I have to say his books make you think. I think he is under appreciated as an author.
People miss the point of Starship Troopers because of the movie. The book is nothing like the movie.
He was pretty misogynistic and kind of nuts, but I do enjoy his books, especially The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which is a great example of how to use a science fiction setting to retell a historical event.
I think that it is unfair to say that about Heinlen that he was misogynistic. The women in his books were strong and capable. He may have been sexiest, but he wasn’t misogynistic.
Another thing to note is in many of the books, he changes the point he is trying to make. He is an interesting author as he covers a vast number of topics.
I don’t know if I would agree with you. Maybe he wasn’t misogynistic earlier in life, but by the end? Did you ever read Friday? It’s kind of disturbing. Yes, the main character is a woman who is better than a normal human through genetic engineering. She also enjoys getting raped.
@wintermute_oregon @FlyingSquid At very least, Verhoven’s film was one of the most point by point perfect parodies of fascism we’ve ever seen. The original novel, IIRC, was written out of terrified nuclear paranoia and very sincere in its genocidal authoritarianism.
I’ve never seen it that way - the opening pages say what the protagonist is doing. He’s landing on a planet to kill bugs, using all his ammo and nukes even though there are sentient beings living on the planet.
All because it isn’t cost effective to evacuate the ammo as well.
Immediately following that we move to the viewpoint of the teenager being brainwashed.
As such I think the movie did a decent job of adapting the story, even though we lost those awesome mechs and dropships.
Boy have I got news for you- Starship Troopers3: Marauder has mechs. I haven’t seen the next three movies/serieses.
In his memoir I, Asimov, Isaac Asimov wrote chapters about his contemporaries and apparently Heinlein was notorious for changing his political convictions based on who he was married to/sleeping with at the time. Hence, free-love hippie in Stranger in a Strange World and boot-licking war-hawk in Starship Troopers.
Heinlein changed his mind.
There are 7 years between Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, during which the world didn’t end or devolve into anarchy.
That’s a long time to think about something, especially if you do so by writing an entire book about the theme.
@wintermute_oregon I suppose on some issues. He was also a Xenophobic authoritarian.
The first Heinlein I read was Tunnel in the Sky when I was a kid. The premise was that non-white people from Asia were out breeding good white Americans & we had to do something about that.
He also wanted to force the US population to spread out evenly across the US to reduce high-density targets for Soviet Missiles.
Whatever his values were, he was fine with using force to enforce them on the unwilling.
