Heinlein Reader’s Discussion Group
Thursday 01-11-2003 05:00 P.M. EST
Teaching The Juveniles – Between Planets
Here Begins The Discussion Log
You have just entered room “Heinlein Readers Group chat.”
aggirlj has entered the room.
aggirlj: Hi David Sr. How you doing?
aggirlj: Hi David, guess Sr. is just on and not there.
AGplusone has entered the room.
AGplusone: What ho, friends!
aggirlj: Finished BP, ending real quick.
KultsiKN has entered the room.
KultsiKN: Hi, all!
AGplusone: Hi, Kultsi
aggirlj: Hi Kultsi.
KultsiKN: Hi, Silvers 😉
aggirlj: Hi you Silvers.
aggirlj: Hi yo Silvers that is.
AGplusone: 🙂
AGplusone: So, I propose we let Jane ask questions about BP . . .
KultsiKN: Second.
AGplusone: For excess “Hi yo”-ing
AGplusone: All in favor say “Aye”
AGplusone: Aye
KultsiKN: Aye
aggirlj: That’s okay with me. And I’ll cut to the chase. How come Heinlein seems to wrap it up in the end so quickly?
aggirlj: An intro to the next one, or keep ’em wanting more?
AGplusone: Kid’s grown up and made up his mind about stuff. Nuthin’ else to say?
KultsiKN: He was having a bout of verbosity, and had to cut it short to please Alice…
aggirlj: Ohhhhh.
aggirlj: I really like this one. The pace was great and all those fun dinosaurs.
aggirlj: Or lizards, or dragons, etc.
AGplusone: In a way, all his juveniles end opening the door into adulthood, and leaving the kid there to carry on.
KultsiKN: Very much so.
AGplusone: I always wanted to see one of the carnivorous cousins.
KultsiKN: Even with a push forward.
aggirlj: Yes, but he never got to make his escape.
AGplusone: What escape?
aggirlj: Leaving Sir Issac’s place when he got bored with doing nothing.
AGplusone: Sure he did. How did you book end. He’s in the ship about to land on Mars, right?
aggirlj: Phipps beat hm to it. Earlier on.
aggirlj: He was going to go through the area that was not protected, stashing food, etc.
AGplusone: Isn’t the metaphor for return to the guerrilla war, in a way, an escape back into an indulgence
aggirlj: Yes, he didn’t want to be just a foot soldier.
AGplusone: Doing what he wants to do instead of a duty
AGplusone: He’s already been told once they can’t let him go back. He mind be captured.
aggirlj: Kinda’ indulgent, yes, and a little thick headed.
aggirlj: And some bravado too.
KultsiKN: Which young man ain’t got that?
aggirlj: Some of us goils have it.
AGplusone: But what’s Heinlein taught so far ?
aggirlj: To think, examine avenues, keep your mouth shut.
AGplusone: Do adult things?
aggirlj: Ah, yeah.
KultsiKN: Take responsibility like an adult, let other adult stuff wait.
KultsiKN: 😀
aggirlj: He certainly took responsibility.
AGplusone: Fer example, in Red Planet, Jim Marlowe just wants to head after the headmaster and kill him . . . . it’s his wiser buddy that says we got to plan this thing out.
aggirlj: Cooler heads.
aggirlj: Heilein also showed Dan as being on his own for a very long time.
AGplusone: Don Harvey wasn’t shown growing up as much as ageing
aggirlj: Don, oops.
aggirlj: I’m not sure of the time span. How long do think this all occurred in?
KultsiKN: I know some pretty aged toddlers.
AGplusone: Months in the bush
aggirlj: There were some things I had to read two and sometimes three times to get the gist. Unusual?
AGplusone: such as?
KultsiKN: With Heinlein? No.
aggirlj: Oh, the ending especially. The spheres.
aggirlj: I finally went, oh duh.
AGplusone: While they’re experimenting or demonstrating them?
aggirlj: Demonstrating with the Federation.
AGplusone: And Phipps asks . . . oh! As they fly by the ships.
aggirlj: But I had to hark back to the expermimenting.
aggirlj: Yes.
KultsiKN: Hate to admit it: looks like my copy of RP’s gone missing, if I ever owned it. Most def’tly read it, though; only way back when.
AGplusone: But you have Between Planets/
aggirlj: Just finished this early afternoon.
KultsiKN: yup.
KultsiKN: The same thingy?
aggirlj: BP, yes.
AGplusone: Can get a copy of Red Planet easier than BP. Not the same.
AGplusone: Red Planet is the one with Willis and the Martians (Gekko) who are like Stranger’s Martians.
aggirlj: Interesting, the cannibalism aspect.
KultsiKN: BTW, Tian sent me Tramp Royale.
aggirlj: Of the gregarians.
aggirlj: Nice play on word.
AGplusone: Between Planet is Don Harvey and Sir Isaac Newton, the Venusian dragon.
AGplusone: gregarian is academic for ‘move-over’
aggirlj: I thought it was part of greagarious.
AGplusone: it is j/k, Jane
aggirlj: What is j/k
KultsiKN: I’ve always thought this ‘Sir Isaac’ stuff being a nudge at the other Isaac…
AGplusone: just kidding
aggirlj: Tanks.
AGplusone: Isaac Asimov?
KultsiKN: Yes.
aggirlj: Which other Issac? Answer came first.
AGplusone: why, K?
KultsiKN: First of all, what’s the time frame of publishing BP?
aggirlj: 1951
AGplusone: Christmas 1951, written earlier in the year.
KultsiKN: Second, when I read BP, I already had read some Asimov stuff.
KultsiKN: So, by then RAH definitely did know Dr. Asimov, right?
AGplusone: Asimov had written the Starr juveniles about that time. Oh, yeah. While married to Leslyn for certain, in Philadelphia during the war.
AGplusone: He’d visited. Like Leslyn although he criticized her for smoking too much.
aggirlj: Was Heinlein a smoker?
KultsiKN: Yes.
aggirlj: His boys aren’t.
KultsiKN: At least I think so. Ginny definitely is.
AGplusone: Yes. Died of emphema
aggirlj: Do you think he might have been warning against.
AGplusone: Conventions then. Good boys didn’t smoke. Remember when the cadets walk into their room first time and find ‘Stinky’ Burke smoking on the bottom bunk.
aggirlj: Vaguely.
AGplusone: In Space Cadet.
aggirlj: I think it might have been a rule perhaps.
KultsiKN: ‘specially, the good gals didn’t smoke, never.
AGplusone: None of the juvenile heros smoke.
aggirlj: Well the good girls did but behind doors.
BPRAL22169 has entered the room.
aggirlj: Hey Bill.
AGplusone: Hi, Bill.
KultsiKN: Hi, Bill!
BPRAL22169: Yo.
BPRAL22169: I thought we might get Tim Kyger dropping by today.
KultsiKN: Do we?
AGplusone: Good. More I think on your Man Without a Country inversion more I see it, but it’s really inverted.
aggirlj: Yes, if that’s to me.
BPRAL22169: Not yet — he said he’d try around 4 pm his time — he’s in Dallas/Ft.Worth
BPRAL22169: Yeah — comedy made out of tragedy.
BPRAL22169: TMWAC starts out with losing Nolan’s country; BP ends with gaining a country — so it must be a double inversion.
BPRAL22169: Mirror image of a tragedy-to-comedy transformation
AGplusone: But he ends really with only ‘countries of convenience’ not with countries. Sez he going somewhere afterwards that will be neither Venus nor Mars, but onward … thataway.
aggirlj: In space, his home.
