Heinlein Readers Discussion Group
Thursday, Dec. 04, 2003 9:00 P.M. EST
Genetic Selection in Heinlein

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From: “Oscagne”
Subject: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Genetic Selection in Heinlein” — Dec. 4,6.
Date: Thursday, November 20, 2003 4:14 PM

The next RAH-AIM Readers Group chat will be “Genetic Selection in Heinlein,” scheduled for December 4 and 6, 8pm and 4pm U.S. Central Time (respectively). Anyone wishing to join us for the first time can find out how by visiting https://www.heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/index.html#Info

Kate Gladstone was kind enough to put together our lead-off this month:
——————-
R.A.H.’s taboo-busting activities as a writer focused on a variety of areas. Many fans and critics have focused on his “crowding [or more than crowding] the taboos” in the area of sex – recent real-world developments in biological science and engineering may draw our attention to the ways he pushed the conceptual envelope in another and allied area: that of genetics (specifically – his portrayals of gene-selection, of one kind or another, as not only possible and routine but desirable under a wide range of circumstances: and not only – not even mostly – in the totalitarian type of society with which we generally associate such notions as “eugenics.”)

In BEYOND THIS HORIZON, for instance, questions of “What shall we select for?” eerily prefigure some of the questions raised by parents and physicians today, at the bare beginning-stages of the “designer baby” era. And some characters in in HORIZON’s better-baby-obsessed society – the infertile Martha, for instance, not only prefigure today’s concern with infertility, but also may reflect genetics/fertility-related concerns in the author’s own life. (Robert and Virginia never had children of their own, although they wanted them … and although Robert, like Martha in HORIZON, expressed himself passionately and often about the need for people of “good genetic stock” – in whatever way(s) one might define that – to reproduce and pass on their genetic advantages. Did Martha or RAH ever feel any intellectual/moral/emotional conflicts over finding a certain course of action impossible for oneself yet urging it upon others? Or perhaps Robert urged this course upon others – through BEYOND and other works of his – precisely *because* he and Virginia found it impossible for themselves yet regarded it as necessary nevertheless?)

Questions of genetics, eugenics, “improving the breed,” and the like (including questions of what makes genetic intervention good/justifiable or the opposite) permeate not only BEYOND but, notoriously, other words of RAH’s, particularly GULF, METHUSELAH’S CHILDREN, TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE, and FRIDAY.

In each of those four novels as in BEYOND THIS HORIZON, Heinlein comes out to a fair extent as supporting the use of genetic technologies and/or selective breeding to improve the human gene-pool (or part of the human gene-pool: GULF’s _Homo_novus_ organization and METHUSELAH’s Howards, by and large, prefer to improve their own smarts or longevity while leaving the rest of us un-improved). Sometimes, though, we nevertheless see some ambiguity, some doubt, some admission that (whatever the palpable merits of “improving the breed”) not everyone will feel quite happy with this.

HORIZON, for instance, gives us some sobering glimpses of the “Control Naturals” – people who have not benefited from genetic-selection work because, in some cases at least, the geneticists found no way to pull significant improvements from their parents’ genomes (“There wasn’t anything to select for in either of us,” says Herbert, a Control Natural, in explaining why he and his Control Natural wife decided not to have children.) One wonders: do the very generous monetary stipends that the “Control Naturals” receive (welfare-payments, in effect, for those unable to compete on equal terms with the rest of the citizenry) really make up for a life of (one presumes) finding oneself almost perpetually outdone, out-thought, out-achieved, out-wooed, and – generally – out-everythinged by just about every- and anyone? (Do you remember ever getting picked last for a team at school or play – or barred from the game entirely because you’d only drag your playmates down? Now imagine that happening *every* *day* of your life – not only in sports on the schoolyard, but each and every day and minute and hour of your childhood, teenhood, and adulthood – in just about everything you did or tried to do. Would money – in whatever vast sums apparently provided to the Control Naturals by one of RAH’s few successful welfare-state economies – really make up for it?

To me, BEYOND THIS HORIZON carries a strong flavor of the old _New_Yorker_ cartoon in which a psychiatrist tells a patient: “Sorry, I can’t help you overcome your inferiority-feelings – because, actually, you _are_ inferior!” One wonders whether the psychotherapists of HORIZON – “semantic correctionists,” they call themselves – had any better advice for the Control Naturals among their clients.)

Eugenics elsewhere in RAH works: GULF and METHUSELAH’S CHILDREN each show one segment of the human race separating itself from the rest (on genetic grounds – because of quicker, more capable brains or sturdier, longer-lived bodies), breeding for the traits that distinguish it (_Homo_novus_ encourages its members to have baby after baby – Kettle-Belly Baldwin praises a member who has borne a horde of “wonderful genius-plus kids” – and, similarly, the Howard Families provide financial encouragement for their members to reproduce with each other early and often). In both GULF and CHILDREN (for a time at least), the bearers of genetically enviable traits expect the rest of us, with our comparatively undesirable genes, to feel entirely happy with that arrangement. (In CHILDREN, at least, the Howards learn otherwise – the hard way. I suspect that some similarly bitter learning took place for the _Homo_novus_ group sometime between GULF and FRIDAY, resulting in the “self-styled supermen’s” move from Earth to the planet Olympia.)

And – in both GULF and CHILDREN – one wonders what happened to members of the genetically gifted group who could not, for whatever reason, participate in the spread-your-genes/improve-the-breed endeavor.

If Kettle-Belly warmly praises the intellectually superior mother of “genius-plus kids,” what words would he have had anent an equally intelligent woman (or man) unable despite all efforts to produce *any* kids? (Since the _Homo_novus_ orgainization gives top priority to increasing the numbers of _Homo_novus_, I wonder whether possibly Baldwin might simply not invite a known-infertile _Homo_novus_ [or _mulier_nova_] to join.)

If the Howards (like every other human group) included a few people who for some reason could not bear or beget children, one wonders whether they did not become bitter over the long years of seeing their fertile brethren (and sistren) regularly “ring the cash register” with birth after birth after birth. (And does the “cash register” ring for inmates of the Howard Sanctuary for Defectives, should they manage to reproduce with one another? I suspect not – did the Howards sterilize Sanctuary inmates, perhaps, or did they find some other way to avoid the possibility that Foundation funds would end up supporting the centuries-long-lived children of long-lived imbeciles?)

Even Heinlein fantasy (such as GLORY ROAD) and juvenile works (such as THE STAR BEAST) touch on gene-selection if only mildly (GLORY ROAD’s Star comes from a genetically selected group of candidates for rulership – as does STAR BEAST’s Lummox: something of a surprise in juvenile literature, given that (in USA culture, at least) fiction for children seldom if ever mentions genes, genetics, or notions of superior genes. Our culture taboos teaching kids about genetics even more stringently than it has ever tabooed teaching kids about sex: aside from works by RAH, in the general run of fictional (or even non-fictional) writing for children you will find fifty mentions of sex before you find even one mention of genes.)

What do you think about genetic selection and Heinlein’s approach to the subject? Many RAH characters notoriously preached and/or practiced “eugenics” in some form (e.g., Lazarus Long in TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE argued for letting genetic “monsters” and “defectives” die at birth), but at least one RAH character (Waldo – the only one whose name has become an English word) certainly qualified as a “defective” because of his congenital medical condition, _myasthenia_gravis_. (Had Lazarus Long, MD, assisted at Waldo’s mother’s lying-in, we would presumably have gone short one RAH novel – because I can’t imagine Lazarus desisting from helping the mother to stop and help spank into life a baby who obviously had something seriously wrong with him. Yet killing Waldo would have killed a potentially very high-achieving person indeed – besides, RAH went on record more than once as stating that the less-than-able-bodied could and should have useful, satisfying, and productive lives – how seriously, then, can we take his exhortations through Lazarus against exerting efforts to save the “unfit”? Did Lazarus (or similarly gung-ho “eugenicist” characters”) represent the whole of RAH’s views, or only one side of those views?

I await your answers, speculations, and cogitations on the topic.
—————————

Suggested reading for this chat: _Beyond This Horizon_, _Methusela’s Children_, Time Enough for Love_, _Friday_, and “Gulf”. And I’ll see you all on Thursday Dec. 4 at 8 p.m.(Central) and Saturday Dec. 6 at 4 p.m. (Central).

—
Oscagne, High Priest of Skeptics and Cynics
wanna read a story? http://users.ev1.net/~mcgrew/mss
or see my goofy website?

http://users.ev1.net/~mcgrew/webpage/home.htm

From: “jeanette”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chatmeeting–“Genetic Selection in Heinl…
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 2:16 AM

Thank you for interesting comments on several of RAH’s books.

I disagree with the suggestion that teaching children about genetics is a strong cultural taboo in the USA. Genetic selection in humans may be a subject that many avoid with children (and adults–it combines sex, religion and politics–the three forbidden topics), but genetics is not.

“Oh, the baby has her father’s chin,” may be the first introduction. Children’s books talk about families and how members resemble each other. THE UGLY DUCKLING carries many messages including genetics. Children are fascinated by twins–identical and fraternal. Harry Potter includes mug-bloods and the red-headed Weesley family.

In my experience, people do not avoid talking with children about genetics.
Jeanette

From: “Kate Gladstone”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Genetic Selection in Heinl…
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 9:33 AM

Thanks, Jeanette, for your comments! Jeanette notes:

> … Genetic selection in humans may be
> a subject that many avoid with children (and adults–it combines sex,
> religion and politics–the three forbidden topics), but genetics is not.
>
> “Oh, the baby has her father’s chin,” may be the first introduction.
> Children’s books talk about families and how members resemble each
> other. THE UGLY DUCKLING carries many messages including genetics.
> Children are fascinated by twins–identical and fraternal. Harry Potter
> includes mug-bloods and the red-headed Weesley family.
>
> In my experience, people do not avoid talking with children about
> genetics.

I should have spoken (or written) more specifically – in my experience, people don’t avoid general/overall references to genetic inheritance, but they DO avoid introducing children to the specifics of genes/chromosomes/dominant vs. recessive alleles, etc., sometimes seeing this (e.g.) as “too creepy to discuss with children” for reasons I have never understood.

—
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Kate Gladstone – Handwriting Repair –
http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

From: “David Wright”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Genetic Selection in Heinlein” — Dec. 4,6.
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 10:13 AM

“Oscagne”wrote in message news:bpjav8$1od5jk$…

> The next RAH-AIM Readers Group chat will be “Genetic Selection in Heinlein,”
> scheduled for December 4 and 6, 8pm and 4pm U.S. Central Time
> (respectively). Anyone wishing to join us for the first time can find out
> how by visiting
> https://www.heinleinsociety.org/Archives/ReadersGrp/index.html#Info .
>
> Kate Gladstone was kind enough to put together our lead-off this month:

(snip)

> generally associate such notions as “eugenics.”)
>
> In BEYOND THIS HORIZON, for instance, questions of “What shall we
> select for?” eerily prefigure some of the questions raised by parents
> and physicians today, at the bare beginning-stages of the “designer
> baby” era. And some characters in in HORIZON’s better-baby-obsessed
> society – the infertile Martha, for instance, not only prefigure
> today’s concern with infertility, but also may reflect
> genetics/fertility-related concerns in the author’s own life. (Robert
> and Virginia never had children of their own, although they wanted them

FYI. Robert was still married to Leslyn when _BTH_ was written. I do not know what their status was wrt to having or trying to have children.

> … and although Robert, like Martha in HORIZON, expressed himself
> passionately and often about the need for people of “good genetic
> stock” – in whatever way(s) one might define that – to reproduce and
> pass on their genetic advantages. Did Martha or RAH ever feel any
> intellectual/moral/emotional conflicts over finding a certain course of
> action impossible for oneself yet urging it upon others? Or perhaps
> Robert urged this course upon others – through BEYOND and other works
> of his – precisely *because* he and Virginia found it impossible for
> themselves yet regarded it as necessary nevertheless?)
>
> Questions of genetics, eugenics, “improving the breed,” and the like
> (including questions of what makes genetic intervention
> good/justifiable or the opposite) permeate not only BEYOND but,
> notoriously, other words of RAH’s, particularly GULF, METHUSELAH’S
> CHILDREN, TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE, and FRIDAY.
> In each of those four novels as in BEYOND THIS HORIZON, Heinlein
> comes out to a fair extent as supporting the use of genetic
> technologies and/or selective breeding to improve the human gene-pool
> (or part of the human gene-pool: GULF’s _Homo_novus_ organization and
> METHUSELAH’s Howards, by and large, prefer to improve their own smarts
> or longevity while leaving the rest of us un-improved). Sometimes,
> though, we nevertheless see some ambiguity, some doubt, some admission
> that (whatever the palpable merits of “improving the breed”) not
> everyone will feel quite happy with this.
>
> HORIZON, for instance, gives us some sobering glimpses of the “Control
> Naturals” – people who have not benefited from genetic-selection work
> because, in some cases at least, the geneticists found no way to pull
> significant improvements from their parents’ genomes (“There wasn’t
> anything to select for in either of us,” says Herbert, a Control
> Natural, in explaining why he and his Control Natural wife decided not
> to have children.) One wonders: do the very generous monetary stipends
> that the “Control Naturals” receive (welfare-payments, in effect, for
> those unable to compete on equal terms with the rest of the citizenry)
> really make up for a life of (one presumes) finding oneself almost
> perpetually outdone, out-thought, out-achieved, out-wooed, and –
> generally – out-everythinged by just about every- and anyone? (Do you
> remember ever getting picked last for a team at school or play – or
> barred from the game entirely because you’d only drag your playmates
> down? Now imagine that happening *every* *day* of your life – not only
> in sports on the schoolyard, but each and every day and minute and hour
> of your childhood, teenhood, and adulthood – in just about everything
> you did or tried to do. Would money – in whatever vast sums apparently
> provided to the Control Naturals by one of RAH’s few successful
> welfare-state economies – really make up for it?
> To me, BEYOND THIS HORIZON carries a strong flavor of the old
> _New_Yorker_ cartoon in which a psychiatrist tells a patient: “Sorry, I
> can’t help you overcome your inferiority-feelings – because, actually,
> you _are_ inferior!” One wonders whether the psychotherapists of
> HORIZON – “semantic correctionists,” they call themselves – had any
> better advice for the Control Naturals among their clients.)

I don’t recall any ‘semantic correctionists’ from _BTH_. There was a great deal said about ‘Encyclopedic Synthesists’, (or some such title) which Felix was frustated at becoming because he didn’t have eidetic memory. (I obviously don’t have eidetic memory either) 🙂

>
> Eugenics elsewhere in RAH works: GULF and METHUSELAH’S CHILDREN each
> show one segment of the human race separating itself from the rest (on
> genetic grounds – because of quicker, more capable brains or sturdier,
> longer-lived bodies), breeding for the traits that distinguish it
> (_Homo_novus_ encourages its members to have baby after baby –
> Kettle-Belly Baldwin praises a member who has borne a horde of
> “wonderful genius-plus kids” – and, similarly, the Howard Families
> provide financial encouragement for their members to reproduce with
> each other early and often). In both GULF and CHILDREN (for a time at
> least), the bearers of genetically enviable traits expect the rest of
> us, with our comparatively undesirable genes, to feel entirely happy
> with that arrangement. (In CHILDREN, at least, the Howards learn
> otherwise – the hard way. I suspect that some similarly bitter learning
> took place for the _Homo_novus_ group sometime between GULF and FRIDAY,
> resulting in the “self-styled supermen’s” move from Earth to the planet
> Olympia.)

While what you say here seems to be true wrt the Howards and Homo Novus, I recall the the main thrust of _BTH_ was not the separation of the group, but the attempt to include any and all ‘good’ characteristics into the entire gene-pool. There was a specific dialogue about this between Felix and Claude.

