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Heinlein in Dimension a Critical Analysis
With an introduction by James Blish. From the early 1940s until his death in 1988, Robert A. Heinlein reigned unchallenged as the most influential contemporary author of science fiction. His first few stories turned the field upside down, and set new standards of narrative and scientific excellence. He was justly credited with introducing narrative techniques which are now taken for granted, but were revolutionary at the time. This book was the first full-length critical analysis of Heinlein's work and his place in modern science fiction. Like Damon Knight, Mr. Panshin works on the assumption that the ordinary standards of literature apply with full force to science fiction; a vaulting imagination does not excuse bad writing or foolish plotting. In addition there are criteria of narrative technique and scientific plausibility that are peculiar to science fiction. Rigorously applying these standards, Mr. Panshin discusses Heinlein's fiction and analyzes its strengths and weaknesses; he traces the constants and the variables in Heinlein's interests and viewpoints; and he offers a suggestion as to the ultimate significance of Heinlein both in science fiction and in literature as a whole. Neither adulatory nor carping, this is a study in depth which is both readable and comprehensive. With bibliographies of Heinlein's works up to 1968. Also note that there are some copies left of the hardback edition available directly from the publisher.
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First published June 1, 1968
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Alexei Panshin
64 books56 followersAlexis Adams Panshin is an American author and science fiction critic.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 6, 2009
I've never read anything that I recall by Panshin but he's obviously a much different person than Heinlein was. His inability to understand why Heinlein's story, "They" gets classed as horror shows this point very well.
Panshin doesn't understand what Heinlein believed in politically & manages to mangle his message severely in several places. For instance, he finds that Hugh Farnham ordering someone around with a rifle to be inconsistent with his Libertarian principles. Seriously, this is a fiction book by Heinlein. Panshin seems to find more understanding for the totalitarian regime of "Starship Troopers". This speaks volumes about Panshin & makes much of his analysis suspect.
Still, he does a wonderful job at concisely describing each story & book & he does take plenty of time at pointing out the good points. (There's a couple I want to re-read just because of this!) It is a book I would suggest to anyone who is into Heinlein's works.
Panshin often ignores the market that Heinlein was writing for. For instance, he minimizes Campbell's influence & leanings on the SF market ("Starship Troopers" pretty much sums them up: Earthmen good & kickass, BEM's bad!)
He doesn't seem to understand the ideals of the Boy Scouts, thus "Boy's Life" or the political climate of the US following WWII & into the 50's. A lot of Heinlein's success came from his popularity, not his writing ability & he was popular because he so often captured the spirit or dreams of the times as proven by "Project Nightmare". What American wasn't scared of the Red Threat & the atomic weapons we had lost our monopoly on?
Many of Panshin points are valid. If he isn't a really good writer, he's probably an excellent editor, but many of the points he raises are specious. For instance, he feels that the 4 parts of "Citizen of the Galaxy" are too wrenchingly different. I thought they were supposed to be. That they are made the omniscient POV from which the story is told a lot more personal as the wrenched story line gives us an inkling of what Thorby felt as he was jerked around by life.
He expects too much from a short story. He says,"..."Jerry Is a Man" is hardly long enough or deep enough to allow us to extract any final answers from it." Gee, it's a short story, makes one quick point very well - what defines a man is very complex. That's about all anyone can expect out of a short story. For long dissertations on such a complex subject one needs to look at some of the philosophy tomes that few bother to read.
He dwells on mechanical problems in "Gulf", such as the card stacking to pass the messages. Please! They're supermen & can handle stacking cards for messages. Allowable suspension of belief. If there is any problem here, it is that Mrs. Keithley's people, so competent in so many ways, are fooled by this. Again, like in "The Long Watch" he doesn't seem to get the whole point of self-sacrifice as a heroic point from a man who obviously thought highly of the military. Think 'Congressional Medal of Honor'.
Panshin doesn't particularly like Heinlein's characterization & I can't fault him there, but I do have one bone to pick with Panshin's inconsistencies. In one spot, he praises Heinlein's bare description of a character because he managed to slip in a black, lead character ("Tunnel in the Sky"). He allows the reader to use his own imagination to paint the picture of the character, yet disparages the lack of detail later. That Panshin can't make up his mind is his problem, not Heinlein's.
I find that he considered "Starman Jones", "The Star Beast" & "Tunnel in the Sky" bleak to be interesting. I found them no more so than any of his other Scribner YA books. Young men caught in bad situations that come out on top through perseverance is the way I see them. Life doesn't always hand us what we want, but we can make it right, if we try. Maybe I'm an optimist & he isn't? I don't know, but we agreed completely on his review of "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" as one of Heinlein's best.
I think Panshin would have written a different book if he'd known about Heinlein's first novel, never published until after his death. He makes some assumptions - valid with the facts he had - that put a different light on "Part IV: The Period of Alienation", very aptly named but I think premature. Heinlein certainly alienated me, although not as quickly as he did Panshin. This was written before what I consider Heinlein's great decline in the 1970's. (It was published in 1968.)
