More Heinlein Discussions
Dean
I was screamingly amused recently to read that an overpaid, pretentious bumpkin named Wolcott who writes for Vanity Fair (whose previous claim to fame was hoping most Americans choke on their own vomit and rooting for hurricanes to kill more people in revenge for all the damage our foul race has done) was sniffing at Robert Heinlein books as worthy only for 13 year olds.
I normally wouldn't consider such ignorance worthy of more than an eyeroll, but for anyone who's actually interested in (and hasn't read much) Heinlein, I found Just Barking Mad's refutation a quite worthy introduction to Heinlein's writings.
In response to JBM I will speak out in defense of Heinlein's Juvenile Novels, however. Yes, a good bit of Heinlein's early catalog is "Juveniles," i.e. stories written and marketed for kids, sort of like the Harry Potter books today. But Heinlein very rarely wrote down to kids, and as time wore on his "Juveniles" strained harder and harder against the artificial limits that his contract with his publisher required: tone down the sex, tone down the violence, and make sure your protagonist is a teenager at the start of the book. Since he was under contract that's what he wrote, but near the end of the contract the requirements were all but a figleaf. Both Citizen of the Galaxy and Starship Troopers were classified as "Juveniles" if I remember correctly, and were initially marketed as such, but later editions just threw that out because the books didn't need to be categorized that way.
To put it into perspective, it is all but a certain thing that Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn would have been classified as a "Juvenile" back in the day--but everyone recognizes how much more that book is. So, too, with some (not all, but some) of Heinlein's "Juveniles."
This does point to the problem with Heinlein: if you're seeking an appreciation of his work, you can't just pick up any book at random: many really are kids' books, little more than Boy Scout space adventures. On the other hand, some of his later books are the idiosynchratic favorites of fans who just like reading about and philosophising about sex, a subject that some of us found Heinlein more than a little obsessive about near the end of his career.
Another minor problem with Heinlein is that he often explored ideas that are familiar from Science Fiction movies and television shows--the difference being that those were usually Heinlein's original ideas, only to be picked up later by screenwriters. The number of ideas he came up with is sometimes rather astounding, for he first conceptualized everything from tribbles to telefactoring.
For anyone seeking an introduction to Heinlein, I would say his most worthwhile novels are The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (easily the best discussion of political science and revolution I've ever seen in a novel), Starship Troopers (a book that infuriates and offends many readers, most of whom don't understand it), Citizen of the Galaxy (a novel about a boy who grows up a slave and grows to become a free man, and a meditation on various cultures along the way), and The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (which is a sort of "Tao Te Heinlein." It's taken from a much longer book that isn't anywhere near as good; the notebooks themselves are priceless).
His most famous and popular book is Stranger in a Strange Land. I frankly think it has aged poorly and is terribly overrated. Part of its enduring popular appeal may be that its protagonist has amazing psychic powers, learned at the feet of an alien race and indistinguishable from magic. This was somewhat cutting-edge 40 years ago when it was first written, but with New Age mysticism and UFO cults now a common thing the book seems quite hokey to me--although I suppose it was a harbinger to those cultural phenomena in a weird sort of way. The book was also the start of Heinlein's endless discussions of sex, sex, and more sex, which I don't object to in principle but which Heinlein writes so much about, repeating himself so often, that I often find myself wanting to scream at him, "Yes, Robert, we understand that it's fun to f**k and that sexual repression is bad. Now can we get on with the story please?
Anyway, while there's usually something worthwhile somewhere in almost any Heinlein book--the man was a fount of ideas, and you find them tossed around so casually and frequently in his fiction it's astounding--I recommend starting with one of the books I've mentioned here.
Eric's got a link-roundup on the Wolcott silliness if you want to find a lot more of this sort of thing.
Related Posts (on one page):
- More Heinlein Discussions
- Altruism: Rand Vs. Heinlein
I never could bring myself to read his later stuff, like Friday or Job. Time Enough for Love was bad enough.
Actually some of his earlier work such as Glory Road included quite a bit of sex, including one scene in which the protagonist was held up to ridicule because he refused to engage in sex with his host's wife and her two daughters (about 12-ish and 16-ish if memory serves) all at the same time. Yoicks.
Your comments remind me of an alleged quote where Heinlein said he wrote his juveniles as adult books, then took out the sex.
Actually, I generally prefer the juvenile stuff, since his adult works also included quite a bit of political philosophy; for me being lectured at becomes tiresome after a while, whether or not I agree.