>
> And – in both GULF and CHILDREN – one wonders what happened to members
> of the genetically gifted group who could not, for whatever reason,
> participate in the spread-your-genes/improve-the-breed endeavor.
> If Kettle-Belly warmly praises the intellectually superior
> mother of “genius-plus kids,” what words would he have had anent an
> equally intelligent woman (or man) unable despite all efforts to
> produce *any* kids? (Since the _Homo_novus_ orgainization gives top
> priority to increasing the numbers of _Homo_novus_, I wonder whether
> possibly Baldwin might simply not invite a known-infertile _Homo_novus_
> [or _mulier_nova_] to join.)
> If the Howards (like every other human group) included a few
> people who for some reason could not bear or beget children, one
> wonders whether they did not become bitter over the long years of
> seeing their fertile brethren (and sistren) regularly “ring the cash
> register” with birth after birth after birth. (And does the “cash
> register” ring for inmates of the Howard Sanctuary for Defectives,
> should they manage to reproduce with one another? I suspect not – did
> the Howards sterilize Sanctuary inmates, perhaps, or did they find some
> other way to avoid the possibility that Foundation funds would end up
> supporting the centuries-long-lived children of long-lived imbeciles?)
>
> Even Heinlein fantasy (such as GLORY ROAD) and juvenile works (such as
> THE STAR BEAST) touch on gene-selection if only mildly (GLORY ROAD’s
> Star comes from a genetically selected group of candidates for
> rulership – as does STAR BEAST’s Lummox: something of a surprise in
> juvenile literature, given that (in USA culture, at least) fiction for
> children seldom if ever mentions genes, genetics, or notions of
> superior genes. Our culture taboos teaching kids about genetics even
> more stringently than it has ever tabooed teaching kids about sex:
> aside from works by RAH, in the general run of fictional (or even
> non-fictional) writing for children you will find fifty mentions of sex
> before you find even one mention of genes.)
>
> What do you think about genetic selection and Heinlein’s approach to
> the subject? Many RAH characters notoriously preached and/or practiced
> “eugenics” in some form (e.g., Lazarus Long in TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE
> argued for letting genetic “monsters” and “defectives” die at birth),
> but at least one RAH character (Waldo – the only one whose name has
> become an English word) certainly qualified as a “defective” because of
> his congenital medical condition, _myasthenia_gravis_. (Had Lazarus
> Long, MD, assisted at Waldo’s mother’s lying-in, we would presumably
> have gone short one RAH novel – because I can’t imagine Lazarus
> desisting from helping the mother to stop and help spank into life a
> baby who obviously had something seriously wrong with him.

IIRC, the doctor who delivered him had some ‘feeling’ that Waldo was not quite ‘right’, but there was nothing of the obvious kind of ‘monster’ that Lazarus talked about for Joe and Estelle. Waldo’s condition was not obvious at birth.

You might recall that Lazarus talked about his ‘Doctor Death’ period and that he had finally come to the conclusion that natural selection would take care of the culls.

> Yet killing
> Waldo would have killed a potentially very high-achieving person indeed
> – besides, RAH went on record more than once as stating that the
> less-than-able-bodied could and should have useful, satisfying, and
> productive lives – how seriously, then, can we take his exhortations
> through Lazarus against exerting efforts to save the “unfit”? Did
> Lazarus (or similarly gung-ho “eugenicist” characters”) represent the
> whole of RAH’s views, or only one side of those views?
>
> I await your answers, speculations, and cogitations on the topic

— David Wright

From: “BPRAL22169”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Genetic Selection in Heinl…
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 10:15 AM

Kate Gladstone

>hey DO avoid introducing children to the specifics of
>genes/chromosomes/dominant vs. recessive alleles, etc., sometimes seeing
>this (e.g.) as “too creepy to discuss with children” for reasons I have
>never understood.

Too bad, really, as it’s an excellent introduction to matrix algebra as well as statistical mechanics. Could it be that the real reason is the adults don’t understand the math?

There is a certain amount of squeamishness around the subject of treating humans as biological engineering subjects. Perhaps the teaching of genetics catches fallout from that.

Bill

From: “Kate Gladstone”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Genetic Selection in Heinl…
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 10:42 AM

Bill Patterson notes that genetics does a great job of introducing …

> … matrix algebra as well
> as statistical mechanics. Could it be that the real reason is the adults don’t
> understand the math?

Quite possibly! (given some of the “I-don’t-grok-math-and-I’m-PROUD-of-that!” folks I know)

>
> There is a certain amount of squeamishness around the subject of treating
> humans as biological engineering subjects. Perhaps the teaching of genetics
> catches fallout from that.

Also quite likely – I’ve visited at least one public library whose staff REFUSED to buy any genetics books for the children’s/teen’s department “because chromosomes and DNA are Nazi topics.”

—
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Kate Gladstone – Handwriting Repair –
http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

From: “Kate Gladstone”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Genetic Selection in Heinlein” — Dec. 4,6.
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 10:38 AM

David Wright notes, and I thank him for the information, that …

> … Robert was still married to Leslyn when _BTH_ was written. I do not
> know what their status was wrt to having or trying to have children.

If anyone here knows, please speak up (now and/or during the chat)

>

>
> I don’t recall any ‘semantic correctionists’ from _BTH_.

My error – HORIZON actually calls such specialists “corrective semanticians” in Chapter Six:

“It’s no use,” Smith said. “We don’t speak the same lingo.”

“I am afraid that is the trouble, really. I think perhaps you
should go to see a corrective semantician.”

… and “psychiatric semanticians” in Chapter Fifteen:

Hamilton knew that the loose stories of bygone days did not
constitute evidence of the first order, but some of it, after
examination by psychiatric semanticians, could be used as
evidence of the second order.

> While what you say here seems to be true wrt the Howards and Homo Novus, I
> recall the the main thrust of _BTH_ was not the separation of the group, but
> the attempt to include any and all ‘good’ characteristics into the entire
> gene-pool. There was a specific dialogue about this between Felix and
> Claude.
>

Yes, and I agree that I should have emphasized this – however, HORIZON does have the sub-plot of a separatist “master race” group that sees things differently.

And, yes,

> … Lazarus talked about his ‘Doctor Death’ period and
> that he had finally come to the conclusion that natural selection would take
> care of the culls.

… though, even so, he doesn’t seem to feel very happy about that … after all, he professes his readiness to abort Llita’s pregnancy if it seems likely to produce a “cull”/”monster”/what-have-you.

—
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Kate Gladstone – Handwriting Repair –
http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

From: “David Wright”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Genetic Selection in Heinlein” — Dec. 4,6.
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 10:54 AM

“Kate Gladstone”wrote in message news:…

> David Wright notes, and I thank him for the information, that …
>

(snip)

>
> … though, even so, he doesn’t seem to feel very happy about that …
> after all, he professes his readiness to abort Llita’s pregnancy if it
> seems likely to produce a “cull”/”monster”/what-have-you.
>

I don’t think that he was ‘happy’ about the possibility, but felt that it might be necessary. He was trying to determine ahead of time as to the possible outcome, (after all, these were brother-sister in some sense of the word) and the possibility of a bad outcome might have been very high. These were ex-slaves whom he was trying to make independant and having a bad outcome, either dead at birth or live but in extemely poor shape would make that process very difficult.

—
David Wright

From: “David M. Silver”
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting–“Genetic Selection in Heinlein” — Dec. 4,6.
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 8:24 PM

In article, “Oscagne”wrote:

> I sent the announcement to the Heinlein Society members, to drum up some
> interest. Here’s one reply, from Joe McDermont (forwarded with his
> permission).
>
> *Begin Forward*
>
> I read your missive with interest and will try and make the chats. Here is
> a letter I wrote Leon Kass, head of the President’s bioethics commission,
> citing BEYOND THIS HORIZON:
>
>
> In “Chairman’s Vision”, published on the President’s Bioethics Council
> website, you say:
>
> “…the battle against death itself-as if it were just one more
> disease-could undermine the belief that it matters less how long one lives
> than how well.”
>
>
> I am vitally, if not immediately, interested in the progress of
> biomedical science. . . . [remainder snipped] . . .

It was about the time of this “bioethics commission” report, or reports of it seeped out, that Ginny Heinlein, in her morning IM chats with me — I usually wake about 4 AM, and Ginny, on the other side of the continent, was usually sitting at her computer waiting for the “keeper” (24-hour nurse’s aide) to bring her breakfast (so we chatted daily for whatever time it was it took for her breakfast to be made ready, and often afterwards), pointed out that she believed it likely that the current President was about to adopt that position.

Living in a retirement community, Ginny often expressed concern about illnesses of her neighbors, her remaining close everyday friends with whom she socialized, those conditions that, at their age, often resulted in their deaths (and sometimes to her anguish, their suicides before the final pain came — many were, after all, retired officers in a profession of arms). Caleb Lanning wasn’t the only one Ginny (and Robert) knew who took that way out.

I won’t tell you exactly what she commented to me about that report of the “President’s Bioethics Council” — they were expressions she’d probably want kept private; but they were so highly unflattering and uncomplimentary of a mind that could take seriously or adopt Kass’ position, that is shocked me that Ginny, a person of supposedly well-known conservative views, would express them. But it’s not inconsistent with the so-styled “libertarian” viewpoint that Mr. McDermott goes on to express in his letter to Kass; neither is it inconsistent with Ginny’s equally well-known position favoring that kind of viewpoint.

—
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29, Lt.(jg), USN, R’td, 1907-88

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Smn Jester: Yeah, bummer… ANd for Saturnday, the wife and I are planning an outing.

DavidWrightSr: Well the archives will probably be ready by Sunday night. I am not as quick as I used to be getting them out.

DavidWrightSr: Got to make a pit stop. Be back shortly

Smn Jester: Tried caffene?

Smn Jester: Hope everything comes out all right…

DavidWrightSr: God! Punsters O:-)

AGplusone has entered the room.

Smn Jester: Silver adn Gold, Silver and Gold… Hiya! Call me Cornelius!

Sarah Hoyt has entered the room.

Smn Jester: *licking pick axe*

AGplusone: Wadda mean I don’t usually work?

Sarah Hoyt: It worked

Smn Jester: What worked?

Sarah Hoyt: Your invites don’t usually work.

AGplusone: Hi, Simon, Sarah, David lurking?

Smn Jester: He’s on a potty break…

AGplusone: We start in 20 minutes?

Smn Jester: Too much coffee..

Smn Jester: It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion…

DavidWrightSr: I’m back. Greetings

DavidWrightSr: Hi Sarah

Smn Jester: The lip attain a stain…

AGplusone: Madly refreshing on Beyond This Horizon …. need to with FUTL coming up.

Smn Jester: The mind attains speed…

Sarah Hoyt: I might be irregularly present, as I’m surrounded by kids. (There are two of them. I’m surrounded.)

AGplusone: Set the cats on them, Sarah.

Sarah Hoyt: Hi everyone.

AGplusone: Cats will win.

Sarah Hoyt: They’ve trained the cats.

AGplusone: Everytime

Smn Jester: I have one. He has a dog, a TV and a video game. I think I’m safe.

Sarah Hoyt: Cats like the kids better than they like me. Robert is singing Frank Sinatra songs, which I think is against the law for everyone under 50, right?

AGplusone: no … under 70, unless Italian

Smn Jester: I’m only 34. I’m a law breaker…

Smn Jester: And scottish…

Sarah Hoyt: Um… say no more. If you’re also male, I might elope wiht you. (And then what would the kids and the husband say?)

Sarah Hoyt: Not to mention the cats.

Smn Jester: Same thing my wife would say? “Thank goodness!”

Smn Jester: I’ll being one cat.

Sarah Hoyt: Well… there is that.

Sarah Hoyt: I threw books at kids. Much better now.

Smn Jester: Know what a scot wears under his kilt? *waggling eyebrows*

Smn Jester: Boots….

Sarah Hoyt: Ahhh. Oh. Um…

Smn Jester: *VEG*

Sarah Hoyt: I thought why there were no infertility problems among the Howard families. Can we discuss this now? Or do I have to wait?

Smn Jester: Goat head.

Smn Jester: Um, ‘go ahead’…

Sarah Hoyt: Because you had to “prove” first, before you married. So, infertile Howards, actually wouldn’t get married.

Sarah Hoyt: Don’t know if that’s bad or better.

Sarah Hoyt: And goat head to you too, buddy. How scottish of you, somehow.

AGplusone: Plainly the reason for Maureen’s mother’s giving her the couch.

Sarah Hoyt: 😉

Smn Jester: Scotland; where the mena are men and the sheep are nervous…

Sarah Hoyt: Yes.

AGplusone: That was after the clearnances. Before then it was the cattle that were nervous.

Smn Jester: KNow why scottish men wear kilts? Sound of a zipper would warn the sheep…

AGplusone: One reason why the breeds of Scottish cattle look so strange.

Sarah Hoyt: Of coufse, the resentment of a howerd never able to marry because she’s sterile would have been great fodder for an angst story, if Heinlein had gone for that stuff.

Smn Jester: Puddin?

AGplusone: clearances …. I know how to spell it.

Sarah Hoyt: David, this is dangerous territory. Our scottish friend reacted very badly when we told him the Scottish scientists cloned a sheep because they were short a date.

AGplusone: Maureen Johnson

AGplusone: Owww

Smn Jester: Bwahaha! Good one…

Smn Jester: I’ve been to Culloden Moor… Know more about the Clearances than just what is in that Outlander book…

AGplusone: I keep trying to tell everyone that if I go back seven generations, I’m Scots too.

Sarah Hoyt: My spelling will be weird. I’m on a remote link and don’t see it until I press enter and refresh.

AGplusone: Never read it.

Sarah Hoyt: David, if we go back seven generations everyone is Scots. My Marques ancestors spent two centuries lost in the wilds of Scottland.

Smn Jester: If you talk to my Dad, if the scots go back seven generations, we’re the Lost Tribes.

Smn Jester: My Dad’s a quack though…

AGplusone: four generations back: Gibbon:-)

Sarah Hoyt: Of course, perhaps also, unwittingley the rise of communism.

Sarah Hoyt: Think about this too much and you’ll stay awake at night.

Sarah Hoyt: Point being, genetics count.

BPRAL22169 has entered the room.

AGplusone: Hi, Bill.

BPRAL22169: Howdy

Sarah Hoyt: Not in any stupid way — I mean, “my genes are superior to your genes” because we’re all mongrels… objectively.

Sarah Hoyt: Hi Bill.

AGplusone: Sarah’s arguing genetics were the cause of the rise of communism.

BPRAL22169: I keep forgetting that it is this early — how do people manage who work until 5?

Sarah Hoyt: But as we become more and more able to distinguish the genes each person carries, we need to have a “ethics plan” on how to deal with it.

AGplusone: Actually, I think we arrived early. they went back to 6 PM, our time.

Smn Jester: Do they really? I was told that the offspring of two geniuses would probably have everage IQ kids. Was told there is priciple involved. Forgot the name of it.

BPRAL22169: I think Gregor Mendel did do his primary work in the 1830’s, but I don’t think it was rediscovered until the 1880’s.

Sarah Hoyt: I work at night.

DavidWrightSr: We are not actually scheduled to start until an hour from now.

Sarah Hoyt: Ah, and whoever did that lied to you.

Smn Jester: I work until 3:30 pm…

Sarah Hoyt: At least here at home.

Sarah Hoyt: Both my husband and I high IQs, and Robert is embarrassing us by running out of gifted programs by being pushed upwards.

Sarah Hoyt: When they can’t handle his mind.

BPRAL22169: You can always be the exception taht proves the rule, Sarah.

Sarah Hoyt: And Eric has just been tested as “profoundly gifted.”

Sarah Hoyt: So, we’re bucking the rules.

BPRAL22169: And, then again, wouldn’t you expect anyone named after RAH to do so, hmmm?

AGplusone: If you clone a genetic type, say Laz Long, how do you know they’ll always be Lazuli and Loreli coming out.

BPRAL22169: My father tested in the 140’s

Sarah Hoyt: True, but I grew up in a village. Intelligence doth run in families. As do a lot of other things.

Sarah Hoyt: Okay, Bill, it’s probably the name.

Sarah Hoyt: But Eric was the name we came up with in the delivery room because our “little girl” had a penis.

Smn Jester: I’m working up my courage to try for Mensa…

BPRAL22169: I think the “average” kid of two bright parents has to do more with the kids running in terror, for cover.

Smn Jester: Ewww… Penis? Genetic mutation?

Sarah Hoyt: You know, Mensa just hosts meetings where people tell stupid jokes and drink beer.

Sarah Hoyt: No. He’s a boy.

Smn Jester: Yeah, sounds great, doesn’t it!? *G*

Smn Jester: Boy? Thought you said you had a girl?

Sarah Hoyt: They told us that he was a girl. Up to delivery. Pink everything. The therapy…

Smn Jester: I’m not really an idiot; I just play one on TV.

Smn Jester: *VEG*

Sarah Hoyt: Depends on the chapter. Charlotte, NC had great parties. The local chapter is wall to wall religious people.

Smn Jester: So, you had to put your little girl in therapy?

Sarah Hoyt: Eventually. Oh, Lord, I hope he doesn’t decide he’s a girl at 30.

Smn Jester: Hey, maybe it’s in his genetics…

Smn Jester: If you’ve read the newsgroups, the whole idea of sexuality being genetic is a fascinating subject to me right now.

