Heinlein Reader’s Discussion Group Thursday 10-12-2000 9:00 P.M. Time Enough For Love #1

Heinlein Reader’s Discussion Group

Thursday 10-12-2000 9:00 P.M.

Time Enough For Love #1

 

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Subject: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/02/2000

Author: AGplusone <

The Robert A. Heinlein Reading Group

Notice of Meetings

http://members.aol.com/agplusone/rahmain.htm

Date: Thursday, October 12, 9 PM to midnight, ET, and Saturday, October 14, 2000, 5 to 8 PM, ET.

Topic: Continuing the “Future History” with the novel _Time Enough For Love_. Chat

Cohosts: David Wright, Sr () and Jane Davitt ().

Having completed our survey of the official “Future History” stories from “Life-Line” through “Common Sense,” a popular request is we continue with the story of the Howard families, particularly those blatant lies that comprise the “Lives” of the Senior Member of the Families (t/n Woodrow Wilson Smith, and various alias). So there you have it. Jane and David will share hosting duties and begin their leadoff posts for this excursion.

Please remember to help them out by your thoughts in posts before the meetings. As always, there is more than just the ‘story’ to talk about this one of Heinlein’s works.

For information on how to participate in the chats, download software from http://www.aol.com/aim/home.html/ and read the directions on David Wright’s website: http://www.alltel.net/~dwrighsr/heinlein.html/

On an incidental note: we’ve been beneficiary of some wonderful efforts by Mrs. Heinlein and others to influence some other authors so that we may resume, schedule permitting, visits discussing their own works and the influences of Robert Heinlein on their writings. To arrange for such visits, I’m going to be starting another thread discussing what we may need from persons regularly posting on AFH to make their visits more enjoyable for all.

“Good eating!” was my last closing salutation. How ’bout “Good loving!” for this one.

David M. Silver

“I expect your names to shine!”

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/03/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

TEFL is….a long book. Now I’ve got that pun out of the way, I’ll be serious 🙂 Actually, it could help to look at it as a kind of extended Green Hills of Earth; different stories about different people ( and Lazarus certainly does change a lot as the book progresses) linked by a common framework; no longer the FH but Lazarus’s latest regeneration and rediscovery of his will to live. The Notebooks are yet another theme and one that has probably had more juice per word squeezed out of it than the rest of the book put together. This all adds up to a daunting task if we are to discuss these themes in the space of six hours…..

This is our second meeting with LL, following the much earlier MC. Why Heinlein chose to write again about LL when sequels weren’t common amongst his work at that time and why there is such a gap between the two books is an interesting area of speculation in itself. The character of LL was not always in the spotlight during MC; it wove the stories of several memorable characters together but there’s no denying that LL, as ever, did tend to be a bit of a scene stealer. However he was rather strait laced at times; preferred a kilt to nudity, turned down the offers of several ladies who wanted to er, grow closer and in general seemed a little old fashioned now and then. Perhaps, as he did with SIASL, Heinlein mulled over the idea of continuing LL’s story but wanted to wait until society had changed enough for him to be able to include sex as part of the mixture and still be assured of publication. The three stories are an interesting jumble; the first isn’t even about LL; it’s about a man who’s too lazy to fail, a David Lamb…..who seems to share quite a few experiences and skills of the author himself. Why is this story here? What point was Heinlein ( or Lazarus) trying to make? The next is the twins who weren’t; a fairly extensive chunk of the book that seems to be a typical LL adventure but otherwise unremarkable except for some ( rather tedious IMO) biological shenanigans. As a typical Lazarus adventure I suppose i’s instructive. Then comes one of the best loved parts of the book, if not Heinlein’s whole work; The Tale of the Adopted Daughter and one of the few times that LL not only meets someone more stubborn than he is but falls so deeply in love that centuries later the memory is still poignant and raw.

Mingled in with these three stories are Lazarus’s search, with Minerva, for “something new”, the gradual creation of a family for Lazarus to rule; Hamadryad, Ira, Galahad and Ishtar, followed of course by the birth of Lazarus’s twin sisters/clones. The scene shifts to Tertius, Justin, Tamara and a human Minerva join the throng and Lazarus sets off on his final adventure, back to his childhood. this last adventure of course is also covered, from a slightly different POV, in TSBTS, which fills in some gaps, not perhaps altogether for the best. YMMV. The POV swaps around in a very confusing fashion; sometimes it’s first person ( Ira or Lazarus, Justin usually) sometimes it’s third person, including Lazarus’s final adventure in the past. It seems as if Heinlein was using a lot of different techniques here; does it work? How would the book have been if it had been a straight line chronology? Less interesting? More comprehensible? OK, I haven’t really said much concrete here, just waffling….I’m off to read it again but if anyone has ideas about a particular element of the book that they’d like to focus on ( maybe NOT the perennial “should Lazarus have slept with his mother/clones?” <bg>) then speak up! 🙂

Jane

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/03/2000

Author: dwrighsr <>

In article <>, ddavitt <>wrote:

>

(snip)

Thanks for getting this show on the road. I’ve been mulling over the last few days just what I could say about TEFL and you covered most of what I had to say and even more.

What I have come up with are, basically, questions about what I see as a number of themes.

a) What is the real significance of the title?

b) What is life? (or self-awareness)?

c) What is the purpose of long life? Does age bring wisdom?

d) What is the purpose of life? Does it have one?

e) What is the purpose of government? Does it have one? This is a fairly minor theme, but it is interesting to see how it is handled in the various disparate sections of the book, it seems to me.

That’s it for now. I expect to be adding to these as I continue to re-read the book. Any and all discussions on these points or other are appreciated.

David

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/03/2000

Author: Will <>

In article <8rd2b4$nn$>, wrote:

>In article <>,

> ddavitt <> wrote:

>>

>(snip)

>

>Thanks for getting this show on the road. I’ve been mulling over the

>last few days just what I could say about TEFL and you covered most of

>what I had to say and even more.

>

>What I have come up with are, basically, questions about what I see as a

>number of themes.

<snipped for the sake of space. I will come back to these important themes at a later date>

>

>That’s it for now. I expect to be adding to these as I continue to

>re-read the book. Any and all discussions on these points or other are appreciated.

>

>David

Another topic occured to me just now and I wonder what the group might think of it. Why is this book so loudly disparaged in a large subset of the SF community? People who don’t like RAH often cite it as an example of things wrong with his works. OK, that isn’t all that interesting because those people just don’t like Heinlein. How about the people who really LOVE him who don’t like this book at all. On the old Fido SF echoes, it was often called _Time Enough for Nookie_ and that is a clue that some of these people were just prudish. However, many of these critics also liked SiaSL, so it couln’t be ONLY prudishness, could it? Also, the believers in the ‘Heinlein WAS a great writer but deteriorated and HERE are the boox in evidence’ creed also cite TefL as one of there examples. Sometimes when the debate gets hot one forgets how well this boof SOLD. Anyway, back to trying to figure out what hands to play before the flop.

Will

Dum Vivamus, Vivimus

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/05/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>Why is this book so loudly disparaged in a large subset of

>the SF community?

Is it? I wasn’t aware of that — IWFNE is certainly disparaged for much better reason. The New York Public Library’s website lists only Stranger and TEFL as Heinlein’s best. (it’s necessarily a rather abbreviated list).

IMHO TEFL is Heinlein’s most ambitious (and successful) single work. HOWEVER, it’s also very definitely not a novel, and Heinlein doesn’t care two squats about the PC opinions about what he should be doing as literature. It seems to come closest to a chivalric romance.

What I have seen people object to is the sometimes “precious” portrayals of the society on Secundus and then Boondock. Frankly, I don’t see how it would be possible to portray a “polymorphous perverse” society otherwise without becoming lewd about it. I don’t see it as “precious” so much as an attempt to be frank without being provocative. I have to give RAH points for the attempt, even when it’s not 100% satisfying.

To make sense of the title, you have to remember that “love” emphatically does not necessarily mean sexual friction of mucous membranes. That may be the biggest handicap for the people who object to it. There is cosmic love in there as well as love of self and for self (what makes LL adopt the twins who weren’t) and philios, and the divine love of thou-art-god for the totality of the universe. Heinlein trots out Twain’s definition of love from “What is Man?” in the middle of all this richness to imply an individualist orientation to even the cosmic divine love for which a long life provides time. Incidentally, although this is a minor theme of Shaw’s _Back to Methuselah_ (1930), RAH says it wasn’t in mind when he wrote TEFL, though he had read the play once.

A book that clearly was in mind at the time was Vincent McHugh’s Caleb Catlum’s America (1936) — a hugely popular satire now all but forgotten. There are some passages in the Archivist’s remarks that are almost taken verbatim from the author’s introduction to CCA — a redheaded (and polymorphous perverse as taught by his grandfather, does any of this ring bells) immortal who had led his families in a flight from persecution.

Bill

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/05/2000

Author: Ogden Johnson III <>

(BPRAL22169) wrote:

>>Why is this book so loudly disparaged in a large subset of

>>the SF community?

>

>Is it? I wasn’t aware of that — IWFNE is certainly disparaged for much better

>reason. The New York Public Library’s website lists only Stranger and TEFL as

>Heinlein’s best. (it’s necessarily a rather abbreviated list).

>

>IMHO TEFL is Heinlein’s most ambitious (and successful) single work. HOWEVER,

>it’s also very definitely not a novel, and Heinlein doesn’t care two squats

>about the PC opinions about what he should be doing as literature. It seems to

>come closest to a chivalric romance.

[Snip learned – and appreciated – discourse]

When I first picked up TEFL [in paperback, I was still USMC and never bought HB, they were too cumbersome], my first thought after finishing it was “This is the novel he has been working towards for the last 25 years”.

He certainly took it from there, and played with it some, even took a side trip with Friday to pick up some thoughts that couldn’t have room in TEFL, but for me, it filled the “Da Capo” of the FH chart.

I am not conversant with “the SF community”, so I don’t have any idea of how large the “large subset” that “loudly disparaged” the book is, but I suspect it is quite a bit smaller than the original poster would have us think.

OJ III

[ObCaveat: YMMV, IMHO, just my $0.02, etc.]

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/05/2000

Author: Will <>

In article <>, Ogden Johnson III <>wrote:

> (BPRAL22169) wrote:

>

>>>Why is this book so loudly disparaged in a large subset of

>>>the SF community?

>>

>>Is it? I wasn’t aware of that — IWFNE is certainly disparaged for much better

>>reason. The New York Public Library’s website lists only Stranger and TEFL as

>>Heinlein’s best. (it’s necessarily a rather abbreviated list).

>>

>>IMHO TEFL is Heinlein’s most ambitious (and successful) single work. HOWEVER,

>>it’s also very definitely not a novel, and Heinlein doesn’t care two squats

>>about the PC opinions about what he should be doing as literature. It seems to

>>come closest to a chivalric romance.

>

>[Snip learned – and appreciated – discourse]

>

>When I first picked up TEFL [in paperback, I was still USMC and never

>bought HB, they were too cumbersome], my first thought after

>finishing it was “This is the novel he has been working towards for

>the last 25 years”.

>

>He certainly took it from there, and played with it some, even took a

>side trip with Friday to pick up some thoughts that couldn’t have room

>in TEFL, but for me, it filled the “Da Capo” of the FH chart.

>

>I am not conversant with “the SF community”, so I don’t have any idea

>of how large the “large subset” that “loudly disparaged” the book is,

>but I suspect it is quite a bit smaller than the original poster would

>have us think.

>

>OJ III

>[ObCaveat: YMMV, IMHO, just my $0.02, etc.]

>

Well, I am the appareently annonymouse original poster and I would not “have you think” anything.

If you were on the old SF.Lit echo on Fidonet or the current SF.Written NewsGroup, you would know that the book is rather commonly brought up as evidence of Heinlein’s A: Deterioration or B: Perversity or C: General Unworthiness.

However, I would not “have you think” anything, so just go back to sleep. I was asking people who had seen this phenomonon to comment on it; that it happens is not debatable. How widespread this phenomenon is depends, I guess, on your definition of widespread. If you have not seen it, you don’t have to believe me.

Will

Dum Vivamus, Vivimus

————————————————————————————– ————————-

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/05/2000

Author: Ogden Johnson III <>

Will <>wrote:

>Well, I am the appareently annonymouse original poster and I would

>not “have you think” anything.

Easy, Will. Bill Patterson did not include a cite, and your original post hadn’t hit my server at the time I posted. Am I supposed to be a psychic?

>If you were on the old SF.Lit echo on Fidonet or the current SF.Written

>NewsGroup, you would know that the book is rather commonly brought up

>as evidence of Heinlein’s A: Deterioration or B: Perversity or C:

>General Unworthiness.

Can’t speak to Fidonet, none of the BBS’s I frequented in my pre-Usenet days carried Fidonet. As for r.a.s.w, I found that most posters in that group seem to feel that the substance of one’s thoughts are determined by their volume [both by loudness and count of posts].

>However, I would not “have you think” anything, so just go back to

>sleep. I was asking people who had seen this phenomonon to comment on

>it; that it happens is not debatable. How widespread this phenomenon is

>depends, I guess, on your definition of widespread. If you have not

>seen it, you don’t have to believe me.

OK. <sleep>

OJ III————————————————————-

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/05/2000

Author: AGplusone <>

OJ, Will Reich, and Bill Patterson have commented on a position taken by some regarding TEFL as demonstrating what Will has described the posters on the old SF Lit echo on Fidonet or the current SF Written NewsGroup of citing:

>>as evidence of Heinlein’s A: Deterioration or B: Perversity or C:

>>General Unworthiness.

Probably this is more common than we here experience. I’ve noted very like comments by some on internal AOL boards in what we used to call “Realm” and “TheBookReport” forums.

The type of argument usually posted begins with something like this: “I loved all of Heinlein’s earlier works, the juveniles, etc. … ” BUT … and then comes the ‘deterioration’ and ‘perversity’ and whathaveyou critical comments. I’m always tempted to equate the posters’ minds with Alice Dalgliesh’s; but that is certain to produce flame wars with them.

I think it rankles those who looked to that ‘nice Naval Academy graduate who wrote all those great juveniles’ and therefore considered him “safe” to entrust juveniles for education in orthodoxy to find that there was a provocative, trouble-making mind behind the stories in those great juveniles, just waiting to leap out and pounce on the now grown-up audience and challenge them with satires and other habiliments of adult literature.

What surprises me, often, is they don’t go back and find all hints in the juveniles … and discover they’ve been all wet in their ‘love’ of the juveniles as well. We see the little hints today … because we have read both types of “The Two Heinleins.” Come to think of it, maybe we could call one Dr. Jeckyl and the other Mr. Hyde, with Hyde hiding in there under that nice Naval Academy graduate all the time.

David M. Silver

“I expect your names to shine!”

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/06/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>all hints in the juveniles ..

Oh, yes, indeedy. Heinlein was such an effective educatory in those juveniles because he was _such_ a subversive. If he had been teaching the “same old s**t,” the kids would have turned off and that would have been the end of it.

Heinlein was trying to teach kids how to be human beings, how to be thinking, self-actualizing beings. That is the uttermost subversion, beyond which there can be no more radical. And didn’t Socrates get killed for doing exactly that?

Bill

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/06/2000

Author: Richard A. Randall <>

“BPRAL22169” <>wrote in message news:

>>all hints in the juveniles ..

>

>Oh, yes, indeedy. Heinlein was such an effective educatory in those juveniles

>because he was _such_ a subversive. If he had been teaching the “same old

>s**t,” the kids would have turned off and that would have been the end of it.

>

>Heinlein was trying to teach kids how to be human beings, how to be thinking,

>self-actualizing beings. That is the uttermost subversion, beyond which there

>can be no more radical. And didn’t Socrates get killed for doing exactly that?

_Have_Space_Suit,_Will_Travel_, my first “grown-up” book taught me that greatly respected authority _must_ sometimes be opposed, even by children. (It was also my first really good example of honor — when Kip demands to be sent home first if the Earth is to be destroyed.)

_Starship_Troopers_ introduced me to a utopic society which was utterly at odds with the prejudices being inculcated in me by many authority figures, and provided enough meat so that I could go to the source material and look for myself.

_Rocket_Ship_Galileo_, read a few Heinleins later, (as also pointed out by Spider Robinson) told me to question what I’ve been told and go _look_ for myself.

_. . . If_This_Goes_On_ showed me (at its conclusion) a utopic society that could never do wrong, while _Methuselah’s_Children_ showed how the same society could prepare for a sanctioned pogrom. (This also pointed my nose in the direction of the Holocaust.)

Naw. . . RAH wasn’t a scandalous (check the _Catechism_of_the_Catholic_Church_ for definition — I’m using that meaning) old subversive radical in his juveniles and shorts (which were easy enough for juveniles to read). Not a bit.

That wouldn’t be why my libertarian (I suspect), got-mad-when-I-blindly-agreed-with-anyone-including-him father left RAH lying around on the breakfast table (which he never went near, much less used). Or why he chose RAH as my first “grown-up book”. (NOTB was my second “grown-up” book. . . ) </sarcasm>

Richard A. Randall

Purveyor of fine piranhakeets.

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/07/2000

Author: Tawn Johnson <>

>And didn’t Socrates get killed for doing exactly that?

>Bill

>

Socrates got killed for refusing to compromise his principles. He was afforded opportunity to escape (and to retract IIRC). He choose to take the hemlock. Me myself, I woulda run fer them thar hills.

Tawn

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/07/2000

Author: Will <>

In article <>, (Tawn Johnson) wrote:

>>And didn’t Socrates get killed for doing exactly that?

>>Bill

>>

>

>Socrates got killed for refusing to compromise his principles. He was

>afforded opportunity to escape (and to retract IIRC). He choose to take the

>hemlock. Me myself, I woulda run fer them thar hills.

>

>Tawn

“Give me three steps, give me three steps, mister. Give me three steps toward the door.” Marshall Tucker (or Charlie Daniels, I forget)

Will

Dum Vivamus, Vivimus

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/07/2000

Author: Mike Keith <>

“Will” <>wrote in message news:8rndcg$8qq$

>In article <>,

> (Tawn Johnson) wrote:

>>>And didn’t Socrates get killed for doing exactly that?

>>>Bill

>>>

>>

>>Socrates got killed for refusing to compromise his principles. He was

>>afforded opportunity to escape (and to retract IIRC). He choose to take the

>>hemlock. Me myself, I woulda run fer them thar hills.

>>

>>Tawn

>

>”Give me three steps, give me three steps, mister. Give me three steps

>toward the door.” Marshall Tucker (or Charlie Daniels, I forget)

>

Lenoard Skynard ca 1975

MIke

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/06/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>even took a side trip with Friday to pick up some thoughts that couldn’t have room

>in TEFL

That’s very interesting — I’ve been trying to find connections of _Friday_ with the World as Myth books without much success. How do you see _Friday_ as related to TEFL (which is simultaneously the end of the Future History and the beginning of the World as Myth books)?

Bill

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/07/2000

Author: Ogden Johnson III <>

(BPRAL22169) wrote:

>>even took a

>>side trip with Friday to pick up some thoughts that couldn’t have room

>>in TEFL

>That’s very interesting — I’ve been trying to find connections of _Friday_

>with the World as Myth books without much success. How do you see _Friday_ as

>related to TEFL (which is simultaneously the end of the Future History and the

>beginning of the World as Myth books)?

OK, recapturing the context:

>”This is the novel he has been working towards for the last 25 years”.

>

>He certainly took it from there, and played with it some,

In other words, having finished off, as you noted, the Future History [and not incidentally, become financially secure] he could now go on and write wherever the spirit took him – into the World as Myth as it turned out. But, from this:

>even took a side trip with Friday to pick up some thoughts that couldn’t have room

>in TEFL

By which I meant that for me, Friday’s society represented the ultimate outgrowth of “The Crazy Years” idea that he had played with earlier on in stories. For me, a lot of the “state nations” depicted represented ultimate outgrowths of one or another idea touched on briefly in an earlier story. We had practically everything but Scudder and the Fosterites during Friday’s hegira. And *they* had been covered at length elsewhere.

In other words, some stuff there wasn’t room to finish off, tidy up, clear some more notes, whatever, in TEFL as “Da Capo”. So, take a pause in the World as Myth, a side trip back to the Future History, and clear up some odds and ends. Make a few bucks, inspire a PB cover that harks back to the ’40s/’50s pulp SF covers while you’re cleaning out the attic. ;-> Sorry, nothing more profound than that in my take on Friday. That and the fact that it is solidly in my top ten, probably the top five, of all RAH stories/novels.

OJ III

[No – no way am I actually going to do anything silly like actually listing my top five or ten.]

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/03/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

wrote:

These questions are certainly thought provoking David! Not quite like a triv quiz with a one word answer but off the top of my head, here are my first reactions.

>

>a) What is the real significance of the title?

That only in an advanced, leisured society is there such time; that maybe we are racing along concentrating on the wrong things and missing out on the vital element that makes life worth while; love ( _not_ necessarily sexual…though this book does tend to give that aspect a lot of airtime).

>b) What is life? (or self-awareness)?

I think you’ve answered that; life IS self awareness. It’s possible to be alive and not know it ( amoebas and such) but for humans the knowledge of our own existence and its inevitable end is the spark that either fuels us or consumes us. That Lazarus seemed to be outside this experience ( and how long did it take him to realise that he wasn’t going to die? Did he ever? Does that make him less human?) is the most fascinating part of his story and one that doesn’t get examined enough I think. Both in the book and on this group.

>

>c) What is the purpose of long life? Does age bring wisdom?

I’m not sure that long life is all that different from short life in some ways…like bookshelves, the more you have, the more books appear, never any more space :-). I think that for Ira and the rest of their family ( barring LL) their lives probably seemed much the same as ours do. As to the wisdom, well, that’s a point I’ve often wondered about. Ira says they need LL for his wisdom….but I seriously doubt that…..I think there were more devious political implications…I wish we could see the Arabelle take over in more detail.

>

>

>d) What is the purpose of life? Does it have one?

Hmm…purpose..does it need one? If there isn’t a reason for it all, we may as well give up and die. I think we make our own contributions to the world, some positive, some negative. Whether this goes towards a grander design is moot; we live for our own reasons.

>

>e) What is the purpose of government? Does it have one? This is a fairly

>minor theme, but it is interesting to see how it is handled in the

>various disparate sections of the book, it seems to me.

Do you mean the discussions about pure democracy and the way that Ira handles things? This is one I’ll have to leave until I’ve finished reading it again….be interesting to look at the set up in each section of the book.

Jane

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: CAS6039 <>

>>

>>e) What is the purpose of government? Does it have one? This is a fairly

>>minor theme, but it is interesting to see how it is handled in the

>>various disparate sections of the book, it seems to me.

>

>Do you mean the discussions about pure democracy and the way that Ira

>handles things? This is one I’ll have to leave until I’ve finished reading

>it again….be interesting to look at the set up in each section of the

>book.

>

>Jane

Even though the “Notebooks” section(s) have many references to what Heinlein thought of government, I think the way Ira and LL set up the colony on Tellus Tertius (Boondock) shows what the purpose of government should be: as little as possible. The only government they set up was Ira as mayor, and LL as colony leader. They evenly specifically state that there were NO laws set up over marriage.

Unlike US federales, who can’t figure out if Vermont should stay a state simply because they allow same sex marriages *sigh* Give us a break! Ain’t there something else they could be concerned with?

