XPost: rec.arts.sf.tv, alt.fan.heinlein   
   From: mblack@pubnix.net   
      
   On Sun, 17 Feb 2019, Your Name wrote:   
      
   >   
   > As usual in 'journalism', it's an attention-grabbing headline, while the   
   > article itself says very little to do with it. It barely mentions MacGyver or   
   > Heinlein's MacGyver-isms.   :-\   
   >   
   But a lot of early SF writers were quite capable.  They were either   
   hobbyists of some sort, or actual scientists (Doc Smith comes to mind, a   
   chemist in the baking field if I remember).  I was entranced by "The Early   
   Del Rey" in the seventies, his early stories, and introductions and   
   afterwards  between each story.  So he had varied interests, some of which   
   provided money, and he'd mess with cameras to get some special effect.   
   Remember, many were young, they moved from fans and hobbyists to writers,   
   sometimes overlapping.   
      
   The odd thing is, Heinlein has always seemed distant from these things.  I   
   thought because he was older when he was first published, but after I read   
   the two volume biography last year (yes, finally, I bought them when they   
   each came outin paperback, and they sat there), it presents a different   
   image, an early interest in Barsoom and that sort of science fiction, then   
   foing into the navy for financial reasons (though it was a family thing   
   too).  I think the only reason his parents were "poor" was because it was   
   a large family, if they had one or two kid like today, they'd have been   
   well off.  But maybe it's the telling, we don't see him gonig to the   
   planetarium as he writes his first stories.   
      
      Michael   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)