Heinlein Readers Discussion Group
Saturday 09-18-2003 9:00 P.M.
Heinlein’s Heroines
Here Begin The Postings
From: “Oscagne”
Subject: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” — Sept. 18, 20
Date: Monday, August 25, 2003 3:51 PM
The next RAH-AIM Readers Group chat will be “Heinlein’s Heroines”, scheduled for Sept. 18 and 20, 8pm and 5pm U.S. Central Time (respectively). Anyone wishing to join us for the first time can find out how by visiting https://www.heinleinsociety.org/Archives/ReadersGrp/index.html#Info . Eric Flint (Author of _1632_ and _Mother of Demons_) will be joining us as a participant. Please everyone, go out and buy all his books. Or at least one. Or visit http://www.baen.com/library/ and download the free ones and find out how to download the non-free ones.
Anyhow, to get on with it:
A while back David Silver made a thumbnail suggestion about the circular character of the evolution of Heilein’s Heroines. He came up with this chronology:
Maureen (Puddin’) – Puddin’ stories (Poor Daddy, etc.)
Holly – Menace From Earth
Ricki – Door Into Summer
Podkayne – Podkayne of Mars
Llita – Time Enough for Love
Dora – Time Enough for Love
Laz/Lor – Time Enough for Love
Maureen – Time Enough for Love
David was just goofing around, playing off the topic of the Da Capo thread about the way Heinlein would frequently resolve things the same way he started them off (fitting in nicely with the Auroboros concept). [Note to self: compose a Readers Group topic about Heinlein’s propensity to toy around with circular concepts of causality; e.g. Bootstraps, Zombies, Auroboros, etc.]
This does bring us around to a widely circulated criticism of Heilein’s work: the Heinlein female, the idea being that RAH only wrote one female and placed her in all the different plots he wrote. This is a very similar concept to the Heinlein three-cornered protagonist we’ve seen bandied about. Yet, do they have a point? Is there a pattern to the characterization Heinlein gives his favorably depicted females?
To bring this around the wheel, we have to add many more names to the list. First, stealing shamelessly from Geo Rule ( http://www.robertaheinlein.com/articles/strongwomen.htm), are Dr. Mary Martin (Let There be Light), Amanda Jennings (Magic, Inc.), Sister Maggie Andrews (If This Goes On), and Grace Cormet (-We Also Walk Dogs). None of these ladies seem to fit into the originally proposed continuum. Lets make it more complicated by stealing once again, this time from Deb Rule ( http://www.robertaheinlein.com/articles/womeninjuveniles.htm): Phyllis Marlow (Red Planet), Molly and Peggy Kenyon (Farmer in the Sky), all the ladies of the Stone Family (Rolling Stones), oh Hell… there’s just too many, and I’ve left out many of the Rules’ examples. Maybe we could hear some additions from the peanut gallery.
Even now we haven’t really mentioned any later-written ladies. Hilda and Deety (Number of the Beast). Gwen Novak (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls), an almost-but-not-quite a different character than her earlier incarnation in Stones. Wyoming Knott (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).
There does not appear to be a chronological continuum to Heilein’s Heroic ladies. So how about listing them in order of apparent age? I’ll go from the age when we see them at their youngest (and estimate my butt off in several cases): – Dora – Laz/Lor – Ricky – Peggy Kenyon – Phyllis Marlow – Poddy – Maureen – Holly – Puddin – Meade Stone – Wyoh – Deety Carter – Sister Maggie – Grace Cormet – Molly Kenyon – Dr. Martin – Edith Stone – Hilda Burroughs – Hazel Stone – Amanda Jennings — is there a pattern here? If you don’t see your favorite here, add her in and we’ll see if we can work out that pattern. Could you take any of these ladies, adjust her age, drop her into any other lady’s plot and setting, and see the same outcome?
Or perhaps we should only look at the female protagonists, rather than supporting cast?
Anyway, there _feels_ like there’s a pattern here, but that’s not data. So _where’s_ the pattern? Or perhaps there’s more than one pattern?
From: Stephanie
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” — Sept. 18, 20
Date: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 12:14 AM
I keep trying to phrase a reply, and I keep hanging up…maybe I’ll do better in spontaneous chat.
I do Know I have been reading the late novels here lately. After a foray into the early novels.
Comparison: He tried much harder to get inside the ladies’ minds as he progressed. Perhaps a direct reflection of having an active woman contributor (i.e. Ginny). Early on, the women, when there are any, seem flat. The later ones put Diana of Themiscarae to shame at times.
A common complaint by the feminazis is that the women of late RAH works are superheroic…yet fall prey to love and nurture needs. They fall for a guy and they have babies. Same complaint is made of one of my favorite pop writers, and I tell such critics to go take a flight. I wish I could do half what Maureen can…and still I would not give up my children.
That’s my two cents, early on…I now appoint a new Stimulator, or at least a Respondent!
Stephanie
http://hometown.aol.com/merfilly27/myhomepage/profile.html
From: “DocJam00”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” — Sept. 18, 20
Date: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 9:46 AM
>Perhaps a direct reflection of having an active woman contributor
>(i.e. Ginny). Early on, the women, when there are any, seem flat.
I agree with much of what you’ve posted, but Heinlein always had an active female contributor. Leslyn, perhaps even more than Ginny, was deeply involved in writing the stories. In the unedited recording of the 1941 Denvention speech, RAH specifically says that all of the stories were written with Leslyn as partner.
I think a more likely explanation for why the early women come off “flat” as you say is that the market at the time did not allow women/romance/sex as fully rounded subjects. The original version of “Let There Be Light” was rejected on precisely these grounds by Campbell — although Pohl snapped it up when it was offered to him.
So, as much as anything, this is a reflection of market constraints. The female lead in FUTL, once you’ve read that book this fall, should add more to this conversation.
Thanks for the great post, Stephanie!
Robert James
From: “jeanette”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Friday, September 05, 2003 11:50 AM
I just reread Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and have some comments. The women in the book are portrayed as extremely competent as far as they are portrayed. Not a yammerhead among them. Of course they do not say much. “Lenore is a sensible fem and knows when to keep quiet.” Wyoh is the only one who is involved in other than women’s matters. Even Michelle is only used for girl talk and bawdy jokes. Women are elected to positions when the government starts to form, but I don’t remember any of them (other than Wyoh) actually saying anything.
It seems to me that they are in a hothouse. Job is to smell pretty and look inviting. Carefully protected–it is not their fault if someone can’t resist touching. The only female-run business I can remember is the beauty shop. No other women shopkeepers, gamblers or judges (or juries) mentioned. Warden’s staff and security all men. Only mention of women is comfort corp. When the fighting starts, the women are very involved–fight and die. But, until then, mostly untrained and only allowed around to boost morale (ironically named Lysistrata Corps).
In family matters–it is OK for women not to marry. We kind of get the idea how she can support herself without being tied down to a family. But in Mannie’s family, it seems important that marriages of both women and men happen early. Men work the farm. Women have the babies. Mannie, when promoting the advantages of a line marriage only mentions child rearing and conservation of property. He does not mention aspects of support and love, but we know that they are important to him. One thing that troubled me was the question of allowing an infertile woman to join the marriage. Would it be allowed? It was not answered in the book. Was having children a requirement for women to be in the family? Could they contribute in other ways? Mannie didn’t farm much.
This is only one book–doesn’t show RAH over time. Women are not all the same women, they just aren’t very much of the story.
Group seems very quiet lately.
Jeanette
From: “Christopher A. Bohn”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” — Se…
Date: Friday, September 05, 2003 12:41 PM
Good afternoon,
On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, jeanette wrote:
[snip most of the discussion of the sparse treatement of women in TMIAHM]
> But in Mannie’s family, it seems important that marriages of both women
> and men happen early. Men work the farm. Women have the babies.
> Mannie, when promoting the advantages of a line marriage only mentions
> child rearing and conservation of property. He does not mention aspects
> of support and love, but we know that they are important to him. One
Contrast this to the line marriage in _Friday_ where the matron runs the books.
> thing that troubled me was the question of allowing an infertile woman
> to join the marriage. Would it be allowed? It was not answered in the
> book. Was having children a requirement for women to be in the family?
> Could they contribute in other ways? Mannie didn’t farm much.
[…]
I suppose if she could pull her weight, by some definition of “pull her weight” then she’d still contribute to the marriage — certainly she wouldn’t contribute her genetic material, but that part of marriage is but one of many. But I suppose that’s your point — the women appear to only be there for making and raising children. Taking the question a bit further — if infertile women couldn’t enter the marriage, could infertile men & women be forced out? Probably would be bad policy, since every woman sooner or later would be infertile, and being certain that the security of the marriage is only temporary (with no hope of entering another marriage) is not good for morale.
Take care,
cb
—
Christopher A. Bohn ____________|____________
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~bohn/ ‘ ** ** ” (o) ” ** ** ‘
“Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.”
– Favius Vegetius Renatus, De Rei Militari
From: “lal_truckee”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” — Se…
Date: Friday, September 05, 2003 1:14 PM
Christopher A. Bohn wrote:
> Taking the question a bit
> further — if infertile women couldn’t enter the marriage, could infertile
> men & women be forced out?
IIRC, Grandpa wasn’t forced out, yet it was stated that he wasn’t up to contributing anymore, even if new wifes did sleep with him first. (I wonder how hard Wyoh tried to help her elderly husband, who probably could benefit from a bit of , ah, “tenderness?”)
BTW, did new husbands sleep with the oldest wife (Grandma) on first night? I assume so from symmetry, but it wasn’t stated.
I think the spouse generations issue is an interesting question, doubly so, since a line marriage would have children who are g’g’parental age relative to official “parents.”
From: “Stephanie”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” —
Date: Friday, September 05, 2003 1:51 PM
Howdy Jeanette! Long time no reply back to you!
>I just reread Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and have some comments.
And how! You pointed up a good passle of notes about one of RAH’s most influential works, but one in which women are much more background than forefront. This book takes the flavor of a juvie in that regard.
Stephanie
http://hometown.aol.com/merfilly27/myhomepage/profile.html
From: “LV Poker Player”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” —
Date: Friday, September 05, 2003 2:29 PM
Ack! You aren’t supposed to ask these questions!
Ok, seiously, you ARE supposed to ask them. On a really good day (dark semi lunar, or at least a sunspot minimum) we might even take a shot at answering them.
Jack Daniels warning at this point. Trust me, the backspace key has been used multiple times already. 🙂
I’m trying to cut back. Really I am. I looked at the calories that stuff has, and my waistline, and I figured something has to give. Still, at this point I am dead drunk. At least it is not happening as often. 🙂
Oh yeah, TMIAHM, women, strong characters, frontier society, Wyoming, Lunar Revolutions, mid sixties, typos, drunkenness, and all that. That was the topic, right? 🙂
Heinlein stated often that he wrote for money. Most authors at the time would have put women in the background, or not mentioned them at all. Heinlein put in some strong women characters (maybe not QUITE as strong as the men, but close) in his novel.
Wyoh was part of the war cabinet, not just the cabinet. Your objections seem to be along the lines of “Well, jeez Mrs. Kennedy, we are sure sorry about the shooting, but except for that, did you enjoy the ride?”
We have Mimi telling Manniie that she can stop any Earthworm troops from getting through the Davis tunnels.
I wonder what I will think when I read this cold sober?
Oh yeah, I just may have set a new world’s record for use of the backspace key. I hope not too many typos slipped through.
Also, this really is meant as a serious reply, not as a slam or personal attack.
—
Ferengi rule of acquisition #192: Never cheat a Klingon…unless you’re sure
you can get away with it.
From: bookman
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” —
Date: Saturday, September 06, 2003 1:38 AM
“LV Poker Player”wrote in message news:…
> Ack! You aren’t supposed to ask these questions!
>
> Ok, seiously, you ARE supposed to ask them. On a really good day (dark semi
> lunar, or at least a sunspot minimum) we might even take a shot at answering
> them.
>
> Jack Daniels warning at this point. Trust me, the backspace key has been used
> multiple times already. 🙂
>
> I’m trying to cut back. Really I am. I looked at the calories that stuff has,
> and my waistline, and I figured something has to give. Still, at this point I
> am dead drunk. At least it is not happening as often. 🙂
Note to LVPP: Do you think that doing really heavy exercise once or twice a month would have much effect on your weight?
It is not the occasional splurge that is killing you weight-wise, it’s the regular nightly shot (Or 2, or 3) that is packing them on.
JMO
For me, it is the beer. 😉
(I’m walking on my breaks at work now, we shall see.)
Regards,
Rusty the bookman
From: bookman
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Saturday, September 06, 2003 1:51 AM
“jeanette”wrote in message news:…
> In family matters–it is OK for women not to marry. We kind of get the
> idea how she can support herself without being tied down to a family.
> But in Mannie’s family, it seems important that marriages of both women
> and men happen early. Men work the farm. Women have the babies.
Horribly sexist of them – the men should have had the babies, while the women worked the farm.
As I recall it, Mannie said that everybody worked the farm, and just a couple of the men did the really dangerous stuff. As a matter of fact, Mannie was unusual in that he did contract work on computers, but didn’t a couple of women have a beauty parlor? Yeah, ISTR that they did, and that they shipped the used water back to the farm rather than giving it to the Warden for free.
I will not disagree that the culture is rather heavily gender-based in terms of roles, but given the scarcity of women and the impact that fact had on Lunar society I find that notion to be plausible. Other notions might also be plausible, too, but they weren’t the one that RAH used.
Regards,
Rusty the bookman
From: Christopher A. Bohn
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Saturday, September 06, 2003 9:18 AM
Good morning,
On Sat, 6 Sep 2003, bookman wrote: [about the role of each sex on the O’Kelly farm] […]
>
> I will not disagree that the culture is rather heavily
> gender-based in terms of roles, but given the scarcity
> of women and the impact that fact had on Lunar society
> I find that notion to be plausible. Other notions might
> also be plausible, too, but they weren’t the one that RAH
> used.
I thought about this a bit more last night, and given the man:woman ratio, *of course* women are going to be kept away from the dangerous jobs. I wouldn’t do to have a woman lose an arm (or worse!) in a mining or farming accident. It obviously wouldn’t be taken to the extreme — I’m sure their scissors had points 🙂 — but as long as there’s enough work to go around, might as well “assign” the dangerous stuff to the men first and add women as needed, which leaves the less-dangerous stuff for those who weren’t assigned the dangerous stuff. Of course, I’m sure all the men from a given family wouldn’t be all doing dangerous work in the same place at the same time — and if it means a woman doing something dangerous so that at least one man will survive in case of catastrophe, then at least there’s still one man left to keep it a “breeding” family.
A
t the risk of sounding like a Saudi, think of it as less of a cheapening the value of women to raising their value to the extent they need to be protected.