CAS

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Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

CAS6039 wrote:

>

>

>Even though the “Notebooks” section(s) have many references to what Heinlein

>thought of government, I think the way Ira and LL set up the colony on Tellus

>Tertius (Boondock) shows what the purpose of government should be: as little as

>possible. The only government they set up was Ira as mayor, and LL as colony

>leader. They evenly specifically state that there were NO laws set up over

>marriage.

>

But look how it turned out by the time of CWWTW; queue jumpers being summarily murdered and the murderer being exonerated in minutes. It’s a YMMV situation but it seems to me that too few rules are not that much better than too many and the colony on Tertius could have used a little more structuring. Were LL and Ira being true to their political beliefs or just irresponsible?

Jane

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>too few rules are not that much better than too many and the

Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane Jane.

I don’t believe you two are talking about the same planet, possibly not even the same millennium.

And there is a big BIG difference between rules (ie., conventions of behavior) and laws. Bill

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

BPRAL22169 wrote:

>>too few rules are not that much better than too many and the

>

>Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane Jane.

>

>I don’t believe you two are talking about the same planet, possibly not even

>the same millennium.

>

>And there is a big BIG difference between rules (ie., conventions of behavior)

>and laws.

>Bill

Huh? Are you saying that Colin and Gwen didn’t end up on Tertius? That’s where the queue jumper episode happened. I’m not sure how much time had passed between TEFL and CWWTW without a look at the books but not that long I think. Century at most. Why do you think Cas and I are talking about different places?

As to the other point, I meant the restrictions that government lay down; laws may be more accurate; consider my post retroactively amended if that makes you happy 🙂 Though I think my teachers may have felt that the school rules were just as important as any government laws…….

Jane

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

I thought the queue jumper incident happened on one of the habitats as they were trying to get out — can’t look it up right now.

Every social transaction you undertake is governed by conventions; only a tiny fraction of your life is governed by “restrictions that government lay down,” and most of those “restrictions” have only come about in the last 70-100 years. Some laws reinforce conventions – like traffic laws — so don’t get heavy enforcement. The 20th century has had a bizarre love affair with the state, but that particular fever is starting to pass off.

Bill

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: Richard Bensam <>

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000 0:51:56 -0400, BPRAL22169 wrote (in message <>):

>I thought the queue jumper incident happened on one of the habitats as they

>were trying to get out — can’t look it up right now.

The queue jumper incident took place on Tertius, approximately 4400 AD (date given by Richard Ames), which would be (even more approximately) 114 years after the founding of Boondock colony (based on considerable evidence in TEFL which I once worked out painstakingly but have since forgotten).

Richard A (not Ames) Bensam

http://home.earthlink.net/~rabensam/

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>The queue jumper incident took place on Tertius, approximately 4400 AD

I stand corrected and offer an apology to Jane Davitt.

Bill

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

BPRAL22169 wrote:

>>The queue jumper incident took place on Tertius, approximately 4400 AD

>

>I stand corrected and offer an apology to Jane Davitt.

>Bill

No need Bill; those latter books are so complex it’s hard to keep them straight in one’s mind sometimes. That incident got discussed here quite recently which is why it was still fresh in my memory.

Jane

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

I’ve been thinking more about the queue jumping incident. It occurs to me that the convention versus law discussion taking place on this thread may be related. In a society that depends on the rule of social conventions, flouting those conventions is a much more serious threat to the social fabric than would be ordinary scofflawry in our own. Perhaps the linestanders’ reaction was not over the top, but a responsible and measured reaction — a kind of preventative social surgery, conducted by responsible and far-seeing adults. Those are so few and far between we may not be able instantly to recognize them in action.

Bill

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

BPRAL22169 wrote:

>I’ve been thinking more about the queue jumping incident. It occurs to me that

>the convention versus law discussion taking place on this thread may be

>related. In a society that depends on the rule of social conventions, flouting

>those conventions is a much more serious threat to the social fabric than would

>be ordinary scofflawry in our own. Perhaps the linestanders’ reaction was not

>over the top, but a responsible and measured reaction — a kind of preventative

>social surgery, conducted by responsible and far-seeing adults. Those are so

>few and far between we may not be able instantly to recognize them in action.

>Bill

Well, as the dead man was a tourist, I can’t see that removing him improved the society on Tertius much; he would have been a temporary annoyance at worst. No one found out why he wanted to get to the head of the queue, no one gave him a chance to apologise or instructed him on approved behaviour….if, in a society less well organised than an anarchy, there was such a standard in the first place.

My basic reaction to this incident though was shock that someone would take away a life out of pique that they had been delayed in a queue for a few moments…and the subsequent trial would have been far more of a delay, making it even less of a logical action. In fact, I’m surprised there was a trial at all. It’s a scary society and I wouldn’t like it. YMMV.

Jane

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/05/2000

Author: Roger Glover <>

wrote:

>

>In article <>,

>ddavitt <>wrote:

——->: snip

>What I have come up with are, basically, questions about what I see as a

>number of themes.

>

>a)What is the real significance of the title?

>

>b)What is life? (or self-awareness)?

>

>c)What is the purpose of long life? Does age bring wisdom?

>

>d)What is the purpose of life? Does it have one?

>

>e)What is the purpose of government? Does it have one? This is a fairly

>minor theme, but it is interesting to see how it is handled in the

>various disparate sections of the book, it seems to me.

There is one more important theme which, it seems to me, is really only introduced *directly* at the very end, although I think the Senior’s many stories along the way set it up obliquely. That theme is explores the relationship between creation and creator.

f)What is the nature of creation? To what extent are creations actively formed from the outside? To what extent do creations actively form themselves? To what extent does creation “just happen”?

and in the mirror:

g)What is the nature of a creator? To what extent does a creator create from within? To what extent does a creator react to his/her/its own environment? To what extent does a creator “channel” creation from no identifiable source?

and together, this is where the end of the book becomes most interesting to me:

h)What is the relationship between creation and creator? What are the connections between them? What are the barriers between them?

Certainly other, later works take a shot at this idea “head on”. TNOTB, TSBTS, TCWWTW, and J:ACOJ spring to mind; there may be others but I can’t recall any. Hoever, his first tentative probes into the idea here in TEFL are somehow more pure than his direct assaults on the topic in later works. There is “near-death scene” near the end in which, to all appearances, Heinlein has a dialog directly with Long. It reminds me of similar author-character dialogs in Douglas Hofstadter’s Pulitzer-winning book _Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid_.

— Roger Glover

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: Nollaig MacKenzie

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000 12:02:30 -0400, the estimable ddavitt wrote:

>BPRAL22169 wrote:

>

>>I’ve been thinking more about the queue jumping incident. It occurs to me that

>>the convention versus law discussion taking place on this thread may be

>>related. In a society that depends on the rule of social conventions, flouting

>>those conventions is a much more serious threat to the social fabric….

>

>… as the dead man was a tourist, I can’t see that removing him improved the

>society on Tertius much; he would have been a temporary annoyance at worst.

Seems to me Manny’s attitude toward the Stilyagi who proposed dumping Stu Lajoie out an airlock is about right for these cases: The tourist violated an important local custom, so he should be given some lumps; but he *is* a tourist, so spacing him is way out of line. tMiaHM gets a lot of moral stuff just about right….

Cheers, N.

Nollaig MacKenzie :: ::

http://www.amhuinnsuidhe.cx/rahfan/

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: ddavitt

Nollaig MacKenzie wrote:

>

>

>Seems to me Manny’s attitude toward the Stilyagi

>who proposed dumping Stu Lajoie out an airlock is

>about right for these cases: The tourist violated

>an important local custom, so he should be given

>some lumps; but he *is* a tourist, so spacing him

>is way out of line. tMiaHM gets a lot of moral

>stuff just about right….

>

>Cheers, N.

>

>

I could go along with that …..seems fair.

Jane

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/11/2000

Author: AGplusone

Early this morning, I reviewed the nearly seventy posts already made pertaining to Time Enough For Love in this tread and in the other one. To sum up thus far, our chat co-hosts each have devoted careful initial time to specifying overall themes they see present in the volume, and given significant details on issues that appear to them; but much of what our response to them, perhaps the fault of one of my posts, has been an inquiry concerning the first ‘story’ that I consciously directed as to where the author intended us to see the volume “going.”

I’m beginning to think perhaps our hosts might consider extending our chat meeting over another set of two meetings, depending on developments in the chat this Thursday and Saturday. Think on that, please … David and Jane.

Meanwhile let me return to the point I’ve been struggling with for years. My inquiry was on what, exactly, the author intended us to understand about David Lamb, the subject of “The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail.” Perhaps a consensus is developing that David may have been somewhat less worthy than what was created on a first impression or reading: David is presented by our author as a “affable,” very pleasant person who succeeds personally over adversities. Then he retires to do exactly what he has always wished time enough to do — nothing.

As also do Max Jones and Andrew Libby, David rises from and far above an economically depressed background, using his gifts, mainly mental, to achieve certain goals; but the difference seems to be to me that he never develops in character. For start to end, David is just another portrayal of the pastor in To Sail Beyond The Sunset, the one who seduces Maureen and leaves her locked in a closet, who became a man of religion because looking at the south end of a north bound mule was work too hard and perhaps too honest to suit him.

Just as occurs in Divinity School or a Seminary, David was subjected to education by a system designed to instill a moral code. It didn’t take. What the Navy got in return for that education it could have gotten cheaper by hiring a civilian scientist or aeronautics engineer or experienced commercial pilot, as Heinlein earlier had suggested military might do in Starship Troopers. David was a time-server, who avoided dangerous service to the greatest extent he could arrange during a World War. He gladly flew a desk in Buair, at a time when others his age and class took off in pitifully inadequate Buffalo fighters to defend Wake and Midway, and nearly all died, at a time when others his age took off from jeep carriers in still inadequate Wildcats to land on Henderson Field to rise up each day to fight through that Zero screen to defend against Washing Machine Charlie, and many died, at a time when others ‘ran silent, ran deep’ in pigboats to launch their torpedos, even knowing most of their torpedoes wouldn’t explode, or others attacked battleships aboard thinclad “little boys” zig-zaging in the smoke in the Suriago Straits to do the same, and just many of those died as well. Perhaps David wasn’t a physical coward–we really cannot know–but civilians given 90 days of training and a reserve commission showed far more than he. David was what my Marine uncle called a “feather merchant.” Viewed this way, David is initially merely a disappointment. Why? And why ‘initially merely’?

‘Merely’ mainly because he refused to accept responsibility to his society, or for that matter, to anyone or thing other than his own self. In an essay, Heinlein once divided humanity into three classes: makers, takers, and fakers. David is both a taker and a faker. Sadly, with his skills and abilities he could have been a maker. He also could have been a taker on a somewhat grander scale than he was. Thank God he wasn’t because David’s sort is truly dangerous.

I see Lamb’s character as something far worse than a mere pragmatist, somewhat of a kindly characterization I think for what he was shown capable of being. On first reading David, as the surname choosen for him by the author suggests, seems a ‘beloved’ character, seems a simple pure sort, seems in ways that I ascribe to the author’s skill an emblem of innocence, both characteristics suggested by his cognomen; but in fact he is in a phrase, a terrifying wolf in lamb’s clothing just as David the King, his and my namesake as selected by this author, was.

Don’t take my word for it: ask Goliath about that defenseless shepard boy, ask Saul and David’s beloved best friend Jonathan whose reign and line he ended, ask the tribes he conquered, the male prisoners he executed, their women and children he enslaved, ask Uriah the Hittite who loyally served him, whose wife he enjoyed after he arranged that murder, ask his most skillful lieutenant who fell from his favor and for whom he invaded a holy sanctuary to kill even in his retirement, ask his son Absolom … ooops, sorry, you cannot, can you, they’re all dead by his hand or by his order … aren’t they? No, Beloved King David, the highly skilled creator, singer of psalms, and dancer before the Tabernacle, and truly a taker of Imperial magnitude, was found unfit to build the Temple, wasn’t he? Instead the last significant thing we hear of him was his having young girls brought in to “warm” his bed. Let’s leave him “lying” there in that hammock under the shade trees, shall we?

Do I think a personality such as David Lamb incapable of the highest evil? Isn’t Lamb too lazy? Yes, and maybe not. FWIW, I think that among the David Lambs are the most dangerous people to the world. If I cannot trust their word, their oath, their Honor, then ultimately, they are irresponsibile; and I cannot trust them in anything. I mean, really, a David Lamb would steal and carry off the gravestone of a mule’s grave if he thought it might enable him to avoid some honest work, sometime … somewhere.

I think David Lamb was a fiendishly delightful creation by this author (a “Lamb of the Devil” so to speak), and by his standard we are intended to judge what comes next throughout Time Enough For Love.

David M. Silver

“I expect your names to shine!”

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/11/2000

Author: ddavitt

AGplusone wrote:

>

>

>I’m beginning to think perhaps our hosts might consider extending our chat

>meeting over another set of two meetings, depending on developments in the chat

>this Thursday and Saturday. Think on that, please … David and Jane.

>

>

Well, we did discuss splitting TEFL up into one session on Thursday and one on Saturday; if this has to extend over three, maybe four sessions instead, I can’t see a problem. I think the volume of posts generated on one story shows that there is plenty of material to go at. How about leaving the themes for the moment and moving on to the next story Lazarus tells; one that gets a little overlooked, “The Tale of the Twins Who Weren’t.” Not an awful lot happens in this story but it contains some significant bits nonetheless.

Again, we get a reiteration of the Lamb theme; ” Respect for laws is a pragmatic matter. Women know this instinctively; that’s why they are all smugglers. Men often believe – or pretend – that the “Law” is something sacred, or at least a science – an unfounded assumption very convenient to governments.”

I have a sneaky feeling that Ticky’s actions as chronicled in Tramp Royale may have been at the back of Heinlein’s mind when he wrote this…

Lazarus then meets the twins and cuts back to the present to ask Minerva how she thinks they were created. Oh boy……this bit is soooo boring! “There must be intervention in gametogenesis in each parent just before meiotic division-reduction of chromosome number – that is, one would start with primary spermatocytes and primary oocytes, unreduced diploids.” No kidding…..I really don’t know why Heinlein wrote this and the subsequent pages where LL muses on the possibility of the baby being a “monster”, inevitably leading to another lecture years later to stop possibly dangerous incest between Joe and Lita’s children. If they were just a breeding pair he may not have stopped to look at them but the genetics bit is really superfluous to the story and worse, it’s dull. IMO. FWIW.

There is an interesting bit sandwiched in amongst the musings though, when LL relates how he got the name “Doctor Genocide” by wanting to refuse treatment to defectives who wouldn’t allow themselves to be sterilised; defectives also covering social inadequates, incapable of being self reliant. Hmm….was it Jubal who said something about letting haemophiliacs bleed to death? He calls this a period of “temporary mental aberration”; not because he comes to think his views are wrong but because he’s made the mistake of voicing them and being conspicuous.

There are also hints about the next story; ” a pair-bond stronger than most marriages, in Sheffield’s long experience. More than any of his own – ( Except one, except one!)”

And this story actually includes the title of the book; “Sheffield had decided, centuries back, that the saddest thing about emphemerals was that their little lives rarely held time enough for love.” Dora will of course teach him otherwise…..

Another point is the way the story switches from first to third person; an interesting way of telling it that is easy to overlook.

Jane

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/12/2000

Author: Mac

Nollaig MacKenzie wrote in message …

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000 12:02:30 -0400, the estimable

ddavitt wrote:

>BPRAL22169 wrote:

>

>>I’ve been thinking more about the queue jumping incident. It occurs to me that

>>the convention versus law discussion taking place on this thread may be

>>related. In a society that depends on the rule of social conventions, flouting

>>those conventions is a much more serious threat to the social fabric….

>

>… as the dead man was a tourist, I can’t see that removing him improved the

>society on Tertius much; he would have been a temporary annoyance at worst.

Seems to me Manny’s attitude toward the Stilyagi who proposed dumping Stu Lajoie out an airlock is about right for these cases: The tourist violated an important local custom, so he should be given some lumps; but he *is* a tourist, so spacing him is way out of line. tMiaHM gets a lot of moral stuff just about right….

Cheers, N.

************************

Yes, but didn’t Manny also strongly suggest that Stu, being a tourist and visiting somewhere, had an “obligation” to read up on, to study, to learn some of the customs and rules of the society, of the culture he would be visiting ? If one fails to do so and then strongly shatters some local taboo, then surely one should expect some “lesson” —but I am very glad that Manny had the sense to temper the judgment and that the kids also had the insight to accept the limits.

As for the line-jumper. . .

Although at times one is tempted I do believe that killing, without making any effort to ascertain if there was a reason for such actions, might be extreme and an indication that there may be problems with the local society.

Mac

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/11/2000

Author: Tian Harter <147DISH>

Jane quoted from TEFL:

>” Respect for laws is a pragmatic matter. Women know

>this instinctively; that’s why they are all smugglers. Men

>often believe – or pretend – that the “Law” is something

>sacred, or at least a science – an unfounded assumption

>very convenient to governments.”

Two days ago I was talking to a guy that said “If you want to have a lasting impact, work on the culture, not the law.”

Tian Harter

http://members.aol.com/tnharter

According to page 41 of the current

issue of Adbusters, the CEO of tobacco

company Philip Morris is Geoffrey Bible.

I ride a Nader/LaDuke brand bicycle.

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/12/2000

Author: Mac <>

AGplusone wrote in message +ADw-20001011060727.27047.00003090+AEA-ng-cg1.aol.com+AD4-…

>Early this morning, I reviewed the nearly seventy posts already made pertaining

>to Time Enough For Love in this tread and in the other one.

>To sum up thus far, our chat co-hosts each have devoted careful initial time to

>specifying overall themes they see present in the volume, and given significant

details on issues that appear to them,- but much of what our response to them,

>perhaps the fault of one of my posts, has been an inquiry concerning the first

>’story’ that I consciously directed as to where the author intended us to

>see the volume “-going.”-

>I’m beginning to think perhaps our hosts might consider extending our chat

>meeting over another set of two meetings, depending on developments in the chat

>this Thursday and Saturday. Think on that, please … David and Jane.

>Meanwhile let me return to the point I’ve been struggling with for years. My

>nquiry was on what, exactly, the author intended us to understand about David

>Lamb, the subject of “-The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail.”- Perhaps a consensus is

>developing that David may have been somewhat less worthy than what was created

>on a first impression or reading: David is presented by our author as a

>”-affable,”- very pleasant person who succeeds personally over adversities. Then

>he retires to do exactly what he has always wished time enough to do — nothing.

>As also do Max Jones and Andrew Libby, David rises from and far above an

>economically depressed background, using his gifts, mainly mental, to achieve

>certain goals but the difference seems to be to me that he never develops in character.

>SNIP SNIP

Just as occurs in Divinity School or a Seminary, David was subjected to

>education by a system designed to instill a moral code. It didn’t take. What

>the Navy got in return for that education it could have gotten cheaper by

>hiring a civilian scientist or aeronautics engineer or experienced commercial

>pilot, as Heinlein earlier had suggested military might do in Starship

>Troopers. David was a time-server, who avoided dangerous service to the

>greatest extent he could arrange during a World War. He gladly flew a desk in

>Buair, at a time when others his age and class took off in pitifully inadequate

>Buffalo fighters to defend Wake and Midway, and nearly all died, at a time when

>others his age took off from jeep carriers in still inadequate Wildcats to land

>on Henderson Field to rise up each day to fight through that Zero screen to

>defend against Washing Machine Charlie, and many died, at a time when others

>’ran silent, ran deep’ in pigboats to launch their torpedos, even knowing most

>of their torpedoes wouldn’t explode, or others attacked battleships aboard

>thinclad “-little boys”- zig-zaging in the smoke in the Suriago Straits to do the

>same, and just many of those died as well. Perhaps David wasn’t a physical

>coward–we really cannot know–but civilians given 90 days of training and a

>reserve commission showed far more than he. David was what my Marine uncle

>called a “-feather merchant.”- Viewed this way, David is initially merely a

>disappointment. Why? And why ‘initially merely’?

SNIP

Thank you for your comments.

and yet. . . ?

Was David really avoiding actions and events out of total self-interest and need that be so terrible? He had skills and knew what those skills were and placed himself in places where he might use those skills to the greatest effect — in the case of the war, perhaps that did more help than his sacrificing himself immediately in combat years earlier ?

How can one judge this?

Here is a person who does not just drift along: he knows what he wants, he looks out upon the world and finds the best path to achieve the greatest ease for himself which places him using his talents, his skills in the best fashion.

And yet, would this be an antithesis of Starship Troopers where one must show some action above sole self-interest ?

—Mac

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/12/2000

Author: Ward Griffiths <>

On Thu, 12 Oct 2000, Mac wrote:

>As for the line-jumper. . .

>Although at times one is tempted I do believe that killing,

>without making any effort to ascertain if there was a reason

>for such actions, might be extreme and an indication that

>there may be problems with the local society.

A queue-jumper should at least have a visible excuse (a 10-month pregnant wife, a child with an arrow through its head) or have started shouting “excuse me!” several seconds before cutting into the line. It’s his responsibility to those he is inconveniencing or maybe to his heirs and assigns. Otherwise he deserves to demonstrate evolution.

Ward Griffiths http://members.home.net/wdg3rd/

When the man said alcohol, tobacco and firearms, I just naturally assumed he was making a delivery. (.sig stolen from a guy in rec.nude)

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/12/2000

Author: FREEMAN <>

BPRAL22169 <>wrote in message news:

>I’ve been thinking more about the queue jumping incident. It occurs to me that

>the convention versus law discussion taking place on this thread may be

>related. In a society that depends on the rule of social conventions, flouting

>those conventions is a much more serious threat to the social fabric than would

>be ordinary scofflawry in our own. Perhaps the linestanders’ reaction was not

>over the top, but a responsible and measured reaction — a kind of preventative

>social surgery, conducted by responsible and far-seeing adults. Those are so

>few and far between we may not be able instantly to recognize them in action.

This is a scary thought! The idea that murder is justified as Social Surgery is contradictory to any form of freedom of speech or social innovation.

Have you ever read Huxley’s Brave New World? In it there is one “Controller” is sole job (it seems) is to seperate out the yeast so that the social ‘loaf’ is assured of never being forced to rise.

In TEFL, LL chastises Ira for shipping off the boat-rockers to Sanctuary.

There have been plenty of times when I was ready to take a bead on the back of the head connected to a line jumper. But I don’t think that it would be anything as unselfish as culling the herd, just my own frustration with someone ignoring rules that I see as self-evident.

(mired in anologies)

Adam

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/12/2000

Author: AGplusone <>

Mac wrote:

>Thank you for your comments.

You’re welcome, although I’m not sure that they aren’t quite over-the-top concerning Lamb. It comes from staying awake too late.

>Yet, and yet. . . ?

Still, and still … ?

>Was David really avoiding actions and events out of total

>self-interest and need that be so terrible?

Ordinarily we wouldn’t say so; but he did here take the King’s penny for a career; and I wonder why he so lacked all conviction. It’s nevertheless hard to look at the character so harshly–he’s drawn so affably; but Heinlein has to have a purpose for this story. It’s in the beginning so perhaps it’s intended as a subtle ‘wake-up call.’

