You may note that I've changed the banner on the NitroForum. I believe the subhead to be true in all but irrelevant details.

From the many, one - this forum. All of the other groups I know of are dead, gone, inactive or on the verge of oblivion.

AFH is in the latter category, as Usenet's slow death has been accelerated by one large ISP after another closing their NNTP (newsgroup) server. Something about cost control, liability for exposing customers to an uncontrolled, unmoderated exchange medium (hey, we're all Patriots, right?) etc. so forth blah blah - but the fact is that Usenet has gone from slightly difficult to use to moreso, requiring users to find and subscribe to a server, something that used to come free and easy with any ISP account. Most open servers charge quite a bit because the .binaries. newsgroups, feeding the porn and warez appetite of millions, use bandwidth at humongous rates, orders of magnitude more than us poor text-message users. A few free servers, mostly with no binary groups, still exist but, for example, the one I use has draconian limits on messages and connections per day - violate them, and you're banned.

I suppose Google Groups still allows access to those forums, but GG is such a mangled tool - IMVVHO - that it's hardly an option that's going to support the newsgroups.

In any case, a look at AFH shows about five postings in any given week, from a diminished pool of old users. New blood is nonexistent.

There are spotty instances of Heinlein groups on nearly every list (such as Yahoo Groups and SFFnet) but I've seen none with notable activity. Most are abandoned after a few dozen exchanges between the few oddballs who find and post there.

So instead of Heinlein spreading across the net, interest has faded until this forum, slow and quiet as it is, is the last general-interest Heinlein forum in existence.

How very sad.

All the more important to keep this forum alive, me lad. It's God's own work you're doing here.

I wish some of the anarchistic RAH fans that used to dominate AFH and occasionally show up the "old" NitoForum would come back. It's beginning to feel a little like an echo chamber here.

I'd be delighted to have all the other forums coalesce here. There are many, however, who won't come because of me personally or because we're the Centennial crowd. But I authorize all users here to extend the warmest invitation to any group of Heinleinista out there, and I will welcome them one and all.

Well, make that all but one, actually, but it's a non-problem, I think.

Yes, Priscille, I am being English-centric here. I won't claim it's very globally-minded and won't try to defend the position except to note that it's Heinlein's natal and literary language and thus of key importance in any discussion setting.

You're entirely correct about the long-ago demise of AFH. I was one of the users run out by the great invasion of cat-petting drink-exchanging fluffbrain socializers, quite some time ago. I've peeked in from time to time and the level of conversation has never returned to the levels that made it the center of the RAH universe for a number of years. Like most Usenet groups, it's down to a very small core group, few postings and no new blood. I don't give it long.

I won't comment on the wave of anti-French sentiment of a few years ago, but I'm not surprised AFH was a haven of it.

In any case, we are down to this forum and very little else - in English. (I'd appreciate a summary of nonenglish forums and their approximate numbers of users and posts, if such data is ever in a reader's hands.)

As to why, I can't say. I'm having a running argument, with occasional small arm fire, with another figure in the spectrum, and he violently disagrees that there is a downturn - that the interest is simply elsewhere out of my sight. Well, what I see is a total cessation of discussion, activity and interest, and I can't really say why that is. The expanding interest in Heinlein that began around 1998 or 1999 and was boosted by the publication of RAH:ARC and then other efforts through the Centennial seems to have... well, if not collapsed, then broadly plateau'ed with no sign of an increase or forward movement anywhere.

There's a quite worthy thread to be started on that point.

I'd love to see the few remaining Heinlein forums and so forth coalesce here. I'm even willing to create new forums - say, AFH2 and Heinlein Forum: Yet The Next Installment so that those groups can continue in their own spaces.

For whatever it's worth, I've just now added some footnote links to the Heinlein Persona page (a type of sub-Contents) at to site:RAH and to NitroForum. Hope to help a bit.

Thanks for the 17 rue Dante link, Priscille. I can make out about 95% of it. Seeing Bill Patterson translated into French is definitely an eye opener. Do you know any details about the Nestlé space trip contest prize? Pour la Français seulement, je pense... dommage.

