Talk:Starman Jones

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Contents 1 2002 2 Orientation ability 3 "Allah" 4 Discussion corrections

[edit] 2002

[a tiny bit more (but not too much, okay, Brion?)]

Hey, I don't think I've read this one... (shuffle shuffle) but I do have a copy. I'll move it up to the top of my list... Brion VIBBER 11 June 2002

read this when i was in 4th grade!the only book thats stuck with me and now im 41!!take that

[edit] Orientation ability

"Inability to get lost"? That happened in Glory Road, but I don't think it happens in Starman Jones. Michael Hardy 01:33 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah Jones can get lost... if he couldn't see where he was going or even if he didn't just concentrate. He had to concentrate & look around a lot while they were taking him away. And then he had to concentrate when returning. Shonsu 08:40, 3 December 2005 UTC

[edit] "Allah"

I wonder though... early on in the book IIRC, jones said "Praise Allah!" (or something allah...((i think))). I was wondering if maybe he intended for Jones to be black but the editors cut it out? Shonsu 08:40, 3 December 2005 UTC

Forgive me for not knowing "IIRC" and for jumping in in the middle, but Max Jones can get lost and he certainly never says anything like "Praise Allah", and if he had, it would have meant he was Middle Eastern (in a very wide sense; compare Muslims in other Heinlein juveniles like Space Cadet), not a black American. Zaslav 06:05, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress Heinlein described a society where also people of completely non-Russian origin speak a languague with many Russain words and grammatical forms. Similarly, he may have in this book posited a society where also non-Muslims adopted the Muslim word for God. (Adam Keller) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 192.114.46.174 (talk • contribs) 12:24, 2 March 2006 UTC.

Suggestions:

The list of Heinlein novels belongs in the Heinlein page, not in the article on any one novel.

The comparison with Gulliver's Travels is original research and should appear elsewhere despite being quite interesting. I have not removed it because Wikipedians should think this over. Zaslav 03:00, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm commenting backwards! Yay for being sleepy. Anyway, re Allah, Heinlein has Lazarus Long at least refer to Allah in the same way in Time Enough For Love, and I want to say that comes up in other novels. I think it's more an attempt to show multiculturalism than anything else, as I get the impression from reading that Heinlein wasn't a huge fan of Christianity, but that's just my opinion. KathL 13:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion corrections

"Heinlein - like many other science fiction writers of the time - had a weak grasp of special relativity's statement of the impossibility of acclerating (sic) to the speed of light." I don't believe this is true. First of all, there is no mention that the ship had to reach the speed of light before entering the congruence. Second, in Time For The Stars (written a few years later), Heinlein demonstrates a reasonably good layman's understanding of special relativity.

On a side note, when I was an undergrad in the late 70's, I took an electronics course where (among other things) I had to program a PDP8(?) minicomputer in the manner described by Heinlein, e.g. entering binary numbers via switches, with lights indicating the settings, so he wasn't totally off base with his predictions. Clarityfiend 18:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what Heinlein's grasp of special relativity was - certainly it was better than mine which falls somewhere above absolute zero, ha ha - but I do know from reading biographies that he spent a lot of time researching his theories on space travel in terms of mathematics (there are references to him and Ginny doing massive calculations on rolls of butcher paper), so I imagine his grasp of it was as good as or better than anyone's of the period. Also, the statement that most of his stories had weak or rushed endings is, well, weak. Normally I would say examples of weak/rushed endings should be provided but I believe that would fall under original research, so this ought to be backed up with citations of such criticism. I'm just doing a bit of bedtime reading here, so I won't attempt a rewrite but I'll flag the page and try to come back to it. 66.25.167.155 13:51, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The above is me being lame and forgetting to log in. KathL 13:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)