Heinlein's first novel found
BPRAL22169
While trying to find it, I ran across this Review that sheds light on the
racist/antiracist question:
http://www.troynovant.com/Stoddard/Heinlein/Farnhams-Freehold.html
Bill
BPRAL22169
<The reason FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD is a racist book is not because in it, the Evil
Niggers take over the world and enslave all the white people. That's just
something humans do. However, what is unprecedented in any known historical
slave state is for human beings to master other human beings AND THEN EAT THEM.
<I realize Heinlein was going for shock value here, and he didn't intend to be
racist, but the fact that his Evil Niggers do indeed eat non-blacks takes this
book to an unprecedented level. Add in the fact that there are NO POSITIVE
BLACK CHARACTERS AT ALL IN THE BOOK (I grant you, there are hardly any positive
characters at all, but I suspect RAH meant Hugh and Barbara to be admirable and
heroic, he just badly missed the boat) and little things like the black masters
call all white women 'sluts' (I know, I know... it may seem no worse than white
masters calling black slaves 'bucks' and 'wenches', but I maintain that it's a
more shocking and degrading word; again, that's RAH's intent, but, well...)
<I don't think RAH meant FF to be racist. But I feel that it is. In addition to
just beinga really bad book, for the reasons Mr. Burgess notes, among many many
others, which I note at length in the article you're on about.?>
Bill
BPRAL22169
<I think you're mistaken though. The character of the black handyman who wound
up in the future with the Farnhams was thoughtful and intelligent, and
sympathetic.
<Furthermore, the "master" portrayed seemed highly sympathetic until Heinlein
really reveals the full horror of the slavemaster viewpoint--which was very
obviously modeled on the slavemaster viewpoint Heinlein would have read from
history about the American slave era. Given Heinlein's loathing for slavery,
which he wrote about in many other books, I found that portrayal especially
profound--he makes you almost like the slavemaster for his intelligence and
"liberalism" until you suddenly realize just what he is.
<In the meantime, Farnham's handyman was not only a positive character all the
way through, but he actually agonizes somewhat over his decision to stay in the
new age society--but finally opts to stay because if he goes back home, he'll
be treated like shit again. The fact that Heinlein was willing to put it that
way was pretty risky but also pretty right on the money for the time he was
writing.
<Finally, as to the cannibalism, you miss the fact that white people are all
cannibals in the book too. Indeed, the butchers and the cooks are all white
people. It's something pervasive in the society, one which also practices
selective breeding on its slaves to make them docile and stupid.
<Racism? I'm sorry, I simply do no not buy it. Especially when we look at how
Heinlein treated race in so many of his other books, both before Farnham's
Freehold and after it.>
This exchange strikes me as a fair summary of the argument over the years.
Bill
lal_truckee
> And this reply by the owner of the blog, Dean May
>
> This exchange strikes me as a fair summary of the argument over the years.
I think one should add: As opposed to historical slavery where the
victorious enslaved the losers, the more recent evil represented by the
enslaving of Africans by Europeans was "justified" by some supposed
difference in human qualities, the assumption one human was naturally
superior to another human.
I think Heinlein deliberately made Ponce et al cannibals in order to
assert the logical consequences of this insidious argument from
superiority. If one human is superior to another, then it's only a
matter of degree of superiority whether eating the inferior is
cannibalism or normal carnivore behavior. c.f. bushmeat. The mid-20th
century arguments for separation of races and against inter-marriage
were still based on these explicit assumption of different levels of
humanity. Heinlein deliberately chose to illustrate where that argument
logically leads.
I still find it amazing that _Farnham's Freehold_ - which is an explicit
anti-racism treatise - can be misread by so many illiterates (word used
advisedly.)
Nancy Lebovitz
BPRAL22169 <bpral...@aol.com> wrote:
>Found this on a blog posted by Handsome of the "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" blog:
>
><The reason FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD is a racist book is not because in it, the Evil
>Niggers take over the world and enslave all the white people. That's just
That isn't known--there may be free whites (and enslaved blacks, for that
matter) in other parts of the world. Hugh has very little access to
information, and plausibly so.
>something humans do. However, what is unprecedented in any known historical
>slave state is for human beings to master other human beings AND THEN EAT THEM.
Agreed. I don't know whether Heinlein was just pursuing his metaphor of
irresponsible power or if a little bit of stereotyping in the back of
this mind took over.
><I realize Heinlein was going for shock value here, and he didn't intend to be
>racist, but the fact that his Evil Niggers do indeed eat non-blacks takes this
>book to an unprecedented level. Add in the fact that there are NO POSITIVE
>BLACK CHARACTERS AT ALL IN THE BOOK (I grant you, there are hardly any positive
>characters at all, but I suspect RAH meant Hugh and Barbara to be admirable and
Heinlein clearly portrayed Hugh as someone who's pretty bad at dealing with
people--he's courageous, ethnical, and technically competent, but that's
not always enough.
I don't think Barbara or Karen had much wrong with them, but I don't think
they were excessively vivid characters, either.
>heroic, he just badly missed the boat) and little things like the black masters
>call all white women 'sluts' (I know, I know... it may seem no worse than white
>masters calling black slaves 'bucks' and 'wenches', but I maintain that it's a
>more shocking and degrading word; again, that's RAH's intent, but, well...)
>
><I don't think RAH meant FF to be racist. But I feel that it is. In addition to
>just beinga really bad book, for the reasons Mr. Burgess notes, among many many
>others, which I note at length in the article you're on about.?>
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
Nancy Lebovitz
BPRAL22169 <bpral...@aol.com> wrote:
>
><In the meantime, Farnham's handyman was not only a positive character all the
>way through, but he actually agonizes somewhat over his decision to stay in the
>new age society--but finally opts to stay because if he goes back home, he'll
New age?
>be treated like shit again. The fact that Heinlein was willing to put it that
>way was pretty risky but also pretty right on the money for the time he was
>writing.
I just realized that Joseph's decision goes in parallel with Heinlein's
decription of sentimental fiction about slaves dying for their masters.
Joseph makes the apparently pragmatic decision--decent treatment by *some*
whites doesn't make up for huge amounts of prejudice. It would have been
a very different story if Karen and/or Barbara and he had fallen in love
with each other.
Joseph's decision is only apparently pragmatic because he choses to stay
in a timeline that gets wiped out. Ok, it's possible that time branched,
but I prefer to think that the Chosen were made into didn't-happen.
Mike Schilling
"Nancy Lebovitz" <na...@unix5.netaxs.com> wrote in message
news:kOC5c.258$g07.2...@newshog.newsread.com...
> I don't think Barbara or Karen had much wrong with them, but I don't think
> they were excessively vivid characters, either.
Barbara adores Hugh and has big boobs; what else do you need to know? :-)
BPRAL22169
>Joseph's decision is only apparently pragmatic because he choses to stay
>in a timeline that gets wiped out. Ok, it's possible that time branched,
>but I prefer to think that the Chosen were made into didn't-happen
Yeah, that would be my preferred choice, as well. Joseph is ... well,
problematical.
I excerpted that set of opinions because it seemed a pretty good capsule
statement of the divergence of opinion on the racism question; we had people
asking for citations upthread and this seemed to fill the bill for the most
part.
Bill
r.r...@thevine.net
Lebovitz) wrote:
>>something humans do. However, what is unprecedented in any known historical
>>slave state is for human beings to master other human beings AND THEN EAT THEM.
>
>Agreed. I don't know whether Heinlein was just pursuing his metaphor of
>irresponsible power or if a little bit of stereotyping in the back of
>this mind took over.
Ok, it's been a while since I read the book, and I have tried to
forget all memory of it, but I seem to recall that when Hugh finds out
the meat they are eating is human, he asks whether it's one of the
chief guy's nephew, which was seen as a humorous witty comment,
because of the linguistic difference betweeen "generic nephew" and
"nephew who is my oldest sister's oldest son". I inferred from this
that blacks got eaten sometimes too.
And _Farnham's Freehold_ is probably one of the worst books to start
with for Heinlein. After reading it, I was shocked to think that so
many people considered him one of the SF greats. It took reading
_Job_ for me to realize that he does actually have some good books.
Rebecca
Brandon
r.r...@thevine.net wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 12:54:40 GMT, na...@unix5.netaxs.com (Nancy
> Lebovitz) wrote:
>
>
>>>something humans do. However, what is unprecedented in any known historical
>>>slave state is for human beings to master other human beings AND THEN EAT THEM.
>>
>>Agreed. I don't know whether Heinlein was just pursuing his metaphor of
>>irresponsible power or if a little bit of stereotyping in the back of
>>this mind took over.
>
>
> Ok, it's been a while since I read the book, and I have tried to
> forget all memory of it, but I seem to recall that when Hugh finds out
> the meat they are eating is human, he asks whether it's one of the
> chief guy's nephew, which was seen as a humorous witty comment,
> because of the linguistic difference betweeen "generic nephew" and
> "nephew who is my oldest sister's oldest son". I inferred from this
> that blacks got eaten sometimes too.
Not a valid inference. The cook was white. BUT ... you
have hit upon a point someone else made previously: the
white servants (at least the collaborators, like Memtok)
were *also* cannibals -- they ate long pig, too.
Brandon
BPRAL22169 wrote:
> Nancy Lebovitz
>
>
>>Joseph's decision is only apparently pragmatic because he choses to stay
>>in a timeline that gets wiped out. Ok, it's possible that time branched,
>>but I prefer to think that the Chosen were made into didn't-happen
>
>
> Yeah, that would be my preferred choice, as well. Joseph is ... well,
> problematical.
>
Joseph wasn't problematic: he was the proof that you could
take a peaceful, pleasant, intelligent and gentle man, give
him a little power, and he would go bad fairly quickly.
BPRAL22169
>Joseph wasn't problematic: he was the proof that you could
>take a peaceful, pleasant, intelligent and gentle man, give
>him a little power, and he would go bad fairly quickly.
Not quite -- as I read it, Joseph was already corrupted -- by racism -- it just
took the special circumstances here to bring it out. That is, Joseph was not
corrupted by his evolving circumstances; he was previously corrupted by the
racism/power imbalance of the culture he grew up in.
Bill
Mike Schilling
"BPRAL22169" <bpral...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040316191940...@mb-m17.aol.com...
Hugh isn't blameless here either. He caused much of the antagonism between
Joseph and Duke that helped push Joseph over the edge.
David M. Silver
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hugh isn't blameless here either. He caused much of the antagonism between
> Joseph and Duke that helped push Joseph over the edge.
How? By putting the well-qualified Joseph, a black, second-in-command,
over Ducky, er, Duke, the unqualified, unthinking, ill-disciplined,
unrepentant and wastrel prince who expects his 'blood' to merit the
position.
I suppose there have been white cotton mill owners in the South, say
back in the 1950s, who would agree with you, and make sure they never
promoted a black supervisor over their own son, too. Surely that isn't
your point, is it?
--
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
"The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!"
