Talk:Robert A. Heinlein

Original research?

Hey, great! About time! (I was too lazy to do it myself....)

Here's a question that was discussed (and argued) over for months at various WP forums and articles:

I added to one of the RAH articles a brief statement that Robert told me personally (while we were drinking rose wine in Tahiti) that Moon Is a Harsh Mistress was his best book.

Cries of Original Research! Hoohah to the nth degree! Some people took my side. Some didn't. It was inserted, removed, reverted, etc. etc.

At first I couldn't understand how anyone could *possibly* remove it. Finally I grew to understand the WP view of Original Research, so I shrugged my shoulders and said the hell with it.

What do we want to do about it here in this more civilized environment?Hayford Peirce 15:33, 5 March 2008 (CST)

If he's alive, ask him! If he's dead... hold a seance. *shrug* I do not know. --Robert W King 15:35, 5 March 2008 (CST)

Very simple indeed. You are a Topic Informant for the RAH article. You write up the story of your interaction with RAH (wow!) and put it in the TI: namespace. I would recommend putting it on a subpage of TI:Hayford Peirce; perhaps TI:Hayford Peirce/Heinlein (but this page should be descriptively linked from TI:Hayford Peirce). Then, we (not you) interpret what you have written in the TI: namespace and, if it looks legit, we will add the new fact and footnote the TI: page. That, anyway, is my interpretation of how the Topic Informant policy is supposed to apply to this situation. --Larry Sanger 15:39, 5 March 2008 (CST)

I am partial to Stranger in a Strange Land, myself. I can't grok why no one has made a kick-ass movie out of that yet. It's such rich material. --Larry Sanger 15:41, 5 March 2008 (CST)

Hey, great! How nice to have an answer that makes sense! I'll do it later today. I myself am a Harsh Mistress man, like RAH. (I have the first edition, STILL with dust jacket -- I have a vivid memory of myself circa 1961 or so buying the first editon of Stranger (before anyone outside of weirdos had ever heard of RAH), sitting down in my mother's easy chair, taking off the pristine new dust jacket, and dumping it (and a thousand dollars' worth of value) into the wastebasket beside the chair.) As for the movie value of Stranger, I believe that it has been under continual option since being published. Mike Jagger was gonna do it at one point, I think. I think the first half of it is about as good as any SF ever written (I think people such as Kingsley Amis agreed with me), then I lost most interest in it. Hayford Peirce 15:54, 5 March 2008 (CST)

PS the Tahiti photo of RAH and Ginny in the WP article was taken by my stepson at my house. WP airbrushed me out of the pict. But I have the original.... Hayford Peirce 15:55, 5 March 2008 (CST)

MiaHM is definitely one of his best. Not sure which I would consider his best - I'd have to go over the list. When I was younger, "See you all in Tycho Under" was my rallying cry.... Hmm, maybe we should nickname CZ "Tycho Under"... :-) J. Noel Chiappa 20:38, 5 March 2008 (CST)

Uploaded pictures

I've uploaded two photos of various Heinleins and Peirces taken by my 12-year-old stepson in Tahiti around 1979 -- he was somewhat jittery as he took the pix, so they're a trifle blurry. Some camera guru at WP did a lot of reworking of at least one of them for the Heinlein article there; hopefully someone here can do an even better job. Feel free to crop out any extraneous people who appear in the originals!

They can be found at:

and

Hayford Peirce 23:27, 5 March 2008 (CST)

I am willing to take a stab at them when I get home. They're a real snapshot of history!--Robert W King 10:11, 6 March 2008 (CST)