The political & philosophical differences between the two are to blame for much of what I thought wrong in this critique. Unfortunately, it makes this work less than it could have been. Panshin actually seems to make up some of the issues, such as his problems with the population of the moon in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". He dwells on population numbers with a lot of assumptions that I don't find valid. Also he hates the spoken language of the book, a device that I found delightful. Why would he think a future society should be completely true to its roots? He makes a point about the 'babu-russian' & criticizes this as if the entire society was rather than an amalgamation several generations old.
Overall, it's an excellent read & well worth the time, but take it with a grain of salt.
Panshin doesn't understand what Heinlein believed in politically & manages to mangle his message severely in several places. For instance, he finds that Hugh Farnham ordering someone around with a rifle to be inconsistent with his Libertarian principles. Seriously, this is a fiction book by Heinlein. Panshin seems to find more understanding for the totalitarian regime of "Starship Troopers". This speaks volumes about Panshin & makes much of his analysis suspect.
Still, he does a wonderful job at concisely describing each story & book & he does take plenty of time at pointing out the good points. (There's a couple I want to re-read just because of this!) It is a book I would suggest to anyone who is into Heinlein's works.
Panshin often ignores the market that Heinlein was writing for. For instance, he minimizes Campbell's influence & leanings on the SF market ("Starship Troopers" pretty much sums them up: Earthmen good & kickass, BEM's bad!)
He doesn't seem to understand the ideals of the Boy Scouts, thus "Boy's Life" or the political climate of the US following WWII & into the 50's. A lot of Heinlein's success came from his popularity, not his writing ability & he was popular because he so often captured the spirit or dreams of the times as proven by "Project Nightmare". What American wasn't scared of the Red Threat & the atomic weapons we had lost our monopoly on?
Many of Panshin points are valid. If he isn't a really good writer, he's probably an excellent editor, but many of the points he raises are specious. For instance, he feels that the 4 parts of "Citizen of the Galaxy" are too wrenchingly different. I thought they were supposed to be. That they are made the omniscient POV from which the story is told a lot more personal as the wrenched story line gives us an inkling of what Thorby felt as he was jerked around by life.
He expects too much from a short story. He says,"..."Jerry Is a Man" is hardly long enough or deep enough to allow us to extract any final answers from it." Gee, it's a short story, makes one quick point very well - what defines a man is very complex. That's about all anyone can expect out of a short story. For long dissertations on such a complex subject one needs to look at some of the philosophy tomes that few bother to read.
He dwells on mechanical problems in "Gulf", such as the card stacking to pass the messages. Please! They're supermen & can handle stacking cards for messages. Allowable suspension of belief. If there is any problem here, it is that Mrs. Keithley's people, so competent in so many ways, are fooled by this. Again, like in "The Long Watch" he doesn't seem to get the whole point of self-sacrifice as a heroic point from a man who obviously thought highly of the military. Think 'Congressional Medal of Honor'.
Panshin doesn't particularly like Heinlein's characterization & I can't fault him there, but I do have one bone to pick with Panshin's inconsistencies. In one spot, he praises Heinlein's bare description of a character because he managed to slip in a black, lead character ("Tunnel in the Sky"). He allows the reader to use his own imagination to paint the picture of the character, yet disparages the lack of detail later. That Panshin can't make up his mind is his problem, not Heinlein's.
I find that he considered "Starman Jones", "The Star Beast" & "Tunnel in the Sky" bleak to be interesting. I found them no more so than any of his other Scribner YA books. Young men caught in bad situations that come out on top through perseverance is the way I see them. Life doesn't always hand us what we want, but we can make it right, if we try. Maybe I'm an optimist & he isn't? I don't know, but we agreed completely on his review of "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" as one of Heinlein's best.
I think Panshin would have written a different book if he'd known about Heinlein's first novel, never published until after his death. He makes some assumptions - valid with the facts he had - that put a different light on "Part IV: The Period of Alienation", very aptly named but I think premature. Heinlein certainly alienated me, although not as quickly as he did Panshin. This was written before what I consider Heinlein's great decline in the 1970's. (It was published in 1968.)
The political & philosophical differences between the two are to blame for much of what I thought wrong in this critique. Unfortunately, it makes this work less than it could have been. Panshin actually seems to make up some of the issues, such as his problems with the population of the moon in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". He dwells on population numbers with a lot of assumptions that I don't find valid. Also he hates the spoken language of the book, a device that I found delightful. Why would he think a future society should be completely true to its roots? He makes a point about the 'babu-russian' & criticizes this as if the entire society was rather than an amalgamation several generations old.
Overall, it's an excellent read & well worth the time, but take it with a grain of salt.
September 14, 2024
review of
Alexei Panshin's Heinlein in Dimension
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 11-14, 2024
The full review will eventually be here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticP...
I've read 3 or 4 Panshin SF bks & enjoyed them. He has a special playfulness. SO, I decided to read something non-fiction by him: this. I didn't really like it very much. Take away the playfulness & he becomes.. annoying.