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA '29, Lt.(jg), USN, R'td, 1907-88
Louann Miller
<lal_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>I think Heinlein deliberately made Ponce et al cannibals in order to
>assert the logical consequences of this insidious argument from
>superiority. If one human is superior to another, then it's only a
>matter of degree of superiority whether eating the inferior is
>cannibalism or normal carnivore behavior. c.f. bushmeat. The mid-20th
>century arguments for separation of races and against inter-marriage
>were still based on these explicit assumption of different levels of
>humanity. Heinlein deliberately chose to illustrate where that argument
>logically leads.
>
>I still find it amazing that _Farnham's Freehold_ - which is an explicit
>anti-racism treatise - can be misread by so many illiterates (word used
>advisedly.)
Do the Draka in their Final State cannibalize homo servus on a routine
(as opposed to emergency) basis? If not, why not?
Louann Miller
<ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hugh isn't blameless here either. He caused much of the antagonism between
>> Joseph and Duke that helped push Joseph over the edge.
>
>How? By putting the well-qualified Joseph, a black, second-in-command,
>over Ducky, er, Duke, the unqualified, unthinking, ill-disciplined,
>unrepentant and wastrel prince who expects his 'blood' to merit the
>position.
You can take it that way, but you can also take it another direction:
Hugh is to blame for Duke's character _as a whole_ because he allowed
his son to be irretrievably mis-raised by an alcoholic and neurotic
mother.
Hugh's part in the wrecking of Duke (which IMO was already complete
when the book opened) isn't the whole story, of course. He committed a
sin of omission, where Duke's mom did all the active damage. But since
he was the sane person best placed to fix the problem, and didn't, I
have to hold him responsible for it. The way he writes off his ex-wife
and son when he leaves the alternate future is a failure to even
understand his own responsibility, let alone fulfill it, that was
always a hugely sour note in the book for me.
Maybe some of the problem is me, applying modern standards of
parenting (where getting the job done is more important than sticking
to your traditional sex role) to a very traditional me-man you-woman
division of labor. But I really don't think so. I'm inclined to see
that aspect, rather than the cannibalism, as the big flaw in the book.
I see it as a pervasive Heinlein trait, in fact. It's a very
understandable fault for a very traditionally reared, left-brain sort
of guy born at the turn of the century who never had children. But
Heinlein is _bad_ at child-rearing scenes and related social dynamics,
like the relationships of adult parents and their children.
(For the record, even on first reading in my teens I didn't have
trouble with the cannibalism bits. I disliked them, obviously. I
didn't grasp that they were symbolic of the master-slave relationship
as a whole. But I got it, in that I didn't think he was making a
statement about black = evil in any sense rather than power corrupts =
evil. I don't know how common my experiences were, just reporting a
data point.)
Louann
Dreamer
"Louann Miller" <loua...@yahoo.net> wrote in message
news:94lg50l6714ji4s5r...@4ax.com...
Eat long pig when you could have real pig, or beef, or something *good?* Ew.
Why bother to be Masters of All You Survey and not eat real food?
There is a wonderful little throwaway line in one of the Draka books - I
think it's _Stone Dogs_ where one of the current heroines has brought her
friends home to her family's country estate and they're eating dinner. At
one point the girl reflects that it's "simple country food." It's actually
an I-forget-how-many-courses banquet with what most of us would consider
very fancy restaurant-level dishes. That's how high on the hog Draka like to
live. Eat serfs? Blech.
D
Mike Schilling
"David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:ag.plusone-5D581...@news.fu-berlin.de...
> In article <w4S5c.11129$yb1....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com>,
> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hugh isn't blameless here either. He caused much of the antagonism
between
> > Joseph and Duke that helped push Joseph over the edge.
>
> How? By putting the well-qualified Joseph, a black, second-in-command,
> over Ducky, er, Duke, the unqualified, unthinking, ill-disciplined,
> unrepentant and wastrel prince who expects his 'blood' to merit the
> position.
>
Very early in FF, Joseph pulls a gun on Duke with Hugh's full approval. It's
quite clear that this isn't just a threat, either. If Joseph shoots Duke,
Hugh will back him up. Color aside, it's clear Joseph has replaced Duke as
Hugh's son. Surely there were better ways to handle the situation, but Hugh
always thinks the shortest distance between two points is a straight line to
disaster.
BPRAL22169
>Hugh isn't blameless here either. He caused much of the antagonism between
>Joseph and Duke that helped push Joseph over the edge.
>
While I agree that "Hugh isn't blameless," I don't quite understand what you
mean. if you mean Hugh manipulated the situation to cause the antagonism, it
depends on what you mean. The antagonism was a secondary effect of a
pre-existing racism (and inability to deal practically with his circumstances)
in Duke, brought out by the situation. If you mean it is in Hugh's parenting,
I can't disagree, but I can't support it either -- there just isn't evidence in
the story.
And now the fire alarm in the building is ringing ...
Bill
BPRAL22169
> I
>have to hold him responsible for it. The way he writes off his ex-wife
>and son when he leaves the alternate future is a failure to even
>understand his own responsibility,
This is a "sour note" in the book for me, too, and I go back and forth in my
mind on it. I don't like it -- and I can't really think of Hugh as a heroic
figure because of it. OTOH . . . There is a certain extent to which you have
to let go and simply acknowledge your failures and move on; you cannot,
ultimately, be responsible for another person's choices and it's a hard thing
to have no room for movement and be forced to let someone perish because of
their own choices, wilfully made. I have to acknowledge that in those
circumstances, Hugh's choices were legitimate for him.
It doesn't make me want to sit down at dinner with him, though.
Bill
BPRAL22169
>Color aside, it's clear Joseph has replaced Duke as
>Hugh's son.
You've gotten rid of a lot of the nuance in that scene in order to interpret it
that way. Hugh spends some time regretting that Duke has put himself outside
the conditions that would make it possible for him to function that way. How
could he possibly be second-in-command of the lifeboat when he ridicules the
lifeboat?
I think it's the situation that's princnipally at fault here, Even in the cases
where i might do things differently than Hugh, I have to acknowledge that the
choices he made were legitimate in the circumstances.
Bill
David M. Silver
Louann Miller <loua...@yahoo.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 01:34:27 -0800, "David M. Silver"
> <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Hugh isn't blameless here either. He caused much of the antagonism between
> >> Joseph and Duke that helped push Joseph over the edge.
> >
> >How? By putting the well-qualified Joseph, a black, second-in-command,
> >over Ducky, er, Duke, the unqualified, unthinking, ill-disciplined,
> >unrepentant and wastrel prince who expects his 'blood' to merit the
> >position.
>
> You can take it that way, but you can also take it another direction:
> Hugh is to blame for Duke's character _as a whole_ because he allowed
> his son to be irretrievably mis-raised by an alcoholic and neurotic
> mother.
>
I wholly agree. And so did Heinlein. He's done a traditional thing in
this story: he's taken his hero, put him in the middle of a terrible
mess ("in media res" as good ol' Phil Sid put it), and forces him to
work his way through it.
> Hugh's part in the wrecking of Duke (which IMO was already complete
> when the book opened) isn't the whole story, of course. He committed a
> sin of omission, where Duke's mom did all the active damage. But since
> he was the sane person best placed to fix the problem, and didn't, I
> have to hold him responsible for it. The way he writes off his ex-wife
> and son when he leaves the alternate future is a failure to even
> understand his own responsibility, let alone fulfill it, that was
> always a hugely sour note in the book for me.
It was a note of regret for Hugh, too. Some things get so FUBAR they
cannot be fixed, though. Worthwhile lessons can be taught by that. Grace
and Duckie are write-offs. He screwed up. His fault. And he cannot fix
any of it.
But Hugh's got a problem -- he's in a lifeboat. He can stay, get
tempered and take over from Mentone; or suicide; or he can try again,
spring Barbara and the twins, and get out of there.
Quick, Lieutenant, if you don't make a decision more people are going to
die! Do something, even if it's wrong!
Not exactly the always competent hero some criticize Heinlein for always
writing about, is he? Kinda like us, huh? I understand what's going on
in the minds of Hugh, and Larry Smith, and Evelyn Cyril Gordon, equally
screwed up initially about their role as adults, quite a bit better than
I do the deified Woodrow Wilson Smith. Funny thing: Heinlein was writing
those particular "low mimesis" characters just about the time the first
generation of kids, like me, who'd grown up on his juveniles, were grown
up enough to do things like have their own children and think about how
best to raise them, and not spoil them, like poor Duckie, or spoil their
marriages, by working twenty hours a day and leave their wives to
country club bars for diversion, like Grace. Or the way he showed Poor
Poddy turn out, along with her sociopathic brother, written when, next
year? He gave the Fries family true modern standards: both parents were
idiots, working themselves to achieve -- leaving their children to raise
themselves.
>
> Maybe some of the problem is me, applying modern standards of
> parenting (where getting the job done is more important than sticking
> to your traditional sex role) to a very traditional me-man you-woman
> division of labor.
I don't think RAH was unaware of that point of view. We had such in the
'60s. See, Podkayne, above. An equal opportunity fault.
> But I really don't think so. I'm inclined to see
> that aspect, rather than the cannibalism, as the big flaw in the book.
>
Why a flaw? It's a lesson. They are all of them lessons. Think! This
could happen to you and yours.
> I see it as a pervasive Heinlein trait, in fact.
MMV. In fact I see him seeing every defect you do. And better. He wrote
them, after all. Does it have to come to a comedy ending not to be a
flaw? Shakespeare sure blew it with all his big ones then. Lear,
Othello, MacBeth, all them flawed stories. The first story Heinlein
published was a tragedy, "Life-Line." Why should he give them all up to
write happy endings? They're not all intended for juveniles. Podkayne
wasn't. Her death was supposed to make you as upset as fat Grace left
behind with permanently temperate Duckie, her toy. And his point was ...
?
> It's a very
> understandable fault for a very traditionally reared, left-brain sort
> of guy born at the turn of the century who never had children. But
> Heinlein is _bad_ at child-rearing scenes and related social dynamics,
> like the relationships of adult parents and their children.
>
Frex? And please distinguish, Louann, a deliberately contrived plot or
thematic point, such as Brian and Maureen when Brian decides to dump her
for the younger woman, or Maureen and Pricilla, after Brian and trophy
wife number two have spoiled the broth, from scenes and situations where
you think they're really just plain _bad_.
> (For the record, even on first reading in my teens I didn't have
> trouble with the cannibalism bits. I disliked them, obviously. I
> didn't grasp that they were symbolic of the master-slave relationship
> as a whole. But I got it, in that I didn't think he was making a
> statement about black = evil in any sense rather than power corrupts =
> evil. I don't know how common my experiences were, just reporting a
> data point.)
>
It's pretty common. I don't think I ever got all there was to get in any
Heinlein, first reading, last reading, any reading. If you think you've
figured out all there is in this writer's works, you're wrong, each time
you think that.
David M. Silver
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:ag.plusone-5D581...@news.fu-berlin.de...
> > In article <w4S5c.11129$yb1....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com>,
> > "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Hugh isn't blameless here either. He caused much of the antagonism
> between
> > > Joseph and Duke that helped push Joseph over the edge.
> >
> > How? By putting the well-qualified Joseph, a black, second-in-command,
> > over Ducky, er, Duke, the unqualified, unthinking, ill-disciplined,
> > unrepentant and wastrel prince who expects his 'blood' to merit the
> > position.
