Farah Mendlesohn has posted the Foreword to her book about Robert A. Heinlein, part of the Illinois University Press’ “Modern Masters of Science Fiction” series. It’s scheduled for publication in 2016.
Over a period of twenty years, Heinlein’s attitudes had shifted noticeably. Were one to include the previous twenty years, the word would be dramatically. This was not always (from my feminist point of view) a good shift, but it was there, and I was fascinated. Here was a person sometimes ahead of his time, sometimes crosswise, and towards the end frankly in retrenchment. As a historian how could I not be entranced?
[Via Michael J. Walsh who knows all, sees all and, fortunately for news editors, tells all.]
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Well, perhaps not “tells all”. I suspect all past Worldcon chairs know things That Are Not Spoken Of.
What? Another book about Heinlein? That makes four that I know of. When oh when will somebody get around to some really important author, like Otis Adelbert Kline?
What are you doing the rest of the week? You could knock off that project pretty quickly, I’ll bet.
On the other hand, Otis already has a Wikipedia article. Surely an entire book about him would be overkill?
I’ve seen more than one book offered for sale that was nothing more than a collection of Wikipedia articles.
Morris: There’s at least one company that does that. They have several names, so in fact one company may be all that are in that particular scam. They even have a book on *me* — along with other fans scavenged from Wikipedia. It was noted on the F770 blog a year or two ago.
Leave Otis’ memory alone, and lose the sneers. There will be more people looking for ‘zines and paperbacks by him at Pulpfest (at the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the dawn of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, 1939) this summer than there will be people in any dealers’ room in 2089 looking for the ever-so-literarily proper and definitely Politically Correct F&SFs or Best of the Year anthologies of 2014.
Hey S.D. …. I suspect by 2089 even Larry Correia will suffer the same fate.