I read Robert Heinlein's "I Will Fear No Evil". The book takes place in 2015. In one of the chapters there were characters who were looking for a freshly dead body and one of the characters suggested they could search computerized medical databases because "computers were growing increasingly interconnected".
I found that funny, I was reading that book close to 2015 and I thought, "we already have the Internet". Then I realized the book was published in 1970, before even the personal computer revolution. So then I realized the incredible foresight Heinlein must have had to anticipate that people would network computers.
In the "I Will Fear No Evil" universe computers are connected together in a slowly growing ad-hoc network. I think this was a reasonable prediction, most progress happens slowly and incrementally. "Revolutionary" change that happens quickly is the exception, rather than the rule.
Computers have been networked since the late '50s-early '60s. SABRE, the airline reservation system, went online in 1960. Heinlein would have been well aware of networked computing.
yep. If anything, Henlein seeing the networking of computers as something that develops much more slowly than practical need for spaceflight has to go down as a big miss.
cf John Brunner writing in 1970 about computer-enabled surveillance, data theft and inventing the concept of the internet worm in 1970 (and yes, he also wrote books with near-omnipotent talking computers...)
I'm reminded of the Sector General series by James White, where in the first book he had wireless earbuds connected to a remote computer acting as real-time translators, but characters still had to go to a (video)phone on the wall to talk to each other remotely.
"...Heinlein never achieved stable and consistent recognition either during his lifetime or posthumously. His prose and ideas lacked the signature stylistic and thematic hallmarks that were to distinguish peers such as Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, and Isaac Asimov..."
I really dislike these sorts of remarks. Heinlein is down in the records as one of the "Big Three" authors in the golden age of science fiction. Any Science Fiction reader knows how much of a giant he is. Just because The Atlantic, didn't decide to declare him a singular hidden gem, or HBO didn't make a series based on his works, doesn't mean he wasn't recognized or appreciated in full.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. You, and I, as well, don't happen to agree with this one. After Asimov, RAH is my second favorite SciFi author, having read his entire catalog, many, multiple times. I have my favorites and disfavorites but, across the board, even with his teen stories and his later "dirty old man" books, his books all make interesting reads. His predictions just add to his legacy.
No doubt, I'm also a cranky opinionated life long Science Fiction reader, and we are definitely in agreement. I read as much Heinlein as I could get ahold of as a young man. There's no better fuel for a young nerd than stories of sex, heroic individualism and engineering with a healthy dose of libertarianism. And I know how well regarded Heinlein is in his field.
But what bothers me is the snow-clone nature of that statement that Heinlein was not recognized. It's like a knee -jerk default hyperbolic internet article closing, and I don't think it was true. Especially compared to people like Asimov and Clarke. They all had their little heyday as modern day prophets and fell by the wayside in the wider popular consciousness, no more "consistency" in recognition than any other. PKD, on the other hand seems to be bonafide cultural darling.
personally I only like "Starship Troopers" and would say he was one of my most disliked SciFi writers. It just feels like a Hippie fueled throw up to see what sticks on the walls, minus Starship Troopers and why did they make that movie when it didn't have anything that the book had to say in it?
You say it's an ignorant statement, then you support that with an entirely personal opinion? Okay, here's mine: I loved Starship Troopers, read every other book he's written and loved them as well, with the exception of Stranger in a Strange Land, which is most people's favourite for some reason.
But almost all of my favourite modern sci-fi authors list Heinlein as a major influence, and he has more Hugo awards than anyone else (Hugo is the major award for science fiction). I feel like he gets a lot of recognition.
Hippie? That novel has often been characterized as semi-fascist, and it has pre-Anime mechas and alien bug colonies that essentially get genocided, I'm not sure what book you were "reading".
Stranger in a Strange Land was always one of my favorite pieces of science fiction, but I never knew he was the author of Starship Troopers (1959) until a few weeks ago. Of course, I knew Starship Troopers (1997) as a goofy action flick when I was a teenager, but I just finished reading the novel this past weekend. The two works share little in common besides setting.
The novel is as relevant to geopolitics today as it must have been in 1959. It poses challenging questions about whom within a society deserves authority over others.
Something I've grown to appreciate about the film is that poses similar challenging questions in its own way. In hindsight, the film is much more in conversation with the book than it seems at surface level (more than just setting), because the film is dripping with satire and asks dark questions about fascist authoritarianism. I feel like a key to the film is that it is the best, most direct sequel to Robocop, which is also dripping with satire and dark questions of authoritarianism that are often overlooked in pop culture (Robocop's other sequels for instance misplace/misunderstand the satire pretty quickly).
I agree the movie is more interesting than my above comment implies, for the reason you highlight. That said, I dont believe the novel is about authoritarianism; it critiques universal suffrage, suggesting that only members of an in-group who have demonstrated sacrifice of the individual for the collective can be trusted to make decisions for the collective.
