response 1 of 56:

Dec 27 22:29 UTC 1995

*That* I would like to see.

response 3 of 56:

Dec 30 01:01 UTC 1995

This is from a section of the essay called "Afterthoughts, Fifteen Years Later
--" written in 1967.

a) And now we'ew paying for (space flight) and the cost is high.  But for
reasons understandable only to bureauctrats, we have almost halted development
of a nulclear-powered spacecraft when success was in sight.  Never mind; if
we don't, another country will.  By the end of this century space travel will
be cheap.

b) The (changes in society due to the control of disease and fertility) is
so much more evident now than it was fifteen years ago that I'm tempted to
call it a fulfilled prophecy.  Vast changes in sex realtions are evident all
around us -- with the oldsters calling it "moral decay" and the youngsters
ignoring them and taking it for granted.  Surface signs: books such as Sex
and the Single Girl are smash hits; the formerly taboo four letter words are
now seen both in novels and in popular magazines; the neologism "swinger" has
come into the language; courts are conceding that nudity and semi-nudity are
now parts of the mores.  But the end is not yet; this revolution will go much
further and is now barely started.

<snip>

c) I flatly stand by this one.  True, we are now working on Nike-Zeus and
Nike-X and related systems and plan to spend billions on such systems -- and
we  know that others are doing the same thing.  True, it is possible to hit
an object in orbit or trajectory.  Nevertheless this prediction is as safe
as predicting tomorrow's sunrise.  Anti-aircraft fire never stopped air
attacks; it simply made them expensive.  The disadvantage in being at the
bottom of a deep "gravity well" is very great; gravity guage will be as
crucial in the coming years as wind guage was in the days when sailing ships
controlled empires.  The nation that controls the Moon will control the Earth
-- but no one seems willing these days to speak that nasty fact aloud.

d) Since 1950 we have done so in several thaetres and are doing so as this
is written, in Vietnam.  "Preventive" or "pre-emptive" war seems as unlikely
as ever, no matter who is in the White House.  Here is a new prediction: World
War III (as a major all out war) will not take place at least until 1980 and
could easily hold off until 2000.  This is a very happy prediction compared
with the situation in 1950, as those years of grace may turn up basic factors
which (hopefully!) might postpone disastre still longer.

<snip>

e) Here I fell flat on my face.  There has been no breakthrough in housing,
nor is any now in prospect -- instead the ancient, wasteful methods of
building are now being confirmed by public subsidies.  The degree of our
backwardness in this field is hard to grasp; we have never seen a modern
house. <snip>  I underestimated (through wishful thinking) the power of human
stupidity -- a fault fatal to prophecy.

f) In the meantime, spectacular progress has been made in organ transplants
-- and the problem of regeneration is related to this one.

<snip>

g) Our editor has suggested that I had been too optimistic on this one -- but
I still stand by it.  It is still thirty-five years to the end of the century.
For perspective, look back thirty-five years to 1930 -- the American Rocket
Society had not yet been founded then.  Another curve, similar to the one
herewith in shape but derived entirely from speed of transportation,
extrapoltaes to show faster-than-light travel by the year 2000.  I guess I'm
chicken, for I am not predicting FTL ships by then, if ever.  But the
prediction of the first ship intended to reach the nearest star will be
abuilding by the end of the first century, still stands.

h) Predicting intelligent life on Mars looks pretty silly after those dismal
photographs.  But I shan't withdraw it until Mars has been *thoroughly*
explored.  As yet we really have no idea -and no data- as to just how
ubiquitous and varied life may be in this galaxy; it is conceivable that life
as we *don't* know it can evolve on *any* sort of planet... and nothing in
our present knowledge of chemistry rules this out.

<snip>

i) I must hedge number thirteen; the "cent" I meant was scaled by the 1950
dollar.  But our currency has been going through a long steady inflation, and
no nation in history has ever gone as far as we have along this route
withoutreaching the explosive phase of infaltion.  Ten-dollar hamburgers? 
Brother, weare headed for th hundred-dollar hamburger -- for the barter-only
hamburger.  

But this is only an inconvenience rather than a disaster as long as there is
plenty of hamburger.

j)  This prediction stands.  But today physics is in a tremendous state of
flux
>with new data piling up faster than it can be digested; it is anybody's guess
>as to where we are headed, but the wilder you guess, the more likely you are
>to hit it lucky .

<snip>

k) I stand flatly behind prediction number fifteen.

l) I'll hedge number eighteen just a little.  Hunger is not now a problem in
the USA and need not be in the year 2000 -- but hunger *is* a world problem
and would at once become an acute problem for us if we were conquered ... a
distinct possibility by 2000.

<snip>

m) I stand by prediction number nineteen.