This was copyrighted 1968 so Heinlein wd've had 29 yrs of published work out there by the time Panshin critiqued it. Given that he didn't die until 20 yrs later on May 8, 1988, he still plenty of writing to go. Author James Blish wrote the INTRODUCTION:
"Criticising Robert A. Heinlein, as I know from experience, can be a tricky business. On the one hand, he is so plainly the best all-around science-fiction writer of the modern (post-1926) era that taking anything but an adulatory view of his work seems to some people, not excluding a few in California, to be perilously close to lése majesté—or if the critic is a fellow fractioner, as Mr. Panshin is, to envy. On the other hand, much of his major work gives the impression of being a vehicle for highly personal political and economic opinions, so that a critic who disagrees with these views may find himself reacting to the lectures rather than the fiction. A related danger is taking a firm stand on what Heinlein actually believes, for many of the apparent propaganda threads turn out to be in contradiction to each other."
[..]
"Given these dangers—and I have not listed all of them—the would-be critic may be tempted to take refuge in nothing but plot summaries, or in that commonest of all critical parlor games, influence-detecting." - p vii
Hence, the reader is set up: how will Panshin criticise Heinlein? Will he risk a wrathful reaction? Or what?
"This is a book about the science fiction writing of Robert Heinlein, a man who has written almost nothing but science fiction. Assuming that my estimate of the minor position of science fiction is correct, what is the sense in talking about a science fiction writer at all? The narrator of "Man Overboard," a very good story by John Collier, says of himself: "Though I may lack wealth and grace and charm, I do so in a special and superior way." Both science fiction as a field and Robert Heinlein as a writer have their deficiencies, but both have virtues that make them worth cultivating in spite of any failings." - p 2
Given that I love sci-fi, the possibly false modesty of Panshin here doesn't really appeal to me. It verges on, or even possibly is, a disclaimer.
"Heinlein was also responsible for Destination Moon, a movie loosely based on Rocket Ship Galileo, one of his juvenile novels. It was a beautiful movie, almost documentary in style, with striking special effects that won it an Academy Award." - p 6
I probably saw this but it didn't make it to my "Favorite Movies from Other People" list online ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/tENToth... ) so I must not have liked it as much as Panshin.
"In an interview published in the January 1963 issue of Author and Journalist, Heinlein gave some details of his present work habits. Perhaps the most interesting was his statement that he ordinarily only works three months in a year. Only a professional could do that and still make a living. It is partly the result of having worked steadily for twenty-five years and having an accumulation of material that continues to bring in income. More centrally, however, it is a result of Heinlein's work habits: he begins in the afternoon and continues writing until he has a minimum of four pages of final copy, no matter how long it takes him. Done day in and day out, this produces a book in three months." - pp 7-8
I find that interesting but not necessarily that impressive. It seems to me that my own work habits are considerably more concentrated. I recently drove 4.5 hrs to WV arriving around 3PM. My collaborator & I went out to find a place to shoot a scene for a movie. We found it, set up the gear, & shot the scene. Then we scouted for another scene planned for the next morning & found it. We returned to the motel, set up for another scene & shot that. We got up early the next day, went to the location we'd found the day before, set up, & shot that scene. We went back to the motel & shot a scene in the swimming pool there. Then we went to go ziplining where yet-another scene was shot. My friend left to go do something w/ some friends of his. I shot another scene in the motel. I drove home the next morning & spent the rest of the day, once I was home, uploading footage from 9 cameras. The next day I started editing. I worked straight thru the day until it was done. I wrote brief notes about the movie & uploaded it to YouTube & the Internet Archive. A total of 4 days of concentrated work to make one short:
"71" - 4K 30p Stereo - 7:58
https://youtu.be/DtL0xQMULks
https://archive.org/details/71_20240909
THAT's an impressively dedicated way of working.
I was expecting Panshin to predominantly like Heinlein's work - however, the more he wrote about it, the more negative he seemed to be.
"A look at "Life-Line" or "If This Goes On—," Heinlein's first novel, shows them to be thrown together any which way." - p 13
"There are two ways of narrating stories, generally speaking. The first person is natural, easy to write, and convincing. Its disadvantages are that the survival of the narrator to tell the tale is assured, thereby compromising the suspense of the story somewhat; the "I" of one story by an author is likely to sound like the "I" of his next; and, most important, the scope of the story is limited to exactly what the narrator knows or thinks, and that may be a very small range indeed. The third-person narrative takes much more skill to handle and is less limited. Its main disadvantage, particularly for the beginning writer, is simply that it does take more skill to handle, exactly what the beginner is lacking." - p 16
SO, here I go, writing criticism about criticism. Panshin's description of the limitation of first person narration is fair enuf but it strikes me as being rooted in academic conventions of writing: ie: there's no good reason why a narrative can't start off in first person & then switch to a different mode when the first person narrator gets killed - say a first person POV of a different character.