T
ake care,
cb
—
Christopher A. Bohn ____________|____________
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~bohn/ ‘ ** ** ” (o) ” ** ** ‘
“Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum”
– Appius Claudius (the Blind), Roman Senate
From: jeanette
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” —
Date: Saturday, September 06, 2003 12:03 PM
Maureen in TO SAIL was the wife who was dumped because she was no longer able to have children. In MOON, if all went in the order of things, the wives (and husbands) could look forward to maturing into the senior spouse position. They might eventually retire and in due time fertilize the family flower garden. The question I had was would a women known to be unable to have children be invited to be a wife in the first place? The inner discussion made it sound like a deal breaker.
It is stated in the book that the men take care of the farm. I don’t think the it meant the women couldn’t, I just think that was the way it was. They were glad to add the new husbands because they had just married off a couple of the boys.
I think what bothers me is that RAH flaunts the conventions of the time the book was written by saying that it is OK for women not to marry and have a family, but seems to say that prostitution (there is probably a higher-class sounding word, but it will mean the same thing) is the good alternative. Mention of the queen of a group of stilyagi and the Lysastrata Corps. No mention of other careers for women.
Back to Maureen. What is with the Howard Foundation? They give money as an incentive to have children. It is enough to keep Maureen and Brian interested, but not enough that Brian can stop travelling? Should be enough to afford to raise the kids with both parents at home. When will they wise up and realize that it is not a good economic move?
Jeanette
From: Christopher A. Bohn
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” —
Date: Saturday, September 06, 2003 1:01 PM
Good afternoon,
On Sat, 6 Sep 2003, jeanette wrote:
[…]
> Back to Maureen. What is with the Howard Foundation? They give money
> as an incentive to have children. It is enough to keep Maureen and
> Brian interested, but not enough that Brian can stop travelling? Should
> be enough to afford to raise the kids with both parents at home. When
> will they wise up and realize that it is not a good economic move?
Well, certainly, Brian would have had to have a job to provide a passable cover story for their lifestyle — and it may be that he found a job he enjoyed so much that the money wasn’t an issue … and it just happened to involve a bit of travel.
Of course, maybe his “business trips” weren’t entirely for business…
Take care,
cb
—
Christopher A. Bohn ____________|____________
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~bohn/ ‘ ** ** ” (o) ” ** ** ‘
“Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum”
– Appius Claudius (the Blind), Roman Senate
From: Bryan R. Stahl
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” —
Date: Saturday, September 06, 2003 1:07 PM
“jeanette”wrote in message news:… < SNIP >
> Back to Maureen. What is with the Howard Foundation? They give money
> as an incentive to have children. It is enough to keep Maureen and
> Brian interested, but not enough that Brian can stop travelling? Should
> be enough to afford to raise the kids with both parents at home. When
> will they wise up and realize that it is not a good economic move?
IIRC, it was mentioned that every cent that Maureen and Brian collected from the Howard payments eventually was given to the children as they married. Maureen speculated that Brian may have been embarrassed about the payments.
Earlier, however, it was brought up that the payments were how they paid for their house, enabling them to live in a better neighborhood than Brian’s income would otherwise have provided.
Brian’s traveling came from his career choice; if he had chosen, say law or medicine, he probably would have been home most of the time. His job required him to travel to mining sites, and later, he was gone for military training and service in WWI.
Finally, Maureen also implied that they just had the drive to get rich; she did mention that they raised their children to have that drive.
—
Bryan
“This Universe never did make sense; I suspect
that it was built on government contract.” — Heinlein
From: Stephanie
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” —
Date: Saturday, September 06, 2003 1:10 PM
>In MOON, if all went in the order of things, the
>wives (and husbands) could look forward to maturing into the senior
>spouse position. They might eventually retire and in due time fertilize
>the family flower garden. The question I had was would a women known to
>be unable to have children be invited to be a wife in the first place?
I think the woman would have to be bringing soem form of substantial skill to the table to be “married”, by the chance of being invited to stay without marriage would be high. Mannie did mention that guests sometimes did stay a long time.
Also, even IWFNE still has the women in menial, secretarial/wait jobs. SIASL and Job, again, do not show women in power careers. I could go on, but I think, except with the experiment of Friday, women are not power career people in RAH’s work. Granted, Hazel and her daughter in law were a lawyer and a doctor…off camera, mostly. Then you have Hilda, who winds up heading a good portion of the Time Corps. Deety is a software programmer, but pardon me, I can see this as an evolution of earlier secretary roles. Ishtar is one of the few power career women from the beginning, but again, in the medical field as Doctor Stone was. Any more points to the contrary? I’m not overly conversant with the juvies, so I may be overlooking prime examples to the contrary.
>Back to Maureen. What is with the Howard Foundation? They give money
>as an incentive to have children. It is enough to keep Maureen and
>Brian interested, but not enough that Brian can stop travelling? Should
>be enough to afford to raise the kids with both parents at home. When
>will they wise up and realize that it is not a good economic move?
If you did not need to work, would you? That was the impression I got from the book, after he had paid off the “pyramid” of debt of their move to KC. He worked as much because he enjoyed it as because it was expected. Especially after Black Tuesday with Laz’s tips. The travel was just something bound up in the work he enjoyed.
Stephanie
http://hometown.aol.com/merfilly27/myhomepage/profile.html
From: Simon Jester UK
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” —
Date: Sunday, September 07, 2003 6:53 AM
Stephanie wrote:
…
> Also, even IWFNE still has the women in menial, secretarial/wait jobs.
Hmm… does Joan Eunice confirm or confute this statement?
> SIASL
> and Job, again, do not show women in power careers. I could go on, but I
> think, except with the experiment of Friday, women are not power career people
> in RAH’s work. Granted, Hazel and her daughter in law were a lawyer and a
> doctor…off camera, mostly. Then you have Hilda, who winds up heading a good
> portion of the Time Corps. Deety is a software programmer, but pardon me, I
> can see this as an evolution of earlier secretary roles.
Less so in the early ’80’s, when the book was written, than nowadays, I think.
> Ishtar is one of the
> few power career women from the beginning, but again, in the medical field as
> Doctor Stone was. Any more points to the contrary? I’m not overly conversant
> with the juvies, so I may be overlooking prime examples to the contrary.
…
Her Wisdom, Star?
The Motherthing, from HSSWT? (Possibly this is cheating… 🙂 )
The pilots in ST?
Mrs. Grew, in PoM? (Evil, but running things.)
Poddy’s mother, in PoM, is a senior engineer. She is off camera, most of the time, though.
Mrs. Keithly, in “Gulf”? Another villain, and mostly off-camera.
From: Simon Jester UK
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Sunday, September 07, 2003 7:09 AM
jeanette wrote:
> I just reread Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and have some comments. The
> women in the book are portrayed as extremely competent as far as they
> are portrayed. Not a yammerhead among them.
There is one yammerhead, although she is a minor character: a female politician in the Lunar assembly who wanted to ban anything and everything (plural marriages, divorce, any drink stronger than 4% beer, gambling, etc.)
> Of course they do not say
> much. “Lenore is a sensible fem and knows when to keep quiet.” Wyoh is
> the only one who is involved in other than women’s matters. Even
> Michelle is only used for girl talk and bawdy jokes. Women are elected
> to positions when the government starts to form, but I don’t remember
> any of them (other than Wyoh) actually saying anything.
Outside of the War Cabinet, I don’t remember any of the politicians saying anything (except the yammerhead mentioned above).
> It seems to me that they are in a hothouse. Job is to smell pretty and
> look inviting. Carefully protected–it is not their fault if someone
> can’t resist touching. The only female-run business I can remember is
> the beauty shop. No other women shopkeepers, gamblers or judges (or
> juries) mentioned. Warden’s staff and security all men. Only mention
> of women is comfort corp. When the fighting starts, the women are very
> involved–fight and die. But, until then, mostly untrained and only
> allowed around to boost morale (ironically named Lysistrata Corps).
I got the impression that the absence of women in combat (and other dangerous) roles was due to the fact that there were relatively few women, so there was a particular need to protect them. Might as well give the dangerous jobs to the surplus males.
> In family matters–it is OK for women not to marry. We kind of get the
> idea how she can support herself without being tied down to a family.
> But in Mannie’s family, it seems important that marriages of both women
> and men happen early. Men work the farm. Women have the babies.
…
I got the impression that Mimi ran the farm, while the men did the donkey work.
From: David M. Silver
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Sunday, September 07, 2003 12:14 PM
In article, “Simon Jester UK”wrote:
> jeanette wrote:
> > I just reread Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and have some comments. The
> > women in the book are portrayed as extremely competent as far as they
> > are portrayed. Not a yammerhead among them.
>
[snip]
They are also portrayed as active participants in the revolution itself, e.g., Wyoh is certainly a leader, Mimi is in a C-level cell, one imagines like populations.
Michael Holmes also has a “Mychelle” persona. But since the POV character is Mannie, we don’t see much of her.
>
> Outside of the War Cabinet, I don’t remember any of the politicians saying
> anything (except the yammerhead mentioned above).
>
> > It seems to me that they are in a hothouse. Job is to smell pretty and
> > look inviting. Carefully protected–it is not their fault if someone
> > can’t resist touching. The only female-run business I can remember is
> > the beauty shop. No other women shopkeepers, gamblers or judges (or
> > juries) mentioned. Warden’s staff and security all men. Only mention
> > of women is comfort corp. When the fighting starts, the women are very
> > involved–fight and die. But, until then, mostly untrained and only
> > allowed around to boost morale (ironically named Lysistrata Corps).
>
Don’t forget “until then” hardly more than a handful of the population is trained, and most of the actual combat involves civilians like Ludmilla with that fatal bayonet wound between her girlish breasts — and Hazel has a particularly prominent role in Mannie’s description, what else would you like to have?
> I got the impression that the absence of women in combat (and other
> dangerous)
Your evidence of absence of women in combat is based solely on Mannie’s limited observations; and, in fact, he observed women and men in combat, especially once the yellow jackets and peace dragoons got inside the domes. I wouldn’t call Mannie’s sole observations anything like a thorough investigation or accounting of their role in combat. One person’s account rarely is. Mostly observation by an individual is not detached and clinical (or really very reliable at all), it’s focused mostly on threat identification and target acquisition, one would hope, lest the individual observing become a casualty.
Mannie also received reports; but I doubt whether the categories were broken down into KIA (males), KIA (females), WIA (males), WIA (females), MIA (males), and MIA (females). Field subordinates don’t have the time for such niceties; at least not until it’s quiet and the REMF feather merchants have taken over again.
Hazel, in _Rolling Stones_, wears that sidearm just as proudly as any male veteran of the revolution, perhaps more proudly — even if she does keep cough drops in the chamber.
> roles was due to the fact that there were relatively few women,
> so there was a particular need to protect them. Might as well give the
> dangerous jobs to the surplus males.
>
> > In family matters–it is OK for women not to marry. We kind of get the
> > idea how she can support herself without being tied down to a family.
> > But in Mannie’s family, it seems important that marriages of both women
> > and men happen early. Men work the farm. Women have the babies.
> …
>
> I got the impression that Mimi ran the farm, while the men did the donkey
> work.
>
I wouldn’t call it a mere “impression.” There was no doubt in my mind who was in charge in that family. It was a matriarchy, run by Mimi, giving titular, momentary and limited deference to the old man — they shipped in likely adolescent males from other families (apprentice husbands) to evaluate (to keep or reject) and cheaply work the family farm (just as they did with Mannie originally when his senior Greg taught him how to ice mine) and kept their females, or at least the senior wife’s favorite ones, to themselves as long as possible, taking them into partnerships with their own other females (Ludmilla at Sidris’ beauty shop) in their outside businesses. They required alien females brought home by their straying males (Mannie) to pass tests before they became affiliated with the line marriage. Mimi called all those shots, just as much, but with more apparent warmness and skills than Anne in _Friday_. Yet I wouldn’t imagine Mimi was any weaker than Anne, simply more adroit in personnel management of her major ‘bidniz’ that family.
Marjorie Baldwin had to buy her way with gelt into the line marriage in _Friday_; and I’d argue Wyoh just as dearly bought her marriage in _Moon_ by agreeing to have the reverse operation that might result in yet another monster birth that would have to be destroyed.
—
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29, Lt.(jg), USN, R’td, 1907-88
From: Major oz
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Sunday, September 07, 2003 6:07 PM
re: Wyoh as a leader and “important” fem character.
Wyoming was the first state to give women the vote, and the first state to elect a woman governor (the TX lady succeeded her hubby — no election).
…….wonder if RAH made the connection when he chose Whoh’s name……..?
cheers
oz
From: LV Poker Player
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Sunday, September 07, 2003 7:20 PM
>From: “Simon Jester UK”
>> In family matters–it is OK for women not to marry. We kind of get the
>> idea how she can support herself without being tied down to a family.
>> But in Mannie’s family, it seems important that marriages of both women
>> and men happen early. Men work the farm. Women have the babies.
>…
>
>I got the impression that Mimi ran the farm, while the men did the donkey
>work.
Women did the donkey work at times, unless it distracted the men who were also doing it (see Wyoh and her brief tenure doing the donkey work).
—
Ferengi rule of acquisition #192: Never cheat a Klingon…unless you’re sure
you can get away with it.
From: David M. Silver
Subject: Re: Suggested Reading Order?
Date: Monday, September 08, 2003 2:11 PM
In article, Velvet Elviswrote:
> On Sat, 06 Sep 2003 22:09:21 -0500, Sean wrote:
>
>
> > “Velvet Elvis” wrote in message
> > news:25t6b.3400$…
>
>
>
> > Based on your enjoyment of AP’s _Rite of Passage_ I would recommend just
> > about any of the Juveniles. Heinlein had these novels published between
> > 1947 and 1958, and they are adored and reread by many who post here.
> > There are 12 in total (not counting _Starship Troopers_ and _Podkayne of
> > Mars_ which are sometimes bracketed as pseudo Juvies). You have already
> > read one of the Juvies, _Have Space – Will Travel_. My particular
> > favourites from the rest would include: _Citizen of the Galaxy_, _Tunnel
> > in the Sky_, _The Star Beast_, _Starman Jones_, and _Space Cadet_,
> > though opinions will vary and all are worthy of your time. HTH.
>
> Thanks.
>
> I read A Red Planet last night, and the juviniles seem to be just the
> kind of light reading I was looking for.
I’m glad you enjoyed it, VE. It was always my favorite juvenile from the time I began reading them years ago. I think RAH first hit his stride in Red Planet. It’s the one I usually recommend to parents who ask which one their children should begin with. Oddly, it was one he had the biggest problems with Scribner’s editor; and the version you probably read last night is likely to be the restored text first published after his death when Virgina Heinlein found she could do so, free of the meddling of a very unusual editor, who objected — so help me God — to the depiction of the reproductive habits of Martians and the knowledge and use, on a frontier world, of firearms by young Miss Marlowe, for protection of herself and baby brother.
> I’ve been toying with the idea
> of trying to cash in on the current demand for young adult fantasy
> created by the Harry Potter craze. Heinlein’s young adult fiction looks
> to be an excellent source of instruction and inspiration. Are all his
> juviniles as boy-centric as the few I’ve read, or does he have any which
> appeal to the psyche of young women as well? Are there any novels other
> than Friday which feature a female protagonist?
