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What made me a serious Heinlein 
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On the ‘S.O.A.P. Lockdown’ Topic on the ‘Community Chat’ Forum, I offered the observation that newcomers to this Forum might have gotten the perception that most of the posts had, especially those dealing with politics, viewpoints which contradicted much of what Heinlein had displayed in his fiction and, to some degree, in his non-fiction.

I am making no judgments about the views held by the posters here or those who might have found them objectionable from outside the Forum.

However, this raised a question in my mind which I thought would be worthwhile discussing.

Most posters here appear to be serious readers of Heinlein, otherwise, I don’t think that you would take the time to be here, reading and posting.

So, my question is a three-parter:
• What was it especially about Heinlein’s works that made you into a serious reader?
• What other ideas/viewpoints etc., do you particularly like and/or agree with in his works?
• What other ideas/viewpoints etc., do you particularly dislike and/or disagree with in his works?


Fri Aug 21, 2009 3:53 pm
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Oh, boy. Be careful what you ask for. I had intended to post this somewhere else on the site, but this may be the most appropriate spot. By the way, David, I've said it here before but I really enjoyed your short essay on the THS site on this general subject.


I remember exactly when I first encountered the writings of Robert A. Heinlein - not approximately, but the exact date. It was August 11, 1965 – my ninth birthday.

My parents had given me a very nice ninth birthday party. They had invited my grandparents and cousins and several kids from the neighborhood to our house. We played the usual birthday games – pin the tail on the donkey, bobbing for apples, musical chairs. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” and I opened presents. Along with Lincoln Logs and a transistor radio, there was a book – an anthology of science fiction short stories for children. I seem to remember it was a present from my grandparents, but it might have been from anyone.

That night, exhausted from the day’s frivolities, I opened the book and started to read. To this day, I cannot remember any of the other stories, and I have long since lost the book. There may have been a Silverberg or an Asimov in there, but the one story that made a lasting impression and changed my life was "The Black Pits of Luna", by Robert A. Heinlein.

Later in my childhood, I viewed Robert Heinlein as a provocateur, a heretic, and a teacher. He introduced me to ideas that I very likely would not have encountered elsewhere as a child growing up in East Texas. However, there was no heresy in this story – it was boilerplate juvenile Heinlein. In the story, a group of VIP tourists on Luna goes for a sightseeing walk on the surface. One of the highlights of the tour is a stop at a manmade crater, all that was left of the first lunar laboratory, with a monument dedicated to Lunar pioneers who had died on that spot in a gigantic radioactive explosion.

The date on the monument was August 11, 1965.

I cannot overstate the impact this had on my young mind. In those days, I was beginning to read everything I could get my hands on. My favorite author was Samuel Clemens – Mark Twain. One of my most treasured possessions is a leather-bound single volume of his collected works given to me by my late grandmother. I also read the Bible and sporadically attended Sunday school. I was very much into mystical connections. Heinlein and I were now connected for life.

At my elementary school library, I discovered that we had a very nice collection of science fiction, including a few Heinlein juvenile novels. The first one that I read was Red Planet. Then, I went through the remaining titles quickly. I convinced my best friend David Roberts to read them as well, and soon, my whole circle of friends devoured every Heinlein book in the Anthony F. Lucas Elementary School library.

My discovery of Heinlein coincided with my already-existing exuberance for the U. S. manned space program. His novels heightened my excitement about the future of man in space. Of course, this was already a generation or more after the period in which Heinlein wrote his books. I have thought about the fact that, when I first encountered his work in 1965, he had just finished what many now believe to his best and last great novel. I knew that some of the events he hypothesized about; i.e. colonies on Venus, interstellar travel, would probably never come to fruition. That did not lessen the impact Heinlein had on my love for the space program or my belief in its possibilities.

In 1966, racial integration came to my school for the first time. As we white students watched the first busloads of black students roll up to the front of our school, tension filled the air. Later that day, during recess, some of the white kids threw rocks at the black kids in the schoolyard while the all-white teaching staff stood by and watched. I did not participate in the rock throwing, and in fact had little trouble accepting our new classmates, although my parents were as prejudiced as any others were. This was perhaps in part because I had read Tunnel in the Sky and other Heinlein juveniles, and had absorbed some of the racial tolerance lessons they subtlety conveyed.