> >
>
> Very early in FF, Joseph pulls a gun on Duke with Hugh's full approval. It's
> quite clear that this isn't just a threat, either. If Joseph shoots Duke,
> Hugh will back him up. Color aside, it's clear Joseph has replaced Duke as
> Hugh's son. Surely there were better ways to handle the situation, but Hugh
> always thinks the shortest distance between two points is a straight line to
> disaster.
>
>
Clever phrase. Unfortunately for Duckie, the shortest distance after his
mutiny is death for all of them -- drunken mommie and wimmen he's trying
to impress included. Hugh sees that. Duckie didn't. Duckie was spoiled,
as well as stupid. Surely there was a better way to handle the
situation; but that was in the past, boat officer. You've got the gun.
Get us through this. That's what we pay you for. Whether your solution
is subtle or elegant doesn't count. Wadda expect from an ex-navy petty
officer, who builds houses with his hands?
God help us all if we're ever in a situation such as that with our
children.
The situation the author is portraying is a tragedy. Duke's flawed.
Grace is flawed. Hugh is flawed. It's all their fault. The world was
flawed. Maybe it's all our fault. It went to a Grand Slam. What happens
next is the story, but it's also the lesson.
Aaron P Brezenski
><ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hugh isn't blameless here either. He caused much of the antagonism between
>>> Joseph and Duke that helped push Joseph over the edge.
>>
>>How? By putting the well-qualified Joseph, a black, second-in-command,
>>over Ducky, er, Duke, the unqualified, unthinking, ill-disciplined,
>>unrepentant and wastrel prince who expects his 'blood' to merit the
>>position.
>
>trouble with the cannibalism bits. I disliked them, obviously. I
>didn't grasp that they were symbolic of the master-slave relationship
>as a whole. But I got it, in that I didn't think he was making a
>statement about black = evil in any sense rather than power corrupts =
>evil. I don't know how common my experiences were, just reporting a
>data point.)
I had no problem with the cannibalism bits, when I read FF; but then,
I'd already read Stranger, where the point was made quite clearly that
cannibalism was not something confined to a race or a religious order.
It's hard to say what I would have thought when I read it fresh, but
having been brought up in 70s-80s middle America, the "black cannibal"
was not a meme I had ever encountered, so I would have seen it as
the ultimate result of slavery, not as "darkie reverting to the
ways of his ancestors". People who had to live with those stereotypes
probably had a different outlook.
--
Aaron Brezenski
Not speaking for my employer in any way.
Brandon
BPRAL22169 wrote:
Fair enough.
Brandon
David M. Silver wrote:
> In article <w4S5c.11129$yb1....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com>,
> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Hugh isn't blameless here either. He caused much of the antagonism between
>>Joseph and Duke that helped push Joseph over the edge.
>
>
> How? By putting the well-qualified Joseph, a black, second-in-command,
> over Ducky, er, Duke, the unqualified, unthinking, ill-disciplined,
> unrepentant and wastrel prince who expects his 'blood' to merit the
> position.
Hugh specifically criticizes himself for having Joseph pull
a gun on Duke, and generally criticizes himself for being a
poor leader. I think both criticisms are valid.
Brandon
David M. Silver wrote:
>
>
> Frex? And please distinguish, Louann, a deliberately contrived plot or
> thematic point, such as Brian and Maureen when Brian decides to dump her
> for the younger woman, or Maureen and Pricilla, after Brian and trophy
> wife number two have spoiled the broth, from scenes and situations where
> you think they're really just plain _bad_.
Actually, that very example comes to mind as just plain
*bad*. Maureen had none of Hugh's obstacles. She was
single; she was rich; she didn't have to work unless she
felt like it. Two of her children were obviously in very
dire straits and she made only a token effort to help them
(compared to the resources she had available). She spent
something like two and a half months on them, decided it was
more work than she wanted to do, and washed their hands of
them. She didn't even care enough about them to report what
happened to them as a consequence.
David M. Silver
Brandon <jch...@avalon.net> wrote:
I agree. He should have been ready and able to have shot Ducky himself.
You don't delegate ultimate responsibility for something like that,
either directly or indirectly by saying, "Who will rid me of this
mettlesome priest?" But he was Ducky's father. Tough job. Even David the
King had a problem with it. Chewed out the general who did the job for
him; but iirc, kept him on . . . or maybe not, it's hard to remember at
my age.
Wayne Throop
:: I have to hold him responsible for it. The way he writes off his
:: ex-wife and son when he leaves the alternate future is a failure to
:: even understand his own responsibility,
: bpral...@aol.com (BPRAL22169)
: This is a "sour note" in the book for me, too, and I go back and forth
: in my mind on it. I don't like it -- and I can't really think of Hugh
: as a heroic figure because of it. OTOH . . . There is a certain
: extent to which you have to let go and simply acknowledge your
: failures and move on;
I'm wondering, for those who think Hugh cut and run and is flawed
thereby, just what he should have done instead? Just stay and
have his new family corrupted? Just what *was* his responsibility,
as in, what was it his duty to do or attempt?
Serious question, not just "you're wrong about Hugh"; you might well
be right. It's just that I don't see he had any realistic options wrt
his wife (or, "former wife") and son, or Joseph. He only really had
options wrt himself and Barbara etc.
Maybe he should have stayed and joined the resistance?
Given that by that time he's more or less aware that the
"free" folk are just a conserved breeding stock, this doesn't
seem a very productive possibility.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Captain Button
I don't recall any indication at all of it. A couple of non-conclusive
indicators the other way, though:
In _ The Stone Dogs _, (IIRC) Yolanda leads a raid on an Alliance passenger
spaceship. She discovers that a woman and two little girls on board are
the family of the man who shot her lover during the war. So she attempts a
dreadful revenge. Instead of taking them along as "serfs" (slaves) like
everyone else on board, she orders the ship stripped of all food and leaves
the woman and her daughters alone on the ship with the body of an
acquaintance who was killed in the boarding action.
She clearly intends to force the woman to resort to cannibalism to keep
herself and her daughters alive. Which suggests that cannibalism is still
seen as abhorrent in the late-20th century Domination.
(The woman instead jettisons the body as soon as she is alone, and feeds
the children on a "soup" made from her own blood. So that is technically
cannibalism still, but isn't the same really. The net result is that when
rescued she has suffered grave permanent damage to her health, while the
children will be able to recover.)
Again IIRC, in _ Drakon _, Gwen is cosidering how long she can live in an
apartment safely after murdering the resident. She is considering the
amount of food available and briefly considers the body in that light, but
is clearly repulsed by the idea. Later we learn that she instead ordered
Chinese takeout food delivered on the victim's credit card.
ObOtherSF; Some of the fans of the Sime~Gen series (I among them) have
come up with a rather grotesque retcon on junct society. The Simes raise
Gens (fellow human beings) like cattle. This is in order to be able to
kill one every month by sucking out their "selyn" life-energy, which is
necessary for the Simes to live (as far as they know).
The books vaguely mention public disposal services that remove the used Gen
bodies but no more than that. The retcon is that the bodies are being used
as food for the other Gens. Which may make the economics of the series
somewhat less implausible, though there is still no shortage of dubiousness
if you try and run the numbers.
And Genfarms and Pens are often wracked with disease problems, btw. Maybe
some of that is "Mad Gen Disease".
--
Once is happenstance.
Twice is coincidence.
Four times is enemy action.
BOMB MARS NOW! [ Captain Button - but...@io.com ]
Louann Miller
<ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> You can take it that way, but you can also take it another direction:
>> Hugh is to blame for Duke's character _as a whole_ because he allowed
>> his son to be irretrievably mis-raised by an alcoholic and neurotic
>> mother.
>I wholly agree. And so did Heinlein. He's done a traditional thing in
>this story: he's taken his hero, put him in the middle of a terrible
>mess ("in media res" as good ol' Phil Sid put it), and forces him to
>work his way through it.
I feel much more sympathy for heroes in the middle of such messes when
they didn't, er, excrete the mess themselves. Hugh did, at least the
family-dynamic part of it.
Louann Miller
wrote:
>I'm wondering, for those who think Hugh cut and run and is flawed
>thereby, just what he should have done instead? Just stay and
>have his new family corrupted? Just what *was* his responsibility,
>as in, what was it his duty to do or attempt?
>
>Serious question, not just "you're wrong about Hugh"; you might well
>be right. It's just that I don't see he had any realistic options wrt
>his wife (or, "former wife") and son, or Joseph. He only really had
>options wrt himself and Barbara etc.
I don't see that he had any concrete other choices at that point. I
could have stood a little more realization that Duke was partly his
fault, but there was an action scene and the end of the novel
barrelling at them like a freight train so I can theoretically
understand the brevity.
What I want Hugh to have done differently would have been _way_ back
before the beginning of the existing novel. Probably before Duke was
school age. I want him to have said "hey, my wife's a drunk and a
neurotic and she's going to ruin this kid if I let her." He might have
tried and failed to intervene, but he could've tried.
Side note: why is Duke a total wreck while whatsername, the daughter,
appeared to be completely emotionally stable apart from the odd
illegitimate pregnancy?
Louann
Nancy Lebovitz
Dreamer <dre...@dreamstrike.com> wrote:
>
>> Do the Draka in their Final State cannibalize homo servus on a routine
>> (as opposed to emergency) basis? If not, why not?
>
>Eat long pig when you could have real pig, or beef, or something *good?* Ew.
>Why bother to be Masters of All You Survey and not eat real food?
>
>There is a wonderful little throwaway line in one of the Draka books - I
>think it's _Stone Dogs_ where one of the current heroines has brought her
>friends home to her family's country estate and they're eating dinner. At
>one point the girl reflects that it's "simple country food." It's actually
>an I-forget-how-many-courses banquet with what most of us would consider
>very fancy restaurant-level dishes. That's how high on the hog Draka like to
>live. Eat serfs? Blech.
You're assuming that human meat doesn't taste like much. With Draka abilities
at genetic manipulation plus servus creativity and dedication, why shouldn't
the cuisine have excellent human-based recipes?
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
Nancy Lebovitz
This is from memory, but iirc, Maureen had just ended her marriage--
her emotional resources were lower than they normally would be. What's
worse, she apparently had no idea of how to deal with kids that she
hadn't established dominance over. I'm not saying she shouldn't have
done better, but it's also not shocking that she didn't.
On the other hand, both that story and the bit about the "free-lance
socialist" in _The Cat Who Walks through Walls_ is a sort of "these
messed up kids--you can't do anything with them" theme that strikes
me as pretty unattractive.
Nancy Lebovitz
David M. Silver <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>Not exactly the always competent hero some criticize Heinlein for always
>writing about, is he? Kinda like us, huh? I understand what's going on
>in the minds of Hugh, and Larry Smith, and Evelyn Cyril Gordon, equally
>screwed up initially about their role as adults, quite a bit better than
>I do the deified Woodrow Wilson Smith. Funny thing: Heinlein was writing
>those particular "low mimesis" characters just about the time the first
>generation of kids, like me, who'd grown up on his juveniles, were grown
>up enough to do things like have their own children and think about how
>best to raise them, and not spoil them, like poor Duckie, or spoil their
>marriages, by working twenty hours a day and leave their wives to
>country club bars for diversion, like Grace. Or the way he showed Poor
>Poddy turn out, along with her sociopathic brother, written when, next
>year? He gave the Fries family true modern standards: both parents were
>idiots, working themselves to achieve -- leaving their children to raise
>themselves.
