Template talk:Robert A. Heinlein

Major rewrite

I have rewritten the existing Heinlein novels template to incorporate categories. I divided the books (several of which I added) into four broad categories: Future History and World as Myth; the Scribner juveniles; the other novels; and nonfiction.

Now for details.

Future History: I added the highly-important The Past Through Tomorrow collection, and also chose to include here the World-as-Myth novels in which the Future History turned out to play a key part in. For those who ask why I placed The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress here, remember that The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, a World-as-Myth novel, uses the same background.

Juveniles: I chose to draw the line here on whether the book was published by Scribner or not. This definition thus excludes Podkayne of Mars (not published by Scribner, and the ending is very different from the juveniles' in tone) and Starship Troopers (written as a Scribner juvenile but rejected by it and published elsewhere). I realize that The Rolling Stones (novel) also uses the Mistress/Cat lunar background but I felt it better fits here.

Nonfiction: I added the two works here. I realize that a good chunk of Expanded Universe is fiction, but I believe Heinlein clearly intended the book in toto to be read as a collection of essays with the fiction meant to reinforce their themes.

Other fiction: I realize that World-as-Myth technically includes *all* of Heinlein's fiction, but we have to draw the line someplace, right?

Need to do: I mangled the footnotes I added to clarify the publishing situations for Variable Star and Tramp Royale because, well, I don't know how to do them right in templates. I also don't know how to add the useful "Hide," "Edit," and "Talk" links to the template's title bar. Finally, the template really ought to be renamed now that I'm including nonfiction. I trust that someone more skilled will take care of these issues. Ylee 06:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I changed the template back to the chronological view, as I believe this is more important than sorting by categories. Feel free to change back or comment as you see fit. And sorry to undo your work, it seems it took some time, I just feel that chronology in this template is more important. Chuck^(contrib) 05:02, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to engage in reverts of reverts unless there's a good reason. So I'd appreciate a few (since I don't think it needs, and certainly don't want to invoke, any kind of formal RfD) informal comments from others before deciding whether to revert back to my revision. Heck, if you really like my version, feel free to go ahead and revert it yourself.

I divided the books into categories (retaining the chronological orders in each) because to me Heinlein's books divide up pretty straightforwardly into these categories. At the very least, his juveniles are generally seen as a group apart from the others. Yes, yes, readers can certainly see (insert your interpretation of Heinlein's philosophies here) as a theme that spans his books. However, again, there is certainly room for disagreement here.

As for the renaming, I moved (Novels) to (books) because I added the nonfiction works into the template. Pretty straightforward. But since it's a mostly-novel list, I have no issues with renaming it back. Ylee 06:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

As the summary says, I decided to be bold and put my revision of the template (with slight edits) back online. Now that it's a weekday we ought to be able to get more eyeballs on it. People! Whether you hate it or love it, let me know! Ylee 15:13, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

You seem to know more about Heinlein novels than I...I don't know very much. However, I removed the wikilinks from the subjects, as they were making it difficult to decipher where the next subject was and which were subjects and which were novels. Hope its alright. Chuck^(contrib) 08:16, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem; I noticed the same issue. If there's a way the Wiki links for the subjects could be included in a more obvious way that'd be great. I don't know; all-caps, perhaps? Colors? Ylee 14:37, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

All-Caps would probably be bad. Colors might work, and I would go for that...but you'll find a lot of people on Wikipedia that don't like "unneccesary" formatting/coloring. I say coloring sounds good for now. I have no idea how to do it, so I won't be able to. Chuck^(contrib) 01:28, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Template renaming

Decided to go ahead and rename the template to account for its new, wider scope. So no need for someone else to do it.

I'm confused as to how books creates a wider scope. In any case it is general practice to use novel rather than book. The template should probably be moved to Template:Heinlein (novels) to conform to standards. This will recreate a bunch of double redirects, so if it's not done, I will move it when I'm not going to sleep. Chuck^(contrib) 05:05, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

italicization

book titles should be italicized here... --Lukobe 18:53, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Early Future History

Is there any reason for not including the early FH collections under FH/WAM; that is: The Man Who Sold the Moon, The Green Hills of Earth, Revolt in 2100 and Orphans of the Sky. Also, The Past Through Tomorrow is really a "collection of collections" and has had different stories for different editions. The only story that does not appear in one of the other collections above is Seachlight. Searchlight may not even be a Future History story at all.

In my opinion, TPTT should be taken out of the list and the four collections above should be added. What say you? —Preceding unsigned comment added by RoyGoldsmith (talk • contribs) 16:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

When I built the current template, I chose TPTT because a) it is by far the most-comprehensive Heinlein short-story collection, and b) it's the only one with a name not also shared with a Heinlein work. YLee (talk) 17:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Dates

The template currently reads

Beyond This Horizon 1942
Sixth Column 1949

It should read either

Sixth Column 1941
Beyond This Horizon 1942

(preferable, based on original serial publication in magazines where the date differs from the book by more than a year) or

Beyond This Horizon 1948
Sixth Column 1949

(based on book publication).

Also, I was thinking Farnham's Freehold was 1964, but I could be wrong. The serial was but I'm pretty sure the book was, too.

And, if it went consistently for original publication, Methusaleh's Children might need to be changed to 1941, though it was expanded. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.162.154.159 (talk) 21:33, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Since this template deals with books rather than magazines (else the dates of the early juveniles would all be before 1945), I'll change BTH's date to 1948. This corresponds to the earliest single volume date reported in the article.

As for Farnham's Freehold, there is a discrepancy. The text in the lead of the article says "A serialised version, edited by Frederik Pohl, appeared in Worlds of If magazine (July, August, October 1964). The complete version was published in novel form by G.P. Putnam later in 1964". But the infobox says that the Publication date is:

1964 (serial)

1965 (book)

However, the Library of Congress (catalog.loc.gov) says that it was published in 1964. Therefore, I'm going to change not only the template but the infobox to 1964. And, just to be complete, I'll remove the serial date; since the infobox is about the book, it doesn't belong there in the first place.

--RoyGoldsmith (talk) 04:22, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Jonathan Hoag

Should that be listed under other novels, when it isn't a novel ? -- Beardo (talk) 06:48, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. Removed. Dan Bloch (talk) 15:09, 22 September 2023 (UTC)