While I was busy being busy, the centennial of Robert Heinlein’s birth slipped right by me. On 7/7/07, Heinlein would have been 100 years old. A group of Heinlein aficionados gathered in Kansas City to celebrate the 100th year of his influence on the world. They had quite the guest list, from the chairman of NASA, to Ben Bova, to Sir Arthur C. Clarke (via video, of course.)
Heinlein was, along with Clarke and Asimov, one of the grandfathers of modern science fiction. Influenced by authors like H.G. Wells, he wrote early stories about grand space adventures. His arguably most influential work, though, came from his middle years, and books like Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and of course, the extremely controversial Stranger in a Strange Land. In those books, he used sci-fi as a vehicle to talk about everything from sex to government, although his strongest points were about the power of libertarianism.
(Seriously, everybody should have read those three books at least once.)
In additon, to date The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is the best book I have ever read. Perhaps I’ll find a better one someday, or perhaps the excitement will fade. But I’ve read it so many times I can’t even make a fair guess as to a number, and it never gets less good. I can read it in a weekend, and what an enjoyable weekend it is. If the Libertarian ideal that exists in that book existed in modern society, it might be the perfect society.
But it doesn’t, because people don’t function with rational self-interest. People are inherently irrational, and nearly reason-proof. Anyone who’s read Stranger could bear witness to the fact that it would almost certainly be banned by many schools were the urge to ban books again en masse ever to be resurrected.
If Heinlein was alive, I’d ask him this question:
“How did you not let the mass stupidity get you down?”
Because in the end, his books were so special because he described through them a promise which I can’t see in humanity. He did get awfully preachy sometimes, but he really never did let the stupid win – he was convinced we could be a better people than we are. I guess that’s the closest a non-religious person will ever get to faith.