Jesse and J. Daniel Sawyer talk about For Us, The Living by Robert A. Heinlein
Talked about on today’s show:
1938/39, first fiction, before Lifeline, highschool, Robert E. Howard’s juvenalia, 14 years old, terrible and awesome, natural writers, those who don’t force it, self-confession, the natural writers, tipping their hand all the time, Robert E. Howard later on, stupider and funnier, who is this kid, he sounds like Dan Sawyer, fine a writer they like, read more of that, Heinlein’s most popular juvenile, Have Space Suit Will Travel, a capstone, an epitome of the whole series, Farmer In The Sky, an excellent novel, Time For The Stars, the central characters are so horrible, horrible people, 30 years ago, Between Planets, a little bit like Podkayne Of Mars, count it as, the same literary form, the same basic structure, Starship Troopers, a transitional book, suit the new market, to break the contract, walk it across the street, literary genre is more philosophical dialogue, later books, his preferred form is the philosophical dialogue, main weakness, surprised a couple of times, predict every scene, fresh details, 23 years ago, getting old, lear a few things between books, having known when Heinlein was alive and reading, Heinlein-like novels, Annette Kurtis Clause, a cat a girl and a spaceship, she liked Heinlein, The Unincorporated Man, the sequels, The Unincorporated Woman?, triple or double the length, the premise, a really interesting premise, 2008, technically possible that they read this, who isn’t?, alot of podcast, insights, supergenius, transgenderism is always hidden, why is he like this, why?, the same reason, Stranger In A Strange Land, Starship Troopers, as a book, so much shorter, a good length, at least twelve, maybe seventeen, more plot, less rawness, everyone’s main problem with Heinlein, Perry, The Last Days Of Socrates, the strawmen there, well dressed strawmen, more distance, self-satisfied, echo, do a show by myself, Heinlein is too fuckin smart, it makes him isolated, smart at the typewriter, the result of his arguments with other very smart people, Sturgeon, Goddard, Asimov, Jack Parsons, resentful and hectoring, a background, Secrets Of The Heinlein Epic, the occult background, a Thelemite, the rocket guy, figuring out how to make rocketry work, Scientology, gnosticism, a weird direction, through his second wife, the Philip K. Dick story, a foot in that world, a rationalist, not a materialist, all of these worlds, a grand synethsis, modernity had broken culture, Sixth Column, just right after WWII?, the one book he says he regrets, a short story that John Campbell, racism, yellow peril is awesome, The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag, The Number Of The Beast is a grimoire, one thing on top, a whole other thing going on underneath, how to write, in the guise of a really bad novel, The Pursuit Of The Pankera, an adventure story, a nostalgic revisit of The Puppet Masters, a throwback, really readable, a seperate book, rights clearances, that’s crazy, he was dying when he wrote it, license fees, LibriVox, Heinlein, Furure Fantasia, first science fiction somethings, technically his first fiction, this had never been seen before, the guy who tracked it down, lost, naval academy buddy, Leon Stover, sitting the Heinlein archives in four different peices, more from good writers, new Michael Crichton novel, wasn’t published during his lifetime, raw, scraps of notes, James Patterson, a collab with, Vesuvius, Eruption, based on something, the real guy, somebody vibing with Heinlein, the best hoax ever, everything is in there too, nudity, the transgenderism, more and more later, whatever kink thing, Socrates, The Symposium, as a digression, Margaret St. Clair, a few novels, her shor stories, Weird Tales, wrote up into the 60s at least, she was a witch, weird stuff, in the same region, his letters, regress yourself to an ancient roman, weird stuff explainable by the weird personalities, what this book is, News From Nowhere, by William Morris, a utopian novel, William Guest, the socialist league, very Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, an epoch of rest, the economics, philosophy, no authority, no marriage or divorce, people find pleasure in nature, pleasure in their work, engenders between people, socialism will entail, art life and work, there is a plot, guy has a car crash wakes up, fur coat, nude underneath, a future society, diagonsed as being a guy, punches her old boyfriend, sent for therapy, san fransisco for a minute, a rehab center, tour a rocket factory, winds up in a threesome, much longer stranger, circumnavigating the moon trip, doing Requiem before Requiem, Heinlein got his wish, Door Into Summer, Beyond The Horizon, something from Star Beast, the seeds for everything, mining this book, The Roads Must Roll, the premise for the tech, no strike, the rolling sidewalks are called the ways, Door Into Summer, the rolling roads are in The Door Into Summer, a little bit of Friday in there, so useful, so hepful, Costco, first 10 books for 20 bucks, 2 volumes of Heinlein juveniles in a slipcase, kids interested in reading, how good Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen, more of the same everytime, different everytime, get kids into