Re: Heinlein/Clarke Recommendations

In article <1190909114.171202.274330@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
dtate@xxxxxxx says...
On Sep 27, 8:34 am, netcat <net...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <Jp0308....@xxxxxxxxxxx>, djhe...@xxxxxxxxxxx says...

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.

Oh yes. Exactly the thing that bothered me in "By His Bootstraps".
Bob is in an unsatisfactory relationship, but instead of ending it "like
a man" he just grabs his chance to run away without closure. As a matter
of fact, since he's a nobody achieving nothing, he's not running only
from Genevieve, but his entire world, society and life.

Were you under the impression that the reader was supposed to
sympathize or empathize with Bob?

Not exactly. It's just it bothers me somewhat that a lot of people who
praise the story and are a lot more sociable than I am _do_ empathize
with him, while I cannot. I think he was a selfish loser who deserted
life and his obligations to society. And no one else I've spoken to
seems to have gotten this impression.

Interesting; I certainly didn't.

(But then, I didn't read BHB for the first time until fairly
recently.)

I read it first when I was very young. I didn't pass judgment on
Wilson's character then, obviously, I was just all excited about the
neat time loops.

It was a lot later when, upon re-reading, I suddenly thought: hey, what
did this guy just do? He ran away forever without saying goodbye to
anyone at all, had he no friends, relatives, family? He ran away to a
solitary life among no mental peers, nobody he could talk to, for his
entire life, and he _liked_ it so much he sent his younger self to close
the loop?

Not to speak of the issue that he had access to both a time machine and
knowledge of what happens to mankind in the future, and he did _nothing_
about it.

But as I said, I know a lot of people who like this story, who consider
it one of the best examples of Heinlein's work, even, and none of them
thinks Bob Wilson was weird.

rgds,
netcat
.

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