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Sources

Full list of sources on the show page: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/180/

The 1960s were when Heinlein produced some of his most famous works. And they started to bring him fame outside the Science Fiction community, which was most unusual.

Heinlein in the 1960s

Heinlein had interests that he tended to keep hidden in the early years while he was establishing himself as a writer, particularly as he was feeding the lucrative Juvenile market. These included things like sex, nudism, and unusual political and religious views. But when Scribners rejected Starship Troopers he not only abandoned writing Juveniles, but decided he could be a lot more open about his views. And this resulted in his most famous novel. This is the one novel that people who are not science fiction fans are likely to have read, particularly in the 1960s.

Stranger In A Strange Land (1961)

This novel won just about every award possible: Hugo, Locus, Prometheus. It was the first science fiction novel to crack the New York Times Best Seller list. And the Library of Congress named it as one of 88 “books that shaped America”. And it even introduced a new word to the English language: grok.

The stranger in the title is Valentine Michael Smith, an infant born to one of the astronauts, and then raised by Martians. He is brought back to Earth by a later mission, and his adventures in this strange land are what the book is mostly about. But in so doing, Heinlein writes a satire on religion and also espouses very different approach to love and sexuality than was considered proper at the time. And this attracted the hippies of the 1960s, for whom it became a Bible, much to the annoyance of Heinlein who did not appreciate them knocking on his door. The book had the original title of “The Heretic”, and was intended to challenge social norms about religion and monogamy. Heinlein’s own take on the reaction to the novel was that he was surprised that some readers thought the book described how he believed society should be organized, explaining: “I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers … It is an invitation to think – not to believe.”

The book also exemplifies the characters that Heinlein managed to put into most of his stories. Michael is the naive young man who needs to learn better, and Jubal Harshaw is the wise old man who becomes his mentor.

Podkayne of Mars (1963)

The heroine of this book, Podkayne, is a teenage girl who is invited along with her younger brother on a luxury cruise with their uncle Tom from their home on Mars to go to Earth. We learn along the way that Mars was once a prison colony (echoing Australia), and that Podkayne’s family are of Maori ancestry. In the United States, at least, this would count as “colored”, and reflects Heinlein’s subversion of racist ideas in his works. Much of the travelogue on the luxury liner reflects Heinlein’s own experiences as depicted in his non-fiction book Tramp Royale which covers his own world cruise. But old uncle Tom is actually a diplomat using the kids as cover, and they get kidnapped by people who want him to take a certain position at talks to held at Luna. Podkayne’s brother Clarke is portrayed as a genius but lacking certain qualities of empathy, and in the end he manages to get her killed. The publisher rejected this ending an insisted on one where she lived. Later Heinlein published a version with both endings and invited people to vote on which one they preferred, and the one where she died won. Heinlein’s own objection was that it was like changing the ending to Romeo and Juliet into one where they both lived happily ever after. Since then the book has been published with Heinlein’s preferred ending.

Orphans of the Sky (1963)

This is basically a couple of novellas from 1941put together as a complete novel. The first novella, Universe, was recognized by the Science Fiction Writers of America by including it in their volume The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two. This is a story about a generation ship, i.e. a ship that will take generations to arrive due the speed of light limit. In this case, the people who understood what this was all about are long dead, and we learn that at one point there was a mutiny and the the ship’s officers were killed. In Universe, the descendants of the remaining people think the ship is all there is, it is the Universe to them. In the second novella, Common Sense, a few people find some of the old records and work out what the situation is. Then, seeing a star growing larger ahead of them, they take a life boat and land on a habitable moon of a giant planet.

This is part of the Future History, as Rhysling and his “Green Hills of Earth” are brought up, and it is also referred to in Time Enough For Love, where it is revealed that this ship is the sister ship to the one the Howard Families stole in Methusaleh’s Children. But being that this is from 1941 it does not show the polish and mastery of Heinlein’s other work of the 1960s.

