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From: crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Heinlein's panegyric for the Bomb
Message-ID: <8548@duke.duke.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Sep-86 18:00:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: duke.8548
Posted: Wed Sep 10 18:00:24 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Sep-86 06:01:37 EDT
References: <1071@hoptoad.uucp>
Organization: Duke University CS Dept.; Durham, NC
Lines: 106
Summary: Simply false.  BLATANTLY False.  Read the real article.
Xref: mnetor net.sf-lovers:8343 talk.politics.misc:23


Oh, jeezus, Tim, did you get up on the wrong side of the bed or what?

I wasn't going to reply to this, but I can't stand it -- and before you
start pulling quotes out of context, you oughta write "I will always
check my sources" 100 times.

I just happen to have a copy of Heinlein's *Expanded Universe* right at
hand; let's look at some of these things in context:

>...These are taken from "Ghastly Beyond Belief",
>an anthology of bad and embarrassing science fiction excerpts.

Can you pass me a reference to this, by the way?  Sounds like fun... I'm
assuming they made the pull out of context, since I can't believe you'd
pull something that low yourself.

>
>First, from "Pie in the Sky":
>
>	There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of
>	ours which would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the
>	Hiroshima treatment.

Okay, "Pie from the Sky," page 175 Ace edition of *Expanded Universe.*
Let's quote the first couple of paragraphs to start with:

    	Since we have every reason to expect a sudden rain of death from
    the sky sometime in the next few years, as a result of the happy
    combination of the science of atomics and the art of rocketry, it
    behooves the Pollyanna Philosopher to add up the advantages to be
    derived from the blasting of your apartment, row house, or suburban
    cottage.
    	It ain't all bad, chum.  While you are squatting in front of your
    cave, trying to roast a rabbit with one hand while scratching your
    lice-infected hide with the other, there will be many cheerful
    things to think about, the assets of destruction, rather than
    torturing your mind with thoughts of the good old easy days of taxis
    and tabloids and Charlie's Bar Grill.
[okay, here it comes....]
    	There are so many, many things in this so-termed civilization of
    ours which would be mightily improved by a once over lightly of the
    Hiroshima treatment.  There is that dame upstairs, for instance, the
    one with the square bowling ball.  Never again would she take it out
    for practice right over your bed at three in the morning.  Isn't
    that some consolation?
    	No more soap operas. No more six minutes of good old Mom facing
    things bravely, interspersed with eight minutes of insistent, syrupy
    plugging for commercial junk you don't want and would be better off
    without. ....
    	... best of all, you will be freed of the plague of the
    alarm.... If you are snapped suddenly out of sleep in the Atomic
    Stone Age, it will be a mountain lion, a wolf, a man, or some other
    carnivore, not a mechanical monstrosity.

It's too much work to copy the rest of the first, sarcastic section of
the article -- but I'll catch a couple of high points:

    o Men who bawl out waitresses
    o The preacher with the unctuous voice and the cash-register heart.
    o People who censor plays and supress boooks.

So let's go on to the second part of the article, the part where the
voice changes and he is talking straight:

    ....In spite of the endless list of things that could be made of the
    things we are better off without I do not think it will be very much
    fun to scrabble about in the woods for a bite to eat.  For that
    reason I am thinging of liquidating, in advance, the next character
    who says to me, "Well, what difference does it make if we are
    atom-bombed -- you gottas die sometime!"
    	I shall shoot him dead, blow through the barrel, and say, "You
    asked for it, chum."

Now for what I think is the clincher: the final paragraphs.

        If you really want to hang on to the advantages of our slightly
    wacky psuedo-civilization, there is just one way to do it, according
    to the scientists who know the most about the new techniques of war
    -- and that is to form a sovereign world authority to prevent the
    Atomic War.
    	Run, do not walk, to the nearest Western Union, and telegraph
    your congressman to get off the dime and get on with the difficult
    business of forming an honest-to-goodness world union, with no
    jokers about Big Five vetos or national armaments... to get on with
    it promptly, while there is still time, before Washington, D.C., is
    reduced to radioactive dust, poor devil.

				--end--

These paragraphs PROVE to me, without a shadow of a doubt, that the
person who exerpted that original quote was doing so having either not
read the article, or was *consciously,* *purposefully* trying to
assassinate Heinlein's character.  Why? I don't know: I suspect it was
from some ideological aim, but I don't have enough evidence to say for
sure.  And I know Tim personally -- while he is sometimes strident, I've
never seen him be intellectually dishonest, so I assume it was not him.

But I'd look really closely at whoever wrote that "Ghastly Beyond
Belief" -- sounds to me like there is a subtext, a reason, behind the
choices.  Might as well claim that Abraham Lincoln was a Confederate
Officer.
-- 

			Charlie Martin
			(...mcnc!duke!crm)