Sarah Hoyt: Again — are we going to have to make moral judgements, sometimes, on who should have what genes?

AGplusone: I’m thinking about the bartender named Hubert in the early part of BTH. He and his wife want it “better” for their children. Both control naturals; but the charts say their kids can never been more than marginally better than they

Smn Jester: Is it moral or practical? The good of the many outweighs the needs of the few.

AGplusone: are. Would you want children then?

Sarah Hoyt: Heinlein — as I read him , and this is an important caveat — seemed to say it was okay to select against diseases and for longevity, but not for intelligence, etc.

AGplusone: Why?

DavidWrightSr: How do you figure that?

AGplusone: And where? Expressly does he say that?

Sarah Hoyt: Because the characters that have the most long running eugenics experiment — the Howards — do indeed only select for longevity, health and such.

Smn Jester: I’ve read thigs saying that the genes for intelligence have been found closely tied to the genes for mental disorders.

AGplusone: But that’s simply an accident of a character named Howard who left $

Sarah Hoyt: Oh — also, he says that stupidity is the only capital crime, which seems to imply Darwin will take care of that.

AGplusone: E.g., average intelligence over long life results in the supreme intellects planning well over long life, and actually developing a more intelligent race … the cullings helping a lot.

Sarah Hoyt: Simon — or is that , like the saying about genius and madness — a way of consoling the ones who don’t cut it?

AGplusone: Long life results in more running to predicted form.

Sarah Hoyt: David — perhaps I’m getting old, but I’m starting to value long life over intelligence, too. For one, we all are twerps at 20.

AGplusone: Bars accidents in which the dumb survive by chance.

Smn Jester: Sarah… Good point. This Society of Mediocrity could certainly use that idea.

AGplusone: And allows intelligence to grow to be wisdom.

BPRAL22169: Actually, a very high percentage of the really bright people I’ve met have been healthy and emotionally stabler than what I take to be the overall average

Sarah Hoyt: Christopher Marlowe coming to mind right there — as in, he might have been better than Shakespeare, but he died at 29 in a stupid bar accident. Of course, reproduction didn’t enter into it at all in that case.

AGplusone: Marlowe was stupid enough to pick fights (in bars) (or with people who would send someone into a bar to kill him).

AGplusone: A flaw of youth.

Smn Jester: Bill… Yeah, but what I was told, by a Shrink, was that if you look, the ‘great’ minds like poets and writers have a vein of depression and madness.

Sarah Hoyt: Bill — actually, I think that might be an artifact of modern life, which, by removing the need to survive minute to minute seems to depress people without interior resources to keep them amused.

Smn Jester: Keats was a great poet, and dwelt on death all the time.

BPRAL22169 has left the room.

AGplusone: Hamilton Felix’s observation about the number of frowns :: happy faces.

Sarah Hoyt: Simon — Poets/great minds — speaking as a recovering poet, what do they have to do with each other.

Smn Jester: Sarah… Creativity then.

AGplusone: Starts the novel off …. “All of them should have been very happy . . . ”

BPRAL22169 has entered the room.

Sarah Hoyt: Oh, good, Bill. It wasn’t something I said.

BPRAL22169: Thanks for the invite. The AOL service in Santa Cruz bites.

Sarah Hoyt: Um… Poetry is often no more than an overdeveloped verban ability.

Sarah Hoyt: verbal.

Sarah Hoyt: As for Keats, I think that had more to do with the spirit of the age. They had just started living long enough to regard death as sad.

Smn Jester: No wonder I’m no good at it then…

Sarah Hoyt: So, like teenagers who just discovered they’re mortal, they obsessed on it.

AGplusone: Which is what Monroe Alpha does.

Sarah Hoyt: Yes.

Smn Jester: Which story was Monroe Alpha from again?

DavidWrightSr: Beyond This Horizon

BPRAL22169: One of the key things about RAH is that he was born into that age still dominated by Romantic attitudes — and we arent

Smn Jester: I was born well after RAH. I’m fairly Romantic…

Sarah Hoyt: We don’t understand romantic in the same vein.

Smn Jester: Oh?

BPRAL22169: Do you wax elegaic about daffodils and clouds in your copious free time?

AGplusone: Monroe Alpha was planned to be bred to bring back the mathematical genius of an ancestor and avoid the craziness, the paronia. Yet M-Alpha was worried about being a paronoid, so much so that he seems developing it.

BPRAL22169: Actually, I think that WAS M-A’s manifestation of paranoia.

AGplusone: He feels straitjacketed.

BPRAL22169: the self-proving statement.

AGplusone: yep

Sarah Hoyt: Also, because life was too easy/safe. Although the thing I remember the most from that novel was the dueling.

AGplusone: So he’s obsessed with something he cannot control.

Sarah Hoyt: Being able to challenge certain people to duels would greatly improve my mental health.

Smn Jester: I don’t have much free time, but lots of mental free time while I work. I about mundane stuff like that quite often.

AGplusone: No one had to work; the Social Credit idea we will find in FUTL.

BPRAL22169: Have to do something with all those wolf genes — have to do something with Gene Wolfe, too… but that’s another story.

AGplusone: Seemed to be a good way to cull out the asocial.

AGplusone: To me . . .

AGplusone: while they were still too young to breed much.

Sarah Hoyt: Yes. I’d probably get killed too, being naturally uncoordinated. Which WOULD definitely improve my mental health. And there , you see, Simon, that’s romantic.

AGplusone: Anyone ever take BTH apart and see what tracks from Rostand’s Cyrano?

Sarah Hoyt: I don’t do literary analysis unless someone is paying.

AGplusone: Thing was: in my mind — how do you developing a dueling culture when the time is peaceful? Cyrano lived during a period of Sixty Year Wars.

AGplusone: Everyone was a soldier home on leave throwing his weight around.

Smn Jester: Cowboys….

BPRAL22169 has left the room.

Smn Jester: Western culture would not be a dueling culture?

AGplusone: There are no wars in BTH, except the home grown dueling, and the revolutionary plot.

AGplusone: Don’t know …

AGplusone: take away war and what do you get … rampant capitalism, dueling out of boredom?

Smn Jester: Maybe a colonial culture would develop a dueling culture?

AGplusone: Football … rollerball, and on?

Sarah Hoyt: An individualist — true individualism — could develop into dueling fairly easily.

OscagneTX has entered the room.

OscagneTX: howdy

Sarah Hoyt: Culture.

Sarah Hoyt: Not an individualist. Though this might be a Freudian slip.

OscagneTX: Bacteria.

Sarah Hoyt: Hi.

Smn Jester: Can you buy those at Fredericks of Hollywood?

OscagneTX: Oh, is this not word-association?

Sarah Hoyt: A culture of individualis bacteria.

Sarah Hoyt: Um….

AGplusone: We were wondering about culture … how would a culture that breeds for the “best life” you can have, develop dueling? Is life so cheaply held by the perfect?

OscagneTX: %^)

Sarah Hoyt: Yes, Simon. They look like fish.

AGplusone: Or were the medicos that good?

OscagneTX: Easy, David. It’s artificial survival of the fittest.

BPRAL22169 has entered the room.

OscagneTX: If you have perfect health care you have to have some culling mechanism.

Sarah Hoyt: WSell, historically speaking, life was cheapest when it was short. Hence, Marlowe and the tavern brawl.

AGplusone: I thought so. A way to cull out the stupid, terminally stupid ones that always must fight.

Smn Jester: Artificial? Maybe since they have no predator, they have become their own.

OscagneTX: GMTA

Sarah Hoyt: Yes, and that makes sense from the top. But would it have developed?

AGplusone: Me, I’d put on a brassard, until I decided to murder someone for a serious reason.

OscagneTX has left the room.

Sarah Hoyt: I have this theory that the longer we live, the more protective of life we become.

Sarah Hoyt: So, if they do come up with a near-immortality process, streets will be padded.

OscagneTX has entered the room.

Smn Jester: What if you decided to not follow the rules? Not wear a brassard AND carry a gun?

AGplusone: Prolly true. Pointy headed kids don’t believe in death until it comes to visit.

OscagneTX: I think I’m going to have this problem all night. I don’t know why. Someone else will have to be responsible for the log.

DavidWrightSr: I’ve got it Os.

AGplusone: [that was possibility number two, but you’d have to hide it]

OscagneTX: Thanks, DW.

Smn Jester: I’ve got the conversation from the beginning if you want it…

OscagneTX: outstanding.

AGplusone: Easy thing would be to egg on Hagar the Terrible to take care of your enemies.

AGplusone: After all, they are breeding perfects. Someone would breed a perfect Machivelli.

AGplusone: For his political skills.

OscagneTX has left the room.

AGplusone: Bill, are you back?

OscagneTX has entered the room.

AGplusone: What were the original titles of Beyond This Horizon?

OscagneTX: Wasn’t that… Mordan Claude?

AGplusone: possibly …

OscagneTX: I’m asking now, in case someone knows the magic words or something…

Sarah Hoyt: BRB — Abel and Cain.

OscagneTX: I keep getting disconnected from the chat room, but not from AIM itself. WTH? Is there a time-out thing?

AGplusone: One original title was the passage at the beginning, “All of them should have been very happy ….”

OscagneTX: Or maybe I need to update?

AGplusone: I don’t know Joe.

BPRAL22169 has left the room.

AGplusone: But there were darker titles rejected. Here, we have a well-bred utopia, and everyone’s unhappy … for one reason or another.

OscagneTX has left the room.

Sarah Hoyt: back.

Smn Jester: Front…

OscagneTX has entered the room.

Sarah Hoyt: In a well bred utopia it is my guess everyone would be unhappy. Look at history. Any material improvement in human life, brings about more human-inflicted misery — suicides, homicies, crime.

BPRAL22169 has entered the room.

Sarah Hoyt: I’m not front today. Someone else is.

BPRAL22169: Let’s see if this does any better — I let the Autofix run and it didn’t actually destroy anything this time.

Smn Jester: hehhehe…

OscagneTX: brb, trying to upgrade/update.

OscagneTX has left the room.

AGplusone: Was asking if you remember the original titles of BTH, Bill?

BPRAL22169: I dont recall alternative working titles for BTH. Let me look it up.

Sarah Hoyt: I’m curious too. never heard this.

AGplusone: We in the notes I mailed back to Bill today. Should have copied them all.

AGplusone: were

AGplusone: [he’s up to the end of 41 … ]

OscagneTX has entered the room.

AGplusone: All downhill from here

OscagneTX: upgraded. Maybe I’ll stay in, now.

AGplusone: I hope so.

BPRAL22169: OK — I had read this before and just forgotten. “Problem Child” was one. “False Dawn” another.

BPRAL22169: (though that might have been an alternate title for chapter 1)

BPRAL22169: I think the problem child referred to was Hamilton Felix.

AGplusone: Exactly! “False” dawn. A perfect world that to 98 out of 106 people was unsatisfying.

AGplusone: But Monroe has his problems too.

Sarah Hoyt: Oh. Oh. false Dawn.

AGplusone: so does everyone it seems

Sarah Hoyt: I remember those …

Sarah Hoyt: Well, yeah.

BPRAL22169: I think the third title proposal was actually a chapter heading, since he actually used “Rich Man, Poor Man…”

Sarah Hoyt: brb — Return of Abel and Cain.

BPRAL22169: The first page was originally titled “‘Utopia’ Means ‘Nowhere'” and aren’t we glad he chose another working title!

AGplusone: So Felix is on one side, and Monroe on the other. Felix is “what me worry” . . . and just lives.

Merfilly27 has entered the room.

OscagneTX: He had trouble with titles, though, didn’t he? Didn’t they always get changed by the editors?

DavidWrightSr: Anyone in the 518 area code. Kate Gladstone needs help 518/482-6763 …

OscagneTX: Howdy, Steph.

AGplusone: Well, the real dawn is beyond this horizon.

Merfilly27: hi

AGplusone: Hi, Stephanie.

AGplusone: Some is his point that genetic manipulation a false dawn?

Sarah Hoyt: Okay — ALMOST all titles get changed by the editor.

Sarah Hoyt: It has nothing to do with their being good or bad.

AGplusone: so is … not “some”

BPRAL22169: AGplusone: So Felix is on one side, and Monroe on the other. Felix is “what me worry” . . . and just lives.

AGplusone: But there’s the ennui they all seem to have.

Sarah Hoyt: It’s merely a measure of the editor’s enthusiasm. If they really like the book, they cnge the title. It has more to do with “pissing on it” to mark territory.

BPRAL22169: I don’t think so — he’s severely damaged.

AGplusone: Who, Felix?

AGplusone: He’s disappointed clearly. He can’t be what he wants to be, but copes.

OscagneTX: My wife will call. She’s a Mac person.

BPRAL22169: Yeah, he pisses away his talent — he’s a classical case of adolescent depression.

LV Poker Player has entered the room.

BPRAL22169: Of course, so is Monroe-Alpha.

Sarah Hoyt: Well, I’d say those titles also give us a pretty good idea of what ws in RAH’s mind.

AGplusone: And “Herbert the bartender” is a classic case of mature depression, the control natural who cannot breed with his wife and have any hope of every having offspring who are “genetically” more advanced?

Sarah Hoyt: One of the things I like in BTH is the games/books. Gaming hasn’t developed to this point yet/now. Wonder if it will. To where it’s a narrative, needing a writer to narrate it. [Whistful Sarah]

AGplusone: Everyone seems to be in angst against their ‘great expectations’

LV Poker Player: Kate is having trouble getting into chat and posted the following on afh: HELP! I cannot access the Heinlein Readers Group chatroom!

Sarah Hoyt: I never can get in, unless/until invited.

OscagneTX: My wife is on the phone with Kate right now.

OscagneTX: She’s helping.

LV Poker Player: good

AGplusone: Tell her to forget about using iChat and download AIM and use it. iChat doesn’t mesh for some reason for her.

Merfilly27: i miscalculated the time

OscagneTX: yup. That’s the advice.

Merfilly27: so I’m late

AGplusone: Actually, you’re on time, Filly. We just kicked off early.

Merfilly27: ahh

AGplusone: What did you think about ‘genetics’ and Heinlein?

Merfilly27: I think he correctly foresaw that it would be a prime branch of science

OscagneTX: Kate’s going to be downloading AIM, and logging on. Someone who knows her screenname should look for her to invite… she rang off before we could get it.

AGplusone: Sarah: ‘dueling’ is just another form of games, I think …

AGplusone: if you don’t have to root hog or die to live, you play games . . .

AGplusone: ennui … funny that in Farnham’s Freehold, Joseph makes his killing inventing old games. The slave owners were bored, I’d say.

Smn Jester: Bored slave owners? I thought that is what the slaves were for…

LV Poker Player: Could be, one of the ways they fought boredom was through “curiosities” I think the term was

AGplusone: The, what was he, Sidonean, with the long hairy ears, in the beginning of Citizen of the Galaxy, also easily provoked to duel.

AGplusone: The FFVs in antebellum Virginia also dueled more than a bit.

OscagneTX: I think that was a case similar to a “Boy Named Sue”.

AGplusone: and Hamilton is named for someone killed in a duel

OscagneTX: If you have long pointy funny-looking ears, you learn to fight early and dirty.

AGplusone: Think Monroe is named by accident?

Merfilly27: he has no accidental namings in his books

Merfilly27: brb

OscagneTX: Monroe Alpha? Who’re Beta, etc.

AGplusone: Monroe a Jeffersonian Democrat, Hamilton a political opponent?

AGplusone: They’re pitted as opposites …

DavidWrightSr: Hello?

OscagneTX: Howdy.

AGplusone: ::::: waving :::::

Merfilly27: Almost back

n1yqh a has entered the room.

OscagneTX: Still helping Kate.

Merfilly27: gotta put dinner out for the man

Sarah Hoyt: Sorry, making dinner and dealing with homicidal juvenile delinquents.

Sarah Hoyt: They wonder why I put the LL saying that begins with “Delusions are functional” outside their rooms.

AGplusone: That’s a name I haven’t seen in a bit! Hi, ‘n1qh a’

AGplusone: can’t even type it straight. Lack of practice.

n1yqh a: hi… it’s been a while since I’ve benn to one of these…

Reilloc has entered the room.

Merfilly27: indeed it has

Merfilly27: and I am present now

Merfilly27: chicken fettucine has been served

AGplusone: Welcome …. again.

Smn Jester: ANd I’m outta here… Have fun all..

AGplusone: Take care simon

OscagneTX: ‘night

Merfilly27: nite

Smn Jester has left the room.

AGplusone: Okay … genetics … is Beyond this Horizon exhausted?

