I write goes quite long enough without such unnecessary
expansion. If Franklin wants to use words uncommonly, or confusingly, in
a newspaper of general circulation such as the NY Times, then it's his
obligation to tell the reader what he's doing. If he doesn't then he's
committing Aristotle's noted falsity of rhetoric, laid down as a
standard for all speakers and writers thousands of years before there
was an English language to have the word "Franklin" in it to take and
use as a name.
>
> Now, your purpose in doing so may have been any number of things, but,
> deliberately or not, in doing so you used a debating tactic I have
> always despised. This likely is simply because you do firmly consider
> your definition the "right" one, but the end result was something else.
What end result? You sympathized with poor John Cotton Dana Professor of
Literature, etc., Franklin because you think there's a possibility that
somehow his misuse was innocent? I don't have to prove a trained,
professional critic writing a review to be dishonest beyond any
reasonable doubt to say so, and neither does anyone else. If I believe
it's merely more likely than not, I'll state my opinion if and as I
wish. I'm not grading a fifth grader's book report, whose writing I wish
to encourage. Granny's rule doesn't apply to comments on critics who
show they can't use properly the language they presumably read,
regardless of whether I consign them to perdition or a Klein bottle.
They publicize what they write for the express purpose of affecting the
public's evaluation of artistic worth. Play in traffic and get run over
is the rule I follow that Granny always told me.
> You changed the definition of a word he used, then presented his claim
> in such a way as to make him appear either dishonest or a fool because
> the new, redefined word didn't match the facts, by showing that
> Heinlein's protagonists were not "super-beings" by *your* definition,
> without mentioning that it wasn't the same definition as his.
>
I didn't change a thing. I used the most common definition that possibly
applies sensibly. He used a word that had that most common definition.
Your citation of a definition that is a sub-usage (and moreover is
"nonce" which means for the lack of anything better, or provisional)
existing sixth down in usage the OED doesn't change anything, either,
except it pointed out the usage is so rare and so provisional that it
doesn't make into other commonly-accepted dictionaries.
> When used as a deliberate tactic, I find it dishonest.
You must find a lot of argument dishonest by your definition. What you
see with me is what you get. If I use it, always assume I use it
deliberately.
> When used
> unintentionally, as it frequently is, it almost always breeds
> misunderstanding and arguments, in my experience. Either way, I hate it,
> and will always call someone on it.
>
Well, one thing is certain, it will always breed arguments with you.
> And, since you proved him wrong even using his own definitions, it was
> completely unnecessary.
>
In your view. My inclination and training is never to abandon a valid
argument, and, as I've noted, the argument I made is valid in my
opinion.
Franklin is biased. Franklin subscribes to a system of dialectic that
makes use of invalid antithesis to produce invalid synthesis, because he
honestly believes that Marxism is inevitably so produced, and as he
wants to produce world-wide Marxism he uses the system in his criticism
against people he is biased against. What else is new? But is noting
that unnecessary so long as his published reviews continue to be quoted
and relied upon by those who support his viewpoint? I don't believe so.
> > As you noted, Baldwin once flattered his 'daughter' Marjorie with the
> > term to get her to study something or the other he wanted her to study.
> > The term was used by Franklin to title his review, "Genius and
> > Supergenius."
> >
> > If you think they're all the same, perhaps you need an appointment with
> > an optometrist. :)
>
> Not at all. I simply believe that your definition of "super-being" is
> not so superior to others that failure to use it constitutes dishonesty.
> Franklin's review is sufficiently dishonest that one hardly needs to
> reach so far to prove it.
We vary. Pointing out one of the oldest rhetorical falsities isn't that
far of a reach and points out how fundamentally flawed the review truly
is.
Filksinger
I would like to begin by stating that the "dishonest" tactic to which I
was referring is not, in my opinion, what you were doing, and I regret
it if I inadvertently stated or implied that you were. Your response
here has made what you were doing clearer to me, and as a result, I
realize that I might have said or implied things that were unjust. My
sincere apologies if I have.
Who said anything about being nice to the man? I don't want to be nice
to the man. I just want to be certain that we are beating him up
completely fairly and honestly, and your original response to his review
initially appeared to me to possibly use a dishonest tactic.
