Birthdays
Andrew Garfield b. 1983 (Spider-Man)
Ben Barnes b. 1981 (Narnia)
Moon Bloodgood b. 1975 (Terminator Salvation)
Amy Adams b. 1974 (Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Man of Steel)
James Marsters b. 1962 (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel)
Greg Bear b. 1951
(won 1995 Nebula for Moving Mars)
(won 2001 Nebula for Darwin’s Radio)
Sylvester McCoy (7th Doctor) b. 1943
Frank Herbert b. 1920 died 2/11/1986
(won 1966 Hugo for Dune)
H.P. Lovecraft b. 1890 died 15 March 1937
Quite often, the birthday list is all actors, but today there are three significant writers, and I have decided to use H.P. Lovecraft in the Picture Slot. Of course, Lovecraft is better known for a certain type of horror dealing with ancient powers instead of science fiction, but it's pretty remarkable when a person's name becomes an adjective, like Orwellian or Kafkaesque or Lovecraftian. Another thing these three 20th Century writers have in common is that all of them died before they were fifty.
Many happy returns to the living, and may the dead remain dead, their graves undisturbed by foolish mortals, their souls protected from the Old Ones.
Prediction: 1969 headline: N.Y. YOUTH MEET DEMANDS UPPER LIMIT ON FRANCHISE
Predictor: Robert A. Heinlein from Methuselah’s Children, started 1941, compiled and expanded into a novel 1958
Reality: Regular readers know that I have two Heinlein photos and I have labeled them Sensible Bob and Ridiculous Bob. The picture used today is the latter, but I only use it because I don't have a photo called Fucking Evil Bob.
Throughout my lifetime, conservatives have worked hard to deny the vote to people they disagree with, whether it's the southern Democrats of the Jim Crow era or the Republicans of Arizona during the Goldwater era where future Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist made his name getting Hispanics of the voting rolls or today when conservatives around the country work hard to take the vote away from the poor, women, college students, anyone who is unlikely to support their nasty nihilistic policies.
If one of the Old Ones decides to fuck with the immortal soul of Robert A. Heinlein, well... it's no skin off my nose. I say to him what he often said to his readers.
You're on your own.
Looking one day ahead...INTO THE FUTURE!
Our new pal from 1905 T. Baron Russell gets another go, this time a prediction that isn't quite as accurate as his first two.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
Ok, I haven't felt the need to re-read any of this Heinlein stuff in quite some time, but I think you might be off the mark on this one.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, the youth movement in MC was a response to the knowledge that there were a fair number of really old people who had lived far longer than most people, and had taken to a standard procedure of changing their identity so they wouldn't be found out.
The effort to restrict the franchise was a reaction to this knowledge, and I kind of thought it was Heinlein's way of illustrating how reactionary and repressive humans could be on a whole. More cuationary and extrapolatary than endorsing the whole thing.
Having said that, you have a valid point that evil Bob really liked the idea of stratifying culture into special people and plebes.
When looking at science fiction, I'm specifically looking for dates, and in Methuselah's Children, Heinlein says things get wacky in the late 1960s. As proof of this wackiness, he gives a passel of headlines from 1969. For the most part, these headlines aren't really plot points, but the passages do exist and I have borrowed them.
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