Here's kind of the definitive analysis of Starship Troopers the book, how well it works, Starship Troopers the movie, and where the movie didn't work in the same way the book did: http://www.kentaurus.com/troopers.htm
Door Into Summer also predicted Roomba, but with a 50s sexist brand name:
```
What Hired Girl would do (the first model, not the semi-intelligent robot I developed it into) was to clean floors . . . any floor, all day long and without supervision. And there never was a floor that didn't need cleaning. It swept, or mopped, or vacuum-cleaned, or polished, consulting tapes in its idiot memory to decide which. Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray on its upper surface, for someone brighter to decide whether to keep or throw away. It went quietly looking for dirt all day long, in search curves that could miss nothing, passing over clean floors in its endless search for dirty floors. It would get out of a room with people in it, like a well-trained maid, unless its mistress caught up with it and flipped a switch to tell the poor thing it was welcome. Around dinnertime it would go to its stall and soak up a quick charge-this was before we installed the everlasting power pack. There was not too much difference between Hired Girl, Mark One, and a vacuum cleaner. But the difference-that it would clean without supervision-was enough; it sold.
```
And in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, most families are organized as a sort of generational polygamy thing, typically with more men than women in the group because of the relative scarcity of women in the moon penal colony.
Stranger in a Strange Land was my first Heinlein novel and I finished just a week or two ago. I am not sure if I loved it or hated it, but the direction it went was certainly unexpected. Unsettled, is I think the primary response.
You mean the alarm clock system that Don uses at the hotel that has settings ranging from "Gentle Reminder" to "Earthquake"? That'd be fun. :)
Interesting you bring up Between Planets, because that shows a prediction Heinlein made that isn't covered in this article. Read the description of the "crazy wagon," and, specifically, the conical metal cover it has that reflects away all incoming radar beams. Heinlein was basically describing stealth technology in 1951, six years before Pyotr Ufimtsev's paper on the subject...and it wasn't until 1976 that development started on the F-117, a real implementation of his idea.
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I found that funny, I was reading that book close to 2015 and I thought, "we already have the Internet". Then I realized the book was published in 1970, before even the personal computer revolution. So then I realized the incredible foresight Heinlein must have had to anticipate that people would network computers.
In the "I Will Fear No Evil" universe computers are connected together in a slowly growing ad-hoc network. I think this was a reasonable prediction, most progress happens slowly and incrementally. "Revolutionary" change that happens quickly is the exception, rather than the rule.
cf John Brunner writing in 1970 about computer-enabled surveillance, data theft and inventing the concept of the internet worm in 1970 (and yes, he also wrote books with near-omnipotent talking computers...)
I really dislike these sorts of remarks. Heinlein is down in the records as one of the "Big Three" authors in the golden age of science fiction. Any Science Fiction reader knows how much of a giant he is. Just because The Atlantic, didn't decide to declare him a singular hidden gem, or HBO didn't make a series based on his works, doesn't mean he wasn't recognized or appreciated in full.
But what bothers me is the snow-clone nature of that statement that Heinlein was not recognized. It's like a knee -jerk default hyperbolic internet article closing, and I don't think it was true. Especially compared to people like Asimov and Clarke. They all had their little heyday as modern day prophets and fell by the wayside in the wider popular consciousness, no more "consistency" in recognition than any other. PKD, on the other hand seems to be bonafide cultural darling.
personally I only like "Starship Troopers" and would say he was one of my most disliked SciFi writers. It just feels like a Hippie fueled throw up to see what sticks on the walls, minus Starship Troopers and why did they make that movie when it didn't have anything that the book had to say in it?
But almost all of my favourite modern sci-fi authors list Heinlein as a major influence, and he has more Hugo awards than anyone else (Hugo is the major award for science fiction). I feel like he gets a lot of recognition.
The novel is as relevant to geopolitics today as it must have been in 1959. It poses challenging questions about whom within a society deserves authority over others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roughnecks:_Starship_Troopers_...
``` What Hired Girl would do (the first model, not the semi-intelligent robot I developed it into) was to clean floors . . . any floor, all day long and without supervision. And there never was a floor that didn't need cleaning. It swept, or mopped, or vacuum-cleaned, or polished, consulting tapes in its idiot memory to decide which. Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray on its upper surface, for someone brighter to decide whether to keep or throw away. It went quietly looking for dirt all day long, in search curves that could miss nothing, passing over clean floors in its endless search for dirty floors. It would get out of a room with people in it, like a well-trained maid, unless its mistress caught up with it and flipped a switch to tell the poor thing it was welcome. Around dinnertime it would go to its stall and soak up a quick charge-this was before we installed the everlasting power pack. There was not too much difference between Hired Girl, Mark One, and a vacuum cleaner. But the difference-that it would clean without supervision-was enough; it sold. ```
I wish there was a Roomba with that feature.
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Interesting you bring up Between Planets, because that shows a prediction Heinlein made that isn't covered in this article. Read the description of the "crazy wagon," and, specifically, the conical metal cover it has that reflects away all incoming radar beams. Heinlein was basically describing stealth technology in 1951, six years before Pyotr Ufimtsev's paper on the subject...and it wasn't until 1976 that development started on the F-117, a real implementation of his idea.