reading, when you’re a kid you have to have something in hand, nothing to hand neices and nephews, wish-fulfilment bullshit, he does Tom Swift, quanit and handy, making sandwiches, missing wills, nosy neighbours, not for boys, confident in your manhood, Starman Jones, the most non-memorable book of the whole series and its awesome, orphans, orphan mentality, a stepmom and a new stepdad, homeless bum, very 1930s very 2026y book, guilds, the system is rigged against us, cheating your way into success and meaning is helpful, keeping your soul, how Heinlein got into the naval academy, state senator, went and camped out, impressed or annoyed him to death, a lot of competition, the scions of wealthy houses, a poor kid from the ozarks, look at old magazines, from 1912 up to the 1930s, all the rich people magazines are putting your kid into summer school or military school, Robert W. Chambers, Hastur, The King In Yellow, The Repairer Of Reputations, America’s imperial future, feels like the 2020s, suicide booths, Aleistair Croley and William Morris, The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth, very tounge in cheek, Idiocracy, the same idea, the movie version, an army experiment, a future that’s different, that formula with Looking Backward, The Sleeper Wakes, The Door Into Summer, Rip Van Winkle, not a science fiction story, how funny America is, my how things are changed, everybody’s Heinlein, sitting around the pool, the beautiful naked lady, the slightly fatter naked lady, Jubal Harshaw, his physique, a different experience reading Stranger now, a lot more about the personalities, who all these people are, roman a’clef, an afterword, a special edition, kickstarter backers, general release, Glory Road, adult juveniles, a distinct literary form vs. a target audience, to tell an adult story, drank from the well and I was full, water brother, grokked it well, quite an experience, a scene right in the middle of the book, Rodin’s sculpture of the caryatids, about that scene in the center, the sculpure gallery, the decoder ring for the whole thing, audiobook, moved out into the wilderness, recording studio, August, recording a lot, writing Secrets Of The Heinlein Epic, the juveniles and a few others, distinct in literary history, publicity, keep reading Heinlein’s later works, obviously garbage, derrangement syndrome, Our Opinions Are Correct, this is incoherent, you’re mad at someone who’s dead, mentally model people, there isn’t a little homunculus in your head, that scene from Men In Black, a whole starship full of forces and actors and dicipline, constantly being overriden, explaining their weird behavior, a very diciplined crew, undisciplined crews, driving off the road and getting divorces, what have you, the art of agency, sort your drives out and point them in the same direction, Marvin Minsky, I read every Heinlein, “other better writers”, want to say newer authors, John Scalzi, we don’t need book 2, book 4, Joe Haldeman’s Forever War, you can’t have Orson Scott Card, plays nice, using his blog to promote their books, forbidden, I read Heinlein, I sold all my Heinlein, for Lovecraft, turning over in his graves, fact masquerading as taste, a disservice to everybody invovled, an echo chamber sort of thing, he is his own best echo chamber, at his worst, I Will Fear No Evil, a super-cool book, in terms of literary value, how Heinlein worked as a person and author, Ginny had to pay the hospital bills, Lurton Blassinggame, shortened it, augmented it or retooled it, some really interesting ideas, similar to this book in a way, easy to miss, finding out, newspaper reports of how he died, a fun little scene, still newspapers and stuff, doing great for 1939, the internet from Friday, human invovled search engines, ai tokens, the woman at the beach, her name was Diana, this is all a dream of the guying on the beach, Glory Road, psychotic break, a unique quality of its own, all of them start with death, in most of his books after Stranger, a repeating pattern, a very interesting road, Heinlein was big into reading ancient mythology, an ancient afterlife myth, another aspect of this book, mention a lot, had this been published in 1940 or 1939, a huge hit or immediately dismissed, Ayn Rand, the same thought, she gets way too much fuckin attention in the 20th century, The Fountainhead, a very robotic book, Anthem, they’re not humans, they’re robotoids, mythological abstractions, sadder, university, very excited about college and university, economics, micro and macro, the ideas more interestin than the calculations, of course he’s right, he does another thing he’s really good at, Farmer In the Sky, food, breakfast, strawberries, flapjacks, the long list of enjoyable food, the sensous pleasure, if this was 1939, a Murad!, not a lot of penetration, milk glands, the female form, a nudsit, another Margaret St. Clair connection, a sacramental aspect, occultism, the gnostic and hermetic went their seperate ways, anti-body, hateful of the natural world, Sam Altman, destroy humanity and replace it with the machine god, underlying Marxism, very body embracing, the physical body as the contact point between the temporal and eternal universe, of that tradition, anarcho primitivists, a good cup a coffee, pet a dog, be chased by