The two characters I liked and identified with were not Mike and Gillian. Instead I was the most intrigued by Jubal Harshaw and Anne the fair witness.

Jubal : Anne what color is the house on top of the hill?
Anne: It is white on this side.

Required by whom for whom? Education should be run by competent teachers who know what to assign and require of the students when, along with properly teaching it. But Common Core decreeing reading a good book with no rational motivation and support would undermine it.

Heroic novels with a good sense of life are valuable. A good sense of life is not enough to defend and build a moral society. See Ayn Rand's essay "Don't Let it Go" on how America has lasted as long as it has since the Enlightenment founding based on a characteristic sense of life, and how that isn't enough against an explicit philosophical onslaught progressively undermining it.

ST was far more about the why than the how.

He wrote about so many things, a rare talent.

He was a consultant called in as the detective/investigator in a few of those shorts. Kind of his equivalent to Sherlock as opposed to the more generic tyoes in the other shorts.

The oath of service was quite the construct.

Perhaps, but he gets the credit for paying the taxes, the tenant does not. Even though we all know they are passed through to the tenant(s). Fair enough, since ultimately the landlord is responsible for paying them.

He might have held that view because of frustrating encounters with too many 90 day wonders.

I have no direct knowledge of Hubbard and Heinlein. I have a couple of friends who say they were helped by Hubbard's later writings.
Here is an interesting (and undoubtedly biased) article about the Heinlein-Hubbard relationship:
http://tonyortega.org/2014/11/08/the-...

I also enjoyed the Black Widowers series. Do you know Wendell Urth?

You can serve in the TXSG until you are 70. In Vermont you can serve until you are 80. We do have physical requirements. (Ohio's are even stricter.) But if you cannot make the physicals, you can still serve without being deployed to the field because there is always a lot of work to be done, and today, much of it is on a keyboard.

Moon was a prequel to Rolling Stones (but you knew that). And I touted Tunnel in the Sky to ewv above. I carry a USAF survival handbook in my duty kit, but Tunnel in the Sky was my training.

Any book accepted in trade. -- And whining has no survival value.

Heinlein's sense of life was very much the kind that builds and maintains a free society. Whatever he wrote about, whatever the story line, intelligence with insight, loyalty to one's values, technical ability, and perseverance all are necessary to success. In every case, the hero is the one who holds true. Moreover, his plots are integrated to their themes. I do not know which of his novels you know. It has been long decades since I devoured them.

Do you know Tunnel in the Sky? The kids are sent on a weekend survival test that is intended to be little more than a camp-out. But the transporter fails and they are stuck for like six months. They don't all make it. The hero and the girl do because they are reality-based, rational, and loyal to each other. They use their intelligence to solve novel and life-threatening problems.

Double Star was perhaps a retelling of The Prisoner of Zenda but with much more supporting it. I understood from that why Ronald Reagan's success - whatever our criticisms - came from his ability to act like the President of the United States which few before and none after him were able to do. It is all in the acting; and an actor does not need to "look like" someone to portray them convincingly. It was an integrated story.

Ever have a cat? Every winter, they go from door to door looking for that Door into Summer. We all do.

it is impossible to write without a philosophy. I grant that Taylor Caldwell wrote from a different philosophy. I only read one of her novels, The Glory and the Lightening because it featured Aspasia of Miletus. From what Wikipedia has, she seemed to have been a devout Christian, writing stories about saints, among very much else.

In MIAHM, the lunies write a constitution. It was not an anarchy, nor could it have been. Yes, the heroes all got along well enough, what about everyone else. As Heinlein painted the ending of the revolution, people were proposing more silly laws. The intention was that the constitution would mitigate most of those negative effects.

Also, was it not there that one of the discussions among the heroes was to pay all the legislators a million credits, but make them pay for everything they vote for out of their own pockets? That proposal was not engaged, but it was discussed, as I recall. So, too with "rational anarchy." The revolutionaries talked about a lot of things, but they did something that worked realistically.

I also liked the "hard science" writers such as Niven and Pournelle. Alan Steele's Orbital Decay is set in a near future about the construction of a space station, told from the view point of the construction workers.

But I take a different tack entirely with William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and the cyberpunk genre. The only problem with it, is that reality caught up with it.

Good of you to make that distinction, Mike.
David Friedman said it inspired his own ideas.. Apologies if that was unclear.

Never heard of. I just read a synopsis. Heinlein seems to have rubbed elbows with L. Ron Hubbard, oh, and there was "The Great I Am" cult at Mount Shasta. Interesting...

No, we need to "trick" people into listening to the truth before they "turn off" or are bored, in the same manner ignorant, but otherwise intelligent, have been 'tricked" into accepting fallacies.
Listen to Kelley's closing parody versus the drier earlier arguments in this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KejrB... An example of putting messages in the context of the listener. Much more effective than preaching.

I have to disagree on several grounds, as much as I also enjoyed Asimov for the clarity of his intellect as a story teller. My problems begin with the fact that his robots are ideal altruists. That is his moral ideal. How would that apply to humans? Because that is what he intends. On the other hand, the ST:NG story "Measure of a Man" asks "what is an android, that a human is not?"

Again, I also liked the Foundation Trilogy and with all of my classes in sociology, I certainly to accept social science as a predictive study. That said, though, it is the collectivist's dream that we can reduce humanity to a (very large) set of equations. Indeed, the compelling element in the Foundation Trilogy is the actions of the individuals such as Hober Mallow and Savlor Hardin, as well as the adventurous young woman Arkady Darrell. Unfortunately, it remains that their actions, while benefiting themselves and others perhaps, were completely irrelevant to the development of capital-H History.

Thanks for the link.

You think that you have to trick people into understanding the truth? When that fails, what is your next move?

Hard to say. But he clearly modeled his Mobile Infantry on the Marines. His take on the ultimate chief-of-staff of the armed forces I found most interesting: "A man can't buck for Sky Marshal until he has commanded both a regiment and a capital ship."

"Required reading" is a such a dangerous idea. Encouraged reading is perhaps what you intend, granting that there are many way ways "encourage" something, such as by forbidding it. See my comments up above : https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...