Heinlein Thread #37 In 1980, Jerry Pournelle organized a so-called Citizens Advisory Council with meetings held at Larry Nivens house with the aim of arriving at a viable alternative to Mutual Assured Destruction -- the Dr. Strangelove program of you-drop-a-Bomb-on-us we-drop-a-Bomb-on-you, and hopefully nobody will be that crazy. Heinlein was a member of these brainstorming sessions from the beginning. For me, this has something of the flavor of the bullshit/strategy gatherings that Heinlein held for SF friends in Philadelphia toward the end of World War II. Isaac Asimov wouldnt be invited to participate, but wouldnt care because he was writing SF again. The group wouldnt come up with anything useful, but Heinleins hosting of these meetings -- or parties, or whatever they actually were -- would become a part of his what-Robert-Heinlein did-during-the-war mythic resume. Heinlein clearly yearned to be a man of action and command, but was never allowed to be. In the Navy, hed been a seasick sailor. He wasnt a deck officer. He wasnt on a command track. And then hed washed out of the service when he got tuberculosis. Nobody had ever put him in a position of real authority since hed been demoted from his position as head of his high school ROTC unit for being a dick. Hed kicked around unproductively during the rest of the Thirties. And hed then found his way into pulp science fiction magazine writing , a solitary occupation which wasnt at all the career of service and authority he had envisioned for himself. During the war, hed wanted desperately to get in on the action, but he hadnt been taken back into the Navy at a time when people were being scraped off the sidewalk to serve, a time when even the likes of L. Ron Hubbard were being given given command of ships to run aground. The reason thats been given has always been his health, but Patterson says it was for a permanent black mark in his file from someone in a position of higher authority who thought Heinlein was a commie. The Patrick Henry League that he had tried to organize in 1958 opposing the cessation of nuclear testing for patriotic reasons had quickly come to nothing. The first approximation of what Heinlein really wanted -- to serve and command and impress -- came with the blood drives he became known for at SF conventions during the Seventies. He would do his best to set blood gathering professionals straight. He would even attend a banquet given by the National Rare Blood Club immediately on the heels of his appearance at the YM-YWHA Poetry Center in 1974 at which Heinlein thought he was to be a speaker only to discover that he was actually being honored as Humanitarian of the Year. Patterson, of course, doesnt say so, but Its my belief that Jerry Pournelles Citizens Advisory Council appealed to Heinlein because he wanted to be part of something patriotic, military and important again. It could well have reminded him of his brainstorming sessions in Philadelphia. In the summer of 1982, at the instigation of Pournelle, a magazine called _Survive!_ contacted Heinlein. They were planning to present an issue which featured retired general Daniel O. Grahams concept of orbiting space platforms to shoot down any missiles fired at the United States. Graham was an informal adviser to the Reagan administration, Patterson says. His program was called High Frontiers. The idea appealed to Heinlein. It may have reminded him of his concept in his second Scribner book Space Cadet back in 1948 of orbiting bombs keeping the world at peace through constant threat of nuking anybody who might get out of line, even good ol Mom and Pop. In reply to the inquiry from _Survive!_, Patterson says, He agreed to write a short piece, on the condition that it not be editorially changed. The performance piece that Heinlein produced had some of the same pumped-up prose that hed used in Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry? What he wrote pleased General Graham so much that he would snatch it up and use it as an introduction to his new book _High Frontier: A New National Strategy_ which pitched the concept of armed space platforms. Heinlein wrote (in Pattersons rendering): High Frontier is the best news I have heard since V-J Day. For endless unhappy years the United States has had no defense policy. We had something called a defense policy... but in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.... High Frontier places a bullet-proof vest on our bare chest..... It is so utterly peaceful that the most devout patriot can support it with a clear conscience -- indeed _must_ support it once he understands it ... as it tends to stop wars from happening and to save lives if war does happen. Heinlein would even make a brief appearance in one of High Frontiers video tapes. Heinlein was contemptuous of those who objected to High Frontiers. In a note, Patterson writes: Custard-head was one of Heinleins favorite epithets for the foolish; he specificially applied the terms to pacifists in the Forrestal Lecture in 1973 and again in a then-recent letter. He attributed resistance to the High Frontier concept to the Nervous Nellies and Custard Heads who regard even defensive measure as destabilizing because it would provoke the Russians into first strike. The thinking of the Citizens Advisory Committee would continue to evolve, morphing into a defensive shield of missiles concept, which would become an official policy known as Strategic Defense Initiative or, more familiarly, SDI. Patterson says that in 1983, when President Reagan introduced the policy it would be with phrases and even entire sentences lifted from the Citizens Advisory Council papers.... Wikipedia says that SDI was derided, largely in the mainstream media, as Star Wars after the popular 1977 film by George Lucas. In 1987, the American Physical Society concluded that a global shield such as Star Wars was not only impossible with existing technology, but that ten more years of research was needed to learn whether it might ever be feasible.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 16:24:17 +0000
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