Heinlein

Heinlein
By Daniel G. Jennings,
Master Blogger
I just got done reading "For Us the Living"* the first novel written by Robert A. Heinlein, the greatest science fiction writer who ever lived. This book was written in the late 1930s and rejected by publishers at the time because it was too radical largely because Heinlein advocated sexual freedom. Today it seems old hat but at the time it was radical.
Heinlein was forced to make his living in the pulps as a science fiction writer and children’s book writer for the next twenty years not allowed to write adult novels again until the late 1950s. Then like another neglected literary master, Sinclair Lewis, Heinlein revolutionized American writing and was forgotten for it.
Since he wrote science fiction and held unfashionable political opinions, Heinlein knew he’d never win the Nobel Prize, or the Pulitzer Prize or be honored by the literary elite. He would never get into the pantheon of great American writers alongside people like Hemingway and Steinbeck. Largely because Heinlein, like Sinclair Lewis, challenged and criticized all aspects of society he was just as wont to knock the left’s sacred cows as he was the right’s. Heinlein criticized bankers but he also attacked bureaucrats and politicians. He criticized religion as a threat to freedom but he was just as skeptical and fearful of psychiatry and social engineering. Heinlein liked and respected the military and for all his criticism of American society he was an old fashioned patriot who never wavered.
Unlike Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke whose science fiction could be dismissed as flights of the imagination Heinlein wrote about basic human questions, sex religion, war, freedom and dared challenge conventional thinking. Unlike most intellectuals Heinlein was critical of pacifism and believed peace should be based on military might.
Heinlein was one of the few literary figures in America to denounce the evil of Communism. Unlike most American intellectuals Heinlein had a healthy dislike of Europe which he saw as a source of barbarism and tyranny. He was also a promoter of sexual equality, sexual freedom and privacy long before such things were fashionable. Yet Heinlein was willing to attack such liberal sacred cows as the Peace Corps in his work.
The scope and breadth of Heinlein’s vision as expressed in "For Us the Living" is incredible. In this book, written in 1938, Heinlein predicted that Hitler would commit suicide by shooting himself, that Nazi Germany would collapse because it lacked the resources to fight a protracted war, both things happened. Heinlein predicted a United Europe that would eventually collapse. He failed to predict American involvement in World War II but rightly predicted McCarthyism a hysterical anti-Communist crusade in the 1950s.
Some of the other predictions are also interesting, Heinlein predicted that the United States government in the year 2086 would be based upon respecting the right to privacy of its citizens. Today of course much of our politics is dedicated to fights over rights like abortion, contraception, freedom to read, the right to bear arms etc.
Heinlein predicted televangelism and the Religious Right as well. He predicted that extreme fundamentalists led by television preachers would seriously try to limit Americans religious freedom in the late 1930s and early 40s. Heinlein also predicted that these people would discredit religion and force average people to rise up and take action against the religious extremists. Heinlein’s criticism and skepticism of religion and championing of reason are things we should well remember in this era where too many thinkers champion spirituality and cite religion as a basis of morality.
Some of Heinlein’s other predictions are notable he predicted that private automobiles would be replaced by mass transit. That a system of socialized medicine would have to be introduced and that the government would one day have to provide income to citizens. In terms of technology he predicted people movers, television, magnetic levitation, high speed air travel, genetic engineering.
Heinlein was no dogmatist unlike Ayn Rand he realized that pure capitalism was unworkable and massive government intervention in the economy unavoidable. In particular he saw that entrepreneurs and businessmen could just as easily be hindrances to progress as promoters of progress. Yet, he refused to buy into the silly dogma of Communism and saw clearly the threat Communism posed.
Heinlein’s attitude to Communism was interesting, he backed Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan because he believed they would be more effective in fighting Communism. Many were horrified by Heinlein’s decision to back Goldwater (whose personal beliefs on such issues as sex were close to Heinlein’s) in 1964, yet in light of the needless death and destruction caused by the Vietnam War launched by the enlightened liberal Johnson we can see that Heinlein might have been right.
Heinlein’s works are well worth rereading today because they put our world in a very different light. In particular they show many of its shortcoming and point to a better world that can be created by the human spirit and American ingenuity.
* "For Us The Living: A Comedy of Customs" by Robert A. Heinlein, Scribner, New York, 2004.