Great Background on Bill Patterson's Style and Editing of the Biography

See "Prosody 1" at his blog. It gives some real insight into things you may have noticed in v. I:

The harder part is (well, there have been several “harder parts,” but –) something that might be called “stylistic differences” in some aspects of what my sense is of what the prose ought to be like and my editor’s. This difficult process has shown me things about my own writing process that I may have been only faintly aware of before.

Over a period of forty-five years, I have developed certain stylistic devices, devices of intention, that have become habitual and very characteristic of my rather eccentric personal style.

My approach to “the paragraph,” for example, is highly “networked.” That is, I write paragraphs not only to express and develop an aspect of an idea — which is the pedagogical standard of what a paragraph is supposed to do — but also to relate this idea to the paragraph that preceded it and to prepare the way for the paragraph that will follow. In particular, the development points are organized so that the one which points most clearly in the direction the text is going to go is last. Often the last sentence of a paragraph will contain a word or an expression which will be repeated in the opening sentence of the next paragraph, or the next paragraph will back-reference material in the preceding paragraph.

The net effect of this technique is to give flow and impetus to the writing, so that it moves smartly along with logical force. Ideally you hit all the logical steps between one idea and the next so that the reader is not required to make logical jumps to cover, say, lack of evidence. On the evidence of what is said — and what is not said — in the reader reviews of the first volume, that technique did substantially what it is supposed to do. The book took hits for what might be called stylistic “elegance” but got points for being a fast read despite its size.

The "New Phrenologists" and the Failure (So Far) of Heinlein's Vision of Social Science

Over at the Heinlein Society's Nexus Forum (if you're not a member get over there and sign up!) I posted some selections from an article at The Weekly Standard by Andrew Ferguson, "The New Phrenology." Subtitled "How liberal psychopundits understand the conservative brain," the piece goes into some detail about the numerous news stories most of us have probably seen lately, with titles like that of Chris Mooney's book The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality.

With that background, I want to make explicit that this is not a political post, nor is it an analysis of the psychology of any particular group. The meta point of "The New Phrenology" has been made powerfully by a number of others--the current state of the "social sciences" is barely scientific, after 100 years or more of effort. The mere gloss of scientism is now provided by colored pictures of brain images, publication in peer reviewed journals and the use, and misuse, of statistics.

One hundred years ago Robert A. Heinlein was about to turn five and people of a wide variety of political and philosophical views, from Freud to Wells to Woodrow Wilson, believed that economics, psychology and sociology were taking their first firm steps toward becoming true sciences, where national and world economies would be managed in steady prosperity without booms and busts, criminals and the mentally ill would be reformed or healed through drugs and therapy, and populations would be managed toward happiness through education, advertising and techniques like mass hypnosis and official propaganda. Eventually, all of these efforts would be put on a firm base of physics and neuroscience and mathematical statistics, with formulas fed into computing devices and the right answers for societal management coming out.

These ideas can be seen clearly in many of Heinlein's early works. Indeed, the Future History takes place against a background where this social management is often simply assumed and only mentioned en passim when necessary. In other instances, it is made explicit as an important part of the story, as with the extensive explanation of economic management and Monroe Alpha Cliff's work near the beginning of Beyond This Horizon or the debate about using mass hypnosis to recondition the populace toward freedom at the end of "If This Goes On--". In Methusalah's Children there is mention of statistically rating the impact of words, and the strategic planting of useful rumors based on mathematical formulae. For a good short explication of this idea under the general heading of "social engineering" see the "Logos" section of this article on "If This Goes On--" by Bill Patterson.

Here in 2012 I would argue that these fields have made very limited progress toward being "science." In economics, the worldwide Big Bust of the last four years provides compelling evidence that legions of Ph.D. economists are subject to forces far beyond their control, their manipulations of money and interest too much, too soon or too little, too late. Criminals are still with us, in plenty, and while the soma of a wide variety of "anti-depressants" masks the symptoms of perhaps 20% of the American populace, all the billions and indeed, trillions of dollars expended on "scientific research" into education, reform of prisoners and the proper raising of children seems to have merely, mostly maintained the status quo ante in these areas.

But back to "The New Phrenology." Mostly believing that the mind is just a useful, or useless fiction, the reductionists have deployed the truly wonderful tools of modern medical imaging in the study of the brain and declared the colored pictures taken therefrom the answer to a broad number of questions. Why do people do what they do? Hook them to a forest of electrodes and ask them question or show them some naughty pictures, see what lights up, gather some stats and you've got yourself a peer reviewed journal article that will help further your career path in the Academe!

I do not claim that this kind of study is necessarily useless, biased, wasteful or harmful. It may be that discoveries from these techniques really will result in a better life for us and our children.

So far though, what we've got is that drug users' pleasure centers light up when they use, that brain scan color pictures prove that there is no free will, and that political"conservatives" are a fearful, authoritarian bunch. I don't claim to know the entire field--I just read the newspapers, and that's what I'm seeing.

It's a long, long way from the vision of Heinlein and others, during those early, heady days, that all of this research would eventually give us scientific solutions to social problems.

Another side of Heinlein, the rugged proponent of individualism, liberty and the generally untamable nature of Man, would probably be delighted at these developments. So far, that's the side that seems to be winning in the real world.

RAH Biography News: Bill Patterson Reports Work Has Resumed on V. II

On his blog:

It’s been awhile since there was any real news to report. Following the worldcon last year, I had a transmetatarsal amputation of my right foot and was down for a couple of months but during recuperation completed the first-pass edit of the second volume, tentatively titled “The Man Who Learned Better” though I also favor “Time Enough for Love.”

(...)

In the last week (late April, Early May 2012), the second-pass edit has resumed. I can only do about ten pages per day. But progress is actually under way again.

Also of great interest is this comment at another post there (scroll down):

The editor, David Hartwell, has broached the subject of splitting the second volume into two — I suspect so that we can get volume 2 out expeditiously. Well see what eventuates.