Heinlein's "I Will Fear No Evil"

[triskellian]

I was talking to a colleague about science-fiction a couple of weeks ago. She claimed Heinlein as one of her favourite authors, and I confessed to having read nothing of his, put off by a possibly-unjustified impression of him being too interested in plot at the expense of character, and having misogynist tendencies. She claimed this wasn't true, and leant me I Will Fear No Evil to prove it. Yesterday, ill in bed*, I read the first two chapters. The characters are little more than props, and the main female character wears sexy clothes to please her elderly boss (and decides to make an effort to be extra-sexy tomorrow to thank him for a hefty bequest), doesn't mind being treated like a silly little girl, and, despite claiming to be happily married, throws herself into the arms of another much-older man at the first sign of danger, saying stuff like "Your arms are so strong. I feel safe when you're holding me", and then offers said older man a nude photo of herself. I gave up in disgust. Has anyone read it? Should I give the rest a try before returning it, or is it all like that?

*Hence no appearance at angry_marmot's party, and being off work today. secretrebel - want to come over and cheer me up?

Comments

[lathany.livejournal.com]

put off by a possibly-unjustified impression of him being too interested in plot at the expense of character

Having read a handful of Heinlein, that's probably completely justified. None of his characters have ever been memorable (IMO) and it is only plot/background that he's worth reading for.

and the main female character

All of his female characters, which I've come across so far, behave like this.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Isn't it nice, Triskellian, when all your prejudices turn out to be completely justified :)

[triskellian]

It's lovely - especially when they're based on nothing ;-) From now on I shall assume all my unfounded prejudices are true!

[triskellian]

Glad it's not just me.

For the most part, I'd rather read a book with great characters and no plot than the reverse - perhaps I should've made that clearer to the colleague in question. Can't imagine why she thought IWFNE would make me change my mind!

[venta.livejournal.com]

This is something I've noticed people doing in the past; not that I can grumble, because I suspect I do it too:

You tell me you don't like author X because of reason Y.
I like author X, in particular I think book Z is great.
I therefore offer you book Z to "convert" you, regardless of whether Y is true about it or not.

I guess it's some sort of selective "things I like are all great" blindness.

[triskellian]

Yeah, I'm guilty of it too, of course, but she wasn't even saying "author X/book Z is great despite suffering from flaw Y", she was saying "author X doesn't suffer from flaw Y, and here's book Z to prove it".

I guess book Z could possibly be so good as to make me rethink my position on Y being a flaw... if it had bothered to introduce anything other than examples of Y in the two chapters I read ;-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'll look forward to hearing what she has to say in defence if you present her with your analysis of the first two chapters as it appeared above :)

I guess it's possible in general that book Z's greatness might blind its fans to the existence of flaw Y, but on your assessment Z has a fairly extreme case of Y in this instance.

[triskellian]

I'll look forward to hearing what she has to say in defence if you present her with your analysis of the first two chapters as it appeared above :)
I will, since she's bound to ask what I thought, and I'm dying to find out what was going on in her head ;-) I'll try to remember to post her response.

Podkayne of Mars

[jinty]

is the one notable exception, being one of his shorter books aimed at adolescents and therefore nothing like as creepy about sex. She gets to be active and heroic and stuff. I can't remember the plot off-hand so maybe that's a good sign, me remembering the character more than the plot.

Anyone who tries to sell you Heinlein on the basis of him not being a sexist misogynistic pulp writer is barking very much up the wrong tree. Having said that, I own and have re-read a whole bunch of his books, including IWFNE, as a tacky guilty pleasure. I'm not even quite sure why I read them, except for the fact that I started reading them when I had little critical judgement and was reading Piers Anthony (have since stopped) and Anne McCaffrey (still kept as a guilty pleasure, mostly because I like the dragons).

Re: Podkayne of Mars

[triskellian]

Yeah, stuff you started reading as a kid is often exempt from the standards you apply to other books. I will never read the Dragonlance books, for example, because by the time I discovered them, I was too old to appreciate them. I'm with you on the Anne McMaffrey, though, although I pretty much stopped at about All the Weyrs, and just occasionally re-read the old ones now.

Hooray for Friday-afternoon-LJ-surfing, btw ;-)

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

From what I recall it gets worse. His early Boys Own adventure stuff in space was quite fun (in a rather miliataristic right wing kind of way), but by the time he got to his dirty old man phase his stuff was pretty repellant even to a teenaged boy. A quick rule of thumb is that if a story of his is under 200 pages it's proabbly a fun ripping yarn, if it's over 200 pages it's a dirty old man's wish-fulfilment fantasy.

[triskellian]

512 pages. And Amazon reviews suggest the rest is entirely sex, which isn't promising from someone whose views of women I already don't like.

