Stranger In a Strange Land (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

Who cares if Smith came from Mars, Jupiter or Pluto?

So you're saying that Heinlein could just IGNORE the fact of the enormous gravity and pressure on Jupiter (make up in his own mind without explanation laws of gravity and pressure that vary from planet to planet), and have a human being raised there. You really are confused about fantasy vs. SF.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Robert A. Heinlein is correctly lauded as the most influential science-fiction author of the modern era. There's no overestimating his importance.

Yet even he could be a victim of his own wishful thinking, given that he was writing about intelligent life elsewhere in this Solar System well, well after astronomy had demonstrated that such was not possible. Though the Hugo Award-winning Double Star is great fun, it is seriously flawed.

"Fiction" does not mean the license to make things up to conveniently fit your story. For science fiction to be valid, it must be written in accordance with and adherence to science as it is known at the time of its being written. And Heinlein lapsed seriously here in the late '50s and early '60s.

Science fiction is not about "making weird stuff up" at will. To be published in a science-fiction magazine or by one of the hardcover houses, a writer must respect science as it is known at the time.

So Heinlein, as great as he was, was far from perfect.

 

[Eric F]

Nonsense. Fiction is imaginary. That is the definition.

Science Fiction can be set in the future as well- how do you apply that to "adherence to science that is known at the time"? You can't. Therefore, are you saying all science-fiction taking place in the future is fantasy, while all taking place in the present has to be based on fact? That doesn't make sense.

Stranger is not about alien life per-se, so "where" he came from is not important, just that he was alien, the ultimate "Outsider".

 

[Dan Rudolph]

"Soft" SF is not the same thing as "fantasy".

Yes it is.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

"Soft" SF is not the same thing as "fantasy".

Yes it is.

 

[TheLongshot]

Ugg... The Science Fiction Nazis are out.... :rolleyes

Personally, I don't care about labels. Great literature is great literature no matter what label you put on it. So what if SiaSL isn't hard SF? I still think it is a great book. I'm sure even Heinlein probably would have agreed that it didn't have much to do with SF.

That being said, I tend not to like most "hard" SF. A lot of it is too focused on the science and not on characters and story. (Clarke and Bova come to mind) There are exceptions to this (Asimov), but not many as far as I have found so far.

Jason

 

[Walter Kittel]

You say it like having standards is a bad thing.

Jack said it as well as it can be stated. Science Fiction has to have some basis in 'Science'. While we obviously cannot accurately predict advances in science in the future, that doesn't relieve the author of internal consistency, and adherance to current standards of science knowledge; with the proviso that current limitations may be overcome by scientific advances, but the laws themselves cannot be violated.

- Walter.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Talk about circular logic. If an SF story is based in the future, it must conform to what is known scientifically at the time of its writing. Robert Heinlein's charming The Door Into Summer, a 1958 novel set in the "future" of both 1970 and 2001, is hopelessly out of date now but still qualifies as SF because it was based on an understanding of science from back in 1958.

If what you are writing about flies in the face of physics then you are producing fantasy.

This is a basic precept of written science fiction, forged by Hugo Gernsback in the 1920s and reinforced by John W. Campbell when he took over Astounding in 1938 (and later went on to forge the careers of Heinlein, Asimov, Simak, Sturgeon, and other leading lights in the field).

Also, lose the "Nazi" slurs.

 

[Henry Gale]

Robert Heinlein's charming The Door Into Summer, a 1958 novel...

Thanks! What a great memory for me, I read that in '58, at 11, it made a big impression.

 

[Edwin-S]

So are you saying that Larry Niven is writing Fantasy because he uses "impossible" technology in stories like his "Known Space" series? After all, in those stories he uses FTL drives and impervious hulls built by the Puppeteers "General Products" company. At the same time those stories also use a science foundation, which he extrapolates upon. For example, Beowulf Shaeffer's flight to the centre of the galaxy, where he discovers that the entire core has supernovaed, creating a wave of radiation that will extinguish all life in 20,000 odd years.

How about the "Ringworld", which is basically an extrapolation on Dyson spheres? The book also uses fanciful technology. So where does it lie? Is it Fantasy or Hard SF. I, personally, classify "RINGWORLD" as Hard SF.

