tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524497770619950288.post7928233806113404672..comments2023-12-18T18:23:05.715-05:00Comments on Marooned Off Vesta: Adventures in Time and Space: Robert A. Heinlein's "Requiem"Ethan Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11207042480666924085noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524497770619950288.post-54836333678489895052014-06-10T13:14:39.513-04:002014-06-10T13:14:39.513-04:00Oh, I think the effect Heinlein was going for--or ...Oh, I think the effect Heinlein was going for--or at least the aspect of it you single out (the "moment" coming too late)--is far from sentimental on its own, and actually I wish more sf would deal with loss, regret, etc... It's his specific choice of too-late moment, and the ways he gets to it (which I think I'd disagree are "clunky", or at least the clunkiness is not what is bad about them; I think the stacked-deckness is fundamental to what he's doing here) that I object to.<br /><br />Very interesting observations on the earliness of the story in Heinlein's career, which I don't think I was taking sufficiently into account. I still think there's a major science-fiction-as-hero aspect to the story, but perhaps less of a science-fiction-<em>writer</em>-as-hero than I made out. For me though this story just screams to be read in the context of the bizarre cultism of early American magazine sf, the "fans are Slans", vanguard-party, superior-class attitude so many of its partisans had at the time.<br /><br />I know I must have read "All You Zombies--" but I remember nothing about it (beyond what I've read about it elsewhere). I should try it again. That, and some of the later Heinlein, which I don't think I've ever attempted. I really <em>would</em> like to like him...Ethan Robinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11207042480666924085noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524497770619950288.post-21046719748598428082014-06-10T11:49:59.566-04:002014-06-10T11:49:59.566-04:00Again, you teach me something. I've read this...Again, you teach me something. I've read this story only once, and it was nearly 30 years ago, but I find your arguments fascinating.<br /><br />The whole "sentimentality" thing interests me. (NB, Heinlein had some nasty things to say about Wilde, as I'm sure you know.) I've always thought that Heinlein wanted get at a particular feeling, the feeling of someone who's always wanted something and was never able to have it, getting it only at the moment before death. You may think of it as sentimental, but I think there are many people who experience their "moment" as coming too late in life, when they cannot derive from it the pleasure or comfort they wanted. Ultimately it will all come to an end, and where is the comfort there?<br /><br />I agree that the conceits he used to get there (the stupid people keeping Harriman from getting to the Moon) were clunky, and I imagine he'd have done a bit better later. I have experienced exactly that compositional problem myself -- I want to produce a certain emotional effect, and I tear my hair out trying to think of a sequence of events that will result in that effect without seeming utterly artificial and contrived. (NB, that's not the way I write most of the time. Usually I start with the conceit, and follow where it leads me.) <br /><br />I pause, though, when I consider that this is <i>early</i> Heinlein. This story was published only a year after "Life-Line", before any of his novels (unless you count <i>For Us, the Living</i>, which I don't). In that context, it's difficult for me to imagine this story as any sort of summative statement of his work or of his perception of the SF field. He was a recent entrant into the writing of SF. He wasn't someone who'd "known all along", because he'd only been doing it for a short time. I imagine he might be voicing all the SF writers who came before him, but I doubt it. (By contrast, I do think that his novel <i>Friday</i> is every bit a meditation on the evolution of his own work.) The story is a partially-failed exercise in emotional progression.<br /><br />If there were a Heinlein short story I'd have put into a collection, it would be "All You Zombies --" which gets at a genuine spiritual problem that the time-travel metaphor allows us to examine: our own culpability in the horrors of our own lives.Ken Schneyerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00530209947553176188noreply@blogger.com