My family barely qualified as middle class, even by Sixties standards – my dad worked for the Santa Fe railroad his whole life. We did not have a lot of money to buy books. When I wanted to read a book, it pretty much needed to be one I could borrow free from the library. Therefore, once the supply of Heinlein juveniles was exhausted, that was the end of my exploration for a while.

However, in the spring of 1968 I somehow obtained a used copy of an early paperback edition of Stranger in a Strange Land. It really opened my eyes, as did the events of later that year – including the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the Soviet Union’s crushing of the “Prague Spring,” and the anti-war violence at the Democratic National Convention, culminating in the election that fall of Richard Nixon.

Jubal Harshaw’s dismantling of my notions of the basic underpinnings and traditions of organized religion was simultaneously thrilling and disheartening. I had never read such heresy. The novel’s free love storyline was not so shocking in 1968, given the counter-culture that was already well established and continuing to grow. However, Heinlein’s contempt for traditional religious organizations had quite an impact on me. That, along with the numerous traumatic societal changes and tragedies, served to turn me from a traditional white Southern boy who did not question authority to somebody completely different. I began to question many of my assumptions.

On July 20 of the following year, I sat in front of our television set watching Walter Cronkite’s coverage of the first lunar landing. I saw Heinlein and Clarke give their impressions, and then the ghostly television images of men walking – hopping – on the lunar surface. I believed more than ever in Heinlein’s optimistic visions for the future of humanity’s inevitable triumph over the universe.

In the fall of 1969, I was an eighth-grader looking for ways to rebel. I had stopped combing my hair in the traditional manner and tried to grow it long, but repeatedly ran up against the dress code that was still enforced in my school. In October of that year, a group that included former Eugene McCarthy campaign activists along with the usual anti-war student groups declared the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. It was the most successful nationwide protest campaign of the era. One of the ways that ordinary students were to show their solidarity with the Moratorium was to wear a black armband to school.

One morning, I fashioned a black armband from some of my mother’s sewing material, pinned it on my shirtsleeve, and set off to catch the bus to school. The bus driver, Mr. Gwynn, looked at me with curiosity. “Someone die?” he asked. No, I told him, I was honoring the Vietnam moratorium. “Um, okay,” he replied and motioned me to take my seat. One of my female classmates and I had vowed to wear black armbands on that day in defiance of the traditional mores of our little town. When I arrived at school, our principal noticed my armband and asked me whether I was a communist or a hippie or both, and why did I not respect the sacrifice our soldiers were making overseas?

I replied that I did not protest the war to dishonor our soldiers, and I meant it. I had read Starship Troopers. However, that explanation did not save me from an unplanned three-day vacation.

My opposition to the war also brought me into direct and constant conflict with my father. On May 4, 1970, four students at Kent State University in Ohio were killed, and nine were seriously wounded, by gunfire from National Guard soldiers, in the midst of a heated protest demonstration against the war. Not all of the killed and injured were protesters. Some were merely walking to class.

Kent State crystallized the deep divisions in this country over Vietnam. Reactions to the incident varied widely, but everyone had an opinion. I remember watching the father of Allison Krause, one of the four dead students, weeping in an interview on the evening news. He blamed the U.S. government, and President Nixon, for his daughter’s death. His bitterness was understandable, and I, already somewhat radicalized and (I thought), precociously astute at age 14 about things political, agreed wholeheartedly with Allison’s father.

My Dad, who had fought the Japanese in the South Pacific during World War II, part of what much later became known as the “Greatest Generation,” looked at the TV image of Allison’s father with derision distorting his features. “What the hell was she doing protesting, that’s why she was shot!” he exclaimed. Like she got what she deserved.

He was part of the generation that thought America’s mission was to defend democracy, and to fight evil. He believed deeply that our nation’s leaders were good men who would never intentionally do anything not in the country’s best moral interests. We were in Vietnam to fight the Commies, and that was good enough for him.

I thought my Dad was a fool.