BPRAL22169: Didn’t he have to make a decision as to where his loyalties lay and decide they lay with Venus in this conflict?
AGplusone: for the time
aggirlj: Yes.
KultsiKN: Tomorrow, the stars. Ooops, wrong title.
AGplusone: he picked a side
aggirlj: 🙂
AGplusone: but ‘tomorrow the stars’ is correct
BPRAL22169: Close enough. He wasn’t “free” until he had made that decision; once you are free, then you can go whither thou listeth.
aggirlj: That’s another thing, free means creative, productive, etc. Very interesting.
KultsiKN: That’s some deep old English.
BPRAL22169: Kind of the lesson of the Book of Job, brought forward to the space era.
AGplusone: Job picks Margarete rather than the abstract God
DavidWrightSr: Hi Folks. I’m finally back.
aggirlj: Hi Sr.
KultsiKN: Hi, Dave Sr!
AGplusone: We jest thought you were a’sleepin’ in the corner, old fellow.
BPRAL22169: I meant the Biblical Book of Job — all the tests are just to ascertain whether Job had actually made a choice, deliberate choice being the quality that makes a human valuable to god or The Adversary
aggirlj: Making choices sets you free.
AGplusone: In your rocker by the fire. Like Ol’ Mose, by the fire, in Searchers. 😛
KultsiKN: Not the wrong choices…
BPRAL22169: Yes. An intersting observation, because, of course, freedom is the ability to choose.
aggirlj: Well I seem to generalize somewhat.
DavidWrightSr: I feel like sleeping. I didn’t sleep too well the previous two nights in a motel.
BPRAL22169: And I think Heinlein would go along with that — if you’re not choosing, you’re not a free human being.
AGplusone: [What kind of business trip, David?]
aggirlj: I gotta’ tell ya’, youse guys have got me hooked.
KultsiKN: Two cups of the strong black, Dave…
DavidWrightSr: A slave has to free himself!
BPRAL22169: Yes. The lesson of — was it Epictitus?
BPRAL22169: And in Heinlein: you cannot enslave a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
AGplusone: I woke up two minutes before the chat started, My daughter took me literally and woke me in time for it. Slurping tea still.
KultsiKN: Aren’t they fascinating, Jane?
aggirlj: Oh, yeah.
AGplusone: Next one we’re going to let you read is a grown-up, tho … spelled groan.
aggirlj: 😀
BPRAL22169: You’re rationing your sister?
aggirlj: I am an acolyte.
AGplusone: Get the new collection, buy it, Fantasies of Robert Heinlein, in hardbound.
BPRAL22169: I know — “it’s for her own good”
KultsiKN: He’s rationing her on me. 😀
aggirlj: 😀
KultsiKN: Got it — thx to Ginny.
BPRAL22169: My copy of the Doubleday Waldo & Magic, Inc., is the only autographed volume I own.
aggirlj: Whoa!
KultsiKN: I’ve got Grumbles, signed by Ginny.
aggirlj: Keep the ring, it might be valuable some day.
BPRAL22169: I shuld have asked her to autograph mine, one of the trips I made to Florida. It just didn’t occur to me.
aggirlj: Quoted from BP
AGplusone: Waldo was originally published in one of the sci-fi mags, available for years in a collection called Waldo and Magic, Inc. Now it’s available with some others in a hardbound copy called Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein.
KultsiKN: Am PROUD!
BPRAL22169: Astounding. 1942 — August, I think?
BPRAL22169: Might have been October.
aggirlj: The IT&T reminded me of the IR&S.
KultsiKN: Lost me, Silvery gal…
aggirlj: The security force and how they were so frightening.
aggirlj: IRS, Internal Revenue Service
DavidWrightSr: Are you referring to the IBI? IT&T was the communications company
KultsiKN: The abrevs…
aggirlj: Oooops, yeah.
AGplusone: I think it was just IT&T, moved to the stars.
AGplusone: Interstellar Telegraph and Telephone
aggirlj: Yeah, and I only just finished it, duh.
AGplusone: or Interplanet Tele & Tel
KultsiKN: ATT in the stars.
DavidWrightSr: They hadn’t quite gotten that far yet, It was Interplanet
aggirlj: Oh, oh, Facsimile, did we even have them then?
KultsiKN: Sort of, I think
AGplusone: Noticed my feed has gone to calling it self Atlantic Bell, instead of Verizon again.
aggirlj: You know, when they read the wire. It was said 3 times and then they copied it.
AGplusone: Remember those drums they sent photos with in the early Dragnet television shows?
BPRAL22169: ISTR that was about the time wire services started transmitting wire photos.
aggirlj: Yeah, just thought of it.
aggirlj: There you go, thought Heinlein was even more of a genius.
AGplusone: But they weren’t very common until much later than 1951.
AGplusone: Say 1957 or so.
BPRAL22169: Picking what would come into common use is a talent, too.
KultsiKN: And, most of all, they were nothing like today’s faxes.
BPRAL22169: No, I think 3M hadn’t invented the wet copy system yet.
aggirlj: You know the more people I mention Heinlein’s name to and this chat, the more people I meet who know him.
AGplusone: “much later” — six years — huh!
AGplusone: You oughta go look and see what’s at his old homestead in Colorado Sprs.
BPRAL22169: I get conflicting reports about that.
aggirlj: I know, I wrote it down. I go right by every day.
BPRAL22169: Ginny thinks their house was torn down recently.
DavidWrightSr: I was reprimanded by my 3rd grade teacher, (1948) for predicting that televisions would one day be carried around by hand. Of course, I had already seen Dick Tracy’s wrist watch tv, but nobody took that seriously 🙂 and she didn’t
DavidWrightSr: ..take my prediction seriously either.
aggirlj: Closed minds.
AGplusone: NIH
AGplusone: “not invented here”
aggirlj: Water boyyyyyyyyyyy, break time?
BPRAL22169: Clarke’s first law: If an elderly and distinguished scientist says something is possible, he’s probably right, but if he says it’s impossible, chances are pretty good he’s wrong.
AGplusone: One thing I noticed in a couple of recent books: wrist pad computers and internet transmissions from Moon or Mars to Earth about as fast as anything we have today. Near instantaneous.
BPRAL22169: Or is that the second law? I forget. The only one I can reliably remember its number is the third law.
aggirlj: I sure liked that politician who just knew the draft wasn’t going to happen nor the war.
AGplusone: Yeah, as if no one had read history . . .
BPRAL22169: wrist pad computers is a timid prediction and probably wrong.
DavidWrightSr: Was it a Heinlein quote that said that you could write a history of science by taking all of the predictions of scientists which said that something couldn’t be done?
AGplusone: do over the old stuff just because that’s how it’s done
BPRAL22169: Sounds more like Anderson — or Benford.
DavidWrightSr: I once saw an April fool article in a computer magazine predicting a ‘tooth’ implant computer
KultsiKN: Today, the limitatios are obvious — not enough display are etc…
BPRAL22169: More likely we’ll be wearing computers in smartfabrics first.
KultsiKN: That’s on Bill’s comment.
AGplusone: I’d think you’d want to project either holographic or on any flat surface
aggirlj: Sr., Brian Keith had the first teeth transplants that I knew about in the 70’s.
aggirlj: implants.
BPRAL22169: And then comes implanted chips.
DavidWrightSr: That reminds me. I am reading L. Neil Smith and in ‘Brightsuit MacBear’ he has implants which project images directly into the brain.
aggirlj: You read that book too Bill.
BPRAL22169: That’s old technology by now.
BPRAL22169: Yes, probably, though I don’t remember that story in particular.