Glory Road (1963)

Some stories make you wonder if they are Fantasy or if they are Science Fiction, and this is one of them. Of course, Heinlein would just call it Speculative Fiction and not worry about it. A former soldier has just been discharged from a war in Southeast Asia. The country is not mentioned, but this is 1963 and Vietnam was just bubbling up into people’s consciousness. With nothing to do, he meets up with a gorgeous woman who invites him on a quest. This takes them to other worlds and involves a certain amount of swordplay, culminating in a sword fight against Cyrano de Bergerac. The woman turns out to be the Empress of many worlds, and the quest was to retrieve the Egg of the Phoenix, a cybernetic device containing the memories and personalities of most of her predecessors, and now she has to absorb all of this, which is fine for her but leaves or hero pretty useless. Finally he goes looking for another quest.

This is a really good novel, and was nominated for the Hugo, but it lost out to Clifford Simak’s Way Station. We should probably discuss Simak at some point, he was an important writer with a distinct style.

Farnhams’ Freehold (1964)

This novel attempts to be satire on race relations, but is in my view a failure. A nuclear war happens, and a group of people in a fallout shelter find that they have been transported into the future (or is it an alternative universe?). The war pretty much destroyed the societies of the northern hemisphere, leaving things open for the Africans and other southerners to become dominant. And of course the blacks enslave the whites and re-enact the worst excesses of the ante-bellum American South. When I am in the mood to go back and re-read some Heinlein, this is not one I pick.

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (1966)

This is one of Heinlein’s best novels, set on a lunar colony. The moon has been used as a penal colony, but of course most of the people there now are descendants of the people originally exiled there. The Warden runs things, but as long as the grain shipments are on schedule he doesn’t bother much with the affairs of the “Loonies”. The background here is fascinating, describing a nearly anarchic society. Men out number women two to one, leading to some interesting marriage customs, including something called “line marriage” which is a type of group marriage. The wise old man role is played by Professor Bernardo de la Paz (Prof), while the young man he mentors is Manuel O’Kelly-Davis (Mannie). Mannie is computer technician who discovers the big mainframe computer that runs everything has become sentient. And since the computer has the acronym HOLMES, he names it Mycroft Holmes (Mike), for Sherlock’s smarter brother. They all become involved in a revolution against the Earth government, which in theory is led by Prof, but in fact is led by Mike. Since he is a computer, and keeps his sentience a secret, he creates a persona of Adam Selene to be the figurehead

I said that the background of this lunar colony is fascinating in itself, but the book is also a discourse on the nature of government, libertarianism, and what it means to be free. That was something Heinlein was prone to do, and it did not always work well. In some of his last works he tended to pontificate in a way that left the story behind, but in this novel the story is interesting all the way through. This the novel that popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL, which means There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, and which is the motto of the Loonies. Hazel Stone, of The Rolling Stones, appears here as a 12-year-old girl involved in the revolution, and both she and Mike also appear in later works of Heinlein. I recommend this book highly.

This novel won the Hugo award (by the fans), was nominated for the Nebula Award (by the writers), was named one of the Top 10 novels in the Locus poll, and won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.

Links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podkayne_of_Mars
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glory_Road
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham%27s_Freehold
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress
• https://www.palain.com/science-fiction/the-golden-age/robert-a-heinlein/heinlein-in-the-1960s/

Provide feedback on this episode.

New hosts

Welcome to our new hosts:

• Trurl

Last Month's Shows

Comments this month

Past shows

• hpr4673 (2026-07-01) "First contact conversation" by Archer72.
  
• Dave Lee (thelovebug) said: "Baofeng naming conventions" (2026-09-16 07:07:02)
  
• hpr4677 (2026-07-07) "UNIX Curio #10 - Checksums and Hashes" by Vance.
  
• Cli said: "Systemd Topics" (2026-09-13 05:19:58)
  
• hpr4702 (2026-08-11) "MakeACopy is an open-source document scanner app for Android" by Ken Fallon.
  
• Archer72 said: "What's not to like? " (2026-09-09 21:55:48)
  
• hpr4709 (2026-08-20) "Peertube: my two penneth" by Kevie.
  
• Kevie said: "links" (2026-09-08 08:15:24)
  

This month's shows

• hpr4718 (2026-09-02) "Programmable Logic Controls - Episode 2 " by Whiskeyjack.
  
• Trey said: "OpenPLC" (2026-09-02 22:40:23)
  
• Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to Trey on OpenPLC" (2026-09-03 16:05:35)
  
• hpr4719 (2026-09-03) "How to use a multimeter, introduction and basic usage" by number9.
  
