A Tribute to Robert A. Heinlein

Inspired by Bookpilled, who regularly expresses his displeasure of the works of Robert Heinlein, I decided to make this tribute. Because for me Heinlein is one of the best writers of all time.

I take a deep dive into my Heinlein History as a reader.

0:00 Introduction
2:15 Revolt in 2100/Methuselah’s Children
3:00 The Door Into Summer/Stranger in a Strange Land
4:13 Juveniles: Farmer in the Sky/Space Cadet/The Rolling Stones/Red Planet/Have Spacesuit – Will Travel/Podkayne of Mars/Tunnel in the Sky/Starman Jones/The Starbeast/Citizen of the Galaxy/Time for the Stars/Between Planets
5:34 Double Star/The Puppet Masters/The Moon is a Harsh Mistress/Starship Troopers
8:05 I Will Fear no Evil
9:04 Time Enough for Love
11:26 To Sail Beyond the Sunset/Sixth Column/For Us, the Living/The Man Who Sold the Moon/Orphans of the Sky/The Green Hills of Earth/The Menace from Earth/The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein/Requiem/Expanded Universe/Assignment in Eternity
13:08 My only DNF: The Number of the Beast
14:04 Beyond This Horizon/Glory Road/Grumbles From the Grave
15:02 My Heinlein TBR: The Cat Who Walked Through Walls/JOB: A Comedy of Justice/Friday/Tramp Royale
15:45 Farnham’s Freehold
18:57 Bloop!

@Bookpilled

My Favorite Books of All Time, Part Two

[thomassmith]

The Man Who Sold the Moon is my favorite story of all time. Reading it is as if I were standing on the Colorado plain watching the Pioneer rise into the sky.

[MrJerrycampbell]

I started reading Heinlein in the 60's as a kid with his juveniles and keep growing with him as the decades passed. I can''t say I read all of them but I read most at one time or another. The 1991 version of Stranger In A Strange Land where the 1/3 he cut for the 1961 version was included is one of my favorite. Time Enough For Love is another fave. Robert expanded horizons, pushed boundaries and created wildly independent characters that lived life their way. I enjoyed the Kettle Bailey stories which concluded in Friday. Tunnel In The Sky. Glory Road. There were some serious gems in his work. It may only be a personal taste but every one has their preferred flavor. Thanks for the tribute of one of the great grand masters. Those last few you presented are excellent! Enjoy.

[natesims]

Oh, definitely read The cat who could walk through walls and Friday soon! ❤

[mikegammill]

Heinlein circles around to different time points of some of his core characters.

In "The Rolling Stones" Grandma Hazel mentions being involved in Luna's revolt against Terra, as a youth. Her name is Hazel Mead Stone. We meet her younger self in "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" where she winds up running "the Baker Street Irregulars" Mike Holmes child intelligence network. Hazel Mead who marries into the Stone Gang. Hazel Mead Stone then emerges as Gwynn in "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls", working for the Time Corps. Alongside Lazarus Long.

The Martians from "The Red Planet" are the Martians who rescued and raised Valentine Michael Smith in "Stranger in a Strange Land". Since Humans are being allowed to live on Mars, this implies that the Martians are still debating/deciding as whether to allow Human existence to continue; or they are just tolerating us for the time being.

[davids]

Very interesting to hear the reaction of a latecomer to Heinlein who ingested his body of work in one large gulp. I've been reading Heinlein since I was nine. Everyone's honest opinion of any work of art is valid, even if it isn't shared, and I realized long ago that I am irrationally devoted to Heinlein. There are only one or two of his works I would consider to be sub-standard. In some cases, it was not entirely his fault. You mentioned Sixth Column as one that struck you as "not a fully fledged Heinlein novel". With good reason. Heinlein wrote Sixth Column from an outline that was written by his editor at Astounding. In becoming an editor, Campbell had unintentionally ended his own writing career. The publishing company that owned Astounding didn't want him selling stories to their competitors, and it looked even worse for him to accept his own stories for publication. Campbell had written an outline for Sixth Column and passed it along to Heinlein, who had been publishing for less than a year, but had made a strong impression on Campbell. He pitched it to Heinlein as an easy, guaranteed sale, and Heinlein needed a new car. This was in 1940, and the idea of a Japanese invasion of the homeland was not at all farfetched. Nevertheless, Heinlein did his best to elevate it above the standard "Yellow Peril" pulp fiction it was intended to be. But he wasn't really pleased with the result.

