‘“Vancouver was a part of the United States where the people were so clever that they never paid taxes to Washington”’
Now that is confusing.
Yes, Vancouver, one city of that name, is part of the USA. It’s in Washington. The state.
Sow what was Heinlein going for?
Implying Lazarus was telling tall tales again, because everyone knows Vancouver is in Canada?
That British Columbia was part of the USA in that timeline?
I just realized the chutzpah of Heinlein when writing this.
―Hey, Heinlein, yu'r writing hard SF with spaceships and going to Mars and everything. What’s yur next book about?
―Oh, it’s got spaceships and all. They hav a FTL drive tho, that they got from some telepathic aliens, and i never even hit at how that works.
―O… Kay. Fine. “Hard” SF. Anyway. So, what’s it actually about?
…
Oh, 🤬.
Heinlein being Heinlein means Heinlein being transfobic.
I’ll not quote him here, because, ugh, but here is one paragraf just pure, distilled transfobia and nothing else.
‘“It was even before China destroyed¹ Europe”’
IDK, maybe it’s just me, but i think the destruction of a whole continent is worth more than a brief mention in literally hav a sentence.
There ar some oblique references to nuclear war in Heinlein’s future history, but he never bothers to really deal with it. It’s not the USA, so who cares.
¹That’s not “impoverished”, “ruined” or the like
Hmpf.
Looks like the interesting stories ar only hinted @, while The Senior rambles on an on about more boring stuff.
We get a mention how Elizabeth Libby met her end, but i think we don’t get the detailed story of it.
Maybe 200 pages hence.
Ugh.
This side story is one that i rememberd, but much longer.
Also, apparently the editor was taking a break. The narration switches between 1st person (I, Lazarus Long) and 3rd person (he, Captain Sheffield) for no reason and with no explanation.
OK, so.
The main point about this freedman and freedwoman – José&Estrellita J&L (for Llita) – is their genetic origin.
But then Heinlein spends page upon page on Lazarus haggling with the slave seller, with José trying to make coffee, J&L learning to read, &c. &c.. On and on. 🥱
Then he gets on to the genetic bit, “The Twins who Weren’t”
Heinlein’s idea here was that J&L were twins. Born together, same parents. But his trick was that instead of doing standard meiosis he had all the 46 chromosomes per parent divide into two gametes with 23 chromosomes each, and made an offspring of each.
Oh, look.
This too long sub-story *is* going somewhere.
It is going towards full-on eugenics.
No real point in quoting it, but 🤬
“Money was necessary to a growing colony; barter was too clumsy. Some medium of exchange was needed even before government was needed.”
Where is David #Graeber when yu need him? (Rhetorical question, unfortunately)
Yu need a medium of *account*, not necessarily exchange. That can be anithing, like »chickens«.
Yu can do trade on credit. Personal credit.
The sene in the book was in a small colony where everibody knew everibody else.
I ges part of it is #zeerust, but mostly it’s just lazy writing.
Would yu really colonize a planet in the 31st century without casually putting some observation satellites in orbit first and making sure people on the ground had some solar power to power their comm devices?
But how could he write his old west pioneer story otherwise?
Oh 🤬
Now Heinlein is deadnaming cis dudes. Because, why not. 😩
Some guy has changed his name, there is no reason to mention his old name, he shows discomfort when his old name is mentioned, and so Heinlein puts it in there repeatedly.🙄
Did yu know that the Howards (the immortals) who all were North Americans totally were not racists?
We know that because one was of Chinese ancestry, and another, Zaccur Barstow, was “a quarter Negro”.
Two from some 100’000.
At least “Lee Choy Moo” the name Heinlein pickt, isn’t as bad as “Cho Chang”, what She Who Must Not Be Named came up with.
Ugh.
I know i red this before, but did not remember some of the details.
Like the bit where he – between chapters – fucks his daughters.
Or that they were 13 years old at the time.
Or not just his daughters, but actually his clones (with repeated X cromosome).
Or that he wants to fuck his mother in the next chapter.
Or that he talks to his penis about said mother fucking.
😠 🤬 🤮
I mean, in Homo Faber the stuff was between chapters and the first time i read that i missd the significance of that dash.
Heinlein makes sure yu get what he meant. And that he thought that it was a fine idea.
The age and dependency thing is never discussed.
The genetics thing: Lazarus Long is just that great, don’t cha know.
How convenient.
Back to sell squicky stuff:
The way how he was confused about the right date on Earth during his time travel makes no sense.
That his time machine isn’t as precise as in, say, Back to the Future is actually a nice idea.
But then he described the method to determine the date “by reading positions of the Solar System’s planets.”
He seriously underestimates how *easy* that is.
…
But reading the time by planets is so easy i could manage it, with an almanac, good binoculars and a bit of time.
The date (month & day): That is just the position of the Earth in relation to the Sun. Those zodiac signs is where the Sun is on the stellar “sfere” as seen from Earth. Reverse the direction, read it a bit more precisely, done.
…
Then to make sure that yu ar in 1919 – or not, as in the book: Look up where Jupiter and Saturn ar supposed to be in the almanac.
When they ar there, yu ar fine.
One Jupiter year is rufly 1/12 Earth year. So if it is not there yu hunt rufly one zodiac sign on either side per year offset. In this case it would be 3 signs back.
Do the same for Saturn just to make sure. If it is somewhere different, yu ar off by a lot.
…
Modern computers ar a big help. (Their absence is the biggest zeerust, together with computers as conscious AIs.)
Here sky simulations for 1916 August 4 (the date mentiond in the book) and 1919 August 4, the year they had aimd for.
(Yu need to look from orbit, otherwise the Sun is in the way.)
And without computers and from a different point in the solar system: That is basically a two dimensional problem. Yu can do it on chart paper, for the precision required.
Doing it more precisely: that is very much what Kepler did. So, early 17th century technology.
What took him 20 years was not calculating positions for a given date, but coming up with the whole idea pretty much from scratch.
Sorry to go back to the squick
So now Lazarus, in his quest to become a mother fucker, joins the army to go and murder some Germans. In a war he clearly sees as not his war and a bad idea in general, for a country that is not his.
So, yeah. When yu ar an amoral libertarian, than that makes sense. Kill strangers to fuck somebody yu like.
If not, not.
“I try not to think about how useless this war is.”
Yeah, well. That is the root of the problem.
I find the idea “Second Thirty Years’ War” actually offensive.
Heinlein calls it ‘“Phase One of the First Terran Planetary War.”’
It started with de Gaulle, and yu can see why the French would see it that way.
But it completely ignores the Weimar democracy. The Brecht play is cald “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui”.
Some less pure democracy and more defensive democracy might hav been enuf.
And, close to the end, the mother fucking sene.
Now these bits ar odd. I ges just misoginy.
So, Heinlein actually is solidly anti slavery, the way lots of current white Usonians from the former CSA areas ar not. Yu know, those vile “Slaves had better lives than the free Africans” folks.
Nonetheless, Heinlein talks about slavery a lot. When someone is good in bed Lazarus thinks “[Y]ou would fetch a high price on Iskander”, a planet with slave markets.
ospalh