On: The Predictions of Robert A. Heinlein, from the Co...

[baldfat]

That is just an ignorant statement.

personally I only like "Starship Troopers" and would say he was one of my most disliked SciFi writers. It just feels like a Hippie fueled throw up to see what sticks on the walls, minus Starship Troopers and why did they make that movie when it didn't have anything that the book had to say in it?

[Kluny → baldfat]

You say it's an ignorant statement, then you support that with an entirely personal opinion? Okay, here's mine: I loved Starship Troopers, read every other book he's written and loved them as well, with the exception of Stranger in a Strange Land, which is most people's favourite for some reason.

But almost all of my favourite modern sci-fi authors list Heinlein as a major influence, and he has more Hugo awards than anyone else (Hugo is the major award for science fiction). I feel like he gets a lot of recognition.

[baldfat → Kluny]

Exactly. The author was ignorant to the facts and just used his own personal taste.

I was stating I don't like Heinlein but his is absolutely a top 3 author.

[_khau → baldfat]

Verhoeven said he found the novel to be childish and boring, so he made the movie a sort of parody of the book's pro-fascist leanings.

[lonalzarus → baldfat]

Hippie? That novel has often been characterized as semi-fascist, and it has pre-Anime mechas and alien bug colonies that essentially get genocided, I'm not sure what book you were "reading".

[dragonwriter → lonalzarus]

> Hippie? That novel has often been characterized as semi-fascist,

Well, the “Hippie” characterization was made by GP of the rest of Heinlein’s work (which GP does not like), not ST (of which GP approves).

It's not an uncommon reaction to some of RAH’s work, Stranger in a Strange Land particularly, but it's just as wrong as calling ST semi-fascist.

[sfRattan → lonalzarus]

I suspect Heinlein gets categorized all over the map (from "hippie" to "fascist") because critics looking at only one of his books don't realize that he's using science fiction to explore (but not necessarily fully endorse) different sociopolitical and cultural arrangements. He constructs a Sparta-style government of the military elect which gets mistaken for fascism in Starship Troopers. He describes a free-love new religious movement in Stranger in a Strange Land. He engineers a libertarian-anarchist[1] revolution in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Heinlein portrayed none of these systems as perfect and seemed, to my eyes, to be exploring their implications in a scifi setting rather than plugging for any one of them.

[1]: Libertarian used here in an American context, though some members of the lunar revolution in the novel are monarchists, syndicalists, and anarchists as well.