Now that I think about it (and looking at a list of his works sorted by date, I realize that I don't like anything Heinlein did after after Glory Road in 1963, with the exception of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Hmmm. Never thought of it that way before, but then I don't think I've ever looked at a listing by year before, either.
I don't know that Mistress would be the best "intro" to RAH, as it's his last decent novel. I might suggest Red Planet, Space Cadet, or The Rolling Stones. The latter novel was around 'wayyy before the British Rock group. ;)
One might best rate Heinlein by his affect on the US space program; admiration for his work was nearly universal at NASA "back in the day," to the point where Larry Niven actually wrote a short story about someone who went back in time to cure RAH of his tuberculosis, so that he might stay in the Navy and never write SF, thereby killing the space program.
Seriously, tho, I like just about every book of his that I've read (and re-read and re-read). I can't say how many of his books I own, or how many times I've read them.
I still love his "juveniles" like Podkayne of Mars, though. They tell good stories, with real issues to be resolved.
Okay, sometimes Heinlein's politics got a bit, shall we say, "brusque?" He never went around the bend the way Rand did and still kept humanity as his focus. A Heinlein character would go out of his way to save a dog; a Rand character would do so only if there were some immediate profit to be had--financial or otherwise.
Heinlein's a bit dated... who, after all, wants to read about Heros, for God's sake! But I still treasure the 30+ of his books I've got.
After that, I read Starship Troopers, which is also extremely well thought out, and impressive. Sixth Column, For Us, the Living, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress round out the rest of what I've read.
Part of what makes science fiction appealing to me is the ideas involved give my mind something to chew on, though I'll take a good idea wherever I can find it.
I read at a fairly advanced rate when I was young, my favorite book from when I was about 8 until I was about 10 was Papillon. Second was the Godfather. Third was whichever Hardy Boys book I had just bought.
Gene gave me Stranger to read when I was in 4th grade. I loved that book, it's been my favorite book ever since. Every few years I break it out and read it again even though I just about know it by heart. I think the reason that it had such allure was that hippies really wanted Valentine Michael Smith's religion. They wanted free-love, an end to war and hatred and all the rest of the happy stuff from the last few chapters.
They all wanted to be Valentine Michael Smith. I read the book and wanted to be Jubal Harshaw. Jubal saw the world and worked within it, he was constructively lazy. VMS was a superman for whom what he did was easy. He knew for sure that he had a soul. He knew for sure that life and death were only illusions. He had superhuman powers. For us mere mortals, things aren't so easy.
That's what's funny. Heinlein is why I'm conservative. His religion was self-reliance, hard-headed pragmatism and responsibility. All anathema to the left. So my conversion to the dark side was sparked by a gift from a hippy. Don't me wrong, I love Gene. He was one of the best teachers and finest people I've ever known but he was and probably still is a hippy even though he bathed regularly.
My mother recently saw Gene for the first time in probably 20 years and naturally told him I'm a conservative. I guess he was heartbroken. Imagine if he found out that I'm conservative because of him?
I get the same kind of frustration in an opposite way when reading Tolstoy: "Yeah, Leo, I understand Ivan's got a shiny new tractor. Now can you tell me why he f**ked his brother's wife?"
Writers can be so silly....
That's a problem with a lot of SF classics. I had a real yawn reaction to The Foundation Trilogy the first time I read it: "I've seen this all, like, a million times." Then I checked the copyright date: Asimov blazed the trail for all the stuff I had seen.
And for the reader who just wants enjoyment, I think it's fair to say, "So what?" If you just want to enjoy the story, the copyright date shouldn't be a concern. We don't discover stories in chronological order. You can enjoy Star Trek without ever seeing Forbidden Planet.
But for the fan, the history is part of the enjoyment. The stories don't stand alone, but rather form a whole literary tapestry of influence and interconnection. We love to study and discuss the genre, not just individual works. That's not a pleasure for everyone; but for some of us, it's a true joy.
Still, I think the fans need to relax and not be too judgmental about the casual reader or viewer. Yes, it's funny when a casual movie goer says, "Lord of the Rings is too much like Star Wars;" but for them, that's the order they experienced those stories, so their reactions are natural. It's OK to educate them, if they're willing; but don't demand that they care about the history as much as you do.
(Really, I had no idea where this comment was headed when I started it...)
