January 22, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:CalPundit has a nice little tribute to Virginia Heinlein, Robert Heinlein's wife and the inspiration for many of the women in his books. If you're a Heinlein baby like me, this means something to you. Otherwise. . . well, later I'll be posting about taxes.
Posted by Jane Galt at January 22, 2003 11:08 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>I'd like CalPundit's tribute more if he hadn't bothered to quote Asimov's (seriously flawed, IMO) opinion about Ginny changing RAH's political views. Characterizing RAH as a "rock ribbed far-right conservative" is silly on the face of it, and I really wonder if RAH was ever a "flaming liberal" by any rational standard. Much as I admire Asimov's writing, he appears to have been abysmally ignorant of economics, and remained a far-left liberal (I don't know about the rock ribs) his entire life.
There's a bit more about Ginny's recent life at The Heinlein Society, and pictures and other Heinlein stuff at www.robertaheinlein.com.
PJ: I like Asimov's work generally, but that statement was the silliest thing he ever wrote, and revealed mainly that he was so blinded by his own knee-jerk liberalism as to not understand Heinlein at all - not in the 40's, not in the 50's, and not in the 60's. Maybe Virginia did swing Bob more towards the libertarian side (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, e.g.) - but since that position doesn't fit the liberal/conservative dichotomy, Asimov saw it as "rock-ribbed conservatism". And while you might see a certain sort of liberalism in Heinlein's pre 1950 work, he was always incredibly tough-minded, and closer to Teddy Roosevelt than to Franklin Roosevelt...
Posted by: markm on January 24, 2003 9:52 PMRe-read the Asimov quote: he thought over the possibility that Virginia had altered Robert's views, but concluded she had not.
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