And Heinlein also shows the opposite error of excessive harshness in
_Double Star_.
I could even argue that he says in _The Rolling Stones_ that raising
children successfully takes luck and dedication, and hitting the
right balance takes interest in the children at least as much as
following rules about how to raise them.
Sea Wasp
> Side note: why is Duke a total wreck while whatsername, the daughter,
> appeared to be completely emotionally stable apart from the odd
> illegitimate pregnancy?
>
People are very different, is the basic answer. My brother and I
followed very different paths despite being raised by the same people.
One person raised like Duke goes to pieces, another develops strength
in adversity.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Wayne Throop
::: direction: Hugh is to blame for Duke's character _as a whole_
::: because he allowed his son to be irretrievably mis-raised by an
::: alcoholic and neurotic mother.
:: I wholly agree. And so did Heinlein. He's done a traditional thing
:: in this story: he's taken his hero, put him in the middle of a
:: terrible mess ("in media res" as good ol' Phil Sid put it), and
:: forces him to work his way through it.
: Louann Miller <loua...@yahoo.net>
: I feel much more sympathy for heroes in the middle of such messes when
: they didn't, er, excrete the mess themselves. Hugh did, at least the
: family-dynamic part of it.
This seems to assume there was something obvious that could
have been done about it. It's not clear to me that the sins of
the children, or the spouses, should always be visited upon
the parents, or spousees. The least evil outcome one can manage
is sometimes quite evil.
Not that I'm saying Hugh did the best he could, or should have.
Simply that "he shoulda fixed his wife and kid years ago" (or some
milder "he shoulda given 'em warm fuzzies and theyda never turned
bad on 'im" variant) isn't necessarily the conclusion I would reach.
Nor on the other hand are Hugh's guilty feelings in the matter evidence
that he is "the one to blame" in all of it. It is entirely possible
to feel guilty even if there was no way to get a better oucome.
Such is the human experience of regret.
Anyways, it smacks too much of reflex fingerpointing to me. "I'm in an
abusive relationship and my spouse is an alcoholic", "well, you must have
done something to make them a drunk, what's wrong with you!". "My kid
joined a cult" "why you rotten parent you, what did you do to drive them
to that?". "My kid joined the KKK" "why you racist bastard, what have
you been teaching your kids!". Again this is not to say there *wasn't*
anything done to make them drunk/lobotimized/racist, nor is it to say
there's no such thing as codependence... just that it isn't the knee
I would immediately jerk. I'd jerk some other knees instead.
Obviously, other folks reached other conclusions about Hugh. And I'm
certainly not trying to pooh-pooh that. Just that I myself did not find
"it's all his own fault!" to be anywhere near my first reaction, based on
what thankfully-little I've seen of people struggling
with relationships going bad.
OK, so I suppose I've pounded that one into the ground. Sigh.
Wayne Throop
: Side note: why is Duke a total wreck while whatsername, the daughter,
: appeared to be completely emotionally stable apart from the odd
: illegitimate pregnancy?
Well, I took that to be because their experiences diverged.
I know, that's partly a "duh!", but still, just having the same parents
doesn't count for much in terms of equivalence of formative ambiance.
It's easy enough to imagine Duke falling in with unthinking dweebs and
building up attitudes and habits of thought from it, while his sister
not so much.
lal_truckee
Stirling isn't a tenth the writer Heinlein was. (1/10 is high praise, in
case you were wondering.) One can't expect him to follow his
hypothetical creations to their logical conclusions.
Pete McCutchen
<ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote:
>In article <w4S5c.11129$yb1....@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com>,
> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hugh isn't blameless here either. He caused much of the antagonism between
>> Joseph and Duke that helped push Joseph over the edge.
>
>How? By putting the well-qualified Joseph, a black, second-in-command,
>over Ducky, er, Duke, the unqualified, unthinking, ill-disciplined,
>unrepentant and wastrel prince who expects his 'blood' to merit the
>position.
No, that was logical enough. But, as Hugh himself comes to realize,
the *way* he put Joseph in charge and got Duke to obey him was cause
gratuitous humiliation.
Plus, it's not clear to me that Duke's turning out badly isn't at
least in part attributable to bad parenting skills on Hugh's part.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
>Mike Schilling:
>
>>Color aside, it's clear Joseph has replaced Duke as
>>Hugh's son.
>
>You've gotten rid of a lot of the nuance in that scene in order to interpret it
>that way. Hugh spends some time regretting that Duke has put himself outside
>the conditions that would make it possible for him to function that way. How
>could he possibly be second-in-command of the lifeboat when he ridicules the
>lifeboat?
If Hugh and Duke had had a history of father/son bonding activities,
they could have worked together on the project, even if Duke gave him
a hard time about it.
--
Pete McCutchen
BPRAL22169
>Side note: why is Duke a total wreck while whatsername, the daughter,
>appeared to be completely emotionally stable apart from the odd
>illegitimate pregnancy?
Duke is a mommy's boy and Karen is a daddy's girl -- this kind of complicates
things.
Bill
BPRAL22169
>On the other hand, both that story and the bit about the "free-lance
>socialist" in _The Cat Who Walks through Walls_ is a sort of "these
>messed up kids--you can't do anything with them" theme that strikes
>me as pretty unattractive.
It's an open question that IMO gets different answers at different times and
with different people. You have to put your energy in the battles you can win,
and sometimes (bringing it back to Dukie) it's just too late.
Bill
Johnny1A
> "Louann Miller" <loua...@yahoo.net> wrote in message
> news:94lg50l6714ji4s5r...@4ax.com...
> > On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 09:42:22 -0800, lal_truckee
> > <lal_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > >I think Heinlein deliberately made Ponce et al cannibals in order to
> > >assert the logical consequences of this insidious argument from
> > >superiority. If one human is superior to another, then it's only a
> > >matter of degree of superiority whether eating the inferior is
> > >cannibalism or normal carnivore behavior. c.f. bushmeat. The mid-20th
> > >century arguments for separation of races and against inter-marriage
> > >were still based on these explicit assumption of different levels of
> > >humanity. Heinlein deliberately chose to illustrate where that argument
> > >logically leads.
> > >
> > >I still find it amazing that _Farnham's Freehold_ - which is an explicit
> > >anti-racism treatise - can be misread by so many illiterates (word used
> > >advisedly.)
> >
> > Do the Draka in their Final State cannibalize homo servus on a routine
> > (as opposed to emergency) basis? If not, why not?
>
> Why bother to be Masters of All You Survey and not eat real food?
>
> There is a wonderful little throwaway line in one of the Draka books - I
> think it's _Stone Dogs_ where one of the current heroines has brought her
> friends home to her family's country estate and they're eating dinner. At
> one point the girl reflects that it's "simple country food." It's actually
> an I-forget-how-many-courses banquet with what most of us would consider
> very fancy restaurant-level dishes. That's how high on the hog Draka like to
> live. Eat serfs? Blech.
>
In _The Stone Dogs_, in the immediate aftermath of the Final War, Eric
von Shrakenburg and his 'cabinet' are discussing their immediate and
general prospects, and somebody comments they ought to be able, just
barely, to squeeze through the nuclear aftermath without 'having to
eat the serfs'. It's meant and taken mostly as a joke by the others,
but they're all nervous and scared.
(The Final War was a Draka victory only by the tiniest of narrow
margins. America came within a hair's breadth of taking the
Domination down with them.)
Shermanlee
Wayne Throop
: (The Final War was a Draka victory only by the tiniest of narrow
: margins. America came within a hair's breadth of taking the
: Domination down with them.)
Tsk tsk. Couldn't they have tried just a *teeny* bit harder?
Nathan Leahy
> In article <b0823$4058605b$4364a1ea$3...@msgid.meganewsservers.com>,
> Dreamer <dre...@dreamstrike.com> wrote:
> You're assuming that human meat doesn't taste like much.
>With Draka abilities
> at genetic manipulation plus servus creativity and dedication, why shouldn't
> the cuisine have excellent human-based recipes?
any more popular than rat is in "Wesren" societies. In Drakon, Gwen
considers eating one of her conquests, after he comes across evidence
of her superhuman activities and she doesn't eat him, although she's
hungry.
It's a mild distaste, rather than primal revulsion, like I'd feel
about chimp. Presumably there are Draka who'd have no compunctions,
but I'd say they're a small minority
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
>> (as opposed to emergency) basis? If not, why not?
> Eat long pig when you could have real pig, or beef, or something *good?* Ew.
How do you know long pig's not good? Maybe it's the best meat you'll
ever try. Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett's pies were certainly popular
enough in their day.
--
<a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"Doing the impossible makes us mighty." -Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly
Mark Atwood
> : sherm...@hotmail.com (Johnny1A)
> : (The Final War was a Draka victory only by the tiniest of narrow
> : margins. America came within a hair's breadth of taking the
> : Domination down with them.)
>
> Tsk tsk. Couldn't they have tried just a *teeny* bit harder?
In *every* surrounding timeline, for quite some "distance" in every
"direction", they were able to.
--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right,
m...@pobox.com | people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Dreamer
"Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes" <kami...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote in message
news:slrnc5ie8q....@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu...
> Dreamer <dre...@dreamstrike.com>
> wrote on Wed, 17 Mar 2004 08:27:10 -0600:
> > "Louann Miller" <loua...@yahoo.net> wrote in message
> >> Do the Draka in their Final State cannibalize homo servus on a routine
> >> (as opposed to emergency) basis? If not, why not?
> > Eat long pig when you could have real pig, or beef, or something *good?*
Ew.
>
> How do you know long pig's not good?
You don't seriously expect an answer to that question, do you? Move along,
nothing to see here.
D
Dreamer
"Johnny1A" <sherm...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b3030854.04031...@posting.google.com...
> In _The Stone Dogs_, in the immediate aftermath of the Final War, Eric
> von Shrakenburg and his 'cabinet' are discussing their immediate and
> general prospects, and somebody comments they ought to be able, just
> barely, to squeeze through the nuclear aftermath without 'having to
> eat the serfs'. It's meant and taken mostly as a joke by the others,
> but they're all nervous and scared.
Oh, I don't think for a minute that Draka *wouldn't* eat serfs. I just don't
believe they'd do it for preference.
> (The Final War was a Draka victory only by the tiniest of narrow
> margins. America came within a hair's breadth of taking the
> Domination down with them.)
IIRC, the Draka stopped using nukes first, because von Shrakenburg realized
it was about to go to a nobody-wins place. In all the nearby timelines, if
he had been killed, or rendered incommunicado for just a few hours, or
hadn't been in charge, or hadn't had the power to singlehandedly stop the
nuclear exchange, or his field commanders hadn't listened soon enough, it
would have all been over. So yes, any number of very small changes give you
a human-civilization-free Earth, at best.
D
Dreamer
"Nancy Lebovitz" <na...@unix5.netaxs.com> wrote in message
news:A656c.384$pa6.3...@monger.newsread.com...
