Smoking?
gullive...@yahoo.com
amazed at the amount of smoking in RAH novels. Characters smoke at
times when it doesn't make sense, not that it ever makes sense to
inhale poison into one's lungs on purpose.
I know he lived in a different time (although the terms "coffin nail"
and "cancer stick" are older than you would think) and I know smoking
was viewed differently in the past.
Is it just a reflection of the times at which he wrote? Was this just
an effort to make characters look "cool" or "dashing/daring" or is
there some other explanation?
I have to stop now, as I have used up my apostrophe allotment.
jeanette
was totally acceptable.
My mother said she was one of the few in her nursing school class who
didn't smoke. You may be too young to remember clouds of smoke wafting
from the teacher's room in school.
There were tuna cans to be used as ashtrays in many of my college
classrooms. I majored in home economics and smoking was not allowed in
classrooms because of the food and textile aspect, but there was a room
where students could smoke. Teachers could smoke in their offices and
an ashtray was part of the dorm room inventory. I think smoking was not
allowed in the chemistry building. This was in the late sixty's, five
years after the surgeon general's report which convinced my father to
stop.
Just yesterday, my father's 30 year old foreign born caregiver commented
on the amount of smoking in the I LOVE LUCY DVD they were watching. I
think it is more her age than not growing up in the USA that caused the
surprise.
I read that when soap operas had to give up smoking it took away a
reason for the "thoughtful pause" so they started drinking instead.
They decided that showing everybody drinking was not a good idea, so
that has been toned down.
My aunt gave birth in a Seventh Day Adventist hospital so she had to
sneak her cigarettes in the bathroom--any other hospital at the time,
she probably would have had an ashtray on her bed tray.
Long answer to something you already knew.
RAH and his wife were smokers. There were very few places that
discouraged smoking. It was a cool thing to do. Look at old movies, TV
shows and magazines.
I don't remember RAH's young people smoking or much discussion of how
his adult characters started. While I assume most smokers start as
teenagers before it is legal, did he portray that??? From what I can
remember, his smokers seemed to be the "thoughtful' adult.
Jeanette
Mike Stone
"jeanette" <wo...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:15292-4B0...@storefull-3172.bay.webtv.net...
>
> I don't remember RAH's young people smoking or much discussion of how
> his adult characters started. While I assume most smokers start as
> teenagers before it is legal, did he portray that??? From what I can
> remember, his smokers seemed to be the "thoughtful' adult.
There's a passage in _Starship Troopers_ where Rico's father recalls turning
a blind eye to the cigarette butts they had discovered in his bedroom - and
to how sick he was for a while afterwards.
As to thoughtful adults, in _Double Star_ there is mention of Bonforte
having "struck a cigarette" which can now be lit without needing matches.
--
Mike Stone - Peterborough, England
"Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of
Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work
strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby in the
reservoir, he turns to the cupboard only to find the vodka bottle empty".
P G Wodehouse - Jill the Reckless
gullive...@yahoo.com
> I think it is the "different time" thing. Smoking as a social activity
> was totally acceptable.
>
> My mother said she was one of the few in her nursing school class who
> didn't smoke. You may be too young to remember clouds of smoke wafting
> from the teacher's room in school.
>
am as old or older than you. Although I never smoked, I was one of
those teachers in the smoke filled teacher's lounge.
But it still doesn't make sense, and RAH would have known that even if
it were acceptabvle to the standards of the time.
Mike Stone
<gullive...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:0fcbbc8e-527b-4d19...@k13g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
What has sense got to do with it? A story assuming that the human race
behaves sensibly would not be sf, but fantasy. RAH was too sensible himself
to have made any such assumption.
Basically, even the most imaginative writers tend to project the standards
of their own day into the future [1]. One of my favourite examples is
Asimov's _The Naked Sun_, in which Solarian roboticists are working overtime
to deal with their big problem - that the robots running Solaria's
nurseries are, by the First Law, unable to use corporal punishment. Old
Isaac, one of the most politically liberal of American sf writers, could not
imagine a society in which kids were brought up without spanking.
