Is Robert Heinlein Our Best Pulp Novelist?
Is there any better pulp novelist than Robert Heinlein? Oh sure, I read a handful of his books and stories as a kid, but I was an Asimov devotee from age eight, when I received my first copy of The Caves of Steel, and my loyalties could hardly be divided. Asimov wrote mysteries, which appealed to my adolescent bookish sense. As Asimov himself noted from time to time, there wasn’t much in the way of chase scenes in his writing; the characters tended to sit around and think their way out of trouble. He wrote Agatha Christie novels, but with robots and interstellar travel.
The egghead outlook befit a man of the academy who didn’t much like to travel. Heinlein, on the other hand, was a military man, a brash, spirited doer, and his books are positively packed with everything Asimov’s lacked: running and jumping and ducking and diving and shooting and slaying. His characters survive on their wits, yes, but also on their brawn. He wrote, in other words, about adventure. His work is smart, of course, but even more than that, it’s fun!
I just read Starship Troopers for the first time in forever. Part of what struck me was how badly the movie (much as I love its brand of meathead camp) employed its source material: Not only did Verhoeven dumb it down, he cut out a fair bit of the most exciting action! I can understand (if not agree with) wanting to make it a little more accessible. But why cut out the most gripping and, frankly, cinematic action scenes?
I’m working my way through the delightfully brisk Glory Road right now, and it’s the most delightful sort of raucous, energetic romp — never brooding or grim, just game and fun. I’ve got a stack of lesser Heinlein titles lined up for next: Sixth Column, The Star Beast, Tunnel in the Sky. Far more than a writer like Michael Crichton, I think it’s Heinlein who’s the true master of what Ross Douthat called the “marriage of sci-fi and page-turning potboiler.” Heinlein’s novels don’t qualify as great fiction by any means, and every time I pick one up, I’ll admit to feeling a tinge of guilt at ignoring the better, arguably more important novels on my shelf. But not for long: Heinlein’s books are so thoroughly engaging, how could I? They read fast, the writing is just clever enough not to be embarrassing, and they’re never less than damn entertaining — which it to say with Heinlein, it’s always a pleasure, but never a guilty one.
i’m not a big consumer of the pulp-‘golden era’ sf, but from what i here/know that’s about right. i like asimov myself, but heinlein seems to capture the ethos of the pulp era better. asimov later switched mostly to nonfiction and i think his fiction somewhat prefigures that in its relatively cerebral character.
— razib · Apr 2, 07:58 AM · #
Skip Sixth Column — Heinlein didn’t come up with the plot. John W. Campbell, his editor, handed it to him, and Heinlein later felt he had only made the best of a bad job.
Heinlein wrote Glory Road in 19 or 23 days, something like that, and it shows. Fantasy didn’t much interest Heinlein. During the weird coda, where the action comes to a halt and you get extended meditations on the domestic troubles of a man married to the Queen of the Galaxy, you can see Heinlein visibly losing interest in the book, and, presumably, turning most of his attention to his next book and last masterpiece, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
The books for boys he wrote from 1947 to 1963 are almost uniformly fine. The Star Beast is a delight (Mr. Kikuyu, the ultra-competent Kenyan Permanent Undersecretary of Extraterrestrial Affairs, is one of the most memorable government bureaucrats in literature). Tunnel in the Sky, a story of how young people marooned on a strange planet painfully construct a workable society, serves as a terrific rejoinder to Lord of the Flies from the year before. (Heinlein probably hadn’t read Golding’s book yet.) Greg Cochran would say the best juvenile is Have Spacesuit, Will Travel (and hopefully he’ll someday finish the quasi-sequel to it he’s writing). I think the most perfect example is Starman Jones. Citizen of the Galaxy suffers a little from being modeled on Kim and Heinlein, like everybody else, is no Kipling, but its wild changes of social setting are remarkable.
Don’t worry about trying to make coherent sense out of Heinlein’s political views. As Cochran notes, Heinlein tended to espouse whatever politics his wife at the time believed in. Heinlein’s three big cult novels have strikingly non-overlapping audiences: Starship Troopers — soldiers and militarists, Stranger in a Strange Land — hippies and druggies, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress — libertarians. Heinlein was an imaginative writer, not a political philosopher.
— Steve Sailer · Apr 2, 09:13 AM · #
can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, but Verhoeven’s film is meant to be a parody of Heinlein’s latent fascism and military-worship; it’s hardly meant to be an accurate reproduction of the book.