>
> thanks again,
>
> VE
There was a minor problem Heinlein encountered when he offered to Scribner’s editor, Alice Dalgliesh, to write a good girls’ story, as she had been grumbling to him that no one seemed able to do that: she was simultaneously astonished, offended and amused at the “ridiculous and arrogant notion that a mere man could write stories for girls.” See, _Expanded Universe_, at pg. 354.
So, stymied, Heinlein sent his stories about “Puddin'” (Maureen) to other editors [see, Gifford’s RAH:ARC for a listing of the three that were published]. You can trace, I think, his development of the Maureen character through the ‘Puddin’ stories and on through Holly in “The Menace from Earth,” F&SF, August 1957, republished in the collection _The Menace from Earth_ (Baen), into the offshoot, _Podkayne of Mars_ (Putnam, 1963) [I’m one of those who definitely doesn’t think Poddy was a juvenile, although it was marketed by the publisher as if it were one]; and finally to fully-realized Maureen Johnson in _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_ (1988).
It’s interesting to speculate what Heinlein could have done with juveniles written for girls had he been allowed to try. He wrote in EU in 1980 that he had blocked out sufficient stories in his mind to do a full book of “Puddin'” tales, even the title of the book: _Men Are Experating_; and regretted at the time that “at my age, there are more stories that I want to write (and are certain of publication) than I can possibly write before the black camel kneels at my door.” EU, at 355.
He hoped we’d like “Puddin’.” I do. Track them down, and try them, along with Holly; and let me know what you think.
—
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29, Lt.(jg), USN, R’td, 1907-88
From: David M. Silver
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Monday, September 08, 2003 2:50 PM
> re: Wyoh as a leader and “important” fem character.
>
> Wyoming was the first state to give women the vote, and the first state to
> elect a woman governor (the TX lady succeeded her hubby — no election).
>
> …….wonder if RAH made the connection when he chose Whoh’s name……..?
>
> cheers
>
> oz
I certainly wouldn’t bet against, having found what we’ve found about RAH and the names of his characters, particularly in Stranger, but elsewhere too — seems to me that he’s deliberately picked names for his characters with resonances from the very beginning. You may have noted from Simon & Schuster’s advertisement that his first protagonist is named Perry Nelson in FUTL. Be interesting to work out that resonance. There were two American naval heroes named Perry and Nelson might resonate a bit with our cousins across the pond. But there could be other Perrys and Nelsons as well here.
—
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29, Lt.(jg), USN, R’td, 1907-88
From: “Dr. Rufo”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 11:47 PM
David M. Silver wrote:
> In article ,
> (Major oz) wrote:
>
>
>>re: Wyoh as a leader and “important” fem character.
>>
>>Wyoming was the first state to give women the vote, and the first state to
>>elect a woman governor (the TX lady succeeded her hubby — no election).
>>
>>…….wonder if RAH made the connection when he chose Whoh’s name……..?
>>
>>cheers
>>
>>oz
>
>
> I certainly wouldn’t bet against, having found what we’ve found about
> RAH and the names of his characters, particularly in Stranger, but
> elsewhere too — seems to me that he’s deliberately picked names for his
> characters with resonances from the very beginning. You may have noted
> from Simon & Schuster’s advertisement that his first protagonist is
> named Perry Nelson in FUTL. Be interesting to work out that resonance.
> There were two American naval heroes named Perry and Nelson might
> resonate a bit with our cousins across the pond. But there could be
> other Perrys and Nelsons as well here.
>
So, David, it’s not a tremendous extrapolation that “Perry Nelson” is probably a member of the (US ??) Navy. Or, at the least, has some solid “tie-in” with the Navy/Naval Traditions (perhaps from a long-time “Navy” family)?? Other examples of effective nomination: “Thomas Paine Leonardo da Vinci Bartlett” and “Patrick Henry Michelangelo Bartlett”. But, then, to undermine my own effort: There’s “Faith, Hope, and Charity Bartlett” and the intriguingly-named “Mr & Mrs Bartlett.” Another observation: The more “important” the character is to the story the more “meaning” there is attached to that character’s name?
What do you think?
Rufe
From: “David M. Silver”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 12:31 AM
In article, “Dr. Rufo”wrote:
> David M. Silver wrote:
> > In article ,
> > (Major oz) wrote:
> >
> >
> >>re: Wyoh as a leader and “important” fem character.
> >>
> >>Wyoming was the first state to give women the vote, and the first state to
> >>elect a woman governor (the TX lady succeeded her hubby — no election).
> >>
> >>…….wonder if RAH made the connection when he chose Whoh’s name……..?
> >>
> >>cheers
> >>
> >>oz
> >
> >
> > I certainly wouldn’t bet against, having found what we’ve found about
> > RAH and the names of his characters, particularly in Stranger, but
> > elsewhere too — seems to me that he’s deliberately picked names for his
> > characters with resonances from the very beginning. You may have noted
> > from Simon & Schuster’s advertisement that his first protagonist is
> > named Perry Nelson in FUTL. Be interesting to work out that resonance.
> > There were two American naval heroes named Perry and Nelson might
> > resonate a bit with our cousins across the pond. But there could be
> > other Perrys and Nelsons as well here.
> >
> So, David, it’s not a tremendous extrapolation that “Perry Nelson” is
> probably a member of the (US ??) Navy.
That’s the easy part, Rufo. Oliver Hazard Perry was the hero of the battles on the lakes in upstate New York during the War of 1812; but Matthew Perry (not the actor in “90210,” or “Friends,” fer goshsakes) was the commodore of the fleet that opened up an unknown world — Japan, in 1854.
Trying hard not to tip anything in particular that hasn’t already been disclosed: Perry Nelson, the character in FUTL, as the advertising blurb notes although they use the wrong term, is a naval aviator, sometimes spelled “nasal radiator,” by those who fly but don’t have tailhooks growing out of their, er, tails.
He’s the one who finds himself in the “unknown world” of the future after an accident.
In 1938-9, the distinction of opening up “unknown” Japan to the rest of the world has a somewhat uncertain air, of course. Heinlein, I think you’ll find from the 1974 Buell letter when it gets published said he had a pretty fair idea of what was coming, what had to be coming; and probably most of the Navy did as well, except maybe Admiral Kimmel on December 6 when he kept most of his fleet in port in Pearl to save on his annual fuel budget, or something.
[snip]
> Another observation: The more “important” the character is to the story
> the more “meaning” there is attached to that character’s name?
>
That’s pretty generally true: when Heinlein deliberately used historical names, there was significance that tied to the story. Red Planet’s James Madison Marlowe, Jr. wouldn’t have been named after that revolutionary (the second generation so named) if there hadn’t been some sentiment for independence in his family. Daniel Boone Davis, self-reliant and willing to strike out on his own, in The Door Into Summer, is another example. Woodrow Wilson Smith is named after the symbol of progressivism, fiscal and otherwise, for his times by his family.
And we’ve all been through the names in Stranger in a Strange Land, which take up a full chapter in Andy Thornton and Bill Patterson’s A Martian Named Smith, etc. David Lamb: give me a break please!
Perhaps Horatio Nelson’s heroism has some application to this character (Trafalgar and the Battle of the Nile, and all that): maybe, it sheds light on the reason urged in the publisher’s blurb explaining why FUTL wasn’t published in 1938-9, and perhaps we ought to look also at Nelson’s affair with Lady Hamilton as well for a tip what the author may have been thinking, and why he stuck his character with yet another famous sailor’s name.
I always wondered why Maureen’s first cousin (the one who slipped the pie under her) had that first name, but never thought very hard about it. Maybe there’s no reason in particular? Or maybe there is.
> What do you think?
> Rufe
Dunno, yet, Rufe. Waiting for the books to be in the stores Thanksgiving so we can all talk about it, and just dodging around lightly and speculating based on what has been published thus far about it.
—
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29, Lt.(jg), USN, R’td, 1907-88
From: “Dr. Rufo”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 1:39 AM
David M. Silver wrote:
>>>You may have noted
>>>from Simon & Schuster’s advertisement that his first protagonist is
>>>named Perry Nelson in FUTL. Be interesting to work out that resonance.
>>>There were two American naval heroes named Perry and Nelson might
>>>resonate a bit with our cousins across the pond. But there could be
>>>other Perrys and Nelsons as well here.
>>>
>>
>> So, David, it’s not a tremendous extrapolation that “Perry Nelson” is
>>probably a member of the (US ??) Navy.
To quote Tennessee Williams: “Deception! Deception! Deception!”
Counselor, did your fingers “slip” on the keys or are you being
“deceptive” in attributing the publication of FUTL to “Simon &
Schuster?” Or are you just trying to take the mickey outta me?
> Perhaps Horatio Nelson’s heroism has some application to this character
> (Trafalgar and the Battle of the Nile, and all that): maybe, it sheds
> light on the reason urged in the publisher’s blurb explaining why FUTL
> wasn’t published in 1938-9, and perhaps we ought to look also at
> Nelson’s affair with Lady Hamilton as well for a tip what the author may
> have been thinking, and why he stuck his character with yet another
> famous sailor’s name.
>
OKAY! I confess! I broke down and googled for FUTL (I limited myself to
Bill Dennis, Deb Rule and a “fellow-traveler’s” site.) No more quizzing
you, David. Naughty naval aviators and their “lady friends” — indeed!
Vagaries in sexual mores — indeed! Illegal to send the novel through
the (1939) U.S. post — indeed! I’m stoked !! (as those old-timers said
in the 1960s.)
> I always wondered why Maureen’s first cousin (the one who slipped the
> pie under her) had that first name, but never thought very hard about
> it. Maybe there’s no reason in particular? Or maybe there is.
Nelson, Mo’s cousin who slipped the pie under her in church, was, I
recollect, 14 years old when he and Mo began their on-and-on pairings.
When did Horatio, Lord Nelson first go to Sea? 14 sounds about right —
lemme google a bit . . . Oh, pooh! Robert Southey says in his “The Life
of Horatio Lord Nelson” that little Horatio was just 13!
Ah, me. . . no more speculation until the reading of the Tale is completed — just past Thanksgiving, no? I shall offer up the tensions “for the sins of my past life” as they say.
Pax,
Rufe
From: “David M. Silver”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 5:54 AM
In article, “Dr. Rufo”wrote:
> To quote Tennessee Williams: “Deception! Deception! Deception!”
> Counselor, did your fingers “slip” on the keys or are you being
> “deceptive” in attributing the publication of FUTL to “Simon &
> Schuster?” Or are you just trying to take the mickey outta me?
Simon & Schuster bought it. They’re bringing it out under the Scribner’s
imprint which they now own or control, perhaps for auld lang syne’s
sake, e.g. the juveniles. I don’t recall an old Charlie with prehensible
toes in this one, anyway.
—
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29, Lt.(jg), USN, R’td, 1907-88
From: “David M. Silver”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 6:01 AM
In article, “Dr. Rufo”wrote:
> Nelson, Mo’s cousin who slipped the pie under her in church, was, I
> recollect, 14 years old when he and Mo began their on-and-on pairings.
> When did Horatio, Lord Nelson first go to Sea? 14 sounds about right —
> lemme google a bit . . . Oh, pooh! Robert Southey says in his “The Life
> of Horatio Lord Nelson” that little Horatio was just 13!
Well, Nelson, Mo’s cousin wound up being a Marine officer. Everyone
knows that Marine officers are a leetle slower than their other comrades
in the Naval Service, ain’t that so, Jim and Steve. At least that’s what
I’ve been told, confidentially, by certain folk, the joke about the
Marine Lieutenant and the sweet Miss in Paris in 1917 to the contrary.
“Thank you, Ma’amselle, but Marine officers are not allowed to accept gratuities.”
—
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29, Lt.(jg), USN, R’td, 1907-88
From: “Dr. Rufo”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 1:32 PM
David M. Silver wrote:
> In article ,
> “Dr. Rufo” wrote:
>
>
>>To quote Tennessee Williams: “Deception! Deception! Deception!”
>>Counselor, did your fingers “slip” on the keys or are you being
>>”deceptive” in attributing the publication of FUTL to “Simon &
>>Schuster?” Or are you just trying to take the mickey outta me?
>
>
> Simon & Schuster bought it. They’re bringing it out under the Scribner’s
> imprint which they now own or control, perhaps for auld lang syne’s
> sake, e.g. the juveniles. I don’t recall an old Charlie with prehensible
> toes in this one, anyway.
>
Thanks for the explication in re Simon & Schuster v. Scribners’. I am
not “au courant” with who owns who in publishing.
Pax,
Rufe
From: “Ogden Johnson III”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 7:08 PM
“Dr. Rufo”wrote:
>David M. Silver wrote:
>> “Dr. Rufo”wrote:
>>>To quote Tennessee Williams: “Deception! Deception! Deception!”
>>>Counselor, did your fingers “slip” on the keys or are you being
>>>”deceptive” in attributing the publication of FUTL to “Simon &
>>>Schuster?” Or are you just trying to take the mickey outta me?
>> Simon & Schuster bought it. They’re bringing it out under the Scribner’s
>> imprint which they now own or control, perhaps for auld lang syne’s
>> sake, e.g. the juveniles. I don’t recall an old Charlie with prehensible
>> toes in this one, anyway.
>Thanks for the explication in re Simon & Schuster v. Scribners’. I am
>not “au courant” with who owns who in publishing.
In today’s merger-mad world, nobody other than those in the actual
industry and businesses involved [and sometimes not all of *them*],
knows who’s who, who’s thinking of buying whom, who’s going to buy
whom, who has bought whom, who’s fighting being bought by whom, who’s
seeking to be bought by whom, who’s seeking to be bought by anyone,
…, …, …, ad infinitum.
OJ III
From: William Hughes
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 11:15 PM
On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 19:08:08 -0400, in alt.fan.heinlein Ogden Johnson IIIwrote:
> In today’s merger-mad world, nobody other than those in the actual
> industry and businesses involved [and sometimes not all of *them*],
> knows who’s who, who’s thinking of buying whom, who’s going to buy
> whom, who has bought whom, who’s fighting being bought by whom, who’s
> seeking to be bought by whom, who’s seeking to be bought by anyone,
> …, …, …, ad infinitum.
They’ve all been bought by the Publishing Conglomerate, just as all the airlines
are actually owned by the Transportation Conglomerate and all the radio and TV
stations are owned by the Communications Conglomerate.
Gotta run; Rollerball starts in thirty minutes – don’t want to be late.
RB
From: William Hughes
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” –Se…
Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 11:15 PM
On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 19:08:08 -0400, in alt.fan.heinlein Ogden Johnson IIIwrote:
> In today’s merger-mad world, nobody other than those in the actual
> industry and businesses involved [and sometimes not all of *them*],
> knows who’s who, who’s thinking of buying whom, who’s going to buy
> whom, who has bought whom, who’s fighting being bought by whom, who’s
> seeking to be bought by whom, who’s seeking to be bought by anyone,
> …, …, …, ad infinitum.
