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"The Heritage of Heinlein" Book 
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Post "The Heritage of Heinlein" Book
I had never seen this one before a chance Amazon discovery--

Did a search for "Clareson" on this Forum but got no hits, so no one has brought him up, apparently.

The Amazon page shows a publication date of Jan. 2014, but apparently Prof. Clareson was working on it when he died over 20 years ago, and Sanders has taken the original draft and produced this book.

The preface notes "Tom tracked down the identity of Heinlein's first wife" which is interesting; how many people knew about that before 1993?

Other than that, has anyone here seen or read the book? It's pretty expensive, but I might buy it if there was some high-quality original material.

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Mon May 19, 2014 12:30 pm
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Well well well... good catch. Never heard of these guys. I've ordered it.


Mon May 19, 2014 3:08 pm
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"Look Inside" allows one to read the entire Foreword by Frederik Pohl, which is meatier than I was expecting. It's Fred's view of Heinlein's career, and it's terrific. Sure, there are a few factual errors, but Fred is beyond correction now.

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Tue May 20, 2014 6:00 pm
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I see that Thomas Clareson appears in v. 2 of the biography- p. 369, invites Heinlein to a meeting of the MLA in 1975.

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Thu May 22, 2014 12:55 pm
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Post Re: "The Heritage of Heinlein" Book
I am reading it now. I have noticed a number of things that I might have concerns about, but will have to wait until I have a chance to re-read and study it.

One thing, I definitely disagree with is his comment that Starship Troopers "vehemently treats its readers as children". [p.131]

What is your opinion about that?


Tue May 27, 2014 2:00 pm
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Tue May 27, 2014 4:01 pm
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Post Re: "The Heritage of Heinlein" Book
It's not news that ST was written for the Scribner's "juvenile" line, or that Heinlein had felt increasingly confined by the house's (particularly editor Alice Dalgliesh's) notion of what was suitable for the target audience as they conceived it. (And that audience was not only actual kids but also kids-as-imagined-by-librarians and the journal reviewers who influenced library purchasing.) It's pretty clear that in these books Heinlein was addressing young people, though he certainly did not think of them as children in the "think of the childrun" sense, nor did he intend to talk down to them. According to Bill P, after Scribner's rejected it, the decision was to was to issue the novel "by the Putnam's Children's Department, but design and promote it on their adult list." Putnam's did not demand changes, but in the editing process Heinlein expanded the original text by more than 30,000 words.

I've just finished a long review of Volume 2 of the biography (look for it in the July Locus) and could probably cite more chapter and verse, but fatigue, a finally-receding headcold, and a snootfull of oak pollen are making me lazy.

That said, I can see where some readers might (and did) get impatient with the (literal) lecturing in ST. I was within the target demographic when I first read it around 1961, and I thought that the finger-wagging was closer to my nose than I cared for. (And I was a big fan of G.B. Shaw as well as RAH, so it's not like I'd never been on the receiving end of one of those convention-inverting recitals.) Nor did I agree with the socio-political ideas in the book, though I did not take them to be Heinlein's own personal, absolute, real-world policy notions. Sometimes my nose was being tweaked instead of finger-wagged-at by the Old Man.

I've only seen the intro sections of The Heritage of Heinlein, but I've known Joe Sanders for going on forty years and respect his common sense and good will. Last thing I saw of his was a sympathetic monograph on Doc Smith. (I knew Tom Clareson, too, but not as well--he was a senior figure when I was still in grad school and just starting to write about SF. In fact, he published my first academic piece, on Phil Farmer.)


Wed May 28, 2014 12:49 pm
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Thu May 29, 2014 9:59 am
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Post Re: "The Heritage of Heinlein" Book
84,769 according to http://absolutewrite.com/forums/archive ... 94172.html .


Thu May 29, 2014 8:31 pm
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Post Re: "The Heritage of Heinlein" Book
If I recall correctly, Bill P's account has the original MS at 60K, expanded to 90K for the version published by Putnam. (Again, I'm too lazy to look up the relevant text in my index-less ARC.) Then, of course, it was abridged for the F&SF serialization, which is the version that set off the first round of discussion inside the field.


Fri May 30, 2014 9:00 am
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Post Re: "The Heritage of Heinlein" Book
A review of Heritage of Heinlein (and also vol 2 of Patterson).


Mon Aug 18, 2014 9:31 pm
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I'm now halfway through Heritage and thoroughly enjoying it. It's a thoughtful analysis that exposes many things I didn't know, is respectful without being obsequious and critical without backstabbing *cough*Panshin*cough*.

Apropos of the earlier comment re: ST in this thread, the book asserts that Heinlein was obligated to keep sending books to Scribners as long as they kept accepting them, and wanted out of the juveniles contract; therefore Troopers was a deliberate ploy to craft a book that would be completely unacceptable as a juvenile and therefore release him from his bonds. Makes sense to me. Comments?


Sat Mar 07, 2015 9:01 pm
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Not that I don't also disagree with the comment about Troopers treating its readers like children, but that would open up a very rusty can of worms. I do find Heritage refreshingly vacant of literary pretense; it doesn't attempt to use five dollar words to convince you that you're a Neanderthal incapable of seeing an allusion to Proust if it smacked you upside the head. Instead it points out the sorts of things you always wanted to know about the stories but somehow missed. A perfect antidote to Panshin.


Sun Mar 08, 2015 11:35 am
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Sun Mar 08, 2015 2:21 pm
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I need to pick up a copy of this book; it sounds interesting.

It was pretty clear to me that by the late 1950s, Heinlein was bored with doing juveniles and ready to move on to something else, but Scribner didn't want the "something else". Other writers run into problems with their publishers when they start writing for a different audience or different kinds of books. Publishers mostly don't want to help the writer "expand" except to sell more books; they're in it to make money. I don't say that as a criticism, but a fact. It's just like the big Hollywood movie companies or the big music labels. Once you hit a winning "formula", they just want to repeat it with minor variations because they view it as a "safe" thing.

Most writers, most directors, and most musicians get bored with that sooner or later.

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Sun Mar 08, 2015 4:46 pm
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Post Re: "The Heritage of Heinlein" Book
Neither do I find anything in Heinlein to be condescending. I do think that Troopers, like, but more so than, anything else in the oeuvre, is part Rohrshach Test and part Shibboleth. Heinlein's fans feel that he was writing just for them (I certainly do). So I think each will read into Troopers something that reveals more of themselves than of Heinlein.

But that's as much as I want to say about that particular book in this thread. If you want to explore it further – and I am certainly game – then let's take it to a different thread, because I want to reserve this one for Heritage.


Sun Mar 08, 2015 6:06 pm
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