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Many here are too young to remember when Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, and Robert A. Heinlein were Science Fiction’s Big Three. I grew up reading Golden Age Heinlein, and the shiny new stuff he published in the fifties and sixties. If there is one leitmotif RAH demonstrates in his work, it is the Competent Man—or Woman. Heinlein is one reason I respect the less crazed aspects of conservative thinking. (My respect for the less crazed aspects of liberal thinking is a different issue.)
Baen Books releases the first chunks of its publications on line. “The first hit is free. Try it, you’ll like it. Don’t you want to buy the whole book?” It’s a strategy that they pioneered, and it works well for them. Baen recently made the beginning of Heinlein’s 1965 novel Farnham’s Freehold available. For those who don’t know, the story begins with an American-Russian nuclear firefight. Hugh Farnham and family dive into the bomb shelter Hugh designed and built. Hugh’s shelter has the flavor of nineteen fifties Civil Defense preparations, shaped in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
That’s a different context than our Wilderness & Survival forum. But survival thinking is worth examining no matter what its source. The book eventually meanders into other Science Fiction tropes. But even time travel doesn’t obviate the need for wilderness survival skills. Nor the desirability of general survival skills.
They set out—rifles, canteens, hand ax, machete, matches, iron rations, compasses, binoculars, mountain boots, coveralls….They took turns, with the man following blazing trail and counting paces, the leader keeping lookout, compass direction, and record.
The book stresses that when times are tough you need to conserve everything.
He must warn them that anything manufactured, a scrap of paper, a dirty rag, a pin, all must be hoarded. Caution them, hound them, nag them endlessly.
Nor did RAH ignore a survival library:
He felt sudden grief that abstract knowledge of deaths of millions had not given him. Somehow, the burning of millions of books felt more brutally obscene than the killing of people. All men must die, it was their single common heritage. But a book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man. Book burners—to rape a defenseless friendly book.
Books had always been his best friends. In a hundred public libraries they had taught him. From a thousand newsstands they had warmed his loneliness. He suddenly felt that if he had not been able to save some books, it would hardly be worthwhile to live.
Most of his collection was functional: The Encyclopedia Britannica—Grace had thought the space should be used for a television receiver "because they might be hard to buy afterwards." He had grudged its bulkiness, too, but it was the most compact assemblage of knowledge on the market. "Che" Guevera's War of the Guerillas—thank God he wasn't going to need that! Nor those next to it: "Yank" Leivy's manual on resistance fighting, Griffith's Translation of Mao Tse-tung's On Guerilla Warfare, Tom Wintringham's New Ways of War, the new TR on special operations—forget 'em! Ain't a-gonna study war no more!
The Boy Scout Handbook, Eshbach's Mechanical Engineering, The Radio Repairman's Guide, Outdoor Life's Hunting and Fishing, Edible Fungi and How to Know Them, Home Life in the Colonial Days, Your Log Cabin, Chimneys and Fireplaces, The Hobo's Cook Book, Medicine Without a Doctor, Five Acres and Independence, Russian Self-Taught and English-Russian and Russian-English dictionaries, The Complete Herbalist, the survival manuals of the Navy Bureau of Weapons, The Air Force's Survival Techniques, The Practical Carpenter—all sound books, of the brown and useful sort.
The Oxford Book of English Verse, A Treasury of American Poetry, Hoyle's Book of Games, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, a different Burton's Thousand Nights and a Night, the good old Odyssey with the Wyeth illustrations, Kipling's Collected Verse, and his Just So Stories, a one-volume Shakespeare, the Book of Common Prayer, the Bible, Mathematical Recreations and Essays, Thus Spake Zarathustra, T. S. Eliot's The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, Robert Frost's Verse, Men Against the Sea—
He wished that he had found time to stock the list of fiction he had started. He wished that he had fetched down his works of Mark Twain regardless of space. He wished— Too late, too late. This was it. All that was left of a mighty civilization. "The cloud-capped towers—"
Heinlein didn’t scorn improvising at need:
Very quickly Hugh knew what his worst oversight had been: no wheelbarrow.
He had dug only a little before reaching this new appreciation. Digging by muscle power was bad but carrying it away in buckets was an affront to good sense.
