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alt title(s): Robert Heinlein
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
— Lazarus Long
Widely considered
one of the best writer
s of
Sci Fi and
Speculative Fiction of the Twentieth Century. Often the standard by which other writers are measured. Has probably written — and in some cases
created — every form of story in science fiction, including:
- Revolution and its aftermath (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and the first part of its sorta-sequel The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, If This Goes On..., later packaged in the collection Revolt in 2100)
- Organized crime invading an industry (Magic, Inc., Let There Be Light)
- Space Travel (The Rolling Stones Along with most of his short stories)
- Time Travel and Paradoxes ("By His Bootstraps", "'—All You Zombies—'", Time Enough For Love, A Door Into Summer)
- Cross-Universe travel ("The Number of the Beast—", Glory Road)
- Age extension and immortality (Methuselah's Children, Time Enough For Love, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress)
- Labor strikes by people critical to the economy (The Roads Must Roll)
- Man has brain transplanted into gorgeous woman (I Will Fear No Evil)
- Generation ship; Society on a self-contained spaceship forming its own religious mythos (Orphans of the Sky/Universe)
- Problems of precognition and knowing the future (Life-Line)
- War and the government it creates (Starship Troopers, frequently considered one of the best war novels ever written)
- Slavery, freedom, and the forms each can take (Citizen of the Galaxy)
- Settling on and civilizing new and unfamiliar worlds (Farmer in the Sky, Tunnel in the Sky)
- Human-alien relations (Red Planet, Have Space Suit — Will Travel, Double Star.)
- The transformative power of innocence plus observations of humanity from an Outsider (Stranger In A Strange Land)
His protagonists can be expected to believe in sexual freedom, the right to bear arms, the death penalty, and private ownership and private enterprise, and to
not be shy in expounding on those beliefs. Most believe in hard work and although they often suffer bad luck, in the end it pays off for them.
Humans Are Special, at least his heroes are. Expect there to be at least
one foolish and lazy person to
contrast to the heroes (although
smart lazy people are usually respected — see "The Tale of The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail" in
Time Enough For Love). Mutual respect and personal autonomy are key themes,
Polyamory is presented as the most rational and reasonable form of partnership, education (particularly maths and linguistics) is a vital (but
personal and freely chosen) process, and on occasion there are allusions to naive forms of chaos magic. In addition to that,
throwing rocks at people who don't agree with one's personal beliefs is quite okay when one's personal beliefs are enlightened enough — and if one is throwing them at
Obstructive Bureaucrats.
Outside of this, few generalizations are possible — aside from the above common elements Heinlein's protagonists have held opinions covering most of the political spectrum, to the point where the oft-made argument 'Heinlein's heroes all have his political opinions!' needs to account for the fact that the sum total of "political opinions held by Heinlein protagonists" includes many mutually contradictory ideas. (Compare Mr. Kiku's opinion on the usefulness of bureaucracy and civil service regulations to Colonel Baslim's, for example.) For that matter, Heinlein
himself expounded the merits of wildly different political opinions; two of his earliest books were essentially guided tours through a couple of non-Marxian anarcho-socialist
future paradises — though said paradises also valued sexual freedom and the right to bear arms. He would later write of a yet another such (alien) paradise in
Stranger In A Strange Land — and he would reference said paradise thoughout much of his future work.
It's also useful that his book introducing the "
World as Myth" concept has every single villain be named with an anagram of Heinlein or his wife's names or pen names.
Heinlein's stories are populated by certain stock characters:
- The Competent Man (sometimes woman): Essentially your classic leading man character, he or she is competent in a reasonably wide range of fields (usually including several sciences and/or technologies), and usually is also The Man (or Woman) Who Learns Better, having learned an Important Lesson and experienced considerable personal growth by the end of the story. The latter aspect is more prominent in Heinlein's juveniles.
- The Wise Old Mentor (usually, but not always, male): Professor Bernardo de la Paz, Hazel Meade Stone, Jubal Harshaw, and of course Lazarus Long, who also falls into the above category.
- The Gorgeous Woman: Spirited, beautiful and complex. Many of them have red hair, like Heinlein's wife Virginia. In fact, it is often tempting to assume the Gorgeous Woman is essentially Virginia in various guises. Star, in Glory Road, is described as hundreds of women in one body, along with a number of men, and amply describes the more universal version of the character.
His characters are often very intelligent, highly skilled (or they quickly learn any skills needed), good at math, and largely without major physical or mental defects. There are, however, notable exceptions:
- Waldo, a physical and emotional cripple in need of redemption.
