Sarah A. Hoyt on Heinlein

[fan_about_town]

I will admit I am far from an unbiased observer, but hearing someone call Heinlein a racist or a sexist offends me.

Part of this is the blindness of those who–with blythe certainty and missionary zeal–undertake to tally the color of characters’ skin and the thoughts of every female character in Heinlein’s books.

Perhaps because I’m not American by birth or education (though I am American by choice—more on the Americanism of Heinlein later), I see this for what it is:

The blinkered notion that the American customs, obsessions and–yes–intellectual vices of this place and time are laws of the universe. Heinlein had some things to say about that.