Reddit reviews For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs

Read For Us, the Living and Starship Troopers, both by Robert Heinlein. Not only are they fascinating, they're both terrific "can't put it down" stories.

FUtL advocates that the power to declare war be handed over to a national referendum of military-age citizens, and that a vote in favor of war constitutes enlistment, pending the referendum's passage.

Somewhat similarly, Starship Troopers advocates a 100% volunteer military, with the added stipulation that service is a prerequisite for the right to vote.

You're veering into the realm of my real identity and professional expertise, so I may not be as in-depth as I'm tempted to be.

> It's funny, that considering one of LRH's first supporters was his editor at the SF magazine, nobody ever taught him how to rewrite. He wrote first drafts and published them, fine when all you care about it output. His biggest problem as an author was that he didn't learn that quantity isn't everything.

I agree with your criticism and disagree with it at the same time.

One issue here is the context of Hubbard's writing, both fiction (SF and westerns) and later "tech." As a fiction writer paid a penny a word -- like Heinlein, Lester Dent, Walter Gibson, and his peers -- he had to crank out stories very quickly. They weren't polished; that wasn't expected. The nature of "pulp fiction" was an emphasis on setting and situation ("What if an alien came to Earth and did this...."), at the expense of character development or, shall we say, lasting literary prose. If you wanted to make a living from writing, there wasn't time to edit, even if you wanted to.

What writing excellence resulted was because of the excellence of Hubbard's (and the others') editors. A good editor doesn't just fix the text that the author submitted; he is a mentor who helps the writer stretch, and improve his skill, so that the next "first draft" is better (and needs less editing, or fewer rejections). Some writers respond to the feedback by becoming better writers. Some don't. Plenty of folks stay at the same level of skill for years; that's true beyond writing or other creative field. That can be okay, as long as the manuscript still fits the requirements of the publication, and the writer doesn't piss off his editor in other ways (such as missing deadlines).

As an editor, John Campbell was everything that an author could ask for -- not just someone who selected stories for publication, but an editor who corresponded frequently and at great length with authors, helping them to improve at their craft and to suggest story ideas that might appeal. Boy, is that a long way from photocopied rejection slips.

Heinlein is among the writers whose skill improved under tutelage (as his earliest work demonstrates). And later Heinlein became known for refusing to let anybody edit him, because he was sure he was better than his editors. (The truth of that belief is left as an exercise to the reader.)

I'd say that Hubbard did not. His "first drafts" were "good enough" in the 30s and 40s. And he got stuck in that belief when it came to other writing... resenting or refusing help at improving his prose (even places where a skilled editor might query, "It's not clear to which item 'that' refers; clarify?").

Fun reading in this regard: The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril: A Novel

> I think the real merit in reading ME is the insight it gives us into the man.

Oh, please no. Never use a novel as an insight into the person, even with the presence of Mary Sues. That's such a terrible mistake. ...I could go on at length about the reasons why, but I think I'll leave it right there.