Re: Heinlein/Clarke Recommendations

On Sep 26, 5:07?pm, djhe...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
In article <1190849698.105491.55...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Bill Patterson <WHPatter...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

There are interesting moral and psychological ambiguities scattered
throughout that period of Heinlein's writing, where the reader is
(gambit) invited to take a position from which you can't really see
and evaluate the whole picture. I think Bill Lermer's relationship
with his father is one of these, even more interestingly pregnant than
this one.

Oh, yes. I reread _Farmer_ recently and the opening couple of
chapters always make my blood boil. George, as he explains
eventually, doesn't want to marry Molly so he can emigrate; he
wants to emigrate because he wants to marry Molly.

Why is that?

Molly was his draftsman. Earth society will see her as the
scheming secretary (all female employees are the equivalent of
mere dumb secretaries) who inveigles till she gets to marry the
boss. So George wants to take Molly to a place where there is
no one who knows she used to be his employee, and, mark you,
where there is no one who knows that he used to be married to
Anne.

Including Bill, whom he does his best to leave behind. If he
could just have left Bill behind on Earth, nobody on Ganymede
would know him and his family as anything but Mr. and Mrs. Lermer
and their daughter; he would have cut himself completely off from
his embarrassing past and everyone connected with it. He is
eventually shamed out of it, or the book would have ended very
quickly.

If I were Bill, and figured out in time what George was up to, I
would have gone along with it, you bet. I would've stayed on
Earth, letting George shuck me and our whole history together
like a snakeskin, and I would never have communicated with him
again. (George had left Bill all his funds in trust, and couldn't
reclaim them.)

Consider also the last scene of _The Puppet Masters,_ where Sam
explains that he and Mary have left their daughter behind on
Earth with her grandfather "where she'll be safe." Of course,
they're going to have other children on the trip. Meanwhile,
the daughter is only three or four and doesn't understand why her
parents are abandoning her. They don't seem to care, either;
she's just their genetic backup in case they don't come back.

Heinlein does seem to have had spells of thinking of one's personal
history, including one's children, as unnecessary ballast to be
jettisoned as needed. Good thing he never had any.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djhe...@xxxxxxxxxxx

The social model Heinlein was using to was the one he grew up with --
a frontier mindset toward the end of a 200 year period of emigration
and frontier. The social model we're reading it from now is the ones
who were left behind as things got worse and worse. Heinlein has
deliberately scaled travel times to approximate the late Colonial
period in the U.S. wrt Great Britain or France. The relationships
aren't "jettisoned," but they have different meanings on such time
scales of communication and travel.

Very interesting analysis of George Lermer -- hadn't thought of it in
those terms before, but the instant you articulate it, it's obviously
right in at least some of its parts (it's not that the others are
necessarily *wrong*, just not so obviously right that the marrying-the-
boss trope is being invoked). There is no problem on earth that is so
big and hairy that it can't be run away from -- and you've put your
finger on one of the reasons Heinlein left Los Angeles when his
marriage to Leslyn broke up.

Even when you're resisting Other People's Expectations and determined
to make your new relationship work, it's always a strain; it's just
easier on everyone to make a clean break with the old environment.
Something Diane Ford used to use in her routine bears on this: going
back for the holidays to visit with family; on the second or third day
you realize why it was that you moved 1000 miles away. She told it
better.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Heinlein/Clarke Recommendations
    ... So George wants to take Molly to a place where there is ... could just have left Bill behind on Earth, ... emigrates to Ganymede is seen as a psychopathology -- an inappropriate ...
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  • Re: Heinlein/Clarke Recommendations
    ... Including Bill, whom he does his best to leave behind. ... could just have left Bill behind on Earth, ... If I were Bill, and figured out in time what George was up to, I ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Heinlein/Clarke Recommendations
    ... I think Bill Lermer's relationship ... George, as he explains eventually, doesn't want to marry Molly so he can emigrate; ... could just have left Bill behind on Earth, ... parents are abandoning her. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Heinlein/Clarke Recommendations
    ... I think Bill Lermer's relationship ... So George wants to take Molly to a place where there is ... could just have left Bill behind on Earth, ... and their daughter; he would have cut himself completely off from ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
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