Good guy Heinlein

No io9, recomendo a leitura deste interessante artigo sobre a ajuda (de longa distância, note-se) que, em tempos, Robert A. Heinlein deu a Theodore Sturgeon para este superar o seu “writer’s block”. Na Worldcon de 1962, Sturgeon contou o episódio da carta que enviara a Heinlein, e da resposta que recebeu - com 26 ideias para histórias (e um cheque de 100 dólares). Essa missiva de resposta a Sturgeon pode - e deve - agora ser lida no site Letters of Note. Para todos os efeitos, não foi só a imaginação e a capacidade de escrita excepcionais de Heinlein que o tornaram num dos grandes escritores que o género da ficção científica conheceu, mas também a sua generosidade para com os colegas (Philip K. Dick que o diga). Abaixo, alguns excertos seleccionados da carta de Heinlein a Sturgeon:

Almost all writers need cross-pollenation—myself most certainly! (I am at present stuck on p.148 of the best set-up for a novel I ever had in my life and I cannot get the Goddam thing to gel!) The M.L.S. [Mañana Literary Society] used to give ideas such a kicking around that a man went out of there with notes enough for three months; when Jack Williams, Anthony Boucher, Cleve Cartmill, Mick McComas, and several others all got to snarling over the same bone, something had to give. 

(...) 

But I will do the best I can at this distance. I must say that I am flattered at the request. To have the incomparable and always scintillating Sturgeon ask for ideas is like having the Pacific Ocean ask one to pee in it. 

(...) 

Mmm...Sturgeonish ideas—Well, here's one that might be Campbellish: a society where there are no criminal offences, just civil offences, i.e., there is a price on everything, you can look it up in the catalog and pay the price. You want to shoot your neighbor? Go ahead and shoot the bastard. He has a definite economic rating; deposit the money with the local clearing house within 24 hrs.; they will pay the widow. Morality would consist in not trying to get away with anything without paying for it. Good manners would consist in so behaving that no one would be willing to pay your listed price to kill you. Of course if your valuation is low and your manners are crude, your survival probabilities are low, too.  

(...) 

We know very little about multiple personality, despite the many case records. Suppose a hypnoanalyst makes a deep investigation into a schizoid...and comes up with with the fact that it is a separate and non-crazy personality in the body, distinct from the nominal one, and that this new personality is a refugee from (say) 2100 A.D., when conditions are so intolerable that escape into another body and another time (even this period) is to be preferred, even at the expense of living more or less helplessly in another man's body. 

(...) 

What is a personality? A memory track? A set of evaluations? A set of habit patterns? What happens to a soul in a transorbital lobotomy? Is it murder to kill a man's personality, sick though it may be, in order to make his body a bit more tractable for ward nurses and relatives? 

(...) 

You could have a hell of a hassle in a society in which there were a group, large or small, of illuminati who really do know what happens after death (as compared with the fakers we now have) and who in consequence have different motivations and different purposes from the others who are the way we are now. Just for a touch, they might try a man in absentia for suiciding to avoid his obligations...then maybe have some one else suicide to go after him and carry out the sentence. (But hell, Bill, I don't have to tell you—just some of your usual hoke that Dick Burbage can get his teeth into. We start rehearsals Wednesday. Quote and unquote). 

(...) 

This guy sells soap and cosmetics, door to door like the Fuller Brush man. She tries their beauty soap; she becomes beautiful. So she tries their vanishing cream... 

(...) 

Ler na íntegra. 

Fonte: io9, Letters of Note