AGplusone: which, the brain projections?
AGplusone: or the holographic?
aggirlj: Somewhere in a beach community in SC
aggirlj: Giant company implants chips through injection.
BPRAL22169: Yeah — lasers can project directly on the fovea of the eye (not direct to the brain, though)
DavidWrightSr: I should add that those images ‘appear’ as holographic images in front of the user.
KultsiKN: They have images projected to their brains constantly… 😎
aggirlj: People develop cables and are connected to the computer.
BPRAL22169: Come to think of it, doesn’t Pilot’s Assistant use some of that tech?
AGplusone: Be a little leery of anything that can project into my brain …
AGplusone: Air Force fighter pilots use projections on canopy all the time I think
DavidWrightSr: HUD
aggirlj: ?
BPRAL22169: Nanotech is coming together very gradually. Nanometer computing is within a few years.
DavidWrightSr: Heads-Up-Display
aggirlj: 🙂
AGplusone: He had something like that in the helmets in Starship Troopers.
KultsiKN: This one F1 driver just got a new helmet — worth $1.5M — with HUD capability.
DavidWrightSr: Exactly
AGplusone: Blink your head one way and you got this, another way and you got that.
BPRAL22169: ISTR there were screens inside the helmet that could be adjusted.
BPRAL22169: The blinks were the equivalent of menu selections.
AGplusone: yea
aggirlj: Me too.
DavidWrightSr: In HSSWT, the dials were visible by mirrors IIRC, ‘effective 14 inches’ or something like that
aggirlj: This shorthand is killing me. But you guys know what it is.
BPRAL22169: There’s a long technology for moving images around by mirrors.
DavidWrightSr: Have Space Suit — Will Travel
BPRAL22169: “IIRC = If I recall correctly; ISTR: I Seem to Recall
AGplusone: something about tongue switches
aggirlj: Ok, I’m workin’ on it.
AGplusone: It seems to me . . . ISTR
aggirlj: 🙂
AGplusone: F1 is a fighter plane
BPRAL22169: BTW – By the Way; IMHO – in my humble opinion; IMNSHO – in my not so humble opinion; GMTA, Great Minds Think Alike.
DavidWrightSr: Juan used a jaw switch to change channels and flipped his head in various ways to bring up weapons etc.
DavidWrightSr: ISTR — I seem to recall
aggirlj: Somewhat like the wheel chairs for parapalegics.
KultsiKN: DOH. Formula One, not an Indy car, but fast anyway.
AGplusone: Anyone know exactly how Stephen Hawking uses his voder?
BPRAL22169: Tongue switches in the space suit in HSSWT, too.
aggirlj: Yeah, that’s an interesting question.
aggirlj: One I’ve wondered about.
DavidWrightSr: I was wondering that. He is very good with it. I got a glimpse of a computer screen that he had in front of him and it was really whipping along.
BPRAL22169: He’s got a huge menu he uses his one “good” arm to select from — it’s a computer built into his wheelchair.
AGplusone: I think that’s a vocabulary
AGplusone: he builds sentences from it
BPRAL22169: I think it’s got a primitive kind of context sensitivity to it.
BPRAL22169: Yes.
BPRAL22169: and lots of macro’d phrases, too, ISTR.
aggirlj: I seem to recall, whopdedoo.
KultsiKN: Word 2K’s got some of that as well — context sensitivity, that is.
BPRAL22169: the special on him I saw was before A Short History of Time came out as a film; his condition must have degenerated further by now.
aggirlj: Don’t put me out of a job yet.
BPRAL22169: very primitive.
AGplusone: There was a PBS shown a few days back showed a back view of him using that menu while he lectured.
KultsiKN: Did some proof reading on a dirty story — it was helpful, still.
DavidWrightSr: That was what I saw
aggirlj: I saw that one.
BPRAL22169: Any indication of when the picture was taken?
AGplusone: Trying to recall, seemed rather recent
DavidWrightSr: My impression was that it was rather recent.
BPRAL22169: Ten years ago he was down to partial control of one wrist.
DavidWrightSr: I didn’t see the whole thing
aggirlj: Well he didn’t move hardly at all from what I can tell.
DavidWrightSr: Frankly, I couldn’t see him using any action, but there has to have been some.
AGplusone: Scrolled down it very quickly … led me to believe it was an alphabetical list
AGplusone: Three or four columns of words
BPRAL22169: Alpha tree structures is the way to organize linguistic material.
DavidWrightSr: Be back shortly. Have to take a break.
AGplusone: black background, light characters … let’s break until 20 past
BPRAL22169: OK by me.
KultsiKN has left the room.
aggirlj: Sounds good.\
AGplusone: I’m going to afk a bit …
BPRAL22169: I’m going to get a drink; brb. (Be Right Back)
AGplusone: “away from keyboard”
KultsiKN has entered the room.
KultsiKN: Duh!
aggirlj: Got booted hey.
KultsiKN: Yup. Damn!
aggirlj: So did you like my ode.
KultsiKN: More with ‘or’, Jane 😀
KultsiKN: Instead of ‘e’
KultsiKN: IOW — ain’t got the faintest.
aggirlj: I have a thread where I did an ode to AFH. Seen it?
AGplusone:
Kultsi studies languages … IOW = in other words
KultsiKN: Oh, THAT. Yes, I have
aggirlj: Never mind.
AGplusone: I feel virtuous. Just took out the trash. My daughter cleaned out the refrigerator. No more “brown stuff” and “green stuff” in it.
aggirlj: How’s the weather?
AGplusone: Nice sunny day
KultsiKN: ’twas interesting. I have limitations in verbalizing English, so I can’t judge the flow etc.
aggirlj: Yeah, you gotta’ have rhythum to really appreciate it.
KultsiKN: Blizzard today, fortunately gone. Just two dead.
aggirlj: Not good.
KultsiKN: and it was such a loverly morning.
AGplusone: There’s an old movie, Walther Mathau and Jack Lemon, called the Odd Couple, in which they room together, K. Mathau is the sloppy one, Lemon the neat freak. Mathau makes sandwiches out of leftovers in the frig. “Brown stuff” and “gr
AGplusone: een stuff” he calls it.
KultsiKN: Like ‘livin’ in the fridge?’
aggirlj: Moving.
AGplusone: You spread the green stuff on the bread and then put some of the brown stuff between the slices.
AGplusone: Sorta
aggirlj: 😀
AGplusone: The kitchen trash can was too heavy for my daughter to carry out, so she asked me to carry it.
KultsiKN:the drink I just poured is Bourbon…
AGplusone: I need a drink after that …
aggirlj: Well, then the sun must be over the yardarm.
AGplusone: ’tis in Finland
aggirlj: Somewhere.
KultsiKN: It’s way under the bottom.
aggirlj: I think it was WC Fields who phrased it better.
AGplusone: I forget. Do you get the northern lights as far south as you are?
KultsiKN: sometimes, yes. Really something.
aggirlj: Wonder if they ever get them in my clime.
AGplusone: Are some months better for them than others? Only time I’ve seen them is in August. And they weren’t much to talk about.
KultsiKN: Mostly greenish, but sometimes reds and blues.
AGplusone: What I saw was a little green.
KultsiKN: Summertime, never. Too much light.
AGplusone: From Anchorage.
KultsiKN: For blues you need a real big storm.
Copycat669 has entered the room.
Copycat669: hi there guys!
AGplusone: Tam?
aggirlj: Hi.
KultsiKN: Hi!
Copycat669: yep, it’s me! tam!