> In article <b0823$4058605b$4364a1ea$3...@msgid.meganewsservers.com>,
> Dreamer <dre...@dreamstrike.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Do the Draka in their Final State cannibalize homo servus on a routine
> >> (as opposed to emergency) basis? If not, why not?
> >
> >Eat long pig when you could have real pig, or beef, or something *good?*
Ew.
> >Why bother to be Masters of All You Survey and not eat real food?
> >
> >There is a wonderful little throwaway line in one of the Draka books - I
> >think it's _Stone Dogs_ where one of the current heroines has brought her
> >friends home to her family's country estate and they're eating dinner. At
> >one point the girl reflects that it's "simple country food." It's
actually
> >an I-forget-how-many-courses banquet with what most of us would consider
> >very fancy restaurant-level dishes. That's how high on the hog Draka like
to
> >live. Eat serfs? Blech.
>
> You're assuming that human meat doesn't taste like much. With Draka
abilities
> at genetic manipulation plus servus creativity and dedication, why
shouldn't
> the cuisine have excellent human-based recipes?
Good point, but more trouble than it's worth IMO. If you're going to do
genetic redesign, why not start with an animal that grows much faster, isn't
as smart, and is cheaper to feed, and just tweak the taste?
Sure, there are people who turn barstools into hot rods, so I'll give you
that there's no accounting for hobbies. But it just seems like it'd still be
easier to start with cows.
D
Matt Ruff
>
> Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes wrote:
>
>> How do you know long pig's not good?
>
> You don't seriously expect an answer to that question, do you?
I'm sure that somebody with the necessary experience actually has
answered the question at some point. The problem is, most cannibalism
occurs in circumstances of such extreme hunger that pretty much anything
would taste good.
-- M. Ruff
Wayne Throop
::: margins. America came within a hair's breadth of taking the
::: Domination down with them.)
:: Tsk tsk. Couldn't they have tried just a *teeny* bit harder?
: Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com>
: In *every* surrounding timeline, for quite some "distance" in every
: "direction", they were able to.
There, see? The Americans on that timeline were just slackers.
"Why can't you be more like your brother? *He* never lets the Draka win!"
Bill Snyder
Suppose Alfred Packer's opinion is on record anywhere?
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
James Nicoll
He claimed to have gotten sick after the first sample. Apparently
Democrats could be hard to stomach back then.
James Nicoll
--
"Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture
and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure,
and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the
future of the world depends." -Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"
Dreamer
"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:c3cu8e$b2r$1...@panix3.panix.com...
> In article <4tuj50toivppoeev9...@4ax.com>,
> Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
> >On Thu, 18 Mar 2004 16:21:28 GMT, Matt Ruff
> ><storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> >>Dreamer wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> How do you know long pig's not good?
> >>>
> >>> You don't seriously expect an answer to that question, do you?
> >>
> >>I'm sure that somebody with the necessary experience actually has
> >>answered the question at some point. The problem is, most cannibalism
> >>occurs in circumstances of such extreme hunger that pretty much anything
> >>would taste good.
> >
> >Suppose Alfred Packer's opinion is on record anywhere?
>
> He claimed to have gotten sick after the first sample. Apparently
> Democrats could be hard to stomach back then.
"Back then?"
D
James Nicoll
I had assumed Republicans had largely given up the practice of
cannibalism but I sit corrected.
Brandon
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
> In article <c3a1q3$kho$1...@narsil.avalon.net>,
> Brandon <jch...@avalon.net> wrote:
>
>>David M. Silver wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Frex? And please distinguish, Louann, a deliberately contrived plot or
>>>thematic point, such as Brian and Maureen when Brian decides to dump her
>>>for the younger woman, or Maureen and Pricilla, after Brian and trophy
>>>wife number two have spoiled the broth, from scenes and situations where
>>>you think they're really just plain _bad_.
>>
>>Actually, that very example comes to mind as just plain
>>*bad*. Maureen had none of Hugh's obstacles. She was
>>single; she was rich; she didn't have to work unless she
>>felt like it. Two of her children were obviously in very
>>dire straits and she made only a token effort to help them
>>(compared to the resources she had available). She spent
>>something like two and a half months on them, decided it was
>>more work than she wanted to do, and washed their hands of
>>them. She didn't even care enough about them to report what
>>happened to them as a consequence.
>
>
> This is from memory, but iirc, Maureen had just ended her marriage--
> her emotional resources were lower than they normally would be. What's
> worse, she apparently had no idea of how to deal with kids that she
> hadn't established dominance over. I'm not saying she shouldn't have
> done better, but it's also not shocking that she didn't.
Her marriage had ended several years earlier. That was part
of the point -- she even says explicitly that when they left
her household at the time of the divorce they were polite
and well-mannered, and now, several years later, they are
unmanageable.
Another gripe I thought of about that incident is that her
"solution" to the problem is to deliver them back into the
hands of her ex-husband and his trophy wife -- the people
who (in her explicitly stated view) ruined the kids in the
first place.
Brandon
BPRAL22169 wrote:
But the situations weren't analogous. Hugh, as others have
pointed out, had no options at the end of FF. He could stay
and have Barbara and the twins corrupted as well, or he
could cut his losses and save those he could.
But Maureen had immense resources -- and Brian didn't even
*want* the kids back. She could have arranged for
appropriate counseling, psychiatric treatment, whatever was
necessary. Instead she supervised them only casually, and
gave up entirely in something like 10 weeks -- delivering
them right back into the hands of the people who she felt
were responsible for the problems in the first place.
Brandon
Pete McCutchen wrote:
If Hugh's account as given to Barbara is to be believed, he
more or less opted out of child-rearing wrt Duke at an early
age. Not exactly "bad parenting skills" -- more a case of
not exercising whatever skills he may have had. (Which is
also a failing, of course. You have kids, it's your
responsibility to see that they get a good upbringing.)
BPRAL22169
>But the situations weren't analogous. . . .Maureen had immense resources.
First, it seems to me you're reading into the situation a lot of stuff that
isn't in the text and loading your language -- for example, I don't think you
could justify characterizing Maureen's decision as "casual" in the text.
Second, it's not the circumstances that are analogous -- it's the decision
about what battle you can win and where to put your resources. While I might
have made a different choice if I were confronted with the same circumstances,
Maureen was the person on the spot, and she made the decision she thought best.
It may or may not have been a mistake in some terms, but we need to have some
respect for her autonomy as an individual.
And that brings me to a third point: I think this incident shows that Maureen
does not only deal with her children in terms of power relationships, as has
been asserted upthread. Not only do you have to triage your own emotional
resources, but as a parent you have to respect the autonomy even of your
children, in the good circumstances as well as in the bad.
When you confront a young adult with established life-choices, who shows no
willingness to take what guidance you can give, you have to confront the fact
that these people are taking on adult roles and your appropriate further
actions are limited by their autonomy. She _could_ have taken heroic measures,
sure, but that would have taken her across the line from parenting to meddling,
and she chose not to go there.
I think Maureen must have decided that these people had signed DNR orders on
their lives.
Bill
Nancy Lebovitz
In life, you pick your battles. In fiction, the author choses what sort of
battles to write about.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>> Plus, it's not clear to me that Duke's turning out badly isn't at
>> least in part attributable to bad parenting skills on Hugh's part.
>
>If Hugh's account as given to Barbara is to be believed, he
>more or less opted out of child-rearing wrt Duke at an early
>age. Not exactly "bad parenting skills" -- more a case of
>not exercising whatever skills he may have had. (Which is
>also a failing, of course. You have kids, it's your
>responsibility to see that they get a good upbringing.)
Given Hugh's proclivities, he was almost certainly building things
around the house, doing various projects. It would have been easy for
Hugh to involve Duke in those activities, even when he was not yet
able to help.
--
Pete McCutchen
Ross TenEyck
>Her marriage had ended several years earlier. That was part
>of the point -- she even says explicitly that when they left
>her household at the time of the divorce they were polite
>and well-mannered, and now, several years later, they are
>unmanageable.
Apparently, wossername -- Maureen's daughter-in-law originally,
I believe -- was some kind of uber-bitch; because as soon as Brian
took up with her, he turned from the Perfect Husband and Father
into a callous jerk who couldn't be bothered to pay attention to
his children, who were being ruined by said uber-bitch.
I think Heinlein was caught in a bit of a quandrary; he'd described
how Brian left Maureen back in _Number of the Beast,_ but found
that the incident didn't really fit the characters as he was
developing them in _Sail Beyond the Sunset._ But he was stuck
with the history, and had to incorporate it, regardless of the
violence it did to his characterization.
--
================== http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~teneyck ==================
Ross TenEyck Seattle, WA \ Light, kindled in the furnace of hydrogen;
ten...@alumni.caltech.edu \ like smoke, sunlight carries the hot-metal
Are wa yume? Soretomo maboroshi? \ tang of Creation's forge.
Mike Schilling
"Brandon" <jch...@avalon.net> wrote in message
news:c3eams$do$2...@narsil.avalon.net...
> If Hugh's account as given to Barbara is to be believed, he
> more or less opted out of child-rearing wrt Duke at an early
> age. Not exactly "bad parenting skills" -- more a case of
> not exercising whatever skills he may have had. (Which is
> also a failing, of course. You have kids, it's your
> responsibility to see that they get a good upbringing.)
It's a far worse failing than simply being bad at parenting, at least IMHO.
Your kids will forgive you for a lot of failings, but not caring isn't one
of them.
Mike Schilling
"Pete McCutchen" <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:qfjl50tkckq1pjqm8...@4ax.com...
And unless Duke was abnormal at a very early age, he was bugging Hugh the
whole time, saying "Can I help, Dad? Can I help?"
Louann Miller
wrote:
>Another gripe I thought of about that incident is that her
>"solution" to the problem is to deliver them back into the
>hands of her ex-husband and his trophy wife -- the people
>who (in her explicitly stated view) ruined the kids in the
>first place.
There certainly are people who do things like that in real life. It
seems to break down to which is the stronger emotion for them, loving
the kid(s) or hating the ex-partner. But I don't think that was the
image of Maureen we were meant to take away.
ObBritTV: "Life and Loves of a She-Devil," where the wronged wife
leaves the kids with her husband and his mistress, burns down the
family home, and disappears. Because the house is gone, mistress is
forced to take in the husband and kids; because the wife is
inaccessible but not dead, the husband can't divorce her to marry the
mistress. No concern is shown for the effect on the kids at any point.
Louann Miller
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> >If Hugh's account as given to Barbara is to be believed, he
>> >more or less opted out of child-rearing wrt Duke at an early
>> >age. Not exactly "bad parenting skills" -- more a case of
>> >not exercising whatever skills he may have had. (Which is
>> >also a failing, of course. You have kids, it's your
>> >responsibility to see that they get a good upbringing.)
>>
>> Given Hugh's proclivities, he was almost certainly building things
>> around the house, doing various projects. It would have been easy for
>> Hugh to involve Duke in those activities, even when he was not yet
>> able to help.
>
>And unless Duke was abnormal at a very early age, he was bugging Hugh the
>whole time, saying "Can I help, Dad? Can I help?"