They’ve all been bought by the Publishing Conglomerate, just as all the airlines
are actually owned by the Transportation Conglomerate and all the radio and TV
stations are owned by the Communications Conglomerate.
Gotta run; Rollerball starts in thirty minutes – don’t want to be late.
RB
From: Oscagne
Subject: Reminder: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Heinlein’s Heroines” — Sept. 18, 20
Date: Saturday, September 13, 2003 1:39 AM
The next RAH-AIM Readers Group chat will be “Heinlein’s Heroines”, scheduled for Sept. 18 and 20, 8pm and 5pm U.S. Central Time (respectively). Anyone wishing to join us for the first time can find out how by visiting https://www.heinleinsociety.org/Archives/ReadersGrp/index.html#Info . Eric Flint (Author of _1632_ and _Mother of Demons_) will be joining us as a participant. Please everyone, go out and buy all his books. Or at least one. Or visit http://www.baen.com/library/ and download the free ones and find out how to download the non-free ones.
—
Oscagne, High Priest of Skeptics and Cynics
wanna read a story? http://users.ev1.net/~mcgrew/mss
or see my goofy website? http://users.ev1.net/~mcgrew/webpage/home.htm
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You have just entered room “Heinlein Readers Group Chat.”
OscagneTX: howdy
DavidWrightSr: Howdy back to you.
DavidWrightSr: I’ll be afk for a few minutes. my wife has to read her e-mail.
OscagneTX: okie dokey
aggirlj has entered the room.
OscagneTX: howdy
aggirlj: hi
aggirlj: Just lurking right now. Waiting to begin.
OscagneTX: me too
aggirlj: Reading TMIAHM, fun.
OscagneTX: I like it.
aggirlj: Finally know about Simon Jester now.
OscagneTX: yay.
aggirlj: Interesting that RAH maintains the pidgin for Manuel so well. He hasn’t relaxed on it at all, and won’t I presume.
aggirlj: Stilted way of speaking.
OscagneTX: No, he’s very consistent with it. The same with all the “stilyagi” character types.
aggirlj: Love the premise of women being in charge somewhat.
OscagneTX: Yeah, but it makes it very hard on unattractive men.
OscagneTX: %^)
OscagneTX has left the room.
OscagneTX has entered the room.
OscagneTX: sorry.
OscagneTX: I updated IE, and I forgot windows would want to restart.
aggirlj: You’re not experiencing problems with Ms. Isabel are you?
OscagneTX: In Texas? I got a little rained on. *shrug* %^)
aggirlj: South Carolina seems to have lucked out.
OscagneTX: But last I heard there were something like 2,000,000 people out of power on the east coast.
OscagneTX: how many regulars do you suppose have no electricity tonight?
aggirlj: Not sure. Teresa is possibly experiencing some of it.
aggirlj: But she’s more inland I think.
aggirlj: Stephanie lives where, and didn’t she just have her baby?
OscagneTX: yeah, just today.
Eflint46312 has entered the room.
OscagneTX: I don’t know exactly where she lives.
Eflint46312: Hi, I’m here.
aggirlj: She may not make it, du oh?
OscagneTX: Howdy, Eric.
aggirlj: Hi Eric, me Jane.
Eflint46312: Hi. Now I’ve got to get a cup of coffee. Back in a minute.
OscagneTX: Eric is our guest author. He’s published by Baen.
aggirlj: Cool.
aggirlj: brb
Eflint46312: Okay, I’m back. Slurping away even as I type.
OscagneTX: wb.
aggirlj: b
OscagneTX: I’m worried about connections and power, what with the east coast getting levelled tonight (according to cable networks %^)
pjscott100 has entered the room.
OscagneTX: howdy.
pjscott100: jane, david
pjscott100: howdy
aggirlj: Hi Peter
OscagneTX: okay, just to get this out of the way…I freakin’ loved 1632 and Mother of Demons.
Eflint46312: Well, good. 🙂
aggirlj: I think David’s lurking, just recording in other words.
Pixelmeow has entered the room.
aggirlj: Hi Teresa!
OscagneTX: How receptive do you think Baen (the company or the guy) would be to pimping us to the other authors?
Pixelmeow: hey!
OscagneTX: Howdy, Pix. We didn’t know if the hurricane would get you.
Pixelmeow: we have no electricity here
Pixelmeow: it did
Eflint46312: I dunno. Best way to find out with Jim Baen is just to ask him.
Copycat669 has entered the room.
OscagneTX: okay.
Pixelmeow: what’s this about pimping?
jcgsmtop1 has entered the room.
NYC20CnLtd has entered the room.
aggirlj: Hi Tam
Eflint46312: Alternately, ask the authors you want.
jcgsmtop1: Hi, everyone. I’m Joanne
Eflint46312: Hi, Joanne
OscagneTX: I was asking Eric if Jim Baen would help us get more authors for the chats. Come to think of it, we ought to try to shanghai him, himself.
aggirlj:
Eflint46312: That’s a very good idea.
pjscott100: hey teresa, joanne
OscagneTX: howdy, everyone.
NYC20CnLtd: Hi. I’m John Haywood.
jcgsmtop1: Hi, Jane!!
Copycat669: hi guys….I’m so glad that you explained about pimping…I was a bit worried there.
Pixelmeow: hi, all
LadyS122 has entered the room.
pjscott100: (I’m Peter)
LadyS122: hi
Pixelmeow: Ah!
Copycat669: I don’t usually CHARGE for my services…so I’d be in trouble.
jcgsmtop1: Pimping?
Pixelmeow: lots of names here I don’t know
pjscott100: Teresa – Isabel to blame?
OscagneTX: I guess that was poor choice of words.
OscagneTX: Pix, how are you on with no electricity? Working a bicycle generator or something?
Eflint46312: Call it “soliciting.” It can mean exactly the same thing, but since it’s got two more syllables you’ll probably get away with it.
Copycat669: I’m Tam. And despite my poor taste in jokes, I’m actually NOT a prostitute. Although I will do pretty much anything else for a Heinlein book I don’talready have.
TheCOinOz has entered the room.
Pixelmeow: I’m on my laptop
OscagneTX: Hrm. I have almost all the books… what’s your gender? *joking*
TheCOinOz: Hi all
Pixelmeow: batteries.
jcgsmtop1: One of my most prized possessions is a hardcover first edition of Time Enough for Love
Pixelmeow: hey!!!
pjscott100: I’d sell my body for a new Heinlein but doubt I could cover more than a 2nd hand paperback
jcgsmtop1: Have you all pre-ordered the “new” Heinlein on Amazon?
TheCOinOz: Nice to catch up with you all, it’s 10:30am Friday morning here.
aggirlj: I have.
pjscott100: Me too
TheCOinOz: “new”??
TheCOinOz: What book is this?
OscagneTX: Howdy, Ozzie.
jcgsmtop1: See the Press Release on the The Heinlein Society webpage
TheCOinOz: Gday mate.
Copycat669: I’m borrowing a book right now. TAke back your gov’t. It’s not easy reading, however
aggirlj: The new one For Us The Living.
Pixelmeow: I can hardly wait to get that….
TheCOinOz: Hmm, ok, I’ll have to have a word to Dymocks (big book shop in Adelaide) to get it in for me.
OscagneTX: Are you the one I sent that to? I lent TBYG to someone and can’t remember who.
Copycat669: yes, sir…it’s me!! and i’m still faithfully reading it.
OscagneTX: Ah… okay. I suppose I could have looked that up in my old email, but I’m too lazy.
Pixelmeow: That must’ve been before I had the book exchange…
pjscott100: I have that one… ah, the Perot years *reminisces*
Copycat669: For us the living seems a bit sacreligious to me.
jcgsmtop1: why?
Copycat669: isn’t it a compilation that was done as soon as Ginny left us? Is there perhaps a REASON she didn’t want to release it?
OscagneTX: Pix… I haven’t used your exchange much because I only have one copy of each book, so I loan them and want them back eventually.
pjscott100: you have the wrong end of the stick there
Copycat669: (keep in mind that I know NOTHING about it…)
aggirlj: Not compilation, old manuscript.
pjscott100: FIRST novel
OscagneTX: The first one, yeah.
Copycat669: says who?
Pixelmeow: Osc, I am not in any way suggesting that you don’t do enough!!!
Pixelmeow: 😀
OscagneTX: Too racy to be published in … what was it… 1947 or something?
pjscott100: Says various noted Heinlein scholars
Copycat669: Why didn’t Ginny publish it?
pjscott100: Robert Doc James tracked it down
aggirlj: Too racey.
aggirlj: At time.
pjscott100: ‘cos she didn’t have it
aggirlj: Lost.
Copycat669: who has it?
pjscott100: T’was lost
OscagneTX: I think RAH classed it with his stinkeroos.
Pixelmeow: If you *want* a book, send me a request.
Eflint46312: In 1947, in SF, “too racr” covered just about everything — except book and magazine covers.
Copycat669: Pixel? how do i email you?
Pixelmeow: request@ and donate@ and teresa@
Pixelmeow: 😉
pjscott100: Hmm… high estrogen content in the chat room… must be due to the topic 🙂 🙂
Pixelmeow: all depends on what you’d like.
TheCOinOz: woohoo, your own domain eh?
Pixelmeow: Yeah, buddy!
aggirlj: Yahhhhh.
OscagneTX: hehe… Eric, if you run out of slush over in Baen’s bar you can always check out Pix’s website. It’s got mine and a few other’s fiction. %^)
Pixelmeow: to both of you!
Eflint46312: Mutter. Just what I need, more slush. 🙂
Pixelmeow: and nothing from the last month, durnit
Pixelmeow: but who am I to talk, I’ve not had time to read it
Pixelmeow: but what I have read has been wonderful.
Eflint46312: Seriously, though, I can’t. I’m running behind as it is, keeping up with the slush in 1632 Slush
Copycat669: Oh Pix…i’ve been on your website all this time…just didn’t make the connection.
Pixelmeow: yours, Filly’s, etc
Pixelmeow: ROFL!!!
Pixelmeow: Really?
Copycat669: I’ve actually sent 2 books to others and received maybe 4? or 3?
Pixelmeow: How recently?
Pixelmeow: I’ve only had the Exchange for the last 7 months or so.
OscagneTX: I can’t imagine how you have time to write and keep up with Mutter and 1632 forums, Eric. Spider Robinson just posted his first post to alt.callahans because he’s afraid of getting sucked in.
Eflint46312: It’s a stretch, but I take the time to do it.
Eflint46312: It helps that I have a thick skin and I’m quite willing to say “no” when I have to.
jcgsmtop1: How does one access the alt.___ things? I’d be interseted in callahans…
OscagneTX: I mean… RAH didn’t have time to read, much less answer, his mail for all the writing.
Copycat669: Um…ohbekaybe…pix, i guess I thought you were referring to your link to Asa Hunter Memorial
Pixelmeow: you can use www.google.com, then go to “groups”
jcgsmtop1: Thanks.
Eflint46312: I’m sure he got a lot more mail than I do. I don’t answer all my emails either. But posting on a web site has the advantage that you can pick and choose.
aggirlj: Or if you have MT Newswatcher, which is instantaneous, you can look it up in their list of groups.
OscagneTX: jcg… you need a newsreader. Outlook Express is best for
starters, or i you object to MS there are specific things like Forte or Galaxy(or something like that).
Pixelmeow: once you figure out if you like what you see, you can go up to a newsreader
Pixelmeow: and get an nntp server
jcgsmtop1: I have Outlook …
jcgsmtop1: Sounds complicated … grin. I’ll give it a shot
Pixelmeow: gotta be OE.
NYC20CnLtd: AOL has (or had) a Usenet Newsgroup reader. Don’t know the latest version.
Pixelmeow: It’s worth it!
LadyS122: ew.. Mozilla… not OE…
jcgsmtop1: Anything to do with RAH or Spider is DEFINITELY worth it
LadyS122: jcg: Do you ever get on IRC?
jcgsmtop1: I know what IRC stands for, but I’ve never used it.
Copycat669: It’s funny but I don’t see the correlation. I can’t stay awake for Spider Robinson
Pixelmeow: copycat, my website is http://pixelmeow.com
Copycat669: Internet relay chat is irc
jcgsmtop1: Right
NYC20CnLtd: (I use Outlook Express also. It’s OK–but it has the virtue of being free–or at least hidden in the cost of the computer.)
Pixelmeow: and you can browse to the book exchange from there.
aggirlj: What is irc, I don’t know.
Copycat669: every chat is based on irc. Even this
OscagneTX: Internet Relay Chat.
aggirlj: Internet relay chat, nevermind.
jcgsmtop1: I use ICQ, and I think it links to IRC somehow
Copycat669: it’s like the code that makes this possible.
LadyS122: jcg: There’s a chat room for Spider fans, called #callahans it’s has its moments.
Eflint46312: Tastes differ. That’s the first thing a professional writer has to learn if he doesn’t want to go nuts. Two different readers will give you diametrically opposite opinions of anything you write.
aggirlj: And a ton of posters.
Pixelmeow: be right back folks, powers back on
LadyS122: yay for power
OscagneTX: Well… I know I was remiss in keeping up the pre-chat posting in the newsgroup (sorry, I’m VERY busy now), but does anyone have any opinion about the evolution of Heinlein’s Heroines?
NYC20CnLtd: That’s good. (about the power)
—————–
Editors Note: Log was lost for about 2 minutes
—————–
DavidWrightSr: Sorry. connection dropped on me. Os are you keeping copy of log?
OscagneTX: WB, David the Elder. ( you are elder, right?)
OscagneTX: I will, yes.
DavidWrightSr: Yeah, I’m the old guy
jcgsmtop1: All strong, independent women … who chose when to let her man think she depended on him
OscagneTX: I lost a bit in the beginning to a “uncommanded restart”.
aggirlj: No loss, just a little chit chat.
LadyS122: also usually quite pragmatic, in a not always logical way.
DavidWrightSr: I’ve got everything except where I dropped out.
Copycat669: I think that RAH’s women could teach today’s women a thing or two aboutwhat REAL independence is, though. Many of them wouldn’t have survived withoutthe men in their lives, but knew how to remain independent.
pjscott100: They appeared remarkably consistent to me
OscagneTX: And since it looks like we’re all here… has everyone “met” Eric Flint? He’s our guest author and caught my attention (other than for his books) with his comments about…
OscagneTX: Heinlein on his Baen Free Library website.
jcgsmtop1: The URL to which is?
jcgsmtop1: (Hi, Eric!)
Copycat669: I haven’t. Which one is eric?
Eflint46312: Hi, everybody
aggirlj: Howdy.
Copycat669: Wll, guess that was a stupic question. hiya eric. 🙂
pjscott100: Hi Eric
OscagneTX: http://www.baen.com/library/
jcgsmtop1: Thanks
Pixelmeow: hi!
OscagneTX: np
aggirlj: wb
Pixelmeow: Love the site, I’ve been there many times.
Pixelmeow: and now that I have a cord connecting the machine to the wall, we’ll be just fine!
Eflint46312: We just it some new titles by the way, although there seems to be a glitch with one of them.
Pixelmeow: I need to go more often.