Had Robert Heinlein led me to these conclusions? In great part, he did. Heinlein always stressed that he was not trying to convince people to believe as he did, or to teach lessons in his works, but merely to get his readers to think. He certainly did not agree with my opinion on the war – he was more in tune with my Dad on that. However, what Heinlein did do for me was to awaken my instinct for independent thinking. I have continued to try to follow an individual path (in my mind at least) set by Heinlein throughout my life.

The Seventies continued, I finally got a part-time job and commenced to spend the majority of my disposable income on Beatles records and Heinlein paperbacks – mostly the Signet versions of the era with the semi-psychedelic cover art. I finally read everything, including all the adult novels and the short stories that my library did not carry, that Heinlein had written to that point.

In college, I continued to proselyte Heinlein’s writings. I convinced my favorite English Lit professor to read Heinlein’s latest novel, Time Enough for Love. He pronounced it enjoyable but too wordy. A dorm mate borrowed my old paperback copy of Stranger in a Strange Land, lauded it, and asked to keep it so he could read it again. I never saw that paperback again. I noticed that our college library had an insufficient supply of Heinlein and I gifted several of my Signet editions.

I graduated in 1977 with a degree in Accounting and began my professional career after moving to Houston and landing a job with a large engineering firm. There I met a smart, sexy redhead (another RAH influence?) who later became my wife. We eventually started a family, and with the time I devoted to my new family and my career, Heinlein inevitably began to take a back seat in my life. In 1979, I wrote my first and only fan letter to Heinlein and received one of his famous checklist form letters in return. At the bottom, he wrote a short personal note in his own hand expressing his good wishes and thanks for not asking him for anything.

The Eighties saw me absorbed in my career and family, and I began to develop interests in other areas, including Irish history. I studied extensively and published several long articles in the Houston Post newspaper on the subject. My preoccupation with these things precluded me noticing when Heinlein began publishing again after a long hiatus. I was just beginning to catch up with his final novels when Heinlein died in Carmel, California in May 1988. I will always be grateful to him.

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Fri Aug 21, 2009 4:51 pm
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Last edited by sakeneko on Fri Aug 21, 2009 9:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.



Fri Aug 21, 2009 5:44 pm
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Jack, didn't realize you were another Texan (at least in childhood). I was born in suburban Dallas in 1961, and spent my first eighteen years in Texas. That is an odd place, in some ways, to become a Heinlein fan, but it worked for me too. ;-)

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Fri Aug 21, 2009 5:51 pm
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Fri Aug 21, 2009 6:45 pm
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Jack- I didn't find your initial entry "self-indulgent" in the least and in fact found your bio interesting and entertaining ! I truly enjoy getting to know all of you better

Thanks

Nick


Sat Aug 22, 2009 6:19 am
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Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:56 am
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Many, many moons ago, my 5th grade teacher discovered my fascination with books . Little did Mr.Tilsner realize what he was unleashing when he allowed me to browse the school library whilst my classmates were being treated to inane science experiments ! Like many of you, I found in books the ability to be transported away from my life as a child in the early 60’s. I discovered worlds that once existed and worlds that never were on those library shelves. I discovered dreams.

A couple years later, I was old enough to visit the local library alone and peruse a much larger reading selection. Until this time, I had never encountered the genre of sci-fi. I truly don’t recall my first readings. I know they excited me and I pretty much exhausted their sci-fi section. This section was mostly restricted to what we call the “Golden Era” of sci-fi. Asimov, Simak, Bradbury, and yes, Robert Heinlein. They possessed a large selection of his juveniles which soon left for home with me.

What I found (and find) intriguing about RAH writings was plainly his ability to spin a fine story ! As I and my intellect grew (at least I think it did ;}), I began to see the consistent qualities of his protagonists- qualities that a growing, inquiring teen found admirable. I found myself in agreement with RAH’s ideas of self worth and never say die attitude. I can’t attribute where I read it but I heard him called the epitome of the “American Mustang” mentality ! Independent and free. Unfettered intellect. A mind expanding (lol the 60’s there) experience could be found in his writings. Amidst a fine story could be a found thoughts which provoked deep thought. RAH gave my ponderings direction.