So he carried and thought about how to build a wheel—with no metal, no heating tools, no machine shop, no foundry, no— Now wait! He had steel bottles. There was strap iron in the bunks and soft iron in the periscope housing. Charcoal he could make and a bellows was simply an animal skin and some branches. Whittle a nozzle. Any damfool who couldn't own a wheel with all that at his disposal deserved to lift and carry.
When it comes to improvising, Farnham’s Freehold is where I first learned about a plumb-bob level. Though I wouldn’t choose the T-square version Heinlein proposes in the novel.
"Oh, we'll survey it first."
"Survey it? Hugh, maybe you didn't notice but we don'teven have a spirit level. That big smash broke its glasses. And there isn't even a tripod, much less a transit and all those things."
"The Egyptians invented surveying with less, Joe. Losing the spirit level doesn't matter. We'll build an unspirit level."
"Are you making fun of me, Hugh?"
"Not at all. Mechanics were building level and square centuries before you could buy instruments. We'll build a plumbbob level. That's an upside-down T, and a string with a weight to mark the vertical. You can build it about six feet long and six high to give us a long sighting arm—minimize the errors. Have to take apart one of the bunks for boards. It's light, fussy work you can do while your ribs heal. While the girls do the heavy, unfussy excavating."
At need I’d go for the level the medieval masons used to build cathedrals. A long straight edged board topped with two sticks making an equilateral triangle. The plumb bob hung from the apex and showed how far the bottom beam was from level. Granted, I’ve never had to use that contrivance. But I could if I had to.
The most important thing I learned from Heinlein (And from many other sources; nobody learns anything vital from one single authority) is personal responsibility.
"Hugh Farnham, what a person is can never be somebody else's fault, I think. I am what I am because Barbie herself did it. And so did Grace. And so did you." She added in a low voice, "I love you. And that's not your fault, nor is anything we did your fault. I won't listen to you beating your breast and sobbing 'Mea culpa!' You don't take credit for Grace's virtues. Why take blame for her faults?"
Farnham’s Freehold is built around life-boat preparations and life-boat rules. (If you’ll accept the life boat metaphor in Colorado. If not, think Donner party.) I hope the introductory chapters are enough to spark an interesting discussion here.
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416520937/1416520937.htm?blurb
Baen Books releases the first chunks of its publications on line. “The first hit is free. Try it, you’ll like it. Don’t you want to buy the whole book?” It’s a strategy that they pioneered, and it works well for them. Baen recently made the beginning of Heinlein’s 1965 novel Farnham’s Freehold available. For those who don’t know, the story begins with an American-Russian nuclear firefight. Hugh Farnham and family dive into the bomb shelter Hugh designed and built. Hugh’s shelter has the flavor of nineteen fifties Civil Defense preparations, shaped in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
That’s a different context than our Wilderness & Survival forum. But survival thinking is worth examining no matter what its source. The book eventually meanders into other Science Fiction tropes. But even time travel doesn’t obviate the need for wilderness survival skills. Nor the desirability of general survival skills.
They set out—rifles, canteens, hand ax, machete, matches, iron rations, compasses, binoculars, mountain boots, coveralls….They took turns, with the man following blazing trail and counting paces, the leader keeping lookout, compass direction, and record.
The book stresses that when times are tough you need to conserve everything.
He must warn them that anything manufactured, a scrap of paper, a dirty rag, a pin, all must be hoarded. Caution them, hound them, nag them endlessly.
Nor did RAH ignore a survival library:
He felt sudden grief that abstract knowledge of deaths of millions had not given him. Somehow, the burning of millions of books felt more brutally obscene than the killing of people. All men must die, it was their single common heritage. But a book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man. Book burners—to rape a defenseless friendly book.
Books had always been his best friends. In a hundred public libraries they had taught him. From a thousand newsstands they had warmed his loneliness. He suddenly felt that if he had not been able to save some books, it would hardly be worthwhile to live.
