I was recently listening to an episode of the great Movies That Made Me podcast, and co-host Joe Dante made a statement about objectional materials in older movies. He said that movies should have a disclaimer stating that the movie rejects the way people felt in the past, and that we think differently now. Characters and topics in older works of art may be offensive by current standards, but were acceptable in times past.
Which brings me to Robert A. Heinlein's Sixth Column. Heinlein was my first favorite writer, and I read Sixth Column when I was around fourteen years old. This was in an old paperback that was retitled by Signet with the more generic The Day After Tomorrow. Signet apparently felt that potential readers would not know what a "fifth column" was, and so they bestowed something simpler. In my case, at the time at least, they were entirely correct.
Now, give-or-take forty-five years later, I have re-read Sixth Column. I had heard accusations of racism about the novel, and I wanted to see for myself.
The claims against Sixth Column are not entirely incorrect. The story deals with a takeover of America by Asian conquerers, referred to in the book as "PanAsians".
Okay, yeah, some of the stuff in the book is pretty cringe-worthy. Asians are called flat faces, slanties, even baboons. This kind of thing is almost impossible to justify.
But let's look a little deeper. Of course these kind of denigrations are unthinkable today. However, Sixth Column was originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in 1941. Just two years into World War 2. I think most Americans, even your own forefathers, probably spoke that way.
This doesn't make it excusable, but perhaps it can be understood.
There are other howlers in the book. The story deals with a group of American resisters who create a fake religion to organize their revolt. Priests are instructed to wear beards because Asians are largely unable to do so and will feel "womanly inferiority"!
Wow. That alone is enough to spark a riot.
The Golden Age of Science Fiction is rife with sexism. It was by and large written by socially awkward young men and read by social misfit teenage boys. Sixth Column wasn't the first novel published by Heinlein, but it was the first one written by him. It was outlined and assigned to Heinlein by Astounding editor John W. Campbell, who had some bigotry issues of his own. Yet Campbell did crucial work in developing Science Fiction into a mature and critically accepted branch of literature.
Heinlein later featured strong, capable woman protagonists. His main characters, often avatars of his own personality, spoke of the poison of racism. He became a hippie figurehead with Stranger in a Strange Land. The term he created, Grok, was and is a rallying cry for open-mindedness.
Some say that objectional materials should be banned or altered. I could not disagree more. We should look back at things like Sixth Column with understanding. Not with hate or rage. Heinlein changed for the better in his lifetime. He, like so many of us, was a product of his time.
If you can overlook the offensive comments, Sixth Column is a pretty good adventure story. It isn't among Heinlein's best, and I only recommend it to R.A.H. completists, but it is well written and, at times, exciting. It's kind of like Red Dawn with Asians instead of Russians, and with some rather outrageously unbelievable super science gimmickry thrown into the mix. Heinlein was generally more seated in solid engineering principles in his writing. I think Campbell was responsible for the outlandish elements of Sixth Column.
If we can stop hating and blaming each other, if we can try to work together with maturity and humanity, we may be able to explore controversial books and movies from our past and learn from them. Maybe we will have a lot better chance for a brighter future, which was what most Golden Age SF writers dreamed of.
Written by Mark Sieber
Which brings me to Robert A. Heinlein's Sixth Column. Heinlein was my first favorite writer, and I read Sixth Column when I was around fourteen years old. This was in an old paperback that was retitled by Signet with the more generic The Day After Tomorrow. Signet apparently felt that potential readers would not know what a "fifth column" was, and so they bestowed something simpler. In my case, at the time at least, they were entirely correct.
Now, give-or-take forty-five years later, I have re-read Sixth Column. I had heard accusations of racism about the novel, and I wanted to see for myself.
The claims against Sixth Column are not entirely incorrect. The story deals with a takeover of America by Asian conquerers, referred to in the book as "PanAsians".
Okay, yeah, some of the stuff in the book is pretty cringe-worthy. Asians are called flat faces, slanties, even baboons. This kind of thing is almost impossible to justify.
But let's look a little deeper. Of course these kind of denigrations are unthinkable today. However, Sixth Column was originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in 1941. Just two years into World War 2. I think most Americans, even your own forefathers, probably spoke that way.This doesn't make it excusable, but perhaps it can be understood.
There are other howlers in the book. The story deals with a group of American resisters who create a fake religion to organize their revolt. Priests are instructed to wear beards because Asians are largely unable to do so and will feel "womanly inferiority"!
Wow. That alone is enough to spark a riot.
The Golden Age of Science Fiction is rife with sexism. It was by and large written by socially awkward young men and read by social misfit teenage boys. Sixth Column wasn't the first novel published by Heinlein, but it was the first one written by him. It was outlined and assigned to Heinlein by Astounding editor John W. Campbell, who had some bigotry issues of his own. Yet Campbell did crucial work in developing Science Fiction into a mature and critically accepted branch of literature.
Heinlein later featured strong, capable woman protagonists. His main characters, often avatars of his own personality, spoke of the poison of racism. He became a hippie figurehead with Stranger in a Strange Land. The term he created, Grok, was and is a rallying cry for open-mindedness.
Some say that objectional materials should be banned or altered. I could not disagree more. We should look back at things like Sixth Column with understanding. Not with hate or rage. Heinlein changed for the better in his lifetime. He, like so many of us, was a product of his time.
If you can overlook the offensive comments, Sixth Column is a pretty good adventure story. It isn't among Heinlein's best, and I only recommend it to R.A.H. completists, but it is well written and, at times, exciting. It's kind of like Red Dawn with Asians instead of Russians, and with some rather outrageously unbelievable super science gimmickry thrown into the mix. Heinlein was generally more seated in solid engineering principles in his writing. I think Campbell was responsible for the outlandish elements of Sixth Column.
If we can stop hating and blaming each other, if we can try to work together with maturity and humanity, we may be able to explore controversial books and movies from our past and learn from them. Maybe we will have a lot better chance for a brighter future, which was what most Golden Age SF writers dreamed of.
Written by Mark Sieber
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