That's what I mean when I say Heinlein was just plain bad at writing
parent-child dynamics. Sure you know this, and I know it. As a
non-parent, he didn't -- and as a result creates an image of Hugh as a
rotten parent that clearly was not intended. Parallel to mil-sf novels
written by people with no military background, or erotic fan fiction*
written by virgins.
* beleive me, I WISH I was kidding.
David M. Silver
Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
Unless, when asked, Duckie went to Grace and complained, "Aw, Ma, I want
to go out with my friends and cruise around, and if I help him I'll get
my hands all dirty, and I'll be late for the dance." Grace, I'm sure,
would have handled the situation with Hugh rather neatly and with
dispatch. ;-)
--
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
"The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!"
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA '29, Lt.(jg), USN, R'td, 1907-88
David M. Silver
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
And then about age twelve, unless Duckie was abnormal, he'd have started
hiding from Hugh every time Hugh started setting up for a project --
"But, Ma, I haveta see the guys about [fill in your blank] . . . "
Mike Schilling
"David M. Silver" <ag.pl...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:ag.plusone-842C0...@news.fu-berlin.de...
I don't think that's relevant. It hardly describes opting out of
child-rearing at an early age, and it doesn't lead to Duke still being a
spoiled, resentful brat after 20 or so, when most kids (Thank God!) grow out
of it.
Brandon
BPRAL22169 wrote:
> Brandon Chance:
>
>
>>But the situations weren't analogous. . . .Maureen had immense resources.
>
>
> First, it seems to me you're reading into the situation a lot of stuff that
> isn't in the text and loading your language -- for example, I don't think you
> could justify characterizing Maureen's decision as "casual" in the text.
The first week they were with her, she dropped them off at a
doctor's office to get checkups, and told them to find their
own way home -- in a city they had not been in since they
were bona fide children -- while she went off for a nooner
with George Strong.
She catches them in bed together, and the best thing she can
think of to do about it is strip off her clothes and climb
in with them.
The only other evidence presented as to the care she gave
her children was that she left Pris alone in the house for
several days, with only a hired security agency keeping an
eye on the place, while she went larking off with Strong
again. This despite the fact that she had by that time seen
several instances of Priscilla's immature behavior
> Second, it's not the circumstances that are analogous -- it's the decision
> about what battle you can win and where to put your resources. While I might
> have made a different choice if I were confronted with the same circumstances,
> Maureen was the person on the spot, and she made the decision she thought best.
> It may or may not have been a mistake in some terms, but we need to have some
> respect for her autonomy as an individual.
As Nancy pointed out, Maureen is not a real person; she is a
fictional character, and her behavior is dictated by the
author to suit his own purposes. I feel no need to respect
the "autonomy" of a fictional character; she has none.
>
> And that brings me to a third point: I think this incident shows that Maureen
> does not only deal with her children in terms of power relationships, as has
> been asserted upthread. Not only do you have to triage your own emotional
> resources, but as a parent you have to respect the autonomy even of your
> children, in the good circumstances as well as in the bad.
>
> When you confront a young adult with established life-choices, who shows no
> willingness to take what guidance you can give, you have to confront the fact
> that these people are taking on adult roles and your appropriate further
> actions are limited by their autonomy. She _could_ have taken heroic measures,
> sure, but that would have taken her across the line from parenting to meddling,
> and she chose not to go there.
>
> I think Maureen must have decided that these people had signed DNR orders on
> their lives.
Donnie was arguably a young adult -- he was 17, and most of
the time he even behaved as if he were 17. Priscilla, on
the other hand, was 14, and typically acted like a 12 year
old. It is not acceptable to me for a *parent* to "triage"
a kid who is 14-going-on-12. At the very least, if Maureen
didn't feel up to dealing with it directly (despite having
raised a dozen or so other children, apparently
successfully), she certainly should not have returned them
into the very hands that were responsible for their bad
behavior in the first place.
It is also convenient for the author that Brian was
apparently an exemplary father right up until he ditched
Maureen and married Marian, at which point he proved capable
of raising these two unsocialized creatures.
Brandon
Ross TenEyck wrote:
> Brandon <jch...@avalon.net> writes:
>
>
>>Her marriage had ended several years earlier. That was part
>>of the point -- she even says explicitly that when they left
>>her household at the time of the divorce they were polite
>>and well-mannered, and now, several years later, they are
>>unmanageable.
>
>
> Apparently, wossername -- Maureen's daughter-in-law originally,
> I believe -- was some kind of uber-bitch; because as soon as Brian
> took up with her, he turned from the Perfect Husband and Father
> into a callous jerk who couldn't be bothered to pay attention to
> his children, who were being ruined by said uber-bitch.
>
> I think Heinlein was caught in a bit of a quandrary; he'd described
> how Brian left Maureen back in _Number of the Beast,_ but found
> that the incident didn't really fit the characters as he was
> developing them in _Sail Beyond the Sunset._ But he was stuck
> with the history, and had to incorporate it, regardless of the
> violence it did to his characterization.
It's been a while since I read "Beast". If the account of
how Maureen and Brian broke up is related by Lazarus in
"Beast", but by Maureen in "Sunset", that could account for
quite a few discrepancies. Once doesn't get the impression
that Lazarus was in close touch with his parents during
their separation and divorce.
Brandon
Louann Miller wrote:
I actually think that we *were* supposed to take Hugh to be
a bad parent. Hugh directs that criticism at himself, not
quite in those words, but the implication is pretty clear, I
think, that he feels he fell down on the job in rearing Duke.
Brandon
Mike Schilling wrote:
>
> I don't think that's relevant. It hardly describes opting out of
> child-rearing at an early age, and it doesn't lead to Duke still being a
> spoiled, resentful brat after 20 or so, when most kids (Thank God!) grow out
> of it.
>
Actually, Duke is a practicing attorney when FF opens. That
puts him in his upper 20s, at least.
Mike Schilling
I phrased that badly. What I meant was that Duke was still a spoiled,
resentful brat long after the age at which most kids have grown out of it,
which in my experience is about 20.
David M. Silver
Brandon <jch...@avalon.net> wrote:
Exactly, almost every adult market book written post the 1961 Stranger,
and some written before, involving youthful adult children, or close to
adult children, reflect a youthful adult who has been, one way or
another, poorly raised.
Larry Smith (Double Star) was harshly raised and disciplined by a very
domineering father, seemed to have lacked a mother from the lack of
mention of her, and lacks, now that his leading role actor father is
dead, any direction in his life; he's a poseur, a fly-by-night, a cheap
con-artist, a lightweight know-it-all, has what we might today label
false self-esteem; and his acting career, since he got too old to play
"juveniles," is slowly circling the drain.
Evelyn Cyril Gordon (Glory Road) is an orphan, farmed out to in-laws
after his mother remarried, resentful of having lost his father and
mother, a hardluck story all around, and rootless and disenchanted with
his future. Under that jungle tan and scars, he's a little lost boy
dreaming and crying about his lost daddy. It's fifty-fifty that if the
right or rather 'wrong' person had introduced him to killer weed on the
Rivera, he'd have burnt out probably before his free trip back to the
states, courtesy of Unc Shel, had lapsed. Or maybe he'd have tried the
Marines, like his daddy, and gone ashore at Da Nang next time around.
Podkayne Fries (Podkayne of Mars) is a frighteningly naive, unworldly
and immature young woman who believes everyone is good and kind or, at
worse, just a little naughty, and puts her trust in big showgirls named
Goldie and older enormously rich guys named Dexter and in faries, and
her relatives -- and dies as a result. Her brother Clark is a sociopath.
Both were essentially ignored by their almost exclusively career-focused
parents and their rearing, such as it was, was left to good old "Uncle
Tom," the lying despicable [several expletives deleted] politician who
uses their "vacation" as a shield to protect himself on a dangerous
political mission.
Even Juan Rico (Starship Troopers) doesn't quite get it, yet, in the
beginning. Rich, lazy boy without a goal, hanger on to the bright kid in
his class, third place athlete, C student, no plans except maybe he'll
do what his father has mapped out for him [Harvard on rich man's son's
affirmative action] after this one fling of his, that two-year
enlistment for the glamor of it all, and the approval of his high school
friends.
Each novel deals not so much exclusively with the character building of
the youthful adult (not adolescent, but "adult") protagonists, but the
reasons why they have so much late character building, or correction --
compared with the juvenile protags in the juvenile novels -- to do.
The implication is damned conclusive beyond any reasonable doubt that
Hugh fell down in rearing Duckie, so did Grace, and it's intended to be
conclusive. It's not "just plain bad at writing" parent-child dynamics
but plain good at writing _just_plain_bad_ parent-child dynamics for a
reason. And he did it deliberately. He looked around for models, for
kids being poorly raised. Frex, Clark Fries is based on the son of an
acquaintence in Colorado Springs that everyone was afraid would spend
his adult life in prison. The acquaintence was a star-struck USAF bird
colonel who, obviously, had his mind on pinning those stars to his
epaulets to the exclusion of doing much about straightening out the
kid's development.
Why was that?
Because all these stories are deliberately constructed as tragedies
looking to happen to the youthful adults who were poorly raised. Duke
and Podkayne actually do die or the equivalent, because their fatal
flaws run into real bad luck, sooner rather than later. The rest muck on
through, Oscar due to near divine intervention as befits a mock fantasy,
and Larry and Johnny because they get their "stuff" together in time,
decide to grow up, and rise to the challenge of adulthood.
Heinlein wasn't writing juveniles with happy endings, with good parents,
or parent surrogates [Colonel Baslim, "Deacon" Matson, big sister Helen
Walker] anymore after 1958. He wrote adult novels deliberately for his
former juvenile audience. He said so when he started in regard to
_Starship Troopers_ (although he'd actually written a selfish, overly
protective mother with Mrs. Stuart a couple years earlier -- that's
okay, Betty Sorenson will certainly finish the job of "raising John
Thomas" <g>); and he was forced by the publisher to allow _Podkayne of
Mars_ to be marketed as a juvenile, making a change in the ending to an
ambiguious end instead of certain death for "poor Poddy."
Sometimes the hero or heroine won, sometimes she lost in these adult
novels. Mostly winning or losing was strongly determined in the first
place on how well or poorly the parenting had been done. As a reader I
knew I was supposed to look at the two Drs. Fries and Hugh and Grace and
say, "I'm not going to do that with my kids, when they come." It was so
obvious! I'd read about good parents, when they were present, since
_Rocket Ship Galileo_. And also be critical of the others, for what
criticism is merited, although one can hardly criticize a Marine who
dies too early as the result of wounds, nor his widow whose struggles
are beyond her ability to really solve alone. But I can point to serious
defects in Mr. Smith, Sr., and Mr. Rico, Sr., as well. They're just not
as large.
BPRAL22169
>But then, cannibalism is also a metonym of theft, taxation, and the woman who
dithered about what kind of coffee to get
this morning while I waited in line. Two of these consume my labour, one
consumes my time, hence labour.>
Now I understand how literature works!
Bill
Dwight Thieme
But we don't know that he's really a spoiled, resentful brat now, do
we? We do know that he performs poorly when - drumroll - he's hustled
with no warning into a fallout shelter, blown umpteen thousands of
years into the future, and forced to live, first at a bare subsistence
level, then as a slave. <sarcasm> Gee, what a loser </sarcasm>.