I can only echo the same sentiments Jack broached in what he didn’t like in RAH’s later writings. This was the “familial” sex depicted there. Sorry, as I’ve broached in the old Nitro forum, I find this disturbing even in RAH’s Valhalla. Call it personal bias, call it what you may, incest (imho) is wrong. Under any circumstance. Even as a member of the so called “free love” generation, I see it as wrong. Nope, never a victim of such myself, but I’ve witnessed the after effects of these relationships on people I know very very well. It was the most tragic turn their lives could’ve taken. 40 years later, they still harbor the hurt this caused them. Here I can not let RAH’s fiction be confused with what I perceive as a fact. It’s just wrong. Yes, I’ve read the compelling argument ( which Sharon mentioned) in “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister” where those against incest are painted as the insane ones. Again fact over rules fiction.


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Oddly enough, I didn't find RAH until I was 17 and a lifelong reader. I worked my way through the local library and school library's collection of SF alphabetically, then got to h, and decided to go back from Z on both of them. Didn't get to Heinlein until three years into reading at least a thousand other SF and fantasy titles...


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Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:35 am
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Hi, my name is Sergei Alderman. Welcome to me!

My introduction to Heinlein was much like that of Mr. Henderson. I owe so much to a children's librarian whose name I don't even remember who could somehow tell that I should read Rocketship Galileo. It was a ripping good yarn, and I would have searched out his other books based on that alone. But in one little chat about what the far side of the moon might look like, Heinlein also introduced some fascinating, mind-bending concepts in epistemology and ontology--while avoiding the intimidating Greek polysyllables.

While reading every Heinlein I could get my hands on, I frequently found my intellectual range being widened. Time for the Stars introduced me to subconscious motivations, challenging the notion that I always know why I do the things I do. In Citizen of the Galaxy, I learned about cultural relativism. Starship Troopers challenged the leftist orthodoxy of my Minnesota upbringing. By the time I reached college, Time Enough For Love challenged my sexual mores.

Heinlein changed my mind about a lot of issues, but I didn't and don't agree with everything he espoused (or seemed to espouse.) And I don't think that he meant for people to. He gutted every sacred cow he could, and was more interested in getting readers to think critically than in changing their minds about specific issues.

I credit him with teaching me to really think, and am forever in his debt.

Ideas regarding which I am particularly in accord with Heinlein: ontological skepticism, Social Credit, "thou art god", rejection of sexual jealousy, the importance of the separation of church and state, the right to bear arms....

Ideas that I particularly disagree with: One that comes to mind immediately--I find his uncritical acceptance of the Malthusian fallacy (in Farmer in the Sky, for example) disappointing.

I'm glad that this forum is here, thanks for, uh... existing. I expect to have fun posting here.

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Sergeial, nice post. Welcome to the forum!

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Hi Sergei, welcome to us! Thanks for introducing yourself.

What's your current posting? Are there any fans of Starship Troopers in your unit?


Sun Sep 27, 2009 4:49 pm
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Thanks!

Actually I'm currently a "future soldier," though only for a few more days. I'm shipping out for BCT at Fort Jackson on Oct. 1, so I'll be out of touch for a while. But I'll be back and let you all know how it went over in "Coventry."

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In the end, I found Heinlein is finite. Thus, finite analysis is needed.


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I have always loved Sci Fi. I grew up on a book diet of Roald Dahl and John Wyndham. Then I discovered Asimov and was amazed. Then I read what has become my 2nd favorite book of all time - The Door Into Summer. (Sorry but JW tops the list with The Day of the Triffids). Since reading RAH for the first time I have read most of his novels, not so many short stories though.

I got confused by SIASL, but love the World As Myth sets, and seriously think I am in love with Mamma Maureen! I totally empathise with Starship Troopers (I am an ex soldier) - I also think that the movie totally missed the point of the book, and was not very good (probably a totally different set of posts for that topic!) and wish that Starman Jones was longer! I read Friday, Sail Beyond Sunset, Number of the Beast and TEFL again and again.

