Heinlein was a great guy and all, but for all of this rant against specialization did he ever make a serious attempt to write any other genre besides science fiction? And not for nothing Isaac Asimov wrote about every damn topic under the sun with his non-fiction work...
I'm not sure Heinlein was necessarily his own model of a man, nor was it necessarily within his domain to be one due to the fact that he suffered from health issues for pretty much all of his adult life. But he did do more than just write, which the Wikipedia page discusses some of [1], and there's definitely some other stuff that I know he did that does not show up there. For instance, in Expanded Universe there's a rather lengthy travelogue about a trip to the USSR, with what were at the time penetrating insights past the propaganda screen that would have been considered controversial at the time, and we now know to have been true. (There's a lot of lessons in that bit applicable to the world we live in today, albeit not necessarily the same bits of the world, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.)
I'd also personally question whether Heinlein really "really" believed that quote, or if it was an idealized version of an ideal, to coin a phrase.
I once heard a lecture by Joe Haldeman, an author who was a close friend of a Heinlein. IIRC, he said that Heinlein liked to play by taking ideas to their logical extremes and much of what he wrote should be taken as "a modest proposal" instead of perfectly reflective of his personal beliefs.
I don't know if you're making a subtle reference, or happened upon that irony by accident. But in either case, that is the topic of another of Heinlein's more famous works.
Heinlein had one trick worked out nearly perfectly: he could persuade you he knew what he was writing about, even if he was making it up out of whole cloth. If you went back and thought about it analytically, you would spot hole after hole... but most people don't.
That's what makes his work so fascinating: Starship Troopers, for instance, is extremely effective at both satirizing and supporting militarism and pseudo-fascism, and you can regularly encounter readers who perceive one but not the other.
I'm not sure what qualifies 'serious'. He sold a decent amount of non SF stories. How hard did he try to break out of SF ... probably only his wife or agent knew.
Comments
Heinlein was a great guy and all, but for all of this rant against specialization did he ever make a serious attempt to write any other genre besides science fiction? And not for nothing Isaac Asimov wrote about every damn topic under the sun with his non-fiction work...
I'm not sure Heinlein was necessarily his own model of a man, nor was it necessarily within his domain to be one due to the fact that he suffered from health issues for pretty much all of his adult life. But he did do more than just write, which the Wikipedia page discusses some of [1], and there's definitely some other stuff that I know he did that does not show up there. For instance, in Expanded Universe there's a rather lengthy travelogue about a trip to the USSR, with what were at the time penetrating insights past the propaganda screen that would have been considered controversial at the time, and we now know to have been true. (There's a lot of lessons in that bit applicable to the world we live in today, albeit not necessarily the same bits of the world, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.)
I'd also personally question whether Heinlein really "really" believed that quote, or if it was an idealized version of an ideal, to coin a phrase.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Heinlein
I once heard a lecture by Joe Haldeman, an author who was a close friend of a Heinlein. IIRC, he said that Heinlein liked to play by taking ideas to their logical extremes and much of what he wrote should be taken as "a modest proposal" instead of perfectly reflective of his personal beliefs.
I know right! He was totally just a man his whole life too. He should have spent some time as a woman. That was kinda hypocritical of him.
I don't know if you're making a subtle reference, or happened upon that irony by accident. But in either case, that is the topic of another of Heinlein's more famous works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/—All_You_Zombies—
The quote is from "Time Enough for Love", not "I Will Fear No Evil" :)
Heinlein had one trick worked out nearly perfectly: he could persuade you he knew what he was writing about, even if he was making it up out of whole cloth. If you went back and thought about it analytically, you would spot hole after hole... but most people don't.
Persuasion is very entertaining.
That's what makes his work so fascinating: Starship Troopers, for instance, is extremely effective at both satirizing and supporting militarism and pseudo-fascism, and you can regularly encounter readers who perceive one but not the other.
did he ever make a serious attempt to write any other genre besides science fiction?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein_bibliography
I'm not sure what qualifies 'serious'. He sold a decent amount of non SF stories. How hard did he try to break out of SF ... probably only his wife or agent knew.
He wrote some fun fantasy stories.