I have agreed to take over the management of the Heinlein Readers Group
http://heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/index.html which has been moribund for over 2 1/2 years.

I am going to need help. I would appreciate your suggestions for topics, and even more urgently, short lead-off posts for each of the topics.

Check out what has been done in the past. We can revisit old topics or come up with new ones. I have sent out a notice about this to the old mailing list and hope to hear from some of them also. There is, of course, some overlap between members of this Forum and my mailing list, so some of you have already made aware of this.

I plan on starting the Group up by the first Thursday[1] of December, so I would appreciate any help that you can give me on this.

Some might argue that there is no need for the Readers Group as the Forum itself provides all that is needed. The main advantage, IMO, is the spontaneity and immediate generation of ideas which occur in real-time. YMMV. Let me know what you think.
David Wright Sr.

[1] This follows the old schedule, but it is not set in stone. Other days of the week and times can certainly be considered.

I would be willing to participate.

Rob

Thanks Rob. I greatly appreciate it. Now get me some ideas

David Wright

Discussing Vol 1 of Bill's bio might be an idea. . .

That gives me an idea and a starting point. I'll post a start-off lead around the 20th of November and then we can continue in the Reader's Group the first Thursday of December.
I'm thinking of posting the logs here rather than on the main website, but I want to run that by the board at the next meeting.

For the rest of you, don't let this distract you from coming up with other ideas.
David

I would be happy to come, provided I get nudged and reminded....absent-mindedness is a curse

Will do so.

David

I'll toss this out there for a question for Bill to address at that meeting.

Now, mind you, I don't want to know *now* --I'm just a nice guy who tosses his hand-grenades with plenty of warning when he can. (where's my halo smiley for polite hand-grenade etiquette?)

"You must have had preconceptions when you undertook this project 10 years ago. Relative to Vol 1, where were you surprised and/or challenged in your preconceptions by what you actually found?"

Since, I think it is fair to say, the majority of "his controversial career" is post Vol 1, that is somewhat limiting in context. But I have faith in Bill to come up with an interesting answer nonetheless.

Depends on what you mean by "preconceptions." I never would have believed the amount of material that would become available, so the preconception that there was limited material to make a biography from was certainly challenged -- shattered, in fact.

And I don't want to get too much into spoilers (for the chat) here and now, but there are things I went into this that I was uncertain about -- like, exactly how much can you take of what Heinlein says in his public utterances at face value? I discovered that if you are flexible enough about interpretation, you find that he has said exactly what he meant, but he is almost always speaking more narrowly than you assume he is. You just can't get hung up in details. He means what HE means, and not what you might wish he meant.

please count me in - as another mentioned, please give us a mental nudge prior to the discussion- i could stand some provocative thought !