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Tunnel in the Sky 
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Sat Sep 01, 2012 5:03 pm
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I satisfied myself that Rod and his family are, if not African black, at least dark-skinned, long ago. Wrote a bit on that point. The only way you can write a contradictory opinion is to stand completely outside the tropes and attitudes of the mid-1950s and judge Heinlein's subtle passes with the wrong assumptions.

I think you went off the track regarding 'amenities,' though. It has nothing to do with race or race perception, since we see absolutely none of that back in the civilization end of the story. Cowper means proprieties and social assumptions - an unmarried couple can't go sneaking off in the bushes together because it's inappropriate socially/sexually. Other than the underlying assumption that Rod and Caroline make a marriageable pair, I don't think there's anything about race in this passage.

On consequences for the gate screwup: I think you're misreading the story. A nova distorted space and lost the planet's coordinates, and it's clearly stated that they had been searching for the lost students since the event happened. They have already intentionally sent the students off to thrive or die (even kill each other); any consequence of failing to pick them up in two weeks would be so minor as to be brushed off. It was all part of the risk, and it's very lightly implied that 'Tanaroa' wasn't the only planet affected. Also consider that it was bad form to demonize companies in the mid-1950s, at least in YA fiction, and that Heinlein's companies and organizations are NEVER at fault for anything - being examples of homo superior in chartered form, and all.

Heinlein actually writes more salient and grounded things about the religion than in almost any other book where religion isn't a primary topic. Proselyting waves of evangelical Monism sweeping out of Persia... a purified form of Islam melded with Zoroastrianism and possibly Coptic Christianity, reduced to the monist viewpoint and based on a simple but unstated principle... that's more of a blueprint than in all of Stranger. Google up Monism and think a bit on it.

Back to race, though. Is Matson black? After all, he fell like a ton of bricks for Rod's amazon sister and is off to colonize with her. :shock:

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Sun Sep 02, 2012 7:19 am
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Sun Sep 02, 2012 6:02 pm
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Sun Sep 02, 2012 7:06 pm
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Not having read the Scottish Wiki on any Heinlein topic, I wasn't aware of that, but in thinking about your post and the book, it jumped out as a glaring exception to his extended finesses about Rod's race. Not sure how I ever missed it before.

Bottom line, I think that all of Heinlein's games with race are just that - games, each planned as an isolated exercise but without any depth of understanding or execution. I can't think of a single "non Midwestern white" character that is convincing in attitude, language, or presentation. The ones that are specifically assigned a race or culture are all rather cardboard cutout characters, even grossly stereotyped like the Jewish couple in Stranger. (I can overlook the 1940s presentations of blacks etc. as more a product of their time, but.) They are nonwhite because RAH laboriously says so, then subjects them to a bit of racial abuse or shock from another character, and puts a few "native" words in their mouth apparently looked up in Brittanica. He makes no attempt to create rounded, believable nonwhite characters... and each and every one of them is indistinguishable from his parade of white boys whenever he isn't straining to give them color.

Even worse are the shadow people like Rod and Eunice - in all the fan-dancing, he sometimes forgets what race or culture they are supposed to be and has them act and speak pure US Midwestern. In short, Heinlein is to be commended for attempting to push outside the rigid stereotype of an Iowa boy scout, especially in the juveniles, but he was never very good at it and got worse in later years. In an era when many writers had mastered multicultural characters, Heinlein was still trotting out paper dolls and trying to throw us with a shake-em-up sentence late in the book - such as the absolutely inexplicable exchange between Colin and "Sam Beaux" late in CWWTW. He couldn't keep it straight and consistent even when it was supposed to be a main feature of the story, and thirty years later it was reduced to a brief sight gag, usually ineptly handled and ill-timed to boot.

Frankly, I don't think Matson marrying Rod's sister was meant to be a stinging cultural rebuke... he just forgot.


Mon Sep 03, 2012 8:34 am
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Mon Sep 03, 2012 9:41 am
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I think you're being too kind and trying too hard to write additions to the already lengthy Heinlein Apologia.

Heinlein was a man of his time, and his time was the 1920s. I would be very surprised if any of his attitudes were still in flux as late as the mid-1950s; besides such changes in lifetime orientation being rare after 50 or so (even after 35 or so), Heinlein has a demonstrated record of holding on to his beliefs and values. Even with the best of intentions and a full self-understanding of his own limitations, I think Heinlein would have found it nearly impossible to understand racial issues as well as any moderately well-read person of our day. We have the advantage of growing up in a culture where racism was actively disdained and suppressed... and even I spent my earliest years in clueless white suburbia of the '60s. (We weren't racist by indoctrination; we were just ignorant. I think Heinlein spent his entire formative life in such ignorance but WITH the accepted overtone of racism.)