Copycat669: but I’m crampy and achy and whiny today…
Copycat669: 🙂
AGplusone: Hi, Tam … how’s it going.
Copycat669: what are we discussing?
aggirlj: Between Planets
KultsiKN: Aurora. 😉
aggirlj: Well, that too.
Copycat669: Ahh…i have a newer DelRay version of that one.
aggirlj: I got the Ballentine from the library.
aggirlj: David, did they change this one too.
aggirlj: >
aggirlj: ?
AGplusone: Just finished a break … what did you find interesting and worth discussing about Between Planets, Tam. We were discussing Stephen Hawking’s voder just before the break.
BPRAL22169: Isn’t it a vocoder, btw?
AGplusone: No, no notable cuts to satisfy the editors that I know of …
AGplusone: could be … why do I think voder?
Copycat669: I need to go back and reread the whole collection. I have to say thatI really enjoyed the ingenuity displayed by Don. At every step along theway, he uses his wits to get where he needs to be.
BPRAL22169: I think we tend to forget it’s a two-part thing with a voder and a vocoder for output.
AGplusone: Flexible Frank, eh?
AGplusone: He’s pretty darn lucky in the choices he makes …
aggirlj: Yes, that did play into it. But there are special angels for young’uns.
BPRAL22169: Fools and drunks.
AGplusone: picks the wrong ship and he’d be toast going back to Earth, wrong time to enlist and he’d be toast again with the High Guard
KultsiKN: Dave, don’t ya think it’s a time for a break for us as well?
DavidWrightSr: BP uses the term ‘voder’. See the section where it gets damaged in takeoff
BPRAL22169: That just set off a train of thought — do you think it would be possible to relate the Heinlein juvenile protagonist to the Holy Fool?
DavidWrightSr: ? Clarify Please
Copycat669: What is the HOly Fool to which we refer?
AGplusone: [you’re drinking — that’s break enough — I haven’t had my first sip of wine] Yeah, Bill. Whodat?
KultsiKN: Bill, you’re too fast 4me…
BPRAL22169: Trump Zero of the Tarot; the divine innocent.
aggirlj: Okay, then I can go along with that.
KultsiKN: Nah, I meant time to go OT…
BPRAL22169: His juvenile heroes always seem just a little too naive to be quite believed.
AGplusone: [but I’m going to remedy the wine deficiency right now . . . brb]
AGplusone: Sure, OT is fine with me … what OT would you like?
KultsiKN: By whom, Bill?
BPRAL22169: “God protects fools and drunks” is what started that train of thought.
BPRAL22169: It’s a very common comment in the critical literature,
Kultsi. Consider Panshin’s memorable phrase “shatteringly naive” of Thorby
aggirlj: The fools is what I can’t agree with for Don. Naive, yes.
DavidWrightSr: Of course, one answer is that if he didn’t make the right choices, we wouldn’t have a story or rather would have a very short one.
KultsiKN: Some thoughts with Bill about my membership in the Society…
aggirlj: He was a quick learner though.
BPRAL22169: How do you mean,
Kultsi?
Copycat669: I don’t understand Tarot and abstain from further investigation for religious reasons…:-)
aggirlj: 😀
BPRAL22169: Tarot is just a system of symbols.
TreetopAngelRN2 has entered the room.
aggirlj: Hi Elizabeth.
KultsiKN: Hi, E!
DavidWrightSr: Hi E!!
TreetopAngelRN2: Morning Jane! and Group!
AGplusone: A lot of medieval symbolism depends on it; and you cannot understand some medieval writings without a knowledge of the playing field.
Copycat669: Hey there elizabeth
BPRAL22169: Your handle is in bright chartreuse on my system, Elizabeth.
TreetopAngelRN2: Cool, much brighter than I feel!!
KultsiKN: Well, like starting a … chapter around here.
Copycat669: That’s unfortunate, Silver, for me anyway. But it’s interesting to hear comparisons made by others…:-)
BPRAL22169: If you have any interest, you could come to the same concepts through symbolical philosophy — a lot of it got taken over into Freemasonry.
TreetopAngelRN2: topic?
BPRAL22169: Between Planets.
KultsiKN: Really don’t many addicts around here — I might be the only one. 😉
Copycat669: A comparison of the Heinline Juveniles with one of the symbols from a deck of Tarot cards…Holy Fool?
AGplusone: [it sez here: Francis Coppola presents California Bianco, a blend of chardonay, Riesling, Muscat, and Malvasia … sip]
BPRAL22169: We’re digressing slightly on the naivete of the juvenile protagonist — possibly a reflection of the Divine Innocent or Trump Zero of Tarot or the Holy Fook
TreetopAngelRN2: Ah! Tarot…
Copycat669: I don’t see this as a digression, really. I mean to compare is to make discovery…
BPRAL22169: I know,
Kultsi — the population density doesn’t make it an encouraging prospect. But it’s something I wanted you to think about. I’ll be doing something when I get settled into San Francisco.
BPRAL22169: I don’t recall offhand any other Heinleinians in SF, but there are bound to be some, so I’m going to try to shake them out.
KultsiKN: I have thought about it. The only ones I know are something like old Mr. Krause…
TreetopAngelRN2: That sounds like fun…make flyers for the used bookstores, you’ll find them…
BPRAL22169: The friend the Heinleins met in Helsinki, who was the model for Captain Krause of Sisu? I didn’t know he was still alive.
aggirlj: I’ve found lots in my area.
TreetopAngelRN2: I bet Jane! They have to be around there…
aggirlj: Obvious reason.
AGplusone: Suspect you’ll find a lot of Urban Guerrilla Bookstores with little reading groups not run by Barnes & Noble salespersons.
Copycat669: I think the most endearing quality of the juveniles for me is the subtleunderlying messages that are hidden in the stories. IN this, for instance,Don encounters many hopeless situations, but perseveres nonetheless.
KultsiKN: Some time ago (1 yr) he still was — actually I ran across his son and we got talking.
Copycat669: Do you think that was HIS goal or that was just the particular marketing direction he was expected to take…
DavidWrightSr: If the heroes weren’t somewhat naive in some areas, we wouldn’t have any room for their growth would we?
KultsiKN: so right, Dave!
TreetopAngelRN2: I think it was how the character turned out, there is a time when stubborness is a good thing…
AGplusone: Don is a pretty unwritten upon tablet when we first find him riding Lucky across the range.
BPRAL22169: I don’t think Heinlein’s Scribner’s editor was ever able to give him much positive direction, though he relied on her negative directions.
aggirlj: For marketing?
DavidWrightSr: And some of them were really very sophisticated in their own way. Thorby for example in the ways of the underground.
BPRAL22169: Don at the start reminds me a bit of John Thomas Stuart
AGplusone: Thinks war is just something you study in school.
KultsiKN: And raising him..
BPRAL22169: Also pretty much a tabula rasa
Copycat669: It’s funny, though, and maybe that’s why I’m no Heinlien, but whenI write, I don’t write that deeply. I construct a story and it forms forentertainment, not necessarily teaching. I agree with teh comparison toJT.
DavidWrightSr: Let me thrown in an idea here. Have any of you thought about the connection to Dr. Jefferson’s little speech about the infinite number of worlds when they are in the restaurant to the World-as-Myth?
AGplusone: It’s like the three stories of character development mentioned on Yahoo, Tam. With Heinlein it’s always going to be “boy-meets-girl, or ‘man who learned a lesson,’ or “little tailor” or some combo.
Copycat669: I found it funny that there was a Chapter called The Glory Road aswell. I believe I was reading the book at the same time we were discussingGlory Road and hadn’t read it yet.