OscagneTX: The really neat thing is… he predicted my reaction as if he were in my head. I got _1632_ off the free library, and then went and bought it and about 4 other of his books.
Eflint46312: Hmph. That should have been: “We just put in some new titles…
pjscott100: got to leave for another meeting… bye
OscagneTX: bye
Pixelmeow: later!
aggirlj: See you Peter
pjscott100 has left the room.
Copycat669: Eric, i just browsed your letter a bit. NOTHING will ever replacethe wonderful feel of a paper and leather book. Or even just a paper book. But thanks for sharing online..
Eflint46312: It hardly took any great prescience on my part. That’s exactly how I became a lifelong fan of RAH and a number of other writers — except in my case the library involved was my high school library.
jcgsmtop1: Eric, I love your comments on how the Baen Free Library was
started!
OscagneTX: True, but not exactly the industry standard attitude either, what with RIAA suing 12 y.o. girls and all.
Eflint46312: Well… eventually they’ll develop electronic paper/ink to the point that an e-book reader will seem just like a “real” book, with flippable pages and everything.
Eflint46312: But that’s a ways off. The technology is almost there, but right now a reader like that would cost a small fortune.
Pixelmeow: indeed
OscagneTX: I’ve been using my palm pilot.
Pixelmeow: that’s what I use
jcgsmtop1: And I’ll definitely peruse the titles … and, if I like, I’ll buy the book. (My name’s Joanne, and I’m a bookaholic …) I have my life in storage while I’m waiting for my condo … and I have at least 40 boxes of books alone!
Eflint46312: Once that happens, the rules of the game will really start changing in a significant way.
Copycat669: Just for the record? METALLICA sued me. And I didn’t download theirstuff. it was automatically downloaded from a website I visitied as partof a cookie.
OscagneTX: It’s pretty convenient.
aggirlj: Joanne G?
Pixelmeow: oh my goodness.
jcgsmtop1: Yep, Hi, Jane!!
aggirlj: Hi!!!
jcgsmtop1: (*waving happily to Jane*)
aggirlj: Back atcha.
Pixelmeow: yeah, lots of stuff comes down to our machines second and third hand from websites.
jcgsmtop1: Remember in the story of Llita and Joe in Time Enough for Love?
OscagneTX: yup.
OscagneTX: In particular?
jcgsmtop1: They could read all they wanted on the computer-equivalent…
jcgsmtop1: But reading an actual book was a reward – and they had to wear surgical gloves
aggirlj: Whoa.
jcgsmtop1: Nothing will ever replace a hardcover book
Pixelmeow: I remember that.;
aggirlj: My sentiments exactly,
OscagneTX: yeah. But don’t forget Laz plead guilty to tossing “casual reading material” down the ouiblette in NOTB
Eflint46312: The real question is whether fancy new electronic reading gadgets will ever _replace_ paper books, at least any time in the foreseeable future.
Pixelmeow: different sort of reading material?
OscagneTX: No way. At least not as a way to archive.
aggirlj: Oh, it will. But there will always be the purists.
NYC20CnLtd: I worry about the proposals among the music industry to covertly search peoples’ hard drives, and erase data if they find copyrighted material. There’s a word for that: hacking.
OscagneTX: Say you store all your references electronically. Then Isabel visits and you suddenly need to read about how to stop arterial bleeding… but no electricity.
Eflint46312: Supplement them, yes. That’s already happening. But the fact is that “obsolete” paper books are still an extremely efficient and reliable way of storing information. And they have a lot of advantages.
Copycat669: Ok, this isn’t exactly on topic…well maybe it is…didn’t JErry Pournellewrite all the footnotes and stuff in Take Back Your Government?
Pixelmeow: NYC, you have my sentiment, right there.
Eflint46312: Just for starters, nobody is going to change the program next year. You can still read paper books printed hundreds of years ago. Try doing that with any computer program after maybe ten years.
OscagneTX: We could make some on-topic inferrences, though. We know that RAH was VERY protective of his copywrites.
jilyd has entered the room.
aggirlj: Hi Dee.
OscagneTX: howdy.
Pixelmeow: hey girl!
Pixelmeow: wow, got crowded…
jilyd: Real problems gettingin here tonight, despite 2 invitations.
DavidWrightSr: Off Topic: Warning Will Robinson. I’ve had 20 copies of virus infected e-mail in the last 4 hours
Eflint46312: Yes, he was. Extremely so. That’s why — to this day, so far as I know — no Heinlein title published by Baen has ever appeared in Webscriptions. Virginia wouldn’t agree to it.
aggirlj: Is Isabel near you.
Pixelmeow: well, Dee, time to get to slinging drinks…
Pixelmeow: Oh NO!
NYC20CnLtd: I don’t think we’ve found the happy medium. I remember Mrs. Heinlein aggressively going after any website that had any Heinlein material on it–I did some searching and downloading for those efforts…
LadyS122: hi Dee
jilyd: I see some names htat are new to me. Howedy all, and especially
Eflint, NYC and jcg.
Eflint46312: Yeah. On that subject, she and I were poles apart — and I suspect she reflected RAH’s viewpoint pretty closely.
jilyd: Happy news, eh, Lady S.
jcgsmtop1: Actually, I found out about The Heinlein Society because I was looking up quotes from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long online …
OscagneTX: I saw on the NG someone announced a newly digitized Heinlein novel… I guess I figured it was a Baen thing, but I didn’t pay much attention.
Pixelmeow: I got another of those bogus M$ upgrades
jilyd: Djinn in Beijing was pleased to hear, too.
DavidWrightSr: That’s them Pix.
LadyS122: Happy News?
jcgsmtop1: and I ran into a message from Ginny talking about how it wasn’t appropriate to publish any of RAH’s stuff on the web.
NYC20CnLtd: And while I was doing that, I kept remembered that some of the stuff we have by Shakespeare would not exist today if modern copyright laws existed back then.
Pixelmeow: I saw that, too, it was from Bryan, and I checked on it
Pixelmeow: bookmarked it
aggirlj: Steph had her baby.
Pixelmeow: yep
Eflint46312: There might be one, but if so it’s probably encrypted. That was the aspect of Webscriptions that I think most disturbed Virginia Heinlein.
NYC20CnLtd: BTW–if you missed my introduction, I’m John Haywood.
Pixelmeow: I delete those as soon as I see them, David.
LadyS122: No one contacted us yet..
Copycat669: wow, that’s a sobering thought…shakespear.
jilyd: Don”t tell me we heard on the ng before you. Victor has arrived.
Pixelmeow: Hi, John@ Lucylou98 has entered the room.
OscagneTX: It bothered her that it was encrypted?
LadyS122: actually, I knew, but only because my mom is a blabbermouth.
OscagneTX: howdy, Lucy.
Copycat669: Ya know, I like it when authors publish online, though I con’t havethe patience to read it online, but I respect those whose wishes are to nothave them posted.
jilyd: Well, someone made a general post for her, and I guess she has not made her own calls yet.
BPRAL22169 has entered the room.
jilyd: Your mom?
NYC20CnLtd: My mother was very close to Mrs. Heinlein, and (if you were wondering), I’ve inherited Snowy.
Eflint46312: Well… Shakespeare would be in the public domain. But I remember how shocked I was when I discovered that W.B. Yeats’ poetry was still under copyright.
OscagneTX: Howdy, again.
Pixelmeow: I love ebooks, I’d rather have them, because I read them on my pda.
LadyS122: My mom works at the hospital’s post partum floor, and Steph told her not to tell anyone until she broke the news…
LadyS122: oh well.
Pixelmeow: AWWWW!
Eflint46312: Fer chrissake, he died back in 1939 and he is universally regarded as one of the great poets in the English language. It’s absurd.
jilyd: I wondered if you were part of that Haywood family.
Pixelmeow: You are too lucky.
LadyS122: so she told me that she didn’t see her “On the Floor” which meant she did see her.
NYC20CnLtd: Ultimately, the goal of copyright is to promote the arts.
OscagneTX: some decendant has the copyright?
BPRAL22169: Hello.
Pixelmeow: hey bill!
aggirlj: Hi Bill. Hot ‘n heavy.
jcgsmtop1: Who died in 1939?? Shakespeare?
jcgsmtop1: Grin
Pixelmeow: sorry we didn’t see you in Toronto
Eflint46312: A pain in the ass for me, too, because I’d written the first draft of AN OBLIQUE APPROACH using extensive selections from Yeats as Aide’s method of communication. Had to rewrite the whole damn thing.
DavidWrightSr: John. I didn’t realize who you were. Please accept my condolences about your mother. We conversed quite a bit during Ginny’s last days and I liked her very much. She sent me a pair of cuff-links that she had made for Ginny.
BPRAL22169: Me too.
Pixelmeow: I saw that too
Copycat669: well….isn’t Mickey Mouse about to enter public domain? This year or next?
NYC20CnLtd: Thank you.
OscagneTX: Well, you know “Shakespeare” is an inherited office, not a person…
OscagneTX: No. I think congress changed the law specially for Disney.
NYC20CnLtd: Mickey mouse would have entered the public domain in 1999–if they didn’t change the copyright law right before then.
Pixelmeow: John, would you give Snowy a snuggle for me?
jilyd: I never met your mom, NYC, but I thought the world of her for what I heard of her love and care for Ginny.
NYC20CnLtd: Disney was a major lobbyist for that change, also.
NYC20CnLtd: Thank you.
Copycat669: Ah.
Pixelmeow: I used to ask Ginny that a lot, before I had a cat of my own.
Copycat669: I love disney with my whole heart, but I don’t quite agree with the change in law.
BPRAL22169: Disney Co is one of the great agents for evil in the modern world.
NYC20CnLtd: I’ll pet Snowy for the group. (Last I saw him, he was on the kitchen table.)
Pixelmeow: Many people have shared their cats with me (or their cats have adopted me) in the time before I had a cat
Pixelmeow: thank you!
Eflint46312: Modern copyright law is insane and is entirely driven by the influence of giant corporations. It has not a damn thing to do with protecting “writers” and “artists.”
OscagneTX: Eric, was it you or SR that wrote the short about the artists lobbying for permenant-for-ever copyrights?
Pixelmeow: I still don’t have a cat
Copycat669: I hope I don’t speak of something of which I have no right, but I thinkthat an author should have rights as long as he is alive and can benefit,but once he’s gone, his work should be shared openly.
Eflint46312: It wasn’t me.
BPRAL22169: I think that was Spider Robinson
OscagneTX: Had to be him, then.
DavidWrightSr: I think the family ought to be able to keep benefitting, but not corporations
Pixelmeow: Tam, I certainly don’t have the right, not being a writer, but I’m somewhere between you and David
OscagneTX: But then a family couldn’t profit by selling the copyright to a company.
aggirlj: I agree. What if he never made it while alive and then became the latest hot product.
jilyd: That seems too limited, to me, just as current seems to long.
Pixelmeow: Family, yes; corporation, I dunno.
Eflint46312: My own opinion is about the same as that of Macaulay, way back in 1841, when the issue was first seriously thrashed out. Copyright should last for the lifetime of the author or some reasonable number of years.
BPRAL22169: Once you start making legal distinctions between natural and artificial persons, you’re on a slippery slope.
NYC20CnLtd: I worry that copyright law has become more about restriction of the arts than promotion–for instance, large corporations doing their best bo bury historic movies becasue they’re now “politically incorrect”
Copycat669: I TOTALLY agree wiht your PC fear!
Pixelmeow: well, yeah, that’s not good
Eflint46312: Which comes _last_. The problem with simply making it the life of the author is that would discriminate against authors who start writing late in life — or die early — and still have real dependents.
aggirlj: My point exactly.
Pixelmeow: yeah
jilyd: F’riinstance, Robert should have been able to provide for Ginny, no?
Pixelmeow: YES!
Copycat669: Well, now, Jilyd, hit below the belt, why don’tcha? hehehe. 🙂
BPRAL22169: With Robert and Ginny, we have the most benign possible example — the whole thing goes to fund research.
Eflint46312: Yeah, sure — but he still would have lost copyrights for things written a long time ago. Macaulay, IIRC, proposed “life of the author or 41 years,” and I’d be willing to extend that to 50.
Pixelmeow: I was just gonna say something about poking a sore spot…
OscagneTX: But even if you limit it family… why should Herodotus’ g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandkids get to keep him out of public domain?
NYC20CnLtd: Life of the author + 20 years seems reasonable to me.
BPRAL22169: I think we’re thinking of it in the wrong terms.
Copycat669: very true. Should it be limited to generations, perhaps?
Eflint46312: Any specific provision for extending it to family has to be PRECISE — widow/widower or surviving underage children, thazzit.
DavidWrightSr: Agree
BPRAL22169: If the thing you’re trying to promote is accessibility, let it go to public domain when the publisher takes it out of print.
jilyd: How about something like the old rule against perpetuities–a life in being plus 21 years. Only teh Authors life plus 21 years. That gives time for his youngest possible dependent child to come of age, and wido tobecome self-suffi
OscagneTX: Perhaps. How about “the life of the direct descendants or those specifically specified in the author’s will”?
NYC20CnLtd: There’s no reason to zap the publisher because the buy a book from someone, and then the author dies suddenly.
Copycat669: I mean, odds are that a grandchild of mine might have appreciated mywork, but beyond that, the odds are slim that generations past would haveknown me at all and it’s just a matter of greed.
Eflint46312: Otherwise you get absurd situations like the one with Henry Kuttner’s estate. That’s controlled by C.L. Moore’s second husband — who hated science fiction and made her willingness to stop writing it a condition of their marriage.
DavidWrightSr: Like Johann Bach Smith’s “daughters”
Pixelmeow: yes!
BPRAL22169: I think as long as the publisher can profit by it, let it stay in copyright. the publisher has a contract with the author that is property of his estate.
OscagneTX: bingo. and back on topic, David.
aggirlj: 🙂
Pixelmeow: those “daughters” were NOT heroines.
Copycat669: Ok…shakespeare still brings publishers profit. Should the concept be PROFIT driven?
Pixelmeow: 😛
Eflint46312: No. Publishers’ contracts should have SPECIFIC reversion rights. No publisher should retain copyright in perpetuity. That’s the road to hell.
OscagneTX: So how would you relate that, bill, to literature versions of “abandonware”?
DavidWrightSr: We have a long list of Heinlein females who were definitely not heroines. I think
Pixelmeow: yes.
BPRAL22169: I’m not quite sure what you’re asking, Oscagne. What does “abandonware” mean?
Pixelmeow: his females who were dumb were so totally stupid and worthless that I wanted to just puke on them.
Pixelmeow: like Grace Farnham.
OscagneTX: It’s books or software that are out of print, yet still copyrighted by somebody who has no interest in re-publishing them.
Pixelmeow: And whatsername in Door into Summer.
Copycat669: OMG. I was trying to come up with an anti-heroin, and you just HIT ON IT with GRACE farnham!
DavidWrightSr: Belle?
Pixelmeow: just wanted to slap them all to hell.
Pixelmeow: Yes, her.
Pixelmeow: GRRRR!