a goose, his analyis, description of the game, a “master”, the alternate rules at the end, something homeschoolers should be doing, the history of the 20th century would be different, a bold claim, people are highly motivated by ideas, the whole 20th century is explainable, incredibly popular with dentists, the New Deal, look at the economics, projected into the future past us, he predicted UBI, Wisconsin a fair amount, this is not a novel in the normal sense, an educational tract disguised as a novel, the Vril book, The Coming Race by Edward Bulwyer Lytton, triumph of the human spirit, big lady positive, power rods, symbolic, the bullion called Bovril, it was huge, pre-WWI Germany, huge popularity, we are becoming, lay a lot of the histy of the world at the feet of Marx and Engels, the end of the draft, the Moon mission, the draft was ended by Milton Friedman, hilarious and crazy, a friend born in 1946, my favourite billionaire likes rockets, he’s interested in things I’m interested in, he’s interested in satellites, sending my girlfriend, D.D. Harriman, Space X, the books are incredibly powerful, people model their lives on characters in books and television, a citation for that, even the stupidest people, Paul Krugmann, wanted to be the foundation character, Hari Seldon, Peter Turchin, fail upward, they didn’t read the book, they read the ai summary of the book, Al Qaeda, a parallel evolution, a big science fan, 100191, numeralogy arguments, the romans not having arabic numerals, not having punctuation, internal signaling, the USS Cole, personal experience, a learn to read book, 1840 version of Chicken Little, a leaf falls on her tail, runs to tell her mother, out let us run, Duck Luck, Fox Lox, in to my den where we will be safe, the end of the world story, Paradise, 2012 (2009), Roland Emmerich, a really funny comedy, it’s a comedy!, it’s very funny, When Worlds Collide, a retelling of Noah’s ark and the rebirth of the world, all the ladies, we’ll be safe from the falling of the sky, ate em all up, end of story, a very valuable and resonant story, are you the fox?, seeing it with my ears, questioning my senses, what if you’re wrong, when gets things a little bit too pay, cringe, a refrain in the book, his assembly campaign, reading through it, stops and has the exponents of the great future, it serves our needs, it’s not the perfect system, when Lazarus Long gets involved, history doesn’t have an end state, a remarkable individual, George O. Smith novel, Hellflower, scanned it up, find the magazine art, Virgil Finlay, analogy for poppies or heroin, the drug running sort of stuff, “indespensible”, “other better writers have taken up Heinlein’s torch”, writers who are less important to read, for your self, it’s super fucking interesting and compelling, don’t worry about spoilers, how it explores the ideas, there’s never been a book where he half-asses, goes in with both feet, he’s just a man, he didn’t agree with himself, a Wikipedia entry for BRIC shares, cleaning up shelves, what is this?, some sort of investment thing, they were trying to do what Heinlein’s trying to do, the words “social credit”, not the same as the chinese system, the fun part, the authors: Heinlein, Orwell, Aldous Huxley, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Julian Huxley, The Tissue Culture King, a Wakanda story, a hidden african country, an african native doing some sort of obesicanece ritual, a tissue culture, he’s culturing tissue, they took the king, spreading him around, for mind control, a telepathy thing, a metal helmet, mind-controlled, 1911 area, republished in Amazing, simultaneously published, fuckn weird Guy, T.H. Huxley, H.G. Wells, strange fuckin interesting guy, way into nudity for my personal hanging around, put on a robe once in a while, bro, very big into hospitality, his relationship with Philip K. Dick, a defense of Heinelin, the funniest man ever, broken and hilarious, hitting on everybody, the two most different kind of guys, courtly and knightly, awkward and lusty and sweaty, the mad monk of science fiction, the most influential authors of the 20th century, top down vs. bottom up, literary technique, evolved, technically better writers, also into social credit, one foot in today and one foot out of time, hard to find in any writer, fully of the moment, the fashionable frame, an example, W.R. Bennett, W.A.C. Bennett, the socialist party, currently in power, they were running as “social credit” (socreds), in power in Alberta, they can’t do anything because they’re provinical, they can’t issue money, they eventually become a conservative party, what his dad did, 1871, a very different history, Kamchatka, last colonized, wild, a whole bunch of social construction, from a free enterprise party, those two parties are competing for the attention of British Columbian voters, that’s what Saudi Arabia has done, Saudi Arabia, Norway, taken the extra steps, how fuckedd things up with ai, human flourishing, if this book had been published in 1939, sunk and lost forever, really popular, politicians generally don’t know anything, socializing and getting promoted because of his midwit status, a foothold, defensible, an a b test, in this version of reality, coming late as it does, almost nobody reads at all, same