BPRAL22169: Even by 1941 — 4 years after he started publishing these juveniles — he was still marking out a unique path in the field. I understand the Horatio Alger stories were his biggest model.
Copycat669: World-as-myth…yes…I apply that to every Heinlein story now, as sort of an “addition” to the history of the world…
AGplusone: And The Glory Road was in for just as rough and rocky a trip as Oscar ever took. Don was embarking on one.
DavidWrightSr: 1941? 4 years ? Do you mean 1951?
BPRAL22169: Yes, you’re right: 1951
Copycat669: Expand on your world as myth, thought, david…were you taking that somewhere?
DavidWrightSr: I just thought that it was very interesting that that concept got stuck in there seemingly as just an idle speculation with no follow-up whatsoever in that work.
Copycat669: World as myth shows up in BP?
TreetopAngelRN2: I found that I was just agreeing with Dr. Jefferson, not thinking about it, just agreeing…
DavidWrightSr: (sneaky fellow that I am. I also used that as the opening to Part Two of my article coming out this month in The Heinlein Journal).
DavidWrightSr: 🙂
BPRAL22169: It was a very esoteric idea at the time — somewhat less esoteric now.
BPRAL22169: David, you should explain for Tam.
BPRAL22169: About Dr. Jefferson’s remark, I meant.
DavidWrightSr: Hang on a minute….
KultsiKN: We’re gonna get a quote…
BPRAL22169: Not world as myth, per se.
TreetopAngelRN2: inkling of the idea…
Copycat669: ok. cool. 🙂
DavidWrightSr: Gotta do it in two parts.
Copycat669: since I moved, I have my bookcase right next to my computer. I justreach out and grab the book we’re looking at…hehehe. MY IDEA of paradise!
TreetopAngelRN2: waiting is…
TreetopAngelRN2: I did the same thing Tam!!
DavidWrightSr: “Studied any mathematical philosophy, Don? Familiar with infinite universe sheafs and open-ended postulate systems?” “Uh, I’m afraid not, sir.”
KultsiKN: Mine’s way over there. 🙁
DavidWrightSr: “Simple idea and very tempting. The notion that every-thing is possible-and I mean everything-and everything has happened. Everything. One universe in which you accepted that wine and got drunk as a skunk.
DavidWrightSr: Another in which the fifth planet never broke up. Another in which atomic pow-er and nuclear weapons are as impossible as our ancestors thought they were. That last one might have its points, for sissies at least. Like me.”[23]
Copycat669: chapter?
DavidWrightSr: Chapter 2 when they are at the restaurant before the air raid drill
Copycat669: found it first—who hoo–oh well
aggirlj: “Hunted”
TreetopAngelRN2: Sounds very familiar when pointed out…I am curently reading H. Beam Piper’s Paratime stories.
BPRAL22169: Great series.
TreetopAngelRN2: loving it, was thrilled when I found the trade paper with all the stories in it.
BPRAL22169: Piper’s the only other SF writer who made fiction out of J.W. Dunne’s stuff.
Copycat669: Ok…don’t think i’m obstinate, but I don’t see that as supporting world-as-myth so much as parallel universes.
DavidWrightSr: Piper and Heinlein both based a lot of their work on the philosophical speculations about time by Ouspensky and J.W. Dunne. Both specifically mention them.
AGplusone: Something like that even in the recent Michael Crighton story on time.
TreetopAngelRN2: I read about that in the forward, will have to look him up.
AGplusone: The one where they pop back to the 14th century France Aquitane
BPRAL22169: The only difference, Tam, between what’s in BP and the World As Myth is the jargon of quantum mechanics, framing the cusps in terms of quantum fictons.
BPRAL22169: Did Piper mention Ouspensky, too? I hadn’t noticed that.
DavidWrightSr: It would depend on whether or not you think of the WAM as actually being ‘created’ by authors or there being existing worlds which ‘represent’ the authors works.Note that the ‘Alice’ world was not exactly what was in the book
TreetopAngelRN2: That is a good one David Jr. read that one also!
DavidWrightSr: Sorry, You are right I don’t believe Piper did mention him.
Dehede011 has entered the room.
TreetopAngelRN2: Hi Ron!
Dehede011: Howdy Y’all
aggirlj: Hi Ron.
KultsiKN: Hello, Ron!
AGplusone: It’s the eraser on the end of the pencil that gets Daffy all the time. Half of the world’s Daffy’s a star. Half of the worlds, including ours, Bugs erased him.
DavidWrightSr: You can consider all of this a paid advertisment. Get your subscription now O:-)
Copycat669: mmm..i’m not so sure of that.
BPRAL22169: I was about to say you could probably make a case for ouspensky in Piper, but I think he gets his Extraphysical Ego Component from Dunne, after all.
Dehede011: I kept noticing some of you were on line — then my defective memory kicked in
Copycat669: I think that Parellel Universes depend on A creator setting life in motionlike water down a hill and it splinters off into different rivulets, alldifferent, and yet the same.
Copycat669: World as myth is more dependent on creationand allows each of us to “play God” merely by exercising our creative abilities.
AGplusone: By erasing Sam Beaux?
Copycat669: Ah. ok, david said that. 🙂
Copycat669: Trouble with typing long responses that have to be cut up, i guess.
KultsiKN: Tam, they jist get intermixed. 😉
TreetopAngelRN2: I have to run away folks!!! See you next chat…Bye!
DavidWrightSr: I mentioned this whole concept to a friend of mine yesterday, and when I said that all universes were a figment of someone else imagination, he said that it was comforting to know that somebody was thinking of him!\
aggirlj: Bye E!
BPRAL22169: I don’t know about that, Tam — that’s just one of the ways universes get filled. It comes up in the discussionf why they are visiting their favorite fictional universes. I got the impression all possibilities were filled out;
KultsiKN: Bye, E!!
Dehede011: CU
Tree Top
TreetopAngelRN2 has left the room.
Copycat669: bye elizabeth
AGplusone: bye E
Copycat669: OH DAVID! that’s HILARIOuS! Think of him…
DavidWrightSr: Yeah. but what if I don’t like the guy/gal who is thinking of me? 🙂
BPRAL22169: In a way, that’s very Christian — Thomism holds that the universe is maintained in existence by the continuous Will of God.
AGplusone: It’s also Twain’s Mysterious Stranger universe … created in bubble of a mind, ending when we die.
aggirlj: BRB
AGplusone: Although I think the protagonist in Mysterious Stranger is Lucifer, according to some.
Copycat669: I can reconcile the parallel universe with Christianity, but World as Myth puts man on a God level.
KultsiKN: Y’all just figments of electrons…
BPRAL22169: Yes, I think he says specifically he’s Lucifer, doesn’t he?
Copycat669: I can ponder it, but it feels a bit guilty…
AGplusone: Like Job: A Comedy of Justice? Or Jurgen
Copycat669: What’s Mysterious Stranger?
AGplusone: A Twain novel, sorta
Copycat669: OH.
BPRAL22169: Mark Twain’s last book — not published until 1965, I think.
AGplusone: has variant endings
Copycat669: Man, i feel illeterate around you brains sometimes…
aggirlj: You!
Copycat669: HAHAHAH!! did you see that I typo’d illiterate? 🙂
KultsiKN: &Me
DavidWrightSr: I agree Tam from a purely personal viewpoint. It definitely goes against my religious beliefs, but I don’t let them stop me from enjoying the concept.
Copycat669: exactly, david
DavidWrightSr: or writing about it 🙂
Dehede011: Gotta go folks, the flu bug has got me BYE
Dehede011 has left the room.
