Heinlein shows some Traditional Rationality but doesn’t give you a sense that more is possible, apart from his one story showing how to train a mutant to be a better rationalist—I forget what the story was called, it’s the one with the supernova weapon.
“Gulf”, and he wasn’t a mutant, just on the far right of the bell curve. They were trying to breed a new human race from the extremely intelligent. The techniques used in that story were mostly based on General Semantics, like the Null-A novels, but took it in a different direction.
When I wrote Heinlein’s juveniles, I was thinking more of “Rocket Ship Galileo”, “Farmer in the Sky”, where the protagonist is learning the importance of
thinking clearly and accurately.
I second Stiegler’s novels. I didn’t think much of Vogt’s Null-A novels—also Gosseyn was a mutant, among other things he had two brains.
Heinlein’s juveniles in general. Vogt’s “Voyage of the Space Beagle” .
But Gosseyn wasn’t a mutant rationalist.
Heinlein shows some Traditional Rationality but doesn’t give you a sense that more is possible, apart from his one story showing how to train a mutant to be a better rationalist—I forget what the story was called, it’s the one with the supernova weapon.
“Gulf”, and he wasn’t a mutant, just on the far right of the bell curve. They were trying to breed a new human race from the extremely intelligent. The techniques used in that story were mostly based on General Semantics, like the Null-A novels, but took it in a different direction.
When I wrote Heinlein’s juveniles, I was thinking more of “Rocket Ship Galileo”, “Farmer in the Sky”, where the protagonist is learning the importance of thinking clearly and accurately.