Merfilly27: Genetics, or at least natural selection, play a big part in several books of RAH’s

Merfilly27: which would allow one to infer that he felt it was an important science

LV Poker Player: A rather extreme example is Orphans Of the Sky, where any abnormal babies go into the Converter

Merfilly27: yes

Merfilly27: he mentions, in MC and other Howard books, the ‘culls’

Sarah Hoyt: Oh. Ew. had forgotten that.

AGplusone: Always wondered why they didn’t eat them. Maybe the “engineers” did?

Merfilly27: in TSBTS, they say that some branches were rooted out entirely for not holding to the longlife breeding ability

BPRAL22169: The technology they were using was stock breeding technique. Inbreed to reinforce, cull to clean the genome.

Merfilly27: the conversation about the genius primitves that takes place in ‘TEFL?’

DavidWrightSr: The advantage of breeding for long life. You don’t have to remove the culls. Old age does it for you

Merfilly27: because they were bred from the high tech scientists of the first colony ship lost in the stars

LanaiHoward has entered the room.

K8Gladst1 has entered the room.

LanaiHoward: ah. much better

n1yqh a: In TSBTS, they were “rooted out” by being excluded from the Howard Families, not by any….more drastic measures…

OscagneTX: TadAA!

OscagneTX: Welcome, Kate.

Merfilly27: welcome HOward

OscagneTX: Welcome, Howard.

Merfilly27: They go in depth on the breeding of slaves in FF

K8Gladst1: Hello – computer-problems forbade me to join in time – what have I missed?

OscagneTX: chit chat mostly, Kate. Preliminary stuff.

K8Gladst1: I now use AIM as my chat-program, so please add me to your buddy-lists therein.

Merfilly27: but later, by TEFL, RAH was actively mentioning gentice manipulation, not just breeding for desired traits

AGplusone: Not much. Want a log?

Merfilly27: is it the yule type?

Merfilly27: 🙂

K8Gladst1: Yes, I’d gladly accept a log of What Has Gone Before.

K8Gladst1: Re genetics and such – the new book (FUTL) has some tangential mentions proleptically reminiscent of BEYOND THIS HORIZON.

n1yqh a: Even in TEFL, was it genetic *manipulation* or was it more of “picking pairs of parents carefully” (i.e. Ishtar picks which pair makes kids, not Ishtar picks which genes the kids get), wasn’t it?

Merfilly27: 23 parents to Minerva, strictly in genome pairs

Merfilly27: that was the part I was remembering

K8Gladst1: In TEFL, Ishtar assembled Minerva’s human body from 23 pairs of chromosomes.

n1yqh a: okay, good point – memory would be a good thing…

DavidWrightSr: Merfilly27: 23 parents to Minerva, strictly in genome pairs. Like Friday too

LanaiHoward: so it was a selection of chromosomes rather than the finer granularity of genetic manipulation

K8Gladst1: So Ishtar DID pick the genes in that case … similarly re FRIDAY and its eponym’s genes.

Merfilly27: yes

K8Gladst1: Okay, then chromosomic manipulation.

AGplusone: Okay, helpful log sent.

LV Poker Player: Kate, have you gotten any email from me over the last month or so?

K8Gladst1: Where do I see that helpful log, David?

K8Gladst1: In e-mail?

LanaiHoward: And RAH had so much less to work with than we do. All the fuss about the Human Genome Project obscures…

OscagneTX: For minerva, minerva picked the gene pairs, but for everyone else, I got the impression that Ishtar manipulated the available gametes.

LanaiHoward: that, at best, it’s a dictionary of nouns and verbs,with no adjectives or adverbs.

n1yqh a: On a side note – interesting that RAH implied ability to manipulate chromosones but not genes within the chromosones (i.e. 23 parents, not several hundred). Perhaps that was far enough ahead for then without dealing with finer stuf

Merfilly27: the thing is, when TEFL was written, we did not have any genes mapped yet, I think

K8Gladst1: Well, David’s log has arrived, so please give me a few minutes to read it.

Merfilly27:

Merfilly27: 🙂

LanaiHoward: Even now, while we may know the gene sequence for a protein, we don’t know how its expression is called. We think that’s in what used to be called “junk DNA”

BPRAL22169: He may have been reluctant to talk about sub-chromosomal stuff because there still wasn’t any way to get to nanomanipulation at that point. I think Drexler’s book wasn’t to come out for another ten years.

n1yqh a: to some extent, that’s true — but on the other hand, we know that the promoters are in the same general region of the chromosone, and there’s plenty of “junk DNA” that’s still “damndifweknow” kind of stuff

Merfilly27: and yet we’re already pretending to understand retro RNA virusing …. scary

jilyd has entered the room.

OscagneTX: howdy.

Merfilly27: hi Dee

n1yqh a: “understand” may be a bit strong…

Merfilly27: yeah

LanaiHoward: Hmmm….probably too far afield, but I tend to think of immunochemical or even viral manipulation at that level rather than nanomachines…

jilyd: Thanks for the invite David, I had lost my shortcut when a HD failed.

LanaiHoward: although if there’s a Howard Secret, it very well may be in the p53 telomere genes.

DavidWrightSr: Pozhalsta. De nada

Merfilly27: didya ever send it off?

jilyd: Me. Steph? yes.

BPRAL22169: Well, yeah — but, pragmatically speaking, what’s the difference between a virus (or a prion) and a nanomachine?

K8Gladst1: THANKS to Dave for the log! I feel sad to have missed so much of value!

jilyd: With pecans and grits. 🙂

OscagneTX: Tell me, please, that Howard Secret is _not_ men’s lingerie… %^)

AGplusone: Hi, Dee ….

jilyd: Hi young Dave.

BPRAL22169: Would that men’s lingerie be for . . . howard’s end?

K8Gladst1: And I *don’t* know that RAH opposed breeding for intelligence, as someone said a number of minutes ago … didn’t he speak rather highly of intelligence, more than once?

LV Poker Player: I assume jilyd is Dee from afh?

jcgsmtop1 has entered the room.

jilyd: Yes, LV, it’s me.

jcgsmtop1: Hi, everyone – Joanne from Chicago here

jilyd: Hello, Joan. Welcome.

OscagneTX: howdy, Joanne.

jilyd: Joanne. Sorry, bad fingers.

jcgsmtop1: Bad fingers … tsk!

RMLWJ1 has entered the room.

Merfilly27: did not mean to imply such if it was me…Lazarus said specifically he wished they had

K8Gladst1: Hello, Joanne! Joanne and all – what RAH genetics references do you like most … or least?

RMLWJ1: Good evening. I hope all of you had a good Thanksgiving.

LV Poker Player: Lazarus at one point mentions that the Howards perhaps should have bred for intelligence instead of longevity

OscagneTX: while we’re introducing… nlyqh… I don’t recongize your screen-name.

LanaiHoward: oof re Howard Families secret. As I understand the telomere, it affects the length of the chromosome and be “trimmable” by a nanomachine…a mechanical intervention…

K8Gladst1: Yes – does RAH have any examples of people (outside BEYOND THIS HORIZON and GULF) *in* *fact* breeding for intelligence?

OscagneTX: and RMLWJL?

n1yqh a: Probably because I haven’t been reading/posting to AFH for a few years… Mike, from Massachusetts

LanaiHoward: the difference between thrombolysis and (mixing terms a little) atherotomy

RMLWJ1: << Leon Jester. In Roanoke, VA

OscagneTX: howdy, Mike.

BPRAL22169: Howard, I think it works the other way — every replication it gets trimmed by one telomere, and when the telomeres are gone, the replication stops.

K8Gladst1: Hello, Mike! And hello, Leon!

Merfilly27: I remember the screenname, never knew the name, Mike

OscagneTX: Howdy, Leon.

LanaiHoward: (looks for telomere crazy glue)

RMLWJ1: Thanks for the invite, David.

jilyd: MIke and Leon–Welcome!

BPRAL22169: Maybe the Howards don’t lose the last telomere and there’s a section of junk code that re-reads it a certain number of times more than usual.

OscagneTX: Just out of curiosity, was anybody here drawn by my global email to the Heinlein Society?

LV Poker Player: Licensing of babies is mentioned in I Will Fear No Evil. Qualifications for a license are vague at best, but intelligence of the parents is probably a factor

K8Gladst1: Re the church in BEYOND THIS HORIZON (that forbids members to engage in the gene-selection program or programs) – does anything think that, probably, over the years that church thereby “bred out” of itself those members who’d …

OscagneTX: That’s probably not the only factor, though, because Eunice’s _body_ was licensed for 3 kids.

Merfilly27: ability of said parent to rear a child seem to be a factor too

n1yqh a: If anybody manages to invent a good telomere crazy glue, there’s a few cell biologists in the next wing over from my lab who would really like to wine and dine you…

BPRAL22169: I don’t know, Kate — that society has a lot of uses for Control Naturals.

K8Gladst1: … have had most to gain from gene-selection (and who knew it) because they’d probably leave the church or at least seriously break its rules?

LanaiHoward: Interesting to think of the perhaps vital role of the Control Natural in preserving herd immunity

K8Gladst1: Yes, the BEYOND THIS HORIZON people had their uses for Control Naturals … but we do get the distinct impression that the society considers them useful-but-second-class citizens. People who resent this status (and who can …

n1yqh a: Speaking of violating the Hayflick limit — presumably they figured that out for the chunk of chicken heart (in MC, Miz….somethingorother… that they took with them)

DavidWrightSr: Hawkins

K8Gladst1: … genetically better their offspring) probably choose to have better offspring: those (and perhaps ONLY those) who cannot better their offspring …

OscagneTX: I don’t think I got the point of control naturals. They were used for benchmarking?

K8Gladst1: (e.g., Hubert & his wife) would not have that impetus to leave the church or to leave the Control Natural pool.

AGplusone: Think it more likely that they were the lifeboats, which is the same as benchmarking in a way.

BPRAL22169: I think there is some exception at the cellular level — all the cell strains used for cancer (and other)research are all cloned from a single stock — some female in new Jersey, IIRC, 35 years ago.

K8Gladst1: “Benchmarking” well describes one big reason that the society subsidized Control Naturals.

LV Poker Player: Kate, have you gotten email from me over the last month or so?

RMLWJ1: I’d say a little bit of both, myself.

LanaiHoward: Osc, imagine a world where malaria has been eliminated. Then assume BTH gets rid of the sickling trait….and malaria recurs.

K8Gladst1: LVPP, I’ve had some serious e-mail problems which for the past month have prevented me from seeing most of my e-mails.

K8Gladst1: But I can take a few minutes and see if I can force any of them to become viewable …

jilyd: I have not read BTH in just about forever, it was my “least favorite RAH.”

OscagneTX: But, if it was eliminated, it wasn’t through vaccines, it was through genetic manipulation.

LanaiHoward: HeLa strain in NJ — Helene(?) Lacks. But there are other lines.

LV Poker Player: Suspected something like that. Are you getting email now?

BPRAL22169: I think anything that preserves variability is a net adaptive benefit.

OscagneTX: If it’s eliminated it’s because everybody has the positive sickling trait, or something to that effect.

jilyd has left the room.

jilyd has entered the room.

AGplusone: WB, Miss Dee

LanaiHoward: now, I’ll admit the protection of the recessive sickle trait is less important now that we have fairly effective drugs — but that’s one hypothetical for a Control Neutral

jilyd: Thanks.

OscagneTX: Basically, _everyone_ is genetically immune from malaria, so even if it did recurr (in animals or something) nobody would catch it, as long as that manipulation was still being retained in the gene selection.

n1yqh a: So basically if *everybody* picks “trait X” for their offspring, and years later it turns out that “trait not-X” has some essential (or even useful) aspects, the control naturals provide…

jilyd: I think I loost my last sentence–the discussion is reminding me of people who collect seeds of heirloom species.

K8Gladst1: OK, LVPP, I’ve seen those e-mails now and have replied to the one most needing an answer.

n1yqh a: … a pool of variability from which to reintroduce the useful “not-x” so as to avoid it being purged from the gene pool entirely?

AGplusone: I’m doubtful whether all this genetic manipulation going on in Heinlein is more than neutral and to create a story situation.

LV Poker Player: Capital!

OscagneTX: hrm. but…. if a culture has the knowledge to alter DNA on an atomic level (which they very well might) and they KNOW what the codings mean…

K8Gladst1: And I agree that we can also see the Control Naturals as an “heirloom species/gene bank” endeavor – just in case, someday, we need the “pool of variability” they represent (e.g., what if we eliminated the gene for skin-moles, but…

OscagneTX: Then they could manufacture the needed trait chemically, no?

K8Gladst1: … then that gene turned out to have a link with superlative talent in some specialized field?

AGplusone: ISTM that it would be nice to be able to do these things, but, the point is, to create situations. After all, what’s the point in clonning Laz and Lau, other than to give a bored old man something to play with?

n1yqh a: I agree with AGplusone — the genetic manipulation seems to me to be more of a plot device rather than an exploration of the societal implications of manipulation per se…

K8Gladst1: Sure, they could make the needed gene/trait chemically, but the BEYOND THIS HORIZON society (as I recall) has a strong commitment to avoiding alteration of genes: they’ll select for good naturally-occurring ones, but no more …

BPRAL22169: Well, yeah — Heinlein almost always presents us with genetic manijpulation as a solved problem and looks at specific cases that are interesting

Merfilly27: the twins who weren’t?

K8Gladst1: … e.g., their medical-ethics code prohibits destruction of zygotes (abortion and such), quite unlike the code(s) followed by Friday’s creators some decades later.

OscagneTX: ie… if sequence atcgatcgatcggcta.etc. eliminates warts. And we do that. And then find out we need that sequence to make… proper vocal cords (whatever)…

AGplusone: Exactly.

BPRAL22169: Kate, that’s experience — remmeber that society is the result of at least two genetics wars.

K8Gladst1: Good example!

OscagneTX: We can in the lab make a dna strain including atcgatcgatcggcta.etc. and clone it into an egg.

LanaiHoward: sad in a way — so much used to be useful “as given”. I was in an awful focus group last night,and eventually was thrown out because I kept asking how the marketingbabble worked.

K8Gladst1: Yes – the BEYOND folks try hard to keep clear of tampering in certain ways: e.g., I suspect they’d oppose stem-cell research/use …

K8Gladst1: because of their experience in the gene-wars, with the super-soldier breeders/etc.

K8Gladst1: Thrown out because you ask how stuff worked? Doesn’t that leave the marketers with an unrepresentative sample of the population?

BPRAL22169: I wouldn’t care to speculate. I first read about genetics in 1960 or so — none of the stuff routinely used in genetics labs then was even on the horizon.

n1yqh a: stem-cell work doesn’t have to involve genetic manipulation, dunno why they’d object to it…

AGplusone: Whereas Friday is exactly that … super soldier … but I agree with Bill. I don’t think the issue had even arisen.

BPRAL22169: I mean “now”

OscagneTX: Booo! Bill. All “of the stuff routinely used in genetics labs then was” Beyond This Horizon.

OscagneTX: Boooo!

BPRAL22169: I kind of douabt that.

K8Gladst1: Stem-cell work (on embryonic stem-cells) involves destroying embryos, which the BEYONDers wouldn’t do. And FRIDAY, while a “super-soldier,” does *not* exactly match the BEYONDER super-grunts …

BPRAL22169: BTH used “handwavium” technology.

AGplusone: But remember, the original title, or at least lead-off to Cp. 1 is “False Dawn”

K8Gladst1: … for one thing, they didn’t need to eat more than twice a week or so.

BPRAL22169: Kate, none of us really “need” to eat more than once a week.

BPRAL22169: Or so.

K8Gladst1: As to gene-tech in BEYOND: remember, ‘way back when he wrote, we still hadn’t accurately counted our own chromosomes!

AGplusone: Not a panacea, still have to deal with “peoples’ characters”

LanaiHoward: Well, yes. But this company is trying very hard to redefine the Internet in terms of their business model — and is actually progressing

RMLWJ1: not really, blood sugars would hit the sock tops after about 24 hours or so.

LV Poker Player: I think we would lose combat effectiveness after a day or two. Those supersoldiers apparently could keep right on fighting on those occasional meals.

K8Gladst1: Okay … but can an army, fighting and marching, “fuel” its soldiers with a once-a-week meal? If so, the Army Quartermasters really could save a bundle if they knew about this! 😉

BPRAL22169: No, you’d simply flip over to your alternate metabolic pathway. We have more than one metabolic pathway.

RMLWJ1: I’d doubt it.

RMLWJ1: ketoacidosis doesn’t make for a good fighter.

