Re: Russian Slang in Heinlein's Work

From: stencil (stencil@bcn.net)
Date: Thu Aug 09 2001 - 11:41:15 MDT


On Thu, 9 Aug 2001 06:12:54 -0600, in
 extropians-digest V6 #219
Mike Lorrey >
replies to
Lee Corbin >>

>> Would you please explain further your belief that Heinlein was actually
>> pandering to leftists when he utilized Russian slang in that book? I
>> naively thought that it was because he foresaw a greater role for the
>> Soviet Union in the future than has so far turned out to be the case.

> [ ... ]
> current left wing and public distain
>of science as simply one more battleground of class warfare that the
>white male establishment uses to enforce its patriarchy.
>
>The golden age writers like Heinlein, Campbell, Clarke, and others saw
>this coming.

I have to second Lee's implicit criticism of this thesis.
Unless there's some correspondence or other record of
RAH's motivation, it satisfies Occam's Razor to presume
that a reasonable SF writer in the Fifties would envision
space development - and its attendant argot - to reflect
current Soviet Russian technical ascendancey. What I
would support, though, would be the likelihood that RAH
was the first to implement this perception, and that he
tipped the wink to onfollowers like PourNivelle (the
CoDominium) and Burgess's baddiwad droogs (hi, Joe.)

stencil sends
RKBA!



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