• Ken Fallon said: "Thanks !" (2026-09-03 07:43:52)
  
• Archer72 said: "Thanks! Quite interesting!" (2026-09-03 09:49:32)
  
• Trey said: "Excellent episode" (2026-09-03 12:52:57)
  
• xmanmonk said: "Great show!" (2026-09-03 19:14:51)
  
• Whiskeyjack said: "Fluke Meters" (2026-09-03 22:39:30)
  
• brian-in-ohio said: "welcome" (2026-09-06 12:54:51)
  
• Kevin O'Brien said: "Endorsing comment" (2026-09-06 14:25:11)
  
• Jim DeVore said: "I learned a few things!" (2026-09-07 21:15:48)
  
• hpr4721 (2026-09-07) "HPR Community News for August 2026" by HPR Volunteers.
  
• Th3Dud3 said: "Sorry for getting your name wrong Kevie" (2026-09-09 16:27:10)
  
• hpr4722 (2026-09-08) "Show and tell: AI tropes" by Trollercoaster.
  
• Trey said: "This is so true" (2026-09-08 10:57:10)
  
• Steve Barnes said: "Re: This is so true" (2026-09-08 20:13:53)
  
• Ben said: "Great text" (2026-09-10 21:08:25)
  
• Antoine said: "AI writes very well" (2026-09-11 00:11:36)
  
• Trollercoaster said: "Re: This is so true" (2026-09-12 08:10:11)
  
• Trollercoaster said: "Re: Great Text" (2026-09-12 08:25:13)
  
• Trollercoaster said: "Re: AI writes very well" (2026-09-12 22:45:17)
  
• Antoine said: "Re #7 - Brazilian ... logic?" (2026-09-13 15:09:10)
  
• candycanearter07 said: "cool ep" (2026-09-13 20:05:22)
  
• Trollercoaster said: "Re: cool ep" (2026-09-15 17:50:02)
  
• hpr4723 (2026-09-09) "friedcamp interviews part 3: The fried telephone system" by Kristoff.
  
• Cli said: "Background noise." (2026-09-13 05:22:10)
  
• Whiskeyjack said: "Dial telephones" (2026-09-26 21:15:53)
  
• hpr4724 (2026-09-10) "HPR Beer Garden 19 - Lager" by Kevie.
  
• Gan Ainm said: "Märzen" (2026-09-14 15:32:33)
  
• Th3Dud3 said: "The reason why the USA uses Adjuncts in our Lager" (2026-09-14 18:07:03)
  
• hpr4726 (2026-09-14) "Trurl's intro show" by Trurl.
  
• candycanearter07 said: "hello!" (2026-09-15 23:22:59)
  
• hpr4732 (2026-09-22) "Webp" by Klaatu.
  
• Henrik Hemrin said: "Now I will consider webp as an alternative." (2026-09-26 17:16:21)
  
• hpr4733 (2026-09-23) "Static Adict Episode 1: Pulse Demon" by TheDUDE.
  
• brian-in-ohio said: "good show" (2026-09-23 14:44:12)
  
• Antoine said: "Never listened about" (2026-09-23 22:41:53)
  
• hpr4736 (2026-09-28) "How to replace the battery in a car key fob" by Ken Fallon.
  
• Lee said: "Replacing battery" (2026-09-29 20:24:03)
  

Mailing List discussions

Policy decisions surrounding HPR are taken by the community as a whole. This discussion takes place on the Mailing List which is open to all HPR listeners and contributors. The discussions are open and available on the HPR server under Mailman.

The threaded discussions this month can be found here:

Events Calendar

With the kind permission of LWN.net we are linking to The LWN.net Community Calendar.

Quoting the site:

This is the LWN.net community event calendar, where we track events of interest to people using and developing Linux and free software. Clicking on individual events will take you to the appropriate web page.

Provide feedback on this episode.

OLF Conference

The Conference the artist previously known as the Ohio Linux Festival, is returning to it's 2003 beginnings on the campus of Dreese Laboratories at Ohio State University

Starting at noon on Friday Nov 20 and running all day Saturday 21 Nov 2026, during this event, Open Source projects, developers and visitors can exchange ideas and knowledge.