Copycat669: if we don’t open our minds to understanding conflicting concepts, we’llnever be able to defend our personal convictions. And so, I think what wewrite is different that what we live, too…:-)
KultsiKN: That was a fast bug!
BPRAL22169: I don’t know . . . I think you could make it consistent with Christianity: that’s just the way Jehovah set it up; it happens that the bible deals almost exclusively with dealings in this one timeline.
aggirlj: I don’t think it’s happenstance.
BPRAL22169: There are lots of facts not covered in the Bible. Although some narrow scissorbills say “if it’s not in the Bible it’s not true,” that’s not a mainstream way of approaching things.
Copycat669: Well….I think that the Bible couldn’t possibly contain EVERYTHINGbut it does contain the important stuff. if it’s not in there, it ain’timportant.
AGplusone: You can read some classics, for example, Milton’s Paradise Lost, as anti-religious. The entire explaining God’s ways to man, business, can be read as subversion, Tam.
Copycat669: BUT I can’t reconcile the idea that I can create my own world withthe teaching of humility, servitude, and definite insignificance with God’sown powers.
BPRAL22169: Well, one extreme of that attitude is the Amish, who refuse to use anything that wasn’t invented in Biblical times (not quite true; there’s a lower limit of something like 1650)
Copycat669: And again, don’t get me wrong, it DOES have a place in my fantasy life.
aggirlj: One must and should dream.
DavidWrightSr: Actually, Orthodoxy is based on a lot of things which are not in the Bible. In fact, the Bible itself is considered just one aspect of what we call Holy Tradition.
Copycat669: And I don’t believe that God doesn’t want me reading books and creationsof man that don’t necessarily square with God’s teachings because I needto be aware of the alternatives in order to be confident in my choices.
Copycat669: So World as Myth is a great concept for me to chew on once in a while.
BPRAL22169: I think this is just a matter of perspective: if the true nature of Jahweh’s creation is that human beings create worlds by mythopoeia, it doesn’t in the least affect the reverence due to Jahweh, does it?
AGplusone: And Milton slipped his classic by during a period of extreme religious Puritanism.
DavidWrightSr: Same here as well as all of the other concepts in Heinlein.
Copycat669: ok, more than once, but….
Copycat669: So anyway, what I love about Between Planets too is the idea that youcan build positive relationships that will come in handy later. kind ofa Fraternity of Friends idea…
AGplusone: The “White Brotherhood” of Scientists. We haven’t talked about that one, yet, Bill.
BPRAL22169: And we go from the Plain Folk to puritanism to Quakers.
DavidWrightSr: Specifically? Do you mean Don’s friendship with Sir Isaac or what?
aggirlj: Sir Issac and Isobel.
BPRAL22169: True — though it’s also a trope that goes back to 19th century fiction. Wasn’t the moon cannon in From the Earth to the Moon built by a consortium somewhat like this?
BPRAL22169: And H.G. Wells’ Wings Over the World?
Copycat669: yeah, both. I mean all through the book, little coincidences save his butt…:-)
AGplusone: It’s a lot also like the Masonic fraternity in “If This Goes On . . . ” in Revolt in 2100
AGplusone: The notion of an organization of homo supersaps saving humanity, as in Gulf.
BPRAL22169: I think part of Don’s “lucky coincidences” is being the kind of person who would be cherished by Isobel and Sir Isaac.
aggirlj: Because of his ingenousness.
aggirlj: Sp?
AGplusone: “Lucky Don Harvey” LOL
BPRAL22169: I wonder if this white brotherhood could also be equated to Wells’ “Open Conspiracy.”
BPRAL22169: There are a lot of possible sources — Heinlein used these story figures often because they could be used to bring in lots of different thematic directions.
Copycat669: eh, we’re taking it a bit too far, as far as the poitn I was tryingto make. I suppose I was merely trying to say that if you are the kind ofperson who deserves loyalty of friends, you’ll benefit from it.
aggirlj: I agree Tam.
BPRAL22169: Actually, Tam, I think two different points got launched at about the same time.
Copycat669:
AGain with the touchy-feely moral that isn’t even a hint of the adult books.
Copycat669: ah, 🙂
DavidWrightSr: I relate this more to the ‘cusps’ that lead Michael to the conclusion of SIASL. Each one was necessary for him to get where he was going. Same for Don. If hadn’t met these people and interacted with them, the story would have been..
DavidWrightSr: different
AGplusone: But why is Don ‘lucky.’ Because he’s willing to wash dishes if that’s what it takes to support himself, like Alex Hergenshimer, in Job:ACOJ?
AGplusone: roll up his sleeves and do anything?
aggirlj: That’s my point. He doesn’t have a snobish bone in his body.
DavidWrightSr: And will to ‘share mud’ with Sir Isaac and Isobel.
DavidWrightSr: and eventully Phipps.
Copycat669: Which is no problem for those of us schizophrenics, right?
Copycat669 has left the room.
AGplusone: He couldna gone to the Black Market, become a con artist like Johnnie Ling
BPRAL22169: Very Horatio-Algerish: politeness opens doors.
aggirlj: Very attractive.
AGplusone: His question to the Lieutenant says it all, finally: “Where do I sign up?”
DavidWrightSr: Like Thorby could have become a thief etc. without Baslim, but he had to come to the realization himself that it was up to him.
aggirlj: brb
aggirlj: let the dawg out.
AGplusone: LT sez: well, you know that you’ll probably die, and if they capture you you’ll be executed for treason. Answer: yeah, I figured that out last night.
AGplusone: “Where do I sign up?” “Raise your right hand.”
AGplusone: Time to do the dishes again.
BPRAL22169: Farmer in the Sky was just before this book; The Rolling Stones is just after it, then Starman Jones. Looks like he’s got broken and distant families on his mind at this stage.
DavidWrightSr: I’m really surprised that Dog-leash let this one get by with so much, lots of killing both on and off the screen.
aggirlj: Yeah, Charlie.
DavidWrightSr: But, I guess it’s alright if the ‘govment licensed them’ O:-)
AGplusone: I think you have to consider this: RAH grew up 1917-25, lots of kids with death in family, WW 1, the Spanish flu epidemic; and WW 2 had just ended. Same story, and with Korea beginning ….
aggirlj: Hmmmmmmmmmm! 🙂
AGplusone: I think he saw a market of one-parent kids out there.
AGplusone: Horatio Alger, as you pointed out.
KultsiKN: D’ya think he targeted ot on the the poor sods?
DavidWrightSr: Yeah. most of these one-parent families were due to death, not divorce.
AGplusone: Divorces came later.
AGplusone: So too did the 60s with unmarried mothers
BPRAL22169: This is something completely off the wall, but I’m going to toss it out as speculation: in 1950 and 1951 he had just married Ginny and was trying to start a family.
DavidWrightSr: I don’t think so specifically,
Kultsi, but most kids experience some aspect of this even with both parents. Maybe due to their own doing.
AGplusone: Yes. I think that was part of it.
AGplusone: Before they found they couldn’t.
BPRAL22169: He comes from a large family, but most of the families he writes about were small. The Rolling Stones and Time for the Stars are the exceptions that come tomind.
BPRAL22169: could he have been thinking about what his childrens’ lives might be like in 15-20 years?
BPRAL22169: He was also revising the Future History at that time, between 1949 and 1953
DavidWrightSr: There is a possible case of what I was saying in ‘The Black Pits of Luna’
aggirlj: I would hazard a guess you’re in the right arena. I would think about it.