>He had skills and knew what those skills were and placed

>himself in places where he might use those skills to the

>greatest effect — in the case of the war, perhaps that

>did more help than his sacrificing himself immediately in

>combat years earlier ?

Which is why he should have perhaps been more in his element had he been a hired civilian. I really wonder what Heinlein thought when he portrayed this character, bearing in mind how hard Heinlein fought to try to get back into uniform, how frustrated he may have been by that, and then how many uniformed officers he encountered during the war working as engineers or scientists, and what he may have really thought of them. The “King’s penny” actually is buying your agreement to take bullets for civilians, not design aircraft, unless they wouldn’t let you into combat.

>How can one judge this?

>Here is a person who does not just drift along: he knows

>what he wants, he looks out upon the world and finds the

>best path to achieve the greatest ease for himself which

>places him using his talents, his skills in the best

>fashion.

He certainly made the best of his bargain, didn’t he? Yet, I have to think or rather wonder whether any of those guys who strapped Brewsters Buffaloes on their back at Wake or Midway, or the ones in Torpedo 8, stood as high in their respective classes as he did. Do you think they’d have rather been assigned to Buair than flying those inadequate crates to certain death? What did the fellow who made the speech to the Brigade of Midshipmen about the role of juvenile male baboons think? I’m not convinced that RAH hated “David Lambs” but there is a case that can be made that it was so.

>And yet, would this be an antithesis of Starship Troopers

>where one must show some action above sole self-interest ?

I think it possible. Which is why the hired civilian role to which David Lamb was perfectly suited occurred to me. Thanks for the conversation, Mac.

David M. Silver

“I expect your names to shine!”

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/12/2000

Author: FREEMAN

David Silver wrote:

>Meanwhile let me return to the point I’ve been struggling with for years. My

>inquiry was on what, exactly, the author intended us to understand about David

>Lamb, the subject of “The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail.” Perhaps a consensus is

>developing that David may have been somewhat less worthy than what was created

>on a first impression or reading: David is presented by our author as a

>”affable,” very pleasant person who succeeds personally over adversities. Then

>he retires to do exactly what he has always wished time enough to do —

>nothing.

>

>As also do Max Jones and Andrew Libby, David rises from and far above an

>economically depressed background, using his gifts, mainly mental, to achieve

>certain goals; but the difference seems to be to me that he never develops in

>character. For start to end, David is just another portrayal of the pastor in

>To Sail Beyond The Sunset, the one who seduces Maureen and leaves her locked in

>a closet, who became a man of religion because looking at the south end of a

>north bound mule was work too hard and perhaps too honest to suit him.

>

>Just as occurs in Divinity School or a Seminary, David was subjected to

>education by a system designed to instill a moral code. It didn’t take. What

>the Navy got in return for that education it could have gotten cheaper by

>hiring a civilian scientist or aeronautics engineer or experienced commercial

>pilot, as Heinlein earlier had suggested military might do in Starship

>Troopers. David was a time-server, who avoided dangerous service to the

>greatest extent he could arrange during a World War.

I think you’re being a bit to hard on David. Here was a man who’s sole purpose in life was to be left alone to read. And he acheived this by every honest way presented him (save lying about his age).

He was a man who was well aware of his goals and used the resources around him to achieve them. When responsibility presented itself, he didn’t shirk it, as he was no doubt capable, he embraced it and looked for opportunities to shape it to his objectives.

There was a point later in this morality tale when LL points out that David used every occasion available to make his post in the war machine work more efficiently and with less effort, perhaps those brave men that you spoke of should have traded some of their bravery for David’s brand of laziness. Had everyone been working towards David’s goals of achieving the winning of a war with the least amount of effort, it might have been won sooner rather than later.

I confess a certain kinship to David. While my own sense of self-worth won’t allow me to do a job half-assed, my innate laziness won’t allow me to make a job harder than it has to be. And, truth be told, all I really want is to be left alone in a hammock with a good book.

Adam

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Mtng Notice, 10/12 & 14/00 –TEFL

Date: 10/12/2000

Author: AGplusone <>

Adam Freeman writes:

>There was a point later in this morality tale when LL points out that David

>used every occasion available to make his post in the war machine work more

>efficiently and with less effort, perhaps those brave men that you spoke of

>should have traded some of their bravery for David’s brand of laziness. Had

>everyone been working towards David’s goals of achieving the winning of a

>war with the least amount of effort, it might have been won sooner rather than later.

>

Perhaps it’s true that if a lot of someones of David’s intelligence had been around in certain Buair positions before the War long enough they wouldn’t have had to fight the first year or so in overmatched crates or with torpedoes that didn’t explode, etc.; but the point remains that had David shown less to offer and worked his ass off to stay out of combat during that war as commander of the proverbial mess-kit repair facility in Barstow, California, we’d think a bit differently of him. What’s the real difference here?

>I confess a certain kinship to David.

So do I. That’s why I’ve had such trouble with this story. And why I think it’s a devilish puzzle. 🙂

David M. Silver

“I expect your names to shine!”

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Subject: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/03/2000

Author: Stephanie Vickers <>

I’ve begun reading the book for the next chat session, so I wanted to kick off the thread to prelude our chat. Not intending to step on toes, David, but I already have a single question in regards to the novel.

I am reading it for the first time with an eye to the deeper meanings. And I began thinking of the book’s different stories as fables or parables. Does anyone else agree, and if so, what meanings do you pick up from them? If not, how do they come across to you?

Filly

http://hometown.aol.com/merfilly8/myhomepage

“One man with courage makes a majority.”

–Andrew Jackson

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/03/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

Stephanie Vickers wrote:

>I am reading it for the first time with an eye to the deeper meanings. And I

>began thinking of the book’s different stories as fables or parables. Does

>anyone else agree, and if so, what meanings do you pick up from them? If not,

>how do they come across to you?

>

>

What do you see as the message behind them then Filly? I’ve always just thought of them as being examples of Lazarus’s adventures; a clue to how he altered from the man we meet in MC who wants to, “keep on climbing, and looking around him to see what he can see, as long as the tree holds out.” to the bitter, dispirited wreck that we meet at the start of TEFL.

Jane

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/05/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>the bitter, dispirited wreck that we meet at the start of TEFL.

One of the resonances I saw when I was doing a lot of miscellaneous research into occult Subjects was the idea of a grand cycle in human affairs. There was a lot of writing about this Subject at the end of the 19th century and beginnign of the 20th — i.e., just when Heinlein was doing a lot of miscellaneous reading. The hermetic cycle proposes a period of about 2100 (or 2600) years divided into seven major periods, with an interregnum of decay and stagnation before the cycle starts over again.

TEFL turned out to be the end of the Future History — and also the beginning of the World as Myth books. The Future History cycle would correspond to the Age of Horus, the Magical Child (also called the Age of Aquarius); I don’t know what would come after that — back to the age of Osiris, perhaps? Lazarus Long, having lived one cycle as an avatar of Horus would become the Osiris-hierophant of the next cycle. Maybe.

Bill

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/05/2000

Author: paulhume <>

>The Future History cycle would correspond to the

>Age of Horus, the Magical Child (also called the Age of Aquarius); I don’t know

>what would come after that — back to the age of Osiris, perhaps?

Hope not. Liber AL says Hrumachis (or suggests it) and speaks of the “double-wanded one” taking the scepter of Horus. Later writers in Crowley’s tradition have posited Maat as the archetype of that age.

Given the two-in-one symbolisms involved, the twins seem more likely to succeed Ol’ Buddy-boy as hieropants…er…phants.

>Lazarus

>Long, having lived one cycle as an avatar of Horus would become the

>Osiris-hierophant of the next cycle. Maybe.

Paul

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/06/2000

Author: AGplusone <>

Bill Patterson and Paul Hume converse:

>>The Future History cycle would correspond to the

>>Age of Horus, the Magical Child (also called the Age of Aquarius); I

>don’t know

>>what would come after that — back to the age of Osiris, perhaps?

>

>Hope not. Liber AL says Hrumachis (or suggests it) and speaks of the

>”double-wanded one” taking the scepter of Horus. Later writers in

>Crowley’s tradition have posited Maat as the archetype of that age.

>

>Given the two-in-one symbolisms involved, the twins seem more likely to

>succeed Ol’ Buddy-boy as hieropants…er…phants.

>

>>Lazarus

>>Long, having lived one cycle as an avatar of Horus would become the

>>Osiris-hierophant of the next cycle. Maybe.

Thank you fellas, but …

Would one of you please spell out a little more about this cycle symbolism you both know more than a bit about, so the rest of us uninitiate can follow a little better? Seriously.

David M. Silver

“I expect your names to shine!”

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/06/2000

Author: paulhume <>

>Would one of you please spell out a little more about this cycle symbolism you

>both know more than a bit about, so the rest of us uninitiate can follow a

>little better? Seriously.

>

Uninitiate is the keyword. I would like to discuss it further, but I am forbidden to (g).

Seriously, the Aeon of Osiris/Aeon of Horus nomenclature is a creation of Aleister Crowley. There was an Aeon of Isis as well, and it vaguely (but only vaguely) follows the putative progression of matriarchal cultrue to patriarchal culture to (I must hope) a period of the Child – synthesizing the best of Mother and Father, without the imposition of authority implied in the other systems.

I just noticed the reference go by, and had to make a relatively esoteric comment on the suggestion.

Paul

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/06/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>Would one of you please spell out a little more about this cycle symbolism

There isn’t much spelling out one can do without getting deeply involved in the particulars of this system versus that . . . which is what just transpired.

There seems to be a general consensus among occult groups over the last hundred years that sometime around the turn of the century (the date is variously placed from 1881 to about 1909) we entered a new celestial age — popularly called the “Age of Aquarius”– based on, I think, the constellation that rises at a certain time of the year.

The various hermetic groups (which include the Golden Dawn and the OTO and Thelema — all of Aleister Crowley’s groups — typically think of these ages as “great cycles” lasting multiple thousands of years, though the details of the cycles differ from system to system of interpretation. There are great cycles in other systems as well — Mayan and, I think, Vedanta.

In hermetic cosmology, the material universe is ruled by 7 “governors,” each one of which rules a part of the cycle, plus an interregnum period of decay and weakness before the start of the next cycle.

There is a possible match of the Future History with the hermetic theory (though there’s not really enough detail in the middle part of the cycle to make a good match)

In TEFL, if you count the “locations” or sites of the stories (one way of reducing the confusing multiplicities of counterpoints and frame devices), there are seven stories, plus Boondock which might be the start of the next cycle, so the overall structure of TEFL might incorporate the hermetic idea that when a soul ascends into the heavens (or approaches nirvana or the state of total illumination), it gives up its attachments to the material world by returning them to the seven governors in sequence.

I’ve always thought of Stranger and TEFL as “bookends” — Stranger principally deals with the first law of Thelema: Do what Thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” while TEFL deals with the second law of Thelema: “Love is the Law, Love under Will.” But both books assume the third law of Thelema: “Every person is a Star” (i.,e., Thou art God).

Bill

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/06/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>twins seem more likely to

>succeed Ol’ Buddy-boy as hieropants…er…phants

I’ve long suspected there was a kind of “Children of the Lens” thing going on in the World As Myth books. Doc Smith had described the intended plot of the seventh book in the Lensman series to RAH when they were contemplating a collaboration in the early 40’s, and Heinlein suggests it was mythic in its use of incest themes.

Bill

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/05/2000

Author: lal_truckee <>

In article <>, ddavitt <>wrote re WW Smith.

>he altered from the man we meet in MC who wants to, “keep on climbing, and

>looking around him to see what he can see, as long as the tree holds out.”

>to the bitter, dispirited wreck that we meet at the start of TEFL.

I didn’t think he was “bitter” – just old, jaded, and tired, and enjoying his years. And yes, I used “enjoying” on purpose.

Have you ever talked to an old (ie, in their 90s) man who considered his life a completed work, and was ready to go?

They “cheated” WW by rejuvenating him – being young has autonomic repercussions in attitude. Doesn’t invalidate his “old man” attitude, just changes it. Better would have been WW figuring out he had more to accomplish BEFORE rejuvenation.

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/06/2000

Author: Pixelmeow <>

Filly wrote:

>I am reading it for the first time with an eye to the deeper meanings. And I

>began thinking of the book’s different stories as fables or parables. Does

>anyone else agree, and if so, what meanings do you pick up from them? If

>not,

>how do they come across to you?

>

Absolutely I think of them as parables. Even if the “really happened” to Lazarus, they are still stories to learn from, which I have done as much as possible. Meanings, hm, don’t worry about growing old but live your life fully; do what’s fun in life; take care of your family; don’t do any cruelty; don’t tread on others’ prerogatives when possible; my list could go on… Got to find it and read it again though.

~teresa~ >^..^< “Never try to outstubborn a cat.” Robert A Heinlein >^..^<

“Blert!” (Eat the .cat.nip to email…)

http://hometown.aol.com/pixelmeow/index.htm

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/06/2000

Author: Marty <_.spam.com>

Stephanie Vickers <>wrote:

>I’ve begun reading the book for the next chat session, so I wanted to kick off

>the thread to prelude our chat. Not intending to step on toes, David, but I

>already have a single question in regards to the novel.

>

>I am reading it for the first time with an eye to the deeper meanings. And I

>began thinking of the book’s different stories as fables or parables. Does

>anyone else agree, and if so, what meanings do you pick up from them? If not,

>how do they come across to you?

>

>

>Filly

>http://hometown.aol.com/merfilly8/myhomepage

>”One man with courage makes a majority.”

>–Andrew Jackson

I think that’s a great observation. Lazarus’ fables

Here’s one I was just enjoying, when Laz accepted that it was his fault for being found out early in the book, he says, “I’ve always known that it is more difficult to lower your status convincingly than to raise it.”

There is a great point to that one, I think.

Most of the ‘higher class’ folks I’ve met would definitely have a hard time getting along in some shadier neighborhood places… I think they know it, too. A few, though, could get comfortable in either element.

Too bad, cause alot of the times you can get some awesome food at a local rough joint.

M

does that make sense?

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/07/2000

Author: CAS6039 <>

Yes, it does make sense. I think that he also means that a “man of means,” well-dressed, etc., sticks out, or sticks in people’s minds, more than an “ordinary-looking bloke” would. A well-dressed man finds it harder to blend into many places in shadier neighborhoods, than someone dressed in much more causal and modest clothes.

Raising your status convincingly, on the other hand, could just be someone putting on their “Sunday Best” (like I do for every wedding i ever attend) where they seem uncomfortable in those fine clothes.

Even more important than a man’s (or woman’s) outward appearance is how they speak. If you are able to use grammar and an extended vocabulary convincingly, you may seem much higher (or lower) in status than your outward appearance you appear. It’s the same principle that allows someone to speak “the Queen’s English” at work, and fall back into whatever idiom or slang you’re more familiar with when you’re “hangin’ out with the buds.”

CAS

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/07/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>Raising your status convincingly, on the other hand, could just be someone

>putting on their “Sunday Best”

Well, actually, clothes do not make the man. If you don’t wear your “Sunday Best” like they are natural to you, you will still stick out like a sore thumb.

Bill

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/08/2000

Author: Stephanie Vickers <>

I can’t find time to read!

Okay, that rant aside, I am only just finishing Lamb’s tale. And I still have that feel of a parable. I’m just not sure what it was meant to teach. 🙂

Seriously, I did find myself wondering if the story about Lamb might not have been a tongue in cheek about one of his fellow writers or classmates. Opinions?

Filly

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/08/2000

Author: CAS6039 <>

>I am only just finishing Lamb’s tale. And I still

>have

>that feel of a parable. I’m just not sure what it was meant to teach. 🙂

>

>Seriously, I did find myself wondering if the story about Lamb might not have

>been a tongue in cheek about one of his fellow writers or classmates.

>Opinions?

I’ve always thought that he was trying to show how “LAZY” people, not “industrious” workers, are the ones responsible for all human progress. They’re the ones who do not accept the status quo, who are always asking, “Why do it that way, when THIS way would be so much easier?” The fact that he emphasized several times that reading and studying was no chore for Davis Lamb seemed to indicate that he (the character) did know how to think and reason, something many folks seem to have difficulty with!!

But some of that story must be autobiographical, and I seem to remember some extensive notes in Expanded Universe about his time on USN carriers that also contributed to the story.

I just finished up “The Tale of the Adopted Daughter” which I always thought as his attempt to explain his idea of the perfect love affair. I had to read it all the way through; I can never put that one down til I get to the end…..”E.F. or F.F.? Both!”

CAS

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/08/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>”LAZY” people, not

>”industrious” workers, are the ones responsible for all human progress.

I think Heinlein was speaking to the Puritan part of the American heritage that thinks only of bodily labor as true work.

Bill

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/08/2000

Author: Ogden Johnson III <>

(Stephanie Vickers) wrote:

>I can’t find time to read!

>

>Okay, that rant aside, I am only just finishing Lamb’s tale. And I still have

>that feel of a parable. I’m just not sure what it was meant to teach. 🙂

>

>Seriously, I did find myself wondering if the story about Lamb might not have

>been a tongue in cheek about one of his fellow writers or classmates.

>Opinions?

It clearly has its autobiographical elements, and surely draws from classmates. CAS, in the first response to your post has also put his finger on an element in the tale. In line with that, one of the primary lessons the USNA tries to inculcate into its midshipman through their four years is time management. Other parts of the curriculum may change over time, but Naval officers quickly learn that unless they are masters of time management, there will be a hard row to hoe once in the fleet. The midshipmen have to learn, and quickly, the easiest and fastest way to do their day-in/day-out tasks so that they have the time and energy reserves to cope with the unexpected when it arises, as it often will throughout their tenure at the Academy and in the fleet. Or, hopefully, the time and energy to anticipate and thus expect and be better prepared for the “unexpected”.

David Lamb, by being “lazy” and organizing things so that his day-in/day-out life would be as easy as possible, found himself prepared when the unplanned arose. In telling the tale, RAH did, if nothing else, provide a spiritual blueprint for survival at the USNA [or USMA/USAFA, for that matter]. ;->

OJ III

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/08/2000

Author: AGplusone <>

OJ replied to Filly and CAS at length concerning “The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail” and I agree with what he said so much, it bears repeating before I add my comment:

>It clearly has its autobiographical elements, and surely draws from

>classmates. CAS, in the first response to your post has also put his

>finger on an element in the tale. In line with that, one of the

>primary lessons the USNA tries to inculcate into its midshipman

>through their four years is time management. Other parts of the

>curriculum may change over time, but Naval officers quickly learn that

>unless they are masters of time management, there will be a hard row

>to hoe once in the fleet. The midshipmen have to learn, and quickly,

>the easiest and fastest way to do their day-in/day-out tasks so that

>they have the time and energy reserves to cope with the unexpected

>when it arises, as it often will throughout their tenure at the

>Academy and in the fleet. Or, hopefully, the time and energy to

>anticipate and thus expect and be better prepared for the

>”unexpected”.

>

>David Lamb, by being “lazy” and organizing things so that his

>day-in/day-out life would be as easy as possible, found himself

>prepared when the unplanned arose. In telling the tale, RAH did, if

>nothing else, provide a spiritual blueprint for survival at the USNA

>[or USMA/USAFA, for that matter]. ;->

There is however one element of the tale that has always troubled me: the secret marriage. Virginia has recently cleared up that point, i.e., it was not Robert who was the model for that episode, even though Robert may have been his own model is several other parts of the depiction of “David Lamb” (it was an identifiable someone else in the Class of ’29, who, of course, is no longer alive).

Cadets at West Point and Midshipmen at Annapolis were then and are now taught one very important Code while in those respective schools, the Honor Code, i.e., “an officer does not lie, cheat, or steal, and does *not* tolerate those [others] who do so.” That later clause places on obligation upon cadets and midshipmen to report to the Honor Committees of their respective Academies those who do violate the Honor Code–at least it was so construed up to and at the time of the writing of Time Enough For Love.

They are also forebidden to marry while at the Academy. (“No wife, no horse, no private arms” is one formulation I seem to recall from days past.)

Lamb’s deception, and the connivance of his Professor who was the father of the girl who was impregnated, as well as the infered connivance of at least some of his classmates, has always troubled me.

What exactly was Heinlein saying, here, I have always wondered? ‘Rules are meant to be broken’? doesn’t exactly fit in the circumstances … cadets [and probably midshipmen] have always slipped out late at night to go to “Benny Havens” [or the Annapolis equivalent] so to speak, but the marriage prohibition is a far more serious obligation.

Concededly the ‘book solution’ was Draconian. What Lamb is supposed to have done was admit he’d impregnated his girlfriend, resigned as a middie to ‘do the right thing’ (marry her), and then return to the fleet and wearing the little round white cap and bellbottomed thirteen-buttoned trousers, for the *next five years,* which was the obligation you agree to in return for that education. Practically a guarantee in the late 1920s and 30s when enlisted men were paid $21 monthly for failure of the marriage, or real penury for the couple, and, not too incidentally, the end of his career for the bride’s father, social disgrace to the wife-to-be for marrying an enlisted man because he made her pregnant … and a waste of the government’s money educating Lamb … still, and all, that prohibition against marriage is one of the red line causes for a Dishonorable Discharge from the Corps of Cadets and the Brigade of Midshipman.

Anyone have thoughts on this one … ?

David M. Silver

“I expect your names to shine!”

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/08/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

AGplusone wrote:

>

>

>There is however one element of the tale that has always troubled me: the

>secret marriage. snip

>

>Lamb’s deception, and the connivance of his Professor who was the father of the

>girl who was impregnated, as well as the infered connivance of at least some of

>his classmates, has always troubled me.

>

>What exactly was Heinlein saying, here, I have always wondered? ‘Rules are

>meant to be broken’? doesn’t exactly fit in the circumstances … cadets [and

>probably midshipmen] have always slipped out late at night to go to “Benny

>Havens” [or the Annapolis equivalent] so to speak, but the marriage prohibition

>is a far more serious obligation.

>

>

I don’t know if there is a moral or a lesson; it seems to me that in this case, rather than being lazy, David was pragmatic; something of which Lazarus strongly approved. It would help no one to disclose his marriage and it would, in the climate of the times, have been very detrimental to his girlfriend’s future if they hadn’t got married. He took, as always, the easiest route and it hurt no one really. If you’re saying that he should have weighed the future of at least three, possibly more, people against a code of honour and chosen the code…well, I think he made the right choice.

That said, I’m outside the system…and I can’t see the point of the rule. If I were inside the system, I wouldn’t be expected to see the point; just to follow orders. IMO, David too was an outsider and he reacted in character.

Jane

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: Major oz <>

>That said, I’m outside the system…and I can’t see the point of the rule.

Sure you can: it is in place so that, in the course of our careers, we will trust, with never a doubt or hesitation, what each of us says in all things pertaining to the job.

>If I

>were inside the system, I wouldn’t be expected to see the point; just to

>follow

>orders.