OscagneTX: Yeah, Pix… that was perfect. He’s great at writing jerks and twits. %^)
DavidWrightSr: Mrs. Keithley. Mrs. Grew
Eflint46312: She wasn’t stupid. Vicious and selfish, yes. Dumb, no.
Pixelmeow: Grace was the slackest piece of work…
Copycat669: she was the anti-Heinlein woman
Pixelmeow: sigh. maybe so. but I could NOT stand her.
OscagneTX: Mmm… I think the only thing keeping Mrs. Grew from being a Heroine is that she’s evil. Otherwise, she’s very competent, no?
Pixelmeow: simpering selfish woman.
BPRAL22169: OK — so the publisher (scum, every one of ’em) has to revert the copyright to the author or the author’s direct estated after a period of, let’s say — 50 years unless the rights have reverted previously for some other reason.
BPRAL22169: How’s that, Eric?
BPRAL22169: No reversions to indirect or secondary estates.
Eflint46312: ????? Baloney. MY rights revert after 12 years — sooner than that, if the book goes out of print — unless the publisher does a hardcover edition. Then they retain the rights, but only as long as the book is in print.
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BPRAL22169: But the author can vest his rights in public or educational trusts that survive him or his legatees.
Eflint46312: You really want to keep reversion rights clear and to the benefit of the author.
OscagneTX: Did you do that specifically Eric? By contract, I mean?
BPRAL22169: OK, 12 years I don’t have problems with — make the term whatever is convenient.
Eflint46312: Yes. Baen has very clear and good reversion rights in their boilerplate contract provisions. It’s one of the things I like about them.
BPRAL22169: But I think a fixed term is what is causing all the problems.
Pixelmeow: Alright, favorite RAH heroine?
OscagneTX: Bill… you’re thinking of the Heinlein Society as a benficiary of RAH through Virginia, aren’t you?
Pixelmeow: NOT Maureen
aggirlj: No, I’m liking Wyoh right now.
jcgsmtop1: I already voted for Tamara…
BPRAL22169: The Society — but I was thinking specifically of the Butler Library Foundation Trust and the Heinlein Prize Trust.
Eflint46312: The problem actually has nothing to do with publishers, per se. They don’t own these immensely long copyrights in the first place. The authors or their heirs do.
Pixelmeow: Friday
BPRAL22169: Or the Long Range Foundation.
Pixelmeow: or Deety
jcgsmtop1: Friday is also high on my list
jcgsmtop1: So is Minerva
OscagneTX: Or the Howard Family trust?
aggirlj: That’s the one.
BPRAL22169: Hands down: Hazel Meade Stone before she became Gwen Hardesty.
jilyd: Although many people cannot stand her, I am rather partial to Hilda.
Eflint46312: Even that wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, if the heirs had a realistic assessment of the value of their property. But, at least half the time, they don’t. So books go out of print and stay there.
Pixelmeow: I sorta like Hilda too, but she can be, well, something that I can’t describe, but I’m not sure I like or not.
jilyd: And Hazel. They both have a lot of starch.
BPRAL22169: I can’t stand Hilda
Pixelmeow: maybe that’s the word.
Pixelmeow: Starch.
Pixelmeow: tough little bitches.
Eflint46312: Ironically, the best situation is often one where you CAN’T find the heirs, even after seriously trying. Then you can legally set up an escrow account on their behalf and go ahead and reissue the works in question.
BPRAL22169: I’m generally in favor of anything that keeps a book in print.
aggirlj: A lot of it. Ever iron drabs for anyone in the Army with a ton of
starch.
OscagneTX: If we’re talking favorites… I think I’d go with… either Friday or Laz/Lor.
jilyd: I start out by seeing them as physically tiny, and making up for it with a lot of presence.
BPRAL22169: Of course, with electronic storage and the possiblilty now of micropayments, that may no longer be an issue.
Pixelmeow: yes, dee.
Pixelmeow: Osc, I can’t put a personality to laz/lor.
Pixelmeow: not to either of them.
aggirlj: They are mostly small women, except I see Mum in TMIAHM as being like my grandmother.
Pixelmeow: for some reason, they don’t work for me.
Pixelmeow: like they are just flat paper, or something.
BPRAL22169: I was kind of fond of Maureen Johnson.
jcgsmtop1: I agree about Laz/Lor
Eflint46312: On a purely personal level, my favorite RAH heroine is probably the tough little cookie in THE STAR BEAST. Yeah, yeah, she’s a bit on the mercenary side. But I always get a kick out of her.
OscagneTX: Hrm… they’ve got Lazarus’ cantakerousness, but they channel it more… friendly? something.
BPRAL22169: Betty Sorenson, yeah!
jcgsmtop1: Softer
Pixelmeow: yeah, that kid was great!
jilyd: Me either, pix. They are not developed, yet. Like a Polorid where you cannot see the features yet.
Pixelmeow: yes.
jilyd: Betty, yes!
Pixelmeow: and that back/and/forth with the conversation…
OscagneTX: brb… foraging.
Pixelmeow: k
Pixelmeow: I just don’t know, that did not work
jilyd: You mean, sorta like we do in a chat room? 🙂
Pixelmeow: I can’t see any people really doing that.
Pixelmeow: 😛
aggirlj: lol
Pixelmeow: finishing each other’s sentences, meanie!
jilyd: I used to do that with my best friend, and us not related.
jilyd: I can see twins doing it.
Pixelmeow: hmmmm, YMMV I guess
BPRAL22169: Apaprently Robert and Leslyn used to do that.
jilyd: Xine and I sounded like a private language to other people.
Pixelmeow: my daughter is now spread all over me
jcgsmtop1: My friends and I can finish each other’s sentences…
Pixelmeow: going to sleep
Pixelmeow: 😀
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jilyd: Joe and I finish sentences or say the exact same thing simultaneously, a lot. We laugfh and say, “You have been married TOO long!”
aggirlj: Oh, well, tra ra.
BPRAL22169: Unfortunately, most of the time, I have people guessing what I’m going to say and getting it completely wrong.
NYC20CnLtd: lol
aggirlj: Resisting. Lucylou98 has left the room.
NYC20CnLtd: (I’ve been known to doi that with my friends.)
jilyd: I can see why it would not work for someone who has not experienced it, though.
BPRAL22169: Sometimes I wind up thinking to myself: “Glad I’m not living in Your head, cobber”
jilyd: Bill, I have been so prone to tying of teh tongue lately, that people don’t get it right AFTER I spat all the words out. 🙂
aggirlj: A poll, ladies, who was the first RAH heroine that you completely associated with and why?
Pixelmeow: DEETY!
Pixelmeow: sorta ditzy and smart all at once
jcgsmtop1: Tamara – the description of “love with a little skin around her”
jcgsmtop1: That’s what I’ve aspired to since I first read the book … some 30 years ago
BPRAL22169: LOL, Jilyd
aggirlj: My references a limited, buy being in front of an audience and swaying them is what I like, therefore Wyoh to date.
aggirlj: but being
aggirlj: And the fact that she is a chamelon(sp?)
jilyd: Hilda–smart, but not a certified super genius, not physically imposing, interested in everything.
OscagneTX: b
jilyd: Deety is just way to sweet for me to ever identify with her.
jilyd: Besides the genius thing.
DavidWrightSr: I can’t name favorites of anything, books, women or whatever of RAH’s creations. I have a couple that are my least favorite, that’s about it
Eflint46312: I tend to be the same way. It all depends a lot on what mood I’m in when I read a book.
OscagneTX: Hm. I can use the books to change my mood.
jcgsmtop1: Who’s your least favorite, David?
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OscagneTX: howdy
aggirlj: Hi Koz.
alankoslow123: Hello Keythong has entered the room.
jilyd: Good to meet you. You prefer Koz?
OscagneTX: and howdy.
alankoslow123: This is my first time here. s
alankoslow123: yes Koz Keythong has left the room.
jilyd: I’m Dee.
Eflint46312: I’m Eric.
NYC20CnLtd: I’m John.
OscagneTX: Dunno why, but I parsed your name as Alanko Slow. Duh.
jcgsmtop1: I’m Joanne
alankoslow123: It will take me a while to get you straight. But hello
BPRAL22169: Oh, not Homer Eon Flint? I’m so disappointed…
OscagneTX: I’m Joe. But I’ve been Osc so long that I answer to that, too.
jilyd: Eric FLint sounds familiar–you have posted on afh, haven’t you?
Eflint46312: No.
BPRAL22169: Big Name SF Writer.
OscagneTX: *grin*
Eflint46312: Not that I know of, anyway. 🙂 Sometimes I get quoted in places I’ve never been.
jilyd: Thanks, Bill. Brain fade.
DavidWrightSr: Eric is big on the Baen Library and an author.
Eflint46312: Which usually starts a fight. 🙂 And then sometimes I get drawn into it.
aggirlj: LOL
OscagneTX: So… a guy who murdered Eric and removed his dermis would be a skin-flint?
jilyd: Are you saying you arenot that Eric?
OscagneTX: Sorry, I’ve been ready Spider all day.
Eflint46312: Which “Eric” are you referring to? I’m the Flint one.
Eflint46312: Not the “Skin” one. And thank gawd Airwick finally went off the market. The jokes I have to put up with as a kid…
jilyd: Are you the Eric Flint who is an SF author, or a different Eric Flint? Y
Eflint46312: The SF author.
OscagneTX: I thought it was joking around, but not so sure anymore so I’ll say this: Efling46312 is Eric Flint, the actual, honest-to-god author, and librarian of the Baen Free Library.
Pixelmeow: I’m pix
Pixelmeow: or teresa
jilyd: Great, you should have thoughts onthe copyright discussion–you bread and butter.
OscagneTX: crud… s/Efling/Eflint
Eflint46312: I tried to get AOL to let me use Eric Flint as my sign-on name, but they told me it was already taken. Hmph. The nerve of some people…
Pixelmeow: dee, we never did pass out drinks
aggirlj: I’ll get the ice
Pixelmeow: okay
Pixelmeow: 🙂
Pixelmeow: anybody?
jilyd: Thanks, OPsc, I really could not rememebr why the name was familiar, truly a brain lapse, then Eric said something that made me think he meant he was a differnetr Eric Flint. Some days I am easily confused.
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jilyd: I seem to be more in need than anyone here, pix.
Pixelmeow: hello, LN!
Reilloc: Hi
Eflint46312: Actually, when I lived in Chicago, it turned out there was another Eric Flint living only 4 blocks from me. Weird coincidence. We found out because our mail kept getting crisscrossed.
jilyd: Hi, LN. Good to see you.
Pixelmeow: here you go, dee
Reilloc: Hi, Dee
aggirlj: Hi LN, Jane here.
jcgsmtop1: If you lived in Chicago (where I live), it’s amazing you got ANYBODY’s mail!
OscagneTX: *retrieves a Shiner Hefeweisen.
OscagneTX: howdy, LN.
jilyd: I think I am aout ready to be shipped off to the home for teh terminally bewildered.
Pixelmeow: we missed you at Torcon, LN; hope things are okay
Reilloc: Hi, Jane and Oscagne
Pixelmeow: dee, you already live there.
jilyd: :-P~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
aggirlj: Is that a phfttttttttt!
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Pixelmeow: at *least*.
Eflint46312: Yeah, Chicago mail is truly horrendous. All we had to do was move across the state line into Indiana and all of a sudden the mail became almost perfect. Same demographics, same kind of people working in the post office.
jilyd: A very wet one, Jane.
aggirlj: lol
Eflint46312: Go figure. I think there’s some kind of curse on the Chicago post office.
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Pixelmeow: okay, you missed the poll, LN; who’s your favorite RAH heroine?
Pixelmeow: except Maureen.
BPRAL22169: The remote server here in Santa Cruz keeps throwing me offline.
Reilloc: Let’s see…
Pixelmeow: (that was my idea)
OscagneTX: My techwriting prof has a sticker in his office, “Guns don’t kill people, Postal employees do.”
OscagneTX: He got it from the campus postmistress.
Reilloc: I like Jill Boardman from SiaSL best.
Pixelmeow: Really!
Reilloc: Not all the way she’s drawn but mostly.
jcgsmtop1: Eric, there was somebody with my same last name who lived a few blocks away – different street, different number, different first name … and I got their mail regularly
Eflint46312: Heh heh. My mail man says he appreciates the reputation of postal employees. I can see why — he’s not more than five feet tall. But nobody gives him a hard time.
OscagneTX: Hm. She was kind of a twit in the beginning, wasn’t she? Even though she matured grandly?
Eflint46312: I think even the dogs are afraid of him. The uniform, rather.
Pixelmeow: What do you not like?
Reilloc: She was never a twit.
Reilloc: I like Maureen Smith least
jilyd: Osc, I thought she was very professional to be so obviously very young.
Pixelmeow: I can believe that.
aggirlj: agitator
OscagneTX: Okay, twit is the wrong word. Naive perhaps?
Reilloc: NOrmal’s the word
Pixelmeow: I tend to be very very naive, Osc, you calling me a twit???
OscagneTX: Even as difficult as it would be for a nurse to be naive…
OscagneTX: No, pix, I’m just twitting you… %^)
Pixelmeow: 😛
Reilloc: What was the poll’s result?
jilyd: Yes, naive, but then it becomes clear a little further on that she is very young. Lots younger than Ben Caxton.
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Pixelmeow: Come to think of it, I like Jill, too; SiaSL is just not my favorite of RAH’s work.
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jilyd: Okay, unworldly outside her field, matter of factly practical within it.
Pixelmeow: We had a few for Friday, me for Deety, one for Sharpie, one for Tamara
BPRAL22169: Dont’ forget Betty Sorenson.
Pixelmeow: this damn thing doesn’t keep everything that’s gone before so I can’t check.
Pixelmeow: yes.
Pixelmeow: thanks.
Pixelmeow: lots of us like her.
jilyd: Sometimes I think I might like Maureen,and sometimes I think she is just a royal PITA.
Pixelmeow: she just gets on her high horse sometimes…
jcgsmtop1: I can’t place Betty Sorenson… help
Eflint46312: THE STAR BEAST
Pixelmeow: what was her nickname?
Reilloc: I didn’t like Job much so I didn’t consider Sorenson
BPRAL22169: Hey, that’s why Maureen Johnson is so wonderful
OscagneTX has left the room.
jcgsmtop1: Thanks
OscagneTX has entered the room.
Eflint46312: If I recall correctly, anyway
OscagneTX: Damn. Wrong button.
jilyd: That’s Magrethe, LN.
Pixelmeow: Ah yes, Marga.
Reilloc: I dind’t like her, either.
OscagneTX: In IRC you can clear your entry line by hitting escape. Here it kills the chat. %^(
Pixelmeow: What did you not like about her?
BPRAL22169: There really wasn’t much personaltiy to Margrethe — just a lot of funny hats.
Reilloc: Wasn’t Sorenson a immature Maureen?
Pixelmeow: true
BPRAL22169: Betty Sorenson was John Thomas Stuart’s girlfriend in The Star Beast
Reilloc: She divorced her parents.
