Friday

What Hacker News says

1. johncearlsJun 2022
   I love Friday and just reread it last weekend. Often I think that Elon Musk believes he is a character in a Heinlein novel. Tesla is Shipstone, the cars are just a mechanism to build better batteries. SpaceX, that's just DD Harriman from the man who sold the moon/sail beyond the sunset. The Boring company is how you build Luna City ala The moon is a harsh mistress. Or maybe a space catapult. Or maybe, I'm just hoping for Heinleinian hero.
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2. TMWNNJul 2021
   Thanks for the profile; it's one I hadn't read before. I thought the wording of the discussion of Heinlein's previous marriage was hinting at his actual first marriage, which no one knew about until after long after his death, but it doesn't.

   I grew up reading Heinlein. I've read it all; the short stories, the juveniles, the late-period novels, the early and late nonfiction essays, the recently published "lost" works. I consider him and Asimov among my formative influences. I disagree with the critics the article cites about the quality of his post-surgery work; Friday is fantastic and Job, the book the profile is putatively about, is also great. They're just different from the Scribner's juveniles. In turn I like the juveniles, but they don't stick with me as much as his short stories, or his late novels like Friday (which did cyberpunk two years earlier and better than Neuromancer did), Job, or (as weird as they are) The Cat Who Walks Through Walls/To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

   I very much think, however, that Stranger in a Strange Land can only be read with vicarious embarrassment.

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3. hatmatrixMar 2020
   Robert Heinlein's character Friday uses something akin to the internet to do her research (this book came out in 1982).

   While the internet comes with its problems (toxic communities, digital addiction), I'm reminded of that book and how it can be a wonderful for self education when used properly.

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4. gregpillingFeb 2015
   I call it 'comfort reading' like comfort food. It is one of the books I pick up when I am lying in bed sick for the day. Usually something by Heinlein/Clarke or maybe Asimov.

   Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Tunnel in the sky, Friday, Rama, have all been read 5 to 10 times.

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5. jackgaviganOct 2014
   My favourite Heinlein prediction is the "Shipstone" from Friday - an energy storage device that packs "more kilowatt-hours into a smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker."

   In the novel, the Shipstone's eponymous inventor realised "that the problem was not a shortage of energy but lay in the transporting of energy. Energy is everywhere—in sunlight, in wind, in mountain streams, in temperature gradients of all sorts wherever found, in coal, in fossil oil, in radioactive ores, in green growing things. Especially in ocean depths and in outer space energy is free for the taking in amounts lavish beyond all human comprehension.

   "Those who spoke of "energy scarcity" and of "conserving energy" simply did not understand the situation. The sky was "raining soup"; what was needed was a bucket in which to carry it."

   I really hope this is what Elon Musk is working on next.

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6. jaybrendansmithMar 2026
   I gotta agree. All we need is corporate-run militaries and we're living in Heinlein's Friday. All the other dystopian predictions seem to be happening at once.
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