{"id":28926,"date":"2014-11-29T00:02:55","date_gmt":"2014-11-29T05:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28926"},"modified":"2014-11-28T11:11:33","modified_gmt":"2014-11-28T16:11:33","slug":"another-part-of-robert-heinleins-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/11\/29\/another-part-of-robert-heinleins-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Another part of Robert Heinlein&#8217;s legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.everyjoe.com\/2014\/11\/26\/politics\/unthanksgiving-leftists-hate-thanksgiving\/\" target=\"_blank\">John C. Wright<\/a> explains why Robert A. Heinlein was so important to the development of the science fiction field:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you are unfamiliar with the name Robert Heinlein, he is rightly called the Dean of Science Fiction; his pen is the one that first broke through from the pulps into the slicks, and then into juveniles, and then into the mainstream. Were it not for him, we would still be a Hugo Gernsbeckian ghetto.<\/p>\n<p>Heinlein was also a bold advocate for equality of all races and both sexes, at a time when such ideas were not discussed in polite society. He was the main champion in our little Science Fiction ghetto of all things Progressive and Leftwing, that is, the Leftwing of that time. (They have since reversed their standards, for example, swapping a principled opposition to censorship to a full-throated advocacy of it, or swapping an unprincipled opposition to monogamy to an even more unprincipled advocacy of abstinence combined with libertinism.)<\/p>\n<p>The Left owe Heinlein an immense debt of gratitude. Ergo they are ungrateful.<\/p>\n<p>While working on the novel that was to become <em>Rocket Ship Galileo<\/em>, Heinlein warned his agent that the inclusion of an ethnically diverse cast was not only deliberate \u2014 it was non-negotiable, and if an editor requested the removal of the Jewish character, Blassingame (the agent) was to take the book elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>This is from the letter Heinlein wrote to his agent about his wishes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>\u201cI have deliberately selected a boy of Scotch-English pioneer ancestry, a boy whose father is a German immigrant, and a boy who is American Jewish. Having selected this diverse background they are then developed as American boys without reference to their backgrounds. You may run into an editor who does not want one of the young heroes to be Jewish. I will not do business with such a firm. The ancestry of the three boys is a \u201cmust\u201d and the book is offered under those conditions. My interest was aroused in this book by the opportunity to show to kids what I conceive to be Americanism. The use of a diverse group &#8230; is part of my intent; it must not be changed. &#8230; I am as disinterested as a referee but I want to get over an object lesson in practical democracy.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Commenting on this is one Mitch Wagner, freak, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/blogs\/2010\/08\/heinlein-forward-looking-diversity-advocate-or-sexist-bigot-yes\" target=\"_blank\">writing on the blog maintained by Tor books<\/a> \u2014 one of the largest and most well-respected names in science fiction publishing, as well as being my own publisher. This is not some overlooked corner or outlier opinion.<\/p>\n<p>Wagner snarks:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>This is all admirable, but let\u2019s keep in mind what\u2019s missing from this cast: Asians; disabled people; non-Americans of any kind; lesbians, gays, and the transgendered; Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or representatives of the other major world religions. Heinlein\u2019s book was enormously ethnically diverse in that it included the full variety of American Judeo-Christian boys.<\/p>\n<p>And even the notion that the ethnically diverse boys are \u201cdeveloped as American boys without reference to their backgrounds\u201d is a little creepy.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The freakish Mr. Wagner is not satisfied that Heinlein stormed the breach for them, being the first science fiction writer to put a Jew (Morrie Abrams from <em>Rocket Ship Galileo<\/em>), a Filipino (Juan Rico, <em>Starship Troopers<\/em>), a Negro (Rod Walker from <em>Tunnel in the Sky<\/em> implicitly and Mr. Kiku from <em>The Star Beast<\/em> explicitly) a Mohammedan (Dr. \u201cStinky\u201d Mahmoud from <em>Stranger in a Strange Land<\/em>) or a Maori girl (Podkayne from <em>Podkayne of Mars<\/em>) in the spotlight as a main character and hero or heroine, but then criticizes Heinlein for not having as a main character \u2026 who? A cross-dressing homosexual castrati Hindu as a main character in a children\u2019s book published in 1947? The Democrat Party still had Jim Crow laws and segregation in the South, and in those days the militant arm of the Democrat Party, the KKK, were still lynching blacks.<\/p>\n<p>Do you understand to what the freakish Mr. Wagner is objecting? He is objecting to the melting pot theory that men of different races, locked into endless mutual hatred in the old world, can leave their hatred behind here in the new world. He is objecting to racelessness. Hence, he is a racist.<\/p>\n<p>Heinlein showed backbone and gorm and ran the risk of being blackballed and put out of business by the Left (who, then as now, have major influence amounting to near total control in the New York publication industry) \u2014 and for this bold stance, unheard-of at the time, the gormless and freakish Mr Wagner criticizes Mr. Heinlein.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John C. Wright explains why Robert A. Heinlein was so important to the development of the science fiction field: If you are unfamiliar with the name Robert Heinlein, he is rightly called the Dean of Science Fiction; his pen is the one that first broke through from the pulps into the slicks, and then into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,831,7,10,28,13],"tags":[198,99,478,85],"class_list":["post-28926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-business","category-history","category-liberty","category-media","category-usa","tag-equalrights","tag-racism","tag-robertheinlein","tag-sf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7wy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28927,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28926\/revisions\/28927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}