more later...

Yes, I'm still stuck on Heinlein.

Two small things recently wandered across my field of vision, tunnel-like as it is with the start of classes:

1) io9's Josh Wimmer talked about the Catcher in the Rye-ness of Stranger in a Strange Land. I mostly agree with him. You?

2) Does anyone know if there are Heinlein universe fan stories that use the same characters/settings? Any Friday/Kettlebelly Baldwin slash? Or is that just too odd? Or are Heinlein's books just too old?

Walking the Glory Road

During the long, long break, I re-read Glory Road. And, again, by way of caveat, there is no particular reason - other than sheer whimsy - I chose this particular title off of my Heinlein shelf.

Glory Road, for the uninitiated (or those who need a refresher), concerns the journey of a hero, E.C. "Oscar" Gordon as he reclaims an item of power* for a very important woman, Star, who turns out to be the Empress of a collection of universes. The first three-quarters of the book follow the standard quest narrative - start of journey, obstacle, victory, obstacle, victory (lather, rinse, repeat), climatic battle and ultimate success.

But the last quarter of the story doesn't hew to the predictable script. Oscar has to figure out what to do with himself once he's fulfilled his destiny. My knowledge of pre-1963 fantasy is not vast. This twist, however, does appear to be a new one for the time. I know blog readers won't hesitate to set me straight on this point.

Two things struck me during this re-read:

1) I can now pinpoint this book as the source of all of my confusion about the difference between fantasy and science fiction. Ostensibly, Glory Road fall into the fantasy camp, what with all of the sword fights, horse analogues and feudal lands. Heinlein, however, keeps tossing out science-based explanations for all of the goings-on, like the Empress explaining that the pentagrams that allow them to travel between universes are really just complicated circuit diagrams.

Take Oscar's defeat of the Igli, a ferocious, unkillable beast. What the hero does is "feed the Igli to the Igli" or, put another way, start stuffing the Igli's appendages into the Igli's mouth and rolling the body into smaller and small balls until they disappear. As the Empress explains, this solution wasn't mystical but geometrical:

What happens when you place an insupportable strain on a mass, such that it can't remain where it is? While leaving it nowhere to go? This is a schoolboy problem in metaphysical geometry and the eldest proto-paradox, the one about the irresistible force and the immovable body. The mass implodes. It is squeezed out of this world into some other. This is often the way the people of a universe discover the Universes -- but usually is as disastrously as you forced it on Igli; it may take millennia before they control it. It may hover around the fringes as 'magic' for a long time, sometimes working, sometimes failing, sometimes backfiring on the magician.

Heinlein, with one frequently-recited swoop, is able to wave his hands and turn magic into avenues of math that we haven't yet discovered. It's a neat trick -- and one that makes me wander down the thorny path of what fantasy (or science fiction, for that matter) actually means.

On a more practical note w/r/t "magic:" I want one of Rufo's folding boxes.** Because, origin stories aside, the ability to store all of your stuff in another dimension would be a handy way to solve my yarn storage problem.

2) When I was in Junior High, I have a clear memory of a male civics teacher explaining that a woman could never be president because she would never be able to control her mood at certain points during her menstrual cycle and would wind up nuking Russia because she's a hormonal mess.***

Which is why this passage stuck out:

By endocrine control of some sort [more magic, it appears -am], Star was left free of Eve's rhythm but in all ways young--not pills nor hormone injections; this was permanent. She was simply a healthy woman who never had "bad days." This was not for her convenience but to insure that her judgement as the Great Judge would never be whipsawed by her glands. "This is sensible," she said seriously. "I can remember there used to be days when I would bite the head off my dearest friend for no reason, then burst into tears. One can't be judicial in that sort of storm."

Which makes me wonder how both Heinlein and that civics teacher would feel about women on the Supreme Court. Does Sotomayor hand down especially vindictive decisions every 28 days? Can women have positions of power only after they've passed menopause (which brings up other issues about what a women is worth)? Or is the whole monthly cycle thing just a convenient excuse to continue to discount the higher reasoning skills of half of the species?

