Unused and Probably Unusable

As many Heinlein fans know, the new book is out. Amazon lists it as available October 16, but if you visit a bricks-and-mortar store right now, you'll find it on shelves now. Furthmore, Amazon seems to have it in stock.

The book is not a Heinlein, at least not in the way that most of the books I've reviewed or mentioned here have been. Unlike even "For Us, the Living" (published posthumously) the new book is based on Heinlein, written with the aid of seven pages of 10-point typed outline, plus index cards with voluminous notes. But it's not writen BY Heinlein.

It's written by Spider Robinson, my favorite living author, a guy who was once dubbed "The New Robert Heinlein," via the sentence, "If I didn't think it understated his achivement, I'd nominate Spider Robinson, on the basis of this book [Mindkiller, reissued along with its subsequent-sort of - sequal Time Pressure, in the compendium Deathkiller - recommended - ed.], as the new Robert Heinlein." Gerald Jonas, for the New York Times Book Review, available here.

If you like Heinlein, particularly if you like vintage Heinlein, like the better so-called Juveniles, you will probably enjoy the new book. If you like Spider Robinson, particularly his superior work (like Stardancer and its sequels, co-written with his wife Jeanne; like Deathkiller, mentioned above), then you will find this to be one of his best books, period.

The book is Variable Star, and it's not quite like anything.

Variable Star takes place in Heinlein's ficton, in the universe that Could Have Been had certain events played out differently. Nehemiah Scudder, the Prophet, could have held the U.S. in thrall via a regime of religious terror, a despotic, theocratic fascist state. But that's just "when."

The book takes place in a Place, and a Time, and a Society, and like the best Heinlein and the best Robinson, it's believable and it's compelling.

The protagonist could have been pulled right out of Time For the Stars, or Starman Jones. He's faced with similar facts, to a point, but this isn't a retread. For one thing, where Heinlein brings some of the big ideas, and the "central antinomy" that drives his first decision, Spider brings the humanity, the emotionally vivid and compelling internal narrative. Heinlein did Big really, really well. Spider does Pain, and Empathy, and they both did Hope very well.

Some of the other Heinleins brought to mind by Variable Star:

• Door Into Summer and Time for the Stars, for an impossible romantic story - with a nice twist courtesy of Spider. For those who haven't read them, DIS uses time travel plus cold sleep to allow a mature man to marry a child - when she has grown up, and he hasn't. TFTS does a similar sort of trick using Einsteinian time dilation.
• Methuselah's Children, and Universe, and Farmer in the Sky, for additional bits of feel and plot and scenery
  

But as well as some of the best of Heinlein, the book boasts some of the best of Spider. There's musicianship, and puns, and action (but never too much, and never incredible), and art, and pain, and death, and immensely powerful people, and people with nothing left to lose.

Summing up: more than just recommended. If you're a fan, or a Fan, then drop everything and get it. It's not just good science fiction, or merely another Heinlein. For my money, it's better.

I think I may blog about some of the legal issues that played out in the book - but not this weekend. Time to enjoy the weather.

Popping my head up. Several thoughts.

Happy New Year to those who celebrate starting tonight.

The new Heinlein/Spider Robinson collaboration is great. I'll have a review up shortly.

Heinlein Friday was driving me to distraction. For my own good, I'm suspending the practice, and substituting it with a new programme, tentatively entitled, "Post when you have something to say."

Linkage continues apace at my beloved Del.Icio.Us page, findable by typing http and then :// and then del.icio.us and then /eh_nonymous and then hitting enter, or touching return. Please do check it out - new (and old) links, webpages, and blogs appear there all the time.

Posner's a sneaky, sneaky debater. Check out this paragraph:

Civil liberties are valuable, but their values should be assessed in a practical, hard-headed way, rather than treated with quasi-religious veneration. Maybe David Hume went too far (though I don’t think so) when he said that “The safety of the people is the supreme law. All other particular laws are subordinate to it, and dependent on it.” But I am not prepared to die at the hands of terrorists in order to defend the Miranda rule, or Brady, or Burton, or Mapp, or Doyle, or the other arabesques that the Supreme Court in the Earl Warren era inscribed on the helpless text of the Constitution.

What's wrong with Posner's screed? Well, he's telling Geoff Stone (in a debate about "Not a Suicide Pact," his new book) that we mustn't be so fuzzy and abstract, putting a thumb on the scales of decision, and preferring civil liberties over other values.

In other words, you can't assume that privacy or individual rights or civil rights are of more value than something else, until you compare them.

Then Posner spins, spins, spins. He writes that he would rather be searched at random without a warrant than be killed by terrorists.

Well! Shut my mouth! Of course, I was thinking the exact opposite, that I'd prefer to die than have my liberties infringed!

Posner's disingenuous to write this sentence, because he's making a number of logical fallacies and he should by gum know it.

Appeal to emotion.
Red herring.
False choice.
Grave consequences unless you agree with him.

I know, I know, he keeps arguing, that's just the setup.

But he's still spinning, and increasingly wildly. Why not assume that violating my Miranda, Brady, Mapp, or other rights will *not necessarily* be more likely to preserve my life, unless there's some evidence for it? Instead, Posner assumes, as a default, that every limitation on freedom, liberty, and individual rights will result in greater safety. If safety is an overarching value, as he says, then the inquiry is over.

He is putting a rabbit in the hat. The rabbit is that safety always trumps. This is precisely the kind of failure to reason and pragmatically compare which he accuses Stone of. Consider Kip's vitriolic (and entirely deserved) scorn directed at subway searches in New York City, as presently laid out. We lose freedoms; we gain nothing. There is NO POSSIBILITY that those (ought to be unconstitutional) searches can deter, vex, or obstruct terrorists. There's no barrier. There's no benefit - and when there's no benefit, it's hard to do a CBA (cost-benefit analysis) that concludes anything other than the practice is a waste of time.

See Kip's posts here: Circuit Court upholds worthless subway searches and the linked posts at the bottom.

I'd have more scornful things to say about Posner, but others are doing a fine job. He's a shrieking hysteric, and it's disturbing that he's prejudging outrageous actions to be fine and dandy - as a legal and as a pragmatic matter - in the fight against terror.

Consider his hypothetical example of assigning an FBI agent to follow each and every Muslim, on foot. I wonder, though, why that would provide any benefit, as some terrorists are not Muslim. Better, perhaps, if he recommends a policeman stand behind each of us, with a loaded gun. That might achieve his desired goals better. But he is just mentioning it to show that it would be legally unproblematic.

Of course it might be, you ninny, if you formulate it wrong - care to ask a civil libertarian if it's unproblematic? The problem's not whether a particular right is violated, although that's there too, potentially. It's that it would be completely useless, and thus not even bear a rational relationship to the goal to be achieved, viz greater safety. Argh!

I'm still on informal blog hiatus, but this day deserves recognition. NOT Sept. 11. Everyone who remembers that day will bear the scars, and the memory.

I don't memorialize bad days. I recall them, and try to move forward. While I understand the impulse to lionize heroics, 9/11 is not the day we need to keep always before our eyes. Nor is 9/10.

The day that matters most is today, September 12th, the anniversary of The Day After.

Today is when we woke up, those of us who got to sleep, and saw dawn. It was not over, not for the bereaved and the terrified, the trapped and the toiling. But for the country, it was the first day after The Day.

Nine One Two is the day we had to struggle with the day that had passed, and think about the days to come.

Depression struck me on 9/12, when the shock wore off. Fear, for myself and my family and my country and everyone (when I had time to think that large) was a dominant emotion. Meanwhile, I kept breathing, kept living, kept doing what I was doing. That week, it was the first semester of law school. Tuesday was a bad day. Enough said, and enough will be said, and has been said, written, televised, and trumpeted on CNN.com. Enough about 9/11.

Let's talk about 9/12, and everything we started to know then.

Blogging goes through periods of varying frequencies, as with most aspects of life.

Sometimes, I post with a frequency which indicates a vast surplus of available time, available mental energy, or both.

Occasionally, as this month, my own self-imposed goals (weekly postings on Friday, at a minimum) aren't met because other rhythms have disrupted the schedule.

My vacation from Heinlein Friday will continue for another week, but its long-term status as a permanent weekly commitment is in doubt. I have more to write, but the very decision to start so huge a project as the Law of War post, which produced dozens and dozens of paragraphs with inadequate planning on how to tame them, has placed an unfortunate obstacle in the path of continued easy posts.

I may want to withdraw it, and prepare a more modest HF post. It wouldn't be the first time I've done this: my last major blawgging project was to be a Scalia Mega-Post, in which I dealt with each and every things about Scalia's jurisprudence (and personal style, and irritating statements) which annoyed or frustrated or infuriated or troubled me. As it turns out, that kind of project involves more than just brainstorming, writing, and collecting links.

To take on a really massive writing project, there needs to be some thoughtful editing, at the planning stage. What gets in, and what is excluded? What's the right order? How does one section relate to another?

I've seldom constructed such open-ended writing projects, and when I have, failure to adequately edit my own structure has been at least as big a problem as inability to find words.

I'm also better at starting projects than finishing them, but of course it's easy to finish a task when you can see its goal clearly and therefore understand the nature of the work that will accomplish it.

Writing a brief is easy by comparison. It's got to have the requisite pieces, to comply with the Federal Rules or local practice or the judge's orders. There's only one way to organize it - the right way, with first things first, all the necessary prefatory and preparatory announcements (introduction, statement of jurisdiction, statutes involved, etc.). A motion for class certification has a form that's virtually pre-ordained, just because it has to comply with Rule 23, or its state law equivalent - see the discussion in this long-ago post. August 5, 2005? It's been a while.

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What else is on my mind?

I try not to journal too much, this being a Blawg and all, but it's so pleasant to write down observations and get them out of the mental buffer. Nobody has to spend time reading about what my cat did today (she's nonexistent, so pretty much the same things she does every day, or rather doesn't do, or perhaps even doesn't not do). But some observations are worthwhilier than others.

Philadelphia's weather has turned distinctly dismal. Temps in the 80s or above (with miserably high humidity) have been replaced by highs in the low 70s, with a distinct overcast. Summer's over. The season has changed, and we can look forward to months of complaining and wishing it was unpleasantly hot again.

Politics in Philly is about to get increasingly unavoidable. I haven't heard from the Lynn Swann candidacy lately, but I assume he's still running against incumbent Governor Ed Rendell (who is married to Third Circuit Judge Midge - er, Marjorie O. Rendell). I haven't seen any lying commercials from Santorum lately - although I hear there's an accurate one going around about how often his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey, Jr., has sought different offices. Well played, Santorum campaign. Keep trying to distract us from the issues of character, philosophy, politics, trust, and substantive issues.

Philly car share, I can now report, is a lovely thing. It may not be competitive with Zip Cars or the other nationwide car-sharing programs. PCS is a nonprofit which (presumably for good and valid and insurance-related reasons) can't let you take one of their cars into D.C. or New York or Baltimore or otherwise outside the Area. But, I think it does finally eliminate the need of many students, many professionals, and most city-dwellers to actually buy, own, maintain, gas, insure, and find permanent parking for their vehicles. Google them if you're in Philly and haven't already considered joining. Many have - and many have sold their cars and finally rid themselves of that albatross, car ownership.

That reminds me, I can buy a new transpass today - why not be able to ride any bus OR check out a car with an hour's notice? It's affordable, as owning and insuring a car in the city isn't.

Life beckons, much as it intruded last week. Off I go, to face another long, dreary, wearying Friday, followed immediately by a three day weekend and then a four day week. Wait, that's not too cumbersome after all.

Posting will resume on or after the weekend.