Footfall

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Hangtime
Heheheheh yah Boroda, I liked Starship Troopers; I especially liked those 'mobile suits', I loved the politics and Heinlen has a brash way of putting forth concepts and ideas that reach out and grab yah by the cortex. Better than Starship Troopers.. Joe Haldermans "The Forever War". Try it. It's written for YOU, Boroda.

Starship Troopers is an interesring book, but it seems to me that his real intentions are not in the "first layer", you have to read between the lines to understand what he really meant there

Originally posted by Hangtime
My favorite Heinlen.. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Best single Line in all of SF... the Loonies are plotting a Revolt from Earths domination with the help of a sentininet computer. The Committiee wonders what they can use for weapons and the computer replies..

"We can throw rocks."
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One of my favourietes too. Imagine the work of translator who had to find substitutions for prison slang in Russian The translation that I have is almost exellent, it even has comments for the allusions that many Russians can't understand.

Originally posted by Hangtime
"Stranger in a Strange Land"... another keeper. Possibly the most read SF book in history, and quite possibly contributed more sanity to the 60's than any other work in print at the time.
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A great book. I have read it in English in late 80s, before it was published here. Re-read it in Russian, found out how many things I didn't understand, and also that I understood many things that translator missed

Hard to imagine that he was writing this novel almost at the same time with Strarship Troopers.

Originally posted by Hangtime
Heinlein could weave a world around you in just a few pages.. the "Cat Who Walks Through Walls" was superb, and as the father of SF "Future Histories" nothing can or ever will touch the compendium "The Past though Tomorrow" containing in their correct order:

Lifeline, The Roads Must Roll, Blowups Happen, The Man Who Sold The Moon (DD Harriman is my personal Hero. ), Deliliah and the Space Rigger, Space Jockey, Requim, The Black Pits of Luna, It's Great To Be Back, We also Walk Dogs, Searchlight, Ordeal in Space, The Green Hills of Earth (tearjerker), Logic of Empire (you'd love that one Boroda;)), The Menace from Earth, If This Goes On--, Coventry, Misfit, and Methuselah's Children.
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Have read all of the "Future History" stories. One of my friends has an old "The Man Who Sold The Moon" American papaerback from maybe 1950. Needless to say that all this stories were translated to Russian, many of them in Soviet times.

Originally posted by Hangtime
Heinlen made two trips to the Soviet Union... his writings on his experiences there were the first honest view I had of the Soviet Mind.. revealing and informative. Very thought provoking.

Try to find "Pravda Means Truth".. though I doubt that one ever made into a Russian Translation. [/B]

It was translated in early 90s, but I couldn't get a copy toe read. It was sold out too fast. It's one of the books that I really want to read. Heinlein was an extraordinaty man and my favourite English-speaking sci-fi writer (or maybe second, after Philip K. Dick). Should be very interesting to read his view on Soviet life.

What is your opinion on his late novels? "Cat Who Walks Through Walls" is probably the only one of his latest works that I didn't read. "The Number of the Beast" and "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" are nice, but weird with all that things about incest...

[Boroda]

Hang, I made a brief search and found Heinlein's articles about USSR.

http://fenzin.hypermart.net/lib/heinlein.htm

I am writing this post when I take a break to stop laughing and smoke a cigarette.

"Staw grahm  vawt-kee, p'jalst,  ee tawmahtnee  sawk"

"Right way to drink vodka is with beer (!!!!!!!) or black bread, butter and caviar (!!!!!!!)"

"Inside Intourist" is beautifull!

"Pravda means Truth" is a good example of cold-war rhethorics. Mr. Heinlein wrote it because he was offended that they didn't open Hermitage specially for him... Technical details are extremely incompetent (U-2 "is a fast plane"). Do you expect USSR to be happy after shooting down an American spy plane?

I find this articles very educating. I wonder why they were not translated in Soviet times. A good example that "they" hate us and don't understand us at all.

Heinlein was a wise man, and I share many of his opinions. But this articles show him from quite another side Saying that population of Moscow is less then one million, and "communists" lie that it is 5 million... It's beyond any possible degree of stupidity. All he needed to do was to take a look from the Vorobiovy Hills.

[Hangtime]

Not surprising he'd be wrong in the details. But.. have a look at the print dates. As I recall, that first trip was in the 1950's.

There is NO doubt that Heinlein was a rabid anti-soviet.. thats why I was shocked that you enjoyed his works.

Glad you found these writings... I was hunting through my stuff this weekend looking for them so I could mail them to you if you couldn't find them there.

Yah.. all of Heinleins late works were just too strange for me... I enjoyed his political views, but his sexual orientation (starship troopers) always had me a mite suspiscious. I suspect the old guy was sliding off his rocker towards the end of his days I think.

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Hangtime
Not surprising he'd be wrong in the details. But.. have a look at the print dates. As I recall, that first trip was in the 1950's.

The articles I read so far were written in 1960, "Inside Intourist" has some comments added in 1980. He thought nothing have changed for that 20 years, but the attitude towards foreigners in 1980 was quite different from what he described. I don't know about 1960, but I remember 1980 quite well. I was one of the few kids who stayed in Moscow during the Olympics, I lived with my Father who moved to Moscow 3 years before Mother and me.

Originally posted by Hangtime
There is NO doubt that Heinlein was a rabid anti-soviet.. thats why I was shocked that you enjoyed his works.
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Hang, I told you many many times I am not a commie And being "anti-Soviet" isn't a stamp that makes his books bad or dangerous. I already said he was often translated in Soviet times, since maybe late-40s when "Explosions happen" was published in "Technika-Molodezhi" magazine. His books like "Starship Troopers" and late novells were only mentioned in Soviet press as "reactionist" and "anti-communist", but many stories and novells were considered classics of sci-fi.

Originally posted by Hangtime
Glad you found these writings... I was hunting through my stuff this weekend looking for them so I could mail them to you if you couldn't find them there.
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The problem was that I didn't know the names of that articles. And I have many other things to read, usually I read at least 150-200 pages daily. I am a "readaholic" as most of my friends, and I feel really sick when I have nothing to read.

Originally posted by Hangtime
Yah.. all of Heinleins late works were just too strange for me... I enjoyed his political views, but his sexual orientation (starship troopers) always had me a mite suspiscious. I suspect the old guy was sliding off his rocker towards the end of his days I think. [/B]

Exactly what I thought.

Heinlein is a great individualist, and that's what makes him popular here in Russia. And it's what made him "unsuitable" to socialist system.

I wish you could read some Soviet sci-fi, like Strugatsky brothers, all-time classics. It is very much different from Western books. Communist utopia from "Midday, XXII century" still is a world that I want to live in. "Snail on the Slope" is a great theater of absurdity showing the futility of human effort inside a stagnant social system. "Monday begins on saturday" is a very funny story about Soviet scientific institute studying magic and wizardry (believe me THIS is really funny).

Unfortunately, when we were reading best Western sci-fi and general litirature, you guys couldn't read Soviet authors. (Hehe, did you expect me not to insert a sentence like this here? )