Crap from Facebook for October 16th, 2026

 A lot of capitalism's most vehement defenders don't even seem to understand what their beloved ideology means.

It's not a synonym for "trade" or "doing business" or "selling stuff" or "making a living" because all of these things existed long before capitalism did.

Capitalism is a specific form of economic organization based on paying workers less than the value of their labour, in order to extract the difference in unearned private profit.

You simply can't have capitalism without exploitation, because exploitative profit-extraction is essentially what it's all about.

I've heard of putting the cart before the horse, but this is like trying to load the entire herd of horses onto the cart. You can't expect to be taken seriously by anyone who hasn't already drunk the Koolaid if you insist on smuggling in the labor theory of value into your proposed definition of capitalism.

And exceptions aside, the most "vehement defenders" of capitalism don't consider it a "beloved ideology." They're not defending it because they're so enamored with markets. Some people are, but most of us aren't in it for the love of the game, but rather for our spite at how blisteringly stupid you idiotic morons are. Commie mouthbreathers made me more pro-capitalist than anything capitalists ever accomplished.

Whenever anyone trades, buys, or sells anything, whenever any of those business transactions take place that you've arbitrarily declared not to actually be capitalism, the people involve necessarily value what they're getting out of the exchange more than they value the raw labor used to produce that thing. Otherwise they wouldn't go through with it! This is not an advanced concept. It is so basic that any human capable of literacy and stringing those sentences together in the manner you have is easily capable of grasping it. You had to learn how to be this dumb. Congratulations. 

Skyrim Amnesia Problem

In Skyrim, there are nine holds, each with their own jarl. In a typical playthrough, the Civil War questline will cause some of these jarls to be deposed and exiled. Generally, if the Dragonborn sides with the Stormcloaks, then the western jarls who supported the Empire lose their positions and live in exile in the Blue Palace in the city of Solitude. If the Dragonborn sides with the Empire, then the Stormcloak-aligned jarls can be found living in exile in the Palace of Kings in Windhelm. I usually side with the Stormcloaks, but I've taken both routes multiple times.

In my most recent playthrough, I did something I normally don't do: I rushed through the main questline and finished it without starting the Civil War at all. Players who reach a certain point in the main questline before resolving the Civil War get a specific quest called "Season Unending." In this quest, the Dragonborn needs to convince the jarl of Whiterun to help capture a dragon in a trap. But the jarl of Whiterun only agrees to this if both sides in the Civil War can negotiate a temporary truce, ostensibly because it would be too dangerous for this large city, situated awkwardly in the middle of Skyrim and wedged between the two warring factions, to devote its resources to this dragon capture project.

One of the mechanics of Season Unending involves negotiation over control of territory between the Empire and the Stormcloaks. When one side gains control of a hold that the other side previously held, the old jarl goes into exile and the other side's appointed jarl takes over. Because the Civil War can later be completed at any time, this has the consequence that for most starting jarls in the game, it is possible for them to lose their throne in the Season Unending negotiations and go into exile, to learn the identity of their usurper, and then to retake their throne once their side seizes control of it again during the Civil War. The game does not really put much thought into these cases, but some of them are written such that they actually make sense. Some of them are too awkward, though, and I'd argue constitute plot holes. One of them is ridiculous and ruins what could have been a good story with blatant, inexplicable amnesia. I'll go through the nine holds in a rough west-to-east fashion, breaking this down...

Haafingar

Elisif is the one jarl who never gets deposed in the game no matter what, so no worries there. That comes with the caveat that she's a puppet for the Empire and can, if the Stormcloaks win the war, switch to being a puppet for Ulfric at the end of the Civil War. But hey, she stays jarl either way, so no issues for our purposes.

The Reach

So this one is easy on the surface, but actually quite weird. Igmund is the starting jarl and supports the Empire. However, he's between a rock and a hard place. The Silver-Blood family are the wealthiest people in his hold, owning much of the property and with agents of their openly controlling infrastructure that should theoretically be in the purview of Understone Keep. Their eldest family member and ostensible leader, Thongvor, hangs out in the jarl's lobby openly praising Ulfric and Talos and basically calling Igmund an elf-loving, milk-drinking, little bitch for refusing to listen to him about that stuff. Meanwhile, Thalmor actively patrol Markarth and the hold, hunting for secret Talos-worshippers because the White-Gold Concordat empowers them to do so and the Empire isn't allowed to interfere, all while Thongvor flips the bird at them from like 90 feet away. On top of all that, there's an ongoing rebellion in the hold by the native Breton daedra-worshippers, the "Forsworn."

Oh, but the plot thickens! Thongvor's younger brother, Thonar, has the Forsworn's leader held in a prison cell and is secretly using the Forsworn as political destabilizers in order to strengthen his family's position and act covertly against his enemies. To put it bluntly, the political situation presented in Markarth. This doesn't really make sense and leads to an especially awkward questline in which the Dragonborn investigates a "conspiracy" involving the Forsworn, only to eventually realize it's just Thonar ordering their imprisoned leader to write letters ordering his followers to do stuff, which the guy does for no real reason. The writing here needed some revisions, to say the least. Really the entire Forsworn aspect of the game is severely underdeveloped. However, for this specific issue, it isn't really a problem: Ingmund would not be in the least shocked that Thongvor would take over as jarl if the Stormcloaks gained control of the Reach because the Silver-Bloods are so influential anyway and Thongvor has been on a soap box about this constantly. If he was too cowed by the Silver-Bloods to act against Thongvor before the takeover, he'd be unlikely to act against the former jarl after the Empire reclaimed the Reach. If anything, he'd rather deal with a blustering Thongvor than a devious Thonar, assuming the younger brother wasn't already killed by the Forsworn and the Dragonborn.

Is Ingmund's apparent willingness to leave the Silver-Bloods alone even after he returns to power and the Civil War is viable as a plot point? Well, it's a bit shaky, but it's sort of defensible. And considering the far worse story issues with Markarth, I'll give this one a begrudging pass.

Falkreath

Siddgeir already deposed the previous jarl, his uncle Dengeir, in a soft coup. The hold was under Imperial control and there was concern that Dengeir was too much of a Stormcloak sympathizer, so they orchestrated the change with the excuse that Dengeir was old and frail and needed to step down for his health. It comes as a shock to absolutely no one that Dengeir is plotting a Stormcloak takeover and reascends to his former position once the Empire are driven out of the hold. And if it's handed over during the Season Unending negotiations and then won back by the Empire, it's no shock that Siddgeir would claim the throne again either. No problems there.

Falkreath's family feud aspect totally justifies the way the in-game mechanics present this. No issues. Easy pass.

Hjaalmarch

This hold is kind of a backwater region with nothing going for it. The initial jarl, Idgrod Ravencrone, nominally supports the Empire, probably more because of the proximity of Solitude and the legion than because she actually cares about the war. She's a weird old mystic who actually makes a show of not being invested in the war. The Stormcloaks can't even find a suitable replacement jarl in the hold capital because it's such a shithole. So they recruit a competent middle-manager in the mining industry from one of the outlying villages in the hold and install her as jarl. Sorli the Builder initially lives in Stonehills and runs Rockwallow Mine. She's not a vocal or notable Stormcloak supporter, and mostly just seems to work for the owner of the mine: Bryling, a thane in Solitude.

Now, I'd think that if jarl Idgrod was ousted in the negotiations and then returned from exile, that she'd banish Sorli the Builder from Hjaalmarch entirely. That wouldn't even really be a spiteful act. It would just be necessary to make sure there was no confusion about who's in charge. Sorli just goes back to Stonehills instead of into exile. However, this could be explained away as either Idgrod being too much of a navel-gazing weirdo to banish Sorli or Bryling, wanting Sorli reinstalled in in her old job running Rockwallow Mine.

I don't think I'd quite give this one a pass, but the problem is pretty minor, and there are potential explanations. Idgrod's aloof nature makes it easy to rationalize what was probably just underdevelopment.

Whiterun

Uniquely, this hold starts out in a neutral position. Whiterun hold is bordered by six other holds, three of them controlled by the Empire and three of them controlled by the Stormcloaks. The jarl of Whiterun initially refuses to take either side, and even if the Dragonborn does take a side in the Civil War, the game uses Balgruuf's hesitation to force the player to advance the main questline to the point that dragon attacks are triggered. Ultimately, he always sides with the Empire, and can never lose control of his hold during Season Unending. If the Dragonborn sides with the Stormcloaks, then Vignar Greymane replaces him as jarl. If Vignar is jarl during Season Unending, he is never made to give up his throne either.

Because of the unique position of Whiterun, it's impossible for the initial jarl to be deposed and then returned to power. He either never loses his throne at all, or loses it to Vignar Greymane permanently. And that means Balgruuf never has a chance to use his power as jarl to retaliate against Vignar's perceived treachery. No problem here because the only way Balgruuf loses his throne is if the Dragonborn sides with the Stormcloaks and takes the city during the Civil War, which goes past the point of no return. Balgruuf is wroth with Vignar as a usurper, but never gets the chance to take his throne back. And the Dragonborn sides with the Empire, Balgruuf never loses his throne and Vignar is just an old guy who hangs out in Jorvasker and talks shit about the White Gold Concordat.