It takes no special effort to call his attempts at race-balancing feeble and thinly worked. I don't think the poor results diminish his evident concern for the problems of racism and exclusion; he saw them, and to an extent he empathized... but he did not truly understand them. He could only deal with the topic in a very focused, prepared, cheat-sheet sort of way, and from our perspective, it shows. Even his late-era writing is closer in tone to early-20th authors who generously wove in "the fine Negro couple that keeps house for us" than to present-day sensibilities.


Mon Sep 03, 2012 9:59 am
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Mon Sep 03, 2012 1:37 pm
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Wed Sep 05, 2012 4:29 am
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Well... prove by counterexample: name convincingly female characters created by other well-known male sciffy authors.


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Thu Sep 06, 2012 4:41 am
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Fri Sep 07, 2012 4:31 am
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I as much as said I'm bringing other debates, including past ones, into this discussion. All of my side comments are about the context and purpose of this discussion (...as I see it). I have no - nada, zero, zip, nyetaw, nuthin' - interest in the legacy style of Heinlein 'study,' to use the broadest term for discussion, discourse, investigation, debate and analysis. The tenor and limitations of this style were established before many of us were born. I've spent almost thirty years at it and IMVVVHO it's wrung dry. ­No más! No más!

If I'm alone in wanting to push on to more focused 'study,' with a deliberate attempt to leave out the assumed selectivity and automatic apologia... I'll shaddap. I am not interested in commandeering any discussion here - tell you what, I will stay out of any such discussion not in Advanced Heinlein. I'll assume if the debate is put there it's fair game to steer to my mindset. Out here, it's for folks who are less tired of the old school and haven't spent forever and a day on the topics.

That said, your closing paragraph goes right back to square one: Let's admire Heinlein some more for his proven good points and just not talk about his limitations. By all means, but I'll now excuse myself.


Fri Sep 07, 2012 7:21 am
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Exactly how is it you want to focus the analysis? All I've seen so far is broad strokes that he was pathetic at characterization. Where do you want to go from here? I'm all for more depth but if your idea of depth is thinking up new synonyms for "hack" that's not what I have in mind.


Fri Sep 07, 2012 9:10 am
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Before we digressed into the meaning of 'discuss' I made several very specific statements and challenges. (I was going to list them, but discovered that either the software has changed or I am remembering other forums that numbered the posts sequentially for reference. Bah.)

I'm not out to call Heinlein a hack and your dividing the potential discussion into another either/or doesn't help.

Why is it so hard to grasp that I think even a great writer - perhaps one of the greatest of American writers - who has many strengths and broke new ground repeatedly and dragged new ideas into the fray for 40+ years... also had flaws and shortcomings in his abilities? Twain wrote some stuff so wretched even his most rabid aficionados don't bother with it. Any prolific writer has crap on his publications list. Only extremely sparing writers like Hemingway might have no bad works that were published in their lifetime.

Having praised Heinlein for the same things lo these many eons, I am more interested in examining his weaknesses and failures... because they can tell us more about him, his milieu and his successful works than yet more glosses on the Hugo winners. Especially things that he is praised for where I think the praise needs to be modulated. His handling of women characters is multifaced, and while he is to be admired for shoving them down Campbell and reader's throats in that era, it remains to be established that he did so well, or skillfully, or believably in a larger context. Ditto for his racial efforts, which are similarly applaudable as efforts but (IMHO) clumsy and inept in execution.


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I would be all for more critical discussion but am not sure whether "advanced Heinlein" is the proper venue. Perhaps another category should be set up.

One profitable area of inquiry might concern parallels between Heinlein and other non-genre writers of his generation. For example, John O'Hara (1905-1970) started to write characters with more overt sexuality, generally taking place offstage (just like Heinlein), during the 1960s. Were authors of that generation, around age 60 at the time, followers or leaders in giving their characters sex lives? And why do some of their efforts in that area make us (well, some of us) wince today?

(O'Hara had several novels that were best sellers in the 1950s and '60s but are almost unknown today, except for those adapted into movies, such as Butterfield 8; I've tried three or four but have never been able to get into them. Many of his stories and novellas, on the other hand, will endure - or so I hope.)


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Fri Sep 07, 2012 9:22 pm
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Sat Sep 08, 2012 6:34 am
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Sun Sep 09, 2012 3:04 pm
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I haven't gotten much past starters on the topic, but I have made those starts. Typically, it goes about three replies before it's lost in deflection back to 'yes but' admiration of Heinlein's strengths.

Happy to start a fresh thread over in the Advanced column, but any hope that it achieves escape velocity and doesn't quickly end up dismissing the issue in favor of such elsewhere praise is faint.

My corresponding problem is that my time to tend to such threads is erratic - and often drops to zero right about the timer they get deep and involved. I try to come back and pick up the thread but it's often too late, both for my own line of thought and the participation.


Mon Sep 10, 2012 5:01 am
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