• PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au
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      5 months ago

      Helinlein stayed in the navy long enough to pick up all their authoritarian traditions and buy into them full throatedly, but not long enough to go into combat and see them all falling apart and gain some wisdom about it.

      He is fine and he wrote some gems but his political viewpoint is a bunch of poo poo.

      Edit: Also, WTF, I am listening and who has a problem with Andy Weir?

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Heinlein was still pretty liberal for his time, at least as far as authors trying to sell books went. Remember, most of his stuff was right around WW2 and then into the McCarthy era. Imagine trying to dance around socialism when the administration was just itching to put you in jail as an example to the others. And when you get into the 60s and things lightened up, he was right out there, writing the hippie bible, SiaSL.

        • PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au
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          5 months ago

          Hm… according to this article, it’s the opposite. He started out as a Hippie and then married a Republican and everything went to shit.

          I hadn’t know that much of the history (that link’s article links to an even more in depth article), but that’s what it says. I think the truth is probably a little more complicated; as you noted his most hippie-ish books came out after this thing says he was already a fascist. I think a certain amount of it is that he didn’t really have a single consistent ideology (and felt very differently about personal liberty as he did about governmental structure.)

          • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            I don’t know much about his personal beliefs, but his stories are kind of libertarian I think. Capable people usually get away with doing whatever they want.

            The fun of speculative fiction is that it allows the author to posit different societies from our own. Heinlein wrote with many kinds of protagonists in all kinds of different structures. He was a product of his time, of course, but the only part that usually sticks out at me are that the women often don’t have much agency.

            There’s an official Heinlein society community, by the way! They could probably weigh in. !the_heinlein_society@lemmy.world

      • Brokkr@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Some people want their Sci fic to be like Asimov all the time. From this point of view, I can see why they wouldn’t appreciate Weir.

    • DancesOnGraves@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Heinlen is a pompous twat that preaches his off-brand ayn rand ripoff philosiphy through shallow mary sue self-inserts that are never wrong, tell it how it is and are also perfectly competent, virile, have huge dicks and are somehow the most eminent philosiphers of their time. . His prose is juvenile, clunky, and artless . His characters are shallow and one dimensional. Worst of all, he just never stops ranting and preaching about the evils of communism.

      It’s cold war era slop by mediocre propagandist who somehow became convinced of his own greatness.