This one gets a clean pass. Technically, there is a wrinkle in the Stormcloak victory scenario involving Balgruuf's children. He has three of them, and they don't move to the Blue Palace with him. If asked, Balgruuf mentions that his children are in hiding from Vignar, but they're actually easy to find within Dragonsreach. This seems to be because Mephala's daedric arifact quest, The Whispering Door, was originally planned to be more involved and to make specific use of these children. In the final version of the game, only one child is involved, and it's pretty cursory. The quest doesn't really make sense if completed following the Stormcloak takeover, but it's a shitty quest anyway.

The Pale

Skald is a staunch Stormcloak supporter, but he's super old and politically volatile and unpopular. Brina Merilis wears her Imperial allegiance on her sleeve, but also has a somewhat popular local following and shows political savvy. She's the obvious choice for the Empire to install as a new jarl. If Skald is deposed in negotiations and then restored in a Stormcloak takeover, it is a bit surprising that Brina basically goes back to her old ways as though nothing ever happened.

Maybe Skald is too much of a self-centered old coot to notice her? Or maybe Ulfric's network finds her presence in Dawnstar useful. She's a public figure with known Imperial loyalty and no actual political power. She's safely contained in Dawnstar and it's not like they don't know whom to spy on.

I give this one a narrow pass, but it's definitely underdeveloped. If the Dragonborn never visits Dawnstar until after Skald is deposed, then Brina Merilis is officially jarl, but the game never acts like it because Skald is exiled to the Palace of Kings and is unable to be in position for the introductory dialogue. So it's kinda possible to just glitch this woman out of ever becoming jarl. They should have at least made her dialogue different if she becomes a former jarl!

Eastmarch

Another non-issue, as Windhelm is the seat of power for the Stormcloak rebellion. Ulfric only loses his throne if he is killed in the Civil War. Then the Empire installs Brunwulf Free-Winter as the new jarl, but Ulfric is never in a position to know that, having lost his life before it happened. If the player sides with the Stormcloaks or never finishes the Civil War questline at all, then Ulfric keeps his throne. If he suspects that Brunwulf is an Imperial supporter living in his city walls, he never acts on it. My impression is that Brunwulf wasn't even really an Imperial agent in the first place, but simply the best figurehead the Empire could prop up in Windhelm on short notice to serve as their figurehead for the hold.

Winterhold

This is another hold with glaring unrelated issues. In this case, the core problem is simpler than for Markarth, but arguably worse. The city of Winterhold was destroyed during the Great Collapse, so in true Bethesda fashion, it looks like shambled ruins except for the College. That was almost 80 years ago! So it should be the case that the city hasn't regained its former glory, but that ruins are nonexistent outside of dedicated memorial sites, the city having been rebuilt into something that looks like an undamaged city, not a husk. Because Skyrim renders Winterhold as though the Great Collapse destroyed the city just a year or so ago instead of 80 years ago, there are almost no buildings to speak of and the population of the capital city is small even compared to Morthal! The developers went all-in on making this city a convenient on-ramp to the unaffiliated (despite its name) College of Winterhold, Skyrim's analog to the Mage's Guild.

Korir is an odd jarl. He's a Stormcloak supporter, but mostly he's a College detractor. He's apparently so unpopular with the other Stormcloak jarls that if he is exiled, he moves in with Brunwulf Free-Winter of all people, and isn't welcome in the palace with the other deposed jarls. There is no explanation for this, ever. The Imperial replacement jarl, Kraldar, is one of the least active jarls in the game, but apparently is friend with Savos Aren, archmage of the College of Winterhold. If Korir regains his throne, Kraldar actually does get banished from Winterhold, shrinking is population just a little bit more, but for some reason he moves into thane Erikur's house in Solitude instead of into the Blue Palace. Again, there's no explanation for this, ever. 

Despite how these jarls are boring and somewhat buggy, this one gets a pass. Actually, it's better than that. We have a true case of a usurper jarl being banished from the hold once the original jarl is returned to power.

The Rift 

I didn't save this one for last just because it's the easternmost hold. This one represents by far the biggest problem for Season Unending. Laila Law-Giver, the starting jarl, is aristocratic, but politically aware. She supports the Stormcloaks over the Empire, but openly expresses concern about Ulfric himself. She seems to take an active role in managing her hold and in trying to ensure that the war isn't hard on her own people. She is aware of the crime problem in Riften, but is regularly fed false reports by her steward Anuriel, who was planted by the Thieves Guild and Maven Black-Briar. Despite evidently not being stupid, she is constantly coaxed by Anuriel and Maven herself and manipulated into allowing the crime syndicate to continue its operations unimpeded. Laila remains worried, but trusts that Anuriel, Maven, and her guards have things in Riften under control, and that the rumors are worse than the reality. If the Dragonborn joins the Thieves Guild, it becomes possible to see just how wrong Laila is about all that.

If the Empire gains control of the Rift in Season Unending, Laila and Anuriel are both banished from the hold. Either the developers forgot that Anuriel was a spy or they wanted her cover to really be that deep.  Maven stops scheming in the shadows and actively takes over the city, having used her connections to position herself as the Empire's chosen replacement jarl. Laila expresses regret at how she was played for a fool. She owns her own role in this, lamenting that her complacency and misplaced trust will make things worse for Riften. And then if the Stormcloaks retake the Rift, Maven and her family move back into her old mansion like nothing ever happened and Laila retakes her throne. She does not retaliate against Anuriel or Maven in any way and seems to have forgotten their betrayal.

Some of the others are awkward, but the Rift? That one just breaks immersion. Based on the character development presented here, a reascendant Laila should be a real threat to the Black-Briars. Sure, we could rationalize that the family are too entrenched and powerful like their Silver-Blood counterparts in Markarth, but this case is different. Maven has Imperial connections and even Thalmor connections. The Stormcloaks aren't going to just shrug and say, "Oh, I guess she's too rich for us to do anything about her. Guess we just pretend nothing happened."

No, in a scenario where the mask is pulled off, Laila has to change. The Black-Briars should definitely be banished at the very least, and Laila should show an entirely different approach to how the city tackles the Thieves Guild problem. Instead, it's like she has amnesia.

The reason that the Rift was handled in this hamfisted way is obvious enough. Maven Black-Briar is involved in multiple quests, especially Thieves Guild quests, and those quests are written to work whether Maven is either a local tycoon and mobster or the jarl herself. But they never bothered to figure out how to make all of those quests work if Maven is a deposed usurper, so they just, well, didn't. They gave Laila video game amnesia.

However, this sucks for storytelling and does Riften dirty. In Solitude, we get a young widow as a figurehead. In Markarth, the conflict is a tense situation with multiple factions making their own power grabs. In Falkreath, we see the war play out between members of one family, uncle against nephew. In Morthal, the conflict is mysticism and portents against pragmatic administration. In Whiterun, we see political neutrality tested under fire. In Dawnstar, we see a military organization choose one of its own veterans to replace a geriatric local ruler. In Windhelm, we can see Ulfric's rebellion either fall and die or graduate to full stewardship of the nation. In Winterhold, we see two old heirs to two old family lineages struggling for power over a husk of a once-great city. But story of the two jarls of the Rift is a story of betrayal and of revelation. When Maven stops lurking in the shadows and actually takes the throne, Laila sees that her trust was tragically misplaced, and that it's now too late to stop it. So if the Stormcloaks retake Riften and Laila gets a second chance? Things would be different. They'd have to be different. And implementing changes for that specific scenario was apparently too much. So instead we just break immersion. 

Stacking mythologies

People my age never actually experienced the 1960's, but have a sort of culturally mythologized version of the shifting landscape of that time. Most Americans around my age were taught a mythological version of 1950's Americana. It was represented as this post-WWII golden age. And the crap that came after it ruined paradise: Walmart, McDonald's, hippies, etc.

So then a lot of these folks came to reject that lionization of the 1950's, to view it as poisonous. They countered with a different mythology, that the 1950's were a time when everyone was racist, when no one was stopping the destruction of the environment, when everything was too expensive, a time of social repression, etc. But they already internalized some of the old myth, and that never really went away. And that includes the reflex against the encroachment of 1960's institutions.

Many of these same people have another myth about Walmart and McDonald's, one born of a 1990's backlash against consumerism. In this myth, Walmart and McDonald's are akin to archetypes of corporate exploitation and race-to-the-bottom capitalism.

The emotional weight of these stacking mythologies worries me. Too many people have taken something with a coherent economic history and mythologized it into a locust swarm. Walmart and McDonald's really did spread very rapidly in the 1960's, for reasons that we actually can know a whole lot about. Instead of trying to learn the real reasons for this, which might be important, they already have their explanation: it's because these are corrupting forces, and they spread across a virgin landscape.

Myths don't always leave much room for nuance, and when you start stacking them on top of each other, there's even less.

Crap from Facebook for December 27th, 2025

This is just my 2¢ as a nonbinary person but I genuinely think that cis people's gender is just as constructed as trans people's. Cis people love to accuse us of having making up genders or artificially modifying our appearance but...the entire makeup, fashion, diet, workout, and haircare industry exists so that cis people can maintain the illusion of two entirely distinct genders with no overlap.

Everybody is constantly doing drag, all the time.

Even though the internet has been inexplicably force-feeding me drivel about gender for the past 14 years, I manage to resist posting the vast majority of this crap on my blog. You're welcome. But this one is pithy and hits the same spot that I've been trying to ignore for too long now, so let's take it down. It'll be easy.

