Heinlein Wrote a Sword & Sorcery Novel - Have You Read "Glory Road"?

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Heinlein Wrote a Sword & Sorcery Novel

Glory Road

I read this about 1970 and really enjoyed it as I did most things Henlein, especially the older stuff.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Anyone else ever read this?

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Jan 13, 2023 18:23:36 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Anyone else ever read this?

Added to my list..

[The Perilous Dreamer]

I am a big Heinlein fan. I like his lead characters. For instance:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
— Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love

That just speaks to me.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

From TV Tropes Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein has probably written — and in some cases created — every major form of story in Science Fiction, including:
Revolution and its aftermath (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and the first part of its sorta-sequel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, "If This Goes On—", later packaged in the collection Revolt in 2100)
Organized crime invading an industry (Magic, Inc., "Let There Be Light")
Space travel (The Rolling Stones (1952) along with most of his short stories)
Time Travel and Paradoxes ("By His Bootstraps", "—All You Zombies—", Time Enough for Love, The Door Into Summer)
The Multiverse and cross-universe travel (The Number of the Beast, Glory Road)
Age extension and immortality (Methuselah's Children, Time Enough for Love, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress)
Labor strikes by people critical to the economy ("The Roads Must Roll")
Crabby old man has brain transplanted into gorgeous woman (I Will Fear No Evil)
Generation ship; Society on a self-contained spaceship forming its own religious mythos (Orphans of the Sky/Universe)
Problems of precognition and knowing the future ("Life-Line")
War and the government it creates (Starship Troopers, frequently considered one of the best military novels ever written.)
Slavery, freedom, and the forms each can take (Citizen of the Galaxy)
Settling on and civilizing new and unfamiliar worlds (Farmer in the Sky, Tunnel in the Sky)
Human-alien relations (Red Planet, Have Space Suit – Will Travel, Space Cadet, Double Star, Starman Jones, The Star Beast, Stranger in a Strange Land).
The transformative power of innocence plus observations of humanity from an Outsider (Stranger in a Strange Land)
The idea of fiction creating worlds (The Number of the Beast and its sequels)
The idea of heaven not being heaven without your loved ones. (Job: A Comedy of Justice)
Artificial Intelligence (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Time Enough for Love, and their sequels)

[The Perilous Dreamer]

I like this and think that there is a lot of truth to it.

Achievements in Ignorance: Hugh Hoyland, the protagonist of Orphans of the Sky, on learning his people's world is actually a space ship, decides to teach himself how to pilot the ship. According to all common sense of astrogation, no single person can learn the necessary skills to fly a ship by himself, especially one of the size Hoyland was on. However, because all knowledge of this common sense was never printed in text, he never realized this and thus taught himself all the skills. This was repeated later in the novel when Hoyland, not realizing the difficulty of managing a landing and the sheer danger his life is in, successfully lands his craft on a planet.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

City in a Bottle: Orphans of the Sky is about a multi-generational space craft where the inhabitants lost the knowledge that they were on a ship (along with most other knowledge) after a failed mutiny, so the current generation thinks the whole universe is just the ship.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Good with Numbers: Andrew Jackson "Slipstick" Libby from the Future History series. In his introductory short story "Misfit", he replaces a spaceship navigation computer by performing all spatial calculations needed to navigate the ship in real time in his head. And his mathematical genius comes to light when he warns of a critical calculation error made in setting a small nuclear charge based on what he's learned about laying the charges just by watching the officer making the calculations. ("Slipstick" is a nickname for a slide rule, a type of analog calculation aid common before hand-held calculators got good enough to do things like logarithms.)

[The Perilous Dreamer]

We have the technology:

Hover Bot: Friday. Police had Public Eyes that they used to perform surveillance. The Eyes had cameras that allowed an officer monitoring them to see what was going on, with a memory that could hold 12 hours of visual record. An unmonitored Public Eye floated around, following any object with the temperature of a human body.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

The Fog of Ages: Lazarus describes the horror and unrelenting frustration that a two thousand year memory creates.
"I told you my memory was playing tricks. I've used Andy Libby's hypno-encyclopedic techniques - and they're good - and also learned tier storage for memory I didn't need every day, with keying words to let a tier cascade when I did need it, like a computer, and I have had my brain washed of useless memories several times in order to clear those file drawers for new data - and still it's no good. Half the time I can't remember where I put the book I was reading the night before, then waste a morning looking for it - before I remember that that book was one I was reading a century ago."

[Morose]

Jan 13, 2023 18:23:36 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Anyone else ever read this?

I read it and most other Heinlein writings. I agreed with almost everything he espoused, except for the free love stuff.

[Morose]

Jan 30, 2023 22:03:38 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

I am a big Heinlein fan. I like his lead characters. For instance:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
— Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love

That just speaks to me.

I agree, we all should be able to do a much wider variety of things than most of us can. In fact, IMO, a lot of the above should be required knowledge to graduate high school.

[Morose]

Jan 30, 2023 22:58:43 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

The Fog of Ages: Lazarus describes the horror and unrelenting frustration that a two thousand year memory creates.
"I told you my memory was playing tricks. I've used Andy Libby's hypno-encyclopedic techniques - and they're good - and also learned tier storage for memory I didn't need every day, with keying words to let a tier cascade when I did need it, like a computer, and I have had my brain washed of useless memories several times in order to clear those file drawers for new data - and still it's no good. Half the time I can't remember where I put the book I was reading the night before, then waste a morning looking for it - before I remember that that book was one I was reading a century ago."

I would not mind having that problem.

[Vladimir, The Dark Prince]

Jan 13, 2023 18:23:36 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Anyone else ever read this?

Glory Road is a really fun book. If Heinlein had wanted to he could have done some great pastiche stories of REH.

[Morose]

Jan 30, 2023 22:58:43 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

The Fog of Ages: Lazarus describes the horror and unrelenting frustration that a two thousand year memory creates.
"I told you my memory was playing tricks. I've used Andy Libby's hypno-encyclopedic techniques - and they're good - and also learned tier storage for memory I didn't need every day, with keying words to let a tier cascade when I did need it, like a computer, and I have had my brain washed of useless memories several times in order to clear those file drawers for new data - and still it's no good. Half the time I can't remember where I put the book I was reading the night before, then waste a morning looking for it - before I remember that that book was one I was reading a century ago."

You know it would be great if you could organize your memories like that. But I have to wonder how much time it would take daily to do that.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Mar 14, 2023 23:02:04 GMT -5 Morose said:

Jan 30, 2023 22:58:43 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

You know it would be great if you could organize your memories like that. But I have to wonder how much time it would take daily to do that.

I don't know, all of the memory things I have looked at require a lot more time than I will ever have. It would be great to just be born with an eidetic memory.

[oldskolgmr]

I remember I read Glory Road about 30 years ago?

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Jan 13, 2023 20:35:33 GMT -5 The Semi-Retired Gamer said:

Jan 13, 2023 18:23:36 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Anyone else ever read this?

Added to my list..

...placed in my thriftbooks cart.  I will pick a few more to bring it to $15 so I get free shipping.