Heinlein was never any good (nor, apparently, had any interest in,
which probably amounts to the same thing) at honestly portraying
viewpoints that differed from those of his protagonists.
For all we really know, in his own millieu, Duke was one hell of a
guy, fixer, schmoozer, diplomat extraordinare. That he doesn't do
well outside his native envronment isn't a particularly honest
indictment of his character; in fact - and I speak with more authority
than any one here - probably 99.99% of the people reading this
wouldn't do any better.
Mike Schilling
"Dwight Thieme" <dbt...@showme.missouri.edu> wrote in message
news:b12606fc.04032...@posting.google.com...
> > I don't think that's relevant. It hardly describes opting out of
> > child-rearing at an early age, and it doesn't lead to Duke still being a
> > spoiled, resentful brat after 20 or so, when most kids (Thank God!) grow
out
> > of it.
>
> But we don't know that he's really a spoiled, resentful brat now, do
> we? We do know that he performs poorly when - drumroll - he's hustled
> with no warning into a fallout shelter, blown umpteen thousands of
> years into the future, and forced to live, first at a bare subsistence
> level, then as a slave. <sarcasm> Gee, what a loser </sarcasm>.
>
We see him at the dinner party before all hell breaks loose, and he's a
pretty unattractive character. We never see him in other company, so it's
difficult to be sure, but my guess is that his parents bring out the worst
in him.
> For all we really know, in his own millieu, Duke was one hell of a
> guy, fixer, schmoozer, diplomat extraordinare. That he doesn't do
> well outside his native envronment isn't a particularly honest
> indictment of his character; in fact - and I speak with more authority
> than any one here -
Why is that?
Wayne Throop
: Podkayne Fries (Podkayne of Mars) is a frighteningly naive, unworldly
: and immature young woman who believes everyone is good and kind or, at
: worse, just a little naughty, and puts her trust in big showgirls
: named Goldie and older enormously rich guys named Dexter and in
: faries, and her relatives -- and dies as a result. Her brother Clark
: is a sociopath. Both were essentially ignored by their almost
: exclusively career-focused parents and their rearing, such as it was,
: was left to good old "Uncle Tom," the lying despicable [several
: expletives deleted] politician who uses their "vacation" as a shield
: to protect himself on a dangerous political mission.
Who was it gave the "BAD parents... BAD" lecture to Podkayne's
parents at the end of that book? I can remember thinking that
he was right, but that he wasn't exactly blameless his own self.
Sheesh, it's been so looooong since I read that, so maybe I'm
mis-remembering.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
James Nicoll
It was good old Uncle Tom, the one who was using the kids as
human shields. Without him, maybe both kids would have matured in their
own ways. Even Clark. I know people like Clark who grew up into reasonable
adults.
James Nicoll
Ross TenEyck
>Ross TenEyck wrote:
>> I think Heinlein was caught in a bit of a quandrary; he'd described
>> how Brian left Maureen back in _Number of the Beast,_ but found
>> that the incident didn't really fit the characters as he was
>> developing them in _Sail Beyond the Sunset._ But he was stuck
>> with the history, and had to incorporate it, regardless of the
>> violence it did to his characterization.
>It's been a while since I read "Beast". If the account of
>how Maureen and Brian broke up is related by Lazarus in
>"Beast", but by Maureen in "Sunset", that could account for
>quite a few discrepancies. Once doesn't get the impression
>that Lazarus was in close touch with his parents during
>their separation and divorce.
Actually, it was related by Maureen, to Lazarus, to describe how
it was that she was a single woman at the time of her "death."
Admittedly, she may well have chosen to present it as being more
amicable than it really was, just to avoid bringing up old dirt that
wasn't really relevant any more.
Wayne Throop
::: career-focused parents and their rearing, such as it was, was left
::: to good old "Uncle Tom," the lying despicable [several expletives
::: deleted] politician who uses their "vacation" as a shield to protect
::: himself on a dangerous political mission.
:: Who was it gave the "BAD parents... BAD" lecture to Podkayne's
:: parents at the end of that book? I can remember thinking that he was
:: right, but that he wasn't exactly blameless his own self.
: jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
: It was good old Uncle Tom, the one who was using the kids as human
: shields. Without him, maybe both kids would have matured in their own
: ways. Even Clark. I know people like Clark who grew up into
: reasonable adults.
OK, thanks for the refresh. I *knew* there was some reason
I was thinking of pots and dark-hued kettles during that scene.
BAD "uncle". BAD.
To some extent, it kind of blunts the point
to put that speech in that mouth.
Dwight Thieme
> "Dwight Thieme" <dbt...@showme.missouri.edu> wrote in message
> news:b12606fc.04032...@posting.google.com...
> > > I don't think that's relevant. It hardly describes opting out of
> > > child-rearing at an early age, and it doesn't lead to Duke still being a
> > > spoiled, resentful brat after 20 or so, when most kids (Thank God!) grow
> out
> > > of it.
> >
> > But we don't know that he's really a spoiled, resentful brat now, do
> > we? We do know that he performs poorly when - drumroll - he's hustled
> > with no warning into a fallout shelter, blown umpteen thousands of
> > years into the future, and forced to live, first at a bare subsistence
> > level, then as a slave. <sarcasm> Gee, what a loser </sarcasm>.
> >
>
> We see him at the dinner party before all hell breaks loose, and he's a
> pretty unattractive character. We never see him in other company, so it's
> difficult to be sure, but my guess is that his parents bring out the worst
> in him.
Pretty much what I figured too. Iow, a slice of real life. Reading
between the lines, I get the impression that Hugh was rather
disappointed with Duke's chosen career path - unreasonably, I might
add, but fathers are funny that way - and Duke both knows this and
resents it.
> > For all we really know, in his own millieu, Duke was one hell of a
> > guy, fixer, schmoozer, diplomat extraordinare. That he doesn't do
> > well outside his native envronment isn't a particularly honest
> > indictment of his character; in fact - and I speak with more authority
> > than any one here -
>
> Why is that?
>
> > probably 99.99% of the people reading this
> > wouldn't do any better.
Probably because, unlike 99.9% of us here, the same thing that
happened to Duke happened to me - I too was thrown forward in time
thousands of years and with only my bare hands, some string and a
couple of fishooks to deal with cannibalistic, technologically
advanced, black savages.
Um, no, actually, at the age of nine, my father for intensely,
selfishly personal reasons of his own subjected his family to this
minimilistic back-to-the-essentials life. This being the sixties, I
also got an eyeful of other people with various degrees of
expectations and prepartions attempting the same thing. Trust me, in
every single case, the powerful of the tribe tried to recreate their
more civilized existence with what was essentially impressed labor.
In my case, for example, we had no running water, no gas, no
electricity. Funny then that my dad still got his piping hot bath
every night - the only difference was, it was us kids that drew the
water, heated it, and so forth.
This is only the bare surface; I could tell you stories for hours.
But the gist of it is, I can say through direct experience that most
people, even the ones who voluntarily subject themselves to those
conditions, tend to, well, not really behave very well.
Louann Miller
wrote:
>>Who was it gave the "BAD parents... BAD" lecture to Podkayne's
>>parents at the end of that book? I can remember thinking that
>>he was right, but that he wasn't exactly blameless his own self.
>>Sheesh, it's been so looooong since I read that, so maybe I'm
>>mis-remembering.
>
> It was good old Uncle Tom, the one who was using the kids as
>human shields. Without him, maybe both kids would have matured in their
>own ways. Even Clark. I know people like Clark who grew up into reasonable
>adults.
I need to re-read that book sometime with the question "Is Clark a
high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome person?" at the front of my mind.
Answer might well be yes, but I haven't gone and looked so I refuse to
go beyond 'might.'
James Nicoll
But if Clark has behavioral deficiencies for physical reasons,
wouldn't that undermine the whole "Parenting: not just a time filler
for when there's nothing on TV" theme? Plus just offhand, I can't recall
anyone human in a RAH novel with a mental deficiency who overcomes it [1]
so if that's what's up with Clark, he better come up with a lifestyle that
isn't hampered by being a sociopath.
James Nicoll
1: Well, perhaps the entire human race in _Lost Legacy_. Otherwise I can
think of people like Bobo or the sensitive in _Revolt in 2100_ who found
something useful to do but who never managed to overcome their particular
problems.
Louann Miller
wrote:
(re Podykane of Mars)
>>I need to re-read that book sometime with the question "Is Clark a
>>high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome person?" at the front of my mind.
>>Answer might well be yes, but I haven't gone and looked so I refuse to
>>go beyond 'might.'
>>
> Had AS been described by that point?
I don't know. My horseback guess would be 'probably not.'
> But if Clark has behavioral deficiencies for physical reasons,
>wouldn't that undermine the whole "Parenting: not just a time filler
>for when there's nothing on TV" theme?
It would undermine the theme. But there could still be a connection in
the context of how-the-book-got-written rather than inside the world
of the book.
Example, made up rather than based on data: Heinlein could have been
modeling his fictional screwy person on real-world screwy people who
had the then-undescribed syndrome, thinking they were the victims of
bad parenting when the situation was actually more complex.
Asperger's is the 'mild' form of autism, or if you prefer the
terminology it's the most functional end of "autism spectrum
disorder." There was a lengthy period in the middle of the 20th
century when autism was explained not as a physical problem with the
brain but as a result of bad parenting by "refrigerator moms" who
obviously didn't _really_ love their kids or the kids wouldn't have
turned out this way.
James Nicoll
Louann Miller <loua...@yahoo.net> wrote:
>On 21 Mar 2004 11:03:28 -0500, jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
>wrote:
>
>(re Podykane of Mars)
>
>>>I need to re-read that book sometime with the question "Is Clark a
>>>high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome person?" at the front of my mind.
>>>Answer might well be yes, but I haven't gone and looked so I refuse to
>>>go beyond 'might.'
>>>
>> Had AS been described by that point?
>
>I don't know. My horseback guess would be 'probably not.'
>
>> But if Clark has behavioral deficiencies for physical reasons,
>>wouldn't that undermine the whole "Parenting: not just a time filler
>>for when there's nothing on TV" theme?
>
>It would undermine the theme. But there could still be a connection in
>the context of how-the-book-got-written rather than inside the world
>of the book.
>
>Example, made up rather than based on data: Heinlein could have been
>modeling his fictional screwy person on real-world screwy people who
>had the then-undescribed syndrome, thinking they were the victims of
>bad parenting when the situation was actually more complex.
OK.
>Asperger's is the 'mild' form of autism, or if you prefer the
>terminology it's the most functional end of "autism spectrum
>disorder." There was a lengthy period in the middle of the 20th
>century when autism was explained not as a physical problem with the
>brain but as a result of bad parenting by "refrigerator moms" who
>obviously didn't _really_ love their kids or the kids wouldn't have
>turned out this way.
Ah, the past. What a wonderful place to be heading away from.
I must admit to a certain amount of peeve wrt AS, although not
towards people who actually have it. There's a certain subset of people
within social groups I belong to for whom AS has been a god-send, as it
allows them to self-diagnose themselves with AS and thereby avoid any
personal responsibility for their lack of social ept, who in fact probably
-don't- have AS, who certainly can't be bothered to see a professional to
see if they actually do (and if so what coping tools are available) and
whose social deficits are in fact not due some unfortunate physical
disability but rather a simple lack of effort and paying attention.