BPRAL22169: Ketosis is not ketoacidosis.

n1yqh a: Lose peak combat effectiveness, yes, but still could be somewhat effective…

RMLWJ1: could be effective, but marginally so.

LanaiHoward: I’m blanking on the name–will dig it up if need be–but there’s a new FDA approved drug for various sleep disorders — that also is showing evidence of being a sleep substitute, apparently with no abuse potential

K8Gladst1: I’ve heard from armed-forces veterans that “armchair tacticians” playing war-games sometimes fall into notions (not provable by experience) that a sufficiently brave or determined soldier could fight/march/work effectively for …

BPRAL22169: ketosis is a normal state of a metabolic pathway that breaks down fats; ketoacidosis is an abnormal state of the carbohydrate metabolic pathway.

LV Poker Player: In combat, “marginally effective” all too often equates to “dead”

K8Gladst1: … a solid week on, say, just a sandwich per week. Would any vets here care to comment?

Merfilly27: part of meals for soldiers is morale though

OscagneTX: It was special food, though, Kate.

LanaiHoward: Can’t remember if it’s 1 or 3 MREs, non cold weather, have about 4000 calories

OscagneTX: They died without their own food.

n1yqh a: worth noting that ketoacidosis is a pathologically *high* level of ketones, which means (in effect) too *much* fuel in the blood (in the form of ketones), not likely to be a problem in (semi-)starvation.

RMLWJ1: Put it this way. Eventually, the adrenaline runs out of stuff to burn. Then you’re shafted.

Merfilly27: 3

OscagneTX: Probably hopped up with protiens and sugars or something.

K8Gladst1: The description of BEYONDs’ super-soldier hordes as surviving on occasional “fuel” rather than food seems to suggest (special rations or no) a severe departure from the human norm.

OscagneTX:

Merfilly27: because one meets the WHO standard fro minimum calories per day

LanaiHoward: Kate, wouldn’t it be a security vulnerability if they are not affected by chocolate?

AGplusone: LIke the pegasus from “Jerry Was a Man,” another genetic manipulation story, that would have to run on sugar.

OscagneTX: I mean, hell… Niven or someone hypothesizes CHON food. Nothing but the elements. Maybe their rations were on that order.

RMLWJ1: The WHO standards are by and large laughable, and not held in much regard by those of us in the medical professions.

K8Gladst1: Not only did the BEYOND horde-soldiers die without their own type of food, they also died WITH a diet of that special food (if “fed on captured rations,” they would still waste away while desperately pleasing for …

Merfilly27: Oh, I know, just mentioning the guideline used to establish MREs

LanaiHoward: No hemoglobin, then, in Niven’s world?

K8Gladst1: something (of unknown-to-us nature) called _vepratoga_. I have no idea (does anyone?) whether asking for _vepratoga_ most nearly resembles …

LV Poker Player: Kate, if you replied, it has not shown up in my mailbox.

RMLWJ1: You can survive on WHO caloric standards. March, fight effectively, no.

AGplusone: Whereas Jerry was perfectly content to run on sigrets and poker winnings like some lawyers I know.

OscagneTX: Dunno, Howard. It’s been several years since I read it. They were making food out of petroleum.

Reilloc: You know lawyers who win at poker?

K8Gladst1: /1/ asking for vitamins/medical tratment/maintenance or /2/ asking for assisted suicide or /3/ asking for extreme unction.

BPRAL22169: to nlqqh a: ketones are byproducts, not fuel.

K8Gladst1: I *married* a lawyer who wins at poker.

Merfilly27: I always lost weigth in the field, despite hoarding MREs and shelf life milk

AGplusone: A few.

Reilloc: Lucky in cards…

BPRAL22169: I’m sorry, but “adrenaline runs out of stuff to burn?” Where did you people learn biochemistry?

RMLWJ1: Not surprising.

AGplusone: They only play with other lawyers, of course.

aggirlj has entered the room.

Merfilly27: Hey Hane

n1yqh a: byproducts normally, but in semi-starvation an excellent way to turn fatty acids into fuel that the brain can use…

Sarah Hoyt: JANE!

jilyd: Hi, Jane.

Merfilly27: Jane

aggirlj: Hi all!

K8Gladst1: My husband grew up with (and believes) the less-common variant of the saying that “Reilloc” quotes: “Lucjy in cards, lucky in love.” Don’t ask me why.

Merfilly27: geeze can’t type

K8Gladst1: Hello, Jane!

Reilloc: He just likes j’s

aggirlj: Hi kate

OscagneTX: Howdy, Han-ay. (Jane)

K8Gladst1: No, I cannot type either.

RMLWJ1: In my case, from getting shot at on occasion.

aggirlj: David lurking?

LanaiHoward: cat interrupt…need to run.

LanaiHoward has left the room.

AGplusone: occasionally.

K8Gladst1: No, Andrew has no marked preference for j over any other letter. My own preference therefor, if real, extends only to typos.

BPRAL22169: Sorry I’m so far behind — my interface isn’t scrolling automatically.

Merfilly27: I hate that

Merfilly27: aol does it sometimes

BPRAL22169: Seems to be working now.

K8Gladst1: “Reilloc,” surely you have something of substance to add to tonight’s discussion?

Reilloc: Yes.

AGplusone: Propose we take a cat watering break for five, Joe?

K8Gladst1: Let’s hear it!

jilyd: Question–is anyone else getting some remarks “highlighted”?

georule1861 has entered the room.

aggirlj: Hi Geo.

K8Gladst1: What does “highlighting” look like?

OscagneTX: Bill, it only does that to me if I highlight something in the window (as to c/p), then when I get it back to the bottom it autoscrolls again.

Reilloc: It’s the people who have preferences set to smart quotes

K8Gladst1: Hello, “georule”!

georule1861: Yo.

jilyd: Hi, geo. “Perfect” timing.

OscagneTX: Howdy, Geo.

Merfilly27: I’ve got my biggest responsibility on my lap

aggirlj: brb

jilyd: Put it in a grey block. I called it highlighting for lack of a better term.

BPRAL22169: I did highlight something some time ago, not connected with this occurrence.

K8Gladst1: No, I haven’t gotten that – but then, I haven’t set “smart quotes.”

BPRAL22169: Ha! Geo — conscience!

LV Poker Player: Kate, if you sent me email, it has not shown up here

OscagneTX:

Merfilly27: he fell asleep while up here, and don’t have the heart to move him

RMLWJ1: Happens occasionally. Mine tend to do that for some reason.

jilyd: No, LN, that can’t be it, because it is inconsistent. Kate is highlighted sometimes, for instance, and sometimes not.

K8Gladst1: LVPP, I sent that e-mail quite recently – probably within the past half-hour or so. Let me know if it continues to fail to appear.

BPRAL22169: I’ve gottent he highlighting the other sare discussing — I assumed my installation ran out of separate colors for the people in the room.

jilyd: Not impoiortant, just curious why.

K8Gladst1: Different people should show up in different colors?

georule1861: I’ve thot RAH ambivalent and mixed messagy on the subject.

jilyd: The names, kate, not the posts.

OscagneTX: yes, kate.

LV Poker Player: I certainly do not agree with all statements made by all characters. Just because a character says something though, does not mean Heinlein thought that way

OscagneTX: the posts do, too, sometimes.

aggirlj: b

K8Gladst1: I often get the same impression (about RAH, well, having more than one view on the matter).

OscagneTX: Depends on the poster’s setting.

Merfilly27: Judging by TEFL, he felt research needed to be done…but did not want to truly deal with the possible ramifications, maybe

OscagneTX: F’rinstance RMLWJI has his background grey, so everytime he posts the lines go grey until someone with a non-default white posts.

georule1861: There seems to be the scientists respect for “improving the race” through science –and uh. . .the poker players respect for the importance of luck.

jilyd: For me, the show according to the font the poster chose, but the name color is assigned by my AIM, according tot he order they came on.

Sarah Hoyt: Smart people often have to have more than one view on a matter. To have only one would be too….. wrong.

georule1861: Look at the Howard Foundation and Lazarus Long.

Merfilly27: though he made a point of mentioning the brain deadness of the clones kept on tap

K8Gladst1: Okay – so which fictional statements in RAH works probably do (or probably don’t) reflect his views? In non-fiction (EXPANDED UNIVERSE) he refers us to a book on genetics/eugenics called THE NEXT MILLION YEARS, whose approach …

Merfilly27: later in the Future History stories

K8Gladst1: … ties in closely with the “Man is a wild animal” view in BEYOND and elsewhere in RAH’s fiction.

BPRAL22169: (A very depressing book, btw)

jilyd: Joe, you just answered my original question.

K8Gladst1: I found NEXT MILLION YEARS not so much depressing as sobering.

hunebear1 has entered the room.

OscagneTX: Star Trek Enterprise just did a live-brain-clone-for-parts episode. I kept wanting to let them know they should have deactivated the brain before it gained awareness.

K8Gladst1: Hello, “hunebear”!

georule1861: The greatest accomplishment of the Foundation is a second generation “mutant”. Talk about mixed messages!

hunebear1: hi all

OscagneTX: howdy.

Reilloc: I think you’re right, Dee. It’s the bold fonts that do it most

K8Gladst1: If you could have any genetic trait (currently existing within the human gene-pool), which one would you choose?

Sarah Hoyt: The best laid plans of foundations and men.

Merfilly27: perhaps trying to show that luck is a fundemental factor, but science can try and guide to those favorable things?

hunebear1 has left the room.

OscagneTX: Of course, ST seems to think that memories go with DNA, so there’s that.

K8Gladst1: Where does ST suggest that memories go with DNA?

Sarah Hoyt: Gaaaaah ST scince.

Merfilly27: Star Trek?

OscagneTX: Not Starship Troopers. Star Trek.

Reilloc: I want the winning lottery number gene

Merfilly27: as in the recent enterprise ep?

OscagneTX: yes, Steph.

K8Gladst1: Oh – STAR TREK – I thought “ST” referred to STARSHIP TROOPERS.

Merfilly27: I beleive in gentic memory…to a point

Merfilly27: not what they used

jilyd: LN, thereis a Niven story about a character sho is the product of a program of breeding for luck.

Sarah Hoyt: No. Star Trek. Heinlein didn’t do that kind of science.

BPRAL22169: RAH’s has taken positions on all sides of the genetic memory question.

georule1861: Did RAH ever mix Psi with racial selection? He did a goodly bit of Psi stuff early on.

K8Gladst1: Merfilly, would you regard genetic memory as explaining, say, ideas of reincarnation? I ask because …

Sarah Hoyt: Not that children were born with a certain memory of the person they were cloned from. Because that’s just silly.

BPRAL22169: Geo — remember the telepaths in Methuselah’s Children?

LV Poker Player: The Ringworld Engineers, I think was the one where humanity was being bred for a lucky gene

Sarah Hoyt: K8 — definitely not.

georule1861: Ah. Bingo. Thanks, Bill.

Sarah Hoyt: Though I’m not Merfilly.

K8Gladst1: … people claiming to remember past incarnations often-as-not remember lives in which they died childless: which doesn’t fit a genetic-memory explanation.

Merfilly27: I don’t tend to mix reincarnation with gentic memories

Reilloc: People remember other lives?

BPRAL22169: (I thought about ITGO, too – but that wasn’t definable as “racial.”)

OscagneTX: Since we’re a bit off track, and it’s been an official hour and five minutes, how about we take a break?

Sarah Hoyt: Unless there is some sort of predestination involved.

jilyd: Right, LV, or at least one of the earlier Ringweorld books. I think I rememebr they accomplished it by adding a lottery factor to the baby licenses.

K8Gladst1: The telepaths in METHUSELAH’S CHILDREN, as I recall, all had something-or-other wrong with them … but telepaths in other Heinlein works don’t tend to, as I recall.

jilyd: People claim to remember former lives under hypnosis.

georule1861: The MC psi’s wasn’t the suggestion that the psi was sort of. . uh, anti-darwinian almost? Other serious defects went along with?

Merfilly27: genetic memories tend to be this innate fear of sber toothed tigers, or respect for fire, etc

Merfilly27: survival linked issues

BPRAL22169: Yeah. When it came to things psychic, Heinlein took positions on all sides of all questions.

K8Gladst1: I’d welcome a break, if others agree. Shall we resume in five or ten minutes?

RMLWJ1: works for me.

Merfilly27: reincarnates’ memories tend to lie in specific, personal veins

BPRAL22169: Reconvene at 7:15?

Sarah Hoyt: Yes, please.

Merfilly27: yes

Reilloc: reincarnates memories?

jilyd: Sure, Kate.

OscagneTX: It’s your show tonight, Kate. Want to call it?

georule1861: ‘kay.

aggirlj: me too

AGplusone: Never quite sure whether Lost Legacy wasn’t a g3enetics story as well.

Merfilly27: Kate, sorry haven’t been free to call you on that subject

K8Gladst1: OK – at 15 minutes after the hour, we’ll resume. I won’t state here and now my views on reincarnation, other than to say that some reported claims thereof strike me as much less persuasive than others. (Leans back for Reilloc zap)

K8Gladst1: Merfilly, call when you can.

Merfilly27: Three kids and prepping for school while supporting KEv in his promotion…sheesh

Reilloc: How do you feel about astrology?

K8Gladst1: My “AIM” screen just displayed an ad reading (complete with typo) ”

K8Gladst1: “Better. Stonger. Faster” (sic) Ain’t Quality-Control Grand?

OscagneTX: Wow. Busy. I’ll be almost as busy, Steph. Starting middle of Jan. I’ll be doing 12 hours at Sam Houston State, and 40 hours at work.

OscagneTX:

K8Gladst1: I have no patience with astrology, Reilloc. Thanks for asking.

Reilloc: Patience?

georule1861: I vote “was”, David.

Reilloc: If astrologers took their time would you feel better about it?

aggirlj: You can do it Joe. If you’re really enjoying it the time will seem okay.

Merfilly27: real busy

K8Gladst1: I disbelieve astrology. I regard it as baloney – no matter how long the astrologers take, I haven’t found them trustworthy or accurate.

Reilloc: Then, it’s not patience you mean?

Merfilly27: I want to add work in there, but need it to fit the hours after class, and before kids need pick up from Daycare

AGplusone: “was” about what, Geo?

georule1861: Lost Legacy.

K8Gladst1: No – I used a loose expression, common where-and-when I grew up. “Having no patience for something” means “not wanting to waste one’s time/energy on it.”

AGplusone: Ah …

Reilloc: How about biorhythms?

K8Gladst1: *Does* anyone here actually believe astrology?

Merfilly27: I think the chinese brand is a little more thought out than the stuff they peddle here

AGplusone: Becky Vessant?

aggirlj: I believe that some of the characteristics are mapable.

K8Gladst1: What I said about astrology applies to biorhythms – I regard the subject as baloney. And Chinese astrology (or Hindu, or whatever) hasn’t struck me as any improvement.

K8Gladst1: “Mappable”? You can map anything – but does the map fit the territory?

Reilloc: Then, if you can’t touch it, if it amounts to belief only, it’s baloney?

georule1861: I believe some people have skills that the tools they use to express those skills aren’t all that relevant.

Merfilly27: what about handwriting analysis?

Reilloc: Aha

aggirlj: Hehe

n1yqh a: IIRC, Becky Vessant’s version was a means to “focus the mind” or some such, and it wasn’t the astrology per se that was particularly productive… Which she acknowledged…

Reilloc: It was giving the mark the blowoff he wanted

Merfilly27: That is me and Tarot…a meditative exercise to help me focus, nothing else

K8Gladst1: I would incline to say so (while recognizing that this will sometimes prove wrong). Handwriting-analysis: well, I’ve seen the practitioners get things wrong as often as they get anything right, or more often!

aggirlj: Isn’t most of this salesmanship on the part of the “reader.”

K8Gladst1: Worse yet, the hwanalysis-johnnies don’t tend to admit errors. (Once I showed a hwanalysis-practitioner acquaintance of mine the Unabomber’s handwriting, without telling the source …

BPRAL22169: It’s an oracle, like any other oracle.

aggirlj: I think there are definately people who are sensitive and see things I would never see.

K8Gladst1: … she analyzed this as showing a kind, gentle person, open-mindedly flexible and incapable of violence. When I told her who wrote it, she said “Then obviously I have just proven that the Unabomber used a secretary & didn’t …

Merfilly27: I do think that our minds tend to take in so much more detail than we are aware of, and this is the wellspring from which intuition and lucky guesses spring

jilyd: Kate, you are not suggestiong that hw analysis for identification is in that category,are you? Just for ‘character analysis”?