Hey, 2¢ person, the difference between your concept of gender and mine can best be illustrated by the following hypothetical. If we were to go back to any time and any place on the globe and talk to people from any background prior to 2011, language barrier aside, they'd nod along and express that yes, they too know all of this stuff. It's common knowledge. In contrast, if we did the same with you, they'd think you were totally insane.

We might be able to carve out some sort of exception involving ivory tower academics, but probably not. Oh, I can go and read some other pretty bizarre remarks from those guys circa 1990 or whatever, but even those enterprising individuals would be baffled at the notion that haircare or diet are tools used to prop up the illusion of a gender binary.

The one aspect of this that disturbs me is that all of those people in the past would be wrong about something here, because, most likely, you actually aren't totally insane. Oh, you've got issues. But you've been able to become acclimated to a society in which posting this unhinged crap online is relatively normal. The Overton Window has shifted so far that your position, one which would have been a clear sign of some pathology for most of human history, is now just annoying.

Crap from Facebook for November 17th, 2025

I just heard a discussion about the biggest military recruiting tool, and I froze.

While I was on active duty, I said this to anyone who would listen. And almost nobody did.

Here it is--

We give soldiers and sailors something America won't give its citizens: steady income, healthcare, and food security.

That is called "Socialism."

We go into impoverished neighborhoods and sell this socialism to the poor.

Many see that as their best option.

Then we send these young people to the far reaches of the planet to push the letter of capitalism in an envelope of democracy.

The Soldiers of Socialism.

Stupid statements about socialism are so commonplace that the old phrase "a dime a dozen" constitutes overkill, even with inflation. This isn't the first time I've encountered "the military is socialism." More typically, I see "public works is socialism." The thing about these silly big-tent arguments that makes me sad is that they actually aren't part of the normal socialist playbook. You wouldn't catch a dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary spouting this crap. Converted bourgeois nepo-babies, academic misanthropes, or actual impoverished proles don't think to try to achieve socialism by redefining it to include everything. No, this talking point always comes from cringeworthy normie liberal progressive types who drifted politically from "democracy" to "democratic socialism" and who have never had to contend with these issues seriously.

To these people, the horrors of actual socialist regimes don't even count because that wasn't real socialism anyway. In their minds, socialism isn't bad stuff like gulags and secret police. It's good stuff like public libraries, and the only problem is that there isn't enough of it. Good stuff scales infinitely, so we just need to promote more of it and everything will be good, not bad. It would be silly to include the bad stuff, so we just wouldn't do it.

This isn't some exaggeration on my part for comedic effect. They are 100% that naive. I know because I've met them. I've spoken with them, sometimes at length. Actual socialists see them as useful idiots, while quietly holding them in contempt.
 

Crap from Facebook for September 19th, 2025

This one is a screenshot of text in a white field that is itself set against a photo of the Sonoran Desert, with several saguaro cacti and what appears to be a palo verde tree off to the side. Not sure why it's the background image for this, but here we are. I'll quote the lines from the screenshot in green and post my own commentary beneath each on... 

If I say, "ketchup is the worst," that's just an opinion.

A wrong opinion! But yes. 

If I say, "people who like ketchup are idiots," that's bullying.

No, that's still just an opinion. It may also be an indicator that you're French.

If I say, "because I don't like ketchup, no one should be allowed to have it," that's oppression.

No, that's also an opinion. Also you're an idiot. Also, I didn't just bully you there. 

If I say, "people who eat ketchup are dangerous and must be controlled," that's racism, bigotry, or fascism.

Definitely not. And I should probably do a separate post about idiots calling everything "fascism" without knowing what the word means, since I see that all the damn time. But racism? With which race do you associate ketchup?

If I say, "anyone who defends ketchup should be silenced or locked up," that's the destruction of free speech and democracy.

Wrong again, idiot. Expressing your idiotic opinions about your desired outcome for ketchup proponents is practicing free speech. It is not destroying it. And you haven't stripped a single person of a single vote, no matter how strident your anti-ketchup stance might be.

This one was so silly that I almost didn't bother to post it. But something about the idea that hatred of a sauce is "racist" tickled me enough to linger on it. Oh well. 

Lone Wolf Adventures

In 1994, my parents arranged to transfer my sister and I from the nearby elementary school (less than half a mile from our house) to another one in the area (about two miles from our house). And so I started third grade in the classroom of Mrs. Hornreich. Due to administrative rearrangements with crowded classrooms and relocation of some classes to new "portable" accessory buildings, I was soon moved out of the main building into the trailer classroom of Mrs. Meskill. And it was in Mrs. Meskill's class that I was introduced to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. These were quite popular among my classmates at the time. I don't recall exactly which ones I read on my own, but there were several. We also did group playthroughs in class.

In 1997, the arrival of new housing developments had pushed that elementary school to capacity and my parents were informed that the school could no longer accommodate the transfer. So my parents looked farther afield, to a school that was about seven and a half miles away. My mother would end up working there serving lunch for twenty years, but that wouldn't be until later. So my final year of elementary school was spent in the classroom of Mrs. Johnston. The school library at "Grass Lake" was somewhat modest, but it did introduce me to Redwall among other things. But Mrs. Johnston also maintained a few bookshelves in her own classroom, a little classroom library. And I have to say that her taste was better than the school library overall. This was how I discovered The Chronicles of Prydain. It was also how I discovered the Lone Wolf gamebooks.

The book Mrs. Johnston had was Castle Death, the seventh book in the series. Once I opened it up and figured out what it was, my immediate comparison was to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series. But this book was different. You tracked information with pen and paper. You had equipment. And your choices from one book could carry over to another. I loved the idea.

I played through Castle Death a few times. The school library didn't have any books from the series and I didn't see them on the shelves at the Covington library. I placed a hold on The Caverns of Kalte. It was the first time I saw a KCLS book with a "CS" sticker as its home library location (Central Storage). I was a bit confused at having my Magnakai powers taken away, but I quickly got up to speed. I died to the Helghast and became obsessed with getting my hands on the Sommerswerd. Eventually, I found Flight from the Dark somewhere. And then I also found The Jungle of Horrors. But I figured out that I needed Fire on the Water in order to get the Sommerswerd, and I couldn't find a copy of that book anywhere.

I kept the idea of getting back to this series in mind, but left it alone just because it was too difficult to find copies of the books. Eventually, I discovered Project Aon, which allowed me to play through the entirety of the Kai, Magnakai, and Grand Master series all for free. So I did. And at long last, I obtained the wonderful Sommerswerd. I imagine that I still have the paper note sheet somewhere, buried with other old documents.

Last year I noticed that paperback "Definitive Editions" from Holmgard Press were available for both the Kai and Magnakai series on Amazon. So those immediately went on my wishlist. My brother got me the books for Christmas. Actually, I think two people independently got me the books as a Christmas gift and I returned one set. I left the other one in its plastic seal for several months. I didn't know whether to dig into them and play through these new editions myself or try to run some kind of game for someone else. I'd thought of running a campaign taking others through the books on the Casual Players Alliance or through some Discord. Wasn't sure if there'd be any interest in that. And I was focused on my Heinlein juveniles project anyway, so the Lone Wolf books sat there.

About six weeks ago, I decided that it might be a fun project to run ChatGPT through the books. I had to do a lot of typing in order to transcribe the longer passages, but that was good practice for me anyway. There have been some problems with this approach, but I actually have had fun with it. ChatGPT's only death so far was in the Tarnalin sections of Fire on the Water, which I consider to be probably the deadliest part of the whole series. Now we're well into The Kingdoms of Terror.

After Robot-Brain obtained the Ornate Silver Key in The Caverns of Kalte, but then passed by the room with the locked chest containing the Silver Helmet, I thought, "Hey, I would have done a better job there. Let's start a parallel playthrough. So now I've got two separate instances of Lone Wolf, both in The Kingdom of Terrors.

I'm not trying to pitch these gamebooks (although I do recommend them). I just wanted to post about an interest of mine that has been seeing a bit of a resurgence lately.

Crap from Facebook for September 17th, 2025

Should I even bother with this one? Probably not, but I'm annoyed at the moment and it's certainly crap I saw on Facebook. Here we go...

The misinformation surrounding Charlie Kirk is astounding - and I’m not talking about average people sounding off on social media - I’m talking about the bullshit being spread by major news outlets and so-called liberal journalists.

I’m looking at you, Ezra Klein.

While Kirk’s shooter was obviously overly steeped in internet whackadoo memelord culture - the “normies” don’t have a clue about how internet culture works at all.

It's extremely telling that some people can't look at what this shooter did and simply note that it is totally evil and profoundly messed up. Instead, they seem to think that if they can fit this individual into some specific bucket, they'll win a prize. You won't. Every sane person who sees you do this is thinking the same thing. 

Charlie Kirk wasn’t someone who was looking for honest debate. He was a political operative spreading hate and divisiveness. When you show his fans his racist, sexist or bigoted rhetoric - they defend it by saying “That’s not (racist, sexist, bigoted) - it’s true.” And that was his goal.

The word "operative" is fun here because it sounds sinister, like he was a spy or saboteur of some kind. But you get plausible deniability because technically "operative" can also mean anyone who does something, and that applies to anyone. So yeah, that's fun.