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm aware the general perception of Heinlein is that he has written three books which are considered to be 'good' and the rest are either bad or have cult appeal only.

The three to look out for are:
The Door into Summer, a time-travel adventure with a cat in it. :)
Stranger in a Strange Land, a human raised as a martian returns to earth to discover life and love. It's pretty good until he forms his own sex-based religion.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, communist style revolution on a futurist moon. My favourite and a real classic. Some strange views of women but these are excused/explained by special circumstances of the society concerned.

I would put aside this load of tripe you are reading now. I'll come visit you after I've had some lunch. Shall I bring you a better book then?

[triskellian]

The Door into Summer
Is this the one you read me the opening page of once? I remember rather liking it. Maybe I'll try that when I've got over the horror of I Will Fear No Evil.

I would put aside this load of tripe you are reading now.
Have done - I'm re-reading I Capture the Castle, having just reclaimed it from C. It's much better, and perfect sick-bed reading :-) And, oddly, Rose is really reminding me of C. Hmmm. Best not tell her that, I think ;-)

I'll come visit you after I've had some lunch.
Hooray!

Shall I bring you a better book then?
No thanks, I've got rather a pile waiting to be read after I've finished my comfort-reading: the new Garth Nix, kindly loaned by kauket, Middlesex, and The Life of Pi. I'm reasonably confident that all of them will be much better than evilevilHeinlein ;-)

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

I think in your enfeebled state you've messed up your italicisation. But I sha'n't forbid you a biscuit.

Yes, TDIS is the one I read you some of. I think you'd like the cat bits and the rest is ok.

ICTC sounds much better for the sick, though, than any of Heinlein's works.

Illness

[killalla]

Sad to hear your not feeling well. (And yes, this means I will not badger you about the gym all week. ;) I have read one or two Heinlein books (can't quite remember which) and they did seem to have similar themes and a lot of sex. But, some had eugenics breeding programs as well, so that was alright.

Re: Illness

[triskellian]

Well, lots of sex isn't necessarily a problem. I mean, I read porn. But at least porn is honest about what it's doing ;-)

Re: Illness

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

So is Heinlein - "superficial pretty girls for older men" is the manifesto, which he seemingly makes little attempt to hide !

I don't really like any of his work myself despite the fact that I much prefer plot ro character in general. I have always assumed this was because I read him too late (ie. long after reading authors who wrote after him doing the same stuff way better).

Re: Illness

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I have always assumed this was because I read him too late (ie. long after reading authors who wrote after him doing the same stuff way better).

That's a pretty accurate guess. The best of the ones I read was Glory Road. It had some nice ideas in it (mainly in the dungeon section). But one of the best bits (the final battle between the hero and the big bad) has since been improved upon by Michael Scott Rohan in Chase the Morning (where it is also the final battle between the hero and the big bad, but this time at the end of the book).

Re: Illness

[triskellian]

So is Heinlein - "superficial pretty girls for older men" is the manifesto, which he seemingly makes little attempt to hide !
And I'd obviously picked up on this at some level - should've paid more attention ;-)

"Our teeth grated and my nipples went 'spung!'"

[mr-snips.livejournal.com]

For reasons too embarassing to explain, I've actually read most of Heinlein's books, on the basis of which I can confidently divide his published work into three main strands:

The Crypto Fascist (Starship Troopers, Tunnel in the Sky, Sixth Column...)

The Spanking Novels (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I Will Fear No Evil - particularly notable for the way in which the old man has his consciousness transferred into the body of a young woman, after which they share both her body and her spankings -, Friday - a book so repulsive I couldn't bring myself to give it to Oxfam for fear that someone else's mind might be contaminated...)

The Literally Unreadable (Time Enough for Lust, The Number of the Breast, The Cat who Craps Through Walls...)


With a special mention for The Door Into Summer, where as I recall the hero spends half the book hanging around with an eleven year old girl and then goes into cryogenic suspension for a few years so he can start sleeping with her.


"Comparable to John Norman at his best"


Neal


PS: Oh, all right, I quite liked Podkayne of Mars. And the spanking stuff would be fine if he had actually been writing AN Roquelaure style "erotic fantasies", rather than constantly going on about how all his supposedly realistic female characters can only find true personal fulfillment when stripping for their boss...

Re: "Our teeth grated and my nipples went 'spung!'"

[triskellian]

I Will Fear No Evil - particularly notable for the way in which the old man has his consciousness transferred into the body of a young woman, after which they share both her body and her spankings
And it was the suspicion of this sort of stuff to come which made me stop before it all got too terrible for words ;-(

Re: "Our teeth grated and my nipples went 'spung!'"