AGplusone: Even when he writes about Maureen Johnson, there’s the fact that Dr. Johnson goes awol so to speak circa 1898 and on into the Philippine Insurrection, so the younger ones are raised, so to speak, without Dr. J’s input
BPRAL22169: David S, remind me about “BPOL”
AGplusone: Just as if the father was on the road all the time, or off in KC or StLouis
DavidWrightSr: David S or W?
AGplusone: The kid that gets lost in the hole. the one the boy scout finds.
BPRAL22169: S
BPRAL22169: I mean W
BPRAL22169: What did David Wright say about Black Pits of Luna?
AGplusone: Told at the end: we don’t want your parents, but maybe you should think about coming back
DavidWrightSr: I was thinking about the mother specifically, who really was kind of dysfunctional
AGplusone: so was I
BPRAL22169: I dunno — that seemed like a kind of stock character to me.
DavidWrightSr: and now that I think of it is similar to Grace in FF.
BPRAL22169: Come to think of it, wasn’t BPOL written for the Post?
KultsiKN: In RL — where’s the education to be a parent?
DavidWrightSr: Yeah, stock, but in this case makes the family kind of one-parent, even though the father isn’t much better. Call it a 1/4 parent family 🙂
AGplusone: Exactly, the kid can think outside the box, like his little brother would think.
AGplusone: Neither parent can
BPRAL22169: Quote from an interview: One story, “Black Pits of Luna,” I wrote in four hours and sold it to the Saturday Evening Post without having touched it at all. That happens once in a blue moon.”
DavidWrightSr: WOW!
AGplusone: Who’d have thought to curl up in a plant over night.
aggirlj: A Ranger maybe.
AGplusone: Except maybe Clark Fries
KultsiKN: Or one familiar with the cold.
AGplusone: Who makes slings out of his shoe trees
aggirlj: Got me.
AGplusone: A later book, Jane. Podkayne of Mars
KultsiKN: A depressive book.
aggirlj: Save it for much later.
DavidWrightSr: I have to admit it. A lot of Heinlein’s characters are ‘stock’. I don’t care myself. It’s how those stock characters relate to each other in different scenarios and the ingenuity of those scenarios is what interests me.
aggirlj: Swimming in the waters, reminiscent of African Queen.
jilyd has entered the room.
DavidWrightSr: Hi Dee
KultsiKN: Hi, Dee!
aggirlj: Hi Dee.
jilyd: Hi! Thanks fir the invite, K.
AGplusone: Thinking about the last two: Red Planet and Between Planets … seems to me that here he starts seeding a little cynicism of elders.
AGplusone: Hi, Dee.
BPRAL22169: Well — his technique wrt the Post stories in particular was to take stock characters and situations and move them onto the frontier in space.
DavidWrightSr: Precisely. That was what made them real for me.
Copycat669 has entered the room.
KultsiKN: WB, Tam!
Copycat669: computer crash.
AGplusone: You get Howe the headmaster instead of Commodore Ackroyd … you get con artists instead of teachers.
aggirlj: Firgured.
KultsiKN: Duh!
Copycat669 has left the room.
aggirlj: Again,
KultsiKN: S* happens.
AGplusone: It’s leading up to Sam Roberts or Richards … who you take with a grain of salt.
KultsiKN: Well… CAN you, Dave?
BPRAL22169: Not too much cynicism in the next book, The Rolling Stones.
AGplusone: Sure, so long as he doesn’t ask me to hold his package of tea cosies.
aggirlj: Oh, is that the next one?
AGplusone: while we go through customs
aggirlj: To read?
DavidWrightSr: And the cynicism in HSSWT is more about society rather than individuals. It seems to me.
DavidWrightSr: In fact, most of the individuals come off looking pretty good, IIRC, except for Ace Quiggle. 🙂
KultsiKN: Cynicism about the society is GOOD, IMO.
BPRAL22169: And then Star Beast is 1954 — certainly a lot of healthy cynicism in that one.
AGplusone: There’s cynicism about Iunio in HSSWT
AGplusone: Wants to buy PeeWee. She’s young but I kin train her.
DavidWrightSr: Yeah, but he is really like Roberts/Richards, I think
AGplusone: I agree.
AGplusone: Or like “Ace” in ST … not Ace in HSSWT
DavidWrightSr: Yep
AGplusone: I’m not sure I’d go on a 3-day pass with Ace in SST
AGplusone: Have to watch my back if he ran out of money.
BPRAL22169: Something else occurred to me: Between Planets was serialized at exactly the same time as The Puppet Masters.
DavidWrightSr: I think that you be ok after you got to be buddies.
AGplusone: after
AGplusone: Before that, he’s Johnnie Ling
AGplusone: make him go through doors first
AGplusone: wrt what, Bill?
AGplusone: ‘with respect/regard to” what
DavidWrightSr: Bill, you are absolute right, same month and year. Do you see any significance?
aggirlj: 🙂
BPRAL22169: I don’t know — I was just turning that fact over in my mind trying to make some connection. No success so far.
KultsiKN: Were the Heinleins needing all the could bear?
AGplusone: There’s a comparison with the lyrical form of prose he wrote in the second chapter of Between Planets describing the scene in the night club and the scene in PM where he describes Washington before the onslaught.
KultsiKN: Traffic, that is.
BPRAL22169: Puppet Masters takes off on Cold War and on the Flying Saucer stuff that was in the news at the time, so it’s highly topical.
AGplusone: He never really got so poetical again, that I could see.
DavidWrightSr: There is a degree of similarity in the fact that the scenario is based on absolute dictatorships of one type or another.
AGplusone: He was trying for style points.
BPRAL22169: Well, they were building the house in Colorado Springs at the time (more or less) — he started writing TPM after the main construction was over.
BPRAL22169: The New Beginnings chapter of TEFL for poetry?
BPRAL22169: He had a purple passage a little similar at the end of “Lost Legacy.”
AGplusone: Yes, but not as descriptive …. or purple
DavidWrightSr: My favorite in TEFL.
KultsiKN: ‘discussions In The Dark’ in TEFL.
AGplusone: The New Beginnings is poetry. The scenes I’m talking about are descriptively poetic.
AGplusone: lush
DavidWrightSr: Examples?
BPRAL22169: OK.
KultsiKN: From who?
AGplusone: I’ll have to dig them out. It’s the scene where he writes about how beautiful the river looks in PM … the lights, etc.
DavidWrightSr: David S.
AGplusone: How vital
BPRAL22169: It’s the passage where he talks about the multicolored domes and the bioluminescent streaks in the waters of the Potomac.
AGplusone: compared to the scene in the nightclub with Dr Jefferson, the descriptiveness of it.
DavidWrightSr: I recall that. He carries it on to thinking about all of the people under those lights carrying a slug on their backs.
aggirlj: Owwweee.
KultsiKN: Ain’i it.
AGplusone: As I said, I think he was trying for artsy style points both times.
aggirlj: About the way they lived a precursor to SISL.
AGplusone: Be interesting to know who he was reading at the time he wrote both
aggirlj: In BP.
aggirlj: On Earth.
DavidWrightSr: (ot: I hate being away from my computer for any length of time. I have 468 messages to catch up on in a.f.h.)
BPRAL22169: Something else — Robert Kennedy pointed out in the Journal some time back he was building a “last ride together” feeling in that passage in TPM, and there is very much the fin de siecle feeling in that passage in BP.
BPRAL22169: Dr. jefferson remarks on the decadence of his society.
KultsiKN: 416 the last day or so…
AGplusone: A lot of commonality with both of them …
AGplusone: which is why I think they are so similar
AGplusone: May have been reading Pater, for all we know.
