December 16, 2003
ALBERTA?:
Heinlein novel imagines a future America patterned on Alberta (Robin Rowland, December 9, 2003, CBC News Online)
The American science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein is known for such classic novels as Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.A new book reveals that Heinlein, at least early in his life, was a Socred, a believer in the Social Credit movement that came to power in Alberta in 1935.
Heinlein's long-lost first novel, For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs, is scheduled for publication in January. It imagines a future America patterned on 1930s Alberta. [...]
In Heinlein's America of 2086, the country did not enter the Second World War, remaining isolated. (Hitler commits suicide after the collapse of the German economy, Mussolini just retires and the Duke of Windsor becomes king of a united Europe).
In the novel, in the 1950s, Fiorella LaGuardia (mayor of New York when Heinlein was writing) begins a series of economic reforms, starting with a banking system based on the Social Credit theories of Socred thinker Clifford Hugh Douglas. In the novel, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds these changes. In reality, in Canada, the Supreme Court rejected them.
In For Us, the Living, later presidents complete the reforms. These reforms then give people a basic income that bridges the gap between production and consumption, which then allows the Americans of 2086 to do what they really want, free of economic fear. [...]
[Robert James, who is writing a biography of Heinlein] quotes Heinlein as telling another science-fiction writer about the later changes in his political philosophy: "I've simply changed from a soft-headed radical to hard-headed radical, a pragmatic libertarian."
Well, that's sort of progress. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 16, 2003 10:06 PM
The more common SF explanation is that his first wife was a socialist and his second wife a libertarian and he, smart man that he was, went along with both.
In Time Enough For Love, the quintessential Heinlein novel, Lazarus Long describes Canadians as Americans so smart they figured out how not to pay taxes to Washington. I don't know whether Lazarus was pulling his listeners' legs, Heinlein was pulling our legs or Canada has just changed a lot in the last couple of decades.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 17, 2003 9:36 AMThe terrible thing is that I read most of his books when they were relatively new, of course, so was I. The following were my favorites:
Starship Troopers (1959) is a great coming of age story, and contains a profound meditation on the relationship between civil government and the military. Some folks have tarred it as "fascist" They have not read it or they simply do not understand what fascism really is. In fact the book attempts to square the circle between the desire for republican government and the necessity of military force. This is a serious issue and Heinlein's response to it is thoughtful and interesting.
Glory Road (1963) is a picaresque novel that is enormous fun.
Tunnel in the Sky (1955) and Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) are both "juvenile" novels, but I think they both merit consideration for the depth of character and the imagination of their social worlds.
The following are interesting, but lack the literary quality of the previous books.
Beyond This Horizon (first serialized in 1942) is the earliest SF that I know of that tackles genetic engineering. The book was so far ahead of its time that it referred to the Human Genome as being comprised of 48 chromosomes.
The Door into Summer (1957). IIRC the novel's action began in the 1970's and continued to 2000. I read it in the early 1960's.
Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) is kind of a cultural landmark, but as a novel it was not as well characterized as Starship Troopers or Glory Road.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at December 17, 2003 10:29 PMStarship Troopers is on the Official Marine Corps Reading List.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at December 19, 2003 6:54 PM