It's amusing to see how the localization of the site has been... sporadic. E.g.:
"In total 18 user have visited this site today :: 1 Enregistré, 0 Invisible et 17 Invités , 5 of them within the last hour."

Some enthusiastic discussions over there. Bravo!

Just for the record, I have posted an invite in AFH for them to move operations here, in their own forum and the 99% that is possible under their own rules and moderation.

I will probably extend a similar invite to the old Heinlein Forum, but as they are likely happy and under no threat of oblivion on JT's site (SFFnet) they may well decline. But all the existing RAHfora are welcome here in their own slots, so I am open to invitations and suggestions.

Heinlein activity on rasfw has come and gone over the years. Sometimes it's very good but the inanity level and the peevish nitpicker count tended to run high.

This is Catherine Hampton, ariel@sff.net, so at least one person saw your post. I won't be abandoning SFF.net any time soon; it still has some wonderful groups for other types of discussion. The Heinlein-specific discussion is moribund, however, and I'm glad to see some actual fans here talking about RAH.

Just a couple of months ago I finally got around to reading Variable Star. IMHO like most of Spider Robinson's work it has plenty of Heinlein touches, but it read more like Robinson than Heinlein. I don't consider that a bad thing; Spider Robinson is a wonderful writer. However, if I want to read Heinlein, I reread any of my well-read and thoroughly worn copies of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", the unabridged "Stranger" (which for some reason I prefer to the official release), or any of a series of other novels and short story collections. (For some reason, I especially love "Citizen of the Galaxy", although it isn't normally considered one of his best works.)

My husband and I are moving to a new apartment next week, one large enough that we can both have our favorite books out of boxes and in their shelves! Since we both love Heinlein, that will include at least one copy of each of his books we have. (And *that* will include one copy of most books he ever published.)

It's good to find this place!

Welcome.
My husband and I just moved in to a funky old house with enough room to unpack all the books, and we have wound up keeping two of each Heinlein: the hardbacks for the library, and old, much-highlighted paperbacks for a bookshelf in the bathroom. (Does this qualify as too much information? Hope not.)
Extras beyond that are being donated to friends, family, and my chiropractor's waiting room.

Somebody has already posted on the SFF.net Heinlein forum group about this place; that's how I found it. But echoing it here might be a good idea. Posting over there once a month reminding people of this forum might also be a good idea. Even the less fanatical Heinlein readers probably would want to know about this forum because they occasionally have questions or want to talk about a Heinlein book or story they just discovered and read for the first time. (Yes, such people do exist, and I almost envy them the discovery.)

Who is JT, by the way? The owner/operator of SFF.net is Jeffry Dwight, aka JD or Jade. (He's a fairly serious Heinlein fan himself, by the way.)

Hi Jim, Catherine, et al. I'm JT. My handle here is JusTin (I think JT was too short) but I will answer most readily to JT. Props to those of you who recognize the name Justin Foote from TEFL. My given name is John.

I have great sentimentality for an entity known as "The Heinlein Forum" and an interest in seeing it self-identified somewhere/somehow, but like I said on a.f.h I will go where the traffic is (and the noise ratio is low).

Since we are the longest posting internet haven for RAH discourse (english-speaking I just want to keep it going and I'm not ego-bound exactly as to where. I own www.heinleinforum.com and I can direct people anywhere I want to from there for the discussions.

I let those on the HF know about your efforts, Jim, and I suspect you'll see the diehards create an account and lurk at least. My only problem with web forums is that I have to remember to check them.

--JT

Hey, JT. I saw a couple of your posts over on SFF.net tonight too. So that's who Jim was talking about. Yes, I remember Justin Foote from TEFL -- he's someone I'd want to have around, especially when civilization collapses. I hear you about "remembering to check them"; that's my biggest problem with web forums too. But I'll manage, at least with this one and the few others I usually do check.