No you wouldn’t. We want only those capable of thinking and UNDERSTANDING and ACCEPTING the point. Those who would “…just follow orders…” we ship to 30’s Germany.

cheers

oz

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Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: Roger Glover <>

AGplusone wrote:

>

>OJ replied to Filly and CAS at length concerning “The Man Who Was Too Lazy To

>Fail” and I agree with what he said so much, it bears repeating before I add my

>comment:

>

>>It clearly has its autobiographical elements, and surely draws from

>>classmates. CAS, in the first response to your post has also put his

>>finger on an element in the tale. In line with that, one of the

>>primary lessons the USNA tries to inculcate into its midshipman

>>through their four years is time management. Other parts of the

>>curriculum may change over time, but Naval officers quickly learn that

>>unless they are masters of time management, there will be a hard row

>>to hoe once in the fleet. The midshipmen have to learn, and quickly,

>>the easiest and fastest way to do their day-in/day-out tasks so that

>>they have the time and energy reserves to cope with the unexpected

>>when it arises, as it often will throughout their tenure at the

>>Academy and in the fleet. Or, hopefully, the time and energy to

>>anticipate and thus expect and be better prepared for the

>>”unexpected”.

>>

>>David Lamb, by being “lazy” and organizing things so that his

>>day-in/day-out life would be as easy as possible, found himself

>>prepared when the unplanned arose. In telling the tale, RAH did, if

>>nothing else, provide a spiritual blueprint for survival at the USNA

>>[or USMA/USAFA, for that matter]. ;->

————->: snip

>Cadets at West Point and Midshipmen at Annapolis were then and are now taught

>one very important Code while in those respective schools, the Honor Code,

>i.e., “an officer does not lie, cheat, or steal, and does *not* tolerate those

>[others] who do so.” That later clause places on obligation upon cadets and

>midshipmen to report to the Honor Committees of their respective Academies

>those who do violate the Honor Code–at least it was so construed up to and at

>the time of the writing of Time Enough For Love.

It would have been well within the scope of Long’s character to consider the Honor Code “blue mud” that helped him fit in with the natives, and to respect anyone else who viewed it the same way. And I must say from personal experience that I don’t think that such an attitude toward the Honor Code would be that unusual.

When I was at USAFA, I once reported myself for an honor violation, cheating on an in-squadron military knowledge quiz. I just looked up at one point, saw an answer different from mine on another sheet, and changed my answer. This was a low-stakes test, no grades attached, minor point of pride for the people who scored well. When I turned myself in the universal response in public was, “How could you have sold your honor so cheaply?”, but in private, the nearly universal response was, “It was just a damn squadron test. Why turn yourself in over some piddly little thing? You could get kicked out!”

I’m sure purists will say it was different in the “brown-shoe days,” but I don’t really believe that. A number of “brown-shoe” officers were among those who privately told me I was foolish to turn myself in.

>Concededly the ‘book solution’ was Draconian. What Lamb is supposed to have

>done was admit he’d impregnated his girlfriend, resigned as a middie to ‘do the

>right thing’ (marry her), and then return to the fleet and wearing the little

>round white cap and bellbottomed thirteen-buttoned trousers, for the *next five

>years,* which was the obligation you agree to in return for that education.

Actually, when I entered USAFA (1978, class of ’82), the obligation for all four service academies (USAFA, USNA, USMA, & USCGA) was only 4 years, and it was not incurred until the start of the 2nd class (3rd, junior) year. During my freshman year they upped the commitment from 4 years to 5 years, and then gave the undecideds (classes of ’81 and ’82) an extra year (start of 1st class (4th, senior) year) to decide. So Heinlein would have been under a 4-year obligation, assuming even that 4 years was the deal back in the ’20s and ’30s.

>Practically a guarantee in the late 1920s and 30s when enlisted men were paid

>$21 monthly for failure of the marriage, or real penury for the couple, and,

>not too incidentally, the end of his career for the bride’s father, social

>disgrace to the wife-to-be for marrying an enlisted man because he made her

>pregnant … and a waste of the government’s money educating Lamb … still,

>and all, that prohibition against marriage is one of the red line causes for a

>Dishonorable Discharge from the Corps of Cadets and the Brigade of Midshipman.

A classmate of mine who shall remain nameless did pretty much the same thing as Lamb. In his case he married the girl in the summer between his 2nd class and 3rd class years. His best friend at the time was dating the girl’s sister and was disgusted by his now-former friend’s acts. They have not spoken in years. *BUT* he did not turn his former buddy over to the honor court.

— Roger Glover

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

Wiz wrote:

>

>

>From my standpoint, at this time, pragmatism would win out. However,

>the mid that I was 40-odd years ago would have been horrified at such

>a violation of the Honor Code. It was burned into our minds,

>especially, the “I will not tolerate among us…”

>

>In the late ’50s, such an action would have been completely

>unthinkable; I see no reason to believe it would have been otherwise

>in RAH’s day.

>

>>That said, I’m outside the system…and I can’t see the point of the rule. If I

>>were inside the system, I wouldn’t be expected to see the point; just to follow

>>orders. IMO, David too was an outsider and he reacted in character.

>

>I don’t think Lamb would have been an outsider, nor do I think he

>would have considered himself such. It doesn’t take long at all to

>become indoctrinated. <g> Those who do not, who remain outsiders,

>soon leave.

>

>

If you think about it, he began his naval career with a deception; altering his age from 15 to 17. Whilst there is a long tradition of young patriots doing this at the onset of war, that reason doesn’t apply here.

Then he applied to be an officer, again, not out of any desire to serve better; just because officers sat down and read books, rather than doing hard physical work. When it became necessary to join in a sport he deliberately chose the one that was the least physically hazardous over one that might hurt him quite badly. ALWAYS he put himself first….not saying I blame him but is that the attitude of a committed serviceman? As Lazarus remarks to Ira, David followed the Eleventh Commandment….and he also says, of the lack of female naval officers,

“It was Navy policy and therefore did not have a reason. In truth there was no job in that entire Navy which could not have been performed by either sex or even by eunuchs – but by long tradition that Navy was exclusively male.”

Lazarus then refers to the rule about no sex ( which was what it amounted to) as an “impossible rule”, violated by individuals, allowed when not at sea; a hypocritical double standard, winked at by authority. To go back to David Silver’s original point, if that were the case, then David Lamb’s lapse would have been condoned unofficially and not a problem until it came out in the open. When David’s girlfriend got pregnant he reacted as he always did, “When faced with a choice of evils, accept the least hazardous and cope with it, unblinkingly.”

Anyway, I see him as being an outsider because the reason he joined the Navy and his attitude when he was in it was all concerned with making his life safe and trouble free; he was not troubled by esprit de corps, nor burning with patriotic fervour once war broke out; he even pretended to be crazy to milk the system of as much pension as possible.

Jane

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: Tawn Johnson <>

>If you think about it, he began his naval career with a deception; altering his age from

>15 to 17. Whilst there is a long tradition of young patriots doing this at the onset of

>war, that reason doesn’t apply here. Then he applied to be an officer, again, not out

>of any desire to serve better; just because officers sat down and read books, rather than

>doing hard physical work. When it became necessary to join in a sport he deliberately

>chose the one that was the least physically hazardous over one that might hurt him quite

>badly. ALWAYS he put himself first….not saying I blame him but is that the attitude of a

>committed serviceman?

I don’t believe you wrote that Jane. By about the second or third sentence I was thinking “oh, another insulting Randy post”. I scrolled down to see who wrote it (100 percent sure it was Randy). I was amazed that I saw your byline.

You don’t understand the military dear.

Tawn

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

Tawn Johnson wrote:

>

>

>I don’t believe you wrote that Jane. By about the second or third

>sentence I was thinking “oh, another insulting Randy post”. I scrolled down to

>see who wrote it (100 percent sure it was Randy). I was amazed that I saw your

>byline.

>

>You don’t understand the military dear.

>

>Tawn

Merci du compliment……but there was no insult intended. I am giving my views on the actions of a fictional character…dear.

Jane

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>If you think about it, he began his naval career with a deception; altering

>his age from

You know, this post just caused me to wonder if we are mistaking Heinlein’s motive for putting this story in, believing Heinlein wants us to approve of David Lamb. Maybe, instead, he’s showing what an amoral pragmatist can get away with and thus giving us a benchmark against which to test Lazarus Long’s evolution (not nearly far enough) out of pragmatic orientation and toward a “love” orientation.

Bill

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: Chris and Elisabeth Zakes <>

On 09 Oct 2000 17:41:36 GMT, an orbiting mind-control laser caused (BPRAL22169) to write:

>>If you think about it, he began his naval career with a deception; altering

>>his age from

>

>You know, this post just caused me to wonder if we are mistaking Heinlein’s

>motive for putting this story in, believing Heinlein wants us to approve of

>David Lamb. Maybe, instead, he’s showing what an amoral pragmatist can get

>away with

That’s actually rather plausible. Remember Zeb’s description of how he got his PhD in “The Number of the Beast”?

-Chris Zakes

Texas

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: Will <>

In article <>, (BPRAL22169) wrote:

>>If you think about it, he began his naval career with a deception; altering

>>his age from

>

>You know, this post just caused me to wonder if we are mistaking Heinlein’s

>motive for putting this story in, believing Heinlein wants us to approve of

>David Lamb. Maybe, instead, he’s showing what an amoral pragmatist can get

>away with and thus giving us a benchmark against which to test Lazarus Long’s

>evolution (not nearly far enough) out of pragmatic orientation and toward a

>”love” orientation.

>Bill

>

Lamb is a low-key Flashman. Anyone who can approve of Flashman and condone the stuff HE does can do the same for Lamb. For that matter, Lazarus Long has some of the same characteristics. I suppose there are many such in literature but Flashman was the one I thought of.

Will

Dum Vivamus, Vivimus

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: Philip Brown <>

On 09 Oct 2000 17:41:36 GMT, (BPRAL22169) wrote:

>>If you think about it, he began his naval career with a deception; altering

>>his age from

>

>You know, this post just caused me to wonder if we are mistaking Heinlein’s

>motive for putting this story in, believing Heinlein wants us to approve of

>David Lamb. Maybe, instead, he’s showing what an amoral pragmatist can get

>away with and thus giving us a benchmark against which to test Lazarus Long’s

>evolution (not nearly far enough) out of pragmatic orientation and toward a

>”love” orientation.

>Bill

>

I never thought we were meant to approve of Lamb. RAH the speculative fiction writer spins us a great yarn about how far wily self-interest will get you – then RAH the patriotic Navy man steps out of the wings and whacks us with a big stick to point out that this has its limits, in the scene where “Mr” Lamb chickens out of fighter training.

A bit tough on the poor guy, you might say, but all I’ve read of/by RAH suggests that on such points he was tough.

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

Philip Brown wrote:

>

>

>I never thought we were meant to approve of Lamb. RAH the speculative

>fiction writer spins us a great yarn about how far wily self-interest

>will get you – then RAH the patriotic Navy man steps out of the wings

>and whacks us with a big stick to point out that this has its limits,

>in the scene where “Mr” Lamb chickens out of fighter training.

>

> A bit tough on the poor guy, you might say, but all I’ve read of/by

>RAH suggests that on such points he was tough.

Hmm…must admit it never occurred to me to think of it that way; I always got the impression that Lazarus fully approved of David. Whether or not Heinlein did is perhaps another matter. But Lazarus is not Heinlein.

Besides, “chickens out” is a little harsh; at that point they weren’t at war….and David was so scared that he was a bit of a liability. He damped his fear of placing his life in someone else’s hands down enough to function….but not perhaps at full efficiency. Why should he do something that scared him when there was no need to? That would be silly. From his POV at least. Flying was a means to an end, like everything he did in his life, that end being a lie in each morning and minimal effort involved to get it.

Remember, it’s Lazarus ( and Heinlein too if Grumbles can be believed) who thought that, “Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offence, that is.”

Jane

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: Richard A. Randall <>

“ddavitt” <>wrote in message news:

>Philip Brown wrote:

>

>>

>>

>> I never thought we were meant to approve of Lamb. RAH the speculative

>> fiction writer spins us a great yarn about how far wily self-interest

>> will get you – then RAH the patriotic Navy man steps out of the wings

>> and whacks us with a big stick to point out that this has its limits,

>> in the scene where “Mr” Lamb chickens out of fighter training.

>>

>> A bit tough on the poor guy, you might say, but all I’ve read of/by

>> RAH suggests that on such points he was tough.

>

>Hmm…must admit it never occurred to me to think of it that way; I always got the

>impression that Lazarus fully approved of David. Whether or not Heinlein did is

>perhaps another matter. But Lazarus is not Heinlein.

>Besides, “chickens out” is a little harsh; at that point they weren’t at

>war….and David was so scared that he was a bit of a liability. He damped his

>fear of placing his life in someone else’s hands down enough to function….but

>not perhaps at full efficiency. Why should he do something that scared him when

>there was no need to? That would be silly. From his POV at least. Flying was a

>means to an end, like everything he did in his life, that end being a lie in each

>morning and minimal effort involved to get it.

>Remember, it’s Lazarus ( and Heinlein too if Grumbles can be believed) who thought

>that,

>”Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a

>first offence, that is.”

A point to consider is that, while he did get stationed to shore duty, those flying boats were designed (and used) as fleet reconnaissance and courier planes. They had weapons (a few dinky machine guns and, in some cases, a puny load of bombs), but were slow, fat, and vulnerable. Military, especially naval, aviation is _never_ a safe job. All it would have taken is a set of orders, “Lieutenant Lamb, you’ve been assigned to the Philippines. . . ” I wouldn’t call declining carrier fighter duty to be “chickening out” (I’ll insert from, Hell, even jump out of any old crate. I’ve been on National Guard choppers older than I was, where I could _see_ stripped screws moving back and forth. But you _won’t_ find _me_ doing any arrested night landings. <g>)

But, that is a good point; Lazarus is not Heinlein, so perhaps we aren’t supposed to like Lamb.

Richard A. Randall

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: Dehede011 <>

I had interpreted the whole Lamb story from a very autobiographical viewpoint and really didn’t take RAH very seriously either in praising Lambs’s “carrier” decision or decrying it.

I had been an amateur boxer in HS and in flight school faced the decision of which branch of flying I should choose – fighters, attack, seaplanes or multi-engined land.

My analysis saw the object of war as trying to kill as many of the enemy as fast as possible, deny him the power to kill yours, and get the war stopped as soon as possible by doing this.

If you consider the mid 50s I don’t think any of us thought we would live through WW3.

At that time our target in seaplanes was a sub carrying many men that possibly was trying to take out New York City. In addition we had a strategic seaplane in the pipeline which we intended to use for strategic bombing of the Soviet.

I chose seaplanes. I understand the external reasons that RAH assigned to Lamb but these need not have been Lamb’s internal reasons.

Dehede

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: BPRAL22169 <>

>then RAH the patriotic Navy man steps out of the wings

>and whacks us with a big stick

That’s plausible. he’s done that kind of thing before. i’m thinking particularly of “Coventry,” where people think they are supposed to think the Covenant society is utopian, but Heinlein has a very different take on it. Why did MacKinnon get let back in without reconditioning: Heinlein’s answer: they were wrong.

Bill

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: AGplusone <>

Bill Patterson responded to a salient point concerning Lamb:

>>then RAH the patriotic Navy man steps out of the wings

>>and whacks us with a big stick

>

>That’s plausible. he’s done that kind of thing before. i’m thinking

>particularly of “Coventry,” where people think they are supposed to think

>the

>Covenant society is utopian, but Heinlein has a very different take on it.

>Why

>did MacKinnon get let back in without reconditioning: Heinlein’s answer:

>they

>were wrong.

Perhaps more than merely plausible, especially if you look at the January 4, 1942, letter to Campbell excerpted in _Grumbles from the Grave_, referring to the part around:

“Furthermore, if they were, they would be no damn good as naval officers. A naval officer is much more than a man with a certain body of technical information. He is a man trained to respond in a certain behavoir pattern in which ‘honor’ and ‘patriotism’ have been substituted for economic motivation. … ”

Note the sentences a few paragraphs above that: “Let him see classmates cashiered for a small and casual lie. Let him see another classmate cashiered for stealing a pair of white silk stockings.” Those small and casual lies and that theft were Honor Code violations.

It would baffle civilians to learn the elastic definition of “Quibbling” employed at the Academies … at employed at least at one time. Quibbling is a Lie.

Consider what you hypothetically would do if called upon to hire a middle aged man one of whose years’ earlier job evaluations, given when he was only two years out of college, contained the following:

“X has a tendancy in submitted written reports to magnify his own contributions to missions while reducing the contributions of others and shifting the responsibility of any failure to his subordinates … ”

Did you understand (does everyone here understand?) that that mere, mild comment in a young military or naval officer’s evaluation, probably a curable fault with time and experience and correction in corporate life, would be lethal? That it would result in his or her being asked to resign the commission and find another career? That if a resignation was not forthcoming, in most ordinary circumstances, the officer would be cashiered as a liar and unfit to serve?

It all comes down to the perhaps unprovable and certainly unscientific fact that the military equates untruthfulness or lack of forthrighness with an admission of cowardice, at the bottom, and while this may not be always true, it is always a major factor in any evaluation of fitness to receive or retain a commission.

David M. Silver

“I expect your names to shine!”

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/09/2000

Author: Richard A. Randall <>

“ddavitt” <>wrote in message news:

>Wiz wrote:

>

>>

>>

>>From my standpoint, at this time, pragmatism would win out. However,

>>the mid that I was 40-odd years ago would have been horrified at such

>>a violation of the Honor Code. It was burned into our minds,

>>especially, the “I will not tolerate among us…”

>>

>>In the late ’50s, such an action would have been completely

>>unthinkable; I see no reason to believe it would have been otherwise

>>in RAH’s day. <snip>

>

>

>If you think about it, he began his naval career with a deception; altering his age from

>15 to 17. Whilst there is a long tradition of young patriots doing this at the onset of

>war, that reason doesn’t apply here.

>Then he applied to be an officer, again, not out of any desire to serve better; just

>because officers sat down and read books, rather than doing hard physical work.

>When it became necessary to join in a sport he deliberately chose the one that was the

>least physically hazardous over one that might hurt him quite badly. ALWAYS he put

>himself first….not saying I blame him but is that the attitude of a committed

>serviceman? <snip>

>When David’s girlfriend got pregnant he reacted as he always did,

>”When faced with a choice of evils, accept the least hazardous and cope with it,

>unblinkingly.”

>Anyway, I see him as being an outsider because the reason he joined the Navy and his

>attitude when he was in it was all concerned with making his life safe and trouble free;

>he was not troubled by esprit de corps, nor burning with patriotic fervour once war

>broke out; he even pretended to be crazy to milk the system of as much pension as

>possible.

I’m with Jane on this one. David Lamb is _not_ the model of the perfect Kay-Det, but. then, he never wanted to be.

Richard A. Randall

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: Dehede011 <>

Jane,

Did it ever occur to you as an outsider that the entire honor rule that we hold up for not only cadets and military officers and others as well is a little bit deranged or at the very least inconsistant.

Military Officers and Cadets, like many others, have an honor code that says we will not lie among ourselves but we accept that honor may require that we lie expertly or deceive outsiders expertly; for example an enemy in wartime. The question becomes who is the enemy and that is capable of being interpreted and graded by threat.

Dehede

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: ddavitt <>

Dehede011 wrote:

>Jane,

> Did it ever occur to you as an outsider that the entire honor rule that we

>hold up for not only cadets and military officers and others as well is a

>little bit deranged or at the very least inconsistant.

>

>Dehede

Yes but as an outsider ( and a non American) I don’t feel qualified to comment in case I’m missing something. I’m not sure of the situation in the British Armed Forces and even if I were, bear in mind that the David Lamb story is set at the start of the 20 th century; things have changed.

My comments ( which some people may have misunderstood) can be summed up as; David Lamb used the Navy to get the life he wanted; he never put its needs first. This made him an outsider, rather than a committed Naval Officer. Lazarus may have seen this as pragmatic and perhaps admirable; Heinlein may not. I am not insulting those who followed the code and I’m not saying that the code is pointless, just that from my POV as an outsider, it seems to be flawed if it is observed at one level and ignored at another, both with the approval of the authorities.

Jane

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/10/2000

Author: James Gifford

BPRAL22169 wrote:

>>then RAH the patriotic Navy man steps out of the wings

>>and whacks us with a big stick

>That’s plausible. he’s done that kind of thing before. i’m thinking

>particularly of “Coventry,” where people think they are supposed to think the

>Covenant society is utopian, but Heinlein has a very different take on it. Why

>did MacKinnon get let back in without reconditioning: Heinlein’s answer: they

>were wrong.

You think that’s where he left it? Not that MacKinnon’s experiences with a very different grade of people inside the Barrier changed him into someone that could be a useful and “workable” member of the outside society? The direct comment, from Fader (IIRC) is that MacKinnon cured himself. Does that equate to Heinlein saying the Covenant judges were wrong?

| James Gifford – Nitrosyncretic Press – |

| See http://www.nitrosyncretic.com for the Heinlein FAQ & more |

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/11/2000

Author: BPRAL22169

>You think that’s where he left it?

Now, now: I was just quoting Heinlein’s one statement (I know about). He may have had a lot more to say about it that never got to print.

My opinion is a lot closer to yours. One of the things I’m marveling about at the moment is how very confident RAH was about how we can heal ourselves, how much influence and control we have over the kind of person we are. As the victimocracy around us gets so much more … victimic, it’s a straw to clutch at.

Bill

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/11/2000

Author: Dehede011

Jane,

I think you are right as the code often works that way. Past that there may be a deeper meaning that I didn’t catch. Actually in Navy Flight School there wasn’t much emphasis on the honor code in the fifties.

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/12/2000

Author: Dehede011

You can also consider that RAH had been in the process of developing certain ideas throughout his body of work. He played with the Homo Novus in GULF, with time travel in BY HIS BOOTSTRAPS, etc. In TEFL he first brings it all together. The book begins with LL “the bitter dispirited wreck” alone and friendless. He was absolutely unique in the universe; alone not just because he had no friends, but because as a unique person in all respects he was incapable of having anything more than passing acquaintances. At the end of TEFL, for the first time, he is wealthy, healthy, surrounded by other HN friends that would live forever and had the ability to travel the universe through all dimensions and all times. As perfect genetic control was possible what we label incest no longer mattered and any person could be plucked from their timeline and from their destiny to join this little band of HN. Later he would perfect his time and dimension traveler in NOTB then bring his chosen lifestyle to fruition in TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET. But I have a question: what was his next step to be when he worked out the workings of his next novel? I’ll bet he had one?

Dehede

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/11/2000

Author: Tian Harter <147DISH>

Jane wrote:

>Dehede011 wrote:

>

>>Jane,

>> Did it ever occur to you as an outsider that the

>>entire honor rule that we hold up for not only

>>cadets and military officers and others as well is a

>>little bit deranged or at the very least inconsistant.

>I am not insulting those who followed the code and

>I’m not saying that the code is pointless, just that from

>my POV as an outsider, it seems to be flawed if it is

>observed at one level and ignored at another, both

>with the approval of the authorities.

This is what I call “a bug in the system.” Differing opinions about the concept of military honor.

I am so surprised that these exist… 🙂

Tian Harter

http://members.aol.com/tnharter

According to page 41 of the current

issue of Adbusters, the CEO of tobacco

company Philip Morris is Geoffrey Bible.

I ride a Nader/LaDuke brand bicycle.

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/13/2000

Author: Stephanie Vickers

> Later he would perfect his time and dimension traveler in NOTB then

>bring

>his chosen lifestyle to fruition in TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET.

> But I have a question: what was his next step to be when he worked out

>the

>workings of his next novel? I’ll bet he had one?

>Dehede

I contest this point. I see TSBTS as an acknowledged end to his exploration of the theme. His next novel, I believe, would have chased a different literary rainbow.

