For many years, I've wanted to see Heinlein's last Hugo award winning novel converted to a movie. Seeing the plucky Loonies fight off the hamfisted Terran Federation would be definitely very enjoyable. Recently, however, I've come to see some major problems with the novel as a movie.
One issue relates to a major issue in the novel - the low gravity of the Moon. It figures in many aspects of the story line. The inhabitants of the Moon are permanently adapted to the one sixth gee, and can't return to earth for any sort of normal existence. When the Federation lands troops on the moon to suppress the revolt, the troops are hampered by their inexperience, and the Loonies use this to their advantage. In any adaptation of the novel, the gravity should figure in every scene, not just a few. Depicting the low gravity is very difficult. The movie Gravity did show zero gee very well, and for the full length of the movie. However Cuaron (the director) only had to show one person moving in zero gee- not whole families, riots and battles. The one sixth gravity would be quite the hindrance of translating the novel and it has to be shown. Another issue is that Heinlein told us about a revolt on the moon, but did not show it. Much of the preparation of for the rebellion is laid out in expository pages. Heinlein, master that he was, got away with it, but it won't work for a video art form. The directory could opt for numerous montage scenes, but that gets old fast. Heinlein also glossed over several character issues. He shows a long discussion with Manny and Stuart Lajoie to enlighten the reader as to the social status of females and the social hierarchy on Luna. He skips later scenes when Lajoie becomes entranced with Manny's family, and not only figures out what's going on, but joins the rebellion as soon as he's informed. In a later scene Manny complains that many of Prof's friends spoke down to him during the time when Luna was preparing for invasion. But this was never shown. The first the reader hears of it is when Manny complains about it. The obvious solution for these two issues is, of course, to write more material. Introduce more characters and show them joining the rebellion and what it means. Let us see Lajoie get swayed by Wyoming Knott, watch his face as he puts clues together and figures out whats going on. Show the progression of the revolt from the formation of the cell system, to the gang rape and riots that resulted with the Loonies overthrowing the local authorities. Watch the disbelief of the intelluctuals when they meet the lead triumvirate. This of course would mean not a movie, but a full HBO or Netflix series. Maybe show three seasons, one season for the insurgency, one for the rebellion and one for fighting the invasion forces. Finally (or perhaps firstly) several major plot holes need filling. One involves the various tricks Mycroft plays on the occupying forces. Unlike 1965, computers are now prevalent in society. The first thing Alvarez would think of would be computer viruses or back doors allowing access to the mainframe. As the local computer consultant, they would heavily scrutinize Manny. Perhaps some sort of LeCarre sting could be worked out to redirect attention to some one else - a very smart computer scientist on the Fed's payroll, but it would still be difficult. Maybe Alvarez would suspect what was happening, he couldn't prove it. He may even campaign for a total reboot that would destroy Mycroft.....hmmm that could lead to a heist episode where Manny has to temporarily download Mycroft to a portable disk drive. Okay, maybe this plot hole could be fixed, but the writers would have to spend some time on it. The second major plot hole involves sending convicts to the moon to do the Fed's farm labor. With a long waiting list for colonizing Mars, I don't think it would be difficult to find volunteers to colonize the moon. Why send dangerous convicts who would more like as not drag their heels and try to sabotage every project? The moon is only three seconds from the earth- many tasks could be done by drones monitored from earth. The idea doesn't make sense. We don't send our DWIs or bar brawlers to Antarctica to monitor research equipment all winter. Also, consider the whole 'farming wheat on the moon to resolve a hunger crisis on Earth' scheme. Heinlein was only guessing at the amount of Lunar water, but we now know there isn't very much. The lunar regolith lacks much carbon and nitrogen, vital necessities for any agricultural endeavors. Any scheme to send convicts to the moon to farm food for earth would just be met with a puzzled look and the question, "Why not just build more prison farms in Nebraska and Alabama?" A plot point about the rebellion was the Loonies had to revolt or face a severe ecologic crisis as they mined the last of their water. But they would barely be able to feed themselves, let alone the teaming masses of India or China. With all the current emphasis on sustainability, I'm not sure how no one would notice that the Moon is running out of water, carbon and nitrogen. The scheme in the later part of the novel where an indigenous Lunar authority increases grain shipments would be utterly ludicrous. The idea of the descendants of convicts on the moon revolting against outside authority certainly touches part of the human spirit, but making a movie from Heinlein's book presents far too many problem. It's a shame though, because I'd love to see it. Image from Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=627437
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Robert Heinlein gets called nasty names because he didn’t believe in the one person-one vote principle. He felt it would devolve into the masses voted themselves bread-and- circuses, with the subsequent loss of the republic. Now, he was a bit idealistic, in that, just about everywhere, there’s some group that doesn’t want Those People voting. Doesn’t matter where, it’s just human nature. The Turks don’t want the Kurds to vote.
