Heinlein

Lots of Heinlein discussion going on these days, in no small part triggered by the publication of the first half of Patterson's massive biography Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialog with His Century.

Here's a comment I left in one of the discussions:

Heinlein was a progressive or even radical in many ways by the standards of a man who was born in 1908. However, he did not move forward nearly as quickly as he thought he did, and was outstripped by events, especially on sex and race.

Chip Sullivan had a good paper at this year's ICFA discussing gender in the juvies, and one of the saddest things is the degree to which he obviously believed that women were as smart and capable and admirable as men, but at the same time couldn't really think of them as being as smart and capable and admirable in the same ways as men.

Or, as Farah Mendlesohn said, "he believed in the rights of women, and then managed to get his understanding of what that might look like spectacularly wrong in all sorts of ways".

(More attribution: The first paragraph of my comment was deeply influenced by David Hartwell's letter of comment to NYRSF #263.)