Re: Russian Slang in Heinlein's Work

From: Michael M. Butler (butler@comp-lib.org)
Date: Thu Aug 09 2001 - 12:08:04 MDT


The Burgess predates RAH's _MiaHM_ by years.

_Moon_ came out in '66. Burgess' _aCO_ came out in '62.

Damien has it on the mark:

The Loonies' talk was a patois of "old lags'"--
transportees to the prison colony's--native tongues.
And there were transportees of many nations--any
country willing to pay the freight, literally, to
remove people it was not expedient to simply liquidate.

Contrariwise, IMHO, _Burgess_ *was* implying that the
Fabian impact on England had reached critical mass.
Paging Dr Damien: am I 'way off base here?

MMB

stencil wrote:
> 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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