(no subject)

[stonebender]

Today is Gilly (my baby Dobie's) 5th birthday! That's right, her birthday is The Ides of March. Given her nature sometimes, it seems oddly appropriate. :-)

Yesterday, serenejournal very thoughtfully went looking for xango images for me to use as user pics. She found several that I liked. My favorite, wouldn't really work, but there is at least one other that is quite cute. If I can use the term, "cute" to refer to xango. :-) Then she discovered, my free account only allowed three user pics and guess what she did? She paid for my account!

Recently, there was (for the 1,300,032nd time) another discussion about Heinlein on Alt.Poly. I do not intend to bring that discussion here, but it brought up some stuff that I thought I'd mention.

I am a Heinlein fan. I read my first novel of his when I was about 12 (Rocketship Galileo for crying out loud. Nazi's on the Moon, *sheesh*!). I didn't see any of his flaws (which are legion) but there was something about him that spoke to me. I still believe many of the things I am most proud of about myself came from reading his books. My social activism, much of my moral code, even how I approach my faith.

I understand why people don't like his work or what they think he advocated. In fact, now that I'm older, I agree with many of the criticisms. Personally, I'm pretty conflicted about the man. He wrote the first short story, "Waldo", I ever read that had a person with a disability very like mine. I can't tell you how powerful it was for me to read about someone like me getting into space. Being a part of the future! Now the ending of "Waldo" sucked, but that didn't matter to me.

Many of Heinlein's characters had a disability of one sort or another. Unfortunately, he also had some pretty negative stereotypes of people with disabilities. How the Howard families for example in Methuselah's Children treated their disabled children. Drives me nuts!

What's interesting, lately, is how I don't really feel any need to defend or argue about Heinlein. It doesn't matter to me if anyone else ever agrees with me on the subject. I take the good I find in his work and I ignore the bad stuff. I'm not interested in convincing anyone of Heinlein's value.

I argue about things that matter to me. Trying to stop George Bush and his cronies from getting the U.S. military to kill people over oil. Getting U.S. government to treat health care as a right rather than a luxury reserved for those who can afford it. Getting a health-care system that treats people like human beings, human rights, the environment etc.

I don't really much care whether my science-fiction tastes coincide with anyone's. I don't have the energy and it's just not very important.

Comments

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

This is *exactly* how I feel about atheism and poly and so many other things. (Not that they're not important, but that it's not important enough to me that people agree with me about them that I'm willing to spend much energy arguing about them. Peace and justice are entirely different matters.)

My Feelings about Heinlein

[pack-rat.livejournal.com]

First off, I'm new to this LiveJournal thing and hope that it's all right to comment on your entries even though I don't know you. If not, then please accept my apologies.

I'm enjoying reading your journal, but especially liked this entry. I remember as a kid, reading just about every Heinlein book I could get my hands on. His social and spiritual philosophy had a big affect on me as I was growing up.

Then, about ten years later I re-read some of those same books that had been such a big part of my young life. I couldn't believe how offensive some of his characterizations were. "Methuselah's Children" was a great example of a story that made me uncomfortable on so many levels.

But these days I can occasionally re-visit his books with some of my old enjoyment. Yes, I recognize what I consider to be the flaws in his thinking, but I am able to look past those and focus on the positive ideas that he expressed in most of his work. He covered a lot of topics that most authors wouldn't touch back then, and he doesn't have to be 100% right about everything for me to find the good in his writings.

And when you look at what's happening in our own government today, it's kind of hard to get too worked up at what Heinlein wrote all those years ago. So, I will continue to enjoy his work while acknowledging that he was a long way from being perfect.

Thanks for the well-thought-out entry.

Re: My Feelings about Heinlein

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

If you post to a publically accessible website (for lack of a better term). You got to expect some responses. :-) That's kind of the point of this exercise for me anyway. So thanks for your interest and comments. Just so you know it is possible to post so "friends only" can read your post. So if you can read it, generally you can comment on it. As to the meat of your post, we are the chorus and we agree. :-)