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* Does anyone else see a similarity between the Empress' Egg and Zerika's Orb?

** Does anyone else see a similarity between the Rufo's luggage and Pratchett's the Luggage?

*** Really.

Happy New Year

This year we lost our friend and Locus founder, Charles N. Brown. There were many wonderful works of science fiction and fantasy published, which will no doubt be discussed in our traditional year-in-review issue in February, but this is what rocked me the most in 2009.

I hope that in 2010 everyone's year is peaceful, happy and filled with success, and that the darker side of life doesn't cast its shadow on your door. Oh, and Happy New Year!!!!

RAH heirs?

Since Heinlein's death -- actually, well before he died but the situation became more acute post-mortem -- the genre has been trying to find the writer who will replace the Grand Master. Various names have been bandied about. Spider Robinson has long been a contender and was tapped to finish, Variable Star, a partial manuscript Heinlein left behind. Charlie Stross's Saturn's Children was an homage/pastiche/tribute of Heinlein's Friday. John Scalzi's Old Man's War books get dropped in the Heinlein hopper as well, if only because they capture RAH's clear prose and smart heroes.

Admittedly, it's a silly task, this trying to find someone who will give readers the same experience as one of the field's icons. Writing in another person's style is akin to wearing another person's underpants. It's unsettling and uncomfortable on a number of levels.*

But if I had to anoint one current writer as the one who captures that feeling I get when I read Heinlein, I would drip the oil on John Varley's forehead.

I have read Steel Beach more times than I can count, frankly, and love it more each time. Ditto The Golden Globe. My abiding affection for these books comes not from their Heinlein-ness but from their Varley-ness, whose work has a singular voice that hits all of the best notes of Heinlein's work while investing it with a greater sense of human failings and modern panache.

This carries into Varley's last three titles -- the Red Thunder, Red Lightening, Rolling Thunder series -- that are clear hat-tips to Heinlein's juveniles without ever attempting to imitate them. Varley knows that a wide number of his readers will get all of the Heinlein references** but doesn't let them stand in the way of spinning his adventure stories that rely both on the moxie of his young heroes and on the reader's knowledge of the last 30 years.

So while I wait for Varley to publish his next book, whose work do you think captures the Heinlein voice and ethos while still maintaining their own voice and ethos? And do you think it is fair to label any given writer "the next Heinlein?"

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* Some of those titles succeed because the writers in question never tried to bend their voice into a strange shape. And some of those titles, imo, fail because the writers tried too hard to make it work.

** Two of my favorites are from Rolling Thunder:

1) "Somebody once said that teenagers should be raised in a barrel and fed through the bunghole, then decanted when they're twenty. I should know; I admit it, I was a prime candidate for encooperage...until recently."

2) SPOILERISH: "I'm going to miss my home, the Red Planet. But now I'm between planets. Now it's time for the stars."

Friday links

Light posting round here because I'm still getting back on my feet. Some links:

- The Robert Holdstock memorial fund
- Short fiction from non-anglophone authors in the big three magazines: a comprehensive survey. (ETA: Updated here.)
- In case you hadn't seen it: John Scalzi takes Black Matrix publishing to task for breathtakingly low fiction payment rates (1, 2); SF signal publishes attempted rebuttal; epic comment thread ensues.
- Today's (London) Times had a banner headline "First review of Avatar"; as Emily Bell tweeted, "presumably for people without internet access"
- Helpful summary of New Moon.
- Whither fantasy? from Hal Duncan (at length) and M John Harrison (not at length).
- Matte vs Gloss, the eternal debate.
- Gorgeous (but currently sold out) mix of 20th and 21st century audio tech.
- The UK may be drowning in government debt, but we're getting our own space agency! I do hope they employ Stephen Baxter.

And finally, not particularly sf-nal, but an impossibly addictive Flash game.

ETA: And happy 80th birthday, sf fandom!