Since summer brings with it a plethora of birthdays in these parts, it seems only right to note a few of the literary variety, such as…
… John D. MacDonald, born this day in 1916. Go now and buy The Deep Blue Goodbye.

Born yesterday, July 23rd - Raymond Chandler. While I’ve always been first and foremost a Dashiell Hammet fan, The Simple Art of Murder is required reading for anyone with an interest in the pulps or ‘genre’ fiction.

And finally, one of science fiction’s ‘Big Three,’ Robert Heinlein, born on July 7th, 1907. I’ve been a devotee of Heinlein in the same way I am of say, REH or Tolkien, but I’ve read, and enjoyed, a number of his works over the years, especially Starship Troopers (which bears little relation to the silly movie of the same name). As an added bonus, Heinlein is also insanely quotable.

From The Puppet Masters:

Don’t ask me why it was top secret, or even restricted; our government has gotten the habit of classifying anything as secret which the all-wise statesmen and bureaucrats decide we are not big enough girls and boys to know, a Mother-Knows-Best-Dear policy. I’ve read that there used to be a time when a taxpayer could demand the facts on anything and get them. I don’t know; it sounds Utopian.”

A few of my favorites from Time Enough For Love:

Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”

“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”

“Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naïve, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.”

And finally, from Starship Troopers:

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that “violence never solves anything” I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”