I dislike a lot of things about him, despite loving most of his books. It was him and Orson Scott Card who taught me to love and be enriched by an author’s work separately from the person themself.
It always seems a shame to me when people can write at length about taking a fundamentally skeptic view of everything in the world and society, down to its core values, and then be so blind as to their own biases and prejudices. At the very least, Heinlein writes in a few places how he’ll never be truly free of early childhood conditioning around sex and norms (contrast the author of Ender’s extensive reflections on xenocide choosing to give money to anti-gay-rights organizations), but stops there. The misogyny, the militarism, all of it remains unexamined.
A deeply flawed person, who gave us deeply enriching works (IMO).
> The misogyny, the militarism, all of it remains unexamined.
I think two things you absolutely can't defensibly say about Heinlein is that his views about gender roles and relations, or about the relationship of society to it's military in either an institutional or individual sense are “unexamined”.
There may have been blind spots nonetheless—I don't think anyone can be free of those—but “unexamined”, no.
Nope, definitely Heinlein. He takes nationalism as a given, as if these abstractions we call countries are something real. The idea of whether or not this is a good thing is never once dragged out into the light.
Additionally, I can only take so many well-meaning Jillian Boardmans. Friday is often held up as a counterexample, but the fact that she willfully marries her rapist seems to pass unnoticed.
Ok. I'm going to go with dragonwriter here then. Man wrote a (terrible) book about dealing with becoming a woman, man wrote Stranger, man wrote plenty about dealing with tyranny and assorted nastiness.
He wasn't LeGuin by any means, and he fails by modern standards, but for someone born in 1907, he did a pretty good job.
Yeah, Heinlein, for as far out there as he got toward the end, spent most of his life legitimately trying to get the rest of humanity - which makes it hard to read his stuff in present day - because he was trying (and often failing) to get there.
Card though... how many times is he going to insert a gay man explaining why he needs to have sex with the ladies and have the childrens before he gives it up and just comes out.
It always seems a shame to me when people can write at length about taking a fundamentally skeptic view of everything in the world and society, down to its core values, and then be so blind as to their own biases and prejudices. At the very least, Heinlein writes in a few places how he’ll never be truly free of early childhood conditioning around sex and norms (contrast the author of Ender’s extensive reflections on xenocide choosing to give money to anti-gay-rights organizations), but stops there. The misogyny, the militarism, all of it remains unexamined.
A deeply flawed person, who gave us deeply enriching works (IMO).