Asklemmy

43858 readers

1650 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

185

What was the worst bastardization of a classic book into a movie? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

326 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Heinlein was horrified by Soviet Communism (and he'd traveled in the Soviet Union). He believed the US nuclear program (and space program) were a necessary protection against people like Stalin and Mao taking over the world.

There's a running theme in a number of his works, of people trying to find a society and a place in it where they can live safely, where they won't be oppressed for disagreeing with that society. It shows up in Stranger in a Strange Land, in "If This Goes On—", in the Lazarus Long stories, etc.

I think Heinlein's militarist liberal Americanism was contextual: he saw America as a place where a weirdo like him had a chance to live in peace, and that made it worth defending.