Heinlein proposed several different schemes. In the novel Starship Troopers he sketched a society where only persons who completed a term of public service could vote. In an essay of Expanded Universe, he offered other schemes - buy your vote with 20000 Swiss francs (Ca 1970s), be able to solve a quadratic equation, and others. He suggested reading 'The Curious Republic of Gondour' by Mark Twain. This was an essay by Twain about a fictional republic where everyone got one vote, but could earn additional votes through education or public service. You can read it here. In case you’re wondering if he wanted to keep people different from him voting, he suggested having 150 years where only women could vote. He said his mother was forty before she could vote, so turn about was fair play. Or even go a step farther, and only allow mothers to serve as judges or Congresspersons. He definitely wasn’t trying to hog the franchise for men or only people who looked like him. The fortunate thing is that none of these schemes are presently active. If you are over eighteen, a citizen of the US, and haven’t lost your vote by being convicted of a felony,you can vote! So do so, in both the primary and general election. In many states you have to pick a party and register with that party to vote in the primary. This is done to prevent various shenanigans of persons of one party from voting for a weak candidate of the opposition party in the hopes of having a walk-on in the general election. Therefore, you have to pick a party to vote in the primary. So pick a party and get registered! You aren’t locked into that party and can vote for different people in the general election. Some states have pretty onerous requirements, like you have to be registered six months before the primary. That’s about now for the 2020 primaries! If you want to vote in the primaries, check your state’s requirements and get registered. If you screw around, don’t cry about it in March that you can’t vote in the primary in two weeks because you didn’t register six months ago. Get going and do some adulting. Vote! SHTF. Shit Hits The Fan. The End of the World as we know it (EOTWAWKI). Whether by zombie apocalypse,plague, power grid collapse, or a magical stoppage of modern technology, some folks fear the end of our modern civilization. Many articles are available about what firearms you would need for SHTF. I figured I’d toss my hat into the ring and offer my perspective.
Firearms and ammo are expensive, so before we get started, let’s ask the question, how often does SHTF happen? Looking over the past few decades, we had the nuclear war in the 1980s, the Japanese buying everything after that, nuclear blasts from bombs stolen from the Ukraine, Y2K, terrorists spreading tularemia-- Oh wait. None of that stuff happened. The main thing we know about SHTF is that it has never happened here in the US. When first starting out, direct your prepping dollars to things that help your life before SHTF happens. What sort of things? It could be a wide variety of things. First, ask yourself how are your finances? Credit cards maxed? No savings? If that’s the case, pay off your credit cards and get a couple of months living expenses saved. Do this before you do anything else. Now your credit rating won’t matter after SHTF, but before SHTF, it certainly does. Peace of mind knowing you have savings for emergencies is wonderful. As you stop paying credit card interest rates, your savings go up, and you have more options. You can transition to other preparations for the end of the world. What other preparations? Well most people can stand to lose a few pounds, so you might spend money to lose weight. Buying more vegetables generally costs more than cheap frozen foods, so you’ll spend more money at the grocery store. Many diets are low in carbs, so no more cheap meals with pasta or homemade french fries - you eat expensive lean meats and veggies instead. Exercise can help a bit to lose weight, so you may want to join a gym -- more money. You can also join a dojo and learn some martial arts, which would certainly be useful in SHTF. Also, before SHTF happens, you may actually have a need for martial arts. It’s uncommon to get attacked, but certainly more common than SHTF. Going to a dojo will certainly help you lose weight, get fit, and help in an altercation. Disaster planning is actually a good thing to spend money on, within limits. Creating a bunker with a year’s food supply is extremely expensive, and not much use before SHTF. But having a week’s worth of food, water, medical supplies, survival radio, and so on can be extremely helpful, especially if your area is prone to the more extreme disasters like hurricanes. Disaster preparedness carries less expense than SHTF and can be done gradually. The food supplies can be used as they expire and new food rotated in, so that can turn out to be a net zero in cost. What else to spend your money on? How about public speaking and learning a foreign language? Such skills have obvious uses before SHTF, but how would that help surviving SHTF? Eventually, the hiding phase of SHTF will end and you’ll need to interact with other survivors in a non-violent fashion. An ability to speak well at the survivor enclave can help you push things in the direction you think is appropriate. And of course being able to interact with people that don’t speak English after SHTF is just as useful as before. A few caveats here. If you have lots of money, you can spend more money directed to SHTF if you want to. You aren’t so concerned about your money doing double duty. If you want a gun for other reasons - you want to take up hunting for food or you’re marrying into a skeet shooting family- then knock yourself out. Not going to take that right away from you. The top preparations for SHTF aren’t guns at all. It’s the realization that SHTF has never happened. Focus your efforts on the present and not terrible stories Spend your wealth wisely with faith and hope for the future. When most people start learning martial arts, they don’t argue with the instructor constantly. The sensei tells them to throw a punch straight in, and shows how easy a roundhouse is to block, they do it. If they punch with a limp wrist, the instructor tells them they can hurt themselves that way, maybe even flexing their wrist until they feel some discomfort. The sensei shows them a proper fighting stance, explains that they can be shoved off balance with how they are currently standing, they do what the teacher says. The students learns and are happy get something for their $100+/month. I’ve never heard a student say “oh, that’s formulaic” or “I want to break the rules and surprise my opponent.”