Since you're here, JT - the question I was going to pose was whether or not you'd be okay with a "Heinlein Forum rev 4.0" (or whatever the counter is up to) here. I don't want to step on anyone's toes but as long as we're gathering up the sorry, scattered remnants of online RAHfandom, it'd be nice to see them here occasionally.

Let's see... Prodigy, GEnie, SFFnet... did I miss any instances?

Only two others I can think of are Usenet and possibly Dueling Modems, although I haven't been over there in years and don't know if they're even there any more.

I was referring specifically to the former homes of the Heinlein Forum - started on Prodigy, picked me up when it moved to GEnie, then has been on SFFnet for a good ten years. SFFnet is a good place but a bit isolated, which is why I suggest moving the HF again - or at least opening a branch HQ here.

There was a hilariously insular little board called Quotable Heinlein. The forum was open-access and so had to be taken down a few years ago; my attempts to contact the five or so regulars and the board op all went unanswered. The site is still there, untouched since about 2000, but the forums and chat are still gone. I always kind of liked the place because I was the resident incarnation of Satan. Long story.

Jim-- personally, I don't think you need to have a separate topic for the HF. In some blurb description for the NF overall, just put that the Heinlein Forum cobbers hang out here, too, and list the HF URL in links resources.

I'll eventually revise the HF web page to say that we frequent this forum, it's been linked since at least last year. After the Centennial I revised the webpage to be a little more current with what RAH resources were out there.

At one point at the dawn of widespread internet use the HF had forums on Prodigy, GEnie, AOL, SFFNet and Delphi. The only place we never really had a foothold was on CompuServe. The two main forums were Prodigy and GEnie, though. We had a couple of really great years on SFF Net, but then I think Web 2.0 kinda overtook serious genre discussion and now it's time to take it back.

I doubt we'll abandon the outpost on SFF Net, but if conversation takes off here I don't see people double-posting much. I think Jeffry's admin schedule would probably delete the group if it didn't get any posts in a quarter. It hasn't even hit the archive tipping point in the last few years.

I think the problem any RAH group is going to have is to get the right balance to allow newbies to discuss works for the first time, while still keeping those that have "been there done that" around for color commentary without intimidating the newbies.

Sorry, I'm misremembering. I know there was an entity that started as an uber-BBS and migrated to Usenet - and I'm pretty sure I'm thinking of something other than Fidonet. (And no, not AOL, either.) That SFFnet used the BBSing term "sysop" might be what's confusing me.

Anyway, I'd love to see the whole HF crowd find this place and bookmark it for occasional visits, whether or not the presence on SFFnet persists.

I wasn't an original HFer, but I came along fairly early in the game. I don't recall you in that crowd - did you not discover it until it moved to SFFnet?

I'm not really an RHFer at all; I discovered this group/crowd on SFFNet and have been lurking for years and occasionally posting on the SFFNet Heinlein Forum group. I'm an avid reader whose favorite fiction tends to be SF, and Heinlein is one of the half dozen SF writers I find myself rereading time and again. He's got what the lit world calls an "authentic voice"; there really is nobody who writes like he does. He's also aware of and intelligent about people, not just science and technology, so his stories tend to resonate with me. I can quote whole swaths of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" from memory, and am almost at that stage with some of his other books.

I got involved in SF fandom in general through the GEnie network, and after leaving GEnie on the demise of GENie*Basic services in 1993, wandered through various forums til Jeffry and Jim started SFFNet. (By the way, the word "sysop" was used on GENie as well as on Fidonet, hence its use on SFFNet.)

ROFL! Men! ;P

Thanks Will, it's good to be seen. I haunted AFH for many years and although I wasn't much of an anarchist, I suppose I stomped my share of trolls, perpetuated my share of goofball discussions and made friends who left a void when marriage and fatherhood imposed a falling away of all sorts of netizenship. Reading is a vice not as easily abandoned and with every new writer I sample, I appreciate RAH all the more and revisit his worlds often.

Little Valentine Michael takes after his pop (a lot of noise and little substance), and he's developed a healthy love of books and although his introduction to Heinlein is still a few years away, he's become an authority on Dr. Seuss and looks forward to nightly story time.