This whole sick affair is notable enough that I figured it would bring out the weirdos. But in principle, anyone who is in the business of deciding that they get to tell me the unstated goals of others, of the people they do not like and are actively being critical of, is itself worthy of "Crap from Facebook."

The whole “Prove Me Wrong” setup that made Kirk famous wasn’t really about proving anyone wrong. It was about creating content. Kirk mastered a specific type of performance that looked like debate but functioned more like a carefully orchestrated show designed to make his opponents look foolish and his positions seem unassailable.

That's how a debate is supposed to work, you buffoon. If you're not trying to make your own position seem unassailable and your opponents appear to be wrong or "foolish" then you're not practicing debate. You're doing some other, different thing.

The basic formula was simple - set up a table on a college campus, invite students to challenge conservative talking points, then use a combination of rhetorical tricks and editing magic to create viral moments. What looked like open discourse was actually a rigged game where Kirk held all the advantages.

But like I said, some of the videos I've seen myself weren't the ones filmed or edited by his team, but were footage recorded by others. And many of the others were longform, showing entire exchanges with no cuts.

First, there’s the obvious setup problem.

Kirk was a professional political operative who spent years honing his arguments and memorizing statistics. He knew exactly which topics would come up and had practiced responses ready.

So he was prepared? You know that's good, right? That's not a bad thing. It's not cheating or underhanded.

Meanwhile, his opponents were typically 19-year-old students who wandered over between classes. It’s like watching a professional boxer fight random people at the gym - the outcome was predetermined.

Well, some of his interlocutors were professors. And from what I could tell, an aspect of his agenda was to try and reach the hearts and minds of young people going to college or considering going to college. The venue makes sense and speaking with students, including young students, makes sense there. You're trying to make it sound nefarious.

Kirk used what debate experts call a corrupted version of the Socratic method.

You made that up just now, you lying fuck.

Instead of asking genuine questions to explore ideas, he’d ask leading questions designed to trap students in contradictions or force them into uncomfortable positions. He’d start with seemingly reasonable premises, then quickly pivot to more extreme conclusions, leaving his opponents scrambling to keep up.

You're describing debate tactics and trying to make them seem somehow bad or wrong. This sort of thing has been done for millennia. Read a damn book or something.

The classic example was his approach to gender identity discussions. Kirk would begin by asking seemingly straightforward definitional questions - “What is a woman?” - then use whatever answer he received as a launching pad for increasingly aggressive follow-ups. If someone mentioned social roles, he’d demand biological definitions. If they provided biological definitions, he’d find edge cases or exceptions to exploit.

Oh, I actually saw a bunch of videos with him doing that. And the reason he did it so much was because the interlocutors, almost invariably, didn't answer the simple question. Seriously, that's it. It's obvious that's the whole reason he did it.

This is like the easiest tactic to defeat in the world, and almost every single person he talked to immediately proceeded to play tic-tac-toe by leading with an edge play. Incidentally, this is one of the only parts of Kirk's agenda that I particularly found useful: exposing to the world the propensity for members of university communities in America to utterly flounder at a tactic that shouldn't even work in the first place.

If Charlie Kirk had asked me "What is a woman?" I would have offered him a dictionary definition and asked if there were any other common nouns that every English-speaker knows that we needed to review. What is a triangle? What is a cloud? What is a book?

It's not some super-elite debate trick. It's a trap with no bait in it, which is not armed. And he kept setting it on the floor and watching as they immediately armed the trap and then stepped into it.

The goal wasn’t understanding or genuine dialogue - it was creating moments where students appeared confused or contradictory.

Ah, the Oracle of Goals has spoken.

Kirk also employed rapid-fire questioning techniques that made it nearly impossible for opponents to fully develop their thoughts. He’d interrupt, reframe, and redirect before anyone could establish a coherent argument. This created the illusion that his opponents couldn’t defend their positions when really they just couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

Those are also good debate tactics. Incidentally, I don't doubt that he employed such tactics. But also, the person writing this drivel is relying on conveying the idea that not only are these things bad, but also that they were Charlie Kirk's bread and butter. And from what I can recall, a more common tactic of his was to just let people dig themselves into rhetorical graves. He didn't need to interrupt or redirect. He gave them a platform to make fools of themselves, and that was all it took.

The editing process was equally important. Kirk’s team would film hours of interactions, then cut together the moments that made him look brilliant and his opponents look unprepared. Nuanced discussions got reduced to gotcha moments. Students who made good points found those parts mysteriously absent from the final videos.

I wasn't a "fan" or anything, but sometimes videos of his made it into content I watched or listened to elsewhere. Some of these videos were 10 minutes, 20 minutes, or even longer of uncut footage. I'm sure that a lot of meticulous editing was used for YouTube shorts and such, but longform examples were (and are) readily available.

What’s particularly insidious about this approach is how it masquerades as good-faith debate while undermining the very principles that make real discourse valuable. Kirk wasn’t interested in having his mind changed or learning from others - he was performing certainty for an audience that craved validation of their existing beliefs.

I mean, you're writing a hit-piece on a guy who was just assassinated. You don't really have a leg to stand on when it comes to good-faith debate.

The “Prove Me Wrong” framing itself was misleading. It suggested Kirk was open to being persuaded when the entire setup was designed to prevent that possibility. Real intellectual humility requires admitting uncertainty, acknowledging complexity, and engaging with the strongest versions of opposing arguments. Kirk’s format did the opposite.

Charlie Kirk did not invent the phrase "prove me wrong." And it's essentially always been a challenge, not an earnest expression that one believes one is about to be successfully proven wrong.

This style of debate-as-performance has become incredibly popular because it feeds into our current political moment’s hunger for easy victories and clear villains. People want to see their side “destroying” the opposition with “facts and logic.” Kirk provided that satisfaction without the messy reality of actual intellectual engagement.

And what do you provide, vulture?

The broader damage extends beyond individual interactions. When debate becomes about humiliating opponents rather than exploring ideas, it corrupts the entire enterprise of democratic discourse. Students who got embarrassed in these exchanges weren’t just losing arguments - they were being taught that engaging with different viewpoints was dangerous and futile.

Dangerous. Interesting word choice there.

Kirk’s approach also contributed to the broader polarization problem by making political identity feel like a zero-sum game where any concession to the other side represented total defeat. His debates reinforced the idea that political opponents weren’t just wrong but ridiculous - a perspective that makes compromise and collaboration nearly impossible.

I'm open to the idea that the "Turning Point" approach might have some serious flaws or exacerbate problems that I'd rather see tackled in some other way.

But nah, this argument doesn't work. If Kirk's thesis is that universities are brainwashing students, and he engages with students (and faculty, for that matter) and seeks to publicize this and expose the purported brainwashing, one cannot attack his thesis on the grounds that he is "contributing to polarization."

The most troubling aspect might be how this style of engagement spreads. Kirk inspired countless imitators who use similar tactics in their own contexts. The model of setting up situations where you can’t lose, then claiming victory when your rigged game produces the expected results, has become a template for political engagement across the spectrum.

I'm sure his team appreciate you giving him credit for inventing something that he didn't invent at all. Dork. 

Real debate requires vulnerability - the possibility that you might be wrong and need to change your mind. Kirk’s format eliminated that possibility by design. His certainty was performative rather than earned, and his victories were manufactured rather than genuine.

Spoken like a true loser.

The tragedy of this approach is that college campuses actually need more genuine dialogue about difficult political questions. Students are forming their worldviews and wrestling with complex issues. They deserve engagement that helps them think more clearly, not performances designed to make them look stupid.

Oh man, I hate this crap so much. When I began attending a university, I had zero interest in the notion of "forming my worldview and wrestling with complex issues."

So to every pretentious twat who believes that adults are studying at universities so that they can form their worldviews, I invite you to go fuck yourselves.

Kirk’s assassination represents a horrific escalation of political violence that has no place in democratic society. But it’s worth remembering that his debate tactics, while not violent, were themselves a form of intellectual violence that treated political opponents as objects to be humiliated rather than fellow citizens to be engaged.

There's no such thing as intellectual violence, you stupid, idiotic, moron.

I’ve turned down every podcast and interview request that’s come my way in the past few months. Two reasons. First, I have zero interest in making myself the story. Second, and more importantly, I’m not some oracle with instant answers on demand.

I actually have no idea at all who this person is, nor what the context for that statement is. I mean, I'm satisfied that this person is contemptible and that any podcast involving this person is worthless. But that's about it.

Podcasts and debates aren’t designed for real intellectual work. They’re built for entertainment. Serious thinking doesn’t happen in a soundbite. It requires time to wrestle with ideas, to sit with them, to test them against reality. My first reaction isn’t always my best one - and I’m honest enough to admit that. What feels true in the moment often crumbles under reflection. That’s why I’d rather write than perform.

Name one serious idea. Give me a single example of your "real intellectual work."

Because while I also make my living from creating content - I refuse to mistake performance for truth.

You make a living from this crap? What? How? 

Heinlein Juveniles Postscript

This project has dominated my reading for 2025. I officially announced it back in November of 2024, as it was to be a project to take place between my thirty-ninth and fortieth birthdays. However, at that time I'd recently started reading Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb, and I underestimated just how long that would take me to finish (it was a bit of a slog). So I didn't get to kick things off properly until February.

From February through July, Heinlein was pretty much the only author I was reading. Starting in August, I finally opened a Christmas present from last year and got back into Joe Dever's Lone Wolf series. But I knew that wouldn't stop me from completing the Heinlein project ahead of schedule.