Today, of course, the situation is reversed. When the late David Feintuch
envisaged a world in which corporal punishment of minors _did_ play a major
role, he was viewed in certain quarters as some kind of wierdo.
[1] Perhaps the most extreme case was Mack Reynolds. In many of his stories,
whatever fashionable notion was going around in the 1960s got projected a
century or so into the future
Chris Zakes
laser caused "gullive...@yahoo.com" <gullive...@yahoo.com> to
write:
>it were acceptable to the standards of the time.
While a character's voice isn't necessarily the same as the author's
voice, I think this particular quote from Zeb in "If This Goes On..."
probably *is* an expression of Heinlein's views on the matter:
"'Oh, no. It's a dirty, filthy habit that ruins my wind and stains my
teeth and may eventually kill me off with lung cancer.' He took a deep
inhalation and let the smoke trickle out of the corners of his mouth,
and looked profoundly contented. 'But it just happens that I *like*
dirty, filthy habits.'"
For that matter, look at the amount of "social" drinking in the Nero
Wolfe stories, from roughly the same time period.
-Chris Zakes
Texas
The wise man does not seek enlightenment, he waits for it. So while I was
waiting, it occurred to me that seeking perplexity might be more fun.
-Lu-Tze in "Thief of Time" by Terry Pratchett
Bruce C. Baker
"Mike Stone" <mws...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:7mgmglF...@mid.individual.net...
[...]
> Basically, even the most imaginative writers tend to project the standards
> of their own day into the future [1]. One of my favourite examples is
> Asimov's _The Naked Sun_, in which Solarian roboticists are working
> overtime
> to deal with their big problem - that the robots running Solaria's
> nurseries are, by the First Law, unable to use corporal punishment. Old
> Isaac, one of the most politically liberal of American sf writers, could
> not
> imagine a society in which kids were brought up without spanking.
Apropos Asimov: in his Foundation trilogy, written in the late 40s/early
50s, even the "good guys' partake of the demon weed. :-)
jeanette
Jeanette
Michael Black
It was probably the same thing that had him put a soda fountain in a book,
or "Woody Guthrie" in the form of Rhysling, or have hobo camps. They
connected the future to the present, so yes you can go to the stars but
life won't be so different that nothing is familiar.
Smoking was common, and whatever people said against it, those warnings
were mostly ignored. So it wasn't uncommon to see people smoking in
movies or even on tv (even in the sixties), and lots of places that people
would never consider smoking in nowadays were perfectly acceptable back
then. Since it was so socially acceptable, it's not really a surprise
he'd have smoking in the book.
Michael
Tian
> How many of us eat more than a couple French fries?
>
They were delicious.
On smoking: Seems to me that smoking on the moon is a huge waste of
energy. I had no trouble smoking when cigarettes were a quarter a pack.
At $2/pack I quit. The fuel cost to boost a pack of cigarettes to the
moon is mind boggling. Heinlein had a number of people smoking up there.
I think maybe that was a mistake on his part. Smoking in North America
makes good sense though. I hope it still does a hundred years from now.
One of the reasons it was cool down here is that a lot of people made a
good living off the habit. Not just the farmers and the corner stores,
but also the governments off the taxes. What are all those people going
to do now that it's going out of style?
Another reason that smoking was cool is because it gave people a shared
experience that wasn't too private, personal, or weird. Sharing a smoke
is a nice way to get what's on somebody's mind. If you come across a
straanger sitting under a tree, offering them a smoke is a good way to
start on the right foot, so to speak. What ritual works the same way?
--
Tian
http://tian.greens.org
Latest change: added words&pictures of the San Francisco green festival.
Chris Zakes
Depends on the circumstances. If I'm at a restaurant and the meal I
ordered comes with fries, I'll usually eat most/all of them. But if
I'm at a burger joint, I just order a burger, not the combo, so I
don't get any fries. My wife, on the other hand, usually does order
the combo, and I'll snitch one or two of her fries.
Michael Black
> jeanette wrote:
>> How many of us eat more than a couple French fries?