But like a favorite pair of slippers I turn to my 10 year old well worn paperback copy of Door whenever I want to escape for a few hours, I even wanted to call one of our cate Pete - but my wife wouldnt let me!


Thu Oct 29, 2009 11:11 am
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The first Heinlein novel I read was Starship Troopers. I was in the eighth grade. Until that time I had been reading Anne McCaffrey, Jerry Pournelle, Orson Scott Card, and Frank Herbert. RAH's writing grabbed me in much the same way that Frank Herbert's Dune had but in a different way. Despite all the action and adventure, there was something about Starship Troopers that kept me returning to it after the first reading.

Yet Starship Troopers was not the book that pulled me over the edge into full blown Heinlein obsession. That honor goes to Stranger In A Strange Land. The second RAH novel I read, also as an eighth grader. While there was much that went over my head at the time, I had such a strong reaction to the novel that I began to hunt down and read everything I could get my hands on by RAH.

Even if some of the works are now a bit dated, they all contain gems that reward re-reading.

Rob


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My brother was the first Heinlein fan so when I was very young in the 50s I read his books. I don’t really remember the exact ones I read, but I always remembered a story about a lost star ship. In the 70’s after I got out of the Army I started collecting and rereading all of them that the book store had. It took a long time before I found the same story again (reprinted in Expanded Universe). So I guess you could say I have been a serious fan since I was seven or eight. Like all of us I have everything that I could put my hands on.
His influence is there is always something to think about within the story. I don’t think the thing in the stories is always what Heinlein thought, but something to think about so you can form your own framework.
I do think SciFi in general and Heinlein in particular makes my work more exciting; I spent over 30 years working in contract quality assurance for the DOD & NASA. I now work for a private company as a Quality Engineer for space equipment, mostly for satellites, but we are involved in other space ventures.

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It was in 1971, and two people I knew who knew me from Vietnam Moratorium (they were anti-war, but not pro-Moratorium -- well, one of them was a Randite) got to talking with me, and at one point they offered to loan me a copy of Harsh Mistress. Don't know why; I wasn't intellectually stimulating then, and I don't feel I am now, either, especially with respect to the folks who post on this site.
But they did, and I just loved it. For one thing, I was political (new left) and Heinlein was political, and I just loved the revolution angle.
For another, I was looking for friends (and didn't know it) and here were some people who wanted to be my friends.
For a third, I was seduced by Manual Garcia O'Kelly-Davis (I only realized this lately). Manny is a great guy! His family life is great! And he's such a down to earth (down to luna) type of guy -- who wouldn't love him?
I think these folks -- well, it was Al and Harry, if you know 'em, mebbe you don't -- wanted to turn me politically. When they offered to loan me a Heinlein book, I said something like "Yeah, that's the guy who wrote Stranger In a Strange Land, isn't it? Always meant to read that."
Well, Al and Harry weren't about to let that be the first Heinlein I ever read, so they loaned me Mistress. When I finished and asked for another, they loaned me Farnham. That was taking a chance! But I decided this Heinlein guy couldn't be a racist (I hoped!) I think I got down to thinking that the way RAH and I differed on race is that I approved of affirmative action and he apparently thought the black liberation movement was part of the entitlement society. I still believe affirmative action was the right thing for the times, though now, after decades in power, I can see many black leaders figuring that THEY'RE entitled. My hope is that there is so much miscengenation in the world that eventually we'll all be latte-colored, and color won't matter any more.
Where do I agree with Heinlein? Tolerance of others, individual responsibility (this really is not a question of right-wing, left-wing), respect for people who read.
Where do I disagree? I believe toward the end of his life he grew intolerant of ignorance (did I just write that?), I mean, a bit too intolerant of the ignorant, perhaps a bit arrogant. I believe along with Kettle Belly Baldwin that you have to treat such people with compassion and try to pull them along. I also don't have that much problem with socialism; only problem is, it takes government to deliver, and that means politicians in charge, and I have grown more and more intolerant of politicians of any stripe as I've grown older.
Another bone I can pick is his reluctance to call out the scoundrels in the Republican Party, and there were plenty to call out: Gingrich, that fatass Limbaugh, Robertson, either Bush. I'll leave Reagan alone: I think he was both sincere and suffering from Alzheimer's during his second term.
Whoops! Gotten kinda off RAH here, haven't I?
Let's just say, I have great respect and admiration for the man who wrote The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, The Man Who Sold the Moon, Starship Troopers, Stranger In a Strange Land, Farnham's Freehold, Space Cadet, Red Planet...had enough?