Here are my final rankings for all fourteen books. It divided them up into five tiers, because really I feel kind of ambivalent about some of the individual rankings, but the tiers are solid and I stand by them. I'll link to my blog post for each book. And before I do that, I'll link to the post that introduced this project, so the post you're reading now can serve as a kind of master post for the whole project, indexing everything.

Tier 1: Transcendant, All-Time Superlative Works

1. Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958)

2. Starship Troopers (1959)

Tier 2: Great Books, Personal Favorites (and not just among YA novels)

3. The Star Beast (1954)

4. The Rolling Stones (1952)

5. Tunnel in the Sky (1955)

6. Space Cadet (1948)

7. Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) 

Tier 3: Excellent Juvenile Science Fiction

8. Podkayne of Mars* (1963)

9. Starman Jones (1953)

10. Between Planets (1951)

Tier 4: Still Good, But Flawed

11. Red Planet (1949)

12. Time for the Stars (1956)

13. Rocket Ship Galileo (1947)

Tier 5: Mediocre, Deserved Revision 

14. Farmer in the Sky (1950)

This has been a blast. I might try something like it again some day.

*Arguably not part of the Heinlein juveniles, but I include it anyway for the sake of completeness. 

Podkayne of Mars

Back in June and July of 2006, this was the very first Heinlein novel I ever read. And having re-read it recently, I bring my personal Heinlein juveniles project to a close. Well, there's a complication I threw into the mix well after the project started. I purchased a copy of Grumbles from the Grave and I'm currently reading that. I already know that some of the information in that book might shed some light on some of the juveniles. But that's nonfiction anyway. So yeah, this project is completed. I re-read all twelve thirteen fourteen Heinlein juveniles before my own fortieth birthday.

I talked about alternative versions of a juveniles "canon" in my previous post, and I won't belabor the point. I'm counting Podkayne of Mars as a juvenile because it has a young protagonist with a tone and themes that put it closer to Starship Troopers than to something like Methuselah's Children. I could see an argument that some of his other works, The Door into Summer comes in mind, would probably also feel similar except for the fact that the protagonist is an adult. But I wanted to include it for the sake of being as complete as possible and in order to give this series a book with a female POV protagonist.

Although the first few Heinlein juveniles were pretty much distinctly boys' stories about boys, the author did eventually include some great female characters in the novels. Here's my rundown...

Rocket Ship Galileo (1947): Totally a boy's story. One of the boys' mothers gets some good lines early on, but this whole book is a sausage fest.

Space Cadet (1948): Setting is seemingly a gender-specific military academy, so human female characters are very minor. If the female aliens count, though? These are still some of my favorite aliens in any book. 

Red Planet (1949): Little sister is a minor character. It shifts partway through from being a boy-focused story to being one about a whole community, but most of the leading characters there are men anyway. There is a single instance of a woman taking the reins with some of this stuff, but it's very brief.

Farmer in the Sky (1950): Stepsister is an invalid and used to illustrate the grueling nature of the frontier environment. Stepmom gets some lines early on and then kind of weirdly goes totally silent for almost the whole book.

Between Planets (1951): Isobel actually gets some significant presence here. I compared this book to Esther Forbes' Johnny Tremain. What starts out as a survival story for Don sort of morphs into a revolutionary war framing with a boy becoming a man against that backdrop. If this had run on for longer instead of ending in a hazy Deus Ex Machina with no real denouement, we could have really gotten a lot more Don/Isobel material to work with.

The Rolling Stones (1952): So Hazel Stone steals the show here and Edith is a decent minor character too. Meade ends up being kind of the family member with the least development in the pages. Missed opportunity? Maybe. It's framed as a Castor and Pollux story, so the twins get top billing and their grandma steals the show anyway. The whole dynamic between the boys and their father is key to tying the whole narrative together, and their mother's profession keeps coming up as a hook that somehow causes more trouble for the family than the twins' shenanigans. There's just not that much room in such a thin book for the Big Sister character to take the spotlight. I read that James Nicoll called this book's "sexual politics" tragic, and thought that was an especially inane analysis.

Starman Jones (1953): Eldreth counts as a major character here, but it seems like this whole thing could have been smoother with a female crew member taking on that role instead of a passenger. The whole idea is that Max ordinarily can't go where the passengers are. And I guess Heinlein wanted to make her a spoiled rich girl, so the passenger thing fit the bill. Maybe a missed opportunity, though?

The Star Beast (1954): Betty is great. If the whole series had female characters like this, then the Heinlein juveniles would probably be remembered very differently in the zeitgeist.

Tunnel in the Sky (1955): Pretty balanced. Multiple important female characters. And the treatment of gender roles struck me as pretty thoughtful.

Time for the Stars (1956): There are various minor female characters. Actually, I think this book could be a candidate for gender-swapping the original twins. Maybe I just didn't love this one as much.

Citizen of the Galaxy (1957): Multiple minor female characters, but the main character bounces from each of his main arcs to the next such that there is really only one major character because no one else is really following him to the next leg of his journey. Reasonably balanced, given the settings described.

Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958): Peewee and the Mother Thing are both major characters.

Starship Troopers (1959): Various female characters, but Heinlein commits to the bit of having the main character take up a role in what is basically heavy infantry, a role that was historically about 100% male. Even its closest analogs in the present day are still sausage fests.

Even if Heinlein later contextualized it in a different way (and I'm curious to see what he says about it once I get to that section of Grumbles from the Grave), it really feels like Podkayne of Mars was partially about him wanting to finally do one of these stories with a young girl front-and-center, to make it her story and not have her show up as the sidekick to a boy. He'd already done that in short stories, but never before in a novel.

I believe that Heinlein found his mark with Podkaynen's narrative voice. Initially, Podkayne struck me as being rather witty, but so over-the-top that it was a bit cringeworthy and almost chauvinist. But then I remembered that the character is about sixteen Earth years old, and I've met some sixteen-year-old girls myself. They really are over-the-top. And Podkayne's voice hitting the mark is vital to the story because it's mostly just a kind of travelogue with lots of foreshadowing for the dark conclusion. Most authors could not pull that off and wouldn't even try. Heinlein pulls it off. This was never going to be as great of a book as The Rolling Stones or Have Space Suit—Will Travel. But it really is pretty good.

Two matters surrounding the publication of Podkayne of Mars are especially noteworthy. The first isn't such a big deal, I think, but I'll address it anyway. For better or worse, Podkayne of Mars is more similar to the juveniles than to most of Heinlein's books for adults. And while Heinlein did write plenty of short stories for adults that were published in magazines during the early arc of the juveniles and even eventually wrote some adult novels for other publishers in between the publication of the Scribner's juveniles, I think those could be said to have taken a back seat to the juveniles. It looks like the only ones that were actually both written and published contemporaneously were The Puppet Masters (1951, after Between Planets and before The Rolling Stones), Double Star (1956, between Tunnel in the Sky and Time for the Stars), and The Door into Summer (1957, between Citizen of the Galaxy and Have Space Suit—Will Travel). But Podkayne of Mars came out in 1963, and the 1960's were when almost all of Heinlein's most famous and beloved books for adults were written. Just look at the sequence starting from the canonical end of the juveniles, with Have Space Suit—Will Travel marking the final volume published by Scribner's. It goes...

1959: Starship Troopers

1961: Stranger in a Strange Land

1963: Podkayne of Mars

1963: Glory Road

1964: Farnham's Freehold

1966: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress 

Of those, Farhnam's Freehold has generally been panned, but the others are probably Heinlein's most famous novels of all time. Actually, even Glory Road probably gets overshadowed by the other three. They're critical and commercial juggernauts, and having Podkayne of Mars right there in the middle of them makes it look especially weak by comparison.

But that's fine! There's no rule that says an author's greatest works should be distributed in some specific manner through the course of a career, nor one that states a less remarkable work standing amidst a cluster of masterpieces in a bibliography is made worse by the greatness of its neighbors.

And now we come to the elephant in the room: the ending. The final page of the final chapter of Podkayne of Mars was changed at the insistence of an editor at Putnam's. While this blog has never been a spoiler-free safe haven, I also don't really even want to get into the weeds with the differences between the two endings. Instead, I'll put it this way...

1. The originally written ending is now widely available. I'd say that it is and should be considered the canonical ending. Any analysis that judges the book as a whole based on the originally published ending would be disingenuous, unless it was written decades ago, when it was the default ending.
2. I appreciate that Baen published my version with both endings, for a neat side-by-side comparison.
3. I'll read Heinlein's letter about this in Grumbles from the Grave, but I think it's pretty obvious why he'd be annoyed about the specific nature of the revision that Putnam's demanded.
4. I can wrap my head around the objection that the editor had to the original ending. I can wrap my head around Heinlein's objection to the objection. But what I just don't get is how the editor, on seeing the revised version, ever thought, "Yeah, OK. This fixes what I complained about. This works. We shall publish this version." Heinlein didn't just phone in a tonally different ending. He managed to, in six paragraphs, craft an ending that presumably met the technical requirement of the editor, but which is somehow so much darker and basically just screams, "I don't belong!"
5. Plenty of authors experienced great frustration at editorial interference in their work. Heinlein hardly ever did, so the fact that he did with this novel is noteworthy. In some ways, the controversy over the ending surpasses the importance of the entire book in the story of Heinlein's career, and that's just kind of sad.
6. From what I've read so far in Grumbles from the Grave, maybe Heinlein avoided editorial interference most of the time because he was such a diva about it.