New writers, good golly, so many say such things over and over. They want to be new, avant garde and experimental. Rules are for old people, not their free soaring spirits. Perhaps it’s because the rules of martial arts are based on the concrete evidence of the human body. We all bend and break in the same way, we generate power and strength in the same way. If the beginner wants to throw a punch with just his arm, the instructor could make him do that ten times into a mitt, demanding more power. At the end he could ask the student how tired they are. Then he gets the student to use the whole body to throw the punch ten times, and asks them how tired they are. “Can you feel the power? Can you feel how you use less energy to generate more power?” For most, the difference is obvious. The rules of the story are coded deeper into the human psyche and aren’t as obvious. They have to be taught, and many people resist. They want to think they are the special person with inside knowledge that will produce something new and untarnished. Now, the analogy does break down here a bit, because there are ways to break the rules of writing and still have a successful story. Some fighters are so good, they can break the rules and still win the fight, but also the analogy only stretches so far. Stories aren’t martial artists. The story is not in a street fight, and can exist with readers passing it over constantly. Sometimes these stories are rescued by self described elites known as English teachers who prop up stories that deserve to “lose their street fight.” Remember that you have to be good writer to break the rules. If you are a beginning writer, wait a bit, develop your skills, follow the rules. So what if they seem formulaic and contrived. As you gain experience you can eventually challenge the constraints. For now, the deep structure of plot, character and setting all work together to evoke a deep emotional in people, and you use those rules to engage, please, and even surprise the reader. A human should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly., Specialization is for insects.
This famous quote appears in the First Intermission of Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein. The book chronicles how the two thousand year old character Lazarus Long almost ended his life, but a new family and a prospect of time travel gave him renewed zest for living. The two intermissions in the book offer the wisdom sayings of Lazarus Long. The quote is attributed to a fictional character, whose beliefs may not necessarily line up with those of the author. Does this quote meet the criterion of actually something Robert Heinlein would agree to? From Heinlein’s works, I do recognize a distinct enthusiasm for a person having a wide variety of skills. For example in “Have Spacesuit- Will Travel” Kip mentions two engineering disciplines he is interested in. An older character suggests “Why not both? I deplore this modern over specialization”. Therefore, as a guess, on a scale of 1-10, this quote matches with Heinlein’s beliefs as a 10/10. I should mention that I am not a literalist in interpreting the words of Heinlein. I’m definitely in the camp of metaphorically interpreting his words. Of course, who gets the final say in of the meaning is a discussion for another day. The list of things a human should be able to do is very long, and at first reading, my reaction was “Yeah, Lazarus Long was two thousand years old, of course he had time to learn all this.” Take a deeper look. People know many of those items already, and may not realize they can do others. The easy items are as follows:
Analyze a new problem does not need to mean to solve some complicated math word problem. It could be as simple as “Mom has to work late, Kid 1 needs taking to work, Kid 2 has to get to a soccer match, and I have to make dinner.” People figure that stuff out every day. So how many people would ever plan an invasion? Even folks with decades long military careers never do this. But we could interpret that to mean any sort of gathering with logistics involved. My friends recently planned and executed a writer’s conference. In a sense they had to invade the local community college (call the college and schedule use of the room), bring in specialty troops (hire the speaker, arrange his food and lodging), and solve the logistics (bring lots of snacks, decide whether to provide lunch or a list of restaurants). Similar things could be said about large family reunions, or even small gatherings. My dad cooks for himself, but he’s not going to cook for his kids, grandkids, and great grandchildren. But his house is centrally located and a good place for a family gathering. So simply coordinating among relatives eg, “We’re bringing meat, can you bring sides? The kids are bringing pie and the domino set,” constitutes ‘planning an invasion.’ Set a bone is learned from first aid courses. Of course, most people won’t be able to set a compound fracture, but they can still learn how to tie a splint, along with other basic first aid. Fight efficiently means many things. Most people could benefit from basic self defense knowledge. I’ve heard most people don’t know how to fight well and having just basic knowledge of throwing a punch and how to get somebody off you when wrestling can help you immensely. Also, fighting is about the hardest physical activity there is, so being in good shape with good wind means you can outlast some opponents. Of course there are some folks who are just too fragile or small to hurt their attackers much. In those cases, ‘efficiently’ can mean the use of a taser, pepper spray, or firearm. Finally, the best fight is the one you can avoid. Knowing how to convince people to do what you want, or talk them down from violence is something everybody should learn. Such skills overlap with ‘cooperate’, ‘give orders’, and ‘take orders’. What’s left? Write a sonnet, solve equations, conn a ship, butcher a hog, program a computer, build a wall, comfort the dying, design a building. Design a building again does not necessarily mean build a skyscraper or even a small garden shed. But ability to read blueprints, follow what the contractor is saying can all help a person. Most people will not program a computer to solve climate simulations. They can certainly use a computer to do things necessary -- figure out a budget, contact co-workers, create a mailing list - which for short lived people, is close enough. I’m not going through the final items. The quote pushes people to show flexibility and a willingness to learn new things. They can’t let themselves be pigeonholed by other people. Most importantly they can’t let themselves be pigeonholed by themselves. So, yes, if life brings you a wall to build, dig in and figure it out. Keith Houston’s The Book. A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time. W. W. Norton and Co, 2016.
Houston describes one my favorite objects ever : the book. Starting with the substrate of papyrus, he traces the development of parchment, made from sheep, and then also paper in China. Houston describes the how codices seemed to appear in the Roman Empire and how they are superior to scrolls. Several pages are devoted to Gutenberg, the father of printing with the use of movable type. But, he also mentions how China invented moving type centuries earlier, but it never caught on, mostly because of the sheer number of characters needed. Throughout the book are handy annotations, using The Book itself to show what such things as endpapers or an ad card are. Towards the end, it did get a touch dry with the detail Houston goes into, but overall the whole story was still fascinating. I heartily recommend The Book as a wonderful gift for the bibliophile in your life. Once there was a boy named Fred. His parents died in a boating accident and he was raised by a variety of relatives. Occasionally, he spent the summer with wealthy friends Michael and Paul, heirs to real estate conglomerates. Quick witted and intelligent, Fred was the favorite of his Uncle Bill.
On his eighteenth birthday, his Uncle Bill gave Fred a huge trust, and departed for Europe. Fred moved into his uncle’s house, and kept busy studying ancient languages and Icelandic poetry at the local university. Bill’s gardener was a younger man named Sean. Bill helped Sean get his landscaping certificate. After Bill departed, Sean worked for Fred, who loaned him the money to open his own landscaping business. Bill also had this weird thumb drive, which could hack into any computer in the world. Bill left it with Fred, with a caution to never use it. One day, Bill's friend Mr. Gary showed up. He was rather mysterious, with an undefined job in the State Department, who visited Bill and Fred from time to time. On this trip, he revealed to Fred the thumb drive was the property of a powerful Russian gangster. The thumb drive was actually intelligent in a way, and was the source of the gangster’s power. He had learned its location and would send his bratva to take it by force. With the power of the AI in the drive, the gangster would conquer the world. Mr. Gary tells Fred the thumb drive is highly encrypted and protected by the AI that controls it. It had copied itself to the internet, and if the drive was destroyed, it would download itself to another thumb drive at random. If he tried to erase it, the same thing would happen. The only way to destroy it was to take the drive to the computer that created it, at a small college in Kharkov, in the heart of the Russian gangster’s power. But the first step was to set out for England and try to reach an MI6 safe house. Fred and Sean try to slip away unnoticed, but Fred’s wealthy friends Michael and Paul catch up and insist on coming along. The bratva find them, but the timely intervention of Army Green Beret Captain Andrews helps them escape. If my tale of Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Merry, Pippin and Aragorn sounds unlikely, well you now know what I’m talking about. None of the halflings were raised as warriors. Frodo was basically a trustifarian! Merry and Pippin were scions of wealthy families and neither put much energy into anything. (You might think how all the warriors that met the halflings and consider their reactions in a new light.) But during the War of the Ring, they did great things. Pippin