I would raise a counterpoint to your impression that Heinlein's philosophical streak is almost non-existent in his juvenile novels. Heinlein's most fundamental values were 'personal responsibility' and 'the pursuit of excellence'. They play out throughout his work as what Heinlein's fans and detractors came to identify as "uber competence". Heinlein's epigrammatic commentary on this in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long culminates with his phrase, "Specialization is for insects." A lot of modern readers and critics interpret that degree of self-confidence as arrogant and unacceptably individualistic. I doubt he'd argue with them. Regardless, it is a philosophy, and it is one to which young people, particularly boys, are susceptible. I imagine that you long ago forged your own identity and found the human traits that you admire and have sought to emulate. Heinlein never got the chance to appeal to you in that way. Heinlein's juveniles were particularly appealing to young people because they treat their juvenile characters as fully realized personalities who, when placed in extreme situations, have to make hard moral choices and live with them. In Red Planet, his two young protagonists have to chose sides in what amounts to a civil resistance against the government. They find themselves in possession of information that will threaten the lives and freedom of their families and their community, and it falls to them to evade capture and make an impossible trek across the Martian landscape, drawing on their own courage and experience to bring this vital information back home. Between Planets presents a similar choice, though the road is much longer and takes the lead character from boyhood to manhood. In The Rolling Stones, the twin adolescent protagonists at one point make a simple mistake-- they fail to log a space scooter as out of order, and they get distracted before they are able to repair it. Later, their grandmother takes their little brother out on the scooter and they are both nearly killed. The two boys beg their father to punish them severely for this lapse. He declines, telling them that a simple punishment would be too easy a resolution. Instead, they would have to live with what they had done and what very easily could have happened. In spite of his youthful intended audience, Heinlein did not hesitate to incorporate mature concepts and messages into his stories. He didn't coddle or pander.

One passage has always stood out in my mind-- in The Star Beast, John Thomas is ultimately placed in a position in which interstellar war could hinge on what he chose to do. He is hampered in his choices by his mother, who wants him tied to her apron strings for the foreseeable future. A senior diplomat, Mr Kiku (a black man in charge of global policy, in a book written for children in 1954) confronts John Thomas's mother to convince her to allow her son to make his own choices:

“Mr. Kiku, I lost my husband to space; I won’t let my son go the same way. I intend to see to it that he stays and lives on Earth.”
He shook his head sadly. “Mrs. Stuart, sons are lost from the beginning.”
She took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “I can’t let him go off into the sky … he’s only a little boy!”
“He’s a man, Mrs. Stuart. Younger men have died in battle.”
“Is that what you think makes a man?”
“I know of no better gauge.”

A few lines later he delivers this observation: "Madam, the commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes." Heinlein's juveniles are stuffed full of lines like that, suited to the situations his protagonists found themselves. It was philosophy enough for me when I was a boy.


Thanks for your observations. It's nice to know that Heinlein is still making new fans, decades after his death.

[christopherdoolan]

I read Have Spaceship Will Travel after hearing Andy Weir (author of The Martian) cite him as an influence. Quite enjoyable.

[mrmicro]

I think he has devoted fans since he treated his young readers, not as equals, but as potential equals based on their actions and choices. He challenged the readers to fulfill their potential. I cannot think of another author, much less a juvenile author who consistently sent this message. Like many, hjs later work did not speak to me but I am glad he wrote his earlier work. Good video.

[theworldsinger]

I picked up Stranger in a Strange land after watching your top 10 video, I can't wait to read it!

[bjminton]

Stranger in a Strange Land was the first Heinlein I read about 50 years ago. That was a time when SF had been around a good while and the "fantasy" genre, as we know it today, was just starting. He and Bradbury will always be my favorite SF guys! Friday and Time Enough For Love are my least favorites of his novels. Thank you for defending Heinlein! I can't imagine a lover of SF not liking him!