"John W. Campbell, Jr. became editor of Astounding in September 1937 and still edits it today" [1968] "under its present title, Analog." - p 20
I submitted my 1st short story to Analog, written when I was 13 in 1966 or 1967. It was rejected. No doubt it deserved to be rejected since it wasn't science fiction but was just a story about a guy trying to escape from a mental institution by sliding down laundry chutes. Alas, as far as I know, I don't have a copy of it any more or I'd probably publish it now no matter how bad it might be as an example of my juvenilia. Anway, it's interesting to me that I was trying to place myself in Analog's world when this bk was being written.
"a war that throws out 400,000,000 invaders, who are, of course, PanAsians—the old Yellow Peril again—is bound to suffer simply because its issues are oversimplified to an incredible degree. It is easy to read a story like this but very hard to take it seriously.
"The example just given is an actual novel, Sixth Column, serialized in the January, February, and March 1941 issues of Astounding. The author was given as "Anson MacDonald," but the name was a Heinlein pseudonym." - pp 21-22
It was partially Heinlein's inclination to be pro-war that gradually turned me off to him. I was reading him during the time of the invasion of Viet Nam & I was opposed to that so any "Yellow Peril" story wd've seemed like pro-Vietnam War propaganda.
"Using pen names for their own sake usually makes no particular sense. A writer's name and record is about all that he owns in the way of credentials, and whatever he publishes under pen names is lost opportunity to add to the name and record. I have used a pen name myself, but would not do it again.
"Charting the course of Heinlein's pen names is confusing business since he was never very consistent about it. For all that Emerson had it that "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," there is such a thing as unfoolish consistency.
"The Heinlein pen names I am aware of are Anson MacDonald, Lyle Monroe, Caleb Saunders, John Riverside and Simon York." - p 22
Using one name is probably best if you're trying to offer a brand name that you expect to stick w/ consumers. It's not necessarily best if you're trying to create varying contexts for differing conceptual approaches. I've used 2 or more names in the same piece for 2 different sections. The intention was to pretend that 2 different people had done the writing, rather than just one. I used the names Monty Cantsin, Karen Eliot, & Luther Blissett to associate myself w/ these collective identities & thusly contribute to a myth. I'd be interested in reading a whole bk of writings by authors explaining their pen names.
""Beyond Doubt"—Astonishing, April 1941—was a collaboration between Lyle Monroe and Elma Wentz. It explains the Easter Island monoliths as political caricatures in Mu. The story, Heinlein's only fictional collaboration, is tedious and trivial and of interest only to Atlantis and Lemuria fans. The collaboration, I suspect, was done as a favor, and the story has not been reprinted in any Heinlein collection." - p 24
Well, I'm interested & I generally have no interest in Atlantis & Lemuria. So there.
"Methuselah's Children, published in revised and expanded form by Gnome Press in 1958" - p 26
"These children of Methuselah are a group of families who, starting in 1874, have been interbred to produce descendants who live up to three times as long as most people." - p 27
I wonder if this is his 1st incest novel? I think it might've been To Sail Beyond the Sunset that I read after Stranger in a Strange Land that was the one that led to my losing interest in Heinlein. As I recall, the sci-fi in it was just a thin disguise covering over the prominent incest theme of a family or some families in Michigan. Since I remember reading that in the late '60s or early '70s & since it was copyrighted in 1987 when I was 33 I'm confused. Perhaps it was another novel of his that I read from an earlier era. Anyway, the incest was SO prominent that I got the impression that this was Heinlein's late stage THING & I didn't really like it so I never read any of that later work again.
Panshin's criticisms eventually seem too hard-pressed to me.. I had to wonder whether there was sour grapes at play, whether he resented Heinlein's popularity - wch, as far as I can tell, dramatically outshone Panshin's own.
""Pied Piper" is another never-reprinted Lyle Monroe story, this time from the March 1942 Astonishing, and is another candidate for the Rejected Thirteen Times Sweepstakes. The most truly astonishing thing about this issue (after a letter from one Isaac Azimov [sic]) was that it cost only ten cents. It seems almost incredible in these days when you can't even buy a comic book for that price.
""Pied Piper" takes place in an undesignated country at an undefined time. As the solution to a war, an elderly scientist kidnaps all the opposing country's children and when the chief general of his own country objects to a settlement of the war, the scientist disposes of him by shooting him off into another dimension. It is all very bland and never-neverish." - p 31
"In "Gulf," for instance, Heinlein spends one day in time and thirty-six pages in enrolling an agent. He then spends six months, skimmed over in another thirty-odd pages, in training the agent. Then, just to end the story, he kills his agent off in a job that takes him one day, buzzed over in a mere four pages. The gradual loss of control is obvious." - p 154
Perhaps one of the most famous influences that Heinlein has had is in the naming of "Waldoes" - just as the Tom Swift novels led to the naming of TASERS (Tom A. Smith Electric Rifles).