I haven't read Heinlein's sexual writings, but, from the descriptions here, he sounds a bit too Naturalistic* for me. Ayn Rand once wrote:
"Sex either has a high spiritual base and source, or else it is nothing but an evil perversion."
Profound, and — the style of that!. I'm a Jehovanistic-style Gnostic*. If I want the latter, I'll go to de Sade. If I want the former, I'll go to Rand herself (chiefly The Fountainhead), or to Sappho, or to von Sacher-Masoch. For both, I'll continue writing about holy Dawn vs. wicked Wanda.
(*Murray S. Davis's spectrum in his Smut: Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology)
The Puppet Masters: A great alien invasion story. It's not the first that postulated aliens taking over human minds, but it's one of the best.
Double Star: A short, fun read that also happens to be a primer on practical parliamentary politics. This is the story of an egotistical ham actor hired as a stand-in for a missing politician. That sets the stage for the politician's aides to educate him (and us) on the ins and outs of the game of politics.
The Past Through Tomorrow: This is the best place to start if you prefer short fiction. The stories are a bit uneven; but uneven Heinlein is still pretty good. These stories form a Future History that also serves as the backdrop for some of his other works; but they can be enjoyed on their own. If you're in a hurry, there are two stories that you must read above all others: "The Man Who Sold the Moon" and "Requiem". Really, those two form one story, with "Requiem" as the postscript. If you don't have a lump in your throat after those two, then I'm not sure you and I can ever communicate.
Rocket Ship Galileo: While Starship Troopers was nominally a juvenile, this one really does fit the category. And in my opinion, it's the best, most representative of the bunch. It's also a book that influenced a lot of NASA engineers back in the day. After reading this, you'll believe that you're ready to go build a rocket ship yourself.
My favorite among Heinlein's books is Citizen of the Galaxy— I've reread that one I don't know how many times. In fact I like most of Heinlein's earlier works. Others I've often reread include The Door into Summer and (WTF?!) Farnham's Freehold.
Later Heinlein I sometimes find tedious. But I actually liked The Number of the Beast. Ditto Friday, and the first half or so of The Cat Who Walks through Walls.
I have to confess that Heinlein's books have had little if any influence on my overall outlook. In fact, often as not I find myself in disagreement with him; though I usually find his thinking intriguing. But I seldom read fiction on the basis of whether I agree or disagree with the author's views. I want to say Heinlein is my favorite science-fiction author because he knows how to write, and he knows how to tell a story; and that's probably close to the mark. But I think the truth is simpler and more basic than that: for whatever reason, I simply find myself drawn back to Heinlein's writings, again and again and again.
"Copulation is spiritual in essence--or it is merely friendly exercise. On second thought, strike out 'merely.' Copulation is not 'merely'--even when it is just a happy pastime for two strangers. But copulation at its spiritual best is so much more than physical coupling that it is different in kind as well as in degree. The saddest feature of homosexuality is not that it is 'wrong' or 'sinful' or even that it can't lead to progeny--but that it is more difficult to reach through it this spiritual union. Not impossible--but the cards are stacked against it. But most sorrowfully--many people never achieve spiritual sharing even with the help of male-female advantage; they are condemned to wander through life alone."
Gay people will probably want to argue with this assertions about homosexuality, but hopefully those who do so will not be offended but will merely roll their eyes and say "you don't know what you're talking about, straight boy" and let it go. Hating homosexuals was absolute anathema to Heinlein, so just chill and try to dig the essence of what he's saying here.
Honestly, Steven, I increasingly think we are going to have to browbeat you into reading some Heinlein.
Regarding later Heinlein and all the sex: as I think I've said, it's not that I find it offensive, I just find it tedious. I do like a lot of later Heinlein, but I always caution people that you probably have to already be a Heinlein fan to read much of it. If Ayn Rand kept pounding home the same message over and over again on the nobility of selfishness, Heinlein kept pounding home over-and-over again the notion that sex is good. That's probably a good comparison.
Of his later work, I find I Will Fear No Evil probably one of the most provocatively interesting things I've ever read (and SMA would probably love every minute of that, come to think of it). I enjoyed Friday, Job: A Comedy of Justice, and several others. I have to admit I even liked The Number of the Beast, but only the second time I liked it (bloody incoherent book, that). Still, while Heinlein fans quibble over this or that, most of them seem to agree that his late period work--say, past about 1970--is spotty and hit-or-miss, and that his very early work is mostly suitable for kids although they're very good for kids' books.
