Hacker News Reader

Comment by forapurpose | Hacker News Reader

In the two Heinlein books I remember, Stranger in a Strange Land and Job, the protagonist is a middle-aged man who has beautiful young women throw themselves at him. The women have no needs or agendas of their own; their only motivation is to please this man. Job seemed so much like the author's personal fantasy that I had to put it down.

View on HN

Check out Farnham's Freehold, where a middle-aged man gets flung into the far future with his wife, daughter, and daughter's friend (and another guy). The wife goes crazy, and then the middle-aged man knocks up his daughter's friend. Then his daughter mentions to him that, of the men she's been stranded with, he's the one she'd prefer to father her child (if she weren't already pregnant). Her dad is completely undisturbed and in fact flattered by this.

That’s not even the worst part of Farnham’s Freehold.

People read what they want to read, but that’s not the Stranger I remember. And you’d have a different conclusion if you read Job to the end. You probably wouldn’t like the book any better, but it’s not remotely what you’re implying.

Edited to add: I realize post-juvenile Heinlein is not to everyone’s taste — and I’m personally convinced Double Star may be his finest single book — but if one is interested — Stranger, Glory Road, Starship Troopers, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, are all worthwhile — and different from each other.

I’m not gonna defend Farnham’s Freehold, but each of the other later Heinlein works not listed above has some merit, though mostly for real fans only.

> that’s not the Stranger I remember

IIRC, it happened in the martian's commune.

> you’d have a different conclusion if you read Job to the end

Thanks for the tip. Someone else posted the spoiler. While it does change things, it still is a stereotypical middle-aged guy's fantasy - she is throwing herself at him, whatever her motive.

I read Stranger in a Strange Land when I was 14 years old and it was blindingly obvious, even then, with my incredible lack of life experience, that heterosexual relationships did not actually work like that.

Nor do any other relationships of any kind ...

> ...the protagonist is a middle-aged man who has beautiful young women throw themselves at him...

Given that that could be used to describe quite a lot of pulp sci-fi from that era, that is not much of an indictment. Writers, then as now, knew what their audience wanted.

> Given that that could be used to describe quite a lot of pulp sci-fi from that era

Now that is useful context that I didn't know. Could you provide other examples?

> Writers, then as now, knew what their audience wanted.

Wasn't their audience mostly younger guys? Wouldn't their audience want younger guys getting laid?

I was thinking of the Buck Rogers novels and William Burroughs's John Carter when I wrote that but both of them turn out to be ~30. Older than the likely audience but younger than I had thought.

You should have finished Job because her throwing herself at him was part of the story. Spoiler alert but she was a plant working for the Devil from the start.

And SIASL isn’t about a middle aged man. It’s about a frickn Martian absolutely nothing like anyone on Earth.

I think the parent meant Jubal Hershaw, who does rather read like Heinlein's dream image of himself.

Maybe so, but while Jubal certainly enjoys having three young beautiful women around him, it's made clear that there's nothing but teasing going on. At least that's my recollection.

It happened in the Martian's commune (sorry, it's been awhile and I'm having a hard time remembering names).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com