> I say Franklin is deliberately misusing the terms, reflecting his bias
> against Heinlein to misconstrue his writings. You say that Franklin,
> while surely mistaken, is using imprecise or definitions that are far
> from common and, therefore, might be honestly generating confusion.
Except that I didn't agree that he was "surely mistaken" in his use of
that definition, I flatly denied that his definition was "far from
common", and I don't find his use of this definition remotely confusing,
as it was the definition with which I grew up.
If he was trying to confuse people with the term "super-being" by
conflating the two definitions, making it seem as if Friday was a god,
angel, devil, or demigod, I can only say that he A ) Did a lousy job, as
I saw nothing confusing at all, and still don't, and B ) I can't see the
point, as this in no way supports any of his positions that I can see,
nor does it constitute any sort of criticism of Heinlein.
> Marxists view dialectic as merely a way to transform a given Marxist
> proposition into the mind of another by using antithesis after
> antithesis after antithesis to produce synthesis after synthesis after
> synthesis, because the ultimate synthesis is always valid, regardless of
> what intervenes, because truth's development into Marxist philosophy is
> historically inevitable if so used. If Marxist philosophy is the end,
> then since all antithesis used for the nonce are valid, to quote
> Machiavelli, "the end justifies," you know how it goes.
>
> I won't agree to a synthesis that I believe is false, David. It's the
> difference between Neville Chamberlain and Winnie.
Getting a bit testy, are we? That was not only an inaccurate assessment
of my position, but the last line was downright insulting.
However, I probably asked for it, by implying you might be being
dishonest in your review.
As I most certainly didn't see it that way, I doubt that it was "evident
to most readers". Quite the contrary. While I endeavored to give you the
benefit of the doubt, it appeared to me as if you were trying to change
the definition without it being noticed, as a way of changing his claim
that Heinlein heroes are usually "super-beings" into a greater straw man
so that you could heap more mockery upon him, and make him look even
more wrong than he was. Unnecessarily, too, as he was already dead wrong.
At no time did I get the impression that you were criticizing his
incorrect usage of the word "super-being" in your initial assessment of
his argument. On the contrary, it appeared you were hiding the fact that
your definition was different, so as to make him a better punching bag.
Upon rereading it, I still don't see that it was "evident to most
readers" that you were using a different definition than Franklin, nor
what your definition was.
If you hadn't spelled it out in later posts, I *still* wouldn't know
what your definition was, nor that you disagreed with his definition,
rather than just his claim.
> Good Lord, what I write goes quite long enough without such unnecessary
> expansion. If Franklin wants to use words uncommonly, or confusingly, in
> a newspaper of general circulation such as the NY Times, then it's his
> obligation to tell the reader what he's doing. If he doesn't then he's
> committing Aristotle's noted falsity of rhetoric, laid down as a
> standard for all speakers and writers thousands of years before there
> was an English language to have the word "Franklin" in it to take and
> use as a name.
Frankly, I did not find his usage even remotely confusing. I thought
that his meaning in using the term "super-being" was quite clear. I
found *your* usage considerably less clear, despite both definitions
being known to me. Indeed, until you actually stated your definition
outright in a later post, I wasn't certain exactly what definition you
were using. His, I got right away. He was wrong about his "most Heinlein
heroes" being super-beings, but I knew exactly what he meant by
"super-being".
As for using it "uncommonly", I already have stated that I believe his
usage is more common in general usage today than yours, and in my
opinion was more common as I was growing up as well, in the 70s and 80s.
As the NY Times *is* general circulation, his using a definition that
is, correctly or incorrectly, are in common usage is not necessarily
improper. It is common practice to do so in all kinds of non-academic
publications. It is common in science writing, for example, even though
I deplore the inaccuracy that results.
>> Now, your purpose in doing so may have been any number of things, but,
>> deliberately or not, in doing so you used a debating tactic I have
>> always despised. This likely is simply because you do firmly consider
>> your definition the "right" one, but the end result was something else.