>>
> Guilty. I had a whole order of the things at In-N-Out a few days ago.
> They were delicious.
>
> On smoking: Seems to me that smoking on the moon is a huge waste of energy. I
> had no trouble smoking when cigarettes were a quarter a pack.
> At $2/pack I quit. The fuel cost to boost a pack of cigarettes to the moon is
> mind boggling. Heinlein had a number of people smoking up there.
> I think maybe that was a mistake on his part. Smoking in North America
> makes good sense though. I hope it still does a hundred years from now.
>
Maybe they did grew the tobacco hydroponically?
Note that in "Farmer in the Sky", Bill's father realizes he has to give up
smoking, a pipe in his case, because the colony wouldn't bother to import
something so useless as tobacco. The policy was to import only the most
essentials, since they had to pay for importing, which of course is why
the father was so valuable when he was able to set up processes on
Ganymede to make things like glass (for windows, and those glass buckets).
I seem to recall that towards the end of the book, things are looker
brighter, there's some talk of growing tobacco. Or maybe it's that Bill
is talking about having enough of a farm already that he can look to
planting luxury crops like tobacco.
>
> Another reason that smoking was cool is because it gave people a shared
> experience that wasn't too private, personal, or weird. Sharing a smoke
> is a nice way to get what's on somebody's mind. If you come across a
> straanger sitting under a tree, offering them a smoke is a good way to
> start on the right foot, so to speak. What ritual works the same way?
No, that is ritual.
It also works when someone tries to get a cigarette from someone already
smoking, "hey, can I have a cigarette, I'm trying to quit [or I ran out]".
It's a specific approach that is more or less standard. It doesn't work
if I'm eating a chocolate bar and some random person comes up and asks for
a bite. (Though, when I give cookies away at our Fringe Festival, maybe
once a year some random person comes up and asks if they can have one.)
Michael
Michael Stemper
><gullive...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:0fcbbc8e-527b-4d19...@k13g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
>>On Nov 17, 11:20 am, wo...@webtv.net (jeanette) wrote:
>>That's exactly what I expected, except for the fact it appears that I
>>am as old or older than you. Although I never smoked, I was one of
>>those teachers in the smoke filled teacher's lounge.
>>But it still doesn't make sense, and RAH would have known that even if
>>it were acceptabvle to the standards of the time.
>
>What has sense got to do with it? A story assuming that the human race
>behaves sensibly would not be sf, but fantasy. RAH was too sensible himself
>to have made any such assumption.
Well said.
>Basically, even the most imaginative writers tend to project the standards
>of their own day into the future [1]. One of my favourite examples is
>Asimov's _The Naked Sun_, in which Solarian roboticists are working overtime
I'd just like to point out that even though Asimov was a non-smoker
and considered the dangers of smoking to be patently obvious, smoking
was common in his stories as well, even as far in the future as _The
Caves of Steel_ (Lije Bailey's pipe) and "The Mayor's" (Salvor Hardin's
Vegan cigars and the omnipresent atomic flash for disposing of drottle).
>[1] Perhaps the most extreme case was Mack Reynolds. In many of his stories,
>whatever fashionable notion was going around in the 1960s got projected a
>century or so into the future
I think that Brunner's _Stand on Zanzibar_ is a nice pathological
example of this tendency.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Reunite Gondwanaland!
Mike Stone
"Michael Stemper" <mste...@walkabout.empros.com> wrote in message
news:he1emp$5lf$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Arthur C Clarke made the same assumption. In _The Sands of Mars_, the
captain of the "Ares" remarks that "there would be a mutiny" if he had to
ban smoking for three months, even if it did waste Oxygen. He mentions a
special astronauts brand with a built in oxygen carrier so that they didn't
use air. Unfortunately some got to much, and went off like squibs when lit.
In _Earthlight_, when Jamieson and Wheeler are turned away from a secret
Lunar base thay have stumbled upon, they are indignant that "they didn't
even offer us a smoke".