K8Gladst1: … write this or other messages himself). Self-sealing logic, neatly ZipLocked off from the observable universe – or so it seems to me.

Merfilly27: yes

K8Gladst1: Yes, I referred only to “character analysis,” not to forgery-detection and such (except insofar as character-analysts encroach upon the domain of forgery-detection specialists; e.g., the “it-ain’t-Unabomber” lady mentioned above).

RMLWJ1: back

jilyd: Getting back to the memories and reincarnation, LN, I belive RAH menitoned the “Bridie Murphy” case. Apparently “past lives regression” was one more thing he found at least a bit intriguing.

Merfilly27: front

AGplusone: Let me ask somehing to start the nxt hour, please, Joe.

OscagneTX: Steph stole my joke. %^)

Merfilly27: gmta

jilyd: Who’s front now?

OscagneTX: With Kate’s permission. It’s her show.

K8Gladst1: The topic of handwriting makes me note that, in two RAH works (FUTL and “Cliff and the Calories”) we see the word “cursive” rather oddly used as a synonym for “curvaceous” (in speaking of a woman’s body). Has anyone else seen …

BPRAL22169: The usage is correct, but not common.

K8Gladst1: … the word thus used, or seen this meaning documented (e.g., in dictionaries or thesauri)?

BPRAL22169: “cursive” as a descriptor for handwriting comes from the base meaning of “curving.”

OscagneTX: Kate… would you like David to start the next hour?

georule1861: round, round, ready, hubba-hubba.

K8Gladst1: What establishes the usage as “correct”? I can’t find (e.g.) dictionaries recording it – and “cursive’s” base-meaning has nothing to do with “curving,” since the word comes (as the dictionaries DO document) from Latin CURSIVUS = …

K8Gladst1: … “running, coursing” (etymologically related to CURRERE). If

David wants to start the next hour, I’d gladly yield the cyberfloor.

fgherman has entered the room.

BPRAL22169: You’reright, Kate.

OscagneTX: GA, David.

fgherman: Hello all

Merfilly27: hello

aggirlj: Hi

OscagneTX: howdy.

BPRAL22169: (a racecourse curves, though)

BPRAL22169: Your Metonymy at work

AGplusone: Mordan says, “they tried to breed the fighting spirit out of men . . .” Are we trying to condition that out, now? And is M’s point valid? Can it be done either by conditioning or breeding?

K8Gladst1: People below a certain age, or without a certain type of education, will need an explanation of “georule’s” “round, round, ready, … ” comment – which I trust that we will provide.

LV Poker Player: Still no email, kate

georule1861: Cursive writing where I grew up was taught specifically as curves. Everything round. I thot RAH was playing on that.

aggirlj: Good question. Wouldn’t they both go hand in hand.

BPRAL22169: Palmer method?

K8Gladst1: I suspect that we DO try to “condition out the fighting spirit” – FUTL in fact speaks with approval of this course of action! (a great difference from what RAH said most other places). BEYOND may (at least in part) reject the …

Merfilly27: Alan Dean Foster wrote that a human comes into the world preprogrammed one way, but can be shaped severely contradictory by environment (conditioning)

georule1861: I don’t remember what they called it, but everything was circles, and all instruction sessions started literally with the kids chanting “round, round, ready, write.”

AGplusone: Why don’t we leave FUTL to another day for a mo, Kate.

K8Gladst1: … no-more-need-to-fight attitude in FUTL and a somewhat simialr story, “Coventry.”

Merfilly27: although the idea may be attributed to James Cameron (his screenply, but this smacks of author’s manipulation)

K8Gladst1: LVPP, e-mail me your phone-number and we can talk after the chat if you want – and, okay, I’ll happily delay talk of FUTL.

fgherman has left the room.

AGplusone: RAH’s point, if Morden is the spokesman in this instance is: natural selection would take over, and any attempt would fail.

K8Gladst1: What GeoRule describes does, indeed, sound like Palmer Method (which RAH probably would have had in his schooldays).

AGplusone: despite whatever genetic approach or whatever conditioning or cultural approach was tried.

jilyd: Again I am reminded of a Niven story–humanity has bred th aggrrssiveness out, Ain’t a-gonna study war no more. Aggreesive + mentally ill. Then along come the kzinti. Oops.

Merfilly27: love the Kzin stories

LV Poker Player: Just sent it Kate

K8Gladst1: I had *great* trouble with Palmer because of (gentic?) inability to produce ceaseless and subtly-changing curives unrelieved by straight lines.

AGplusone: Konrad Lorenz had a point, although disputed: The Killer Ape.

OscagneTX: *as far as FUTL, I want to leave it till it won’t spoil anyone — I’m going to poll afh for “permission” before I make it a topic*

georule1861: That was also the dream of John Adams, however, so nothing new. “We study war so that our children may study art and music

georule1861: ” OWTTE.

Merfilly27: I think it is so contrasurvival to breed out aggressivness that you’d have a lot of mutations, so to speak, to bring it back out

BPRAL22169: The Killer Ape hypothesishas been laughed out of paleoanthropology

AGplusone: Of course it was, even if laughed, it was a point.

Merfilly27: explain the Killer Ape theory for me…can’t remember it

DavidWrightSr: Compare the philosophy in Double Star vs Starship Troopers.

BPRAL22169: Basically Raymond Dart led an extremely luxuriant fantasy life.

K8Gladst1: Yes, we study war so that posterity may study more pleasant things … but, if posterity devotes itself only to the arts and trades of peace, they’ll still have to deal with someone else’

K8Gladst1: else’s posterity (human or alien) who didn’t write war out of the syllabus.

AGplusone: he was trying to figure out, extrapolate, without enough basis

BPRAL22169: Was it von Clausewitz who said the purpose of an army is to appear so fierce that no one will make war on you?

K8Gladst1: We don’t have to see ourselves as “killer apes” to recognize that, in certain circumstances at least, a killer can outlive a non-killer.

BPRAL22169: Not really, David: he was just making up shit.

georule1861: I thot that was Sun Tsu, but maybe GMTA.

BPRAL22169: Could be — it sounds more like The Art of War.

Merfilly27: that is a basic tnet of Art of War

RMLWJ1: IIRC, Clausewitz said that war was an extension of diplomacy.

AGplusone: Exactly … like Fraud, er, Frued, but trying.

AGplusone: er Freud

RMLWJ1: Roomie added “by other means.”

AGplusone: maybe Fred, whatever

BPRAL22169: Well — he found leopard bones among hominid bones adn concluded with no evidence and no thought about evidence that the human were hunting the leopards — whereas it was actually the other way around.

K8Gladst1: Remember also that quite a few of the folks who claim to stand for unmitigated peace may *not* actually do so … e.g., Golda Meir’s much-quoted statement that she hoped Israelis would eventually become …

AGplusone: “Sometimes the bear eats you.”

BPRAL22169: In this case, the leopards always ate the hominids — the bones wound up i the caves because leopards killed them and hoisted them into trees overhanging the caves.

AGplusone: But what about the basic point: can we breed or condition the aspect away?

K8Gladst1: … “the first human beings incapable of shedding blood” … had she reached her goal (an improbability, assuming even that she had any way to get there), what would this mean for a small country w/neighbors NOT thus incapacitated?

Reilloc: I’ve been away, breed what away, Dave?

K8Gladst1: I suspect that we CAN condition (if not breed) the tendency-to-violence neatly away … but at what cost?

Merfilly27: no, David

AGplusone: And, in a condition of no war, or ‘reasons’ for war, does this explain the “dueling” fixation in Beyond This Horizon.

Reilloc: Why would we want to breed that away?

BPRAL22169: I think aggressiveness is a strategy and we can culturally condition more or less in many different ways.

Merfilly27: very feasible

LV Poker Player: I would say that conditioning toward non violence is a large part of childrearing, both at home and in school

OscagneTX: And then next week the bugs come.

LV Poker Player: Sometimes the conditioning is more successful than at other times

Reilloc: It’s a non-question.

AGplusone: I doubt that.

Reilloc: If you eliminate aggressiveness at it’s extreme, you’re left with a resulting extreme.

BPRAL22169: The thing is, if you’re conditioning, you’re conditioning to “Control” the ability — it’s still there if you need it.

AGplusone: You’re right, LN. It’s a non-question.

aggirlj: Exactly Bill.

AGplusone: I doubt that conditioning is more successful at one time or any time

K8Gladst1: The BEYONDers duel to give themselves a socially important use for their “wolf trait” of violence. Sure, they learn to control their violent passions at need, but they still HAVE the ability when they need it. …

georule1861: This is one of the reasons a frontier is useful, and the lack of one troubling.

AGplusone: If we don’t shot at each other, we “compete” in business or in the law courts, or in finger painting.

Reilloc: Since when do we lack a frontier?

AGplusone: shoot

LV Poker Player: The conditioning worked better for most of us than it did, for example, with Ted Bundy

georule1861: Where’s my pioneers?

Merfilly27: even herbivores are competitve

K8Gladst1: … better have something and not need it, than need it and not have it, eh?

Reilloc: They’re not required to come forward and identify themselves to you.

AGplusone: Ted isn’t a valid example. Ted’s an abberation

georule1861: I didn’t ask them to; I asked you to.

K8Gladst1: “Where are my pioneers”? GeoRule, do you seek volunteers for a wagon-train?

Merfilly27: boxers?

Reilloc: They’re in all parts of society, breaking rules.

OscagneTX: Pioneers? Isn’t that some type of Chrysler?

Merfilly27: lol

georule1861: No, I suggested we didn’t have a frontier, Reilloc suggested we did. I asked “where?”, etc.

LV Poker Player: Aberration, whatever, society attempts to condition us to look for non violent solutions to problems. Sometimes that conditioning is successful, other times it is not

georule1861: Ah. I mean the traditional kind that need aggressiveness to survive.

Reilloc: There’s a frontier just outside my window.

BPRAL22169: “The Frontier” is always in the mind.

Merfilly27: we still have the oceans, but few have tried to pioneer it

georule1861: That provides a society acceptable outlet for aggressiveness, was my point.

K8Gladst1: Do we want the necessary “non-violence conditioning” to succeed TOO well? To succeed, e.g., so VERY well that the person will not defend him/herself against a bully or thug, if one arises?

AGplusone: That’s true, LV, to a limited extent. As JD MacDonald, titled one of his books, however, _One Day We Killed Them All_

BPRAL22169: Kate, I think you just defined “PC”

K8Gladst1: I haven’t read “One Day We Killed Them All” – brief run-down, please?

Reilloc: It’s another non-question, Bill

n1yqh a has left the room.

Reilloc: What bullies?

BPRAL22169: Yes, LNC — it’s where you define it as, so it’s a non-question.

Merfilly27: the abberants who resist conditioning

K8Gladst1: And. yes, I intended my example (in part) as an illustration of/stab at Political Correctitudinosity. “What bullies [in a totally peaceful world]?” Well, nothing works perfectly in human affairs …

AGplusone: Just a regular MacDonald story, Kate. Bullies take over, so “One Day … ”

Reilloc: Heinlein liked McDonald

georule1861: I’ve always thot that was part of why the Israelis are so tough; the “turn the other cheek” ones didn’t make it out of Europe, to turn it back to genetics.

Merfilly27: good theory

aggirlj: I have everyone of them downstairs in my library. All the colors.

Reilloc: Travis McGee’s got a lot of Lazarus Long in him and vice versa

K8Gladst1: if ONE person on “Planet Peaceful” doesn’t fully respond to the conditioning-for-peace, and everyone else responded perfectly, the one resistant fellow (or gal) can take over & probably will.

BPRAL22169: That sounds like a classical “evolutionary filter” in Darwinian terms.

jilyd: Goodnight all, enjoyed it.

jilyd has left the room.

AGplusone: He did indeed like him. Ginny told me he kept a shelf of MacDonald’s books.

K8Gladst1: Where can I find “One Day We Killed Them All”? – in what collection? I shall have to start reading J. McDonald.

aggirlj: No collections, paper back.

BPRAL22169: Don’t forget his science fiction.

AGplusone: John Dann MacDonald. Died same year as RAH.

LV Poker Player: Spider Robinson thinks highly of McDonald too

aggirlj: The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything.

RMLWJ1: yeah.

Reilloc: They made that into a made-for-TV movie a hundred years ago

K8Gladst1: Well, I’ll put this author on my “To Read” list PRONTO! – And, oh yes, I DID read “The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything” – I loved it – but I hadn’t recalled the author.

aggirlj: Righto.

RMLWJ1: McDonald’s stuff has the good guy winning, but he gets a licking most of the time to do it.

K8Gladst1: They had TV a hundred years ago? 😉

Reilloc: Did Heinlein like Mickey Spillane?

K8Gladst1: If Spider and RAH like an author, I usually like him/her too.

BPRAL22169: 100 years ago, Special Relativity

AGplusone: MacD wrote about 50-70 novels, very popular for the time. Many still in print. Dectective Mystery.

Reilloc: Mike Hammer always got the shit beat out of him in the end but won.

RMLWJ1: true

Reilloc: They always started in the rain and ended with Hammer beat up.

BPRAL22169: Also, the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk and the Ford Model T — 1903 was a very progressive year,

Reilloc: I recall it well.

georule1861: How much of the Farnham’s Freehold “Ode To the Genetic Joys Of Nuclear War” should we believe?

K8Gladst1: In a similar vein (SF against too much pacifism), has anyone read the Piers Anthony novel THE RING ? In that world, ex-cons get neuropsychologically prevented from committing any form of violence, even in self-defense or to save …

georule1861: Was he whistling in the dark past the graveyard?

LV Poker Player: I think the Model T came later?

Reilloc: Believe?

georule1861: Believe=Assume that is RAH talking and not the character.

K8Gladst1: … someone else’s life, and this leaves them “the perfect victims” for everyone else …

Reilloc: Expand, please…

Reilloc: That mutation will happen?

RMLWJ1: kind of gave up on Anthony a few years ago. Most of his stuff at the time seemed to me to be pretty much the same novel re-edited.

georule1861: There is a part of FF where Hugh claims that like all great calamities, the human race would be made

georule1861: stronger by a nuclear war. Tough survive, improve the breed, etc.

georule1861: Of course, this was before he saw the future. . .

Reilloc: Depends on what you call tough

K8Gladst1: … it also left the peace-conditioned ex-cons unemployable, because ANYone could do ANYTHING to them with total impunity. Example: You have the neuro-inhibiting lock-on peace-collar (the title’s “Ring,”) – your girl gets raped …

Reilloc: If the tough reproduce, you can’t disagree.

AGplusone: Right, the diaspora, and the second diaspora, and the culling of the Howards.

LV Poker Player: According to http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/showroom/1908/model.t.h tml it was manufactured 1908-1927

BPRAL22169: I wonder what tickled my memory for 1903 — Maybe Ford set up his first assembly line that year.

AGplusone: Rather have Rockford riding shotgun on my car, if I were Johan Sebastian Smith.

K8Gladst1: … and you can’t do a thing but stand by and watch quietly. Or you work in a store, someone comes in and robs the store … and the thief doesn’t even have to overpower you to get to the cash-register: s/he merely has to …

Reilloc: Geo, in FF who survived?

Reilloc: Farnham and he was pre-apocalypse stock

Merfilly27: third world country people was my impression

georule1861: The southern hemisphere.

Merfilly27: and the back of beyond types in the first world nations

K8Gladst1: … threaten violence, or poke you in the eye, and you can’t do a thing about this or anything worse that he might do. (Piers Anthony left the Quakers for this very reason, and wrote THE RING as a result …

Reilloc: On the one hand, the flukey survived and on the ohter it was Hugh

AGplusone: A point in FF. The rulers were weakened. They wantted to be “loved” by the picaninnies. However you spell that.

K8Gladst1: … he found serious problems with their forbiddance of ALL violence even in self-defense.)

Reilloc: coughG&Tcough

aggirlj: picquenes.

AGplusone: The rulers were interested in marketing games. Need I say more?

Reilloc: Select a nincompoop

K8Gladst1: Yes, the FF rules wanted “love” from their underlings – what does G&T mean, “Reilloc”? – but this boiled down to the “love” of a not-too-bright animal for whoever feeds it.

Reilloc: Animals can love/

AGplusone: Gin & tonic, kate. I’ve been imbibbing one since break.

Reilloc: question mark

LV Poker Player: I think the Chosen considered their servants “not too bright animals”

Reilloc: Hey, Bill.

AGplusone: Classic underestimate, LV, wouldn’t you say?

Reilloc: Did Heinlein emphasize genetics because he gave up on environment?