- Oscar Gordon, a self-described grunt with a prominent facial scar, whose genius mainly lies in forms of violence and the practical application of personal ethics. After serving his time in the military, he gets recruited from an endless beach vacation by Star.
- Juan Rico, another grunt, who doesn't have the stuff to join one of the more glamorous organizations but proves to be an above-average officer and the right man at the right time. In film adaptations they tend to forget he's only called "Johnny", not named that.
The protagonist Every character of All You Zombies, a heartless cad with an intersexual condition (and time machine).
- Manuel Garcia O'Kelly "Mannie" Davis, a one-armed computer engineer (lost the other arm in an accident), who is otherwise the Archetype for a technically competent hero.
- While Roger Stone is a Competent Man, he freely admits that he's the least intelligent and adaptable person in his entire family, not to mention one of the least so among Heinlein's roster of Competent Men. He yet is the successful leader and moral conscience of the entire Stone family, and is perhaps the only being in the entire multiverse that Heinlein has written winning an argument with Hazel Stone.
- Hugh Farnham in Farnham's Freehold is not extensively educated or much more intelligent than the norm and his mathematical abilities are unknown, but he does have access to a long list of useful books, which come in handy when he becomes a freeholder.
- Podkayne Fries in Podkayne of Mars is a naive and optimistic 16-year-old girl who isn't really capable of understanding evil, and thus can't quite comprehend the villains or the seriousness of the political drama in the midst of which she finds herself.
- Whatever it is that Valentine Michael Smith is.
Heinlein's most notable hero is Lazarus Long, a near-immortal rogue and
Anti Hero. Lazarus Long appears across much of Heinlein's work, often being both the Competent Man and the Wise Old Man. Some criticism is directed at the turn of the later works regarding Lazarus Long. What's most notable is the exploration of free love and incest in the novels.
Heinlein's approach to female characterization is sometimes controversial. While his female characters are a reasonably varied lot, they tend to have a few things in common: The men spend a lot of time explaining things to them. They rarely end the story un-paired with a man. They tend to see motherhood as their highest goal. And, any area of expertise is usually an
Informed Ability.
He also invented and explored the concept of Pantheistic Solipsism in his later works, also known as the "
World as Myth" philosophy: where powerful writers create universes via the act of writing. He uses this for multiple
Crossovers between world lines, including at least one
meeting between every major hero he created in a single scene. It's also noted that later characters would
call him (as the author) out for the horrible actions his characters suffer if this idea is true.
His impact can be best seen in Larry Niven's short story
The Return of William Proxmire
where a fictional version of the infamously Luddite Senator Proxmire — who wishes to prevent the "waste" of the space program — decides to use time travel to cure Heinlein's pulmonary tuberculosis because every scientist and engineer "fanatic" in the space program credits him as being their inspiration. (For the interested, curing Heinlein means he rises to prominence in the Navy and pays attention in 1940 when Goddard tries to warn the military about the potential and dangers of rockets. When Proxmire returns to the present, Admiral Heinlein's Navy-run program has set up Lunar Colonies, orbital solar power stations, and prevented the Russians from developing ICBMs.)
What was he like as a person?
Well, let's hear what Joe Haldeman said about him. Joe Haldeman wrote
The Forever War, which many people consider a
Take That to Heinlein's
Starship Troopers. When they met for the very first time, at the WorldCon immediately after
The Forever War debuted, virtually every fan in attendance was expecting Heinlein to confront Haldeman angrily. Heinlein walked up to Haldeman at the award banquet, shook his hand, and congratulated him on writing "what may be the best future war story I've ever read!" (That is a direct quote of what Heinlein said, according to the author Spider Robinson, an eyewitness to the conversation.)
Haldeman later said that when he and his wife were in financial trouble and homeless, Heinlein heard about it through the science fiction writers' grapevine and sent Haldeman money. Heinlein never bugged him about it, although I assume Haldeman paid him back when he was able.
Heinlein also loaned
Philip K Dick money when he was having trouble with the IRS, and phoned him to cheer him up when he was ill —
despite never having met him in person before that point. Also, Heinlein and Dick had diametrically opposite views. On virtually everything. In Dick's own words: "He knows I'm a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love."
He
did have a few issues with Harry Harrison over
Bill, The Galactic Hero, but this was more for the way Harrison viewed soldiers in general (
asocial crazies) than with being parodied.
Other people, of course, have
other opinions.