Filly

http://hometown.aol.com/merfilly8/myhomepage

“One man with courage makes a majority.”

–Andrew Jackson

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/13/2000

Author: BPRAL22169

>His next novel, I believe, would have chased a different literary

>rainbow.

I disagree. It might be — was almost guaranteed to be — a great contrast in tone and style to TSBTS, but the central conflict of the World As Myth books hasn’t yet happened. What purpose is the Circle formed for, and what is the assault at the end of TCWWTW but the first movement of a phase of active conflict? I don’t see Maureen Johnson (Heinlein’s working title) as the end of the World As Myth. The parallels with Friday are too obvious. I suspect the next book might have been a sequel to Friday with Friday-le-femme brought into the Boondock family, though I don’t right now see how he might have used that to advance the overall dramatic arc of the WAM.

Puzzledly…

Bill

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/13/2000

Author: ddavitt

BPRAL22169 wrote:

>>His next novel, I believe, would have chased a different literary

>>rainbow.

>

>I disagree. It might be — was almost guaranteed to be — a great contrast in

>tone and style to TSBTS, but the central conflict of the World As Myth books

>hasn’t yet happened. What purpose is the Circle formed for, and what is the

>assault at the end of TCWWTW but the first movement of a phase of active

>conflict?

Another action novel with a grand climax as they fight the Galactic Overlord? That sounds like fun! Someone would have to die heroically though….this could be a good point for Lazarus to bow out….

Jane

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/13/2000

Author: Gaeltach

Stephanie Vickers wrote:

<snip>

>I contest this point. I see TSBTS as an acknowledged end to his exploration of

>the theme. His next novel, I believe, would have chased a different literary

>rainbow.

Perhaps……..Being partial to nostalgia and ealier Heinlein works, I would like to speculate that he would return in some way to Hard Sci Fi, where he first made his name and reputation. Unfortunately RAH (like the rest of us mere mortals) is not LL. While it seems we do not have time enough for love, we also do not have time enough to write stories indefinitely (obviously). More than most things I believe that RAH will endure for showing humans alongside the nuts and bolts of space-travel. This theme is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago, and Heinlein was the master. I’m sure he must have enjoyed writing about the military in space……. Maybe he would have surprised us with some kind of Starship Troopers sequel? It certainly would have been an excellent commercial decision, and left plenty of room to explore fresh ideas as well. Alas we will never know, but that has never stopped us from speculating 🙂

Sean

***************

…. and now for something completely different:

Hard RAH

***************

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/13/2000

Author: Chris and Elisabeth Zakes

On 12 Oct 2000 15:30:50 GMT, an orbiting mind-control laser caused (Dehede011) to write:

> You can also consider that RAH had been in the process of developing

>certain ideas throughout his body of work.

> He played with the Homo Novus in GULF, with time travel in BY HIS

>BOOTSTRAPS, etc. In TEFL he first brings it all together. The book begins

>with LL “the bitter dispirited wreck” alone and friendless. He was absolutely

>unique in the universe; alone not just because he had no friends, but because

>as a unique person in all respects he was incapable of having anything more

>than passing acquaintances.

> At the end of TEFL, for the first time, he is wealthy, healthy, surrounded

>by other HN friends that would live forever and had the ability to travel the

>universe through all dimensions and all times.

I’ll quibble with that “first time” notion.

>wealthy

Lazarus said “I’ve been wealthy many times and always lost it, usually through governments inflating the money or confiscating–‘nationalizing’ or ‘liberating’–something I owned.

>healthy

“Any bug that bites me, dies”. Can you provide *any* examples of Lazarus being sick *except* at the beginning of TEFL, where he’s deliberately let his body wear out and is hoping to die because he’s so bored with living?

>surrounded by other HN friends that would live forever

Living forever is standard medical practice in that time-and-place; it’s not exclusive to the Long family or your hypothetical “homo novis”. IIRC, in “Cat” someone says that the two most common causes of death in that society are accidents and deliberate suicide. <[>>had the ability to travel the universe through all dimensions and all times.

Wasn’t he travelling the universe with Libby for quite a while between the end of “Methuselah’s Children” and the beginning of TEFL? Granted he didn’t have the time-travel aspect yet, but he *did* have an entire galaxy (at least) to explore.

As for dimension-hopping, that wasn’t available until he encountered the Burroughs-Carter group, midway through TNOTB (and several years *after* TEFL.)

-Chris Zakes

Texas

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/12/2000

Author: E.M. St. John

CAS6039 wrote in message news:

>I’ve always thought that he was trying to show how “LAZY” people, not

>”industrious” workers, are the ones responsible for all human progress. They’re

>the ones who do not accept the status quo, who are always asking, “Why do it

>that way, when THIS way would be so much easier?” The fact that he emphasized

>several times that reading and studying was no chore for Davis Lamb seemed to

>indicate that he (the character) did know how to think and reason, something

>many folks seem to have difficulty with!!

I agree. I group this story with “Eurema’s Dam,” in which Lafferty argues that stupidity is the mother of invention, and _Bellwether_, in which Willis argues that scientific breakthroughs are the result of bad working conditions. (And, for that matter, “Plan and Plants, or The Administration Block,” in which Parkinson argues that optimum working conditions indicate a moribund enterprise.) All of these suggest that the qualities we expect in an innovator are not the qualities actually possessed by innovators.

There’s been a thorough dissection of how Lamb failed to live up to the ideal of a naval officer. But did he serve the Navy better or worse than an ideal officer would have? Did the efficiencies he devised make up for his deficiencies of honor and commitment?

ems

————————————————————————————–

Subject: Re: Time Enough For Love

Date: 10/13/2000

Author: ddavitt

“E.M. St. John” wrote:

>

>

>There’s been a thorough dissection of how Lamb failed to live up to the ideal of

>a naval officer. But did he serve the Navy better or worse than an ideal

>officer would have? Did the efficiencies he devised make up for his

>deficiencies of honor and commitment?

>

They may have done but for the sad fact that as soon as he turned the streamlined and improved job over to someone else, they promptly went back to doing it the bad old way…..As Lazarus put it, “Some people are ants by nature; they _have_ to work, even when it’s useless.”

————————————————————————————–

————————————————————————————–

————————————————————————————–

————————————————————————————–

Subject: The title TEFL

Date: 10/12/2000

Author: Stephanie Vickers

I’ve lost the original thought provoking post as to what the title meant, but I found one bit in the Notebooks that seemed highly relevent, as it uses all the key words of the title.

“The more you love, the more you can love–and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many(it) you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of the majority who are decent and just.” Lazarus Long’s Notebook, RAH

All typoes within are my own.

————————————————————————————–

Go To Postings

<=”” a=””><=”” a=””>

<=”” a=””> Here Begins The Discussion Log

<=”” a=””>

 

You have just entered room “Heinlein Readers Group chat.”

dwrighsr has entered the room.

AGplusone has entered the room.

AGplusone: Hi, Dave.

dwrighsr: Hi. was working on the other screen and didn’t see you come in.

dwrighsr: I was working on editing the pre-discussion posts. Lord! there are a lot of them. Over 120kb on them alone.

AGplusone: Aren’t they great! I was reading e mail and replying.

dwrighsr: I haven’t even had time to really read them. I’ve been up to my neck on upgrading our servers and haven’t been able to spend much time preparing. I’m only up to the part where they get to Happy Valley.

TAWN3 has entered the room.

dwrighsr: Hi Tawn. Welcome

TAWN3: Hi!

AGplusone: One reason I suggested adding another set of meetings to this one is a suspect everyone’s up to their ears in alligators. Hi, Tawn.

TAWN3: Lots of folks here early.

AGplusone: And there’s an awful lot in this book.

dwrighsr: That’

AGplusone: Actually, “maikosh T” is Dave Wright’s alter ego for logging …

dwrighsr: That’s why I thought that it might take several sessions when we first talked about discussing.

TAWN3: ah

AGplusone: Your initial post influenced that belief too. ‘scratching the surface’ is where we’re at.

TAWN3: Are you two having a private comversation? If so, I’ll leave.

dwrighsr: BTW. ‘mai’ was supposed to have been ‘moi’ (my in Russian) and T is short for ‘chai’ (tea in russian). Put them together and you get ‘My Koshchei’. No significance, but I thought it neat.

dwrighsr: Not private. just chatting.

AGplusone: Certainly not … you just came in in the middle of chatting about whether to have another set of meetings added on TEFL.

TAWN3: OK. I think it would be a good idea. Big book.

Major oz has entered the room.

n1yqh a has entered the room.

SAcademy has entered the room.

Major oz: yo, all

TAWN3: Good evening oz

TAWN3: afk

SAcademy: Good evening all

dwrighsr: Hi. Ginny, Major et al

Major oz: I just, less than an hour ago, returned from Butler.

n1yqh a: It’s been a while since I made it to one of these.. hi, all…

MadaNameerf has entered the room.

TAWN3: Hi SAcademic

RMLWJ1 has entered the room.

TAWN3: now afk

Eeyore3061 has entered the room.

MadaNameerf: AloooooooooHa

Eeyore3061: Hi everyone, is it that time again?

dwrighsr: Hi Adam, Eeyore

Major oz: My notes are are all scrambled, but there is NO cat portrait in town.

ddavitt has entered the room.

ddavitt: Hi everyone.

AGplusone: Hi, all.

dwrighsr: Hi Jane. Glad you could make it.

MadaNameerf: Hi Jane.

dwrighsr: Realllllly glad!

AGplusone: I’ll have to e mail Jim Cunningham. He told me one’s there.

ddavitt: So am I ! 🙂

SAcademy: Hello Jane

Merfilly8 has entered the room.

Merfilly8: good eve one and all!

ddavitt: Hi Filly

Major oz: hi, filly

Eeyore3061: Oh, unless Leon told you, we have been talking about the USS Cole and the probable situation here as a result. Go fill up your gas tanks tonight, just in case.

n1yqh a has left the room.

ddavitt: I don’t know much but it is an awful thing to have happened

Major oz: …..topped mine off at 1.22-9 about two hours ago.

AGplusone: Nice turn out … :-)! Jane and Dave Wright are the obvious attracting force … me, I’m just going to lurk in the background.

RMLWJ1: Six doa, 11 MIA, 35 WIA

ddavitt: You can run but you can’t hide David….

dwrighsr: I was just telling DavidS that I haven’t been able to prepare much as I have been up to my neck at work, including this whole last weekend. On re-reading, I just tonight got to the arrival in Happy Valley.

AGplusone: Yeah and a forty foot hole … that’s about 20 % crew injured, killed or missing.

Major oz: SA, many I saw at Butler today have nice things to say about your last visit there.

ddavitt: I have only read the Twins story again and am relying on memory I’m afraid

dwrighsr: I started editing the pre-discussion posts and have a ways to go on them.

AGplusone: Lots of posts, tho …

SAcademy: That was nice of them

dwrighsr: Well maybe we won’t be too bothered with knowing too much about the subject 🙂

ddavitt: 🙂

TAWN3: BAK

ddavitt: What does that acronym mean Tawn?

AGplusone: About four more minutes of chat, then we’ll start …

Merfilly8: I only got to the middle of the Twins

ddavitt: It spreads out over a few sections of the book….

RaShaKaela has entered the room.

Merfilly8: I can’t find time to read…Jane, how do you do it? 🙂

ddavitt: I just wander around with a book attached to my hand and let my eyes drift to it whenever possible <g>

Merfilly8: ahh

ddavitt: Amazing what you can do with one hand 🙂

Merfilly8: my boss finds it less offensive if I write rather than read to fill dead time

Eeyore3061: Hi Deann

TAWN3: back at keyboard Jane

ddavitt: Yes, some people see reading as a mortal insult

ddavitt: Ah! Thanks; I think I know em all and then along comes a new one

RaShaKaela: hi

ddavitt: Hi there

Eeyore3061: oops, I have to go next door for a moment. brb

Eeyore3061 has left the room.

ddavitt: Tawn, you really misunderstood my post btw; not meant to be insulting or heaven forbid, Randy like at all! 🙂

ddavitt: That hurt <sniffle>

Merfilly8: I had a Randy reminder not long ago in the local paper

ddavitt: My mind is boggling Filly

TAWN3: 🙂

TAWN3: No problem Jane,. I guess I did!

Merfilly8: Some guy wants to cryo convicted criminals so they can be thawed if evidence goes contrary

ddavitt: I’ll cancel the chin quiver then <g>

TAWN3: That has been a similar plot in SF stories before.

Merfilly8: No, this was a news article.

ddavitt: Hmm….expensive and suppose they don’t want to be frozen?

SAcademy: Some people wanted to cryo R and me!

Merfilly8: Proposed by some law-minded individual

AGplusone: Okay, meeting’s in session. Welcome everyone. This is the Robert A. Heinlein Reading Group. Tonight’s discussion is on Time Enough For Love. Jane (ddavitt) and Dave (dwrighsr) are cohosts.

RaShaKaela has left the room.

dwrighsr: Hmm. That might bear thinking about. Might be cheaper than building more prisons 😀

ddavitt: We know SA! That’s what got Cryo Randy all upset; he can’t believe you turned down his dream

TAWN3: I’m glad they didn’t SA!

AGplusone: Dave, and Jane, it’s your meeting … enjoy!

ddavitt: He’s not very reasonable about it I’m afraid

TAWN3: Or else how would we talk to you now?

ddavitt: True:-)

SAcademy: Me. too!

dwrighsr: GA Jane. I’m waiting with baited breath.

ddavitt: OK, do you want to start it Dave?

dwrighsr: I should say Ladies first ::

ddavitt: Hmm…one of us has to go first!

dwrighsr: 🙂

AGplusone: Alfonse-Gastone … 🙂

ddavitt: OK, what story do people like the best?

ddavitt: And why?

dwrighsr: The ‘Tale of the Adopted Daughter’. Why? because it makes me cry.

Merfilly8: Ditto

SAcademy: The Adopted Daughter

Merfilly8: The counterpoint I like best is Laz talking to Minerva over dinner

ddavitt: Yet no one mentioned it in the pre meeting posts….because it’s the most familiar maybe?

AGplusone: I rather like Da Capo, but I’m weird, and we might as well start earlier.

Merfilly8: I felt bad for Minerva

ddavitt: Why Filly? Because of what she gave up?

dwrighsr: Seriously, I think that it is the story which has the most personal feeling to it. I don’t mean necessarily RAH’s personal feelings, but those of the reader.

ddavitt: It is perhaps the most significant part of LL’s life up to that point

RMLWJ1: It’s one of his more ‘intellectual’ stories, I think.

ddavitt: It changed him when he probably thought he was past change

dwrighsr: It certainly seemed to have made a really deep impact on him.

ddavitt: Made him see short lifers from a whole new POV

ddavitt: Dora made his pitying sympathy seem rather hollow

Major oz: It is also a story we can observe from out past. Pioneering in a covered wagon is something we have known of since childhood. Regardless of merit, the other stories are “future” oriented.

AGplusone: Why is it most ‘significant’ Jane? It’s out-of-character. Why would a ‘pragmistist’ like Laz submit himself to such frustration … sadness.

ddavitt: To her mind she was as long lived as he; because all we have is this moment, right now.

Major oz: ….from “our” past…..

ddavitt: That’s love David….

AGplusone: Maybe that’s just life?

Major oz: It is an emotion he had never experienced.

ddavitt: Lazarus had never been in love before..

Major oz: before.

Keythong has entered the room.

ddavitt: Maybe there is only one person for each of us…and his person was someone who could only be around for a short while

Major oz: The concept of “till death do us part” was only theory to him before Dora.

Keythong: Hi I’m mike, deann’s husband.

Dehede011 has entered the room.

AGplusone: I don’t think Laz is really the author … he’s an alter ego, having everything the author doesn’t have and knows he’ll never have. Hi, Mike.

dwrighsr: I doubt that he had never been in love. What made this one so different IMO was that it went from beginning to end, whereas his other loves just faded out due to people growing away from each other

Dehede011: Good evening, Gentle People.

ddavitt: Yes; in the Twins tale we see him with a wife for about as long as he was with Dora; but they were just amicable friends

dwrighsr: Hi Ron Welcome

ddavitt: Hi Ron

ddavitt: Hi Mike

MadaNameerf: Don’t you think that that fading out had to do with two long-lifers being together?

ddavitt: On a stylistic note, the narrative changes are fascinating….

Major oz: ??

Major oz: expand, please, Mada……

AGplusone: (Talking about which story is our favorite from TEFL, Mike) and why ….

dwrighsr: He also seemed to have been in love with Mary Sperling. At least, he was very moved by her loss. Made worse because of the way of her going.

ddavitt: If the whole story had been from L’s POV would it have been as interesting?

Merfilly8: A short lifer sees life from a ‘now’ perspective, but a long lifer takes the long view?

MadaNameerf: Had Dora been long lived would they have had that connection to the end?

Merfilly8: Is that it, Mada?

dwrighsr: …long-lifers being together?… That’s what I meant about his earlier loves.

Keythong: and the timing of Marys passing..

Merfilly8: brb

ddavitt: Do you think that it was the short space of time that created the love?

Major oz: I doubt it, Mada — they would have gone the way of other Howard marriages.

MadaNameerf: Perhaps the intensity gets evened out…

ddavitt: If Dora had been a Howard they would eventually have drifted apart?

Major oz: yes

AGplusone: Maybe Laz can be ‘in love’ with Dora precisely because she’s short-lived … the pragmatist knows it’s not forever, just ’til death do us part?

MadaNameerf: I think so.

ddavitt: Ooh…I don’t like that idea!

Major oz: Dora would not have had the POV she had as an ephemeral.

Merfilly8: I see Laz as cold, but not that cold, even subconsciously

ddavitt: But how vital was that to the relationship?

dwrighsr: Part of it was commitment. He commited to her as a child and kept it up. Then he found that his commitment had turned to love.

MadaNameerf: How is that cold?

Keythong: The long lifer POV is developed over time, Yes.

ddavitt: Do we forsee the Long Family at the end of TSBTS splitting up down the line?

Merfilly8: That was to David’s comment

AGplusone: How cold is that ‘cold’? He’s been through everyone that lived when he was young …

Major oz: …..much, David, as happened in the midwest in the 30’s and 40’s

AGplusone: they’re all gone …

ddavitt: Or is the fact that it’s not a one on one relationship going to save it?

Dehede011: Isn’t this entire story about RAH’s desire for an ideal life?

AGplusone: I think he’s hardened, but not cold.

dwrighsr: Like Mannie’s family. I expect that it will go on a long time.

ddavitt: I don’t know…

Merfilly8: But being pragmatic about what seemed to be his most intense love?

MadaNameerf: That is why the LOng family can go on forever. The sum is greater and stronger than its parts.

ddavitt: Are we saying that only an extended family has a chance over centuries?

dwrighsr: As I said, he was pragmatic at first, but that pragmatism gave way to something else as time went on.

Dehede011: Mer is that really about RAH telling us what he wants in life?

Major oz: I don’t think so De — He is to experienced (cynical) to believe that.

AGplusone: Imagine … everyone you grew up with is dead … debilitating … long life can be a curse, or change you into someone very hesitant to give an uncommitted relationship.

Dehede011: I see the entire novel as a working out of his (RAH’s) ideals.

ddavitt: Do we see a difference in Laz after Dora?

MadaNameerf: Me too

ddavitt: Is the laz of the Twins story really different from the one say who goes back in time?

Dehede011: With Dora he is telling us of the kind of relationship he is wanting.

Keythong: I think the central theme is about how much time most people waste in there relationships.

AGplusone: I agree with Ron and Adam.

dwrighsr: I don’t think so. Like so much of his work, he is simply asking us to question the familiar and standard, not necessarily saying that this is the way it should be.

Keythong: yes

Dehede011: To an extent KEY but even more about RAH gathering together the thoughts he has had on an ideal life.

ddavitt: I think that can be a bit of a quicksand Ron; I wouldn’t want to extrapolate that from the book

AGplusone: Or at least what options would be present … what choices one might make ….

MadaNameerf: How to deal with those choices…

Keythong: from the man who was to lazy to fail perhaps

Dehede011 has left the room.

AGplusone: Ron got booted.

AGplusone: Why is Dora’s story the favorite was the question.

MadaNameerf: It reminds me how to love.

Keythong: Its not my favorite.

ddavitt: Because we are short lifers and she speaks for us?

dwrighsr: What is yours Key?

dwrighsr: And why?

ddavitt: Though I would have gone to get rejuvenated personally.

Keythong: the man who was to lazy to fail.

Merfilly8: It’s my favorite of his memoir stories because it is the only story that shows Lazarus’s ability to truly feel

Merfilly8: IMHO

Keythong: very real life to me.

AGplusone: That it does, Filly … something he always conceals beneath the fascade.

ddavitt: We discussed that quite a bit in the pre meeting posts

Eeyore3061 has entered the room.

Eeyore3061: back

AGplusone: that=The Man Who Was Too Lazy

ddavitt: I think the conclusion was that he may have been a Lazarus hero but not perhaps a Heinlein one?

MadaNameerf: And yet he seems so open to those relationships toward the end of the book.

Merfilly8: Please excuse me, I catch the NG rather haphazardly due to inadverdent mark-reads

Keythong: I was out doing laundry.

ddavitt: 🙂

Major oz: I like Dora’s story not as the love story it is (but it is a GOOD love story), but as the illustration of pragmatism in pioneering. <and it has my favorite character: Buck>

MadaNameerf: Maybe Lazurus needed 2300 years to learn to feel.

MadaNameerf: Yay, Buck.

ddavitt: The superficial reaction of David as a bit of a lad can change to see him as a bit of a cad

Merfilly8: Hear, hear for Buck!

Eeyore3061: Oy, brb again

ddavitt: Buck was sweet

AGplusone: In saying David Lamb was a Laz rather than a Heinlein hero, Jane, do you imply Laz wholly agreed with what David did with his life (or didn’t do)?

Eeyore3061 has left the room.

ddavitt: I think I am David yes; find anything in his narrative that disagrees

Merfilly8: I think Laz could have admired David’s audacity

dwrighsr: My impression was that LL certainly agreed with it.

ddavitt: Lazarus is not Heinlein ( nor Jubal) and he isn’t that nice a person himself all the time

MadaNameerf: I always felt that David was Laz

AGplusone: Really? Then why leave him laying (lying) in his hammock?

MadaNameerf: brb

ddavitt: Why not?

ddavitt: I don’t think he was LL; I think he was a classmate

dwrighsr: But I am *not* going to say whether RAH agreed with it, although I suspect that he might have agreed with some of it.

Keythong: David was who RAH wanted to be.

Keythong: or almost was.

ddavitt: had he no honour maybe….

AGplusone: what kept RAH from being David … ?

Merfilly8: (Ooh, she used the Brit spelling)

ddavitt: Sense of responsibility and patriotism

ddavitt: I am a Brit dammit!!!:-)

Keythong: a compulsion to write?

ddavitt: Whole new meaning to U and nonU

AGplusone: What about David’s selfishness?

Dehede011 has entered the room.

RMLWJ1: the lady spelt it correctly. 🙂

Dehede011: Back again

Keythong: what selfishness?

ddavitt: Thank you:-)

MadaNameerf: back

ddavitt: Aargh…not the selfishness debate again!

Keythong: He lived his life, served his contry.