Eflint46312: The other female character I always liked a lot was Carolyn Whazzername, the Zulu girl in TUNNEL IN THE SKY
jilyd: Also Wyoh and Hazel got votes.
Eflint46312: Of the adult female characters, Wyoh is probably my favorite.
BPRAL22169: I’m surprised, though, that nobody has mentioned either Podkayne or Puddin’
aggirlj: Yeah.
alankoslow123: This would be a great panal. Maybe at Loscon
Eflint46312: Podkayne is a lot of fun, but she’s just that little too self-conscious of herself for my taste.
Reilloc: She’s a kid
jilyd: We never hear why. Divorcing your parents is basically the same as what DHR does not, isn’t iot, only the child can bring the petition himself?
OscagneTX: I’ve never been to a Con. Always lacked cash and time.
Reilloc: DHR?
aggirlj: It can be pricey, Joe.
jilyd: “The Welfare.”
Eflint46312: Depends on the con.
jilyd: Dept. of Human Resources, or whatever your sate calls them.
alankoslow123: Were do you live? city?
DavidWrightSr: DHR in Georgia is Dept. of Human Resources, my boss
OscagneTX: Houston
Eflint46312: Worldcons can chew your budget right up. But I never liked them anyway, so I’ve only been to one.
Reilloc: DHR moves to determine fitness as a third party. A first party action would have a higher threshhold showing, I’d think.
Eflint46312: Depends on the rights specified in law. First parties usually have a LOT more legal power than any third parties.
alankoslow123: There are lots of local cons that can cost little for a fun weekend Hatofpat has entered the room.
Dehede011 has entered the room.
OscagneTX: howdy, and wb.
aggirlj: Hi, Pat, this is a friend of mine weho wants to lurk and watch. Read “Revolt 2001”.
jilyd: I just filled in the gaps, in my own mind, that a child could file, but there would still have to be a judicial determination.
jilyd: And that a responsible judge would not grant a divorce to a child who simply wnated “all ice cream and no broccoli.”
Dehede011: Hi everybody. How come when I come into the chatroom the log says no one was chatting until I got here??
jilyd: Hi, Pat, Ron.
DavidWrightSr: I knew I’d think of one eventually, Sister Magdalene. She was some gal.
aggirlj: Hi Ron. It just does.
Reilloc: If the standard’s “the best interest of the child” it’s almost always preponderantly objective.
Eflint46312: My assumption from what’s implied in the book is that in that universe a “child” is considered at least a semi-adult once they get somewhere in the middle of their teenage years.
BPRAL22169: I’ve known emancipated minors as young as 12 years old.
OscagneTX: Bingo, David. Didn’t she get thrown over for the younger “virgin” in the original? Then RAH revised it so that she got together with Johnny?
DavidWrightSr: I’ve never read the original.
Reilloc: Age of common law consent to marry in Kansas is still 12 for women and 14 for men
DavidWrightSr: Bill?
OscagneTX: Me either, I just saw that in Gifford’s book, I think.
Eflint46312: That only seems odd to Americans because we set so many of our legal distinctions between “child” and “adult” at an absurdly high age for an advanced industrial age.
BPRAL22169: Yes, what was the question?
Reilloc: Absurdly high? What should it be?
DavidWrightSr: Did John Lyle go back to Sister Judith rather than Sister Magdalene in the original
Eflint46312: In most states, for instance, the age of consent is 18. In every European country, it’s somewhere between 14 and 16 — which does, in fact, correspond to the real world.
BPRAL22169: Oh — yes, Oscagne has it right. in the original Astounding version, he weds his first love.
jilyd: Enjoyed seeing everyone, but it is past my bedtime. Goodnight, all.
BPRAL22169: He gets dear johned in the 1953 revision.
jilyd has left the room.
OscagneTX: ‘night.
Reilloc: Night, Dee
aggirlj: Too quick.
Pixelmeow: gnight dee!
alankoslow123: I think that as you become more industrial and advanced the age of maturity not majority goes up
Eflint46312: I leave aside the absurdity of letting people drive cars at 16 and join the military at 18 — but they can’t drink alcohol until they’re 21. Go figure.
Reilloc: The age of loss of innocence, maybe, but not the age of maturity
BPRAL22169: It’s diachronic.
aggirlj: Okay, define diachronic?
Reilloc: Something that kills you but not acutely
aggirlj: Okeedokee.
BPRAL22169: “through time” All of those ages were from different systems, so when they all got jammed together there were different limits for different things.
OscagneTX: boooo.
Eflint46312: The point is that laws should reflect social reality and not try to cram it into a preconceived framework — which is usually based on someone’s ideological or religious ax to grind.
alankoslow123: I agrree it’s crazy but as most are expected to go to college and grad sch. we mature more slowly.
Reilloc: Who’s social reality?
OscagneTX: hm. define “most” in that context.
alankoslow123: Also we use to marry early because we died early. Hatofpat has left the room.
Eflint46312: The point is that it’s BALONEY. I was sexually active and drinking booze as a teenager — and so were most of the kids I knew. And that was back in the early 60s.
Reilloc: I wasn’t and that was back in the ’60’s
alankoslow123: Does that prove you were mature or imature
OscagneTX: I, too, in the ’80’s.
BPRAL22169: It’s mostly the extended education necessary these days, I think. you can’t set up an independent household on the day of your bar mitzvah any more. you’ve got about 7 more years of schule.
Eflint46312: You really have to consider the logic of a legal system that automatically criminalizes half its youth. That’s the surest way to create a general disrespect for law I can think of.
NYC20CnLtd: I wasn’t, and I was a teenager in the ’80s and ’90s. I think it depends on the teenager more than anything else.
Dehede011: The fact is that we are delaying adulthood but when I was raised on the farm I got introduced to the adult world at 12 and was expected to carry a man’s part at 14
Reilloc: Is it or is it not the natural inclination of parents to want to keep their kids, kids, as long as they cah?
OscagneTX: Okay, but at the same time, isn’t puberty starting earlier these days? Last explanation I saw was better nutrition, but I don’t know if I buy that.
Pixelmeow: it is for ME, LN.
Eflint46312: To get back to STAR BEAST, I think what Heinlein was suggesting was that teenagers were simply given the legal right to do what plenty of them do anyway, at that age — run away from home.
Reilloc: Disagree.
BPRAL22169: I dunno, I’ve known too many who were trying to get rid of their kids as soon as possible.
Eflint46312: Which you can do at 15 or 16 but can’t — not easily, for sure, at 10 or 12.
aggirlj: Okay, I’ve got to go now. See you all later.
Dehede011: If you wish to read the history behind the move to postpone adulthood you do a search on John Taylor Gatto and the History of Education
OscagneTX: Did the book say at what age she divorced?
Pixelmeow: bye jane!
TheCOinOz: ok seeya
OscagneTX: ‘night, Jane.
BPRAL22169: have fun, Jane.
aggirlj: Bye for now.
aggirlj has left the room.
NYC20CnLtd: ‘night Jane.
NYC20CnLtd: ‘night Jane.
Dehede011: Night Jane
Reilloc: As for it being folly to try and fit things into a framework, the alternative’s making it up as you go along and repeating historical mistakes.
alankoslow123: When we live to be 120 on average. won’t we want to extend the time to maturity
NYC20CnLtd: (I did send that–It didn’t show up in the window at first.)
BPRAL22169: Something just popped into my head — something about trying to interfere with career choice being an automatic ground for “divorce” – was that said of John Thomas Stuart or of Betty Sorenson?
Eflint46312: IIRC, Betty said it _to_ JTS
Dehede011: Sorry, I meant to say “I suggest” you do that search.
Reilloc: I don’t recall it but it doesn’t make much sense.
Reilloc: Career choices of kids change more often than their underwear.
BPRAL22169: I think that gives us a clue to the value-structure Heinlein was working with in that story.
Pixelmeow: falling asleep
Reilloc: I think it gives us a clue that he had no kids.
Pixelmeow: got to go.
Pixelmeow: gnight all
Reilloc: Later, Pix
OscagneTX: ‘night PIx.
Pixelmeow: 😀
NYC20CnLtd: Night Pix.
BPRAL22169: Somebody had asked earlier about what it was that Betty had divorced her parents for.
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TheCOinOz: It might interest you to know that in Oz the only grounds for divorce is “Irreconcilable breakdown” That’s it. No fault.
Eflint46312: It’s impossible to know whether RAH had any specific overall social framework in mind. A lot of stuff like that he tossed into his books was clearly designed — I think anyway — just to make readers think about their assumptions.
alankoslow123: In SISL heinlein made a good case for needing an extended toime to mature completely and seperated sexual maturity from cultural maturity
Eflint46312: Call it goosing the audience. 🙂
OscagneTX: LN, if I’m reading you right I share an unease with you. It always seemed funny to me that the fiction placed so much importance on kids when he never had any.
Reilloc: It’s like he placed so much importance on the superiority of women when he wasn’t one.
Eflint46312: It depends on how you define “kids.” Almost all the “kids” in Heinlein’s stories were teenagers, not pre-teens.
Reilloc: Offspring, dude
OscagneTX: I think that may be less stange because of who he was married to. I didn’t know Ginny, but what I saw of her in here and heard second hand tells me he had a great role model for the uber-competent lady.
Reilloc: He had none.
Eflint46312: Teenagers aren’t exactly “kids” any more.
DavidWrightSr: Well, of course, a lot of those books were *for* teens.
Eflint46312: That’s true also. But beyond that, _lots_ of authors gravitate toward teenagers in stories. That’s because the “coming-of-age” theme is pretty much a guaranteed audience-please if you don’t screw it up.
Reilloc: It’s interesting, the position that teenagers aren’t kids.
Reilloc: Tell it to the auto insurers.
NYC20CnLtd: lol
OscagneTX: David, true, but the later works almost certainly weren’t, and still emphasized reproduciton and rearing. Even so far as being the rationalization for alternate forms of marriage.
BPRAL22169: I don’t know — I see an awful lot of twenty-plus-year-olds acting like early-teens.
NYC20CnLtd: To State Farm, I was still a kid until I turned 25.
alankoslow123: I have to leave. g-b
Eflint46312: They really aren’t, although they obviously share some characteristics. Half-adult, half-child, as it were — and the balance shifts from one person to another at a different pace and with different emphases.
OscagneTX: ‘night, Kos.
Reilloc: Later, Kos
alankoslow123 has left the room.
TheCOinOz: seeya
NYC20CnLtd: ‘Night Kos.
Eflint46312: Folks, I’m going to have to leave too. I’ve still got some work I need to get finished tonight.
Dehede011: nite, Kos
OscagneTX: ‘night, Eric. It was good to meet you.
Dehede011: Nite, Eric
TheCOinOz: As RAH remarked in (TMIAHM?) something, “I’ve known some mighty tall children”
NYC20CnLtd: ‘Night Eric.
Eflint46312: Its’ been fun. I’ll be back for the Saturday chat. 4PM CST, am I right>
DavidWrightSr: Night Eric. Glad you could get here and that I could help out. Am reading Mother right now.
Eflint46312: Hope you like it.
OscagneTX: yes.
Eflint46312: Okay. I’ll see you then. G’bye.
Eflint46312 has left the room.
Reilloc: Bye
DavidWrightSr: I think that family meant a lot to Robert and Ginny even though they never had children of their own.
DavidWrightSr: Maybe because they never had children of their own.
Reilloc: I think you’re right.
TheCOinOz: Logical assumption.
Dehede011: She commented warmly a number of times about the Heinlein’s large and friendly family
DavidWrightSr: Bill, did Ginny have brothers or sisters?
DavidWrightSr: I know Robert did.
Dehede011: Apparently Ginny really enjoyed them.
BPRAL22169: She had a younger brother, Frank, killed in 1942 I believe.
Dehede011: Military death, Bill?
BPRAL22169: Yes. Navy.
BPRAL22169: He had enlisted at age 16
DavidWrightSr: Osc. Might be time to take a break O:-)
BPRAL22169: For years RAH thought Ginny had enlisted because of Frank’s death — “to replace him.”
OscagneTX: Okie dokey.
Dehede011: In battle I assume. Do you know the name of his ship?
BPRAL22169: No, I’m afraid that had never come up in conversation.
OscagneTX: Break time everybody. Smoke ’em if you gottem.
BPRAL22169: Might have been submarine service, but i can’t vouch for that.
OscagneTX: Erm… 10 min?
Dehede011: Can we smoke here or must we go outside?
DavidWrightSr: Good for me. back at 10 before the hour.
NYC20CnLtd: I don’t smoke–so that one doesn’t matter to me.
OscagneTX: Virtual smoke is as carcinogenic as virtual booze is intoxicagin.
jcgsmtop1: I’m going to fade out, folks. Enjoyed the chat
OscagneTX: g’night
jcgsmtop1 has left the room.
starfall2 has entered the room.
starfall2: hi
BPRAL22169: I was just looking in RAHARC and was surprised to find that family doesn’t become a really important theme to RAH until about 1950. Marriage, community, that kind of thing before then, but family starting with Ginny.
DavidWrightSr: Hi. We are on a short break, but will be chatting again in a few minutes. You ar Joel Rosenberg’s daughter aren’t you?
starfall2: no
DavidWrightSr: Sorry.
starfall2: it’s okay
DavidWrightSr: Jackie?
OscagneTX: howdy
starfall2: yep
starfall2: just got back online
starfall2: isabel has been knocking the power out a bit
OscagneTX: howdy, Jackie.
OscagneTX: I didn’t know that was you.
starfall2: yep
starfall2: it’s me
OscagneTX: Since we’re on break anyway… I’ll gloat a bit. I just got back my first “project” in Tech Writing.
DavidWrightSr: You enjoying school?
starfall2: ooh!
starfall2: yep
OscagneTX: I got 44 out of 40 points.
starfall2: great!
starfall2: i’ve been getting mostly As so far
starfall2: one B, though…
OscagneTX: The instructor says its the first time anybody ever got full credit for the first project… ever. I mean… EVER. I’m very excited about that.
starfall2: what’s your major?
starfall2: wow
starfall2: not surprised you managed that, though (=
OscagneTX: Forensic Chemistry.
starfall2: sounds interesting
OscagneTX: I’m just taking my baby steps toward that major. Chem I and Tech Writing.
OscagneTX: Is everybody ready to restart the topic?
DavidWrightSr: It’s time.
starfall2: okay
OscagneTX: Let’s talk about Bill’s statement there…
OscagneTX: “I was just looking in RAHARC and was surprised to find that family doesn’t become a really important theme to RAH until about 1950. Marriage, community, that kind of thing before then, but family starting with Ginny.”
OscagneTX: I’m trying to think of a contradiciton, but can’t.
Reilloc: What’s the work that signalled the shift to family emphasis?
DavidWrightSr: I can’t really think of any emphasis that early. What works do you mean Bill?
Reilloc: coke
Reilloc: Further, if the emphasis became family and the development of family became Boondock, where’s the recognizability of traditional family structure?