I love a lot of his other work from that time period: Starman Jones, The Star Beast (probably his funniest book by far), Between Planets (another excellent military yarn, by the way), Citizen of the Galaxy, and Orphans in the Sky all come from that sort of middling period when Heinlein was still writing so-called "juvenile" novels but was chafing against and straining to push that genre to its limits. Indeed, it might surprise you to learn that Orphans in the Sky WAS a so-called "juvenile" novel, written and marketed as a book for kids. Pretty intense, huh?
And we know how to do that. Ask Arnold.
What did you find so interesting about I Will Fear No Evil? It's my nomination for Heinlein Novel Not to be Tossed Lightly Aside, But Rather To Be Hurled with Great Force.
Heinlein's assumptions/opinions/fantasies about what it's like to be a woman, and what women are like, are at their most elaborate in this work and therefore at their ickiest as well. I would quote some examples, but I think I gave my copy away at some point after I kept picking it up, re-reading a bit of it, and getting profoundly irritated. (I don't generally discard books by my favorite authors but I also eventually quit beating my head against walls if given enough time.) If anyone really wants to hear me expound at length about what's wrong with this book, I'll go buy another copy.
In the meantime, I'll summarize my feeelings with: bleah. So what did you see there that I didn't?
Fair warning: Job might put you off of Heinlein forever. I don't know you well enough to be sure, but I'm getting the impression that you're fairly devout and traditional in your beliefs. (Feel free to laugh if I've completely misread you.) If you're of a Fundamentalist bent as well, the book may go way too far past your tolerance. Without giving away too much, Job is a book that basically assumes that a Fundamentalist world view -- particularly the views prevalent where Heinlein grew up -- is literally true; and then it explores one injustice after another that results, as a modern day Job figure is tossed and turned in a game between a letter-of-the-law Creator and a mischievous Adversary. The Creator comes across as a bit of an ass.
In my younger, religion-bashing days, I found it to be a barrel of laughs. Now that I'm older and more tolerant and more willing to consider that I might be wrong, it troubles me some. There's still a lot to consider there, and I think it's the best written (in terms of tight plotting, etc.) of all his later books. But I also think a lot of good, honest people will find themselves offended by it.
There is a story, probably apocryphal, that L. Ron Hubbard and Robert Heinlein made a bet about who could be more successful starting a religion. We all know what happened to Hubbard's attempt. Stranger in a Strange Land is supposedly Heinlein's attempt.
Concur with Dean that The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is brilliant, and Stranger in a Strange Land is one of those books that begin brilliantly and collapse into a pile of sexual sludge. The Number of the Beast did the same thing, and that's pretty much when I stopped reading Heinlein. The yuck factor kicked in. Sorry.
Jerry Kindall: At least Heinlein managed to get "grok" and "water brother" briefly into the lexicon. I fear that "clear" and its Scientological brethren will last longer.
"Steven,
Fair warning: Job might put you off of Heinlein forever. I don't know you well enough to be sure, but I'm getting the impression that you're fairly devout and traditional in your beliefs. (Feel free to laugh if I've completely misread you.)"
I'm a theological reactionary, i.e., a Polytheist. I have great respect, particularly after re-reading G. K. Chesterton, for the Christian and Jewish religions because they, too, are ancient Western religions believed in by the vast majority of the devout and the traditional. I revere the Bible as I revere all the ancient books. I consider the G-d of Israel, the Holy Trinity of Christians, the Queen of Heaven of Catholic Christians, to be Deities.
"If you're of a Fundamentalist bent as well, the book may go way too far past your tolerance."
I have read many atheistical and irreverent writings which I have enjoyed. As long as it's written with style....
"Without giving away too much, Job is a book that basically assumes that a Fundamentalist world view -- particularly the views prevalent where Heinlein grew up -- is literally true; and then it explores one injustice after another that results, as a modern day Job figure is tossed and turned in a game between a letter-of-the-law Creator and a mischievous Adversary. The Creator comes across as a bit of an ass."
I once read a sci-fi novel of a battle between the Zoroastrian God and Devil, Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda, Lord of Light)) and Ahriman (Angra Mainyu, Spirit of Evil)), in which Ahriman comes off as far more sympathetic. Many have said this about Milton's Lucifer as well.