Of course, they could all still be right. It remains to be seen whether the
present anti-smoking attitude will be any more permanent than Prohibition
was. And I say that as a lifelong non-smoker.
MajorOz
> On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:07:24 -0800 (PST), an orbital mind-control
> write:
>
> >On Nov 17, 11:20 am, wo...@webtv.net (jeanette) wrote:
> >> I think it is the "different time" thing. Smoking as a social activity
> >> was totally acceptable.
>
> >> My mother said she was one of the few in her nursing school class who
> >> didn't smoke. You may be too young to remember clouds of smoke wafting
> >> from the teacher's room in school.
>
> >That's exactly what I expected, except for the fact it appears that I
> >am as old or older than you. Although I never smoked, I was one of
> >those teachers in the smoke filled teacher's lounge.
> >But it still doesn't make sense, and RAH would have known that even if
> >it were acceptable to the standards of the time.
>
> While a character's voice isn't necessarily the same as the author's
> voice, I think this particular quote from Zeb in "If This Goes On..."
> probably *is* an expression of Heinlein's views on the matter:
>
> "'Oh, no. It's a dirty, filthy habit that ruins my wind and stains my
> teeth and may eventually kill me off with lung cancer.' He took a deep
> inhalation and let the smoke trickle out of the corners of his mouth,
> and looked profoundly contented. 'But it just happens that I *like*
> dirty, filthy habits.'"
Precicely .....................
Whatever it is, or does, or.......yadda, yadda..........it is my
choice.
If I blow it in your face, you have a right to bitch; otherwise, it is
nobody's business but mine.
I am all in favor of a national "Shit Or Get Off The Pot" vote, which
would either ban it or leave it the hell alone.
Telling a bar owner he can't have smoking in his place is busy-body-
ness taken to a terminal degree.
If a restaurant offers a choice, I will usually sit in the smoking
section, as I am less likely to encounter ill-mannered yuppie larvae
screaming and throwing food as a means of expression. It has been my
experience that children of smokers are, on average, much better
mannered than those of rabid smoking whiners.
Of course, with socialism creeping in on "...little cat feet..." we
can expect further intrusions of this and similar kinds.
cheers (anyway)
oz, who LOVES inhaling cigarette smoke, but quit over thirty years ago
because he plays the odds
MajorOz
> "Michael Stemper" <mstem...@walkabout.empros.com> wrote in message
>
> news:he1emp$5lf$1...@news.eternal-september.org...> In article <7mgmglF3hlqe...@mid.individual.net>, "Mike Stone"
> <mwst...@aol.com> writes:
> > ><gulliverfoy...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
I would expect that there are some nanny librarians out there that,
given the opportunity, would ban H's juvies due to his tolerance of
smoking. They are in the same genetic branch as those who ban Huck
Finn for saying "nigger".
cheers
oz, who ran afoul of this tendency when the Forest Service tried to
change the name of Whorehouse Meadows on Steen Mountain in SE Oregon
Tian
> On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Tian wrote:
>
>> jeanette wrote:
>>> How many of us eat more than a couple French fries?
>>>
>> Guilty. I had a whole order of the things at In-N-Out a few days ago.
>> They were delicious.
>>
>> On smoking: Seems to me that smoking on the moon is a huge waste of
>> energy. I had no trouble smoking when cigarettes were a quarter a pack.
>> At $2/pack I quit. The fuel cost to boost a pack of cigarettes to the
>> moon is mind boggling. Heinlein had a number of people smoking up there.
>> I think maybe that was a mistake on his part. Smoking in North America
>> makes good sense though. I hope it still does a hundred years from now.
>>
> Maybe they did grew the tobacco hydroponically?
>
> Note that in "Farmer in the Sky", Bill's father realizes he has to give up
> smoking, a pipe in his case, because the colony wouldn't bother to
> import something so useless as tobacco. The policy was to import only
> the most
> essentials, since they had to pay for importing, which of course is why
> the father was so valuable when he was able to set up processes on
> Ganymede to make things like glass (for windows, and those glass buckets).