OscagneTX: So is it an emphasis on family structure, or on stability for offspring? The boondock family didn’t really have a structure, or at least had a very fluid one. But the kids were still cared for.
Reilloc: The kids were tended but the focus seemed to be a breeding ground for fostering individualists.
Dehede011: brb
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
Reilloc: A whole society of individualists would be a whole society of the kind of harmony (cough) you find in usenet.
OscagneTX: hehe
starfall2: heh
OscagneTX: Okay, to go with that theory we have to assume that the characters didn’t know why, either, because they always explained it to prospective brides/grooms in terms of primarily caring for the kids.
AGplusone has entered the room.
OscagneTX: Howdy, David.
Reilloc: Hi, Dave.
AGplusone: Evenin’ all. How we doing?
starfall2: hi
OscagneTX: Mmm. “David the other elder.”
BPRAL22169 has entered the room.
OscagneTX: wb
BPRAL22169: tx
Reilloc: tx & spnd
AGplusone: Eric here tonight?
OscagneTX: he was, yes.
OscagneTX: And he said he’ll be back Saturday.
OscagneTX: Bill, did you see us talking about your statment before you got bouncec?
OscagneTX: bounced.
AGplusone: Hope he enjoyed it. Sorry I had to miss first two hours. Had a flat, ran over a nail, and couldn’t get AAA out. So I had to break the tire loose myself, despite impact wrench tightness. Arrgh! Hate impact wrenches.
BPRAL22169: Just the start
BPRAL22169: I thought there might be a couple pseudo- or surrogate families — based on “feel” only the group in Magic, Inc., might qualify.
OscagneTX: Would you call it an emphasis on family structure or an emphasis on caring for kids?
BPRAL22169: It seemst o come on slowly and then ultimately take in everything.
BPRAL22169: The first one I thought was solidly about family was Farmer In the Sky.
BPRAL22169: Though “Gulf” has the feel of a surrogate family.
OscagneTX: LN made a good point that the boondock family doesn’t really have a structure.
AGplusone: [someone have copy of log: sendto: and I’ll try to catch up.]
OscagneTX: okay.
BPRAL22169: it does — but it’s a very “flat” structure.
AGplusone: verizon.net
Reilloc: One-story?
Reilloc: California ranch style?
BPRAL22169: Yeah — at least until the NOTB quartet signs on.
BPRAL22169: Kind of like Jubal Harshaw’s poconos house, and the Nest.
OscagneTX: its on the way.
Reilloc: Uhhh…
AGplusone: [thanks Joe]
OscagneTX: np
Reilloc: Interesting to characterize Harshaw’s establishment as a family.
BPRAL22169: I think JH thought of it that way.
Reilloc: I think you’re right.
Reilloc: He went out and bought himself a family.
BPRAL22169: LOL. Well, he says he grew ’em in the cellar, like mushrooms.
OscagneTX: Well, yeah, but how many secretaries and handymen did he have to fire before he got the three that could be family?
Reilloc: If only you could pick your offspring by who had a photographic memory, who looked swell in a bikini and who could fix anything that broke without repair people to have to call.
BPRAL22169: Interesting that he never said anything about that.
AGplusone: Maybe he buried them in the place that needed landfill (where they put the junk mail later).
Reilloc: I would contend it relates back to RAH not having had kids and having to cope with the natural emotions through which parents go.
OscagneTX: Well… the way he reacted to Mike’s cannibalism he could have eaten them. %^)
Reilloc: He went straight to paternalism without having to worry about anything else.
Reilloc: Who’s got kids here?
Reilloc: me–3
Dehede011: Yo — 2
OscagneTX: not I, said the cat.
AGplusone: me–1
TheCOinOz: me 3
DavidWrightSr: 2 both grown. 1 married
NYC20CnLtd: None here–just 5 cats.
starfall2: not unless you count cats
TheCOinOz: cats too LOL
Reilloc: Who’s had the experience that you tell a kid not to do something, sometimes something so obvious that you feel like you shouldn’t have to articulate it, and then watch them do it anyway because people just have to make some mistakes
TheCOinOz: Oh yeah.
Reilloc: themselves, just like everybody else did?
Dehede011: yep
Reilloc: So, we know how it feels.
Reilloc: We can even remember doing it ourselves.
AGplusone: Inevitable
Reilloc: It’s an experience RAH never had.
OscagneTX: From the other side of it, when I was told not to do something it made it mysterious enough to whet my curiosity and made me more likely to try it.
AGplusone: sure, just an hour ago … wife said, wait for the AAA.
Reilloc: One word, Dave
Reilloc: Bengay
Dehede011: My son asked, “Daddy, how is it you catch me at everything just like you can read my mind” Can everyone answer him. LOL
AGplusone: 😉
Reilloc: “I did that myself, 30 years ago, kid”
Dehede011: “Cause there is nothing you ever did or ever thought that I didn’t do it first.”
TheCOinOz: “You think you invented it?”
Dehede011: Boy, did his eyes get big on that one. LOL
starfall2: hehe
starfall2: i learned by the time i was about 10 that my mom knew everything i could think of
Reilloc: It’s mistakes you make first-hand that teach you best.
Reilloc: Let them make their mistakes as long as they don’t get killed or locked up for life.
Dehede011: Right, I told you of the one time that I nailed him, let me tell you of the other
Reilloc: Besides, when they start to listen to reason you’re boring to them and they’re not as much fun for you.
AGplusone: [which makes me think that was why/or how RAH wrote believable male juveniles — been there, done that, been wearing the stupid T-shirt since]
Dehede011: He was about 17 and getting very close to his girlfriend. One day he was doing a monolog on that subject
Reilloc: They all know what love is better than we ever will.
Dehede011: I interrupted him with, “Son, just remember that any Harrison child ever born is going to have the Harrison name.”
Dehede011: LOL
OscagneTX: My dad didn’t try to regulate that for me. He just let me know he knew. And my mom made me carry a condom in my wallet.
AGplusone: “Yonni, I missed my last period and I think . . . ” [that appears in at least two adult novels that I recall]”
Dehede011: I never did either.
Reilloc: Interesting.
Reilloc: Did you take the same approach with your daughters?
OscagneTX: I always thought it was funny… carrying a condom in your wallet is a really good way to destroy it, so I had one there I never used and had a good box in my car.
Dehede011: Me, no, her mother handled that one.
OscagneTX: Used to freak out friends that saw the pocket condom. “Dude, what’s that?” “That’s my mom’s condom.” “Eiw… DUDE.”
AGplusone: Me too. typical of my generation. Asked wife later, years later, “what did you tell her?”
Dehede011: Actually Dave, I never worried over what my wife told my daughter. I remember what she told me at that age. LOL
Dehede011: There were two things I told my daughter but only because there are somethings a father can say better.
Dehede011: What did she say, Dave?
TheCOinOz: Did your wife tell you what she said? I would have thought that came under ‘secret women’s business’
AGplusone: Actually, when she was about 12, wife bought her a nice, little book that explained stuff ….
AGplusone: which I read quickly and shuddered and said, “Yeah, you should give it to her.”
Dehede011: I arranged a code word for when my daughter was feeling pressured by peers.
AGplusone: maybe eleven years old … around then.
Dehede011: I also gave her a line for the guy that tried that oldie about, “If you really loved me you would………”
AGplusone: then later she explained, questions about condoms, how you can’t get pregnant if you have oral sex, etc. . . . but I din’ want to know then. Would have had to kill all the boyfriends.
AGplusone: [slight exaggeration … but]
Reilloc: Did reading Heinlein change your ideas about sex, Dave?
starfall2: from my experiences with my dad and my ex boyfriend, not that much of an exaggeration
AGplusone: In a remote way: I read the underground cavern scene in If This Goes On when I was eleven. thought Maggie was neat. but at eleven I was still pretty young.
AGplusone: The pool party she and John Lyle, and Zack and the other woman spend time at …
AGplusone: Older woman initiates John, mostly, looking back at it.
Reilloc: The references and descriptions there were so oblique, though.
Reilloc: Necessitated by the realities of being publishable.
AGplusone: But I picked up on it. Was very careful not to mention that scene to my mom or dad.
Dehede011: Dave, that is something I picked up on as an adult. I came to realize how closely my folks knew what had been going on with my 1st hand sex ed.
AGplusone: Mother would have probably banned Heinlein … was my fear.
Then, at least. Don’t know what she really would have done. There was no sex ed in schools in 1954 that I ever received.
Dehede011: They let me get my own experience but they knew what was going on.
AGplusone: This was the era, so help me god, in which parents told fairly young adolescent boys to keep their hands on top of the blankets when they went to sleep. Or at least the Legion of Decency thought they did.
Reilloc: Ashcroft was around then?
AGplusone: His father, no doubt.
AGplusone: You’d get that from Boy Scout troop leaders, camp counsellors, or boarding school faculty, too.
Reilloc: Your reputation must have gotten around.
AGplusone: At eleven?
AGplusone: I was still a very young boy … he, said, semi-innocently.
Reilloc: I’ve always been impressed with your charisma
OscagneTX: “Then there was my fifth grade teacher…”
AGplusone: By thirteen or fourteen, used to be a big joke. Went to a catholic high school, boading school by then. 6 AM mass was mandatory. Lots of boys going to confession early in the mass before communion so they could take communion.
Reilloc: Those who seek equity need to have clean hands.
AGplusone: “Bless me father for I have sinned. One instance of immoral thoughts, deeds or allowing myself to be in a state of temptation.” Yes, the clean hands doctrine.
AGplusone: Every morning for many.
Reilloc: Just that one-word telegram should have been enough…
Reilloc: Pecavi
AGplusone: try
AGplusone: true, rather …. I pity the old priests who had to listen to about thirty minutes of that every morning. Very boring …
OscagneTX: “Father, I coveted my neighbor’s ass. No, _really_.”
Reilloc: Now, it’s apparent why your tech writing score was high.
OscagneTX: I think that’s probably just because I can emulate a corporate shill. All my fun writing’s been rejected.
Reilloc: Start at the end with the most improbable outcome imaginable and work your way there using likeable characters caught in absurd relationships.
AGplusone: The thing was: by 1988, when I read Maureen, my daughter was 18 so it was sort of :”yeah, I can see that pretty easy” but there “is no way he could have ever published this in a juvenile before this”
AGplusone: but sort of a “this might have saved a lot of grief” for many, had he been able.
AGplusone: or ’87, if it came out in July, she was 17.
Reilloc: That’s the societal example of mistakes you have to make for yourself no matter how wise your advisor is and tells you not to make them.
AGplusone: Yes. You wonder however whether back in whenever it was if Alva Lyle actually had a conversation like that with one of his daughters.
Reilloc: I wouldn’t wonder to much about that.
AGplusone: [and how Heinlein would have heard of it later]
AGplusone: why? or why not?
Reilloc: It’s a slippery line of speculation to pursue.
AGplusone: true
AGplusone: and yet … there’s always the wise parental example who pays no attention to the reigning Legion of Decency, or Mrs. Grundy.
AGplusone: or Ashcroft
Reilloc: Wise…because…?
AGplusone: lots of mis-info among kids
Reilloc: There’s always that.
Reilloc: Is the because because the parent knows just how basic and biological, natural and to be expected, sex is?
AGplusone: and frustration and weird attitudes built up among the gullible, trusting kids who actually listen to what some fellow who feels being a priest or counsellor is better than being the south end of two north bound mules
AGplusone: Yeah, I think so. and there were them. I encountered them.
Reilloc: Such talk about another of the learned professions is alarming.
AGplusone: Well, we’re only the second or third oldest. Figure Shaman came first then . . .
Reilloc: Exactly.
AGplusone: courtesan, then lawyers to defend the courtesans from the shamans.
Reilloc: Among the learned, we’re newcomers.
AGplusone: Or prosecute them for the shamans which was where the money was.
Reilloc: The politics of prosecution would make a good fun fiction, Os.
AGplusone: Or become politicians and league up with the shamans and outlaw the courtesans.
Dehede011 has left the room.
TheCOinOz: Second oldest profession is Mercenary AFAIR
Reilloc: So, we agree.
OscagneTX: I think I’m going to hit the sack. David, could you keep track of the remainder of the chat for me?
AGplusone: maybe we missed one of Heinlein’s woman. the madam who smuggles Thorby out of Sargon. She was the second oldest profession. Sure, Joe.
AGplusone: The real heroine.
OscagneTX: Okay. Good night, y’all.
DavidWrightSr: I’ve got it all except for that short time I was knocked off. Send me all of what you’ve got and I’ll extract
AGplusone: ‘kay
OscagneTX: No problem.
OscagneTX has left the room.
AGplusone: ’tis pushing the witching hour on the east coast. What time is it in Oz, CO?
AGplusone: And who is NTC 20th Century Limited?
AGplusone: I’m Dave.
NYC20CnLtd: I’m John Haywood.
AGplusone: NYC
DavidWrightSr: That’s John Haywood. Laura’s son
AGplusone: Nice to meet you John. Laurie’s son?
Reilloc: A face in a misty light?
Reilloc: Footsteps that you hear down the hall?
NYC20CnLtd: BTW–relaying a message, Snowy says “Meow”–I took that to mean “Hi.”
AGplusone: Laura Haywood was Ginny friend in Florida. Met John and his dad at San Diego during Ginny’s ashes ceremony. Laura died very shortly after Ginny did. Very sad surprise. Thanks for letting us know, John.
AGplusone: Bob was ‘meowing’ just a bit back. Maybe back at Snowy.
NYC20CnLtd: 🙂
DavidWrightSr: It’s midnight here on the right coast. Y’all ready to call it a night?
AGplusone: Still awake, jackie, or did we put you to sleep with all that how do you raise a kid, and what impact when you were a kid did the RAH stories have?
AGplusone: Night David
Reilloc: Move adjournment.
AGplusone: Any objection?
AGplusone: So ordered. thanks everyone. Was fun. sorry I missed the first two hours.
NYC20CnLtd: Not from me, but if you want to keep going, that’s fine too.
Reilloc: Thanks, Dave.
BPRAL22169: ciao
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
starfall2: i’m still awake
Reilloc: Take some ibuprophen for your back and get some rest.
starfall2: but leaving soon anyway
starfall2: sore from skating
starfall2: and i’ve got an eight am class tomorrow
AGplusone: we can share the ibupophen, Jackie.
starfall2: sounds good
DavidWrightSr: Log officially closed at 12:02. I hope to have it posted sometime tomorow.
starfall2: okay
AGplusone: College freshmen never go to sleep. Take care Jackie and have fun!
NYC20CnLtd: OK. ‘Night.
Reilloc: Goodnight, all.
Reilloc has left the room.
AGplusone: See you all Saturday, I hope. Night LN.
DavidWrightSr: Anybody here who wants to be added to notification list? if so e-mail me at
starfall2: hehe
starfall2: college freshmen with a need to maintain a 3.0 do!
DavidWrightSr: Night All
AGplusone: Really, I mean that! Envy you. You will.
AGplusone: Nite Davfe
starfall2: i’m sure i will
starfall2: goodnight
starfall2 has left the room.
Final End of Discussion Log