"Completely aside from the main problem, Heinlein has included some truly lovely conceits. The best known of these are the machines known as "waldoes," devices for remote control manipulation. Similar machines are in commerical use today, first developed for handling radioactive material, and are generally known as waldoes after those described in the story." - p 35
Heinlein's politics are presented as "Libertarian". I've always found that term to be ambiguous. In Spain, Libertarian = Anarchist; in the US Libertarian is associated more w/ the right-wing, a sortof Anarcho-Capitalist cocktail. To me, the idea of 'Anarcho-Capitalism' is completely self-contradicting & idiotic.
"The society is a libertarian one: to be a first-class citizen you must wear a gun, and if you aren't careful about your manners, you must be prepared to use it." - p 38
"What Heinlein envisions is a parliamentary system and empire like that of 19th Century Britain. John Joseph Bonforte is head of a coalition of minor parties whose interests are libertarian: "free trade, free travel, common citizenship, common currency, and a minimum of Imperial laws and restrictions." The main bone of contention is that common citizenship. Bonforte's Expansionists want to include the native populations of Mars and Venus as full citizens within the Empire, while the party in power, the Humanists, take a strict humans-first attitude." - p 73
& there's an instance of what appeals to me about Heinlein: his inter-species egalitarianism.
Heinlein was important to me as a young'un b/c he was one the 1st SF writers whose work I read. A traveling salesman, of all things, got me to somehow subscribe to a SciFi Book Club - something I don't regret. One of the 1st bks I got was Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold, a bk that was somewhat shocking to me at the tender young pre-pubescent or barely pubescent age I was at when I read it.
"It isn't at all difficult to justify calling Heinlein's second period his Period of Success. The period begins with his return to writing after the war and ends, as did his first period, with one of his better stories, in this case the juvenile novel Have Space Suit—Will Travel, published in 1958." - p 41
It's been over 50 yrs since I mostly stopped reading Heinlein's work b/c of his pro-militarism, pro-incest positions. He rapidly became of lesser importance to me as a SF writer in contrast to the newer writers that I discovered such as Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delany, J.G. Ballard, & the Strugatsky Brothers, amongst many others. Still, at least a few of his bks stand out in my memory as important to me for one reason or another. Have Space Suit—Will Travel is possibly the most prominent of those. In it, a teenager (?) wins a space suit wch he fixes & then uses as something that enables him to travel off-planet. My take-away from it was imagining the possibilities of getting one's foot in the backdoor. It was excellent for stimulating daydreams that might turn out to be practical some day.
Panshin divides Heinlein's work into 3 periods (as of 1968):
"If there is one thing that marks the six novels published so far in Heinlein's third period, it is a change in those things he has lectured about in his stories. Instead of concerning himself with facts, he has written about the morality of sex, religion, war, and politics, but he has treated his opinions as though they were facts." - p 89
"Why this change has come, I cannot say exactly, but I suspect a combination of financial independence and a desire to say the things that he most strongly believes has caused Heinlein to pour himself out on paper. The result from an artistic point of view is a mistake." - pp 89-90
"The last appearance of the idea comes in Starship Troopers, the first novel written in Heinlein's third period. Heinlein has his narrator "prove" as a class assignment that war and moral perfection derive from the instinct to survive, thereby putting a stamp of approval on war. Rico, the narrator, concludes:
"Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics—you name it—is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is—not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be." - p 91
"Shorn of its complications, the plot is as follows: In 1945 a one-month old girl is abandoned on the steps of an orphanage in Cleveland. The girl grows up and at the age of 18 is seduced and left pregnant. It turns out that she is both a functional female and a potentially functioning male. She has the baby, but her female organs are so damaged in the process that they have to be removed and she/he is given hromone shots and turned into a male. The baby, meanwhile, is stolen from the hospital." - p 93
You can probably see where this is going from a galaxy away, time traveler goes back in time to fuck his/her earlier self or some such. More incest, except dandied up a bit.
"In 1961, he published Stranger in a Strange Land, by a good margin his longest book, and a heavily sexual, metaphysical, thoroughly annoying piece of work. It, like Starship Troopers, won the Hugo award as the best science fiction novel of its year." - p 98
Panshin cdn't stand Stranger in a Strange Land, I remember its making a big impression on me as a teenager - at the same time that I found it sortof 'cheesy'. Panshin goes on to criticize another Heinlein:
"A minimum of one-third of this 288-page book, exclusive of conversations, has no reason for existence, since it does not affect the main goal of the story, the winning of the Egg." - p 107
Them's fightin' words pardner! Even as someone who doesn't really care that much about Heinlein I find Panshin to go overboard. "one-third" "has no reason for existence"?! I don't recall reading Glory Road, the novel that this is a criticism of, maybe I'd agree.. but I doubt it.
The full review will eventually be here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticP...
Alexei Panshin's Heinlein in Dimension
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 11-14, 2024
The full review will eventually be here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticP...
I've read 3 or 4 Panshin SF bks & enjoyed them. He has a special playfulness. SO, I decided to read something non-fiction by him: this. I didn't really like it very much. Take away the playfulness & he becomes.. annoying.
