MISC: Eclipse The Girl Who Saved The World (Drew Perron)

George Phillies phillies at 4liberty.net
Sat May 18 16:21:02 PDT 2019


For those of you puzzled by the Heinlein references in the bit:

“Oh, yes, thank you, Daddy,” Trisha gushed. “that makes complete sense 
in the Regency novel, except my teacher said my novel had to do with the 
Heinlein Act, which made no sense, not that I’m sure what the Heinlein 
Act is.”

Abigail rolled her eyes. “The Heinlein Act is that Navy monstrosity.But 
you knew Heinlein, didn’t you, dear?” she asked Patrick.

“Indeed I did,” Patrick answered. “He was a fine Navy Admiral who’d won 
three skirmishes, officially with pirates, and retired with combat 
injuries.He wanted to become a writer, but needed to support his family, 
so he’d read law. A few years later, along came this young lady, about 
the age of you three, and about as bright, who wanted Heinlein to use 
bad wording in a California state law to divorce her parents.Her name is 
under seal; her initials were P.W. Her parents, it later turned out, 
were truly terrible people. Her case reached the Supreme Court.Heinlein 
won his case.Congress codified, the Heinlein Act, rules letting 
adult-competent children divorce truly bad parents.Heinlein then took up 
writing, full-time, made a fortune, and won the Nobel Prize for 
Literature.”

“Sorry your novel was so terrible, Trisha,” a chastened Brian said. 
“But, you see, that novel was good for something.You made the sacrifice, 
you read it, we all learned something from Dad, and it got me an A+.”

“You talked about, yuck, romance novels?” Janie asked. “That’s 
gross!What do they have to do with that stupid play about Italians going 
into suspended animation? You think I can get an A+ if I insert 
something intelligent instead? I could talk about Chess or City of Steel 
or outward influence on my next English exam.Yes, outward 
influence.Those crazy dueling families in Romeo and Juliet do things to 
get spread-out advantage far away.That’s outward influence, just like in 
stones.And at the end of Hamlet everyone is in zugzwang, and they all 
move anyhow, littering the stage with bodies.That’s what I should have 
said, they’re all in zugzwang, and then for sure I would have had my 
A+.” Janie decided not to notice her parents shaking their heads.

“I lucked out,” Brian said. “I guessed Romeo and Juliet had something to 
do with romance novels.I can’t tell what.I wasn’t really sure. But, Dad, 
why is fiction called ‘genre fiction’?Why not just ‘fiction’?”

Patrick looked at his wife.“Yes, I think they are old enough,” he 
said.“We’ve had those discussions, after all.”

“Very well.”Abigail looked to have bitten into a particularly bitter lemon.

“There is also ‘literary fiction’,” Patrick said.“Most people don’t like 
it, so while real, meaning genre, fiction gets the Nobel Prize for 
Literature, ‘literary fiction’ readers have their own awards, such as 
the Joyce and Hemingway Prizes.Joyce was famous for slapping together 
incomprehensible strings of words and claiming they were novels.He was 
quite mad. The ‘literary novel’ you will all be stuck reading, in 
twelfth grade, is Hawthorne’s /The Scarlet Letter/.It’s a truly 
disgusting work, in which a young woman becomes a fallen roundheel and 
ends up bearing a child, when she is not married. Instead of having the 
child taken away to be raised by decent people, as would happen in the 
real world, she is allowed to keep the child, and matters go downhill 
from there.” <<--IMPORTANT CLUE HERE

“Yuck!” Janie said.Her brother nodded in agreement.

“I have to read that?” Trisha tried to remember alternatives to taking 
twelfth grade. Dad had mentioned that Rogers Tech did not care if 
students had a high school diploma or not.

AND ALSO

“The Heinlein Act. I want out.” Trisha was now entirely calm.Heinlein 
had been a Navy Admiral turned divorce attorney and later Nobel laureate 
writer.It would be unusual for a girl as young as Trisha to divorce her 
parents, but it had been done.

“Good,” Patrick said. “Then our family is no longer shamed.” His wife 
nodded agreement. Everyone else in the room was shocked.

“You’re sure, Trisha?” Morgan asked. “It’s very final.”

“Yes.” Trisha stood up, backbone ramrod straight. I felt in her the 
determination of the founders of Massachusetts, people not much older 
than Trisha, the people who two millennia ago crossed the continent from 
Washington to Massachusetts on horseback to create America.

“So be it,” Morgan answered.

Speaker Ming turned to Krystal North. “Captain-General, will you please 
do the mentalic validation?”

“Under the Heinlein Act,” Krystal said, “Mentalic validation of the 
state of affairs is required.Any party may decline, but the worst 
possible interpretation is then placed on their claims and 
positions.Trisha, Patrick, Abigail, I need your permission to read your 
minds.”

“I am an innocent and virtuous man,” Patrick Wells said. “Read away.”

“I agree,” Abigail said.

“Please?” Trisha said.

</Eclipse,> /Krystal said to me, </As champion, you get to watch over 
Trisha, represent her side, and validate my mentalic report./>//I nodded.


But how does an Admiral get wounded in a skirmish?  At the start, we had 
two Carrier Groups, and the officially-not-Manjukuoans had six.  At the 
end, we had two in very serious need of yard time, and they had two, one 
of which apparently went down in a north Pacific storm with all hands on 
the way home.

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