Dear Bozobub: Heinlein’s interest in incest was not particularly prurient, however, deriving as it did from a deeper interest in time problems and paradoxes.
He explored the ultimate incest for example, being sex with yourself (not Onanism, rather being one’s own mother and father), cf. “All you zombies -”
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James always has good intros for his reviews, but this one is particularly poetic. 
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Yeah, it would take a lot to convince me Heinlein wasn’t a libertarian with an incest fetish.
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This seems to be a recurring theme in the topic. If it’s going to keep coming up, perhaps somebody should clarify what, if anything, this has to do with critical analysis. People seem to be emotionally invested in which labels to use, which would be biased rather than analytical, but also of questionable practical value. It’s a common methodology on BB, but I never encounter any explanation of what it is employed to achieve.
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Um, incest comes up in his fiction very often. Perhaps you should clarify how it does NOT belong in a critical analysis. Noting an author’s literary proclivities is not somehow “questionable” in an analysis. In fact, ignoring the subject blinds you to a rather large portion of his work!
Let me put it this way: If Heinlein was a convicted, incestuous child molester but such didn’t appear in his work in any way, THEN it would have no particular bearing on a “pure” literary critical analysis. But this is (as far as we know) the exact opposite situation, point of fact. Whether as a “drier” subject or as rather spicy/prurient detail, you won’t be able to handwave away his own words.
Another reason his attitude towards incest is relevant is that it evolved over time, as noted above. Again, how is this not appropriate for critical analysis of his works…?
You misunderstand what I am saying. Libertarianism and/or incest ARE appropriate to a critical analysis of Heinlein. But us simply labeling Heinlein in this topic has seemed more like personal jabs than approaching the work or the person from any analytical framework. There have been a few interesting posts, but also a lot of them sound prejudiced. So I am interested to ask why a person might have an emotional investment in characterizing Heinlein as being libertarian, incestuous, etc. So it is not that I am skeptical as to how these factors may relate to Heinlein, but rather I am curious as to what makes those relationships so emotionally-loaded to people. So I asked.
I prefer if people don’t get personally judgemental, but if they feel so compelled, the least they can do is discuss what motivates this. It seems contrary to suggest that such interjections are topical, but then asking about them somehow is not.
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Boy that’s a whole lotta unnecessary words for, “How dare you insinuate Heinlein is into incest, maybe it’s you who are into incest!”.
Dude liked incest, ain’t nothing more than that. Also, he was fascist as heck, so the libertarian infatuation with him is very telling.
Thank you for illustrating popobawa4u’s actual point:
so perfectly.
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Paraphrasing Milo Y, I wonder how many here would rather have incest in their families than libertarianism.
Have you read Grumbles from the Grave?
Her choice of what to air posthumously is rather bizarre.
One of those “never meet your heroes” things, I guess; he and Clarke and Asimov introduced me to life in the future while I was in grade school, and I read and enjoyed a lot of his stuff. This, not so much.
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I met Isaac Asimov in an elevator in the 1970s… he was pretty appalling.
Whatever.
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Heinlein wrote a lot of novels with a lot of different sorts of government working reasonably well.
Beyond This Horizon was a utopia of abundance with a controlled economy.
Double Star was pro-monarchy-- at least in favor of having a symbolic monarch.
Space Cadet had a competent world government.
Starship Troopers was a democracy with franchise limited to those who’d done dangerous service.
Later Heinlein tended libertarian, but I think The Cat Who Walked through Walls was drifting away from libertarianism. As I recall, living on a space habitat owned by one company(?) wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
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Starship Troopers is generally seen as a touchstone to pragmatic libertarianism o.o’. He used it to chastise those whom he thought of as “doctrinaire” or hidebound. Here’s a nice analysis that I don’t fully agree with, but explains what I mean a bit better.
Now read “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” (if you haven’t already; you really oughta, it’s a great read =) ). Libertarian to the bone.
Just like the subject of incest, whether specific or abstract, Heinlein’s brand of libertarianism can be found threaded throughout his entire career. No one, however, is saying ALL of his works touch either subject.
@Medievalist: My mom has the dubious honor of having been groped by Asimov at a book signing (she was smokin’ hot and quite young, maybe 19-21); he was pretty much a troglodyte of a man. She punched him and got ejected, then was hauled off (but no charges in the end) by the police; she still has copies of her mug shots. Yeah, my moms is cool xD.
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Oddly enough that was exactly the sort of behavior I found offensive when I met him… although, I got to hear a great exit zinger:
Dr. Asimov: “Ah, girls, like a fine wine I improve with age!”
My Friend, loudly, as we exit elevator: “Even the finest wine eventually turns to vinegar.”
Roger that!
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Best mom story I’ve read in a while!
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“The Door Into Summer” I found a little creepy in how it panned out.
And I was an avid Piers Anthony reader.
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From Wikipedia, about Henlein’s The Door into Summer:
The early Heinlein biographer and critic Alexei Panshin, in his 1968 biography Heinlein in Dimension, took note of a controversial theme: “The romantic situation in this story is a very interesting, very odd one: it is nothing less than a mutual sexual interest between an engineer of thirty and a girl of twelve (‘adorable’ is Heinlein’s word for her), that culminates in marriage after some hop-scotching around in time to adjust their ages a bit.”[3]:149–150 The novel “worried and bothered” John W. Campbell, who said “Bob can write a better story, with one hand tied behind him, than most people in the field can do with both hands. But Jesus, I wish that son of a gun would take that other hand out of his pocket.”
Yup, sounds like Heinlein to me ^^'.
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Right. From a standpoint many decades on, I’d agree; fact is, though, I first read that story when I was eleven years old, and noticed nothing extraordinarily creepy about the ending then. Which says something, I’m sure, about children, or me, or both.
Agreed.
Panshin, by the way, wrote a very interesting book which I couldn’t put down at the time (“Rite of Passage”). - it’s the best thing he ever wrote, in my view. But I was appalled by the central premise - that it’s desirable to put pre-teens in harm’s way to prepare them for a dangerous pioneer existence. I actually had nightmares about the deaths of some that were every bit as bad as those inflicted by Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”. Which didn’t stop me reading on, in either case.
Back to Heinlein. Notice the touching up of the situation with time travel. Around the time I read the story, a young girl in my college (secondary school) wrote a song called “1905” which actually became a smash hit. She was seventeen. The song dealt with her crush on Henry Fonda, who was born in 1905, and so many decades older than her. Excerpt:
“1905, you won your battle with time
The turn was mine, fifty years later;
So there’s no point crying,
Time obviously didn’t even want me
To start trying.”
No-one found the song creepy, or inappropriate. It’s not just Heinlein who thinks about adjusting time to alloow a perfect partnership. It’s not clear to me that it’s any more of a sin for an old person to do that, as for a young person.
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