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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

That's arguably the worst argument given that the author has no special authority over the interpretation of the work. Heinlein with his increasingly militaristic views wrote Starship Troopers as a sincere story, but Paul Verhoeven showed quite compellingly that it might make for better satire.

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That's actually an ironic example, seeing how so many (maybe most) viewers took the intended satire at face value, essentially looping all the way back to Heinlein's intent.

The best satire is always convincing to its targets, because it doesn't misrepresent their positions. The Prince may be satire; who knows what was in Machiavelli's head.

Exactly. Even today, a lot of satire aimed at the 'right', viewed from the 'right's perspective is not realized as satire and is viewed like someone is trying to make a real point. They can't tell it is satire.

Doesn't the guy have another book - The Discourses on Livy, that confirms the general gist of The Prince? (i.e. autocracies are horrible, to be a successful autocrat you need to be brutal and ruthless)

Didn't Verhoeven famously not read the book? Hard to call it "satire" then, "straw man" might be more accurate.

Perhaps less famously, Edward Neumeier wrote his screenplay.

I hadn't heard that before but I agree with you, it doesn't qualify as satire if he didn't even bother to consume the source material. At least not in the literary sense.

You could only think Heinlein had militaristic views if that was the only book of his you read.

Read another book of his and you'd think he was a communist, another an anarchist, et cetera.

He liked to explore ideas. If there's one thing that's reasonably consistent across his work, it's his belief in individual agency.

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