Merfilly27: maybe he hoped genetics would provide the cure to the environment

AGplusone: “Bill” in Cat that Walks is classic environmental failure.

BPRAL22169: You mean as in “nature vs. nurture” environment?

Reilloc: Not the environment but as in what Bill just said

K8Gladst1: The FF “Chosen” rulers had a difficult line to walk – they wanted slaves JUST bright enough, JUST independent enough, to do their work and not get “tingled” too badly … but not TOO bright or TOO independent.

Merfilly27: so I understand

OscagneTX: but, Bill wasn’t a failure, he was an agent.

AGplusone: Again, selective breeding … for docility.

Reilloc: Can you breed for docile?

BPRAL22169: I don’t think so — just on timingl BTH was written during the height of his utopian socialist period — and that’s high ‘environment’

Merfilly27: We concede he saw the “crazy years” coming?

BPRAL22169: I think he probably thought they were both very important and swung to one pole or another depending on what ideas he was working on at the time.

Reilloc: Coventry’s got some interesting implications if you look at it that way.

K8Gladst1: I agree with Merfilly that RAH probably saw good genes as necessary because of the frequent lack of good environment – e.g., in BEYOND where he critiques the 20th century for relying on water-fluoridation against cavities …

LV Poker Player: Animals can be bred for docility, I would assume that people could be bred this way too

AGplusone: But the environment creates ennui, dissatisfaction, and the utopia is “Now ewhere.”

Reilloc: Animals can be bred to be docile?

AGplusone: No where

K8Gladst1: … and for not devoting any effort to breeding from the few who didn’t NEED fluoridated water to have good teeth.

Merfilly27: Erehwon

aggirlj: But you’re fighting the higher intelligence and reasoning powers of humans over animals. How do you breed that out.

georule1861: The Gulf supermen don’t seem particularly genetic component. One could argue that was part of what they tried to do by Friday which lead to them being disgraced/leaving/etc.

AGplusone: They can be gelded. Mary R8isling.

Reilloc: There’s a docile gene?

AGplusone: Risling.

Reilloc: Relaxed fit 501’s?

LV Poker Player: Dogs and cats are much more docile than their wolf/tiger/lion ancestors. Also, some breeds are more docile than others

Reilloc: A cat’s not a tiger.

AGplusone: Never see a feral cat, have you?

AGplusone: Packs of feral dogs among sheep?

LV Poker Player: Like most things, a single gene is almost certainly not responsible for docility level. Several genes are almost certainly involved

Reilloc: Or this one next to me, in heat

georule1861: He’s a tiger “on my mother’s side”.

Reilloc: There are docile combo genes?

K8Gladst1: You can “breed that out” (intelligence/reasoning) by making it unnecessary/disadvantageous in some way. In a society where people “fit in better” if they rot their minds with TV and drugs to make them docile …

AGplusone: Barn cats in England. PBS did a show that demonstrated they act just like prides of lions.

LV Poker Player: Do you have a better explanation for differences in docility levels among breeds?

RMLWJ1: It’s been an interesting evening, but I”m going to have to go. Be well, all, have a happy holiday season, should I not see you before then.

Reilloc: How they’re raised.

Reilloc: Later, RML

aggirlj: Bye

K8Gladst1: … those with the brains that permit “making trouble” may have trouble “fitting in” well enough to acqure mates … and they may notfind the available mates desirable.

OscagneTX: g’night

RMLWJ1: do svidaniya

RMLWJ1 has left the room.

AGplusone: RML, stop by “Join Us” one time,

LV Poker Player: Averages, AVERAGES, ***AVERAGES***

AGplusone: Getting slow in my old age.

Reilloc: So, we don’t need no stinking frontier, eh? Make trouble and you don’t reproduce.

LV Poker Player: Look at the peak of the bell curve, not the extreme ends

AGplusone: But the ends are where the fun happens. Hamilton was an end.

K8Gladst1: Some parts of the Politically Correctitudinous academic/sociological world might LIKE a set-up where trouble-makers had a tough time passing on their genes. 😉

aggirlj: The other side Kate, in that undesireable mates may be just what they need.

Merfilly27: the ends are what move society

AGplusone: So was Lazarus Long.

AGplusone: A mutation.

K8Gladst1: Yes – but “undesirable” can include “unhealthy” (physically or emotionally) as well as “just what we need (but don’t want).”

Merfilly27: I should go…Victor is fussy and Kevin needs to check his mail before bed

LV Poker Player: Sure, it’s possible to have a totally docile Doberman Pinchser. It’s possible to have a vicious Basset Hound. These are not the average though

Merfilly27: so…see you saturday, I hope

Merfilly27 has left the room.

georule1861: The moon, Georgia, Australia, Coventry?. . .so not just frontiers.

Reilloc: And jumbo shrimp

K8Gladst1: Who here has ever felt like a mutant? (Put me down for one.)

Reilloc: cough

K8Gladst1: Oh, do you have a cold, “Reilloc”?

aggirlj: Well I’ve been outside of the in-crowd a few times.

Reilloc: Just something in my throat

K8Gladst1: Well, I hope that it does not trouble you too badly.

Reilloc: It comes and goes.

AGplusone: Part of the appeal of Heinlein is his treatment of the feel outside the maint crowd.

K8Gladst1: So sorry to hear that … what brings it on?

K8Gladst1: I addressed my last remark to “Reilloc,” not to “AGplusOne.”

aggirlj: I sorta enjoyed not being in the in-crowd. I sorta took an evil pride in that.

georule1861: Heinlein made it cool to be smart. God bless him for that.

BPRAL22169: Are you sure you don’t mean “craw”? Hmmm?

Reilloc: Minor, ephemeral irritants that are acute in nature and, in nature, necessary to have something funny around.

Reilloc: Watch it, Patterson.

BPRAL22169: You did mean “craw.”

K8Gladst1: “Reilloc,” can you please provide specifics/examples?

Reilloc: You’re a wise man, Von Helsing

BPRAL22169: OK, I’ll duck my head and be quiet now.

Reilloc: Heinlein made protagonists with which readers liked to identify.

AGplusone: In Beyond This Horizon, we have a question: why isn’t it a successful utopia.

Reilloc: They were smart and he let readers grow with them.

georule1861: I dunno. Ask my wife –he made some protagonists that his readers much preferred to be superior to.

Reilloc: Like who?

georule1861: Most of the juvenile leads.

OscagneTX: The actor, at least in the beginning.

K8Gladst1: Perhaps BEYOND fails as a utopia because the BEYONDers assume that taking care of material needs will take care of all needs.

AGplusone: Farnham, Larry Smith, maybe Oscar Gordon.

Reilloc: You didn’t dislike them, though…

georule1861: Beyond may just be the earliest instance of “There are no final victories” for RAH.

AGplusone: Certainly Felix Hamilton.

K8Gladst1: I’d add Kip (HAVE SPACE SUIT) to the list of “RAH heroes we can feel superior to.”

AGplusone: No, but we were smarter than them.

DavidWrightSr: I must be strange. I never felt superior or inferior to his protagonists, I just enjoyed the stories.

AGplusone: Kip, maybe, but he’s a kid.

Reilloc: He’s a stand up kid, though.

Reilloc: When it comes to putting the race on trial, he comes through

K8Gladst1: Yes, we must take into account his youth and (until shortly before the story starts) poor education.

Reilloc: Name a kid who can do that?

K8Gladst1: And I agree with “Reilloc” that he “comes through” admirably.

AGplusone: Doesn’t count. He is a stand up. Too patient with Ace, however. Ace shulda been decked early on.

Reilloc: That’s not the way he was raised.

DavidWrightSr: Recall what Peewee’s father said about him and his genetic inheritance.

Reilloc: Or maybe it was bred out of him.

K8Gladst1: I wonder what kind of man he grew into … and I REALLY wanted to see Ace get his come-uppance, in a VERY serious way!

georule1861: I was going to say “all genius is precocious in Heinlein” and then I thot of Andy Libby and changed my mind.

AGplusone: True. A handicap of a civilized family. My daddy the truckdriver, however, had a different approach.

K8Gladst1: How did your truckdriver dad approach such matters, David?

Reilloc: My dad was a man of the cloth but raised us in the material world.

LV Poker Player: Did you attend public school, Kate?

AGplusone: Heh. Outside!

Reilloc: He was an upholsterer

K8Gladst1: Sometimes public school, sometimes private school – I had a fairly checkered educational history, and not (for the most part) a pleasant one.

K8Gladst1: This chat has suddenly fallen silent …

Reilloc: Why did the society in Horizon flop, Dave?

AGplusone: You know, Geo, there’s a cut in Misfit, involving the fight ….

LV Poker Player: I was curious how bad the verbal harassment is for a female Aspie? Very VERY ***VERY*** bad for a male Aspie, I assure you

Reilloc: Because he wrote it that way.

AGplusone: They have no direction. No goal.

AGplusone: No Moon to be Sold.

OscagneTX: A quick joke especially for David Wright. Go to google.com, and search for “miserable failure” using the “i feel lucky” button.

Reilloc: How about, could a society actually arise that would look that way?

AGplusone: No Frontier.

K8Gladst1: I’d describe my schooldays’ harassment (from teachers/administrators and students) as VERY-bad-to-the-10th-power.

AGplusone: A complacent one, aiting for the Goths.

AGplusone: waiting

Reilloc: Disagree that the analogy’s apt

LV Poker Player: With only few notable exceptions, teachers and administrators did not give me much trouble. Just the other students

AGplusone: Well, maybe not, but “To Sail Beyond the Sunset” is RAH’s theme. “To seek, to strive, and not to yield” from the same poem.

Reilloc: Inapposite because there ain’t no Goths

BPRAL22169: I don’t know that the society “failed” — it reached a stable equilibrium of “mass man” but the extreme end of the bell curve was happily occupied.

BPRAL22169: This is straight out of Ouspensky.

K8Gladst1: I don’t think that the BEYONDers “sat around waiting for the Goths [to invade]” – I think that (as shown by the game-designer character) they had far more talent/ability than they had productive USES for that talent/ability …

AGplusone: Exactly, so you start to kill each other by dueling.

georule1861: Has anyone ever met a bright individual (not a genuis –average bright Heinleiner) who didn’t have either a relatively horrid time in school, or at the least felt like they could have educated themselves with no teachers and just

georule1861: a library?

Reilloc: Yes.

DavidWrightSr: Here

georule1861: Public school?

Reilloc: Me.

DavidWrightSr: yes

K8Gladst1: … so a potential super-achiever spends his life designing things that he himself sees as “frivolous luxuries.”

georule1861: I was bored to tears. My wife swears they were trying to teach her to hate learning.

DavidWrightSr: It was my impression that he spent very little time on his games.

AGplusone: I have. I was very proud and satisfaied with my school. Proud it wasn’t like HSSWT.

K8Gladst1: Georule, I have made the same statement as your wife: more than once. And I believe it.

LV Poker Player: I think most of the people here follow afh. For anyone who does not, Kate and I have a neurological disorder called Asperger’s Syndrome. It is a form of autism

georule1861: Nice to hear they are out there somewhere. Those kinds of public schools.

K8Gladst1: He spent little time on his games – but he didn’t have (till the end of the book) much BETTER ways to spend his time.

Reilloc: I”m old, though, and so are both the Daves

DavidWrightSr: I had no problem with mine, but that was in the 50’s like AG

Reilloc: They’re much, much older than I am, though.

AGplusone: Yes, a small problem.

Reilloc: I can’t even count that high

AGplusone: ;-P

aggirlj: I’m not saying nothin’.

K8Gladst1: Georule and all, I have actually met teachers/administrators who privately or semi-privately admitted – as their avowed goal – …

AGplusone: And smarter too

Sarah Hoyt: I hated school when I was in it. My kids hate school.

georule1861: Ah. Could be past tense then. Pity. I don’t like to be a cynic; I prefer to find happy things.

Reilloc: Jane, on the other hand, was the life of the party, the center of attention and is hardly handicapped by her sibling

aggirlj: You’ve been peeking.

Reilloc: Just listening.

Sarah Hoyt: Why do I put them through it — they learn how to get along with normal people.

K8Gladst1: “We don’t want the kids learning too much, because that makes things rough for the teachers if they can’t have the kids all on track learning the average amount at the average times.”

Sarah Hoyt: Well, they keep kicking Robert to more rarefied programs because he knows more than his teachers.

georule1861: There is an American assembly line mentality that I think must come from capitalism, that has its strengths, and good lord glaring weaknesses as well.

Sarah Hoyt: It actually has nothing to do with capitalism. Socialist societies are worse.

AGplusone: Actually Jane was. Everyone wondered how come I had such a nice sister.

Reilloc: It comes from administrators and Boards of Education yielding to the notion that there’s such a thing as Educational Psychology

Sarah Hoyt: There you’re actually taught not even to pick their subjects.

georule1861: Glad to hear it, Sarah.

K8Gladst1: “Reilloc,” please explain why “Educational Psychology” does not exist. I want to know.

Reilloc: It does exist

AGplusone: The brightest thing RAH ever wrote was that passage in Expanded Universe about child psychologits.

Reilloc: It tells you that neatness means nothing.

Sarah Hoyt: Sorry — I should point out that I was raised in a socialist system.

LV Poker Player: Which one?

Reilloc: Vermont?

BPRAL22169: So were we, Sarah — so were we.

K8Gladst1: But, “Reilloc,” you criticized admins/school-boards for “yielding to the notion” that such a thing does exist. To me, this sounds like saying that such a thing (as edu. psych.) doesn’t exist.

Reilloc: It doesnt

AGplusone: sorry about the “gits” but that’s the way the typing goes, and appropriate. Bad “gits”

K8Gladst1: Can you please eludidate, “Reilloc”?

aggirlj: Expand David.

Reilloc: I can

LV Poker Player: Not necessarily. Educational psychology might exist but be a bad idea

Sarah Hoyt: Portugal in the seventies. I studied Marxism in three courses and the last chapter of my history book said “Socialism is the perfect society.”

Reilloc: Curse Sir Walter Raleigh he was such a stupid git.

AGplusone: . You get meter maids.

Reilloc: Got the bill and Rita paid it…

aggirlj: Very interesting.

AGplusone: Breeding IRS agents with Postal Employees.

georule1861: Well, I had a Marxism course in Pennsylvania. Tho only one. I got to play Karl Marx in an interview. Kicked ass too. Tho I felt bad about it later.

Reilloc: Aren’t they both sterile, Dave?

aggirlj: About what I was typing a while ago. Teachers unfortunatelly are babysitters these days in a lot of cases.

Sarah Hoyt: Yes, but we were taught to take it seriously.

K8Gladst1: Sarah’s comment reminds me of one of the composition-textbooks widely used in Mussolini’s Italy. The book had a writing-exercise which read: …

AGplusone: They used the same techniques that Baldwin used for Joel and Gail. Knife and testtube.

Sarah Hoyt: Reilloc — they reproduce like amoebas, by gemiparition.

Reilloc: Priority male?

georule1861: I tried to take it seriously. Ever tried to read Das Capital. That will end the “Trying to take it seriously” thing real quick. Communist Manifesto is more about poetry.

K8Gladst1: … “Here is a photograph of The Leader. Write an essay describing your feelings (of admiration and praise.)” – the original book did, indeed, include the parenthesized comment telling which feelings to have.

Reilloc: Hear the one about the gay Latin paramecium who declined to conjugate?

AGplusone: I need another G&T, brb

georule1861: Bring me one too, David. I’m subsisting on hot toddys.

Reilloc: Make it three

Sarah Hoyt: Yes, but the sixties taught me not to take the communist manifesto seriously. My brother is ten years older than I. he and his friends used to sit around in thier underwaear and unshaved beards talking about free love.

georule1861: “Fantasy Worlds of George Pal” on DVD.

aggirlj: 4

Sarah Hoyt: I used to wonder what kind of women would get near them, much less do it for free.

Reilloc: Make Jane’s on me.

georule1861: Hey!

Reilloc: You’re too slow

Reilloc: Hey, Sarah./

Reilloc: Marxism, economic determinism…

Reilloc: I say Marx got it wrong.

Reilloc: It’s sex determinism that drives things.

AGplusone: Problem is I’m using good gin this time: Hendricks, instead of Fleishmans.

Sarah Hoyt: Well — we live in a chaotic system, not a logical one. he assumed it was logical.

Reilloc: No.

AGplusone: But here you are, Geo and LN. One each.

Reilloc: He just missed the mark.

aggirlj: (hand waving)

Reilloc: Thanks, Dave

Sarah Hoyt: Or maybe I’m confused. I’m chaotic, not logical.