After NotB, the stories are much more tied together (some call this The Story of The World As Myth), and in my opinion, should be read in the published order:
(reread Time Enough For Love, then)
Number of the Beast
Friday
Job: A Comedy of Justice
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
He also invented a bunch of useful devices. He invented "Waldoes". I'm pretty sure he was the first to write about water beds. There's a bunch more.
I bet when we go to space they use his method for giving birth from Time Enough For Love.
He got people correct every time. For somebody to say Heinlein wasn't 'worldly' is pretty ignorant. He got technology wrong a lot, he never really appreciated the rise of computers until after it happened, but he always got people right. I learned a lot about people from reading his books.
Job: A Comedy of Justice is much a book like that, only the conterversial subject is religion not women.
Regarding Scientology: Jerry's apocryphal story is half-true. Heinlein never, ever wanted to start a religion. He was very clear about that. He found the idea deeply offensive. However, he was at one point friends with L. Ron Hubbard, and he did once related a story that L. Ron Hubbard told him that any Science Fiction writer was a fool to keep writing SF and should found a religion instead.
Heinlein viewed scientology with antipathy at best. He also viewed those who tried to turn "Stranger In A Strange Land" into a religion with a mixture of amusement and contempt.
To not give any plot points away, it has such an *interesting* premise! I was all ready for an ingenious ending akin to the one many people thought The Sixth Sense had, and then....
Suffice it to say, I felt gypped. I guess I shouldn`t expect top-rate mystery from a sci-fi author.
WRT the homosexuality quote, you may wish to someday read Dreadnought's blog. He's an Aussie gay RC conservative with an awful lot to say and which he says well. I think he'd agree with the Heinlein quote, pretty much.
Hoag is an oddity, no question. But I think expecting it to be a mystery is a stretch. It's a fantasy using mystery trappings.
What I like best about it is that it's in a collection with the very first Heinlein story I ever read, "And He Built a Crooked House". That one will always be a favorite of mine.
Also, be very, very careful with Farnham's Freehold. It's not just about a rascist character, it's an entirely rascist plotline. Very ugly rascism, and I for one haven't found any way to give him a pass for this one.
Let me also recommend "The Door Into Summer" - time travel, cats, corporate intrigue, and love. Kinda icky love though.
I know that's how some people see women, and I'm not arguing that all of those people are men. I'm sure that he wouldn't have written his female characters that way if they'd bothered Virginia Heinlein the way they bother me. I just don't find it accurate for all, or remotely appealing, and I don't think IWFNE held those views up to any kind of critical scrutiny. Although Heinlein's female characters weren't all exactly alike, of course, Johann/Joan/Eunice did seem to be a distillation of some of the 'female' traits that appear over and over in his later works, and it's enough to make you wonder if Heinlein ever spoke at length to another woman after his marriage to the aforementioned Virginia. It's one thing to love your wife, it's another thing to decide that any woman who's significantly unlike her is defective. (One particularly irritating manifestation of this was the repeated opining by his female characters that menstrual cramps aren't physically based but instead are a symptom of mental illness; one can only conclude that Virginia didn't suffer from them.)
I could ignore most of these things in his other late novels, since they were chock full of observations and opinions on other topics, but since his vision of feminity was so much in the foreground in IWFNE it's pretty much a lost cause for me.
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, now...
Heinlein supposedly wrote IWFNE after suffering a stroke, and when he fully recovered, he read what he had wrote, and went 'aggh.' Me, I didn't find it terribly bad, but not worth reading unless you were like I was, a Heinlein completist.
I think that Heinlein's ideas would work better in a hi-tech society with STD's conquered, as you say, Dean, but I still think they are fundamentally mistaken. I don't think group marriages, or polygamy are a good idea. Men are not wired to accept teh first, and the second creates a world in which the rich guy gets all the babes, and poor schmucks like me get nothing. The first, if it even worked, would require lacksadaisical men which would spread to all their activities, and the second would breed violent revolutionaries.
I think its generally best to ignore the sex part of his ideas, and move on to other parts of his idea structure.
Well, unless you have a deep inner need to read tacky sex novels. As Dean says ""Yes, Robert, we understand that it's fun to f**k and that sexual repression is bad. Now can we get on with the story please?"
Underlined...
It's also interestingly done from a literary standpoint, particularly the way the irritating student-government type turns out to be a worthwhile human being after all.
I read a comment not too long ago that the problem with his later work was that at that point he was so big in the genre that no one would dare to edit him.