That's enough on this one. I decided I'll do one more post to wrap this project up. There may or may not be an epilogue post related to information I learned in Grumbles from the Grave.

Starship Troopers

I am now most of the way through my re-read of Podkayne of Mars, so I'd better hurry and write up a post for Starship Troopers. In my previous post, I wrote about how Have Space Suit—Will Travel sort of acts as a culmination or capstone on the thematic arc that started with Rocket Ship Galileo and then continued for eleven more novels. It's such a perfect ending to such an amazing series that extending my personal "canon" of the Heinlein juveniles feels wrong. And that was in the back of my mind for most of my re-reading of Starship Troopers.

I could probably make a case for three different versions of the juveniles "canon" as I envision it. One version stops with the end of the Scribner's run, with a series of twelve stories that expand their scope in time and space, bringing the reader on a wonderful journey that eventually comes back home in an intriguing, yet sobering way. Another version includes that entire arc, but doesn't stop there. It includes the final book submitted to Scribner's, which remains a juvenile, but expects a bit more maturity out of the reader, a start of what could have been "Juveniles 2.0" and introduced the kids who grew up with the first dozen novels to more advanced topics. And a third version, the one I'm processing now that I'm midway through Podkayne of Mars, has everything from the first two version, keeps the tone set by Starship Troopers, but ultimately shows how when Heinlein came back to the well for another juvenile protagonist, he was thwarted in one of the biggest upsets in his writing career and moved on to books for adults thereafter.

There is so much that I could say about Starship Troopers. It is Heinlein's second most famous book for good reasons. And I guess I'll start with my own Livejournal post from just over nineteen years ago.

I read this book almost a week ago, but I'm so lazy that I didn't make an entry until now. Anyway, I was definitely impressed. It's a good book. I don't know. I think I was expecting more. Not that something was really missing, but maybe I thought the book would be longer, even though that doesn't really make sense because I had the book in my hands and could see that it was easily less than 300 pages.

Even thought I knew better, I expected the book to be like the movie, and it was not even remotely similar. Basically none of the characters that are in the book are actually in the movie. They did keep some names, but the characters themselves are completely different. And the book has like, messages and stuff. The movie is just a cheesy caricature. It's as though Paul Verhoeven hated the book but wanted to make the movie anyway. For what it's worth, I kind of like the movie. The biggest problem is that it has the same name as the book and is purportedly based on it.

One thing the book does that's a bit contrived is give us really long flashbacks that are conveniently placed for Heinlein to deliver his philosophy (via the main character's schoolteacher). It's interesting stuff, but seems so removed from the events going on in the rest of the book. Really, I guess my criticism is that the book hops between being philosophical and being action-packed and it gets to be a bit awkward, but mostly, even that is actually done with class. It's an easy read and certainly kept me hooked. A lot. It feels like I've been rather critical here but this book definitely makes my top 50. Not sure exactly where I'd rank it, but it's going on the list.

I hunted this post down prior to beginning my re-read, but I kind of can't wrap my head around it. I can't quite remember the space my head was in back then. My take now? The book is great and I wasn't positive enough about it back then. I'd say that I'd fight the twenty-two year old version of myself over this crappy review, but I am out of shape and he would probably wear me down.

I am spontaneously electing to write the rest of this post, other than a brief conclusion, in bullet point form. Tacky? Too bad. I thought of the idea just now and it appeals to me.

• I cannot believe that I had anything positive to say about that movie. The years since my first reading of the book have really exhausted my patience with trite comparisons between the book and movie.
• A lot of the criticisms of the book, specifically winging about militarism, fascism, misogyny, conflating it with the aforementioned bad movie, or siding with the aliens instead of the humans because some folks are telling on themselves about their own misanthropy, was fully addressed in this essay I'll link to here: http://kentaurus.com/troopers.htm
• Johnnie's descriptions of women throughout the book and discussions of male-female relationships stand out to me more now, especially given the more explicitly sex-driven stuff in Heinlein's later work. There's a certain charm. When the topic comes up and I see any discussion of Heinlein writing about anything to do with women or sex, it's always post-Stranger infamous Dirty Old man Heinlein. But Starship Troopers? He hadn't given up on reining it in, I guess. Maybe it really is a YA novel. It is restrained. That's true. And in a certain sense it is artificial. It's a military story. The main character is infantry. Realistically, there'd be raunchier dialogue and stuff. It's also written with Johnnie as a narrator selecting details, so maybe he did see and hear stuff and even participate, but considers it crass to put in this account and is leaving it out the same way he left out things like the identities of which men were saved when the lieutenant sacrificed his life to throw two men into the evacuation bay. So on the one hand, it's dialed back a little too obvious and on the other hand there's plausible reason for that. But what struck me more than that was what Johnnie does say about women: it's so uncannily reverent. Almost worshipful. It really resonates in a way I guess I didn't pick up on in 2008, and I don't know why not.
• I know at some point I was told that the high school flashbacks to Mr. Dubois are intrusive or hamfisted, and I recall just kind of accepting that on my first reading. I was actually a bit worried that I'd enjoy this one less than the other juveniles because I was expecting long sermons to be in there. But that criticism now seems overstated. The book strikes a good balance and does a good job of grounding the progress of the main plot while still jumping around the timeline to add context. It's smooth. Even in that old LJ post, I described the political asides as "long flashbacks." And on re-reading the book, I'm taken aback. I had totally remembered a version of this book in which the political conversations pad the book out with numerous extended flashback scenes. Did I get brainwashed by online descriptions of the book, even despite having read it myself? Those scenes are sparse, are deeply connected to the scenes preceding them, and are each like two pages of dialogue.
• Considering how much fodder Heinlein gave readers for controversy in his later books, trying to mire this one is just tacky. Some of that just comes from a weird "Everything is fascist" crowd that decided Heinlein was fascist. And they're idiots. They're stupid, moronic people. I ain't got time for that nonsense. But that's only some of it. I think that much of the rest is more telling because it generally hinges on the nuances of the political system used in the world of Starship Troopers. Folks either misunderstand it as being a literal polemic by Heinlein, a blueprint for what he wanted society to look like, or they get pedantic about chasing after perceived flaws or inconsistencies. They want to challenge the realism of a political system used as a backdrop in a novel about a career soldier on the battlefield. At that point, it's like Heinlein already won. You already bought in. If you have burning questions about how big the labor battalions are or how dangerous they are or how free the press is, then don't kid yourself. That's not lit-crit. That's fangirling.
• If we divided up YA into two markets, it's kind of like the earlier books were more like "Early YA" and Starship Troopers is "Late YA." Booksellers don't operate that way, but maybe Heinlein wanted to. I don't know. I think that this could apply to Podkayne of Mars as well.
• I wonder about an alternate timeline in which Scribner's ran with Starship Troopers and Heinlein kept writing more books in that vein. That either means no Stranger in a Strange Land or that it gets pushed back until later in his career. Considering the cultural significance of that book and the timing of it, that's a huge change. He became the biggest name in science fiction and Stranger in a Strange Land was no small part of that. But then, what would we get instead?

In conclusion, this is one of my favorite books and one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time. Among the Heinlein juveniles, I'd rate it as being second, right behind Have Space Suit—Will Travel.

Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Wow. What a book. This was my final book in the series to not be a re-read. It's the best one so far and feel like a proper culmination to twelve years of these novels. Maybe this is giving Heinlein too much retrospective credit. But I could almost see him thinking, "I can already tell that the stiffnecks at Scribner's aren't going to let me keep doing these the way I want to do them. My next book is going to push the maturity of themes here and if they go for it, then great. We'll be doing books for a bit of an older audience than before. But if they don't, then this can be capstone for the kids who followed this journey through the previous eleven books."

We started with Rocket Ship Galileo, which grounds itself in a near-future scenario. From there, we start out with books taking place primarily around our own solar system, moving outward from Venus to Mars to Ganymede, and beyond. The scale and scope of settings continues to grow, eventually moving up to a galactic scale. Then we bounce back to a kind of near-future scenario with Have Space Suit—Will Travel, but it recapitulates the theme of travel to the moon, then out into the solar system, then to a distant star, and finally moves beyond our galaxy before bringing us back home. It feels like the perfect conclusion to a journey.

Perhaps Heinlein had no idea that this would be the last Scribner's juvenile. I don't know. But even if he didn't, I think that the idea was for this book to close the arc he'd started with the first book, and for his next "juvenile" to become the beginning of something new.

Anyway, this one is pretty damn close to perfection. I love it. Ten out of ten, etcetera.

That's my take. What about Critical Reception?

Floyd C. Gale wrote that the book "is possibly the most unabashedly juvenile of Heinlein's long list ... Great for kids, chancy for grownups who don't identify readily with adolescent heroes".

Who hurt you, Floyd C. Gale? Who hurt you?

Final ranking for the twelve "Scribner's" juveniles, bearing in mind that even the worst of them is still better than most science fiction out there:

1. Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958)
2. The Star Beast (1954)
3. The Rolling Stones (1952)
4. Tunnel in the Sky (1955)
5. Space Cadet (1948)
6. Citizen of the Galaxy (1957)
7. Starman Jones (1953)
8. Between Planets (1951)
9. Red Planet (1949)
10. Time for the Stars (1956)
11. Rocket Ship Galileo (1947)
12. Farmer in the Sky (1950)

 Up next is Starship Troopers. 