I see no reason to change any of the negative predictions which follow the
numbered affirmative ones.  They are all concievably possible; they are all
wildly unlikely by year 2000.

response 5 of 56:

Dec 31 22:06 UTC 1995

He did a lot better on the negative predictions that the positive ones.

response 7 of 56:

Jan 16 01:26 UTC 1996

Cathy,  _I_Will_Fear_No_Evil_ had the unfortunate effect in the 70's of
convincing a number of young men that they understood what it was to live in
a female body.  Sadly, it's an old man's fantasy about what it would be like
for an old man to live in the young woman's body.  It did exploe some
interesting themes, such as the meaning of identity, but it was clearly
written in Heinlein's later period when he had lost touch with much of what
made him great.  

Nonetheless, it was one of my favorites for years.

You say you have a book written in the 80's that revisits his predictions?
What's it called?  (I got these pasages from a book published in the 60's)

response 9 of 56:

Feb 12 04:18 UTC 1996

Oh wow, Misti, I have been reading a lot of Heinlein lately too.  I think he
is the best writer of adventures I have read.  I'm glad to hear women like
him too; some of his stuff sounds rather sexist by today's standards, but
that's because it was written in the 50s for Boy's Life Magazine.  Those
are the stories I like best, frankly; with the exception of
_Job: A Comedy of Justice_, most of his later stuff (like _The Number of the
Beast_, a wretched book) leaves me cold.
   I have a friend who says he got most of his libetarian views from Heinlein.
Personally, what I get from him is the sense of the individual: it's
individuals that make things happen in his books, not social movements and
certainly not governments.  His heros stand up and do their jobs, and they
show great heroism.  Really, he has only two characters:  The old one and the
young one who thinks the old one is stupid only to gain respect later.  Jubal
Harshaw in _Stranger in a Strange Land_ is probably the most memorable
instance of the old character, but he appears in nearly every book.
   One of the best things about Heinlein is that he wrote so much - I've read
maybe 15 novels, but I keep finding new, good ones.  What are your favorites,
everybody?

response 11 of 56:

Feb 15 06:32 UTC 1996

I'm with you, Misti - I like the juveniles best.  I'd have to pick Red Planet
as my favorite, followed by Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.  The Rolling Stones
is up there too.  Just read Citizen of the Galaxy a few months ago, and liked
that a lot.  Oh, The Star Beast was kinda cute, too.  (There are so many good
ones!)

Interestingly, in quite a few of the optimistic books I have noticed an
undertone of coming darkness.  In Farmer in the Sky, for instance, a
character expounds on why there will *have* to be a bloody war sometime in the
next 50 years or so.  The same sort of thing is implied in Space Patrol
(another of my favorites.  It occurred to me while I was reading it that if
I ever teach a science fiction class (probability very small), a great double
feature would be to read Space Patrol followed by Orson Scott Card's
Ender's Game.  Both are about kids joining the military, but they have
radically different views on the subject.  Same thing with Starship Troopers
and Joe Haldeman's Forever War.)

I get the feeling Heinlein thought that as populations increase and everything
gets more crowded, the best thing to do is to have a fronteir.  But he didn't
think colonies in space would solve the problem, because you can't move people 
to them quickly enough.  He did, however, think that colonies would allow the
human race to survive despite a war on Earth.

Is it just me, or did anyone else think the movie "Dave" was a blatant ripoff
of Heinlein's Double Star?

response 13 of 56:

Feb 16 01:14 UTC 1996

I was unaware that there was a movie version of any Heinlein work save for
_The Puppet Masters_. (_The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress_ would make a decent
miniseries.)

response 15 of 56:

Feb 16 18:09 UTC 1996

One of the early MST3K movies was written by Heinlein.  I'll see
if I can find the name.

response 17 of 56:

Feb 17 05:16 UTC 1996

That's it, I think.  And it was in the list of MST movies that I read about
it.

response 19 of 56:

Feb 19 01:49 UTC 1996

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(This wasn't exactly The Moon is a Harsh Mistress...)

response 21 of 56:

Feb 19 07:42 UTC 1996

From what I heard about Destination Moon, yeah, it deserved the treatment.
They had a rather insipid 5 part minisieries on US TV (animated) from Red
Planet.
My faves? _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ is definately there, so is The Menace
From Earth and Podykayne and Double Star.  Then mabye some of his other juvies.
Note that Double Star is itself a homage to the Prisoner of Zenda (the sequel
of which is pretty bad), just as the Roling Stones and Trouble with Tribbles
got the idea from the same source.
.s

response 23 of 56:

Feb 24 07:38 UTC 1996

Agreed that "the idea" refered to the idea shared between them, not the only
idea in The Rolling Stones. 
        Don't remember the source for the "fuzzballs that breed schtick;" think
it's in Expanded Universe, though.