The dead hand of Heinleinism

Adam Roberts reviews a dreadful sounding novel, Charles Sheffield’s and Jerry Pournelle’s Higher Education, a “confection of right-wing ideological tendentiousness, bias, strawmannery, tedious earbending and downright banging-your-fist-on-the-edge-of-the-pulpit preaching”. It all sounded very familiar, reinforced by the extracts Roberts provided:

“You stated on your general knowledge quiz that Rome was founded in the year 753A.D. Would you be interested in revising that opinion?”

There was a long silence as Deedee opened her mouth and then closed it. Finally she said, tentatively: “753 B.C.?”

“Correct. A mere difference of fifteen hundred years, but what’s that between friends? Bravo. … Now listen all of you. You may be thinking, what the hell is all the fuss about? Barney French is nit-picking on things that don’t make a damn of difference. Well if you think that you’re wrong.” … She walked along the line of trainees, turning so that they could get a good view of her misshapen face. “See the scars? See the bone grafts? Take a close-up. You’re seeing me after thirty-seven operations and the best plastic surgery that money can buy. My body is in worse shape than my face—I have more metal than bone in my shoulders. And I’m one of the lucky ones. Four people died in the accident that did this. And do you know what caused it?”

It’s Heinlein isn’t it? Ersatz Heinlein, that is, inferior writers aping his style and his certaincies without having his skill to make you share them, at least for the duration of the story. The dead hand of Heinleinism, strangling science fiction from beyond the grave.

Heinlein could sell you a lot of nonsense, really rather stupid opinions and authoritarian bullshit but he could make you believe in all that bullshit. Especially if you are twelve, bookish and slightly smarter than your friends. He was like a kindly if slightly more cynical than your parents thought was appropriate uncle, calmly explaining to you how the world worked, trusting you were smart enough to follow his logic and never upset if you disagreed with him, as long as you could argue why you did so. He stacked the decks outrageously of course, but that didn’t matter when you were in the middle of the story. He made you trust him, if only until the book was finished.

His imitators on the other hand…

All a Pournelle or Sheffield can take away of what Heinlein did so effortlesly is the authoritianism, the big man swagger and opinions stated as facts, but without the skills to make it work. They’re just bullies, Heinlein without Heinlein’s charm. And it’s this dead hand of Heinleinism that helps hold science fiction back, as all these wannabes try to ape the old man and fail and as he remains for so many writers and readers both the standard to measure everything new with, even though it should be obvious he isn’t just that relevant or interesting anymore. Just because we liked him when we were young doesn’t mean kids today should read him or that we should keep trying to imitate him and failing. Let him be.