The Sword and Laser discussion

I'm about 1/3 of the way through the audio-book, and so far there's been one big action scene followed by four hours of people sitting around a hotel room discussing politics. Is this a book about a revolution, or a bunch of college students on Thursday night?

I suppose there was a time when I would've found the philosophizing interesting, but after fifteen years online, I'm just waiting for Mike to call Mannie a Nazi while Wyoh and the Professor get into an argument about gnu control.

gnu control? Was that a pun? ;) (Or should I say "Was joke?")

I'm up to chapter 5 and was thinking sorta the same thing (though not necessarily about how Mike/Mychelle would classify each--haven't gotten to a point where the Professor has joined them).

I see in Heinlein's early teen novels the same flaws he cultivated so successfully later in his career.

Reading (listening to) older sci-fi books with the mindset of a post-postmodern iPhone4 user is certainly a challenge I can see.

just wait, there's plenty of discussion of politics. I was a little hesitant when I was reading the section you're at, but I'm about 4/5 done now and really enjoying the debate in politics. Really has me thinking about the sort of debates the USA had to go through when they were first putting together our Constitution.

I finished the book last night. If you are looking for a lot of action, this is the wrong book. Its more about questioning society in general. Its designed to make you think more about how your society works in relationship to it.

terpkristin wrote: "gnu control? Was that a pun? ;) (Or should I say "Was joke?")"

Is ancient Internet meme. Back in the mid '90s, the net was still small enough that if someone on a discussion group mentioned "gun control" or "scientology," the place would be flooded by trolls who spent all their free time searching DejaNews for mentions of hot-button topics. The only safe way to refer to controversial issues was to munge the names. There was gnu control (and fully automatic emus) and $c!3n+0109y and Elron the Half-Loony.

And whatever you do, you don't want to mention Kibo.

Brad wrote: "I finished the book last night. If you are looking for a lot of action, this is the wrong book. Its more about questioning society in general. Its designed to make you think more about how your ..."

I just have a thing about author filibusters. There's nothing wrong with an author making points in his books, but it shouldn't get in the way of the story. Over in the Utopia thread, I mentioned Ken MacLeod's Fall Revolution series, which covers much of the same political ground, but also tells an exciting tale of a sex-bot suing for her freedom, and a genocidal war against post-Singularity computers. There are scenes where people discuss politics over beers, but they're spread over many chapters.

And I should point out, I'm an anarcho-capitalist, so I pretty much agree with Professor de la Paz. I've read plenty of non-fiction works making all his points, and have had lots of discussions like the one from the book. But when I'm reading a story, I'd like them to get on with it already. Show a society built on anarchist principles and see how it works instead of just discussing it.

Sean wrote: "But when I'm reading a story, I'd like them to get on with it already."

I think this might just be Heinlein's style. I've only read Starship Troopers as well but it seems he enjoys spending page after page talking politics.

Sean wrote: "Is ancient Internet meme..."

Yeah, I remember it (vaguely). I was trying to play along. I failed. ;)

I guess that my "beef" with the action followed by TONS of talking is that it's kind of boring to read, not even getting into how it would be done this day and age. But it is a comment on society...we do a LOT of talking and signficantly less action. Not even just at a national level, but I see tons of talking and no action in many facets of my life, including work and neighborhood-level stuff, too.

I figure this is just Heinlein's commentary on that, even if it does make for some tedious reading. Makes for tedious listening, too, when people do it in real life.

... and yet, Politics and Science Fiction is as old as the genre itself?

Thomas More's Utopia, Voltaire's Candide or Micromégas - even Jule Verne and H.G.Wells, etc etc ... and certainly the Sci-Fi 'New Wave' afterwards (Brunner, Dick, Disch, Moorcock, ...)

Heinlein was just one of these 'pulp mag' writers, who went for the 'political' despite the magazine editors and book publishers? Asimov, Bradbury, Pohl, Clarke ... - they all had their 'politics' in place - that was part of the fun?

There's nothing more boring than the 'new' gen (after 1989) - educated writers, with science degrees, who could write accurately about non-existing tech nonsense, while their characters were shallow as a glass of tap water. They really had nothing to say anymore IMHO (with a few exceptions, of course!).

And then came TV and TV-novels that ruined it all. Kids today think SyFy channel when they hear Science Fiction. They think these boring TV-Shows are good.

I rest my case.

Alex wrote: "They really had nothing to say anymore IMHO"

That reminded me of Sci-Fi author Robert J. Sawyer rant about the state of modern science fiction: "A Galaxy Far Far Away" My Ass!

Even back in the old days there were pulp science fiction serials. Today I think there are modern authors that make interesting political and philosophical statements in their work. You can find quality and drek in any age.

I read this book a few times years and years ago. My memory is that it was created for the Juvenile book Market (aka 10 to 17 years of age).

This is a time in most people lives were a little bit of politics and a lot of anti-establishment is percolating through their consciousness.

I'm not sure how well the book will transfer over to an older age group. I expect the attitudes and arguments will appear to be a little simplistic, but I do remember enjoying the story it when I was 17.

After finishing the book, I'll admit that it does get better, but it's still too talky. It would be much better if Heinlein had spent more time showing us a functional anarchist society instead of having Manny and the Prof explain the principles behind such a society.

Sean, you nailed it! :)

Hello all, brand new to the group and to the podcast but I am going to take a deep breath and jump on in.

This is one of my favorite RAH books and has been so since high school. On first read it can be a little dense, Heinlien does tend toward word walls but. This book the way I have always read it is about potential.