and Merry brought news of the outside world to Treebeard, and he decided to attack Saruman. Pippin endured the siege of Gondor and saved Faramir and Merry’s lives. Merry rode with the Rohirrim and saved the life of Eowyn. Frodo and Sam saved the world from total evil. Not a warrior among them. Just courage, self-discipline, justice, faith, hope, and love. You see this meme floating around from time to time on Facebook. I’ve never questioned it until today. My response came as a simple question: What if she doesn’t want to be a warrior? This brought up all sorts of other questions. What exactly constitutes being raised as a warrior? Does everyone need to be raised as a warrior? Is there a downside to being a warrior? Must kids learn martial arts to be trained as a warrior? Some people enroll their kids in various martial arts. Most classes don’t offer training in weapons, let alone any firearms, so they wouldn’t be of much use in a battlefield. Many of the classes only train to a tap in a tournament, and the skills aren’t of much use in a street fight. In fact most dojos emphasize the self-discipline, exercise, and growth in self-confidence. But you can learn self discipline in many pursuits - piano lessons, sewing, painting, housekeeping, cooking and others. All of which are generally considered ladylike qualities. So being raised as a lady doesn’t necessarily mean you lack self discipline. What about courage? How much courage does it take to sew a button on? Maybe not much, but performing in public is down right intimidating for most folks. It does take some gumption to get up in front of even a small audience and perform Ode to Joy - even an arrangement simplified for an eight year old. Ladylike endeavors can teach the practitioner both courage and self discipline. Is there a downside to being a warrior? Do they become hammers and see every problem as a nail? Some people with power are bullies, taking anything they want. Others even enjoy inflicting pain. These people would still be called warriors. Modern people make jokes about the Vikings raiding monasteries, burning and raping and pillaging, but no one denies the Vikings aren’t warriors. Mongol warriors destroyed entire cities and enslaved thousands, if not millions. Crusaders killed every man, woman and child after storming Jerusalem during the First Crusade, because that’s what warriors did back then. Of course we would want to raise our kids to never inflict pain for pleasure and to see using force unjustly as bad. Both Frank Castle and Steve Rogers are warriors, but we’d want our kids to be the latter and not the former. Most people don’t consider this when they see the meme, though. You can probably see where I’m going with this. We want our kids - indeed ourselves - to have certain qualities such as courage, self discipline, temperance, justice and love (and I could include faith and hope as well). We assume these qualities from the meme, but in actuality, the word warrior doesn’t necessarily include them all. I don’t know what the resulting meme would look like, but we should focus on the seven virtues, both in the next generation and ourselves. I've been rereading the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. On the last book and I've really enjoyed them the second time.
A few years back, I read an analogy about actors, comparing them to the tradespeople building a house. If you liken construction to the process of making a movie, then the actors are similar to the drywallers, plumbers and electricians on the construction site. They come in, do their task under the direction of the plans and the foreman. Then they leave and go on to the next house. The plans are like the script and the foreman is the director.
They may not like either one. They may think the blueprints were created by idiots or the foreman is a dolt, but they keep their mouth shut and do their jobs. To see the completed house, they have to come back a few months later and take the tour at the open house like everyone else. Actors are the same way. They can tell certain scripts are stupid with plot holes from page 1 to the end. With no explanation, the characters don’t act as they did in previous episodes. Similar things happen on the job site. A toilet might be placed so that you can’t close the door in the bathroom. A plumber might go to the foreman and get that changed. But for actors, the problems tend to be a bit more nebulous, and they have no power to change anything. for the most part, they just do what they’re told. Years later they may talk about the stupid things, eg as the youtube video where Michael Shanks and Ben Crowder make fun of the zat guns on Stargate SG1. You could probably find similar videos about other shows if you looked. The most important thing though is they don’t have a lot of power. Kelly Marie Tran had no say in the stupid plot of Last Jedi. She’s just an actress and a fan, who won the lottery to be in a Star Wars movie. Picking on her or other actors is pointless. If you have complaints, go after the director or producer. She did her job, and attacking her is childish and mean spirited. |
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