BPRAL22169: LOL. I don’t see Pater as quite RAH’s thing (though Cabell admired him)
AGplusone: “wilder music, darker wine”
KultsiKN: What would the guys be thinking of OUR times?
aggirlj: Well with that dinner the cannibalism as I mentioned earlier. Interestingthat Don wouldn’t blink an eye, but he was distracted.
BPRAL22169: This is definitely a decadent time.
BPRAL22169: Are we about to expire?
aggirlj: Seems to be winding down.
KultsiKN: Not ME!
AGplusone: Well, you have to think about the state of mind in 1951. League of Nations, er, United Nations was looking like it might fail.
aggirlj: I game.
AGplusone: Uncle Joe had the bomb.
BPRAL22169: Korea
AGplusone: Maybe it was the last ride together.
KultsiKN: Uncla Vanya had it as well…
AGplusone: We all had the two-car garage, but they were ‘rioting in africa, and starving in spain, there were hurricanes in florida, and texas needs rain’
DavidWrightSr: And I don’t like anyone very much
AGplusone: right
BPRAL22169: Sounds like Don Henley, don’t it?
KultsiKN: But the winters were reel winters and the summers were all sunny…
aggirlj: Yep, try out our drought right now.
DavidWrightSr: Fortunately for me, when I read BP, which I believe was my first Heinlein, I wasn’t doing much thinking about any of this stuff. Korea was going on but it wasn’t touching me personally
AGplusone: Between Planets has real echos of what may be coming. Notice what polarizes Don. The Greenies burning out the slum (and the rest of the city) when they land.
AGplusone: We do that in Bagdad we’re in deep doo-doo
aggirlj: Too many eyes these days.
AGplusone: I felt like starting another mooching thread after Thursday, but got lazy.
KultsiKN: Very long eyes at that.
AGplusone: Don Henley?
aggirlj: Elucidate.
KultsiKN: Tends to keep ya ‘onest, though…
aggirlj: Ah, oh.
aggirlj: Shouldn’t be the provcation for honest. But oh well.
aggirlj: honesty.
BPRAL22169: The rhetoric sounds like something he would write. His latest album has some — shall we say “vicious”? –satire in it.
AGplusone: Don’t know Henley
BPRAL22169: You probably do but don’t know it. You can’t have missed one or two of his numbers in the early 80’s: “All she wants to do is Dance,” for instance.
AGplusone: I loved that little passage rebutting the Earth’s government wouldn’t do anything argument.
BPRAL22169: Obviously they hadn’t read the same tracts.
aggirlj: From the soldier?
BPRAL22169: And, of course, he was one of the principal writers of The Eagles in the 70’s.
AGplusone: No, in Chapter X. p. 113.
AGplusone: “The attack should not have happened of course ….
AGplusone: The rice farmer had been perfectly right. The Federation could not afford to risk its own cities … and so on.
AGplusone: “A rice farmer has one logic. Men who live by and for power have another …
aggirlj: seargent rice farmer.
AGplusone: yeah
AGplusone: reads right today
aggirlj: I think it’s timeless.
KultsiKN: Agree, Jane.
AGplusone: Pure Heinlein.
aggirlj: So how come you didn’t insist I read more a long time ago.
aggirlj: Never mind, rhetorical.
AGplusone: Well, . . .
KultsiKN: Yeah, Dave; leave it at that.
AGplusone: you got smarter as I got older
aggirlj: Thanks, makes me feel real young.
AGplusone: like my parents
aggirlj: 😛
AGplusone: or I got better at being persuasive, take your pick
aggirlj: You certainly changed your style, not YOU WILL but TRY THIS.
AGplusone: horrible when your family has your number, ain’t it?
AGplusone: 😉
AGplusone: What you bin up to today, Dee?
AGplusone: aka Quiet Dee
jilyd: Quiet Dee didn’t do her homework this week, so she is just listening. Been a long time since I read BP.
AGplusone: Worth a reread … some many parallels to what’s going on today. LN had it on the button with his last post I’m afraid.
BPRAL22169: I’m afraid I need to leave. It’s been a good chat, people. Thanks.
jilyd: BTW, I finally found out how to frighten a Marine! Percy commented the other day that I was being quiet, and that this was scarey.
aggirlj: Thanks to you, and see you later.
DavidWrightSr: So long Bill.
jilyd: Bye, Bill.
BPRAL22169: ciao all.
AGplusone: see u bill
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
AGplusone: some = so
DavidWrightSr: I’m going to be AFK, but I’ll stay signed in to catch any further comments. Have fun.
jilyd:
AG, it is not pleasant to htink how right LN may have been.
aggirlj: See you later.
AGplusone: Steelers are still alive …
jilyd: Bye DtE
KultsiKN: Sorry, folks — four hours of sleep last night; am about to drop off. I bid y’all a Good Night.
AGplusone: See ya, K, and D
aggirlj: By
Kultsi it was fun.
jilyd: Night, Cutie.
KultsiKN: 🙂
AGplusone: I’ll send you the log, Dave. Did you get the first one?
KultsiKN: Night!
KultsiKN has left the room.
DavidWrightSr: I’ve got everything for both nights.
AGplusone: Including the little boot you had today?
jilyd: Um,
AG, you did do the editing we talked about?
AGplusone: Yeah.
aggirlj: You’re all in trouble now, I’ve opened the GM.
jilyd: Okay.
jilyd: The GM?
aggirlj: Grand Marnier.
jilyd: General Manager?
aggirlj: 😀
jilyd: Should be safew–it’s way too sweet to get tipsy on.
aggirlj: Oh it’s possible.
AGplusone: I’m about to go to brandy myself. The Coppola Bianco wasn’t too bad but only one glass left of it.
AGplusone: Horrible hangover if you do get drunk on it.
jilyd: Doesn’t seem possible, jane.
aggirlj: Take Tylonol if your liver can handle it.
aggirlj: Deeeeee.
jilyd: I’ll bet! Yuck.
jilyd: Never had a hangover, myself. Take a handful of tylenol, and stay awake til you’re sober.
aggirlj: Ask Teresa, I tried to order GS Cookies after the last chat.
AGplusone: What’s the one tastes like oranges?
aggirlj: Something Citron.
AGplusone: No, something else.
aggirlj: Can’t think of it.
jilyd: Somewhere, sometime, I had a recipe for a Gateau St. Honore that used GM in the custard cream filling, layered between puff pastry like a torte, with spun sugar decorating the top. Decadent.
jilyd: GM is orabgey, so is Cointreau.
aggirlj: Yeah. Sounds real good. Have a mousse that uses Kahlua.
jilyd: Kahlua and cream over ice.
aggirlj: Tasty.
jilyd: Or a frozen brandy Alexander.
aggirlj: Tuaca?
AGplusone: Cointreau is the one I’m thinking of. Got horribly hungover with it one time.
jilyd: But that’s not drinking, that’s dessert.
aggirlj: Got it.
AGplusone: yeah, well this girl I knew decided to get me drunk on it, for fun, I think
jilyd: What’s tuaca?
DavidWrightSr: Log officially closed at 8:17 P.M. EST (Above) I will be dropping all the chit chat unless you want it left in. Night All
aggirlj: Oh, god I have to explain it. It’s deadly is all I know, tastes swee.
AGplusone: Good idea Dave
jilyd: Noah, she just had evil designs on your body. Didn;t realize that doesn’t work quite as effectively on males. 😉
DavidWrightSr: Do svidaniye i s’ pokoijnij nochi.
jilyd: Very good idea.
Final End Of Discussion Log
