On Fri, 2 Oct 2009 10:35:12 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

"Tom Francis - SWSports" wrote in
message ...
On Thu, 1 Oct 2009 19:18:54 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

Heinlein (Stranger in a strange land... I still re-read it)

Which version - unedited or edited.

I'm not sure... never checked or even knew there was an edited version. The
book I have (somewhere) is a paperback handmedown from years ago.

It was the edited version then. The unedited version, with footnotes
and commentary, was released by Virginia Heinlein about ten or so
years ago. Gives you a much clearer idea of what Heinlein's ideas
were.

The unedited version is better and by comparison, the edited version
sucks.

Heinlien was good only up to a point. If he kept within the bounds of
his Libertarian views, he wrote some great stuff. When he started
wandering off the reservation trying to match Silverberg and Dick (who
by the way was a complete and total asshole as befits his name), he
lost it completely. Read "Grumbles from The Grave" sometime - that
will give you a whole new opinion of Heinlien.

I never really considered Heinlein that political. I'll check out the
Grumbles if I can find it.

Really? Interesting. "Starship Troopers", is a pure Libertarian
political novel spiced up with a little was action (including some
really funny scenes), then there's "Methuselah's Children" and "Time
Enough for Love" which are all part and parcel of the Lazarus Long
saga - lot's of Libertarian political thought in those, "Friday", was
a Libertarian manifesto in some ways.

Almost all of Heinlein's novels and shorts had some social themes and
follow the Libertarian ideals: individual liberty/self-reliance,
individual social obligations, the influence of organized religion on
culture and government, and most importantly the tendency of society
to repress non-conformist thought.

Those are all strong Libertarian concepts as expressed by Heinlein.

Issac Asimov was a good friend of my Father's. They met through
another friend of my Dad's Clifford Simak - another scifi author.

My favorite Asimov story was when I was in high school - I came home
from football practice on my way to my job at the TV store and sitting
in my living room with my Dad was Asimov, Simak and Martin Greenberg
(the publisher, not the anthologist) yucking it up like there was no
tomorrow. :)

Ah, but there _is_ no tomorrow. Island, Aldos Huxley.

Huxley was a hack. Tomorrow is all we have. :)