HN Explorer

The Heinlein Score (iannaccone.org)

45 points by ianna ↗ HN
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

26 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 79.3 ms ] thread
michaelpinto
Heinlein was a great guy and all, but for all of this rant against specialization did he ever make a serious attempt to write any other genre besides science fiction? And not for nothing Isaac Asimov wrote about every damn topic under the sun with his non-fiction work...
dmm
I know right! He was totally just a man his whole life too. He should have spent some time as a woman. That was kinda hypocritical of him.
evanb
The quote is from "Time Enough for Love", not "I Will Fear No Evil" :)
dsr_
Heinlein had one trick worked out nearly perfectly: he could persuade you he knew what he was writing about, even if he was making it up out of whole cloth. If you went back and thought about it analytically, you would spot hole after hole... but most people don't.

Persuasion is very entertaining.

lukifer
That's what makes his work so fascinating: Starship Troopers, for instance, is extremely effective at both satirizing and supporting militarism and pseudo-fascism, and you can regularly encounter readers who perceive one but not the other.
jerf
I'm not sure Heinlein was necessarily his own model of a man, nor was it necessarily within his domain to be one due to the fact that he suffered from health issues for pretty much all of his adult life. But he did do more than just write, which the Wikipedia page discusses some of [1], and there's definitely some other stuff that I know he did that does not show up there. For instance, in Expanded Universe there's a rather lengthy travelogue about a trip to the USSR, with what were at the time penetrating insights past the propaganda screen that would have been considered controversial at the time, and we now know to have been true. (There's a lot of lessons in that bit applicable to the world we live in today, albeit not necessarily the same bits of the world, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.)

I'd also personally question whether Heinlein really "really" believed that quote, or if it was an idealized version of an ideal, to coin a phrase.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Heinlein

aapl
I once heard a lecture by Joe Haldeman, an author who was a close friend of a Heinlein. IIRC, he said that Heinlein liked to play by taking ideas to their logical extremes and much of what he wrote should be taken as "a modest proposal" instead of perfectly reflective of his personal beliefs.
mcu
He wrote some fun fantasy stories.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
russell
Well I got 16 out of 21. It appears that I am not so good at fighting, killing or dying.
mgarfias
Being a farmer helps. 18/21 here.
Toucan
Being a naval officer also. 18/21.
learc83
The thing about Heinlein is that everyone thinks that Lazarus Long (the protagonist of the book this is taken from) is just a mouthpiece for Heinlein himself. However, Heinlein is just really good at writing from a particular character's viewpoint.

If you notice whenever the pov is centered on Lazarus, he seems to be a superman who can do nearly anything.

But frequently when the viewpoint shifts to another character, Lazarus' flaws become much clearer, and he seems much more human.

saraid216
That doesn't really change the fact that Lazarus Long (and Jubal Harshaw, for that matter) are basically in-character excuses to espouse Heinlein's views on life, the universe, and everything. Just because he's aware of his own views' flaws doesn't make them not his views.

An author surrogate is not necessarily a Mary Sue.

eevilspock
Heinlein and Ayn Rand shoulda got together.
dublinclontarf
I don't think he would have like her, she was a real bitch, great writer/philosopher but an absolute bitch.
[dead] georgieporgie
I'm sure she'd only have to dye her hair red and throw out some witty comments every now and again to fool him...
riffraff
I wonder, how effectively people can answer such questions.

E.g. you think "yup surely I can build a wall", but concretely you don't even have a clue on how to make, well, concrete.

I am afraid in many cases we are led to assume that we know how to do X because we have never tried it and we have no idea of the complexity of it.

lloeki
You don't need concrete, any kind of mortar will do. You could use clay and stones to set up a wall effectively protecting you from water and cold. Nothing even mentions the wall being made in a particular material; it could just as well be wood. Also I take the goal as encompassing basic techniques such as using a plummet and various strings to have it lined up correctly.

That said, you're right, various people will think the thing to various levels, and here we're reaching Dunning-Kruger territory.

riffraff
yeah I meant to make a more largely encompassing example, but give up because of:

* I meant to make an example related to "walls built without mortar"

* being italian, I thought of the wall as a "muro a secco" about literally "dry wall"

* I went to check and I found out drywall is a radically different thing

* I gave up :)

kaybe
He doesn't ask for a wall that will still stand in a year though. In many cases my answer is "Yes, I can do it, but I probably won't do a great job there."
ctdonath
Score doesn't show on iOS Safari.