Citizen of the Galaxy

This was the third and final book contained in the Infinite Possibilities omnibus. I guess the publishers chose that title for the novels from 1955 to 1957 because they expanded the scope of human civilization beyond the solar system and did this considerably more than the eight previous juveniles. I believe I grasp the theme. But wow, this one was a departure from the others. Most of the juveniles start on Earth. One never even leaves! And although some stories involve travel beyond our own solar system through super-futuristic technology like space-folding, there's a general theme of protagonists assuming some role in civilization as it expands, explores, and moves outward from Earth. The previous book, Time for the Stars, did this in a very literal sense, with a protagonist living aboard a ship traveling at relativistic speed away from home. Then this book starts and dumps the protagonist in a city on some planet we know nothing about, being sold as a four-year-old child slave on an auction block. Time for the Stars made the universe feel bigger through use of relativity and scale. Citizen of the Galaxy does it by presenting a kind of mature star-spanning civilization. It feels almost like a prototype for stories that other authors would later tell in the 60's, 70's, and beyond.

I didn't know what to make of Citizen of the Galaxy during most of my time reading it. The previous juveniles had things in common that this one steered away from. His young protagonists were usually relatable American kids. Even the one who was born on Mars seemed like an American country boy. Then he goes and pulls a bait-and-switch on us. The protagonist is a professional beggar living in a city named "Jubbulpore" on a planet that has no relationship with Earth. Freed from slavery but hunted by a tyrannical government that has targeted him for spying (he was an unwitting spy), Thorby escapes the planet and joins a clan of, well, they could be space gypsies (in the book they're the "Free Traders" but the real-world analog definitely seems to be Romani caravans).

The transitions in Thorby's life effectively divide the book into four phases. Heinlein does a masterful job of balancing them, so each one resonates and it feels like there's a meaningful sense of progression.

I do not know that anyone else has pointed it out, but I suspect that the anthropologist Thorby meets on the Sisu, Dr. Margaret Mader, is named as a little homage to Margaret Mead.

I wasn't enthralled by this one, but I did come to appreciate it by the end. Let's see some Critical Reception.

Galaxy reviewer Floyd C. Gale praised the novel, saying "Heinlein is invariably logical. And invariably entertaining."

I'll endorse that blurb.

In The New York Times, Villiers Gerson received the novel favorably, declaring it "better than 99 per cent of the science-fiction adventures produced every year" despite structural problems and a weak ending."

A weak ending, huh? Well, the end is kind of terse. And its impact is really only felt if one really buys into the themes of freedom, duty, and justice that run throughout the story. It's a kind of intricate tapestry, and for that I'll give this one the nod over Starman Jones, but still rank it below my beloved Space Cadet. 

Time for the Stars

With the possible exception of the very first of these juveniles (Rocket Ship Galileo), the two from 1956 and 1957 were the novels I was least familiar with. Other than looking up the titles on the internet prior to purchasing copies to begin this project, I believe that I was unacquainted with either of these. It was not obvious to me from the title that the "time" aspect of Time for the Stars would mean Heinlein would be playing around with the passage of time, something I'd seen him do in books like The Door into Summer and Time Enough for Love. Fortunately, Heinlein is a master at playing around with time in storytelling, so it was a pleasant surprise to see that done in one of these books.

This books is only a time travel story in the relativistic sense. There's no "time machine" involved. It's Paul Langevin's twin paradox told as a science fiction story. The story is so much of a nod to "Rip Van Winkle" that Heinlein even mentions newspaper headlines referring to the surviving crewmembers returning from the voyage as "another load of Rip Van Winkles."

A notorious feature of Heinlein's work I haven't really touched on in these reviews, and which I was actually kind of expecting not to, is his proclivity to normalize sexual arrangements in his fiction that would be highly unusual or scandalous in the real world. I'd seen a slight hint of this in The Star Beast when Betty was the one who proposed marriage to John, but I guess I'm still not too sure how strange a female-initiated marriage proposal was or wasn't in 1954. I think that it was abnormal but socially acceptable? Not sure. Well, this book has the main character marry his twin brother's great-great-granddaughter. While that's tame compared to some of Heinlein's later fiction, I'd think that it would have maybe been shocking to audiences in 1956, but perhaps that assumption is wrong. Obviously Scribner's kept publishing Heinlein juveniles after this one, so apparently they weren't offended.

The writing here is solid and the character development is as interesting as it is in any of the other books in the series. The ships and planets were cool and the descriptions of the struggles with instant-speed telepathy while confronting time dilation wonderfully imaginative. But my favorite part of this whole book was seeing Tom and the other "Rip Van Winkles" return to Earth and deal with the culture shock of having been out in space for the past four years and returning home with seventy-one years having passed in their absence. I've seen other science fiction stories do the whole "Rip Van Winkle" thing before, but they usually have the guy who goes to the future be some contemporary dude, as Asimov did with Pebble in the Sky. It was refreshing to see this device used not as a trope, but with what really starts as a character in a science fiction story and keeps being one all the way through.

I say that my favorite part is the part after Tom's ship returns to Earth. Well, there's the rub: that part of the book is deplorably brief. Heinlein spent so much time with psychological drama and Tom's trials and tribulations as a crewmember aboard the ship that by the time we get to the really interesting part, we're almost out of book. I described Heinlein as a master of playing around with time in storytelling, and I stand by that. In this case, ironically enough, he manages the time devoted to each plot point rather poorly. The stuff about Tom communicating with Pat while Pat is undergoing surgery for his injury just isn't that interesting. There are parts of Time for the Stars that I really like, but overall, I found this to be one of the weakest books in the series overall.

There's not much in the way of Wikipedia "Critical Reception" on this one.

Galaxy reviewer Floyd C. Gale praised the novel as "an engrossing yarn", saying "The plot twists will take you by surprise and the characterizations delight you.

That's true enough. I hope I don't imply that I disliked this one. I do like it, just not quite as much as most of the other juveniles. In comparing all of them, one of them does have to be in last place after all. For me, that's still Farmer in the Sky. But next-to-last is a contest between this one and Rocket Ship Galileo.

I've already started Citizen of the Galaxy and I'm mildly surprised at the difference in tone. For no reason other than that these two stories were bundled together in the same volume, I mentally associated them with each other. Looks like that will probably seem a bit silly, but that's a topic for my next post.

Tunnel in the Sky

Here we are. Chronologically this is the eighth of Heinlein's juveniles and the third and final entry in this run of three re-reads for me, as well as the re-reading of a book for which the original reading was freshest out of any of these (I read this one in 2021). The next three posts here should all be about books I've never read before. So that's exciting. Before returning to this book, I'd noted that while Starman Jones and The Star Beast both exceeded my expectations based on prior memories of them, I didn't think that this one would be quite as good. More specifically, I said, "From my recollection, I do not think I'll rate it quite as highly, but it's also not going to be dead last. Probably somewhere in the middle, but we'll see."

That's kind of a low bar, and I think I know why. The end of this one is frustrating, and in notes that are very deliberate. Rod Walker refers to an Earth-based corporation pulling the rug out from under him, and it really feels like Heinlein pulls the rug out from under the reader too, so that we get a vivid sense of his anxiety. It's a bold technique, and I respect it, but it also really accentuates the bitterness in the bittersweet conclusion.

Reading this book directly after The Star Beast (something I had not done before) really drives home a certain theme that Heinlein delves into. Our culture, American culture and presumably its spiritual successors if we're optimistic about American hegemony in space colonization, and perhaps just Western culture in general has a tendency to treat adolescents as second-class citizens. We take children and, as they transition out of childhood, we run them through a gauntlet. We put them through trials and tribulations and impress upon them all the improvements they'll need to make in this new, adult world. But the moment it's convenient, we tell them that they're just kids and don't have rights anyway and need to listen when grownups are talking. And we justify it with all sorts of rationalizations, but it's bad. Like, this is really, really bad. I'm hoping something in the culture shifts to at least mitigate this issue, and I think Heinlein was hoping for that and using these stories to sort of lampoon the absurdity.

Ultimately, the ecology of "Tangaroa" in this book isn't as interesting as some of the other ecosystems that Heinlein devised. To some extent, the landscape is here in service of the narrative, and this is a landscape where a bunch of young people are stranded for two years, so the conditions have to be pretty mild.

I'd rate this as being one of the better stories so far. Glad I'm making that assessment after a re-read. I was recalling the gloomy bits and thought that I'd rate this one lower, but I ended up loving it right up to the moment of the rug-pull and feeling the full impact once the rug-pull happened. Of course it's still behind The Star Beast and The Rolling Stones. Knew it wouldn't dethrone either of those. Is it better than Starman Jones or Space Cadet? Hm, that's close. I'm calling it too close to call, but if pressed I'm pleading recency bias and giving the nod to Tunnel in the Sky.

I don't see "Critical Reception" for this one on Wikipedia. There's some comparison of the themes in this story to the ones in Lord of the Flies. I recall that the comparison piqued my interest and was what drew me to read this book back in 2021. I feel like the whole point of comparison is a stretch and that it's compounded by Lord of the Flies being published just a bit before Tunnel in the Sky, so folks were able to see it as a rebuttal or echo or whatever. But for my part, I'm unconvinced.