[boromirjonah]

I have read everything Heinlein has written except 3 books. Short stories, non fiction and all. I found the worst book so far to be "I will fear no evil" while my favorite is "the door into summer"

[calvinjohnstone]

Orphan of The Sky was a teen book but deserves more mention. And one of his best imo.

[rickkearn]

First time viewer here. I subscribed because you enter the discussion with a firm understanding of the process of "agreeing to disagree in an agreeable way". First time I've encountered such a comprehensive look at Heinlein as well. I visit many of the SF/SF Fantasy genre YT channels and I think the more of them I discover, the better. Cheers.

[paultheroman]

In an attempt to create a timeline for some of the fictional material Heinlein had written there was a span of time designated as "the crazy years" in which society had become so self-indulgent and corrupt that religion had replaced science and socialism became a self-consuming beast. Given what humanity has endured for the past 20 years, I am duly impressed with the authors prescience. Many critics today consider the author to have been stodgy and ultra-conservative. Ironically, the critics of his own era claimed him to be radical and unrealistic. It wasn't the author that had changed as much as the critics of their own time period. Often I read or hear criticisms that decry the authors rambling expositions and digressions into philosophy and/or opinion. But then those same critics will heap praise and admiration on authors such as S. King or Neal Stephenson, whom I feel are far more wordy and extemporaneous. Truly, I wonder if some critics even hear their own contradictions. There have been only a scant few books that I felt the need to abandon before I made myself struggle through to the end. Those truly were bad manuscripts which suffered from poor editing or simply poor writing. Otherwise, the effort is in deference to the authors intention and hard work. Heinlein never left me with that conundrum. In the words of the wizard of Oz, "a heart is measured by how much it has loved but instead how many have loved it back". The impact and relevance that R.A.H. has had on science fiction can be seen by how many of his contemporaries pay tribute to his inspiration.

[BoomerBookings-yfde]

In the 50's there was a western on TV titled HAVE GUN--WIL TRAVEL. Heinlein must have enjoyed that show and nicked that title into HAVE SPACESUIT --WILL TRAVEL' So, not so weird a title when that is considered. THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH was made into a popular radio show in the 50's. That was my first intro to Heinlein though I did not know it at the time.

[ilanahalupovich]

I pretty much agree wilt your opinion on Number of the Beast, but I want to tell you about another pist-mortem Heinlein
The Pirstiut of the Pankera. It's the alternate Number of the Beast. I liked it even less

[arthurwaite]

One book that he doesn't mention is "Variable Star"', planned and outlined by RAH, then finished by Spider Robinson. Another in the 'Juvenile' category, not to be missed.

[smartalek]

One of the two greatest compliments I've ever received in my life:
One of my exes said, "You ARE Jubal Harshaw."
In my fondest opium-dreams, perhaps -- glad they thought so, anyway, even if I know better.

[gronskeibooks]

I've only read Starship Troopers, which i don't remember well. But I remember enjoying the basic training sequence, but not as much the war vs the bugs. I've been wanting to read Friday, did you ever get to it?

[keithstudly]

How odd, I was never able to finish "Farnham's Freehold". I disliked all the main characters. One of the things about Heinlein was something he pointed out himself. Words have meanings, but they also have connotations. In stories like "Starship Troopers" he intentionally used words with negative connotations to force the reader to think about the real meaning of his words. You had to think more and feel less to understand what he was saying. He was not surprised at the reaction "Starship Troopers" got in many reviews because he knew that not everyone would understand what he said and get past what they felt he said. Most popular reviews were done without any real understanding of the message.

[Kellerwerks]

I like Red Planet a lot more than you did. It is a sequel/prequel to Stranger In A Strange Land... prequel in that it was written first, sequel in that it is set some time after SIASL. I felt you got a better understanding of the martians and their society in RP, and I found plenty of philosophy about liberties, rights and goverence... for soneone who was so supposedly "right wing", Heinlein seems to advocate for a form of gun control in the book, which I found interesting...