I won't say too much to avoid spoilers but one thread that kept popping up always intrigued me: "Even if the revolution is successful would it make a difference?"

I am just starting. Got a laugh finding out that the title I have used for the last ten years (General Specialist) is actually in there. I've read the book (eons ago), must have forgotten it...

This seems to be Heinlein's M.O. Starship Troopers was painfully difficult to get through. I am a little disapointed. I was really hoping for a little more story and a little less philosophy. Also, in my head I can't make the narrator not sound like Mordin Sollis from Mass Effect 2.

In my head he always sounded like "Scotty" from the starship Enterprise.

Not quite sure why.

I recently saw the HBO version of John Adams, and that is what the book reminded me of the most. :)

Heinlein is such a creature of extremes. When he writes action sequences, they really drive along, with just enough detail to keep it visceral without bogging down.
But man, when he preaches, he PREACHES. We're talking Ayn Rand level preachy. Books like MiaHM are a mixed bag. He gets seriously preachtastic in things like Stranger in a Strange Land. The most amusing case is probably Glory Road, which is a slam-bang action book, followed by a 120 pages of politics.
My biggest problem with Moon was always that there's no actual utopia being gestured at in all the utopianism. While Manny decries the degree to which the loonies have fallen from their 'anarcho-rationalist' ideals, it's not like the Professor's ideal society ever actually existed. Their most libertarian times were also full of the same gritty violence and sexism and horror that characterized the American Old West. That's utopia?

"...That's utopia?" - It is for the winners. :)

The strongest always have more fun in a true libertarian future (regardless of the protestations of libertarians)

Stan wrote: ""...That's utopia?" - It is for the winners. :)

The strongest always have more fun in a true libertarian future (regardless of the protestations of libertarians)"

What's a "true libertarian future"?

Sean wrote:
What's a "true libertarian future"?

The Mad Max movies? The 'Fallout' video games? Any similar post-apocalyptic nightmarescape in which law and order (funded by your taxes and mine) have been replaced by the rule of the fist and gun. Heinlein was fond of promoting the bumper-sticker-logic that "an armed society is a polite society." History has proven that axiom wrong over and over and over again, but that doesn't seem to sink in for "rational anarchists" like the Professor, or any dozen other Heinlein mouthpieces like him.
Don't get me wrong, I like the rollicking Heinlein plenty...I just read his ideas of 'utopia' with more than a common dosage of salt.

P. wrote: "Sean wrote:
What's a "true libertarian future"?

The Mad Max movies? The 'Fallout' video games? Any similar post-apocalyptic nightmarescape in which law and order (funded by your taxes and mine) ..."

Of course none of that is what actual anarchists who exist outside of books and movies actually advocate, not even the Bakuninite bomb-throwers of the 19th and early 20th Century. I think you're conflating the destruction of society, which is what the examples you cite are about, with the destruction of the state, which is altogether different. Anarchists aren't interested in a breakdown of order, but breaking the state's monopoly on power, and many have put a great deal of thought into how to maintain order with neither the state nor armed thugs.

You really should try Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom.

I've read some of the anarchist and pseudo-anarchist 'rationales,' and found them self-contradictory...but let's stick with Heinlein. Unlike some pacifist anarchism (a concept I find oxymoronic at best), Heinlein's quite explicit: good manners, self-preservational behavior in the absence of an over-arching state, comes from the threat of violent death. It's a theme he repeats in Beyond This Horizon, Time Enough for Love, Number of the Beast, Cat Who Walks Through Walls, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Don't the loonies of Harsh Mistress eventually get their way,not with rationed debate, but with bombs?

This was my first Heinlein book and to be honest I don't see myself trying another.

I wanted to like this book but it just didn't do it for me. It felt like a chore sometimes to read. I wish I would have read this book when I was younger, I think I would have enjoyed it so much more. I do appreciate what Heinlein does with the book but don't care too much for the execution.


I also couldn't get past the fact that the success of their revolution was based on the capabilities of a super compliant thinking machine. Seemed like a cheap and easy plot device to me.

I'm glad I read it, I understand why it's an important book within the genre but it's an average to below average read for me.

Brian wrote: "I wish I would have read this book when I was younger, I think I would have enjoyed it so much more."

In my Goodreads review, I actually said something to this effect, that I thought younger readers would enjoy it more than older ones. I certainly felt like if I'd read it while in college, I'd have been more amped by it than now, when I'm completely jaded. ;)

I also think it would have been cool to read when it came out instead of 40 some odd years later.

Yeah, this was a definite issue for me while reading - not just the debates, but Heinlein/the narrator's tendency to often tell us what happened in summary form (for pages upon pages!) instead of being shown actual scenes (ye olde 'show instead of tell' rule of fiction being broken over and over). Fortunately, that aspect lessened greatly in the last third.

Minor support and props for Sean here: in opposition to the Bakuninites we also have the Kropotkin-ites. "Natural" feeling and humanity, we all really care for each other, etc. So not all anarchists are bomb-throwers.
Nevertheless, since I did read Heinlein when I was young and impressionable (hooray for Glory Road and Waldo and Magic, Inc.), and those helped push me towards a mainly libertarian outlook -- hey, the state is a necessary evil ( fun text: Anarchy, State and Utopia; definitely opposed to the notion of the state in A Theory of Justice: Original Edition) -- or if not evil, a threat which always attempts to encroach on our liberty. IMHO. Stress on M and H.
Ah, this whole discussion would be more fun if we were all having a beer and pizza. (together...any number of us might be having them independently...)