>
> I seem to recall that towards the end of the book, things are looker
> brighter, there's some talk of growing tobacco. Or maybe it's that Bill
> is talking about having enough of a farm already that he can look to
> planting luxury crops like tobacco.
>
the Sky again... I know where it is because I've been carrying it
around in the trunk of my bike, waiting for the right chance to give it
to my favorite ten year old to read. It seemed like the right one to
start him off on when I was thinking about it.
--
Tian
http://tian.greens.org
Latest addition: green festival pictures and words from San Francisco.
gullive...@yahoo.com
Let's not have this discussion here. Second hand smoke is a health
hazard and smoking should be done in total private, where it can harm
no one except the perpetrator. People who try to paint this as a civil
liberty or some intrusion upon their personal space or their right to
cause damage to those with asthma are beneath contempt. Feel free to
flame away, just remember the odds in your personal life. I will not
return to this thread, in that those who disagree will use all sorts
of disinformation and rationalization to defend their right to harm
other's health.
I just wanted to bring up the poor science in having literary
characters smoking where it would be cost or oxygen prohibitive for
them to do so.
djinn
<gulliverfoy...@yahoo.com> wrote:
snip
> I just wanted to bring up the poor science in having literary
> characters smoking where it would be cost or oxygen prohibitive for
> them to do so.
And it looks like the responses that you got show why it was
reasonable to have smokers in the stories.
MajorOz
....why not, mommy ?
>Second hand smoke is a health
> hazard and smoking should be done in total private, where it can harm
> no one except the perpetrator.
...or other people who do not mind
>People who try to paint this as a civil
> liberty or some intrusion upon their personal space or their right to
> cause damage to those with asthma are beneath contempt.
If it is beneath YOUR contempt, it is a comfortable place, indeed.
>Feel free to
> flame away, just remember the odds in your personal life. I will not
> return to this thread,
...thank you, thank you, thank you.......
>in that those who disagree will use all sorts
> of disinformation and rationalization to defend their right to harm
> other's health.
What else does your crystal ball -- or the whispering voices in the
night -- tell you ?
> I just wanted to bring up the poor science in having literary
> characters smoking where it would be cost or oxygen prohibitive for
> them to do so.
It isn't poor science, at all. It is a choice people, alone or in
groups, make, in consideration of cost / benefit.
...sheeeeesh....sounds like an Obama cabinet apointee.......or a Donna
Shalala staffer......
cheers
oz
Tian
(snip)
>>
>> Whatever it is, or does, or.......yadda, yadda..........it is my
>> choice.
>>
>> If I blow it in your face, you have a right to bitch; otherwise, it is
>> nobody's business but mine.
>>
>> I am all in favor of a national "Shit Or Get Off The Pot" vote, which
>> would either ban it or leave it the hell alone.
>>
>> Telling a bar owner he can't have smoking in his place is busy-body-
>> ness taken to a terminal degree.
>>
>> If a restaurant offers a choice, I will usually sit in the smoking
>> section, as I am less likely to encounter ill-mannered yuppie larvae
>> screaming and throwing food as a means of expression. It has been my
>> experience that children of smokers are, on average, much better
>> mannered than those of rabid smoking whiners.
I like the smell of tobacco smoke to. I could do without menthol though.
Clove cigarettes are good to.
>>
>> Of course, with socialism creeping in on "...little cat feet..." we
>> can expect further intrusions of this and similar kinds.
>>
>> cheers (anyway)
>>
>> oz, who LOVES inhaling cigarette smoke, but quit over thirty years ago
>> because he plays the odds
>
> Let's not have this discussion here. Second hand smoke is a health
> hazard and smoking should be done in total private, where it can harm
> no one except the perpetrator. People who try to paint this as a civil
> liberty or some intrusion upon their personal space or their right to
> cause damage to those with asthma are beneath contempt. Feel free to
> flame away, just remember the odds in your personal life.
I'm remembering this sticker I saw on an old American car.
It said "AT LEAST I CAN SMOKE IN THE PRIVACY OF MY OWN CAE!"
Hard to argue with a sticker like that one.