Merfilly8: I’m teasing…had too many words marked wrong on vocab tests because I read Shakespeare before elementary

MadaNameerf: Laz was only in the hammock long enough to catch up on his Greek history.:-)

dwrighsr: He was certainly self-centered, but I don’t think that that necessarily equates with selfishness

RMLWJ1: lol

AGplusone: David was a feathermerchant … his word was no good … the Navy would have been better off hiring him as a civilian.

ddavitt: A time and motion consulatant a la Gilbreths?

AGplusone: Yes.

Dehede011: After all these years of re-reading TEFL during the last few days I came to feel I finally understood it. Now aol won’t let me stay on line.

ddavitt: ( just got them out of the library; fun reads!)

ddavitt: That’s frustrating Ron

Dehede011: Thank you Jane

TAWN3: I have to leave. Goodnight everybody.

Keythong: nite.

AGplusone: Nite, Tawn …

TAWN3 has left the room.

Merfilly8: David Lamb, And Zeb from NOTB, are the only two that illustrate the notebook-ism about progress resulting from laziness

Merfilly8: that I can remember

MadaNameerf: David, if Law and Moral have changing definitions, why not Honor?

AGplusone: What I’m saying Mike is David Lamb was a Q-ship, sailing under false colors.

Dehede011: Dave isn’t David a common variety of officer. Maybe not the ideal but he did his job and stuck to the service. He was mostly obedient to the system even if he didn’t believe it.

Keythong: laz long is lazy also, but in productive ways.

ddavitt: Does anyone else see much point to the Twins tale btw? I have to say large chunks of it are so dull it’s not like reading Heinlein at all. What message does that have?

Dehede011: Night TAWN

AGplusone: Laz doesn’t fade into the woodwork every time, does he?

Major oz: Filly!!!!!!! I disagree. Zeb was a totally different character

ddavitt: Don’t think he’s capable of that

Keythong: he does not take the long way around too often.

ddavitt: No, i see what you mean in that particualr incident

ddavitt: Zeb applied his brains and fooled them

MadaNameerf: Lamb made his every post more efficient,.

Major oz: But always in a sardonic way

Keythong: David just refused to fight the system.

ddavitt: But it was their fault for having a silly system; lamb may have thought the same about the naval rules against marriage

AGplusone: I agree there’s probably other officers out there who could be termed ‘go-along’ to get-along types, but commonality with them doesn’t make them *officers* …

Dehede011: But he had learned to heart the services need for apparent conformity.

AGplusone: Marriage was just a symptom …

Major oz: They are REMF’s

Major oz: Or HQ weenies

AGplusone: An early warning, so to speak …

MadaNameerf: Of what?

Keythong: No they are the vast majority of serving officers.

AGplusone: cowardice

Dehede011: Dave is it Go along to get along or do they have a serious intent to fit in.

ddavitt: He saw himself as outside the rules if they didn’t suit him…which makes him dangerous in the military I would say

AGplusone: whether they are majority or not doesn’t matter

MadaNameerf: Oh, I don’t see that at all. Cowards don’t join a volunteer army.

AGplusone: They’re time-servers … sure they do.

Merfilly8: Yes they do

ddavitt: But he joined in peacetime

Merfilly8: All the time.

MadaNameerf: Not smart ones.

Merfilly8: Yes, they do

AGplusone: Full of ’em, and they all cause problems.

Dehede011: Was he a timeserver or did he serve honestly in wartime? I think he served honestly.

Major oz: …..that’s when he came of age. Wasn’t his fault there wasn

Major oz: t a war

ddavitt: He got a medal…

AGplusone: “Punch my ticket” …

Merfilly8: they join, we go to war, they turn into objectionists or find other ways out of service…alll the smart ones

Keythong: Look most officers just go in every day and try to perform there jobs as assigned.

Dehede011: The medal was a punch my ticket.

Eeyore3061 has entered the room.

Major oz: Where do you get that idea, Key?

Dehede011: Harry Truman said it. You take the peoples money and you owe them an honest days work.

AGplusone: Volunteer to do important work … even if all they can do is *manage* and mess-kit repair battalion.

ddavitt: He got it through luck and keeping his head

AGplusone: an … not “and”

Keythong: I was raised in navy housing, my father was a maverick officer.

ddavitt: This fits in with his character; sometimes being heroic is the safest option

Merfilly8: Sorry, I’m a bit cynical on the officers. I saw the Warrant program go from men I truly respected to a bunch of whining cry-babies that couldn’t hack being enlisted

MadaNameerf: While RAH has given me a respect for militarty service, I don’t think I’ll ever understand this dynamic.

Dehede011: Jane, Maverick or Mustang?

Merfilly8: And the college kid officers…sad

Keythong: Both.

ddavitt: ? Lost me there Ron

AGplusone: Good officers come from all sources, Filly

Dehede011: Mustang, up from the ranks.

Major oz: what dynamic?

AGplusone: Yes Adam, what dynamic?

MadaNameerf: Military. Code of Honor. Etc.

Major oz: <I is a proud mustang (9 years)>

Keythong: cool.

Major oz: Simply applied ethics

Dehede011: Great, I almost had that honor. Oz

Major oz: Nothing terribly complicated

MadaNameerf: codified ethics

MadaNameerf: Ethics have always seemed more personal to me.

AGplusone: They’re not very flexible, are they, Adam?

Major oz: NOT codifed ethics, just APPLIED ethics

Keythong: but most of the ones I knew whent to work and to war, just trying to do the job and take care of there men.

Major oz: vast difference

Merfilly8: I don’t think all officers are bad, but MI seems to get a high number of the rotten ones

MadaNameerf: Whats the difference?

SAcademy: Nite all

SAcademy has left the room.

Merfilly8: g’nite ma’am

Keythong: nite.

ddavitt: Night SA

ddavitt: The question is, would you have felt safe having David as a CO?

Keythong: Y$ES

Major oz: You have to have the ethics to start with…..the service simply asks you to apply them to your life and interaction with others.

MadaNameerf: Absolutely

AGplusone: Why?

ddavitt: I don’t know if I would if I knew his hidden agenda

Merfilly8: Yes, because he was preserving his own hide, and would have been smart enough to see that meant saving his men’s

Keythong: His agenda includes going haome.

MadaNameerf: Those ‘ethics are defined by others

ddavitt: Which was keep David safe at all costs

Major oz: Certainly safe, Jane; but useless

Dehede011: In flight school I was one of the gung ho guys that bought into the entire system. But I am well aware that many good pilots didn’t but were good pilots and officers.

MadaNameerf: brb

AGplusone: You fellows stay here and hold this line … I’m going back to HQ and make them more efficient.

ddavitt: Yep…

Keythong: The officers that scare me dont treat the military as a job, but as a game to win.

MadaNameerf has left the room.

dwrighsr: I disagree. I don’t think that there was every any indication that David(Lamb) would have cut out on his men it ehey were in a difficult situation.

Major oz: But……sometimes the system gets too silly: tailhook

n1yqh a has entered the room.

ddavitt: Contrast this with laz’s attitude towards his men in france…

BPRAL22169 has entered the room.

AGplusone: Maybe, but we don’t know, do we, Dave. He never give himself that chance.

ddavitt: He seemed to have a keen sense of responsibility toward them

ddavitt: Hi Bill

BPRAL22169: Yo all.

Keythong: as any sergant would.

Major oz: I never figured out why hand-eye coordination automaticaly fit one for command.

AGplusone: That is the contrast I think the book works towards, btw, Jane. Cpl. Bronson and David Lamb.

BPRAL22169: “How do you recognize the officer on a ship’s boat?”

ddavitt: maybe!

Keythong: how?

Major oz: “the” officer

Merfilly8: Good chance. Start with one end of the spectrum, then show the other

BPRAL22169: He’s the one with the hand-eye coordination — applied to the gun he’s the only one carrying.

Major oz: ?

Keythong: ?

MadaNameerf has entered the room.

Dehede011 has left the room.

ddavitt: You mean the man with the gun is the man in charge?

BPRAL22169: It’s an old Navy saw – how do you recognize a ship’s boat officer: he’s the one carrying the gun. That’s what hand-eye coordination is necessary for for officers.

AGplusone: In a ship’s boat …

ddavitt: Bill, you can’t just waltz in here and start a gun thread!:-)

Major oz: Sorry…..I didn’t state my point clearly: flying officers upgrading to command was the point I was making.

BPRAL22169: I believe I just did!

MadaNameerf: Sure he can. He the one with the gun.

ddavitt: Not when I’m co hosting!!! <g>

BPRAL22169: OK. I retract my gun thread.

Major oz: tap, tap, tap

Major oz: go Jane

ddavitt: OK, lets move on; someone convince me the Twins story wasn’t a big waste of space

dwrighsr: Do y’all really see a contrast between Lamb and Bronson. IMHO, they appear very much the same.

Keythong: the twins was a big waste of space.

BPRAL22169: They bridged the love of pets to the love of children. Taught LL how to do that.

Major oz: Bronson knows the future

AGplusone: I sympathesize with David Lamb, like Mac and Adam … I just see him as a personal fear whose character (or lack) that I might fall into

BPRAL22169: He adopts them as Chinese obligations but comes to love them as people.

Merfilly8: I enjoyed seeing Captain Sheffield

ddavitt: I really found the genetics bit to ne mind numbing

Keythong: so did I.

Merfilly8: and it explains chinese obligation

MadaNameerf: I can respect that, David.

Merfilly8: I’m wierd, I liked the genetics, though I boggled

ddavitt: And the rest of the story was…well, interesting but a bit trite

AGplusone: It’s so easy and seductive to be ‘lazy’ …

dwrighsr: Why do you think that it was included?

BPRAL22169: It also puts LL in touch with parts of himself he wasn’t in touch with before.

ddavitt: How does it stack up btw? i can’t judge it having no knowledge of the subject

AGplusone: But isn’t the twins, as you pointed out, Jane, an attack on ‘rules’?

MadaNameerf: brb

Keythong: it was sitting around and RAH worked it in cause it would not stand alone?

ddavitt: I don’t know…

AGplusone: Sort of a continuation of the “stupid” rule David broke?

Major oz: I saw The Twins as a treatise on cross-cultural understanding.

ddavitt: It felt as if H had come across an interesting puzzle and was determined to share it

Major oz: Or miss-understanding

BPRAL22169: He starts off with a very classical liberal gut reaction against the slavery-incest angle, thinks he should do it thoroughly if he’s going to do it all along, then is compelled to think out and act on the consequences of his original impulse — a very good psychological exercise for him.

Merfilly8: Theoretically, I’d say maybe. Dividing the genetic material at the stage they mention would require very refined lasers

BPRAL22169: –not to say non-invasive visualization techniques.

Keythong: or tech not yet relised.

ddavitt: Well, i didn’t like it.

dwrighsr: What. The thought? or the discussion about it?

BPRAL22169: Actually, that process happens naturally — polar bodies get thrown off with the genetic complement.

Merfilly8: recombiniant nucleic acids written to cause the division maybe

AGplusone: The rules Joe and Lita break are stupid in context, aren’t they, and breaking them cause no harm, and maybe goodness results?

MadaNameerf: back – (stupid customers, grumble) <g>

Major oz: It fits well with the TEFL as a whole. Each “sub-story” illustrates responsibility at some level or another. The Twin story was another “kind” of responsibility.

Keythong: thats true.

ddavitt: The whole story…the way Lazarus solemnly calculated the odds, the follow up where their kids were about to hop into bed at an early age…it just doesn’t sit well with me.

Merfilly8: the whole book takes on a layered look….the hindu concept of circles, maybe

dwrighsr: What rules do you mean DavidS?

MadaNameerf: Good point. You could say that TEFL was RAH’s tretise on personal responsiblity

BPRAL22169: I think LL started off like — what’s the kid in Podkayne? Amoral and not quite human, and these stories tell how he came to be more a human being. He ws very hardheaded so it took him a LONG time.

ddavitt: I agree that there’s no reason why Joe and Lita shouldn’t marry; they’ve only ever known each other

n1yqh a has left the room.

BPRAL22169: Clark

AGplusone: Against incest, basically, but against all the cultural ores they run into.

Merfilly8: I’ve alays equated clark to Laz

AGplusone: ores = mores

Major oz: That is how I see TEFL: as a text illustrating responsibility and how it fits with cultures, individuals, and understandings. The sub-stories each branch out.

Dehede011 has entered the room.

Dehede011: Back again

Keythong: persistant arn’t you.

Merfilly8: they also, like TMIAHM, show alternative living styles

BPRAL22169: It’s also part of the progressive “desensitization” to incest that’s going on in the book. This is more incestual than the purely legal incest of Dora, but less than the mother or his clone-sistesr.

Merfilly8: Though Lazarus’s comment about pseudo males and females, unhappy ones, made me look at Libby in a new light

dwrighsr: But the ‘incest’ taboo wasn’t a rule to them. As Laz points out, they had been taught all their life that that was their purpose.

Major oz: Each has details — genetics, love of an ephemeral, roots, etc, but the ethics are the uniting feature.

ddavitt: I think it’s pushing it to assume that their kids would automatically jump into bed when there were other people around; not like they lived in happy Valley

AGplusone: Each piece is a variation on earlier themes … note plural themes.

MadaNameerf: The incest taboo thing, for me, always took a back seat to the How to Run A resturaunt thing

ddavitt: Akin to the “How to be a pioneer lesson’ you mean?

MadaNameerf: They weren’t people. They were slaves.

AGplusone: Yes, the story … contructive creation, what they signed up to do …

BPRAL22169: One of the things you’ve got to keep in mind is that TEFL is formally a romance-anatomy, and there are going to be tons and tons of learned digressions in that kind of form.

dwrighsr: There you go again. with that fancy talk 🙂

MadaNameerf: so pretty

AGplusone: But he does string the digressions together, Bill.

Major oz: romance-anatomy ????????

BPRAL22169: He always has — think of “Misfit.”

ddavitt: Digress all you want but keep the lectures on genetics to a minimum; I just did not undertand the explanation and that meant I was bored.

BPRAL22169: Romance – story of the doings of the heroes

Dehede011 has left the room.

Major oz: <anatomy is a fine part of romance>:-D

ddavitt: <g>

Merfilly8: hehehe

Keythong: lol

MadaNameerf: lol

AGplusone: He has to state the case against incest somehow, Jane.

BPRAL22169: Anatomy – encyclopedic form analyzing the human condition through a single, intellectual idea. In this case Love in all its forms.

MadaNameerf: Anybody figured out how to play that card game?

dwrighsr: What he said……

ddavitt: Which is of course another theme; sex does not equal love ,gasp, shock, horror, tell us more Father lazarus>

Merfilly8: the ongoing counterpoints revolve around the theme of love, keeping it fresh when the stories add so much else

Major oz: I’m so glad I came…….

AGplusone: Reminded me of ‘war’ Adam.

ddavitt: Against it?! Seems to assume it’s quite the done thing.

MadaNameerf: makes since. I always cheat at war to let my nepews win.

MadaNameerf: nephews

Merfilly8: by their point in history, maybe for the Howards it was

BPRAL22169: Hmmm. Have you seen statistics on incest, Jane? It IS the done thing.

ddavitt: Speaking as someone with a brother i can say I’d rather have remained celibate ( no offence Phil!)

Merfilly8: I meant the love=sex thing

ddavitt: Someone you’ve grown up with is generally not fist on your list for a prom date

dwrighsr: ‘fist on your list’. I like that

MadaNameerf: Yeah. Where’s the mystery

BPRAL22169: ERos and philios are obvious, but there are other kinds of love in the book.

ddavitt: Though having a slightly younger brother was handy in terms of having his friends around the house a lot….

AGplusone: Reminds me of a play I saw Sunday … question to a nun: who did Adam’s sons marry?

Merfilly8: Lamb = Narcissus?

MadaNameerf: Even Dora’s agape

ddavitt: <g. ignore my typos!

BPRAL22169: And of course the computers love and are loved without even bodies.

MadaNameerf: Ask a Catholic

Major oz: I asked that of Sister Mary Marcella, David, in the 4th grade.

ddavitt: Pure love…but notice how Minerva doesn’t settle for that; she wants to sleep with Ira

Merfilly8: David’s desires all revolve around keeping himself safe, and whole…self love

BPRAL22169: There is also “angelic” love.

AGplusone: Nun’s answer was: it’s an allegory … Adam and Eve didn’t exist …

Keythong: laz and lor=narcissus for la

Merfilly8: that would be when Lazarus thinks he’s dying at the end

Keythong: lazarus

Major oz: SMM made up a lie

ddavitt: Do people think it’s possible for a computer to love?

Merfilly8: Yes

Major oz: today?

Major oz: or in the TEFL context?

Keythong: mine hates,

BPRAL22169: Given the definition Heinlein trots out, it’s entirely possible — he uses Twain’s.

ddavitt: That bit seems so poignant but is it really on the cards that Minerva would give up what she had to be flesh and blood?

dwrighsr: First, you have to ask. Do you think’s it possible for a computer to be self-aware?

AGplusone: Coming up on end of first hour … ten minutes your pleasure, Dave and Jane?

Merfilly8: not today, maybe, but I do believe they will evolve toward sentience, and toward emotion

Major oz: Hope my line has died out by then.

ddavitt: If people want to break for a bit and freshen drinks etc, ga

Major oz: The forbin project is real, should that happen.

dwrighsr: BRB

AGplusone: Okay, back at 8 past the hour.

ddavitt: AOL 🙂

Merfilly8: I just hope they develop a conscience with their awareness

Major oz: Bill, Butler was nice. Lots of info. When I arrange my notes and print my photos, I will have more to say.

AGplusone: Looking forward to hearing it, Oz.

ddavitt: No one has reported back about Chicon? Anything Heinlein significant?

Major oz: Is there a place (web page or something) I can put pics and scanned documents?

ddavitt: Can it go on the logs site?

AGplusone: FWIW, Oz went down to Butler, Missouri, where the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Library is located. His birthplace. I can make room on the group site, Oz.

Major oz: hokay

ddavitt: That would be interesting Oz

AGplusone: Just send me what you want put up, and I’ll put it up the way you wish.

Major oz: I found there is just a room in the Butler county Library, and the folks are enthusiastic, but poor on actual “stuff”

Major oz: I did drool at all the signed first editions.

ddavitt: We need an SF museum

MadaNameerf: That can’t be good for the books

ddavitt: In Toronto…..

AGplusone: Do they have a map, birthplace, etc.?

Major oz: Geneology material, but never did nail down “Anson” — though it may be His great grandfather from Ohio.

AGplusone: Ginny thought there might be an ancestor, but she was vague on who it might be.

Dehede011 has entered the room.

Major oz: Stopped at the birth house where his folks and his maternal grandfather, Alva Lyle, had his medical office and residence.

Major oz: It is lived in today and I got a pic of it and the sign out front.

Dehede011: I didn’t realize Alva Lyle had his office there.

AGplusone: (and library full of Twain, Huxley, and other books unsuitable for young ladies)

Major oz: Only know ones (got a telephone number) was a half-aunt in KC MO

AGplusone: It’s great you got that stuff!

Major oz: H’s great uncle was a local hero, mayor, bank prez, big deal etc….but grandpa split and went to KC — No infl\o

Major oz: anyhoo,,,,all later

AGplusone: Shame we can’t do what the SFF group had … have a trip. Looking forward to it.

Merfilly8: brb…USS COle on news..

AGplusone: What network Filly?

BPRAL22169: Sorry I was away for that.

Major oz: Anyone know who “Cole” is / was ?

MadaNameerf: brb

BPRAL22169: It was very common for doctors to have their offices in a room of the house — same for Freud IIRC from his bios.

BPRAL22169: I knew about Heinlein’s grandfather — that’s why they moved to KC IIRC. That’s in the Franklin book.

Major oz: Dr. Lyle “read” for medicine. Became a MD in twenty months

dwrighsr: What’s the Franklin book?

Dehede011: IIRC???

MadaNameerf has left the room.

Major oz: if I recall correctly

AGplusone: Unlike the Johnson character, or would ‘medical student’ include reading the medicine?

Major oz: He apprenticed also.

Merfilly8: sorry, it was the human relations side of the story on the local channel

BPRAL22169: IIRC = If I recall correctly.

BPRAL22169: H. Bruce Franklin. Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction. Oxford Press, 1980.

dwrighsr: Thanks. I’ll have to look for that one.

Dehede011: In Franklin’s opinion they moved to get away from the old man??

Major oz: Those at the library were VERY helpful. They had all kinds of great things to say about Ginny — primarily her graciousness.

AGplusone: The Franklin book is a criticism written by H. Bruce Franklin: Robert A. Heinlein, America as Science Fiction … ISBN 19502746-9, 19502747-7 pbk.

Merfilly8: http://www.spear.navy.mil/ships/ddg67/SGTCOLE.htm

BPRAL22169: It’s a Marxist analysis — so don’t expect much.

Merfilly8: if anyone wants to know the ship’s name sake history

AGplusone: Thanks Filly

Major oz: brb

dwrighsr: I guess I can do without it 🙂

AGplusone: Okay, back over to you, Jane and Dave … what’s our next question?

ddavitt: Your turn david…

BPRAL22169: Franklin did some original research and came up with a little information about the Heinlein family history at about that time.

dwrighsr: A minute.

AGplusone: ‘kay

ddavitt: OK then, I’ve mentioned it before; the book is a bit of a patchwork, jumps around, has the notebooks in the middle; does this work for the reader? i was a tad confused the first time I read it I think

ddavitt: I’d have been about 14 I suppose

Merfilly8: Does anyone else feel that the Howards in the book, Ish and Galahad and all them, move rather quickly into deep relationships?

ddavitt: No, because I think they aren’t that deep

dwrighsr: We were discussing the self-awareness of computers in TEFL. I really got to thinking about that when I saw the thread on AFH about ‘future tech’ where they discussed the state of computers in ‘Starman Jones’. Anyone want to make a comment about RAH’s progression of computers from that to what we find in his later books.

Merfilly8: I wound up reading it once straight thru, now I read the stories, or the notebooks, or the counter points

ddavitt: At least not at first

ddavitt: He seemed to jump way ahead Dave; to forestall comments that the books were outdated maybe?

AGplusone: Okay, in order, let’s take first ‘patchwork’ … then after that we go to the two others.

ddavitt: Or because it fitted in with a plot he wanted?

Keythong: good night all.

Keythong has left the room.

ddavitt: Night.

Merfilly8: I was talking subjective time…they live so long, but by TCWWTW, they are deeply entrenched as a family unit, not long after boondock’s founding, subjectively

BPRAL22169: The format was quite complicated, but it seemed to work, to me. The frame device is quite common — and the DaCapo end was an entire novel in itself.

ddavitt: Hey, we can multi task1 🙂

Merfilly8: Sorry

BPRAL22169: The Scheherezade bit worked

Merfilly8: 🙂

Dehede011 has left the room.

AGplusone: I thought that several novels were strung together … first time I read then, then I begin seeing the interconnections … even for the first time, now.

dwrighsr: How many tracks can you do at once Jane? I am very limited myself.

ddavitt: In the Twins, the POv changes; this is unusual for such a short story

ddavitt: joke….

AGplusone: The variation on a theme titles help to show where he might be going.

Merfilly8: I found the comment of three tracks, Laz said five, to be interesting

ddavitt: Where is that Filly?