I can forgive 'I am a self-centered bastard who can't be bothered
to learn social skills' a lot faster than 'I am a scbwcbbtlss who is trying
to hide amongst the ranks of the genuinely autistic to avoid any shred of
personal responsibility', although combining 'Don't blame me, I have AS'
with 'Goddamn cripples, why should my taxes go for wheelchair ramps'
politics is perhaps unsurprising but even less admirable than hiding amongst
the cripples [1] (Actually, it makes me wonder if there -are- correlations
beween various cognitive deficits and which party someone votes for).
Plus I don't think genuine autism cases have the same soap issues.
James Nicoll
1: I myself belong to the limping and nearly blind subcatagories of cripple
but I refuse to allow them to define my life. I am lucky in that they are for
me minor and don't, except that I get to own a wide variety of canes and will
never be farther than arm's reach from my glasses. What astounds me is how it
is that so many people with what look like two perfectly functioning legs walk
so damn slowly and in sidewalk and aisle blocking clumps to boot.
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
wrote on 22 Mar 2004 09:55:31 -0500:
> I must admit to a certain amount of peeve wrt AS, although not
> towards people who actually have it. There's a certain subset of people
> within social groups I belong to for whom AS has been a god-send, as it
> allows them to self-diagnose themselves with AS and thereby avoid any
> personal responsibility for their lack of social ept, who in fact probably
> -don't- have AS, who certainly can't be bothered to see a professional to
> see if they actually do (and if so what coping tools are available) and
> whose social deficits are in fact not due some unfortunate physical
> disability but rather a simple lack of effort and paying attention.
The problem is that it's a rather common disorder in the mildest
forms, especially in the software industry. I'd be tempted to say that
programming exists only because of Asperger's Syndrome, but I don't know
which is cause and which is effect. Too many people self-diagnose
themselves as having a full case of AS because when they see the
description, they go "OH, SHIT! I always wondered what was wrong with
me!", and without seeing a shrink about it or meeting someone who has a
full-blown case, it's hard to understand just how extremely debilitating
real Asperger's Syndrome is.
I'm at the milder end of not-quite-AS; I have eye-contact and
body-language and theory-of-other-peoples'-minds issues which I've spent
an enormous effort trying to correct for, and I've been mostly
successful. I'm still crap at matching faces to names until I've met
someone many times, but I can do voices to names. It may even be an
advantage for really thinking about peoples' reactions, because I've had
to do it analytically rather than instinctively. I know people who had
the same issues, who haven't bothered to correct for them, and they're
messed up, antisocial rejects.
There's a guy who shops at the same comics shop I do who has real AS,
and he's obviously dysfunctional (he's also trying to be friendly with
the shop owner's wife, which comes across to normal people as stalking).
But he also obviously has the same problem I have in some form, and
people have noted the similarity, which is really creepifying.
Some time back on _Law & Order: CI_, a guy with undiagnosed AS was a
suspect, and after Goren and Eames interviewed him, Eames said, "He's
like your older, nerdier brother." Goren's nervous twitches, eye
avoidance, and other behaviors on that show are typical of not-quite-AS
by someone who's actually worked on correcting for it.
> Plus I don't think genuine autism cases have the same soap issues.
AS is not OCD, and bathing regularly is a social-acceptance activity.
Based on the small sample of two AS and one autistic I've ever met, soap
is about as optional as among gamers.
--
<a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"Doing the impossible makes us mighty." -Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly
James Nicoll
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kami...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote:
>James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com>
>wrote on 22 Mar 2004 09:55:31 -0500:
>> I must admit to a certain amount of peeve wrt AS, although not
>> towards people who actually have it. There's a certain subset of people
>> within social groups I belong to for whom AS has been a god-send, as it
>> allows them to self-diagnose themselves with AS and thereby avoid any
>> personal responsibility for their lack of social ept, who in fact probably
>> -don't- have AS, who certainly can't be bothered to see a professional to
>> see if they actually do (and if so what coping tools are available) and
>> whose social deficits are in fact not due some unfortunate physical
>> disability but rather a simple lack of effort and paying attention.
>
> The problem is that it's a rather common disorder in the mildest
>forms, especially in the software industry. I'd be tempted to say that
>programming exists only because of Asperger's Syndrome, but I don't know
>which is cause and which is effect.
You know, at some point if a behavior is common enough doesn't
it move from 'disorder' to 'normal characteristic'?
ObSF: _Expendible_.
snip stuff I am not commenting on by snipping it. My particular--
no, among my many social shortcomings is a communications related one, where
I am more likely to be misunderstood face-to-face the more words I use.
More words, deeper hole. I am not sure why this is so. Also people mumble
a lot, which seems to be on purpose. Some day I will write a book on
dealing with people with regular hearing called _Speak Up, You Mumbling
Bastards_ and the sequel _If I Didn't Hear You When You Turned Your Head
Away From Me the Last Time Why Would You Expect Me to Hear You When You Did
It Again Ten Seconds Later? Are You Fucking Stupid or What?_ [1]. I expect
these will sell quite well to a select audience.
>
>> Plus I don't think genuine autism cases have the same soap issues.
>
> AS is not OCD, and bathing regularly is a social-acceptance activity.
Uh, no. It's a health issue. Social-acceptance is a side-effect
but clean people live longer. One of the interesting things learned in
Summer of Love is what happens if you don't wash for a long time. And
don't get me started on worse case scenarios for teeth.
James Nicoll
1: I also want to a book on cats called _I Hope What I Just Touched When
I Rolled Over in Bed Was Only Cat *Vomit*_.
wth...@godzilla.acpub.duke.edu
> Exactly, almost every adult market book written post the 1961 Stranger,
> and some written before, involving youthful adult children, or close to
> adult children, reflect a youthful adult who has been, one way or
> another, poorly raised.
[...]
>
> Even Juan Rico (Starship Troopers) doesn't quite get it, yet, in the
> beginning. Rich, lazy boy without a goal, hanger on to the bright kid in
> his class,
That, I thought, was one of the few good signs. The truly
lazy ignore or revile the bright and hard working types,
particularly if, like Carl, the bright one comes from
a poorer family.
Plus (and it's been a long time), didn't Rico help
Carl build things? I seem to recall that he did the
semi-skilled work, Carl the design.
Which is not to say I disagree with your analysis, just
that this one point is not to me a negative one.
William Hyde
EOS Department
Duke University
Louann Miller
wrote:
>>Asperger's is the 'mild' form of autism, or if you prefer the
>>terminology it's the most functional end of "autism spectrum
>>disorder." There was a lengthy period in the middle of the 20th
>>century when autism was explained not as a physical problem with the
>>brain but as a result of bad parenting by "refrigerator moms" who
>>obviously didn't _really_ love their kids or the kids wouldn't have
>>turned out this way.
>
> Ah, the past. What a wonderful place to be heading away from.
If your tastes run to that kind of watching-train-wreck stories of
medical history, you could also look up "schizogenic mothers" while
you're at it. <slipping into Feminist t-shirt> funny how it was always
the mothers, never the fathers, who were to blame for parenting
screwups.
Just saying.
Steve Coltrin
> If your tastes run to that kind of watching-train-wreck stories of
> medical history, you could also look up "schizogenic mothers" while
> you're at it.
Hey, nobody _told_ them to be in whichever trimester during cold and
flu season.
--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org WWVBF?
"I had a very organized, Germanic preschool experience. These women
didn't take kindly to my swearing and farting and pulling chairs out
from behind people. They're dead now." -- Geoff Miller
lal_truckee
Has to be the Mothers. Fathers aren't around enough to participate in
any parenting screwups.
James Nicoll
I think that's a side effect of the male role being limited to
A: working and commuting 9+ hours a day and B: handing out beatings when
thematically called for. As long as you have a job and strap, what can go
wrong?
Mike Schilling
> > If your tastes run to that kind of watching-train-wreck stories of
> > medical history, you could also look up "schizogenic mothers" while
> > you're at it. <slipping into Feminist t-shirt> funny how it was always
> > the mothers, never the fathers, who were to blame for parenting
> > screwups.
I'm trying (and failing) to imagine what a Feminist T-shirt looks like.
Tim McDaniel
Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
] Louann Miller wrote:
]> > If your tastes run to that kind of watching-train-wreck stories
]> > of medical history, you could also look up "schizogenic mothers"
]> > while you're at it. <slipping into Feminist t-shirt> funny how it
]> > was always the mothers, never the fathers, who were to blame for
]> > parenting screwups.
Please check your quoting. In fact, she *did* write the above text,
but the extra level of ">" implies that someone else (at ">" level)
wrote it and that you stripped his attribution. Anyway.
>I'm trying (and failing) to imagine what a Feminist T-shirt looks
>like.
"It's not funny!"
--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com; tm...@us.ibm.com is my work address
wth...@godzilla.acpub.duke.edu
>
> ObSF: _Expendible_.
>
> Also people mumble
> a lot, which seems to be on purpose. Some day I will write a book on
> dealing with people with regular hearing called _Speak Up, You Mumbling
> Bastards_ and the sequel _If I Didn't Hear You When You Turned Your Head
> Away From Me the Last Time Why Would You Expect Me to Hear You When You Did
> It Again Ten Seconds Later? Are You Fucking Stupid or What?_ [1]. I expect
> these will sell quite well to a select audience.
I'd like to pre-order a copy.
At lunch today:
"mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble IN THE ROOM mumble!"
The later spoken, for emphasis, in a normal tone of
voice and accompanied by the kind of stare that means
my usual response - "smile and nod" - wasn't appropriate.
I gave a look of concern, and shook my head sadly. Seemed to work
Dreamer
<wth...@godzilla.acpub.duke.edu> wrote in message
news:yv7z1xnk...@godzilla.acpub.duke.edu...
> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>
> >
> > ObSF: _Expendible_.
> >
> > Also people mumble
> > a lot, which seems to be on purpose. Some day I will write a book on
> > dealing with people with regular hearing called _Speak Up, You Mumbling
> > Bastards_ and the sequel _If I Didn't Hear You When You Turned Your
Head
> > Away From Me the Last Time Why Would You Expect Me to Hear You When You
Did
> > It Again Ten Seconds Later? Are You Fucking Stupid or What?_ [1]. I
expect
> > these will sell quite well to a select audience.
>
> I'd like to pre-order a copy.
I have fantastic hearing in the range of the average human voice (in fact,
my hearing's so good that it's hard for me to make out *one* conversation in
a room full of them, so ironically I often have to ask people to repeat
themselves.) I speak in what seems to me to be a fairly loud voice: everyone
I meet accuses me of mumbling. I'd like to apologize to both of you in
advance in case we ever meet. I don't do it on purpose.
A co-worker of mine, who is also my good friend, has the opposite problem:
years of being around heavy machinery, motorcycles, and guns have greatly
reduced his hearing. He's good at blending lip-reading with what he does
get, but if a speaker (particularly women) isn't looking at him, he can't
understand what they're saying unless they speak quite loudly. I'd like to
buy him a copy for his birthday, please.
D