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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