(snip)
Chris Zakes
>Precisely .....................
>
>Whatever it is, or does, or.......yadda, yadda..........it is my
>choice.
>
>If I blow it in your face, you have a right to bitch; otherwise, it is
>nobody's business but mine.
Well... I'd quibble with that a bit. Unfortunately, cigarettte smoke
doesn't just magically disappear a few moments after it's produced, it
tends to drift around.
I don't object to people smoking per se, but if they're indoors, I'd
prefer the smoking area to be physically separated by more than just a
couple of restaurant tables. Either a physical wall or an "air wall"
of properly aimed fans and ductwork would be preferable.
>I am all in favor of a national "Shit Or Get Off The Pot" vote, which
>would either ban it or leave it the hell alone.
A *national* vote? I'd rather not have to submit to the whims of the
folks in California and New York on something like this--keep it local
option.
>Telling a bar owner he can't have smoking in his place is busy-body-
>ness taken to a terminal degree.
Agreed. *I* won't go in there, but since I don't drink booze anyway,
and go into bars maybe once or twice a decade, he's not losing much
business on my account.
Michael Black
> I would expect that there are some nanny librarians out there that,
> given the opportunity, would ban H's juvies due to his tolerance of
> smoking. They are in the same genetic branch as those who ban Huck
> Finn for saying "nigger".
>
That might be a better explanation of why Heinlein juveniles are missing
from the libraries than the recent thread about "scientific inaccuracy".
Of course, it may not be the librarians making such a decision, but
some third party outraged by the smoking. It's the sort of thing that
happens when someone stumbles on the "taboo" and then feels they have
to react, followed by others who haven't read the book but wait, ready
to pounce when needed.
Michael
kke...@gmail.com
> <gulliverfoy...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
In "Looking back from 2000" Mack had the main character going to a
"Smoke easy" to enjoy illicit cigarettes.
Michael Stemper
>On Nov 17, 5:30=A0pm, "Mike Stone" <mwst...@aol.com> wrote:
>> [1] Perhaps the most extreme case was Mack Reynolds. In many of his stori=
>es,
>> whatever fashionable notion was going around in the 1960s got projected a
>> century or so into the future
>> Mike Stone - Peterborough, England
>In "Looking back from 2000" Mack had the main character going to a
>"Smoke easy" to enjoy illicit cigarettes.
Although it wasn't (to the best of my knowledge) called a "smoke-easy",
I went to one in roughly March of that year, in Sacramento, CA.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
The FAQ for rec.arts.sf.written is at:
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper/sf-written
Please read it before posting.
moonstorm
In "Variable Star" the novel RAH started and Spider Robinson finished,
the main character is pleased to be in a shared cabin with a smoker.
However, he does discuss the genetic modification of tobbacco to
eliminate the carcinogins. There is also dicussion of smoking tobbacco
as an underground activity contrary to the dictates of the Prophet,
forming something of a cabal of smokers.
Michael Black
And then there's Woody Allen's movie "Sleeper" where he wakes up in the
future after cryongenic sleep. Once the owner of a health food store, he
discovers that science has found that so many things once deemed dangerous
are outright healthy, such as smoking.
Michael
Tian
> In article <9bb87f98-ecef-48f0...@d5g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, "kke...@gmail.com" <kke...@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Nov 17, 5:30=A0pm, "Mike Stone" <mwst...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>>> [1] Perhaps the most extreme case was Mack Reynolds. In many of his stori=
>> es,
>>> whatever fashionable notion was going around in the 1960s got projected a
>>> century or so into the future
>>> Mike Stone - Peterborough, England
>
>> In "Looking back from 2000" Mack had the main character going to a
>> "Smoke easy" to enjoy illicit cigarettes.
>
> Although it wasn't (to the best of my knowledge) called a "smoke-easy",
> I went to one in roughly March of that year, in Sacramento, CA.
>
around here, although we do have a hookah lounge in San Jose. That would
be a place with huge water pipes where you buy spiced tobacco and smoke
it. Haven't been in the place and have no idea how they handle the law.