Wednesday, February 17, 2016

A complicated political and sex life

Funnily enough, although I have read probably 95% of his books, I've never really bothered digging into the complicated personal life of Robert Heinlein.  

I see that it was summarised in this post at io9 in 2014, which I may have missed.   Strangely, it seems he was clearly on the Left of politics prior to World War 2, then moved to the libertarian right with his second wife.  But both marriages were (apparently) open, with the first one including a 3 way relationship with L Ron Hubbard for a time (!)

He really was a very odd character.

6 comments:

not trampis said...

stranger in a strange land

TimT said...

The open relationships thing seems to have been fairly popular among the SF crowd.

And there is precedent for the shift from left to right too; Reagan and Charlton Heston did it, too - they must have been of a similar age to Heinlein. Whether the present generation will make a similar shift - well, who knows.

Steve said...

What SF authors sex lives do you know about, Tim?

I seem to recall that Arthur C Clarke married once, for a short time, and then was widely believed to have been gay with a particular interest in young guys. Don't think he ever admitted to anything, though.

I think you know more about other British SF authors, though?

TimT said...

I was thinking of an article about George R R Martin where his libertine ways came up.

TimT said...

Though I wouldn't think of authors like Brian Aldiss or Ballard as being particularly free-lovey.

Maybe it's a yank thing.

Steve said...

Oh. And George is not an attractive man...