This was copyrighted 1968 so Heinlein wd've had 29 yrs of published work out there by the time Panshin critiqued it. Given that he didn't die until 20 yrs later on May 8, 1988, he still plenty of writing to go. Author James Blish wrote the INTRODUCTION:
"Criticising Robert A. Heinlein, as I know from experience, can be a tricky business. On the one hand, he is so plainly the best all-around science-fiction writer of the modern (post-1926) era that taking anything but an adulatory view of his work seems to some people, not excluding a few in California, to be perilously close to lése majesté—or if the critic is a fellow fractioner, as Mr. Panshin is, to envy. On the other hand, much of his major work gives the impression of being a vehicle for highly personal political and economic opinions, so that a critic who disagrees with these views may find himself reacting to the lectures rather than the fiction. A related danger is taking a firm stand on what Heinlein actually believes, for many of the apparent propaganda threads turn out to be in contradiction to each other."
[..]
"Given these dangers—and I have not listed all of them—the would-be critic may be tempted to take refuge in nothing but plot summaries, or in that commonest of all critical parlor games, influence-detecting." - p vii
Hence, the reader is set up: how will Panshin criticise Heinlein? Will he risk a wrathful reaction? Or what?
"This is a book about the science fiction writing of Robert Heinlein, a man who has written almost nothing but science fiction. Assuming that my estimate of the minor position of science fiction is correct, what is the sense in talking about a science fiction writer at all? The narrator of "Man Overboard," a very good story by John Collier, says of himself: "Though I may lack wealth and grace and charm, I do so in a special and superior way." Both science fiction as a field and Robert Heinlein as a writer have their deficiencies, but both have virtues that make them worth cultivating in spite of any failings." - p 2
Given that I love sci-fi, the possibly false modesty of Panshin here doesn't really appeal to me. It verges on, or even possibly is, a disclaimer.
"Heinlein was also responsible for Destination Moon, a movie loosely based on Rocket Ship Galileo, one of his juvenile novels. It was a beautiful movie, almost documentary in style, with striking special effects that won it an Academy Award." - p 6
I probably saw this but it didn't make it to my "Favorite Movies from Other People" list online ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/tENToth... ) so I must not have liked it as much as Panshin.
"In an interview published in the January 1963 issue of Author and Journalist, Heinlein gave some details of his present work habits. Perhaps the most interesting was his statement that he ordinarily only works three months in a year. Only a professional could do that and still make a living. It is partly the result of having worked steadily for twenty-five years and having an accumulation of material that continues to bring in income. More centrally, however, it is a result of Heinlein's work habits: he begins in the afternoon and continues writing until he has a minimum of four pages of final copy, no matter how long it takes him. Done day in and day out, this produces a book in three months." - pp 7-8
I find that interesting but not necessarily that impressive. It seems to me that my own work habits are considerably more concentrated. I recently drove 4.5 hrs to WV arriving around 3PM. My collaborator & I went out to find a place to shoot a scene for a movie. We found it, set up the gear, & shot the scene. Then we scouted for another scene planned for the next morning & found it. We returned to the motel, set up for another scene & shot that. We got up early the next day, went to the location we'd found the day before, set up, & shot that scene. We went back to the motel & shot a scene in the swimming pool there. Then we went to go ziplining where yet-another scene was shot. My friend left to go do something w/ some friends of his. I shot another scene in the motel. I drove home the next morning & spent the rest of the day, once I was home, uploading footage from 9 cameras. The next day I started editing. I worked straight thru the day until it was done. I wrote brief notes about the movie & uploaded it to YouTube & the Internet Archive. A total of 4 days of concentrated work to make one short:
"71" - 4K 30p Stereo - 7:58
https://youtu.be/DtL0xQMULks
https://archive.org/details/71_20240909
THAT's an impressively dedicated way of working.
I was expecting Panshin to predominantly like Heinlein's work - however, the more he wrote about it, the more negative he seemed to be.
"A look at "Life-Line" or "If This Goes On—," Heinlein's first novel, shows them to be thrown together any which way." - p 13
"There are two ways of narrating stories, generally speaking. The first person is natural, easy to write, and convincing. Its disadvantages are that the survival of the narrator to tell the tale is assured, thereby compromising the suspense of the story somewhat; the "I" of one story by an author is likely to sound like the "I" of his next; and, most important, the scope of the story is limited to exactly what the narrator knows or thinks, and that may be a very small range indeed. The third-person narrative takes much more skill to handle and is less limited. Its main disadvantage, particularly for the beginning writer, is simply that it does take more skill to handle, exactly what the beginner is lacking." - p 16
SO, here I go, writing criticism about criticism. Panshin's description of the limitation of first person narration is fair enuf but it strikes me as being rooted in academic conventions of writing: ie: there's no good reason why a narrative can't start off in first person & then switch to a different mode when the first person narrator gets killed - say a first person POV of a different character.