What about Clarke's "FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE"? Nobody has built a space elevator and nobody is sure it can be built, but the possibility has been broached by the scientific community. So is it just Fantasy or Hard SF?

 

[Stephen_Dar]

I agree with Jack Briggs on this one. This really isn't a difficult issue to get a handle on. I've not read Larry Niven, but the bottom line is, there's fantasy, there's sci fi, and there's stuff in the middle that's a bit hard to sort out, so it kind of defaults to fantasy for my money.

The original point was, what was Heinlein thinking putting intelligent life on Mars in the 60s. And, the rebuttal was, who cares which planet, Mars is a metaphor. I agree with both points, any movie would ditch Mars and give us star drive to a nearby planet. But, it's still worth asking what this normally careful writer was thinking using the Mars motif in the 1960s.

I also agree with the premise that it would make a poor movie. I tried to reread it recently, had to quit about 3/4s the way in. It blatantly recycles elements from his simpler, earlier, supposedly Juvenile works like Citizen of the Galaxy. Alas, those would make poor movies too because either 1) they'd be gutted so badly that none of the original character would come through on screen, or 2) if not gutted, the required budget would be too large. My thinking - in about a century or so, film-making technology will allow us to revisit such stories and do them justice on a reasonable budget (think perfect digital recreations of every scene in the the book in a miniseries lasting about 8 to 12 hours).

 

[Jack Briggs]

Larry Niven fully qualifies as one of "the club." Though he may get it wrong from time to time (over the decades ever since he first appeared in Horace Gold's great magazine Galaxy, that is).

 

[Eric F]

Talk about circular logic. If an SF story is based in the future, it must conform to what is known scientifically at the time of its writing. Robert Heinlein's charming The Door Into Summer, a 1958 novel set in the "future" of both 1970 and 2001, is hopelessly out of date now but still qualifies as SF because it was based on an understanding of science from back in 1958.

And I will reply by saying your answer is just as specious.

There certainly will be many things disproved that are currently seen as true. So are you discounting any scientific discoveries in the future?

 

[Jack Briggs]

You're still not getting the point. For example, the 1949 Robert Heinlein-scripted film Destination Moon obviously is out of date but it still works as SF because it was based on the science of the day. Whereas a current film such as The Core, based mostly on the whims of Hollywood and with no grounding in science, is just a fantasy.

For an overview, read some of the books that trace the history of the genre. Brian Aldiss's The Billion-Year Spree is a good resource. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, edited by Robert Silverberg, is an anthology of the short works that helped shape the genre, and makes timelessly good reading.

To keep from bogging this thread down, we can carry this dialogue on with private messages if you'd like.

 

[David Forbes]

Edwin,

Niven is hard SF because he at least provides fictional explanations for things like FTL-travel, the Ringworld, etc. Heinlein, with the aliens on Mars in Stranger in a Strange Land, provides no explanation for their presence or why we wouldn't have discovered them (when the science of the time said there could be no life on Mars).

Now, if RH had provided some science fictional reason for the presence of the aliens -- that they were not native to Mars, they lived underground and deliberately concealed their presence, whatever -- it would mollify a lot of the griping about it (and I believe said griping is completely justifiable).

Eric, no offense, but you don't even have a basic understanding of fiction if you believe the writer, SF or otherwise, can just "make stuff up." He or she can, but the product will never be published either. How about a crime novel in which the described pistol, which is known to have only nine rounds (for example), fires 37 shots? What if Grisham were to write a book in which his protagonist fell out of a 20-story building and "bounced" on the concrete and lived with only a few bruises. Grisham could say, "Hey, it's fiction, I can make up whatever the hell I want. I couldn't figure out a way to make him survive the fall but I wanted it in there so I just had him bounce."

I could go on and on. I hope you get the point. In ANY fiction the writer cannot "just make it up." That's what research is all about. Ever hear of the word verisimilitude?

 

[Lew Crippen]

Overall RAH was much more concerned with using his work to present social issues and concepts rather than forcing his fiction into known science of the day.