The next three books, starting with 1956's Time for the Stars are all brand new to me. And then we close the series out with two more re-reads. 

The Star Beast

I was in error with my statement at the end of the previous post, and I'll indulge myself a bit to try recapturing some of my own history with these books here.

Despite seeing his books on library shelves as a kid in the 90's, Heinlein wasn't one of the authors I picked up back then. At some point in this blog, I think I've talked about how I got into Asimov back in 1997. While I was still in high school, I began taking an interest in some other big-name science fiction authors, primarily Ray Bradbury and Jack Vance. I also got into L. Sprague de Camp through his work on Conan, but generally stuck to his fantasy stories and didn't think of him as a science fiction writer back then.

I think that my first actual Heinlein book was Stranger in a Strange Land, which I read in 2007. Over the next year or so while I was still going to GRCC, I also read Starship Troopers and Podkayne of Mars [addendum: I actually read Podkayne of Mars in 2006 and misremembered that detail here, although I'd later get it right. Oops]. Although I read some of Heinlein's "adult" fiction while I was working at the Covington Library, the only "juvenile" I read at that time was Starman Jones. I read Between Planets in 2012, followed by Space Cadet and The Star Beast in 2015. After something in a podcast piqued my interest, I checked out Tunnel in the Sky in 2021, which I'm seeing now was actually the very last book I ever checked out through KCLS (haven't been borrowing library books to read these past few years since I'm sitting on so many bookstore purchases).

When I said that The Star Beast was one of my favorites, I was actually saying that because I'd just started re-reading it and was a bit enthralled. But in 2015, I thought of it as just another juvenile. I saw that on Goodreads, I'd actually rated this one lower than most of the others. Apparently a decade ago, this book just didn't strike me as compelling. I will make a single excuse for 2015 Stephen Bahl: he was working for Clean Harbors at the time. His judgment was thrown off by that.

On my second reading, this is easily the best of the series so far. I love this book. It's a strange change of pace from previous entries. The Star Beast takes place entirely on Earth. It's a kind of creature feature, a magical pet story about John Thomas Stuart and his amazing companion, but with the twist that the surrounding events let it serve as a scathing satire of bureaucracy, sensationalist journalism, and politics. But even more poignantly, it tackles an even more important issue, which is just as real today as it was in 1954: our culture's tendency to heap responsibility onto adolescents while dismissing them as ignorant and inexperienced when they try to actually find their voice.

There's not a lot I have for this one other than gushing praise. My biggest criticism is that the character development for John Thomas's mother is a bit lacking and all at the end of the story, so her overbearing behavior is maybe a bit much even with the book's theme. But she's not a major presence in the story anyway. Betty is the notable human female character in this one, and she steals the show. And now for Critical Reception...

Damon Knight wrote: This is a novel that won't go bad on you. Many of science fiction's triumphs, even from as little as ten years ago, are unreadable today; they were shoddily put together, not meant for re-use. But Heinlein is durable. I've read this story twice, so far – once in the Fantasy and Science Fiction serialized version, once in hard covers – and expect to read it again, sooner or later, for pleasure. I don't know any higher praise.

Yeah. I'm slightly taken aback that I hadn't remembered this one as being so great. It's easily taken a place as not just my favorite of these juveniles, but as one of my favorite Heinlein novels and one of my favorite novels of all time.

Groff Conklin described the novel as "one of Heinlein's most enchanting tales." P. Schuyler Miller found The Star Beast to be "one of the best of 1954."

Agreed. I'm surprised that authors didn't do stories like this more often. It's squarely "science fiction" in the conventional sense and could be borderline "hard sci-fi" when it comes to human technology, but the Hroshii are basically fantasy monsters with powers and traits that defy human understanding.

Up next is Tunnel in the Sky from 1955, the third re-read in a row for me and also the Heinlein novel that I'd read most recently (2021) before embarking on this project. So it might be more fresh in my mind than The Star Beast or Starman Jones had been. From my recollection, I do not think I'll rate it quite as highly, but it's also not going to be dead last. Probably somewhere in the middle, but we'll see.

Starman Jones

As noted in previous entries, this is the first of run of three re-reads in a row for me. So I already knew that I was going to rate this one highly. I remembered loving it before. I briefly thought that I'd even place it above The Rolling Stones. I thought better of that, but this is still an excellent book. It has some of the nautical-adventure-but-in-space aspect that I attributed to Space Cadet, but without the naval academy component of that at all.

I think the elephant in the room here is that the main character, Max Jones, has a kind of super-eidetic memory: he can recall everything. Some of the main characters in previous stories were very talented or had technical skills and knowledge that would really stand out, but they were generally relatable characters as ordinary kids. But in this case, the main character basically gets a superpower. And it's central to the plot. Even after having read the book twice, I don't really know how to feel about it. Starman Jones is a great story and that story doesn't exist without this detail: it's too crucial. But it also makes the the previous six books seem more grounded in comparison, and I'm not sure how to evaluate that. Max is also one of my favorite characters among all of the Heinlein juveniles so far, and I don't know what that says about me either. Oh well.

Another fascinating aspect of this book is that there's a dystopian setting here. The blow is softened because Max makes it aboard a ship and almost all of the rest of the book takes place aboard that ship and on a remote uncharted planet. But we're shown enough of the Earth in this story to see that at least most of the planet is controlled by an oppressive guild system. Technically, the version of Earth in both Red Planet and in Between Planets seems pretty oppressive too, but that's in the context of controlling distant colonies and quelling rebellions. This is pretty different. Max had only ever been on Earth, but his prospects were vanishing to a pretty bleak point just because the system wouldn't give him a chance, and he had to cheat the system to get away from that. Reminds me of the Future History series as well as some of the stuff in Friday. Heinlein definitely liked exploring the theme of Earth going bad and of civilization needing to move to other worlds in order for humanity to survive, or at least for humanity to prosper. The future of the human race was among the stars, not languishing on Earth. Or something.

The superb use of dialogue I noticed in The Rolling Stones is present in this book as well. And ultimately, ranking this one is made or broken by the supporting cast: Sam Anderson, Eldreth Coburn, Doc Hendrix, Captain Blaine, etc. And now that I say that, I think I've got to conclude that while Sam and Doc Hendrix are successful in this regard, I've got mix feelings on the character of Eldreth. Her proficiency with 3-D chess seems a little too blatantly to have been concocted as a vehicle to teach Max a lesson that he's not necessarily smarter than girls, while her naivete feels a bit forced as a foil to emphasize Max's rugged upbringing and the street smarts it has bestowed on him. It feels nitpicky, but I say this with the previous book in the series being The Rolling Stones, which did a better job in comparison. Despite my nitpicking, Eldreth's character works well enough to make the story run smoothly and her dialogue is strong. However, the various members of the Worry Hole gang feel a bit too flat. They blend together too much, especially given how much time Max spends there.

The planet "Charity" and its symbiotic ecosystem is fascinating. I'd remembered the planet from my first reading, but I'd forgotten just how intriguing it was and how rushed and sparsely detailed the description of the settlement there actually was. There's just enough to make it seem like the story is moving to some interesting phase where Max and the ship's crew might have some interesting dynamic going on with the "colonists" in the new settlement, only for that to almost immediately get derailed.

It's between this book and Space Cadet for second place behind The Rolling Stones for now. And it's a close one. The supporting cast in Space Cadet is more balanced, but less ambitious. I'll give the nod to Starman Jones over Space Cadet, but only barely. So yeah, this one is really good. What's the "Critical Reception" say?

Groff Conklin in 1954 found the novel to be "a richly textured and thoroughly mature tale" and the best of the seven Heinlein juveniles available

Second best, I say. Also, kind of weird that most critics agree with me about the excellence of Between Planets and this one, but weren't as keen on The Rolling Stones.

Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas praised it for its "good character-development, rousing adventure-telling, and brilliant creation of several forms of extra-Terrestrial life".

Honestly, after a second reading, I want a kind of sequel in this same world just for the sake of exploring more of that "Charity" planet, even if it's not the same characters.

P. Schuyler Miller ranked it "close to the best in mainline science fiction".

It's a very strong one.

New York Times reviewer Villiers Gerson declared Starman Jones to be "superior science-fiction. ... carefully plotted, lucidly and beautifully written".

Agreed.

Surveying Heinlein's juvenile novels, Jack Williamson described Starman Jones as "a classic example of the bildungsroman pattern" and noted that "with its bold symbolism, the book makes a universal appeal". Despite "coincidence and occasional melodrama" in the plotting, Williamson concluded that "the novel is a fine juvenile [which] reflects hopes and fears we all have known".

I think I grasp what he means by "coincidence." The plot is moved forward by a couple of remarkable coincidences. I don't know that I disagree about "melodrama" except that I'm actually not sure what he is classifying as melodrama here. It's too vague a term.

Damon Knight wrote that in Starman Jones "Heinlein is doing something more than just earning a living at the work he does supremely well: he's preparing a whole generation – the generation that will live to see the year 2000 – for the Age of Space that's as real to him now as it will be, must be, to them."

Wow. Looks like that review is from 1967. I've got to say that in 2025 it probably hits differently. Damon Knight is dead, but he actually did live to see the year 2000. I wonder what he thought at that time.

Up next is The Star Beast, which I distinctly remember being one of my favorites.