— Max Socol · Apr 2, 09:38 AM · #
OK, that’s really odd— no fooling, I’m rereading Glory Road for probably my tenth or twelfth time, and I said to myself “I wonder if Peter Suderman’s read this” yesterday.
— Freddie · Apr 2, 02:09 PM · #
I think America’s best ever pulp writer (not a novelist per se) was H.P. Lovecraft. But for novelist Heinlein does nicely thank you very much.
— Andrew Ian Dodge · Apr 2, 04:35 PM · #
Max – right, although for the record, I think it works far better as camp than as satire, but either way it was still an action movie, still designed to appeal to an action movie audience. Verhoeven reproduced some of the classroom scenes and a few of the the bits from bootcamp, but adjusted the action to make it more bland and conventional. Verhoeven could’ve made his point just as well (badly, I think) and included scenes that work far better on the screen.
— Peter Suderman · Apr 2, 05:39 PM · #
Just wanted to say that I appreciate The American Scene’s unofficial geeky genre fiction week.
— Blar · Apr 2, 05:40 PM · #
“but Verhoeven’s film is meant to be a parody of Heinlein’s latent fascism and military-worship;”
Yeah, yeah, Heinlein’s Starship Troopers was all about blond Nazi Aryans — like his hero, Juan Rico, who, in the book, as we find out on the next to last page is a Tagalog-speaking Filipino from Manila. In the movie, however, he’s played by Caspar von Diehn.
Look, Verhoeven has admitted that his tastes were formed by Nazi propaganda films he watched as a small child in occupied Holland. And ever since Verhoeven has been reveling in the Nazi imagery he loves. But he has to come up with excuses for this so he usually says he’s just satirizing somebody else’s latent fascism, rather than being honest that he still adores Fascist aesthetics himself.
— Steve Sailer · Apr 2, 07:44 PM · #
You know what sci-fi I like about intergalactic war better than Starship Troopers? The Forever War.
— cw · Apr 3, 02:17 AM · #
And out best pulp novelist is Elmore Leonard. Not that I dislike Heinlein.
— cw · Apr 3, 02:19 AM · #
H.P. Lovecraft: Best pulp writer? No way. Most interesting pulp writer? Absolutely.
— Ethan C. · Apr 3, 03:29 AM · #
cw: Yeah, I think I agree about Forever War. I’ve read it multiple times, and I’ve gone through all the sequels too. Haldeman’s great, and a perfect anti-war antidote — if you want one — to Heinlein’s enthusiast militarism.
— Peter Suderman · Apr 3, 05:17 AM · #
Y Hallo Thar? Where is mein Komment? It has been taken to the Gulag for being Anti-Revolutionary and Capitalist.
— Hmm · Apr 3, 09:51 AM · #
All of this only applies to early Heinlein – later Heinlein (To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Time Enough For Love, etc.) is mostly quite bad: actionless, confusingly tied in to his Lazarus Long-centered future history, and incredibly preachy about shockingly bad ideas.
— JasonL · Apr 3, 03:04 PM · #
Heinlein had a long prime from his first stories in 1939 (his 1940 short story “Solution Unsatisfactory” is an astonishing work of prediction — the U.S. will end WWII in 1945 by atomic bombing an Axis city, only to fall into a massive conflict with the Soviet Union) through The Moon is a Harsh Mistress in 1966, when he was 60. After that he suffered severe health problems.
— Steve Sailer · Apr 3, 09:17 PM · #
Steve —
When I interviewed Paul Verhoeven he was actually quite forthcoming about his approach/avoidance conflict with Nazi imagery and with war in general. He mentioned that Starship also satirizes Frank Capra’s recruiting films — anyway the interview is on my website.
— Brian D'Amato · Apr 5, 11:55 PM · #
Well, this is a first. I agree with every word Steve Sailer has written in both his comments. I bow to no one in my love of Robert Heinlein’s work, but don’t bother reading anything he wrote after Moon is a Harsh Mistress. There may be few clunkers before that (e.g., Sixth Column), but it’s all clunkers — clunders all the way down — after that.
— David A · Apr 6, 05:49 PM · #
Between Planets was my favorite novel growing up [probably 20+ reads by the time I graduated HS]. If one liked Starship Troopers, give Armor by Steakley a try [I have read this so many times I had to buy a new paperback]. Regarding Heinlein’s world view, the intermissions in Time Enough for Love give some interesting insights [I did not particularly like the book but go back to the intermissions on occasion].
If one can find a copy, Rowley’s The Vang: Military form is also a fun read.
— Felix · Apr 6, 06:47 PM · #