>
> What end result? You sympathized with poor John Cotton Dana Professor of
> Literature, etc., Franklin because you think there's a possibility that
> somehow his misuse was innocent? I don't have to prove a trained,
> professional critic writing a review to be dishonest beyond any
> reasonable doubt to say so, and neither does anyone else. If I believe
> it's merely more likely than not, I'll state my opinion if and as I
> wish. I'm not grading a fifth grader's book report, whose writing I wish
> to encourage. Granny's rule doesn't apply to comments on critics who
> show they can't use properly the language they presumably read,
> regardless of whether I consign them to perdition or a Klein bottle.
> They publicize what they write for the express purpose of affecting the
> public's evaluation of artistic worth. Play in traffic and get run over
> is the rule I follow that Granny always told me.
I don't sympathize with the man at all. I simply maintain that, if we
are going to criticize Heinlein's (or anyone's) critics for distortion,
assumptions without proof, or dishonest tactics in general, it behooves
us to use the most squeaky-clean of tactics we can, and that, I am
coming to believe unintentionally given what you have said here, it
appeared as if you were using a particularly nasty and dishonest tactic.
I find that the "squeaky clean" method has much better impact, too, if
done well. It can be harder, though, than merely trying to be
straightforward.
>> You changed the definition of a word he used, then presented his claim
>> in such a way as to make him appear either dishonest or a fool because
>> the new, redefined word didn't match the facts, by showing that
>> Heinlein's protagonists were not "super-beings" by *your* definition,
>> without mentioning that it wasn't the same definition as his.
>>
>
> I didn't change a thing. I used the most common definition that possibly
> applies sensibly. He used a word that had that most common definition.
> Your citation of a definition that is a sub-usage (and moreover is
> "nonce" which means for the lack of anything better, or provisional)
> existing sixth down in usage the OED doesn't change anything, either,
> except it pointed out the usage is so rare and so provisional that it
> doesn't make into other commonly-accepted dictionaries.
Except, of course, that *your* definition didn't make it into the OED at
all. The definition I gave may have used the sixth down usage for the
prefix "super-", but you apparently missed that it was the *ONLY*
definition given for the combined word "super-being". Your definition
wasn't even given an honorable mention.
In fact, when trying to use *any* definition given in the OED for the
prefix "super-", I find that the one that comes closest to how you are
using it is the one I quoted.
As for it being a nonce-word, not only did the definition not say that
super-being is necessarily a nonce-word (I cut off more than a dozen
other words that came after super-being, any of which might have been
meant), but further the OED uses the word "nonce" in a different meaning
than you are using it here, which meaning does not apply to "super-being".
As for your changing the definition, you may not have meant to, but it
certainly appeared to me that you did. It appeared as if you switched
your definition of "super-being" with his, so that he would look a
bigger fool. It was not clear that you were disagreeing with his definition.
>> When used as a deliberate tactic, I find it dishonest.
>
> You must find a lot of argument dishonest by your definition. What you
> see with me is what you get. If I use it, always assume I use it
> deliberately.
Not really. And I don't think you were doing what I am talking about. It
did, however, look as if you were.
Did you intend to take a word upon which he based his arguments, and
change its meaning, so that his argument was different than he intended
for it to be, in order to create a straw man you could then beat up? If
not, then you weren't doing what I was talking about deliberately.
If you did do such a thing, covertly changing definitions so that you
could distort his arguments just so you could make him look bad, then
that would have been dishonest, would it not?
>> When used
>> unintentionally, as it frequently is, it almost always breeds
>> misunderstanding and arguments, in my experience. Either way, I hate it,
>> and will always call someone on it.
>>
>
> Well, one thing is certain, it will always breed arguments with you.
>
>> And, since you proved him wrong even using his own definitions, it was
>> completely unnecessary.
>>
>
> In your view. My inclination and training is never to abandon a valid
> argument, and, as I've noted, the argument I made is valid in my
> opinion.
Which is one of the reasons I do not believe you were using the tactic
to which I was referring, as it is not a valid argument.
> Franklin is biased. Franklin subscribes to a system of dialectic that
> makes use of invalid antithesis to produce invalid synthesis, because he
> honestly believes that Marxism is inevitably so produced, and as he
> wants to produce world-wide Marxism he uses the system in his criticism
> against people he is biased against. What else is new? But is noting
> that unnecessary so long as his published reviews continue to be quoted
> and relied upon by those who support his viewpoint? I don't believe so.