AGplusone: And one for Jane.

Sarah Hoyt: Have I been smelling too much of that alcohol.

K8Gladst1: Well, certainly Mark got “economic determinism” wrong – for one thing, he thought that the dictatorship of the proletariat would first take hold in a heavily industrialized nation such as Germany, noit in backward agrarian Russia.

aggirlj: Thank you Rellioc.

Reilloc: It’s not the striving for economic power, it’s pursuing sex that runs things.

LV Poker Player: It seems to me that any economic system that has to be imposed by force (communism, socialism, fascism) is inherently wrong. A system where people voluntarily decide things..

Reilloc: You’re welcome, Jane.

Sarah Hoyt: Well, the whole idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat is a myth. Unless it’s the sort of wimpy dictatorship we’re getting here, via reduction to the least common denominator.

georule1861: Hey, this isn’t Bombay! Ah well, I can rough it. Thans, tovarisch.

Sarah Hoyt: You know, the stuff of 451F.

K8Gladst1: Sex mattering more than economic power – can you prove that,

Reilloc?

LV Poker Player: …(nah, too expensive…nah, I can make more money at my current job) is better than any system where you end up in a Gulag if you don’t like something

AGplusone: Me gusto

Reilloc: Don’t be fooled by what’s going on here.

Sarah Hoyt: Well, I’ve had sex. I’ve never had economic power.

aggirlj: LOL

Reilloc: Can I prove that if I survive to reproduce tomorrow you can have all the money today and I’ll still beat you>?

Reilloc: Yes.

LV Poker Player: Economic power can help in getting sex…

K8Gladst1: … and _vice_versa_, so I hear. 😉

Reilloc: Depends, I would imagine…

Sarah Hoyt: I think if you need economic power, your verbal ability has already failed you.

AGplusone: Oldest profession. Shaman came next, follwed by lawyer to defend prostitite from shaman.

K8Gladst1: Well, obviously not everyone can do as well economically, through sex, as Zaviera Hollander or Heidi Fliess. But some evidently manage.

Reilloc: Tell it to Arnold, Dave’s new governor

georule1861: Urrp. I have night operator monitoring duty this week. Gotta go. Ciao.

Sarah Hoyt: Well, at least speaking for mystelf. I still don’t need money. Knock on wood.

Reilloc: Later, geo

georule1861 has left the room.

OscagneTX: ‘night

Sarah Hoyt: Of course, as far as reproducing, I have the Heinlein’s problem. both kids were miracles. Welcome but miracles.

Sarah Hoyt: Of course, if only one of my kids has ten sons (sons can inseminate more people, and, knowing my family, probably will) I’m still ahead.

Reilloc: Then, send me all your money and I promise not to have any more.

K8Gladst1: Re sex and power and such – FRIDAY came from a “factory” that produced prostitutes-for-sale (she studied “doxy-ology” before Kettle Belly showed up and bought her contract” – do you think the “doxies” had genetic modifications?

Sarah Hoyt: Reilloc — tempted.

AGplusone: Well, folks, overlord unit came home witht the pizza …. must go play with her soon. Say about ten minutes. Joe? Suggest we schedule all four meetings in January for FUTL?

Reilloc: The just practiced kegeling a lot.

Sarah Hoyt: Everyone seems to be having kids but me.

OscagneTX: All four?

AGplusone: Everyone should have it by then?

K8Gladst1: Andrew and I have the Heinlein’s problem (no kids) and CAN’T cure it, miraculously or otherwise.

Reilloc: I’ll be talking about a different FUTL

OscagneTX: Actually, I was going to poll afh before I set it for a topic.

OscagneTX: To make sure enough folks had it.

aggirlj: I saw it. Very interesting.

jcgsmtop1 has left the room.

AGplusone: I know, that was a cute cover. Expected Rhett Butler.

Sarah Hoyt: Oh, I need to get FUTL.

K8Gladst1: I’d like to see FUTL the topic for all January meetings, if we limit this to Heinlein’s FUTL and not to other authors’ books similarly titled and irrelevant to the discussion.

Reilloc: Hey, Dave…

DavidWrightSr: I doubt that anyone interested won’t have read it before January

Reilloc: Who no Heinlein Society special edition of FUTL?

aggirlj: Sarah, got mine. Want to read it.

Sarah Hoyt: Haven’t got it yet.

aggirlj: Got it today.

AGplusone: Actually there will be — in two years. Leather, etc., with gold leaf edges.

Sarah Hoyt: Which reminds me, need to send dues.

DavidWrightSr: Considering the source of the discovery, I think that it *is* a Society special.

Sarah Hoyt: Jane.

OscagneTX: We’ll go ahead and schedule it, on the assumption that the survey turns out positive, OK?

Sarah Hoyt: You’re going to have to come get your bag, and make me write a check while you’re here.

aggirlj: Okay. Will do.

K8Gladst1: Have fun, AGgirl! Re leather-and-gold-leaf-edged Heinleins –

David, how about the following: …

Reilloc: Yeah, but get a box full, emboss the dustjacket with the seal, have Dave Silver sign it and charge through the noes

Reilloc: nose

BPRAL22169: I think “noes” might be more appropriate.

K8Gladst1: … Bind the adult Heinleins in Navy-blue leather, bind the juveniles in sky-blue leather, and bind the “stinkeroo three” as a single volume in rich brown leather.

AGplusone: Yes, that’s what I’d suggest.

Sarah Hoyt: Dave, if I get space opera sold, can I get an official blurb from the society? If people like it,t hat is?

Reilloc: knows, is it.

BPRAL22169: The noes knows.

AGplusone: We’ll make them by subscription only. Edition of about 1,000, or so.

Reilloc: Yeah…

Reilloc: Why the hell not?

Sarah Hoyt: I’ve never bought leather bound books, but for this I would.

K8Gladst1: The “stinkeroo three” volume could have a front-cover logo (a heraldic shield or some-such) containing three skunks (or three outhouses? or three smoldering cigars?)

AGplusone: I lost the entry. Typing too fast. From now on Dula will be negotiating a ‘special edition’ clause for us, by subscription, in all new publs.

Sarah Hoyt: We only have three copies of each book right now.

Reilloc: Tell people the leather’s made from the skin of farm-raised astrologers

AGplusone: They’re not that bad, Kate. I like Beyond Doubt.

Sarah Hoyt: One hours, one for Robert, and one to argue with and mark up.

BPRAL22169: I think I’d rather see the stories collected in roughly the sequence they were written.

Sarah Hoyt: Ours, not hours. Accent again.

Reilloc: I like retro covers

AGplusone: Pied Piper and t’other one are tolerable too.

K8Gladst1: Other volumes would have other more-or-less appropriate front-cover logos similarly embossed in gold-leaf or whatever. And, YES, I liked “Beyond Doubt” a lot (have yet to read the other two “stinkeroos”); …

BPRAL22169: The thing about “My Object all Sublime” is, it was illustrated by damon knight.

DavidWrightSr: Brag: Ginny sent me a beautiful bound, gilt-edge version of ‘Jonathan Hoag’ 2 years ago

K8Gladst1: … I just wanted some kind of joking allusion to Heinlein’s own evaluation thereof.

BPRAL22169: Yes, that’s the Easton Press edition

Reilloc: Do you say thereof in person?

DavidWrightSr: Yes, it is

AGplusone: I’d like to see the juvenile illustrations again. I’d really like to get the magazine illustrations for Citizen of the Galaxy.

K8Gladst1: If possible, reprint the Damon Knight illos for “My Object” – and find or create other appropriate illos for the other volumes in the Complete Works. And, YES, do tell readers that …

Sarah Hoyt: I bought magazine illu. for Mathusalah’s children.

BPRAL22169: Were those Schoenherr?

BPRAL22169: That was Hubert Rogers.

K8Gladst1: ” … we bound the books in the hides of farm-raised astrologers” … or, better yet …

Sarah Hoyt: Not beautiful, but it’s evocative.

aggirlj: Were any of those saved?

BPRAL22169: I’ve been collecting sets of tearsheets.

BPRAL22169: Any of which, Jane?

aggirlj: Cover art

K8Gladst1: … “we bound the books in the hides of farm-raised advocates of utter non-violence and non-resistance” – no, you probably couldn’t get away with that.

BPRAL22169: What do you mean by “Saved”? Originals?

aggirlj: Yes.

Sarah Hoyt: I have some old juveniles cover art. Old ones, from the 40s. I’d like to save them on CD — scanned — and use them for the kids’ rooms later.

DavidWrightSr: An aside: it’s kind of funny, we only had a few pre-discussion postings and this has gone on for almost 4 hours, a record, I believe.

BPRAL22169: I think Rogers’ nephew might have a collection of some of them — but he won’t answer mail.

AGplusone: Collection’s items. Available at a price, Jane.

Sarah Hoyt: I don’t see why not. Advocates of utter non violence and non resistence have to be farm raised.

BPRAL22169: Kelly Freas is still alive (and working at 90+) — he’s probably got the original covers for Double Star.

Reilloc: Does he need a tax writeoff?

Sarah Hoyt: Um… he might.

Sarah Hoyt: Met him. Very nice man.

Reilloc: The Society’s 501(c)(3), isn’t it?

AGplusone: We should write him a nice letter telling him our plans. Bill? Draft it please

AGplusone: Sure is.

K8Gladst1: In the leather-bound Complete Works, should we have a different color for non-fiction (battleship grey, perhaps?) Or stick with Navy-blue bindings for everything RAH geared to adults, fiction or not?

BPRAL22169: He’s approachable through Author Services — Brad would know how to set it up

Sarah Hoyt: David — special edition, for centenial?

BPRAL22169: Exactly what purpose did you have in mind for these originals?

Reilloc: Store and keep from harm.

AGplusone: We’ll get them as we get them. I’m sure Dula would like to have it by then. Time will tell, Sarah.

Sarah Hoyt: Make limited prints. Sell them at a price.

aggirlj: Also on these editions you’re talking about.

AGplusone: Could be done.

BPRAL22169: I think KFF does that already for himself.

Sarah Hoyt: Um… possibly. But I don’t think so.

K8Gladst1: “Make limi9ted prints – sell at a price” – I’d buy that (in both senses of the word: idiomatic and also literal if my purse stretches that far.)

Reilloc: I’m sure he does but nobody lives forever.

Sarah Hoyt: Yes.

AGplusone: Qon’t hurt to write. He can always chance it.

Sarah Hoyt: Actually, I don’t think he does that with the older art.

Sarah Hoyt: And I know he’s even forgotten some of it.

BPRAL22169: Well . . . we need to have a plan in mind before we approach him.

K8Gladst1: “Are you sure, friend Zebadiah”? 😉 (about nobody living forever)

Reilloc: Presentation ceremony.

K8Gladst1: Definitely a presentation ceremony!

Sarah Hoyt: Yeah.

AGplusone: Before he shufffles off his mortal coil.

Reilloc: Have him give them to a heir who needs the writeoff who’s agreed in advance to give them to the Society

Sarah Hoyt: Kate — I’m trying to live forever. So far so good.

LV Poker Player: I’m going to live forever, and I will keep on believing that until the day I die. 🙂

aggirlj: Looking at the centennial, something to sell and give royalty to artists.

BPRAL22169: I think his heir is probably his wife (who is about 40 years younger than he)

K8Gladst1: “Reilloc’s” notion (KFF giving them to an heir who gives then to THS for tax write-off) makes good sense to me.

Reilloc: Have him adopt you, Bill

AGplusone: So she collects a couple royalties at worst she didn’t expect. At best, they give it to us.

Sarah Hoyt: I know one of the mags we took to him to sell, he’d never seen in years.

Sarah Hoyt: I think he was such a hard working agent, he didn’t keep some of these.

K8Gladst1: What about a contest to design NEW Heinlein-story-based art? (for things that KFF or someone else didn’t illustrate)

Sarah Hoyt: Ooooh. For new artists? Maybe young artists.

AGplusone: The pizza is calling me …. must eat … next meeting, FUTL. Who do you want to do lead-off Joe?

BPRAL22169: Well, realistically, we have a good shot at getting things from Power, Schoenherr, Freas, etc., the estate of Clifford Geary, for limited, one-time uses, (like display at the Centennial) and not very good chances for anything

BPRAL22169: more stubstantial than taht.

Sarah Hoyt: BTW, if anyone does a new Henilein-oriented antho — I’m not claiming the honor of editting, my name is not well known — but I’d like to contribute.

Reilloc: They know the value, then?

BPRAL22169: Yes, LNC — the market has risen and floated all boats.

Reilloc: Where’s altruism when you need it?

K8Gladst1: New artists, young artists, old artists – I don’t care. Limit it to the new and/or young – or open it to everyone: whichever seems best to THS’s Board. Note that “art” includes more than pictures – what ab out contest-categories …

Sarah Hoyt: The Worlds of RAH, you know, a chance to play in something like that.

K8Gladst1: … for RAH-inspired sculpture/music/whatever as well as for book-illustrations?

K8Gladst1: And I’d LOVE to see a new Heinlein-oriented anthology!

Reilloc: Some yahoo outbid me on an old hardbound of Door into Summer on eBay

Sarah Hoyt: BTW, I just judged a ROMANTIC sf contest, and most of those women stole from heinlein more directly than anyone could imagine.

Sarah Hoyt: Kate, I can put together a submission package for an antho.

BPRAL22169: The Doubleday books are fairly easy to come by.

aggirlj: It ’tis the witching hour. Double, double . . . I must away . . . see you on Saturda.

Sarah Hoyt: BUT something more in the way of a name should edit it.;

Sarah Hoyt: Connie Willis?

aggirlj: Talk to you later Sarah. Bye for now.:-)

Sarah Hoyt: She might, you know?

K8Gladst1: That sounds good, Sarah – I’d like to see it (and so, I believe, would others) even though I doubt that I myself could write anything worth reading, let alone “officially” publishable, in that vein.

Sarah Hoyt: Bye Jane.

Reilloc: Move adjourn.

K8Gladst1: Asking Connie Willis certainly couldn’t hurt.

aggirlj has left the room.

Sarah Hoyt: I can.

OscagneTX: Seconds?

Sarah Hoyt: I see her, now and then. In fact, there’s a colorado writers office party, this Sat.

LV Poker Player: Out of order, Reilloc 🙂

K8Gladst1: I second the motion – the hour grows late, and one chat-member has asked me to phone him afterwards.

Reilloc: Motions to adjourn are never out of order

OscagneTX: Objections?

Sarah Hoyt: I third.

K8Gladst1: Reilloc got that right!

Reilloc: Call for the question

LV Poker Player: Precisely. Anyone know where I cribbed that one?

OscagneTX: Okay. Official Close of Log 11.53 Eastern.

LV Poker Player: Kate, did you get my email with the phone number?

DavidWrightSr: The first signon was Simon Jester at 7:02 EST

K8Gladst1: From the NOTEBOOKS in TEFL, LasVegasPokerPlaye?

Reilloc: NIght, all…

LV Poker Player: Nope, Tunnel in the Sky.

Reilloc has left the room.

K8Gladst1: LVPP, as soon as I log off and check my e-mail – in two minutes or so – I’ll read your e-mail and phone you.

LV Poker Player: ok

K8Gladst1: As ostensible “chat-leader,” do I have to stay around till everyone else leaves? Or what?

LV Poker Player: Don’t ask me

LV Poker Player: It does bring up a poker similarity, the “third player walking” rule

DavidWrightSr: It’s officially over so anyone can leave or stay. Me. I’m going to bed. s’pokoijnij nochi

BPRAL22169: Kate, once the log is closed, you have no responsibilities.

Sarah Hoyt: Sigh. I should go.

BPRAL22169: Good night, all.

Sarah Hoyt: TThere’s kids.

BPRAL22169 has left the room.

OscagneTX: g’night, yall.

K8Gladst1: The “motion to adjourn” qoiute appears in TEFL/NOTEBOOKS as well as in TUNNEL – look it up!

K8Gladst1: Okay, having no responsibilities I’ll leave. Good night to you all.

Sarah Hoyt: G’night.

K8Gladst1 has left the room.

LV Poker Player: Now that you mention it, you are right

Sarah Hoyt has left the room.

DavidWrightSr: Wisdom of the ages: A lot of Heinlein quotes, (or near quotes), appear in a lot of places.

OscagneTX: I’m going. Everyone have a good night.

LV Poker Player has left the room.

OscagneTX has left the room.

DavidWrightSr: Night David

AGplusone: Got log, dave?

DavidWrightSr: Got it from the beginning just after Simon logged on.
Final End of Discussion Log

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