time zone, we used to be neighbours, Vancouver Island, norther part of North America, the Philip K. Dick bay area, nude beach, Heinlein’s old house, cops enforcing nobody on the beach after sunset, they might hurt themselves, the stairs aren’t lit, bring a flashlight, we are run by idiots who didn’t read no fuckin books, British Columbia, west coast time, they decided to do away with daylight savings time, until California acted, they’re so fuckin dysfunctional, the newest, other than Alaska and Tasmania, not as fully corrupt the farther you go back, the more currupt it is, the corruption scandals in the birth of Canada, California was born corrupt, the corruption counterbalanced, we just want to be honest, craziness, 2nd premeier of British Columbia was Amour De Cosmos, tail end of the 19th century, doukhobourss, nudist pacificsts, the tsar’s military, beaten by the cops for being nudist pacificst, pederasts, aristoi, the elites, Socrates and Plato, shorty flatty, a wrestler, UFC guys, but gay sort of but not really, he’s got a wife, that traitor has a sexy body, send the girls out, women were inherited polluting, not out about it, bronze age pervert, a twitter person, a philosopher, a proper philosophy book, bulgarian, Claremont Institute, selective breeding, born in 1980, a weird combination of vitalism and ancient greek homo-eroticism and liberalism, stimulating, books look nice on the shelf, City Of Endless Night by Milo Hastings, gazebo, a book on chicken breeding, one of the William Hope Hodgson set, Bernarr McFadden, a magazine publisher and body builder, super against vaccines, naming his children with the letter b, faking his numbers, an invasion of the United States by the Japanese right after WWI, an under ground proto-nazi civilization, chemical fertilizer food, refused to surrender, just happens to speak German, a lot like this book but as a dystopia, a royalty breeding level, really weird, synthetic creation of fertilizer, synthetic petroleoum, drugs, different levels of the society, where the workers arent, hedonism and breeding all day, Stanley Kubrick, Brave New World, we’re there, the Fabians, Coventry, the reserve system, two more books, more walking around, If This Goes On, a naval aviator, ballistics guy, taking things apart and putting things together, not replaceable, fun and funny, another different thing, Down From Ten, Hadrian’s Flight, a podcast version, narrating things by other people, Suave Rob series, satire comedy series, surfs supernovas, short story collections, southern gothic horror, Time Of The Twins, Kyrnn, Time For The Stars, the girl one, Podkayne Of Mars, visit Heinlein, admire but don’t enjoy, horrible people, horribly broken people, an unpleasant read, night owl, west coast, easier to get up earlier, private tutor, professor obeisance to a lot of things, political parties, I like reading more than one author, a human religion, one of those ones, doctrinaire stuff, all models break down, enough power, pry the Heinlein estate out of their hands, literary agency, not being very aggressive, how many such cases, try and find a book of his on the shelf, Clifford D. Simak’s estate, way better than Clarke, a power in short stories, The Star, about a jesuit priest coming back from a solar system, the short stories were hard to find, The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, The Nine Billion Names Of God, a classic of science fiction, Olaf Stapledon novels, translated into short stories, orbits and orbital mechanics, The Haunted Spacesuit, the ship’s cat is having kittens inside the spacesuit, he has power, Fredric Brown, What Mad Universe, it’s very good, it’s very funny, very meta, John W. Campbell style editor, a bunch of ribbons, an alternate dimensions, a comedy, in the body of another person, a comedy of customs, a science fiction universe, science fiction is out and westerns are in, recycle other people’s stories, rocket people, beautiful ladies with brass bra bikinis, a cover of Startling Stories, supermeta, an excellent writer, inspired Lawrence Block, the last Burglar book, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, The Screaming Mimi, the writer’s writer, pal around with, admire his writing, see you on twitter, chicken pictures, birds and dogs, no pigs yet, dogs, gooses, turkeys, assholes, eating her pigs, couple geese, tons of chickens, cattle are way less work than chickens, beef, delicious, acreage, goats, straight to cattle, water is difficult, having water delivered, gazebo, the cloth walls come down, a tent cabin in Yosemite, negative 40, 70 or about 20, 32 is zero, grok it, 98 or 32, get those numbers wrong, the freezing point water, the wrong altitude, sea level, boiling point of seawater, now we have to be French about it, Ostreich, little bits of history, okay whatever, Austria’s greatest cultural achievement that Hitler was German and Beethoven was Austrian, the guy always comes from the periphery, Stalin’s from george, Lincoln’s from Illinois, encapsulates the hate, the real life Hari Seldon, grand unified theory, elite overproduction, he needed to be in this conversation in this book, counter elite, corrupt clique of the imperial corps, find a parade and march in front of it, the excellent discussion.
Posted by Jesse Willis