Most of his collection was functional: The Encyclopedia Britannica—Grace had thought the space should be used for a television receiver "because they might be hard to buy afterwards." He had grudged its bulkiness, too, but it was the most compact assemblage of knowledge on the market. "Che" Guevera's War of the Guerillas—thank God he wasn't going to need that! Nor those next to it: "Yank" Leivy's manual on resistance fighting, Griffith's Translation of Mao Tse-tung's On Guerilla Warfare, Tom Wintringham's New Ways of War, the new TR on special operations—forget 'em! Ain't a-gonna study war no more!
The Boy Scout Handbook, Eshbach's Mechanical Engineering, The Radio Repairman's Guide, Outdoor Life's Hunting and Fishing, Edible Fungi and How to Know Them, Home Life in the Colonial Days, Your Log Cabin, Chimneys and Fireplaces, The Hobo's Cook Book, Medicine Without a Doctor, Five Acres and Independence, Russian Self-Taught and English-Russian and Russian-English dictionaries, The Complete Herbalist, the survival manuals of the Navy Bureau of Weapons, The Air Force's Survival Techniques, The Practical Carpenter—all sound books, of the brown and useful sort.
The Oxford Book of English Verse, A Treasury of American Poetry, Hoyle's Book of Games, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, a different Burton's Thousand Nights and a Night, the good old Odyssey with the Wyeth illustrations, Kipling's Collected Verse, and his Just So Stories, a one-volume Shakespeare, the Book of Common Prayer, the Bible, Mathematical Recreations and Essays, Thus Spake Zarathustra, T. S. Eliot's The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, Robert Frost's Verse, Men Against the Sea—
He wished that he had found time to stock the list of fiction he had started. He wished that he had fetched down his works of Mark Twain regardless of space. He wished— Too late, too late. This was it. All that was left of a mighty civilization. "The cloud-capped towers—"
Heinlein didn’t scorn improvising at need:
Very quickly Hugh knew what his worst oversight had been: no wheelbarrow.
He had dug only a little before reaching this new appreciation. Digging by muscle power was bad but carrying it away in buckets was an affront to good sense.
So he carried and thought about how to build a wheel—with no metal, no heating tools, no machine shop, no foundry, no— Now wait! He had steel bottles. There was strap iron in the bunks and soft iron in the periscope housing. Charcoal he could make and a bellows was simply an animal skin and some branches. Whittle a nozzle. Any damfool who couldn't own a wheel with all that at his disposal deserved to lift and carry.
When it comes to improvising, Farnham’s Freehold is where I first learned about a plumb-bob level. Though I wouldn’t choose the T-square version Heinlein proposes in the novel.
"Oh, we'll survey it first."
"Survey it? Hugh, maybe you didn't notice but we don'teven have a spirit level. That big smash broke its glasses. And there isn't even a tripod, much less a transit and all those things."
"The Egyptians invented surveying with less, Joe. Losing the spirit level doesn't matter. We'll build an unspirit level."
"Are you making fun of me, Hugh?"
"Not at all. Mechanics were building level and square centuries before you could buy instruments. We'll build a plumbbob level. That's an upside-down T, and a string with a weight to mark the vertical. You can build it about six feet long and six high to give us a long sighting arm—minimize the errors. Have to take apart one of the bunks for boards. It's light, fussy work you can do while your ribs heal. While the girls do the heavy, unfussy excavating."
At need I’d go for the level the medieval masons used to build cathedrals. A long straight edged board topped with two sticks making an equilateral triangle. The plumb bob hung from the apex and showed how far the bottom beam was from level. Granted, I’ve never had to use that contrivance. But I could if I had to.
The most important thing I learned from Heinlein (And from many other sources; nobody learns anything vital from one single authority) is personal responsibility.
"Hugh Farnham, what a person is can never be somebody else's fault, I think. I am what I am because Barbie herself did it. And so did Grace. And so did you." She added in a low voice, "I love you. And that's not your fault, nor is anything we did your fault. I won't listen to you beating your breast and sobbing 'Mea culpa!' You don't take credit for Grace's virtues. Why take blame for her faults?"
Farnham’s Freehold is built around life-boat preparations and life-boat rules. (If you’ll accept the life boat metaphor in Colorado. If not, think Donner party.) I hope the introductory chapters are enough to spark an interesting discussion here.
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416520937/1416520937.htm?blurb
Last edited:
... somethings are just not acceptable...:barf:
