That Guy on Guns

A lot of folks know Robert Heinlein as one of the Big Names of the Golden Age of Science Fiction - from the 1930s to the 1950s. Some folks know his later, creepier stuff. And every Randian Objectivist nerdbro knows him as the guy who articulated their anarcho-libertarian power fantasies better than they ever could, from TANSTAAFL ("there ain't no such thing as a free lunch") to his famous [or infamous] dictum on guns: An armed society is a polite society. 

That's a quote from one of Heinlein's pulpier works, Beyond This Horizon, in 1942. It's gained enormous currency among gun enthusiasts since then, because it brilliantly encapsulates what might seem to be an obvious train of thought: People won't gratuitously insult, assault, or cheat someone who can kill them.

And that's too bad, for a couple of reasons.

So, Robert Heinlein-

- by know you've probably figured out that I admire him as one of the great science fiction writers and an impressively competent man (holder of patents, predictor of the Roomba & breeder nuclear reactors, trained all-in fighter, influencer of the '60s counterculture, etc.) if not for some of his later political opinions.

So it pleases me to announce that there's a video clip of an interview with him on the only (?) movie he worked on, an adaptation of his own YA novel Rocketship Galileo. (And as an extra added bonus, visual SF greats Chesley Bonestell and George Pal are also there.)

And here it is!