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Ahh, Friday. I threw this across the room about ten pages in, when the eponymous heroine (who had just been gang-raped brutally by prison guards) got up, brushed herself down and strolled off whistling, and there was a little explanation that if you were a female spy this sort of thing happened to you all the time and it was no big deal. Nice.

I was going to defend The Door Into Summer, but I don't remember the dodgy eleven-year-old girl bit. Maybe I was too innocent for it to seem odd.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_corpse_/]

I have to agree completely with waistcoatmark.

I read a lot of Heinlein as a boy, and loved it. Space Cadet, Starship Troopers, Have Space Suit--Will Travel to name but three.

It was all glorious, boys-own adventure in space stuff, with dashing heroes and evil villains. Marvelous. Slightly tinged by his right-wing, naval background, but not so much that it put me off.

Then something happened to him. What it was, I don't know, but all of a sudden his books were at least twice as fat, all featured extended families and nipples everywhere and... well... basically they were bobbins. I suppose Stranger In A Strange Land is worth reading, but only because it's the best of that particular sorry bunch.

It's almost like the real Heinlein was replaced by some kind of nipple-fixated alien.

Hmm.

Heinlein.
Alien.

That's close enough to be proof as far as I'm concerned.

[triskellian]

Heinlein.
Alien.

That's close enough to be proof as far as I'm concerned.
I'm convinced ;-)

[arralethe.livejournal.com]

The only Heinlein I ever read was "Stranger in a Strange land", and that mainly due the (I'm sure) apocryphal tale of Heinlein and L Ron Hubbard arguing about religion whilst taking some dodgy chemicals. I think it went along the line of Heinlein saying "but you can't base a religion on sex and money. " and L Ron Hubbard saying "10 bucks says I can."

Et voila.

Get Tom Cruise as you modern spokesperson and away you go, Scientology.

Stranger in a Strange Land seems to make more sense against this backdrop, but it didn't persaude me to read more Heinlein.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Has anyone read it? Should I give the rest a try before returning it, or is it all like that?

Um. When I was 13 or 14, I read and re-read IWFNE. I loved it. I really, really did.

I am now not at all sure why I did. (I was a baby feminist even then - worked it out from first principles a year or two earlier, and then discovered my mum's feminist books and was working my way through them.)

But yes, pretty much all the rest of the book is like that, or it's worse. The book is notable for an interminable series of conversations inside the old man's brain with himself and the ghost of his secretary, and for more sex-scenes than in any other Heinlein novel, all done in "telephone" format. I've never read so much sex with so little actual detail.

Novels by Heinlein that I still enjoy, despite serious reservations about his politics: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (in part because I really like the computer, "Mike"), Citizen of the Galaxy (though it's fractured like a KitKat, the pieces are all good), and five of the juveniles: Red Planet, Farmer in the Sky, Between Planets, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, and Time for the Stars. Space Cadet, The Star Beast, and Tunnel in the Sky I like with reservations, mostly political (TSB is Heinlein trying to be funny, which frankly he's not good at).

But I'm very much a fan of hard sf, and that mindset is how I enjoy a Heinlein novel: not the characters so much as the landscapes, so to speak. (For example, in HSWT, the description of how a small town boy fixes up a second-hand spacesuit so that it actually works.)

All the juveniles have the advantage and the disadvantage that Heinlein was required to pretend that adolescent boys have no sex life whatsoever. Personally, given the way Heinlein writes about sex, I prefer this - but it does lead to some ludicrous situations.

Then again, though it may lead you to dismiss me entirely, for the same reason I managed to enjoy Friday (which had the basic advantage, till at least halfway through, that the heroine was uniquely uninterested in getting pregnant) and Number of the Beast (I liked the idea of a vehicle that would take me from novel to novel...)

[triskellian]

Thanks!

I'm not big on hard-SF, unless it has other (redeeming in my eyes) characteristics, so, along with everyone else's comments, you've convinced me that I should never waste another second of precious reading time on Heinlein...

... Except that I'm now intrigued by the idea of "a vehicle that would take me from novel to novel", so I might have to go and read NOTB just to find out about that ;-)

"a vehicle that will take you from novel to novel"

[jinty]

...with particular emphasis on the Wizard of Oz and Lewis Carroll. And Heinlein's own books, which is less of a bonus. The Number of the Beast ends up as a big mess, with an over-cutsey anthropomorphised spaceship. Read it once for the experience and then never again, I suggest.

(surfed over here from Neal's journal; hi.)

Re: "a vehicle that will take you from novel to novel"

[triskellian]

Hi

...And I think you've just convinced me not to read it ;-) Sounds like the idea of a vehicle that travels between novels will be better left in my head than in a Heinlein book.