Merfilly8: When Lazarus and Ira are talking in the hospital

Merfilly8: I think

BPRAL22169: It varies depending on how demanding each track is. I’ve done 6-8 things at a single time, but some of them were longer-scale than others.

ddavitt: It flows; it was only cos I was reading it critically I noticed the perception changes

BPRAL22169: And the process leaves one QUITE frazzled.

ddavitt: Bill = homo novis

Merfilly8: It was not uncommon for Ebon and I to maintain five stories on rotation in writing, talk to my dad, cook dinner, and listen to music while talking to each other

ddavitt: I can’t even rub my tummy and pat my head…

AGplusone: I think the variations work subconsciously quite well … you wake up and say: “so that’s maybe what he’s getting at!”

dwrighsr: I’m a ‘half-track’ myself.

ddavitt: Heinlein must have had a reason for telling the story that way though

AGplusone: The points nag, like why Lamb did that … and what did it mean?

Major oz has left the room.

dwrighsr: Frankly, I still have trouble reading anything critically. I start out that way and get involved in the story and forget all about ‘critical thinking’

BPRAL22169: Part of the problem is, if you concentrate too hard on “what he was getting at” it recedes into infinity. It’s like looking at a magic picture: you have to unfocus your mental eyes slightly and let the inherent connections emerge.

Merfilly8: Half the fun for me now is diggin for the little points in all of Heinlein’s works that I have read

ddavitt: Let’s see; we have a narrator, Laz, ira, Justin….anyone else?

MadaNameerf has entered the room.

ddavitt: maybe Bill…

AGplusone: I agree, Dave and Bill … it’s very easy to just go with the flow of the stories and they’re very enjoyable … you really have to read the thing several times to make sense of it (or some more obscure parts of it).

MadaNameerf: finally. Stores empty of people trying to give me money.

ddavitt: Lucky you!

AGplusone: Time of the hammock!

Merfilly8: I wish our store had more

ddavitt: Customers are such a nusiance 🙂

BPRAL22169: Poor Adam. Let’s all take time out to pity Adam!

dwrighsr: Repitition doesn’t work for me. I’ve read TEFL at least 10-15 times and it gets me the same way each time.

MadaNameerf: Never stop crying when Dora dies.

dwrighsr: Pity Pity Pity. 🙂

AGplusone: OTOH, Adam … do you have a webpage ording system we can use.

ddavitt: It sucks you in and next thing you know you’ve finsihed the story and have forgotten to make notes…

BPRAL22169: It sometimes works better to talk about things and then go look up any facts you need.

Merfilly8: The best time I had reading it was to Ebontress…reading aloud does enrich a book

AGplusone: I cry too.

MadaNameerf: Working on it.

MadaNameerf: I’ll let you know.

ddavitt: So shall we look at computers then Filly’s point about relationships?

AGplusone: One reason why I think we might have fun going back over TEFL next two meetings is doing it this way. I found it hard to make notes again.

MadaNameerf: I’m also working with a new distributer to carry RAH

Merfilly8: Comm-Pooh-Torrs!

AGplusone: Sure, let’s go on to Filly’s point. Please restate it, Stephanie.

ddavitt: It’s too big to pin down as I found when i was trying to do the pre meeting posts…I got lost

Merfilly8: I made a point?!

ddavitt: You certainly did!

MadaNameerf: Top of your head

ddavitt: Depth of relationships with ish and galahad for instance

AGplusone: I thought the question was about the ease with which relationships were formed

ddavitt: I like Ishtar; especially when she was jealous of Hamadryad

Merfilly8: Oh, yeah…even the casual relations they begin with in the counterpoints bothered me at first

ddavitt: A natural reaction i could relate to!

AGplusone: Always thought that Ishtar and Galahad really had a future version of a one-night stand that evolved.

ddavitt: Why was that?

ddavitt: They got sumberged into the Family though

AGplusone: But I’m not too perceptive … typical male.

ddavitt: Submerged even

Merfilly8: they moved quickly from one night stand to meshing well as live ins, and then into he whole family atmosphere

ddavitt: Too easy you mean?

Merfilly8: yea

AGplusone: Always ……..

ddavitt: Could be…but we don’t know how much time elapses; ISTR it may be a couple of years

MadaNameerf: I doubt that it was the first one-night-stand for either of them. Just the first to stick.

ddavitt: of rejuvenation and telling Ira stories

MadaNameerf: Why document the failures

AGplusone: They seem to start with a basis, real respect …

dwrighsr: Well. part of that took place quite quickly, but the entire thing took place over several years. We just tend to overlook that part.

Merfilly8: Granted, but my experience, limited by my youthfulness, says it doesn’t happen that fast

ddavitt: Ish says it’s been a while for her…but remember they’reboth over a century old i think

AGplusone: there’s a mental affinity …

AGplusone: reminds me almost of sharing water

ddavitt: Which is why it grates a bit that they act like kids around LL

Merfilly8: I’ve been married seven years now and we still have vast gulfs of misunderstandings

ddavitt: Sure; that’s normal ( isn’t it?)

MadaNameerf: ditto to the 3rd decimal

Merfilly8: (I hope so)

dwrighsr: It had better be.

AGplusone: (yes)

ddavitt: I’ve been married 6, with david for 13 and we still get them. Disconcering but educational

Merfilly8: Then again, here’s the devial advocate…

ddavitt: ?

Merfilly8: Being so long-lived, are the Howards better able to guage the moment, and people, so that they need less time to make up their minds?

AGplusone: So, could we say that the quick relationships are something more than the ‘zipless fuck’ everyone was talking about in the 70s?

ddavitt: Or would it work so they were more contemplative and slower to act?

BPRAL22169: I don’t know . . . there’s an implication in TCWWTW that Galahad is more “central” to the Tertius family than he appears on the surface.

MadaNameerf: Maybe you learn to read people better with time

Merfilly8: Galahad acted as their chief bouncer, eunuch-guard of the harem, and social lubricant

ddavitt: Which was when TEFL was written after all….

Merfilly8: he’s their touch stone for what jives, it seems

BPRAL22169: Isnt’ the arthurian Galadad the knight “sans peur et san raproche”?

Merfilly8: oui!

ddavitt: maybe we should step back and look at the context and society at the time of writing

Merfilly8: But Galahad was also Lancelot’s birth name

Merfilly8: by many accounts

ddavitt: His strenght is as the strenght of ten because his heart is pure…

ddavitt: ( cannot spell that word!)

dwrighsr: But he hadn’t met ‘Noisy Edwards’

dwrighsr: Sorry. couldn’t resist that one.

AGplusone: Getting back to David Lamb, his relationship with the girl he impregnates seems almost sterile … once she’s pregnant, she’s off-stage forever. We don’t even hear about the kids, and later.

ddavitt: From Farmer?

dwrighsr: Right.

BPRAL22169: That’s very Navy

BPRAL22169: Also Marines, also army.

MadaNameerf: You really don’t like him, do you?

ddavitt: Wife in every port….

AGplusone: She’s merely a convenience to satiate him during the four years at the Academy.

ddavitt: But he sticks with her doesn;t he?

AGplusone: Actually I did, and do. Just wouldn’t want to serve with him.

ddavitt: No mention of divorce

MadaNameerf: fair enough

Merfilly8: Wouldn’t be.

Merfilly8: No need to divorce in those days. Just live apart if you could not get along

ddavitt: In that era probably not; besides, why would he bother? He’s not the sort to fall in love

AGplusone: Then looking at Joe and ‘Lita, what can we say about their relationship?

dwrighsr: They lived together on the farm. IIRC

BPRAL22169: Maybe the David Lamb story is to show us the cultural situation LL evolved out of — a terminus a quo, as it were.

MadaNameerf: Can’t wait to discuss the theory of divorce in TSBTS

ddavitt: They never had a chance to be with anyone else; sad really

ddavitt: They were victims

AGplusone: maybe … it’s reville, isn’t it, Bill.

Merfilly8: But, if they were so spiriually complete together, then they lucked out, Jane

ddavitt: It worked out OK but they were fortunate that Laz came along

BPRAL22169: Possibly you’re right

Merfilly8: aughh typos

dwrighsr: Why. They were very happy together. And Laz implies that they did ‘get together’ with others.

MadaNameerf: I some times wish that I had known my wife that long. Maybe I would understand her better

Merfilly8: Llita liked men, and Joe indulged her

ddavitt: They never had any opportunity to be with anyone else

Merfilly8: they reminded me of Eunice and her husband

AGplusone: Then we have Dora …

ddavitt: They married and mated because it was their only option. it worked out OK but that was fortuitous

AGplusone: ‘until death do we part’ …

Merfilly8: I found her effort to slow the signs of her aging distressed me

MadaNameerf: which was a priveledge. Not a burden

ddavitt: Yes and WHY wouldn’t laz tell minerva if he spelt with lita for heavens sake?

dwrighsr: You bring up an interesting point DavidS.

ddavitt: Slept…getting tired now

Merfilly8: I can imagine

MadaNameerf: Its 3:30 for you. GO TO BED

ddavitt: For me?

dwrighsr: He names his ship ‘Dora’, and keeps her intentionally, (as he indicates) from ‘growing up’.

ddavitt: No…10.29

Merfilly8: She’s in Canada

MadaNameerf: Oh. Whoops

ddavitt: Oh..it’s cos i said I was a brit!

ddavitt: Sorry; we emigrated three years ago

Merfilly8: So that he won’t be faced with her maturity and the problems it brought to his Dora-girl

MadaNameerf: Worse

ddavitt: Does Dora ever get a body?

BPRAL22169: (To say nothing of the pain it would bring him — see the episode when Minerva recreates Dora for him)

Featherz Dad has entered the room.

ddavitt: Not to mention when minerva is born as Dora…

Merfilly8: No, Dora stays the eternal child

AGplusone: Hi, Bob says ‘hi’ to Feather

dwrighsr: We rarely have any friends across the pond on these thursday night discussions, but they sometimes make the Sat nights.

Featherz Dad: Feather is gonna let me do this for awhile

ddavitt: That’s not right Filly; we all need to grow up eventually…

ddavitt: Hi there

AGplusone: Actually he sez “meow rah pfsst”

Major oz has entered the room.

Featherz Dad: WHO all needs to grow up eventually? I don’t

AGplusone: WB Oz

Merfilly8: But the Eternal Child is necessary to the Mythos

ddavitt: Peter pan…

Major oz: ….whew!! those bottles are heavy……

AGplusone: We were talking about the ‘ease’ of relationships brought up in TEFL … Will.

dwrighsr: Propane again Oz?

Featherz Dad: Good, I serve a purpose, aside from litter-box worker

MadaNameerf: Quick side note. For the longest time, by her postings, I assumed that Jane was senior. Either I was wrong or menopause is no longer a hindrence to childbirth

Major oz: yep, and then “both” modems were in use…..

ddavitt: I am 36

MadaNameerf: And I’m an idiot

ddavitt: And considering a pout…

AGplusone: Comparing Galahad-Istar, Lamb and his professor’s dauther, Joe-Lita, Laz and Dora, so far.

Eeyore3061: dish washer, laundry, garbage, etc around here Featherz Dad

Merfilly8: I never thought you old…Jane, I saw you as close to my age

ddavitt: my picture is on the afh picture page as proof 🙂

MadaNameerf: I’m melting

dwrighsr: I may be the oldest. I’m 60

Major oz: 61

Featherz Dad: I am fifty-five but NOT grown up

AGplusone: Youse guys are O-L-D!!!

Merfilly8: I likely am the baby tonight at 25

ddavitt: We believe you 🙂

Featherz Dad: 😀

MadaNameerf: 28

Eeyore3061: 36

RMLWJ1: 51

Major oz: But going into Peace Corps at 55 helps keep you young:-D

dwrighsr: Nice range.

BPRAL22169: 48 — but my blood sugar is 51 . . .

AGplusone: 58 but still immature

ddavitt: A good range of experience and youthful vitality!

MadaNameerf: I don’t know if I trust you old folks anymore

Merfilly8: shucks, guys, get the genders up there, and we’ll be like those OTHER chat rooms

Featherz Dad: as long as it isn’t the peace corps in Rainbow Cadenza

dwrighsr: Who said I was mature? just old

MadaNameerf: What are you wearing

ddavitt: Yes…we need more girls….

Merfilly8: lol

BPRAL22169: ta-DAH!

ddavitt: Where’s jani and Pix?

Featherz Dad: jani is prolly long asleep. It is very late across the pond

MadaNameerf: Aren’t we supposed to be talking about a book… or something…?

AGplusone: Redheads! ‘tousands and ‘tousands of redheads. “I marry ’em all I betcha!”

Merfilly8: Of course, for awhile I thought we had more girls….(mistaken gender idents out there)

MadaNameerf: Here here! Redheads

Merfilly8: You misquoted, David

Major oz: I just last week heard about that, Dad.

Featherz Dad: a book, a book, hmm. I THINK I remember something about a book

Merfilly8: it’s “Hoors”

AGplusone: Of course I did!

ddavitt: Ok, let’s do computers then

AGplusone: True … but that would be unkind.

Featherz Dad: thick paperback, some guy named Heinlein

Merfilly8: Currently blonde for Halloween…looks odd on me

Eeyore3061: Someone put in a call for Gen. Hooker.

AGplusone: Okay, on to computers … Dave’s question: please restate it, Dave.

Merfilly8: Computers will evolve

Eeyore3061: Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

BPRAL22169: Incidentally, I own two hardbacks, if anybody is dying to acquire a hardback of TEFL.

Merfilly8: they are our children of evolution

ddavitt: david mentioned the difference between outdated starman Jones and still to be achieved Dora/teena trpes

MadaNameerf: E-amil me with a price please.

ddavitt: Why did Heinlein switch?

ddavitt: it started in Moon i would think…

AGplusone: Bring one Saturday, Bill. I might take it off your hands.

Featherz Dad: And Mike, he is somewhere between but more like the later ones

Merfilly8: help please, What was Starman Jones ‘puter like?

BPRAL22169: Send me an e-mail with an inquiry, if you would.

ddavitt: Primitive filly…

BPRAL22169: That will remind me.

AGplusone: Very primitive.

Merfilly8: Punch card primitive?

ddavitt: They worked things out with paper and pencil

BPRAL22169: I will give you the same price I paid for it — b ut they’r not cheap on EBay.

Featherz Dad: The computers in SMJ were very massive and bad, like Feather

ddavitt: To navigate thru wormholes

AGplusone: I think maybe even earlier than that. I wondered how they imputed.

Merfilly8: like in CotG?

AGplusone: Keyboard?

Featherz Dad: what did they impute?

dwrighsr: No cards. everything keyed in manually. Translation of binary number to decimal looking up in books.

AGplusone: inputed

Merfilly8: ahh

ddavitt: Human error got them lost; inconceivable now which is why people often comment on it

AGplusone: inputted?

Major oz: TEFL was 1973 when computers were IBM 3060 type mainframes. I doubt even He saw the intervening steps currently extant. As a literary device, it was easy to go from the Starman Jones types to the IDEA of a Minerva without specifying the details.

BPRAL22169: Hey, at the time that was a major advance over techs (women) running around from place to place with patchcords.

ddavitt: They should take a look at the publication date and stop being so smug of course

Merfilly8: inputting…the concept of convincing the ‘puter to do what you want

AGplusone: beat the hell out of opening up the case and playing with the eight bit connections

ddavitt: But what i find fascinating is the idea of these super computers envying us weak limited humans

Featherz Dad: The old mythical basic command DWIM (Do What I MEAN)

ddavitt: They give it all up to have a body and have sex. hey, it’s fun…but is it that good? 🙂

AGplusone: Well, we think we ‘feel’ things and emotions and physical stimula

Merfilly8: I still don’t see it

Featherz Dad: Well, I think so

MadaNameerf: Yes. Why would Minerva handicap herself?

ddavitt: For love….

MadaNameerf: Minerva felt

dwrighsr: Since we don’t have any clue as to how ‘self-awareness’ occurs in us, we can really only speculate as to whether or not it can occur in machines.

MadaNameerf: Eros?

Merfilly8: I think the closeness was what it was for, more than Eros

BPRAL22169: Why would an angel incarnate.

Merfilly8: Watch City of Angels, the movie

AGplusone: Unless, of course, it’s all programming that simulates it for us.

BPRAL22169: No huhu — it’s all programming that simulates it for us humans, too.

AGplusone: Love Twain’s Mysterious Stranger (assuming he wrote it)

dwrighsr: Hey Cobber. I don’t know about you, but I am self-aware. 🙂

AGplusone: :-);-)

Merfilly8: I’m self-delusional, does that count?

BPRAL22169: There are some things that to simulate is to become. i.e., if you simulate a teacher you are a teacher.

dwrighsr: Maybe you are all figments of my imagination 🙂

Featherz Dad: He loves Minerva and others but does he really ever feel exactly what he feels in the tale of the adopted daughter again?

Featherz Dad: or is it all echoes and shadows

MadaNameerf: I’m the imagination of your figment

Merfilly8: We’d all have to be ficas of Oz’s imagination

Merfilly8: he’s oldest

Major oz: What’s that catchy cliche, Bill — something about “applied group sollipsism….?”

ddavitt: With maureen maybe?

BPRAL22169: I think it was “multiple ego solipsism.”

Merfilly8: That’s implied by his need to rescue her in NOTB

AGplusone: The carrying it to an extreme that I love so much is the computers like Mike (far more highly evolved) decide we’re a bug and have to be de-bugged from the system. See the “Ian Douglas” novels I keep bringing up.

dwrighsr: I suspect that computers will get to the point where we can’t tell if they are self-aware or not, (from outside), but whether or not they really will be . Bog Znayet.

BPRAL22169: I think the Dora love was so multi-dimensional that part of it enabled him to experience it with everyone else he loved from that point forward.

AGplusone: So they go out to de-bug everything that’s ‘alive’ that makes it past the atmosphere.

MadaNameerf: I think your right

Merfilly8: Pop hooked me on Flux and Anchor by Chalker…they suffered from self-aware computers, destroyed them , then built ones that became our benevolent children

Featherz Dad: that sounds like the berserker novels, ag

ddavitt: Minerva says, “‘Eros’ alone I cannot know…and know at last that I am blind.” that’s a sentence with an awful clout to it

BPRAL22169: What he experienced with Maureen — in TEFL — has a lot more of the flavor of compulsion.

Major oz: “Cheese it, Adama; here come the Cylons”

ddavitt: I think she;s wrong mind you…

Merfilly8: Bill, about the Dora-love, good point

dwrighsr: I mentioned this in an earlier chat. Hogan has a story where the computer is not even aware that people exist except as something like ‘annoying fleas’ that it gets rid of automatically.

ddavitt: Scary!

Featherz Dad: I always wondered if the Borgs came from Saberhagen

BPRAL22169: He has these “transforming experiences” from time to time.

dwrighsr: In the end, they force it to recognize that they are sentient and it immediately rolls over and quits attacking them.

ddavitt: But Heinlein, like Asimov, never had evil computers

Featherz Dad: sort of like when my brother convinced me HE was sentient

AGplusone: Sure, runs Virex automatically … every startup.

ddavitt: Or robots

Major oz: Is it Hogan that has the race of robots on a Jovian moon that were “probes gone wrong”?

dwrighsr: Yeah, but that’s a different one.

Major oz: hokay

ddavitt: I see the working life of each computer getting shorter as they opt out and get a body…..

ddavitt: Not very efficient

AGplusone: Why?

Merfilly8: Well, I’m gonna jet…wife is bored, and hubby just brought back a movie

AGplusone: They’re still computers … just animate.

Merfilly8: nite all

BPRAL22169: Curiously, the trend in SF is for bodies to get computers — the extropian idea that we will all upload ourselves is becoming more and more prominent.

dwrighsr: Well, Teena seemed to expect a working life of about a century.

Featherz Dad: Yup, but what are you going to do/ Make them wait some years for free agencies

Merfilly8 has left the room.

ddavitt: have to keep on getting new computers and bringing them up to speed; the one Minerva leaves behind isn’t sentient rememebr

Major oz: Postulating that computers can be self aware….they would NEVER opt out and get a body.

MadaNameerf: terribly inefficient

ddavitt: Suppose it just isn’t convenient? What rights do theyb have>

AGplusone: LOL, Featherz Dad! Apprenticeship indentures!

Major oz: It would be illogical

Featherz Dad: postulating that we would KNOW what they would do/

Featherz Dad: ?

AGplusone: Why subject yourself to death?

Major oz: “I” do

Featherz Dad: logic IS useful but limited

Major oz: O:-)

MadaNameerf: Would the reverse be possible?

Major oz: Not to a computer

AGplusone: Mayb e they’d laugh and say, “T’anks, but no t’anks.”

Featherz Dad: I don’t even always know what I will do

Major oz: not laugh

MadaNameerf: Human to Computer?

ddavitt: Somewhere along the line there would be a computer entity who wanted to stay silicon surely?

Major oz: that’s the whole idea

MadaNameerf: Same tech

Major oz: and don’t call me Shirley

ddavitt: 🙂

Featherz Dad: But no one ever said that they would ALL want bodies

dwrighsr: Why should we expect that all computers would think alike, (assuming that they think)?

AGplusone: OTOH … WE do think that it’s worth it, don’t we?

ddavitt: It’s implied that it’s the great reward in the sky…

Featherz Dad: Of course, this all has to wait for the death of MicroSoft ™

MadaNameerf: brb

ddavitt: I wouldn’t want to be a computer so why would a computer want to be me?

AGplusone: naw, no reward, simple ‘seize the day!’

Major oz: non sequitor, Jane

ddavitt: My speciality:-)

Featherz Dad: Minerva wanted to be a different Minerva, not a Jane

ddavitt: Notice the parralells between Dora’s ideas on immortality and minerva’s; each living in an eternal ‘now’

Major oz: Carpe Ductum ( a tee-shirt I got from Red Green)

AGplusone: What if it was the other way … you can become a cyborg? Live forever. Whatr would be your choice?

ddavitt: She wanted to be human (I’m human!)

Major oz: I’ll take it with my second-to-last breath.

ddavitt: I’d take it at the end of my life; not now

AGplusone: Replay throwing rocks at earth like Mike.

AGplusone: For a sexual substitute …

Featherz Dad: ok, I will buy that. However, we have no way to predict her actions and the author makes it convincing while we read it.

dwrighsr: I’m afraid that I would get to be like Laz. Bored, bored, bored.

ddavitt: Less messy i guess….:-)

Featherz Dad: I would do it if I were at the end. long as I could watch baseball, play poker and all the major things

AGplusone: Maybe they’d write a viagra subprogram …

ddavitt: Oh sure…but these chats go into looking at it without being hypnotised by Heinlein’s story telling!

AGplusone: <ducking>

Major oz: LL was overcome with Yuppie disease (amazing that H got it so early): been there, done that, check it off the list. Never stopping to savor.

AGplusone: You’re right, Oz.

ddavitt: Could be…

Featherz Dad: good point

ddavitt: Did he waste his unique opportunity?

Featherz Dad: But he KNEW better. Didn;t change it though

BPRAL22169: Anybody see a resemblance to Hamilton Felix?

dwrighsr: Well, he had been there, done that many,many,many times. how else in 2000 years?

Major oz: Remember he was RE-counting the tale of Dora. HE was still trying to die.

ddavitt: Ennui you mean?

AGplusone: Uh-huh …

Major oz: So his finding of “true” love didn’t help

ddavitt: I think it did…but it hurt first

AGplusone: Maybe one Dora is enough … then my question is: why the computer?

