Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!gatech!akgua!lcuxlm!whuxl!houxm!mtuxo!mtune!mtung!slj From: slj@mtung.UUCP (S. Luke Jones) Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers,talk.politics.misc Subject: Re: Heinlein's panegyric for the Bomb Message-ID: <776@mtung.UUCP> Date: Wed, 10-Sep-86 09:53:38 EDT Article-I.D.: mtung.776 Posted: Wed Sep 10 09:53:38 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 11-Sep-86 07:30:46 EDT References: <1071@hoptoad.uucp> Organization: AT&T ISL Middletown NJ USA Lines: 89 Xref: mnetor net.sf-lovers:8345 talk.politics.misc:28 > Because you demanded it, pilgrim, herewith the quotes proving Heinlein's > support for nuclear war. These are taken from "Ghastly Beyond Belief", > an anthology of bad and embarrassing science fiction excerpts. If you're going to run down literature, you ought to read the original rather than a collection of excerpts taken out-of-context by people who (as the title of their collection indicates) had an axe to grind. > First, from "Pie in the Sky": It's "Pie From The Sky" not "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. This is nothing. He also says that a nuclear war would get rid of mothers in law, and put an end to special days like "National Tulip Day." But I'm amazed the editor(s) of _Ghastly Beyond Belief_ didn't catch the sarcasm. In fact, I suspect they did catch it, but ignored it in order to "prove" their point. It isn't hard to catch: all but the last page or so of the essay lists petty gripes people have that a nuclear war would get rid of. The last page says (sorry I don't have it with me, but I usually read for pleasure, rather than to refute deliberate disinformation) something like "But, if you're one of those softies who _likes_ indoor plumbing..." and there follows a list of the ammenities of civilization which would be absent after a nuclear war, "then you should run, not walk, and phone your congressman...." The entire point of "Pie From The Sky" -- if you read the story itself, rather than a collection of blurbs more misleading than anything you might find on the back cover of a paperback -- was to drum up grass-roots support for the U.N. The story was written after WWII when it looked to some as if the US might opt out of the UN the way it avoided joining the League of Nations at the end of WWI. (Since then, mercifully, Heinlein has come to the realization that a world government of the type the UN would be if it had any teeth would be worse than no world government. But that's not part of the story.) > Next, a typically didactic Heinlein monologue from "Farnham's Freehold", > a post-holocaust novel of which Michael Moorcock wrote in the > critical/political essay "Starship Stormtroopers", "It's not such a big > step ... from *Farnham's Freehold* to Hitler's *Lebensraum*." > > [ followed by the "typically didactic monologue" ] I can't believe this! The entire book catalogs, in detail, exactly what the horrors associated with a nuclear war would be. In the scenario in the book this includes having one's hometown (near Cheyenne Mtn in Colorado) smashed by an A-bomb, and, in life after the attack, the hero's daughter dies in childbirth because the civilization you accuse Heinlein of sneering at (above) is missing. I won't spoil any more, but only a complete *idiot* would call the post-war life in _Farnham's Freehold_ a cakewalk. Hardly a close step to "Lebensraum." But, in one conversation, the protagonist mentions how this [nuclear] war was different from all the others. (This was of course the one chosen for quotation out of context.) Hugh Farnham says the war might be better than previous wars, because the intelligent have a better chance of survival than in previous wars. Pacifists have been saying for hundreds of years that "if generals and politicians had to risk their own lives, there would be no more wars." Heinlein is stating essentially the same thing. And he says that this war, because it is a war of mass destruction, is the closest thing there's ever been to that. No-nukers have been saying since 1945 that the first atomic war would be the last, etc. etc. > To the reader who said that he had read this novel many times without > seeing any passage in favor of nuclear war, we award the 1986 Zinc Star > for fearless and incisive critical comment. Well done, well done, noble sir! > -- > Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot and Certified Catholic Theologian Thanks for the Zinc Star. For swallowing whatever gets shoved down your throat by writers more hopelessly biased than I was initially willing to believe and for mindlessly parroting it back to the net without checking it for yourself, you get the 1986 Red Star. You're wasted where you are; why don't you go work for the New York Times or the Washington Post. -- O "I used to bull-eye Womp Rats in my T-16 O OOO O in Beggar's Canyon back home, and they're OO O OO not much bigger than that." OOOO OOO OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO S. Luke Jones (...ihnp4!mtung!slj) OOOOOOOOOOOOO AT&T Information Systems OOOOOOO Middletown, NJ, U.S.A.