Free Republic

A newly-discovered novel by legendary American author, Robert A. Heinlein, will soon be published, marking the first time in more than 30 years that a book by the award-winning author will be published since his death in 1988. The book, The Pursuit of the Pankera, is based on Heinlein’s manuscript from his series, The Number of the Beast. The new publication was made possible by a Heinlein Prize Trust (HPT)-sponsored Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $46,000 to date. The Kickstarter campaign was established in September 2019 with the goal of $30,000. The Pursuit of the Pankera is 185,000 word...

Way back in 1959 legendary science fiction author and political libertarian Robert Heinlein was quite clairvoyant in predicting the demise of our culture due to misguided progressive policies and beliefs. Much of Troopers’ “future history” is told via high school teacher and former infantryman Colonel Jean DuBois to protagonist Juan Rico (by the way, how is that for diversity — a novel from the 1950s in which the main character is Filipino and whose family speaks Tagalog?). In one scene, students in DuBois’ class are horrified that children couldn’t play in city parks in the 20th and early 21st centuries...

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Robert Heinlein. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Robert Heinlein was a libertarian-principled writer, specializing in socio-economic science fiction championing a society based on principles of the US Constitution. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of the puzzle into the white squares on the...

As some of you know, I’m an American by choice. I left kin and country, culture and connections to throw in my lot with the freedom gang. How did this come to happen? How could a girl raised in Portugal, of patriotic (fanatic, really) parents get to the point where she felt expatriate, a stranger in a strange land? Well, a lot of it had to do with what I read. When I tell people I was raised in Robert A. Heinlein books, I wasn’t joking. And there was something in those books that just made me American, before...

By JEET HEER June 8, 2014 The science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein once described himself as “a preacher with no church.” More accurately, he was a preacher with too many churches. Rare among the many intellectual gurus whose fame mushroomed in the 1960s, Heinlein was a beacon for hippies and hawks, libertarians and authoritarians, and many other contending faiths—but rarely at the same time. While America became increasingly liberal, he became increasingly right wing, and it hobbled his once-formidable imagination. His career, as a new biography inadvertently proves, is a case study in the literary perils of political extremism. MOST...

There are often things that inspire us. This is most especially true when you are young and looking for direction. In my case, I was greatly influenced by the books that I read. My favorites were short-length science fiction “pulps”. These were often paperback books that I could shove in the rear pocket of my bluejeans. I would read them, and often reread them. The authors of these stories varied, but my favorites included Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein. Here is one such story. This story illustrates that sometimes, it take one person to take a necessary action. Often that...

... I know what it's like to love an author despite his or her controversial statements about real-life political issues. And I also feel that this year's Hugo slate is an unmitigated outrage that has serious implications for the future of speculative fiction. Next week, on Aug. 22, voters will decide if these awards are still about celebrating excellent writing and innovative ideas, or if they are just another blood-drenched battleground in the conflict between white male traditionalists and everyone else. For those who don't follow the genre-fiction awards circuit, here's what's going on. A shifting contingent of science fiction...

Robert Heinlein could not win a Hugo Award today. If you are a fan of science fiction, you know how shocking that statement is. If you are not a science fiction fan, I salute you for having better things to do with your time than read stories about space princesses being rescued from bug-eyed monsters by stalwart and clean-limbed fighting men of Virginia; but please let me explain why this is shocking.

Today in America, we see two kinds of libertarianism, which we might call “Calhounian” and “Heinleinian.” Both kinds believe in freedom, but they are very different in their emphasis—and in their politics. The names behind the adjectives are John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), of South Carolina, and Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988), of California. [Calhoun] was also a proud slaveholding South Carolinian who rose in politics to be vice president of the United States. Indeed, Calhoun spent the last two decades of his life making the case for states’ rights over national unity In particular, he was a passionate advocate of “nullification”—that...

"Gunman who took hostages at Louisiana bank posted chilling Facebook messages" SNIPPET: "The gunman who took three hostages at a Louisiana bank Tuesday -- killing one of them before being shot and killed by police -- recently posted chilling messages on Facebook, including a cartoon strip about hostages.   In a post on Sunday, 20-year-old Fuaed Abdo Ahmed displays a cartoon strip that focuses on an apparent hostage situation." SNIPPET: "Ahmed's final post, made Tuesday just hours before the hostage standoff began, is of a photo of a man with a sword attacking a tank.Under the photo is a quote...

Is Stranger in a Stranger Land by Robert Heinlein the Catcher in the Rye for the science-fiction set? Yes, I think you could say that about the 1962 Hugo winner in one important sense. When author J.D. Salinger died this past Wednesday, I must confess it was convenient for me (if not for him), because it got people talking about his most famous novel. The Catcher in the Rye occupies an interesting position in the literary landscape: It's inarguably a classic, and inarguably a popular classic at that — a book that a lot of people have not only heard...

Heinlein the Libertarian "Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me," shows yet another side to the Heinlein paradox. As a literary influence on the emerging libertarian movement, Heinlein was second only to Rand. Yet his statement about self-sacrifice and duty to the species seems as un-Randian as you can get. Heinlein, a human chauvinist, always believed freedom and responsibility were linked. But he would never have thought it proper to impose the duty he saw as the highest human aspiration. Heinlein once told a visitor, "I'm so much a libertarian that I have no use for the whole...