Major oz: who?

dwrighsr: I don’t think that he expected to ever find a love such as he had for Dora.

ddavitt: Notice how he had to remain anonymous too…that must have made him feel lonely

ddavitt: But if he was well known, i dodn’t give him long before he was killed

AGplusone: Why name the computer “Dora”?

ddavitt: He is the ultimate target for a madman

Major oz: He always returned to a Howard settlement.

Featherz Dad: would have to be one GOOD madman

BPRAL22169: Always wanted to be surrounded by family.

Major oz: Perhaps to “recharge”….not rejuvinate — just to relax

ddavitt: Long range rifle <shrug>

Major oz: ?

Featherz Dad: true.

Featherz Dad: we were talking about how much madman it would take to do in LL

ddavitt: As the humans were jealous of the Howards, the Howards could have envied laz his extra long life

dwrighsr: Mention of Hamilton Felix made me think of Monroe’s encounter with another ‘oldest living’ thing. the Generalsherman tree.

Major oz: Why kill LL any more than anyone else. I think I missed the start of this idea.

ddavitt: Because he’s there…

AGplusone: Maybe that’s why he keeps moving on to new frontiers …

BPRAL22169: I think LL must have something of a Teela gene — he just wouldn’t be on the same planet as the madman with his number on it/him.

Featherz Dad: I never liked the guy

Major oz: who?…another Howard or some jealous ephemeral. Or just because he is such a unique target?

BPRAL22169: I think it was Monroe-Alpha that had a hug with General Sherman.

AGplusone: I like him, but he’s an anti-author I think … a springboard for ideas.

Major oz: I see it as a stretch.

ddavitt: He would have been mobbed by fans or people wanting to use him to endorse their products..the soap that the Senior uses!

MadaNameerf: Gentle folks, I gotta get. Hopefully, I’ll be here on SAT

RMLWJ1: Night

ddavitt: See you !

Major oz: nada, mada

dwrighsr: See ya

MadaNameerf: Bye guys

Featherz Dad: I like him as a character and he would, under most circumstances, been good company. But I don’t really like him.

dwrighsr: DavidS. Who is an anti-author? I missed that

MadaNameerf has left the room.

Featherz Dad: see you

Featherz Dad: LL

ddavitt: I went off him becaue he;s so know it all.

ddavitt: He’s fine in MC

AGplusone: Laz: he’s RAH saying to himself: would I become this if x, y, and z took place.

Featherz Dad: yeah, he is better in MC and that is legitimate character developement.

Major oz: LL was always on the frontier. Publicity wasn’t a problem — other than the usual for any Howard.

BPRAL22169: Well — by the assumptions of the book, he’s a “wisdom figure.”

Featherz Dad: Mebbe so but I think he is much less dutiful than RAH

AGplusone: At least that’s my transitory thesis this week.

Featherz Dad: the theory, the theory that is yours

dwrighsr: He emphatically denied the ‘wisdom’ bit. Says time and time again that age doesn’t bring wisdom.

BPRAL22169: It would be very difficult for “ancestor worship” to develop among the Howards. Too many great-great-great-great grammas around to kick their b utts.

AGplusone: Well, “wisdom” is as “wisdom” does.

ddavitt: I am going to have to go now; can i hand over to you cohost David?

AGplusone: How’s the baby doing, Jane?

BPRAL22169: And you believed him! I have a bridge you might be interested in buying …

BPRAL22169: Only slightly used . . .

ddavitt: Kicking lots; I keep panicking and my bags are in the car

Featherz Dad: don’t you sell my bridge

ddavitt: # weeks on sunday is the due date.

AGplusone: Full report and photos next week, then!

ddavitt: 3 weeks that is

dwrighsr: Of course I believed him. Why should I not have?

AGplusone: next 3 weeks

ddavitt: We have a friend with a digicam; I will be sending a family photos to stephen’s page

dwrighsr: Night Jane. I’ll try to struggle on….

ddavitt: Thanks dave, see you all on sat.

AGplusone: Nite, Jane, dear, sleep well.

ddavitt has left the room.

Major oz: I don’t see LL as having wisdom and don’t think he does either. I do see him as being smarter AND cleverer (is that a word) than most and knowing it.

Featherz Dad: night and sleep sound. they NEVER come three weeks early, cept when they do

BPRAL22169: No, I’d say the Notebooks are just jam-packed with wisdom.

BPRAL22169: And I KNOW LL has wisdom — he faces facts and moves on, and that is the summa of wisdom.

Featherz Dad: Sometimes I get a whiff of Polonius in the notebooks

AGplusone: Actually, reading the text, there’s a lot more aphorisms than those … in the text.

Major oz: We can get very meta-meta, here. Just being around gives you lots of knowledge. Is that wisdom?

AGplusone: I get a strong whiff of that guy behind the curtain, Will.

dwrighsr: Experience, Yes. Wisdom. Who really knows?

Major oz: hear, hear

BPRAL22169: There’s a saying: a smart man learns from experience; a wise man learns from the experience of others.

Featherz Dad: I just remember how many people quote Polonius’ lines and what a JERK he was

Major oz: What is first on the list? Keep beer in a dark place. Wisdom? no Good idea?

Major oz: yes

BPRAL22169: And, of course, old Polonius got what everybody has the urge to do to a wise man.

Featherz Dad: sell beer to the first person who makes an offer. That is wisdom.

BPRAL22169: How about rephrasing it into a universal: Treat things according to their nature, not according to what’s convenient for you or how you wish they were.

AGplusone: Which is why the question “how come Laz lasts so long” really makes sense.

Major oz: The universe is what it is. It does not forgive mistakes, even ignorant ones.

AGplusone: What was it he said about the Wandering Jew, “Sandy MacDougal” a real PITA to know.

Major oz: Sound familiar?

Featherz Dad: Not exactly the same as the universe as myth, almost the opposite

AGplusone: And never learned to leave the victim enough hide … to grow back.

Featherz Dad: I love casino poker cause you don’t have to worry about anyone growing their hide back. there is always another drunk

BPRAL22169: That’s the difference between a “faker” and a “taker.”

AGplusone: Dave, while you’r cooking up the next question, can we take five minutes?

Major oz: The example of how he and Dora dispatched the bad guy and his two sons was applied common sense.

Major oz: One is intellectual, the other steals your wallet

dwrighsr: Sure. If anyone has any thoughts, please feel free to express them.

AGplusone: … and discuss whether we think (probably, I’d say) we can do another two meetings on TEFL?

Major oz: sure

BPRAL22169: We’ve certainly only scratched the surface.

AGplusone: Okay, be ready with next at 20 past hour.

Major oz: This never wears out

Major oz: next what?

AGplusone: It doesn’t does it. Anyone want to sub for Jane, assuming she has baby pop out?

AGplusone: Next question for chat.

Featherz Dad: At some point, I would like to discuss how so many people really HATE the book.

AGplusone: I’m willing to go there, Featherz Dad.

AGplusone: I agree with you, they’re out there. I’m in an egroup in which, last two weeks, I’ve read nothing but that …

dwrighsr: I have never been able to understand how *anyone* could hate anything of RAH. But I’m probably a bit prejudiced.

Featherz Dad: However, it seems to be a phenomena that only I have seen.

AGplusone: I’ve been tempted to copy their e mail to the group … I may, just delete the names.

AGplusone: But it’s the SOS

dwrighsr: I do know some people that don’t like anything other than the juvies. Mostly for religious reasons.

Featherz Dad: Oops, I got a witness. I missed it as I was cleaning up after the resident ruler

Featherz Dad: People who didn’t SEEM to be total prudes used to call it “Time Enough for Nookie.”

BPRAL22169: Funny how many of those “hates” dont’ even understand the little they have read.

AGplusone: I’m tempted to think that those who express those points are just looking for a good argument …

AGplusone: but I think it’s stronger than that.

Featherz Dad: yeah but there are people who generally LIKE adult Heinlein but hate TefL

AGplusone: That’s interesting …

Major oz: never met one (online or elsewhere)

BPRAL22169: Look — Heinlein was a professional mirror. People who don’t like the aspects of themselves he was pointing out are going to be offended.

AGplusone: I’d like to see a few of those.

Featherz Dad: Mostly of the “he got worse as he aged” faction

dwrighsr: I do know that the incest theme puts off a lot of people.

AGplusone: Or ‘self-indulgent’ or ‘sloppy’ a la Jerry Pournelle.

Major oz: Now with NOTB, or IWFNE, or Job……lots of folks denigrate those.

AGplusone: Do you think JP was serious when he said that?

Featherz Dad: Yes, especially since it WASN’T rape or coercion.

Featherz Dad: People don’t like to see stereotypes violated

BPRAL22169: Their stereotypes.

Featherz Dad: Do they think that the brothers and sisters living together as husband and wife are gonna put it in the PAPER

dwrighsr: Of course not. theirs are the ‘rules of nature’

AGplusone: The criticism always seems to involve ‘well he didn’t have to worry about editors’ so it got worse.

Featherz Dad: By people who have delusions of being editors

BPRAL22169: Heinlein set out to challenge the conventions; and people can get very very uptight when their ideas of what constitutes proper boundaries is challenged.

AGplusone: Which is absurd as far as the adult novels are concerned.

RMLWJ1 has left the room.

AGplusone: I think it’s also terminal shock arising out of the sixties …

Featherz Dad: Even in the juvies, he challenged lots of conventions. And now the juvies are NEVER in the school libraries, never sold in the kid’s dept of bookstores, always in the adult SF sections

AGplusone: Yes

dwrighsr: One of the few things I have finally gotten into my thick skull is that *all* of Heinlein is forcing us to think outside the ‘boundaries’. It took me years to realize that consciously, even though I learned it somewhat subconsciously.

Major oz: This conversation just jarred a memory of my best liked scene in TEFL: when the wastrel, failed farmer admits that, before he emmigrated, he was a professor OF CREATIVE WRITING

AGplusone: Why don’t you ‘volunteer’ and we’ll discuss this aspect at length, Featherz Dad? Start a thread.

AGplusone: I love that scene. All English majors love it, Oz.

Featherz Dad: I was laughing so hard that the woman I lived with at the time made me go outside so she could sleep.

dwrighsr: Didn’t RAH make a point in ‘Grumbles’ or ‘EU’ about professors of creative writing rarely being real authors?

Featherz Dad: Of course, I majored in English also

Major oz: yes

Major oz: many times and many places

AGplusone: Yes, we could raise that one … [few of us admit it, but I wear my major as a badge of honor]

dwrighsr: unlike, for example, professors of medicine, having to be real doctors?

Major oz: personally, I took the Zeb Carter track.

Featherz Dad: married someone whose nipples go “spung”:

dwrighsr: Egads? you mean that you are an ‘education’ professor 🙂

AGplusone: They said: You’re majoring in English to learn to write, right? I said, “No.” I thought but didn’t say: “You must be nuts!”

dwrighsr: Well. I became a German major when my phyics prof said, Get out now and I’ll give you a ‘D’. stay in, get an ‘F’ and try to make it up. I got.

dwrighsr: out.

Major oz: No….after degrees in engineering and biomed, I got a phuddd in edjoocashun, exactly the way Zeb did it, for exactly the same reasons.

dwrighsr: Did you use that as a model or did you think it up on your own?

AGplusone: Okay, consensus is we go another two meetings on TEFL … where that goes we’ll see. Labert may also volunteer. I’ll see him this week, either Saturday or by e mail.

Major oz: I used it as a model. Everything he said about it was RIGHT ON. He had to have known someone who did it.

AGplusone: [note the insidious use of the word ‘also’ … <g>]

Featherz Dad: I will be glad to help out but I can’t be here on Saturday and still play enough poker to pay my bills

AGplusone: Okay, Dave … next question … thanks Featherz

AGplusone: [I’ll ask Labert to share the load]

dwrighsr: I’m fresh out. Help.

AGplusone: Okay, anyone … Bills?

Major oz: I got one

AGplusone: Go, Oz

dwrighsr: GA. (thank god)

Major oz: Why did he go on and on and on and on………..about the “free sex”?

Major oz: What he had to say could have been said much more concisely.

dwrighsr: I’m not sure I follow you. can you elaborate?

AGplusone: Which story, or all of them … or are you talking about the comparison of ‘agape’ ‘eros’ etc.?

Major oz: Between the “recollection stories” there are pages and pages of nothing more than squirmeys, and scrubbies, and cuddle here and there, etc. I appreciate sex as much or more than most, but, hey, say what you have to say and move on.

AGplusone: [Bill Patterson: we had, in one of our AOL chats, some posts on that comparison … do you think it would be worthwhile to dig them out?]

dwrighsr: You mean like on Tertius with the twins and Tamara and so on?

Major oz: He does what he preaches against in other people’s writing.

Featherz Dad: Matter of taste I suppose. I liked it but I read some porn on occasion. And I like violence too so what do I know?

Major oz: yes, David

AGplusone: Interesting question … I think I’m going to have to read and see what is going on there …

Major oz: It’s not a question of like or dislike, but one of what is trying to be said and how he does it.

dwrighsr: I never saw it as excessive, personally, but as FeathersDad said, I think that it is a matter of taste.

AGplusone: I hadn’t looked at it from that aspect Oz

Major oz: It disappointed me in that aspect

Featherz Dad: Just having it brought up makes me want to reread it

AGplusone: I wonder what the interludes would look or read like if you extracted just them …

dwrighsr: Of course, I never consider what the story teller is ‘trying to say’. I simply read the ‘story’. As I said, I’m not critical.

AGplusone: Whether there’s a point to them all considered together.

Featherz Dad: I have read that book several ways. Skipping along reading only one theme or one type of chapter. I think that there is.

Major oz: And, as long as I am on a roll, here…..there is the Nick and Nora Charles aspect of some of the dialog.

AGplusone: [wouldn’t put it past him … sneaky author]

Major oz: …..cnange that — “Most” of the dialog……

Featherz Dad: RAH always liked clever dialog. Sometimes it DID get thinmannish

AGplusone: Sparkling repartee …

Major oz: The bubbles wore out as the ice melted……….

AGplusone: Two things to look at for next two weeks … (actually several)

AGplusone: All I remember a lot of is the Loreli-Lazuli repartee with Laz … like a sideshow.

Featherz Dad: Again, I liked most of the dialog. However, I can sympathise with the criticism, especially of Lor and Laz

BPRAL22169: You can’t have a couple dozen super-intelligent people together without witty dialog happening.

AGplusone: And wonder what, besides the comedy was for …

Major oz: Oh, that’s just the “Cheetah the Chimp” comic relief

AGplusone: mebbe

BPRAL22169: I’ve got another topic to bring up for later discussion.

Featherz Dad: one never knows with RAH

Major oz: ga

AGplusone: ‘kay, go, BillP

Featherz Dad: goheadon

BPRAL22169: I’ve been thinking about the incest bit — not one of the critics objected to it. you know, there are two ways to go with incest. The ironic way takes you into literary naturalism, and the “study of depravity.” That doesn’t seem to be happening here.

AGplusone: William Golding revisited

BPRAL22169: The other way is to go in the mythic direction. What is RAH is using the incest motif to position the Tertius people as gods, a la Children of the Lens.

BPRAL22169: He may not have intended to do anything with it in 1972 . . . but by 1980 he clearly did.

Featherz Dad: interesting point. maybe not gods but phaoroahs

BPRAL22169: What if, I mean.

Major oz: I keep it simpler. As long as there is no chance of offspring, the concept of incest is rendered moot.

AGplusone: … he’d written on past 1987 …

BPRAL22169: He’s upping the literary stakes from romance (=hero) to myth (=gods)

Major oz: That is very evident to me as what LL thought.

AGplusone: But the Kinnisons are going to have offspring. Smith just couldn’t publish it.

Featherz Dad: however, in our society, any incest is assumed to be rape and abuse

BPRAL22169: I have a theory about that too.

BPRAL22169: In our society, incest is thought of as a transgression of boundaries. Our particular society is very rigid right now about boundaries.

AGplusone: This means, I suppose I have to get a copy of Children of the Lens.

Featherz Dad: you won’t regret it if you do

AGplusone: Read it last when I was about 12

Major oz: But, Dad, LL thought only of “his” society — his rules (or lack thereof)

BPRAL22169: Only if you precede it with the other 5 books in the series.

AGplusone: Yeah, have most of them

BPRAL22169: You can skip Triplanetary, I think.

AGplusone: Well, this means Jane will be holding her tummy and reading next week …

Major oz: Did I miss the point. Are we trying to ferret out what H had to say about incest in our society????????

BPRAL22169: Jane will be holding her tummy and reading in any case, if I know Jane.

AGplusone: Not sure … make it clearer, Bill. Where are we going?

BPRAL22169: I don’t have a “direction” yet until people talk about whether the very idea is credible. I think Heinlein was more “lit’ry” than many people might go along with.

AGplusone: Is this back to Homo Novis?

AGplusone: … or maybe not …

BPRAL22169: It’s very credible from a lit-crit standpoint — and it kind of turns the whole World As Myth books into a kind of Ragnarok.

AGplusone: Okay, rather far ranging …

Major oz: …..someone send me the codebook…….

AGplusone: I’m puzzling it just as you are, Oz.

dwrighsr: Me too….

BPRAL22169: That’s anothe raspect we haven’t talked about — TEFL is the end of the Future History, which takes a mythic loop back to LL’s beginnings, Da Capo. But it is also the beginning of the World as Myth.

BPRAL22169: So he gives TEFL a myth’s circular form.

AGplusone: Da Capo being that title way back in the Future History chart … never written, or was it …

Featherz Dad: I think that it is a REAL transition in his work as opposed to the idea that he changed with STRANGER. Not that he wasn’t changing all along

BPRAL22169: Of course, he had also just had a life-threatening medical experience.

AGplusone: very plastic or fluid … wonder where he was going, exactly …

Major oz: I have heard the World as Myth tossed off for a few months now. Is there a critical review somewhere that goes into what, why, how, etc. this encompasses?

Major oz: …..cause I ain’t got a clue…….

AGplusone: Okay, that’s a valid point. What essay from THJ would best get that out, Bill?

BPRAL22169: I think DaCapo must have been planned as a return to Lazarus Long’s childhood — that would be very Cabellian. At the end of Figures of Earth, Manuel goes off with Grandfather Death and passes himself staring into the Pool at Haranton as a child.

Featherz Dad: The idea is most obvious in #otB but it involves all the later boox

BPRAL22169: I’m not sure there’s any essay in the Journal that is directly on point for that. It’s mentioned in a couple, but I wouldn’t refer people to those essays just for that point.

AGplusone: Cabell had a long well-thought out plan to string all his works together, what we think may be going on, Oz, is RAH started doing the same thing.

Major oz: hokay

Major oz: but what is W as M mean, pre-cis-ley?

AGplusone: And “World as Myth” is somehow connected to that, but I don’t understand it clearly yet, either.

BPRAL22169: Cabell also deliberately wrote all his books with a circular pattern — the end returns to the situation at the beginning. RAH may have planned the Future History with that circular pattern from the beginning as a result of his admiration for Cabell.

Major oz: Just to pay the bills

AGplusone: Right, get dem groceries on dat table!

Featherz Dad: W as M is about the universe as product of mind or minds

BPRAL22169: And have a lot of fun doing it.

dwrighsr: Well, TCCWTW and TSBS surprised me. I had the feeling from TNOTB that he expected that to be his last. Of course, maybe he surprised himself that he was able to get them done.

Featherz Dad: I think he ‘spected that ANY ONE of those might be his last.

BPRAL22169: Another medical emergency with that one.

AGplusone: So it might be helpful to have a little exegisis (sp?) about this W as M idea for the posts, Bill …

Featherz Dad: So the themes are there in ALL of them, resolved in different ways and to different extents.

BPRAL22169: You mean the posts for the next meeting on TEFL?

dwrighsr: ….the end returns to the situation at the beginning…. similar to ‘Starman Jones’ in a way.

AGplusone: Something nice and tentative …

AGplusone: yes.

BPRAL22169: That’s a very clear one.

BPRAL22169: “Max liked this time of day.”

AGplusone: “Let’s leave him in that hammock”

BPRAL22169: With an oat-straw in his lips, no doubt.

Featherz Dad: VERY civilized. leave the man in his hammock. like that

BPRAL22169: Oh, a short exposition of WAM: it’s “Elsewhere” writ large.

dwrighsr: Also. in his time travel stories, like ‘bootstrap’ and ‘all you zombies’ ?

AGplusone: yeppers, as someone used to say … I thought so, rather than revile him as I felt it necessary to do.

BPRAL22169: Very large.

Major oz: Interesting…….I have my hammock up at the edge of my lake, here in the Ozarks.

Featherz Dad: have a neighbor named Max?

BPRAL22169: Yes — he incorporates “Bootstraps” into TCWWTW

BPRAL22169: Sorry — I mean “Zombies.”

Major oz: nope—-named Kruz

Featherz Dad: I could write “the cat who walks into things”

dwrighsr: Gad. It’s scary. I’m almost understanding what you guys are talking about 😉

AGplusone: So, why don’t we read Zombies along with TEFL …

Featherz Dad: why don’;t we DRINK zombies along with TefL

Major oz: so where would I go to read the definitive treatise on WAM, written in a readable manner?

BPRAL22169: Much more practical solution!

AGplusone: just to catch an idea of what you’re talking about and make it easier to explain in leadoff … Good Idea! I could use one.

BPRAL22169: I don’t know that there is such a thing — just what’s in the books themselves.

AGplusone: Ever have a Lapu-Lapu Senior, Dad?

Featherz Dad: Boy WaM brings out the hostility in certain fanboys also

Major oz: So, I need to kind catch on…….like learning a language by speaking it?

AGplusone: Good, I’ve been bottling it up for a while …

dwrighsr: What? the hostility or the lapu-lapu?

AGplusone: the hostility … Lapu-Lapu is a one drink to a customer … wish I could bottle it!

AGplusone: Ozzies wouldn’t brag about Fosters if I could ship them a few …

AGplusone: Anyhow, being as it’s three minutes to the hour, gentlemen and other folk ….

Major oz: hai, hai

Major oz: It’s time for me to go

dwrighsr: Yeah. I can hardly keep my eyes open.

Featherz Dad: never heard of Lapu-Lapu. yes time to turn in.

Featherz Dad: see you all down the road

Featherz Dad has left the room.

Major oz: tell me again the Sat time, please

dwrighsr: The log is going to take until tomorrow or Sat morn. those long afh posts are murder.

BPRAL22169: But a very good discussion, I though.

AGplusone: time to eat! Closing log: Thursday, October 12, 2000, 8:59 PM, PDT. [5 PM to 8 PM ET, Oz]

Major oz: hokay—-c ya there

AGplusone: I did too, Bill. Thanks for coming everyone.

Major oz has left the room.

dwrighsr: So long everyone

BPRAL22169: Ciao.

BPRAL22169 has left the room.

AGplusone: Nite Eeyore

AGplusone: Dave

dwrighsr: G’night

Eeyore3061: Night, bb and bw

Eeyore3061: getting worse in the ME

dwrighsr has left the room.

Eeyore3061: Middle East

AGplusone: yes, I’m watching now

AGplusone: Cole won the MH on Iwo …

AGplusone: Nite Ee

AGplusone has left the room.

Final End Of Discussion Log


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