Presenting ideas such as a society where very different marriage (and family) patterns were not only possible, but permitted and encouraged, or examining the effects carrying on an affair with your mother via time travel was much more important to him than providing justification necessary to support such activities.

Accepting a good deal of science fiction usually requires that we accept that some of what know (or expect) to be true today, will turn out not to be true (or that there will be some loophole available).

Personally I don’t find this particularly troubling, as it allows the writer freedom to more closely examine other issues.

I never thought of Mars (in this case) to be anything other than a convenient metaphor—one that had for the general population the advantage of being close and familiar. But even if one believes that RAH got it wrong (in this case), he certainly reached a far greater audience with this novel than most of his contemporaries were able to do, with works that were perhaps more correct as to science of the day.

 

[Jack Briggs]

None of this is to slight Robert Heinlein overall in the science department. He is, as mentioned earlier, the most influential SF author of all time. And he was, as an engineer, quite the stickler for scientific accuracy.

However, RAH was not immune to lapses in scientific accuracy due to his wishful thinking.

Another example of this: his refusal to let go of his "Future History" backdrop/timeline (the common backdrop against which so many of his short stories, novellas, and novels were based), even though much of it was outstripped by current events, to the very end. He even went so far as to call the future that did transpire the "Armstrong Universe" (for astronaut Neil Armstrong) alternative world to his Lazarus Long-influenced "regular" world (in The Cat Who Walked Through Walls and his final novel, To Sail the Distant Sunset). The man just couldn't let go of the romance of the future his fertile imagination had painted.

For such a technologically oriented man and writer to cling to the idea of intelligent life on Mars (and on Venus) well into the early 1960s is out of character when one considers the body of his work. Arthur Clarke had already begun to write about the "real" Solar System as it was being revealed by astronomy and by Mariner 4 and other early unmanned spacecraft.

Here's a Heinlein short work I'd love to see adapted as a smart teleplay: The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag. What a trip that would be!

 

[Lew Crippen]

None of this is to slight Robert Heinlein overall in the science department. He is, as mentioned earlier, the most influential SF author of all time. And he was, as an engineer, quite the stickler for scientific accuracy

Not in the least Jack. I’ve been a Heinlein fan since I was a kid.

And of Clarke as well.

Good call on The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.

 

[Phil Florian]

...except the ending of has little to do with science! I think a lot about how cool that would be as a movie, but I think the ending would let it down.

As for 'fiction writers just can't make stuff up' that shows how clearly creativity has been driven from our lives! Of course they can! I think what is more important is that writers use some sort of internal logic that is consistent and has some explanation that makes sense to the people in the book (and the reader) but to stretch the bounds of today's science would be fine. I mean, even when Herbert wrote "Dune" we would figure that a creature the size of the worms would be impossible to maintain in any gravity or atmosphere using what we KNOW as basic living biology, but that doesn't make the book worse to read, does it? Does it make it less than SF? The whole metaphysical and psychological aspects of Dune are also waaaay out of the bounds of any accepted 'science' (though not metaphysics or mysticism) but it still is considered one of the greatest sf novels ever written, no?

Heinlein wrote a wonderful little short called "Lifeline" which had no basis in science fact but dealt with some cool concepts, namely "what would happen if we could predict our own death." Is it sf? Or just fiction? Can it be "fiction" if the author is "making stuff up?" By the sf rule mentioned in this thread, it can't be sf because it isn't based on any known science, then or now (predict the future to the second?). By the rule that fiction cannot consist of someone 'making something up' then it clearly cannot be fiction, either. Hmmm...where to go with it? I guarantee if an author (Grisham or a good writer) got it in their head to do a story about a guy who fell 20 stories and bounced, it would sell if it had good characters, story, plot and some sort of internal logic that kept the reader involved. "Unbreakable" was a great movie to some (I liked it) and it had the impossible premise of a man being invincible. He didn't 'bounce' but they made up the ability to be invincible and it was, for me at least, compelling fiction.

Sheesh...I wonder how Harlan Ellison would view this discussion? Or Bradbury? Or Dick? (or do they lose their sf standing?)





Phil

 

[Scott Littlefield]

Why do we assume that RAH was writing about this universe? Obviously in the Stranger... universe there is life on Mars.