"John W. Campbell, Jr. became editor of Astounding in September 1937 and still edits it today" [1968] "under its present title, Analog." - p 20
I submitted my 1st short story to Analog, written when I was 13 in 1966 or 1967. It was rejected. No doubt it deserved to be rejected since it wasn't science fiction but was just a story about a guy trying to escape from a mental institution by sliding down laundry chutes. Alas, as far as I know, I don't have a copy of it any more or I'd probably publish it now no matter how bad it might be as an example of my juvenilia. Anway, it's interesting to me that I was trying to place myself in Analog's world when this bk was being written.
"a war that throws out 400,000,000 invaders, who are, of course, PanAsians—the old Yellow Peril again—is bound to suffer simply because its issues are oversimplified to an incredible degree. It is easy to read a story like this but very hard to take it seriously.
"The example just given is an actual novel, Sixth Column, serialized in the January, February, and March 1941 issues of Astounding. The author was given as "Anson MacDonald," but the name was a Heinlein pseudonym." - pp 21-22
It was partially Heinlein's inclination to be pro-war that gradually turned me off to him. I was reading him during the time of the invasion of Viet Nam & I was opposed to that so any "Yellow Peril" story wd've seemed like pro-Vietnam War propaganda.
"Using pen names for their own sake usually makes no particular sense. A writer's name and record is about all that he owns in the way of credentials, and whatever he publishes under pen names is lost opportunity to add to the name and record. I have used a pen name myself, but would not do it again.
"Charting the course of Heinlein's pen names is confusing business since he was never very consistent about it. For all that Emerson had it that "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," there is such a thing as unfoolish consistency.
"The Heinlein pen names I am aware of are Anson MacDonald, Lyle Monroe, Caleb Saunders, John Riverside and Simon York." - p 22
Using one name is probably best if you're trying to offer a brand name that you expect to stick w/ consumers. It's not necessarily best if you're trying to create varying contexts for differing conceptual approaches. I've used 2 or more names in the same piece for 2 different sections. The intention was to pretend that 2 different people had done the writing, rather than just one. I used the names Monty Cantsin, Karen Eliot, & Luther Blissett to associate myself w/ these collective identities & thusly contribute to a myth. I'd be interested in reading a whole bk of writings by authors explaining their pen names.
""Beyond Doubt"—Astonishing, April 1941—was a collaboration between Lyle Monroe and Elma Wentz. It explains the Easter Island monoliths as political caricatures in Mu. The story, Heinlein's only fictional collaboration, is tedious and trivial and of interest only to Atlantis and Lemuria fans. The collaboration, I suspect, was done as a favor, and the story has not been reprinted in any Heinlein collection." - p 24
Well, I'm interested & I generally have no interest in Atlantis & Lemuria. So there.
"Methuselah's Children, published in revised and expanded form by Gnome Press in 1958" - p 26
"These children of Methuselah are a group of families who, starting in 1874, have been interbred to produce descendants who live up to three times as long as most people." - p 27
I wonder if this is his 1st incest novel? I think it might've been To Sail Beyond the Sunset that I read after Stranger in a Strange Land that was the one that led to my losing interest in Heinlein. As I recall, the sci-fi in it was just a thin disguise covering over the prominent incest theme of a family or some families in Michigan. Since I remember reading that in the late '60s or early '70s & since it was copyrighted in 1987 when I was 33 I'm confused. Perhaps it was another novel of his that I read from an earlier era. Anyway, the incest was SO prominent that I got the impression that this was Heinlein's late stage THING & I didn't really like it so I never read any of that later work again.
Panshin's criticisms eventually seem too hard-pressed to me.. I had to wonder whether there was sour grapes at play, whether he resented Heinlein's popularity - wch, as far as I can tell, dramatically outshone Panshin's own.
""Pied Piper" is another never-reprinted Lyle Monroe story, this time from the March 1942 Astonishing, and is another candidate for the Rejected Thirteen Times Sweepstakes. The most truly astonishing thing about this issue (after a letter from one Isaac Azimov [sic]) was that it cost only ten cents. It seems almost incredible in these days when you can't even buy a comic book for that price.
""Pied Piper" takes place in an undesignated country at an undefined time. As the solution to a war, an elderly scientist kidnaps all the opposing country's children and when the chief general of his own country objects to a settlement of the war, the scientist disposes of him by shooting him off into another dimension. It is all very bland and never-neverish." - p 31
"In "Gulf," for instance, Heinlein spends one day in time and thirty-six pages in enrolling an agent. He then spends six months, skimmed over in another thirty-odd pages, in training the agent. Then, just to end the story, he kills his agent off in a job that takes him one day, buzzed over in a mere four pages. The gradual loss of control is obvious." - p 154
Perhaps one of the most famous influences that Heinlein has had is in the naming of "Waldoes" - just as the Tom Swift novels led to the naming of TASERS (Tom A. Smith Electric Rifles).
"Completely aside from the main problem, Heinlein has included some truly lovely conceits. The best known of these are the machines known as "waldoes," devices for remote control manipulation. Similar machines are in commerical use today, first developed for handling radioactive material, and are generally known as waldoes after those described in the story." - p 35
Heinlein's politics are presented as "Libertarian". I've always found that term to be ambiguous. In Spain, Libertarian = Anarchist; in the US Libertarian is associated more w/ the right-wing, a sortof Anarcho-Capitalist cocktail. To me, the idea of 'Anarcho-Capitalism' is completely self-contradicting & idiotic.