Glory Road, Starship Troopers, and Citizen of the Galaxy may have been published as juveniles, but I've read them time and again and still enjoy them.
Gary
Tunnel in the Sky deals with older adolescents. The Boys in Lord of the Flies are comparatively young, about 13 or 14. The teens in Tunnel in the Sky are about 17 and 18, and the product of a culture that emphasizes individual responsibilty.
Job of Job, A Comedy of Justice is the product of a dark and disquieting world. He is what you'd get if the Christian fundamentalist viewpoint was true. He has his virtues and his faults, much like anyone else. And when confronted with the injustices inherent in the authoritarianism embedded in the fundamentalist scheme, comes to reject it. The God of fundamentalist doctrine is by his very nature a restricted God, a constrained God. His omniscience and omnipotence is a false omniscience and omnipotence, for His worshippers wouldn't let him be truly omniscient or omnipotent lest He do things that make them uncomfortable. You could say that God gave us the Ten Commandments, and the fundies - being a courteous people - returned the favor being giving Him this commandment, "Though shalt do nothing that makes us think less of ourselves."
Where the sex is concerned ... Bob was an astute observer of the human condition. He wasn't the only one who recognized our essentially sexual nature, but he was one of the few who acknowledged it. Elizabeth Reid has spoken with some heat on the subject, insisting that she isn't like the women of most Heinlein stories. I don't know Elizabeth, so I can't say anything definitive, but I must ask, is this the case, or are you denying it because admission would embarrass you.
That's the problem with sex in this culture, our impulses and thoughts tell us one thing, our training tells us another. Sex has power. If it did not it would not be used in advertising. While we condemn the uses of sex in our culture, we watch the applications avidly.
Robert Heinlein set out to make us uncomfortable, to get us to think. In the first he very often suceeded, in the latter not so often. Whether it was politics, philosophy, religion, economics, or sex it was his goal to make us reevaluate our teachings, our truisms. To what end? A re-assesment of what it means to be human and possibly growth as human beings.
Proposition: The invention of a 100% reliable contraceptive that requires purposeful intervention to allow pregnancy to occur would remove the only valid prohibition against incest. Discuss.
On the other hand: ick.
No way was Glory Road a juvenile. Maybe you're thinking of "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel"?
<i>Elizabeth Reid has spoken with some heat on the subject, insisting that she isn't like the women of most Heinlein stories. I don't know Elizabeth, so I can't say anything definitive, but I must ask, is this the case, or are you denying it because admission would embarrass you. </i>
You've found me out. My dislike of many of Heinlein's female characters is rooted in my prudery. I really do long to couple with any male who smells good, I just don't like to talk about it.
Okay, sarcasm aside, that's actually part of the problem. There's no such thing as a person who's free of cultural constraints. One of the less realistic aspects of Heinlein's women is that they all have exactly the same views on sex, be they raised in early nineteenth century Missouri, totalitarian states with a strict prohibition on sexual activity, a creche, whatever. Real people grow up with some taboos, and although we may modify those views as we grow older, I disagree with Heinlein's apparent belief that most women could discard all of those taboos in a hot second were they enlightened. It might be positive if they could, but I'd be more impressed if Heinlein could get us from Point A (real world) to Point B (total lack of inhibition of any kind) via some other method than someone pointing out that taboos are silly.
But honestly, that's only one of the unrealistic things about Heinlein's women. I was re-reading <i>To Sail Beyond The Sunset</i> last night and was reminded of something (spoilers follow for those who haven't read it yet). As implausible as I find many aspects of Maureen Long's character (how that woman has time to raise seventeen children to responsible adulthood and have as much sex as she does I have no idea - and does she have any charming anecdotes about her giant brood which don't involve incest?) the thing that really makes my blood boil is the way Heinlein sells her out when her husband leaves her for a younger woman. Although at other points in the book she has placed emphasis on loyalty and duty as supreme virtues, she's totally unbothered when her husband breaks up their marriage, and even continues to affectionally call him by his pet name while he tries to cheat her out of her share of their common property. What a big, naughty boy he is!
As unrealistic behavior goes, I think that pretty much takes the crumpet.
When did you read it, anyway? I can't see how you missed that.
SMA: I second the recommendation for I Will Fear No Evil. It seems as though that would be right up your alley.
But that's my reading, based on what I know of Heinlein's views and the prevailing feel of the times. I've always seen the book as a story on racism, not a racist story.