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Speaking for myself, I found the treatment of this theme in " 'All You Zombies--' " to be more than satisfactory, as encapsulated in the sentence "It's a shock to have it proved to you that you can't resist seducing yourself." That is, in retrospect I'd have been happy not to have ever read Heinlein's working out of this same theme in Time Enough for Love (e.g., the Laz-Lor scenes) and the three later novels in which Laz-Lor appeared.

(Not to say another writer couldn't make a go of it, as for example David Gerrold's 1973 novel The Man Who Folded Himself; just that Heinlein had, in my view, already treated this topic as concisely and wittily as he would ever be able to do.)


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This seems like a good topic for my first post here. I was raised in the Mormon Church, and by age 12 and the 7th grade, 1972 living in Reno, NV I was already rejecting the "story" of the church and considered myself very logical and scientific. Mr. Spock was a personal hero...and I lumped science fiction with fantasy. Until a friend urged me to read Heinlein, saying "this is not fantasy, this is great!"

So, I walked into the junior high library and checked out Tunnel in the Sky, and never looked back. What made me a serious reader wasn't easy to discern at the time. The books flowed. They were riveting entertainment and I was learning science and something about adult life at the same time. I felt that Heinlein was something like a very intelligent, adult friend. We were simpatico. I read everything I could find by him, voraciously.

Over the years I managed to read just about every word he ever published, and I agreed with most of it, regarding rights, duty, government, child rearing, etc. Probably my biggest disagreement was with the economics espoused in BTH, but now I do understand a bit better where he was coming from. And Alaska, where I now live, has a "dividend" from oil royalties that is actually similar in concept.

Robert Heinlein is the biggest intellectual influence of my life.

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Tue May 03, 2011 4:13 pm
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Thu May 05, 2011 3:52 pm
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Welcome, Robert! Browse around here; feel free to resurrect old threads (I am constantly reminded that the permanence of our discussions is what sets us above Facebook...). I am just south of you in BC; no oil dividend for us though!


Fri May 06, 2011 6:06 am
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Thank you very much Peter, I will!

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Fri May 06, 2011 8:11 am
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Post Re: What made me a serious Heinlein
I have an introduction story similar to Jack Kelly. Sitting on my butt on my parent's couch, enjoying a summer vacation as an aimless teenager. My older brother comes up to me, hands me an open book, and says "Read this."
"Sure, Chris. Whatever."
"Read. This story. NOW."

So I did. And it was a Future History compilation, open to Black Pits, monument date 8/11/84 in my edition (Not '65). Which was of course, that day's date. My brother had noticed, waited, sprung the trap. And I was hooked. Chris and I wore the cover off that book.


Tue May 14, 2013 3:32 pm
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welcome to the group sandie ! did ya ever thank your brother ? :)


Tue May 14, 2013 5:50 pm
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Welcome, Sandy!

It was one of the juvies that hooked me, as I recall, after I was thoroughly weirded out by Stranger in a Strange Land -- at fourteen years of age. &lt;wry grin&gt; Fortunately after I grew up, I reread Stranger and loved it, although The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is definitely my favorite of Heinlein's work, with Friday and several short stories vying for second place.

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Tue May 14, 2013 9:59 pm
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Welcome Sandy! You're among kindred spirits :-)


Wed May 15, 2013 6:04 pm
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Sun Dec 08, 2013 3:29 pm
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Welcome! You are among kindred spirits.


Sun Dec 08, 2013 6:27 pm
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Thank you, Peter.

I have been reading various threads on the forum for most of the weekend, which should show you exactly how interesting my 'real' life is. I hope I in some way measure up to what I have read thus far.


Sun Dec 08, 2013 7:19 pm
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