"The society is a libertarian one: to be a first-class citizen you must wear a gun, and if you aren't careful about your manners, you must be prepared to use it." - p 38
"What Heinlein envisions is a parliamentary system and empire like that of 19th Century Britain. John Joseph Bonforte is head of a coalition of minor parties whose interests are libertarian: "free trade, free travel, common citizenship, common currency, and a minimum of Imperial laws and restrictions." The main bone of contention is that common citizenship. Bonforte's Expansionists want to include the native populations of Mars and Venus as full citizens within the Empire, while the party in power, the Humanists, take a strict humans-first attitude." - p 73
& there's an instance of what appeals to me about Heinlein: his inter-species egalitarianism.
Heinlein was important to me as a young'un b/c he was one the 1st SF writers whose work I read. A traveling salesman, of all things, got me to somehow subscribe to a SciFi Book Club - something I don't regret. One of the 1st bks I got was Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold, a bk that was somewhat shocking to me at the tender young pre-pubescent or barely pubescent age I was at when I read it.
"It isn't at all difficult to justify calling Heinlein's second period his Period of Success. The period begins with his return to writing after the war and ends, as did his first period, with one of his better stories, in this case the juvenile novel Have Space Suit—Will Travel, published in 1958." - p 41
It's been over 50 yrs since I mostly stopped reading Heinlein's work b/c of his pro-militarism, pro-incest positions. He rapidly became of lesser importance to me as a SF writer in contrast to the newer writers that I discovered such as Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delany, J.G. Ballard, & the Strugatsky Brothers, amongst many others. Still, at least a few of his bks stand out in my memory as important to me for one reason or another. Have Space Suit—Will Travel is possibly the most prominent of those. In it, a teenager (?) wins a space suit wch he fixes & then uses as something that enables him to travel off-planet. My take-away from it was imagining the possibilities of getting one's foot in the backdoor. It was excellent for stimulating daydreams that might turn out to be practical some day.
Panshin divides Heinlein's work into 3 periods (as of 1968):
"If there is one thing that marks the six novels published so far in Heinlein's third period, it is a change in those things he has lectured about in his stories. Instead of concerning himself with facts, he has written about the morality of sex, religion, war, and politics, but he has treated his opinions as though they were facts." - p 89
"Why this change has come, I cannot say exactly, but I suspect a combination of financial independence and a desire to say the things that he most strongly believes has caused Heinlein to pour himself out on paper. The result from an artistic point of view is a mistake." - pp 89-90
"The last appearance of the idea comes in Starship Troopers, the first novel written in Heinlein's third period. Heinlein has his narrator "prove" as a class assignment that war and moral perfection derive from the instinct to survive, thereby putting a stamp of approval on war. Rico, the narrator, concludes:
"Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics—you name it—is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is—not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be." - p 91
"Shorn of its complications, the plot is as follows: In 1945 a one-month old girl is abandoned on the steps of an orphanage in Cleveland. The girl grows up and at the age of 18 is seduced and left pregnant. It turns out that she is both a functional female and a potentially functioning male. She has the baby, but her female organs are so damaged in the process that they have to be removed and she/he is given hromone shots and turned into a male. The baby, meanwhile, is stolen from the hospital." - p 93
You can probably see where this is going from a galaxy away, time traveler goes back in time to fuck his/her earlier self or some such. More incest, except dandied up a bit.
"In 1961, he published Stranger in a Strange Land, by a good margin his longest book, and a heavily sexual, metaphysical, thoroughly annoying piece of work. It, like Starship Troopers, won the Hugo award as the best science fiction novel of its year." - p 98
Panshin cdn't stand Stranger in a Strange Land, I remember its making a big impression on me as a teenager - at the same time that I found it sortof 'cheesy'. Panshin goes on to criticize another Heinlein:
"A minimum of one-third of this 288-page book, exclusive of conversations, has no reason for existence, since it does not affect the main goal of the story, the winning of the Egg." - p 107
Them's fightin' words pardner! Even as someone who doesn't really care that much about Heinlein I find Panshin to go overboard. "one-third" "has no reason for existence"?! I don't recall reading Glory Road, the novel that this is a criticism of, maybe I'd agree.. but I doubt it.
The full review will eventually be here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticP...
September 10, 2022
I read this when it first came out, and for some reason decided to read it again recently. I was half way through when Panshin passed away. It covers Heinlein's career up through the mid-sixties, including The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It's a very worthy survey of Heinlein's work, his faults and obsessions, accurately pointing out the good and the bad. For some reason I like Glory Road more than he does, but agree on the better books, Have Spacesuit -- Will Travel, for example.
September 5, 2014
Hatchet job by a hack. His analysis of Heinlein is so pedestrian and conventional, I sometimes wonder whether it is simply an act of provocation.
August 28, 2019
Insightful
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