Reading some classics

Currently my reading time is my own. I am taking advantage of that to reread, or read for the first time, some books that I consider classics. Some of it is old science-fiction that I kept when most of my book collection was dispersed on my recent move. For instance, I reread the Man Who Sold the Moon by Robert Heinlein simply because some of the most interesting space exploration at the moment is being financed by the private sector, and that's what Heinlein thought might happen. That book is not really very good, actually. Heinlein's tendency to lecture his readers on how things actually work is on full display. What he thought might happen, based on his experiences up to the 1940s, is not particularly realistic. The sheer scale of private enterprise now as opposed to a private enterprise in the 1940s is staggering.

I am living in a house full of other classics. I have recently picked up Thomas Babington Macauley's Critical Essays. Macauley is a famous, or formerly famous, politician, essayist, and educational theorist of the early 19th century. He wrote the Lays of Ancient Rome, including the famous story of Horatio on the bridge. He also convinced that the British government to make English the language of advanced education in India. He was a Whig among Whigs, a believer in the superiority of modern British institutions and attitudes toward liberty.

Macauley wrote a bunch of essays in the form of a very long book reviews. His book on critical essays includes many re-considerations of the careers of famous politicians of the previous century or even earlier: Thomas Cranmer, Horace Walpole, William Pitt, his son the earl of Chatham are all discussed at length. It's a little bit hard to follow if you don't know British history of the early modern period pretty well. On the other hand, McAuley's early Victorian prose is a delight? Staggering? Amazing?

Here is what he has to say about Cranmer, the Archbishop of Henry VIII so deeply involved in the English Reformation. He doesn't like Cranmer, and thinks that rating him as a martyr is ridiculous:

He voted for cutting off [Thomas] Cromwell's head without a trial, when the tide of royal favour turned. He conformed backwards and forwards as the King changed his mind. He assisted, while Henry lived, in condemning to the flames those who denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. He found out, as soon as Henry was dead, that the doctrine was false. He was, however, not at a loss for people to burn. The authority of his station and of his grey hairs was employed to overcome the disgust with which an intelligent and virtuous child [Edward VI] regarded persecution. Intolerance is always bad. But the sanguinary intolerance of a man who thus wavered in his creed excites a loathing, to which it is difficult to give vent without calling foul names. Equally false to political and to religious obligations, the primate was first the tool of Somerset, and then the tool of Northumberland. When the Protector wished to put his own brother to death, without even the semblance of a trial, he found a ready instrument in Cranmer. In spite of the canon law, which forbade a churchman to take any part in matters of blood, the archbishop signed the warrant for the atrocious sentence. When Somerset had been in his turn destroyed, his destroyer received the support of Cranmer in a wicked attempt to change the course of the succession.

The apology made for him by his admirers only renders his conduct more contemptible. He complied, it is said, against his better judgment, because he could not resist the entreaties of Edward. A holy prelate of sixty, one would think, might be better employed by the bedside of a dying child, than in committing crimes at the request of the young disciple. If Cranmer had shown half as much firmness when Edward requested him to commit treason as he had before shown when Edward requested him not to commit murder, he might have saved the country from one of the greatest misfortunes that it ever underwent.

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The Man Who Sold the Moon by Robert A. Heinlein

I first read this book about half a century ago when I was a teenager. I came back to it because I have a relative working for Space X, and the book is about a private enterprise effort to get to the moon. I was fascinated to see or remind myself that Heinlein was as interested in politics and business and human organizations in general as he was in the scientific aspects and engineering aspects of spaceflight. I gave this three stars on Goodreads but be warned this is a book that will seem really quite old to most readers. Already back in the 60s, when the stories were about 15 years old, it seemed quite old to me. Now it's a relic of an older era for sure.

Image: The edition I have. Not a typical science fiction cover illustration of the time. I'd guess that Signet was going for a more mainstream readership. I wonder if it worked?

The crazy years?

The famous and influential science fiction writer, Robert A. Heinlein, was known early in his career for creating a future history in which individual short stories were framed. There was a big timechart in which the stories and other background events were located. One feature that looked big and important on the chart, which was never quite developed by Heinlein was "the crazy years." Presumably all sorts of bad things happened in that time, one of which was specified: the creation of the repressive puritanical theocracy in the United States.

Back in the 1990s I was thinking about the future history and I thought that Heinlein had really blown it. He himself, when he put together that chart, was living in the crazy years, which included a worldwide depression, the rise of genocidal and frankly insane regimes in major countries, and finally a huge world war. Surely these were crazy years?

Looking back from now until 2001, however, I have to say that I am less critical of what was after all a fictional construct for the fun of it. Put aside 9/11 and the American reaction to it – at least the direct reaction. How about today's events, as seen through various Internet sources?

• In a major jurisdiction in North America, a gay woman is elected premier and nobody notices or cares.
• After billions and billions of dollars invested, an American client regime in Iraq begins to collapse, with American trained soldiers throwing away their weapons and stripping off their uniforms.
• Next to the World Cup, the most puzzling sporting event is the Battle of Nations, "medieval historical warfare" mostly fought between teams from Eastern Europe at a venue in Croatia. Russia and Ukraine, which are almost at war with each other now, are leading in the standings.
• And of course one must mention the lunatic spouting of American politicians who seem to be dedicated to building a theocracy.

One of these things is not like the others, of course:  the election of Kathleen Wynne's party in Ontario. Everyone who cared about the sex life of Ontario's Premier, a smaller number than you might think, knew she was gay. She had been premier for a while, succeeding her predecessor when he retired. This was the first time she led the party into an election. Her orientation was not even mentioned during the campaign.

I was at an event in Ontario not long ago where same-sex couples are allowed to take part in a prestigious contest on an equal basis with heterosexual couples for the first time. There was a very positive response to this turn of events, but I was blasé and did not mention it when I wrote up a short account of it. I told a friend that I did not know whether society had moved on on this issue, but I had.

Now there is evidence that at least in this part of North America, society seems to have moved on pretty definitively.

Which does not cancel out what I said about the crazy years. I'm just glad to keep some aspects of the crazy a little bit further away from me than some people are able to do.