A Fine Old Debate About Starship Troopers

We will go into Alexei Panshin in detail on this blog soon enough. There is a good deal to say. Meanwhile, I discovered during the research process on Panshin this debate by some leading SF personages about Starship Troopers circa 1960-61. Many of you may not have seen this obscue yet high-powered dust-up, so I bring it to your attention. Here's one provocative quote, from James V. McConnell. Again, let me emphasize he's writing in 1961. It was ever thus:

Aside from the goodness or badness of war, the comments so many people have made about SS [Note:"Starship Soldiers" was the magazine version] indicate, to me at least, that s-f is becoming the haven for old, trite, worn-out ideas instead of the testing-ground for new thoughts most s-f devotees so loudly pretend.  How many people have told me, these past few years, that Sturgeon is great, but when will he quit writing those peculiar stories and get down to reality? If Ted were not the great writer that he is, probably he would be mobbed, ostracized, or what have you.  Like Heinlein apparently is to be.  New gadgets we can stand apparently, but not new ideas, nor new ways of looking at old ideas nor even a close examination of the emotional responses most of us have to the safe, secure, comfortable values which society today applauds and inculcates in us.  In my opinion, s-f readers (and writers, too) have become a bunch of old Aunt Nellies hell-bent on preserving the status-quo, glorifying the present norm, and ready to crucify anybody who dares rock the boat by thinking.

Heh, it was ever thus. I think that you'll enjoy comparing these comments on Starship Troopers with your own thoughts and memories of the book.

The Bigger Picture

While I while away on the next installment of "Connections" in the biography (Part I is here) you might enjoy seeing the whole picture that I took the blog title image from:

There are more perfect images available, but this one has the feel of a magazine that was read and reread many times, then stored for the next 70 years, only to be brought out and furnish a delightful sense of surprised recognition, of something old that is none the less perpetually new--something like the work of Robert A. Heinlein.

Heinlein as Libertarian

If you're an admirer of Heinlein and his work you should be a member of the Nexus Forum at The Heinlein Society. If not, hit the link and join!

Regarding the brief post from the other day Was Robert LeFevre the Inspiration for Bernardo de la Paz?, it was pointed out to me that there is some discussion of this point in a thread at the Nexus Forum. There is also a lot of other substantive comment on RAH's politics by Heavy Heinlein Hitters Bill Patterson, James Gifford, Robert James and others who have been seriously studying Heinlein far longer than me. If you are interested in this topic I highly recommend you read the whole thing.

Goodreads Reviews of the Biography

I had previously read the Amazon reviews of the biography, but there are interesting reviews at Goodreads as well. Some are just stubs but a few are substantive.

Was Robert LeFevre the Inspiration for Bernardo de la Paz?

And other interesting speculations about Heinlein's libertarianism. I don't agree with everything the author says about Heinlein, but will await with great interest more information on the LeFevre/de la Paz question when  Volume II of William Patterson, Jr's. biography becomes available:

Both in his physical appearance — the wavy white hair, the dimples, the smiling voice — and in his ideas, Professor Bernardo de la Paz bears a striking resemblance to a real-life libertarian who flourished and enjoyed considerable influence within the libertarian movement during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s — Robert LeFevre. Now it so happens that Robert A. Heinlein and his third wife, Virginia Heinlein, lived in Colorado Springs throughout the 1950s and through the first half of the 1960s, the very period during which Robert LeFevre, a neighbor of theirs as it turns out, was serving as editorial page editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph.

A Lovely Image of Robert and Virginia

From the collection of the University of California Santa Cruz.

"Connections" in the Biography by William Patterson: Part I

Last summer I was delighted to buy and read the the first volume of William H. Patterson, Jr.'s biography of my favorite author, Robert Heinlein. Robert A Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century: Volume 1 (1907-1948): Learning Curve has almost 500 pages of text (and almost 100 pages of notes) on the first half of Heinlein's life. I loved the book and wrote a brief, favorable review on Amazon back in June 2011. There I noted that I had

"plans to write about the 'Connections' that I made to other books and people, during and after reading, but it will take a few more days to get to that.

More than a "few days" have passed, obviously, but here at last is the first installment of some "Connections" that I found in Chapters 1-3, covering Heinlein's life through high school and his admission to the United States Naval Academy in 1925.

Authors must make choices of what to include in a book of this nature, else the book could grow beyond any reasonable length; obviously this one had to run to two volumes even with everything the author had to leave out. One of the choices Patterson made in this book was to avoid deep literary analysis of the works he describes being written in the biographical narrative. Several of the reviewers at Amazon lamented this, but I appreciate that the biographer wanted to tell Heinlein's story rather than turn the book into a textual analysis.  Patterson previously co-authored a book on what is perhaps Heinlein's best known work, Stranger in a Strange Land. This biography is more about a man. I hope that some of the "connections" below can add to the enjoyment and appreciation of the biography and Heinlein's work.

(All numbers in ( ) refer to pages in the hardback first edition of the biography).

(17) "[A] half-brother of the famous Dan Patch."

See the 1948 story "The Man Who Traveled in Elephants": He picked out a likely-looking nag of the Dan Patch line, bet and won...

(23) "Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress--three books that transcend genre and give Heinlein an important place in the lives of his readers."

In a private communication, Patterson hinted that in Volume II there may be some deeper examination of these three works than there was for any individual work in Volume I.

(25) "Thou art God."

A major theme of Stranger in a Strange Land.

(28) "He practiced [card tricks] covertly, even in church..."

See the card trick/coded message scene in "Gulf."

(31) "He liked...the wry humor of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat."

See Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, where Kip references his father's love for the book, and a specific scene where the men are trying to open a tin of pineapple. This is also one of many, many books that I looked for and read after seeing a reference in Heinlein.

(33) "[H]uman beings must never be judged by categories, but only as individuals."

I just note this as individualism is such a bedrock of Heinlein's work throughout his career.

(36) "He learned to read and speak Esperanto..."

Esperanto appears in a several of Heinlein works as a future universal or common language, including, I believe, Starship Troopers and "The Green Hills of Earth." There may be others.

(40) "He also wanted to travel and unsuccessfully entered a National Geographic contest to for a prize trip to India,to see the Taj Mahal."

See the Skyway Soap "Trip to the Moon" contest in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.

(46) "...he lost his virginity during the Coolidge Administration (1923-1929) to a grandmother..."

See the sequence in I Will Fear No Evil where protagonist J.S.B Smith thinks he is perhaps dead and/or trapped in some sort of purgatory, and tried to remember his life, starting with losing his virginity as a young teenager to a woman in her 30s.

I will post a Part II in the near future. We're only 10% through the biography.