>
>>> As you noted, Baldwin once flattered his 'daughter' Marjorie with the
>>> term to get her to study something or the other he wanted her to study.
>>> The term was used by Franklin to title his review, "Genius and
>>> Supergenius."
>>>
>>> If you think they're all the same, perhaps you need an appointment with
>>> an optometrist. :)
>> Not at all. I simply believe that your definition of "super-being" is
>> not so superior to others that failure to use it constitutes dishonesty.
>> Franklin's review is sufficiently dishonest that one hardly needs to
>> reach so far to prove it.
>
> We vary. Pointing out one of the oldest rhetorical falsities isn't that
> far of a reach and points out how fundamentally flawed the review truly
> is.
I still don't necessarily agree that he was using said rhetorical
falsity. Even if I agreed that he should have used your definition for
"super-being", I still have problems with it being a deliberate
rhetorical falsity, if only because I cannot determine what it is you
think he was implying by doing so.
Mike Cothran
> Now, let's see. The term homo novis never appears in the novel _Friday_.
> I don't know where "super-genius" might appear, if at all; and I'd
> appreciate a citation since I don't have time this morning to read
> through its 368 pages in hard back (so give me the chapter if you're
> using a paperback), but I suggest if used, it was used by Baldwin in the
> same way he again used "supermen," in a derisive or sarcastic manner, as
> he described the red monkeys grouped together to present such a nice
> target on Olympia.
David, (a reply which is better later than not at all I guess)
In Chapter XXI near end... [p223 in my hardback copy, Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, First Edition]
As the word... supergenius [without the hyphen] this is in reply to
her 'pert' usage of his saying she is a genius... he further says "You
are a supergenius..." This does seem to be a toss off line though. The
passages are well below the following material.
Other instances of RAHs usage of the word 'supergenius' are within
the following works.
* Cat Who Walks Through Walls, The [twice; initial time is in reference
to Richard re: as an eyewitness when Schultz was killed as shown below,
with the second time referring to Mike from MisHM;
--- Of course I could be! I'm no supergenius gifted with psi powers; I
could be wrong as an eyewitness quite as easily as Gwen could be. ---]
* Have Space Suit - Will Travel [once as shown below;
--- Pick a savage so far back in the jungle that they don't even have
installment-plan buying. Say he has an I.Q. of 190 and Peewee's yen to
understand. Dump him into Brookhaven Atomic Laboratories. How much will
he learn? With all possible help?
He'll learn which corridors lead to what rooms and he'll learn that
a purple trefoil means: "Danger!"
That's all. Not because he can't; remember he's a supergenius --but
he needs twenty years schooling before he can ask the right questions
and understand the answers. ---]
* Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The [once about Mike]
* Number of the Beast, The [several times from several PoVs, no need to
show all that though...]
If you wish I will use agent ransack and search further through my
textual storage for other representations and variations of 'super
genius', 'super-genius', 'supermen-man' and such as you provide and
return specifics.
It might interest all to know RAH only used the work genius re:
himself once and then only to state he was not, really... just a touch
in fact.
However the hyphenated 'super-genius' form does not occur nor does
the space delimited phrase 'super genius' within any of the works I have
at present on my data storage.
--- The Friday passages are quoted below ---
"He's that, all right. But it was that crazy fool threatening
Janet's life that made me go spung! Boss, until this happened I didn't
know that I loved Janet. Didn't know I could love a woman that
intensely. You know more than I do about how I was designed, or so you
have hinted. Are my glands mixed up?"
"I know quite a lot about your design but I shan't discuss it with
you; you have no need to know. Your glands are no more mixed up than
those of any healthy human --specifically, you do not have a redundant Y
chromosome. All normal human beings have soi-disant mixed-up glands. The
race is divided into two parts: those who know this and those who do
not. Stop the stupid talk; it ill befits a genius."
"Oh, so I'm a genius now. Hully gee, Boss."
"Don't be pert. You are a supergenius but you are a long way from
realizing your potential. Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their
own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey
customs of their lessers. Let us return to our muttons. Is it possible
that this body will be found?"
--- end quoted passages ---
--
Mike C