Interviewees

HPR is no stranger to OLF , and we interview the team as a call for presentations is now open.

Vance has been using Linux since 1997 and was active in the Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group from 2003 to 2017. In addition to general desktop use, he has an interest in system and network administration. Vance currently lives in Pittsburgh and works in quality assurance for safety equipment. Vance first began volunteering with Ohio LinuxFest in 2006. He worked on producing audio recordings of sessions starting in 2009, served as Speaker Chair for the 2014 through 2017 conferences, and was Birds of a Feather Chair from 2018 to 2020. He took on the Conference Chair role from 2021 through 2023, then returned as Speaker Chair starting in 2024.

Email

Beth Lynn currently lives in Pittsburgh and works as Senior System Engineer. She has over twenty years experience in managing, building and collaborating with teams within Free Software Expertise in GNU/Linux distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, Ubuntu, and SUSE. From 2002 to 2011 Beth Lynn led the Western PA Linux Users Group, which began at Carnegie Mellon University.

Beth Lynn first came to OLF as an attendee in 2003. She immediately signed up to help at future conferences. When a mix up occurred in the venue early in the OLF history, Beth contacted Jon “maddog” Hall and others for help, which saved that year’s conference (close to the date of the event). Due to her longevity with OLF over the years she has been a speaker, conference chairperson, and fundraiser. When the original conference chairpersons retired from leadership roles, Beth Lynn stepped up to keep the conference running smoothly as the Director. In 2007 Beth applied and defended 501(c)(3) non-profit status for the organization.

Beth Lynn Eicher is passionate about the ideals of FOSS and in growing community across the country and world in this movement. She attends other Linux- FOSS conferences and is well known across the country. In 2013 she was asked to speak at the Free Software Foundation Conference held at Harvard University on the topic of “Closing the Digital Divide”. There she reported on the successful deployment of 100 Edubuntu PCs to schools in Ghana, Africa that served mostly orphaned children. Beth Lynn went to Ghana with a team from Computereach, training in networking, pc repair, the GNU/Linux command-line, and the Edubuntu desktop environment.

Email

Links

• Main web site: https://olfconference.org/
• News page (announcements): https://olfconference.org/news/
• RSS Feed of news: https://olfconference.org/feed/
• CFP: https://olfconference.org/call-for-presentations/
• YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@OLFConference
• Livestream videos: https://www.youtube.com/@OLFConference/streams
• Edited videos: https://www.youtube.com/@OLFConference/videos
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ohiolinux/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1828509
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ohiolinux
• Matrix (unofficial): https://matrix.to/#/#olf:matrix.org
• Mailing list (announcements only): https://lists.ohiolinux.org/mailman/listinfo/olf-attendees
• https://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents/0459.html
• https://www.osu.edu/
• FreedomBox
• hpr4256 :: Birds of a Feather Talk at OLF 2024

Travel Times

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wl-copy is a command in the wl-clipboard package, and allows you to copy and paste data from your Linux Terminal on a Wayland desktop.

Copy an arbitrary string to your clipboard using wl-copy:

$ wl-copy "hello world"

Paste it anywhere on your system as usual (with Ctrl+Shift+V or a right-click and Paste).

You can copy from output, too:

$ echo "hello wide world" | wl-copy

You can redirect to wl-copy:

$ echo "hello world" > example.txt

$ wl-copy < example.txt

You can use wl-paste to paste from your system clipboard:

$ wl-paste

"hello world"

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In this episode we look at a very old style of beer known as Mild. Paul, in the absence of any locally available Milds has a Guinness, Dave tastes Banks's Mild and Kevie Samples 1950s Burton Ruby Mild .

Connect with the guys on Untappd :

• Dave
• Paul
• Kevie

The intro sounds for the show are used from:

• https://freesound.org/people/mixtus/sounds/329806/
• https://freesound.org/people/j1987/sounds/123003/
• https://freesound.org/people/greatsoundstube/sounds/628437/

The next 3 beer styles to be reviewed:

• Bitter
• Pale Ale
• Trappist

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BruCON: https://brucon.org

https://www.youtube.com/@brucontalks/videos

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