Talk:The Long Watch

Novels: Short story / Sci-fi Mid‑importance

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Altruism is uncommon in Heinlein? I've been reading RAH for a decade, altruism is a major theme in his work.

I agree -- and I've been reading Heinlein for more than thirty years.Brandon39 04:40, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Conscientious Objector?[edit]

Do we have any sort of reference for this claim that Heinlein may have been advocating for conscientious objectors? It's implied that since Dalquist does not follow his commanding officer, he's acting as a rebel. However, he tries to talk to his commanding officer before doing anything, showing that he believes in following military discipline and protocol. Also, the very nature of the Space Patrol must be thought of. Patrolmen exist essentially as police officers of the world, being entrusted by the public to hold great power and execute it at the orders of the people, not by their selves. As such, Towers' actions would have been blatant rebellion, and I think it would have been clear to Dalquist that his actions were in keeping with the intentions of the Patrol as a whole, and not rebellious.

The idea of Dalquist being presented as conscientious objector is a pretty big stretch if you ask me, and I'd like to see a reference is this is going to be left in. Sub Zenyth 18:38, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is a lot of good info in that section, but I tend to agree with you that the bits referring specificly to a "conscientious objector" are original research and should be carefully excised. I think it is quite clear from Heinlein's background and peripheral statements and actions that in this story Dalquist's actions were responding to a call to higher duty of greater ideals such as rejection of military dictatorships. Hu 19:10, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article mentioned the specific case of a conscientious objector who was inspired by the story and delcared it in his court martial and even told the judges the details of the plot. This is a quite conclusinve proof that the story is capable of being interepreted in this way. Whether Heinlein intended to have this intepretation is quite a different issue, but even if he didn't a stpry can have a life of its own. Heinlein probably did not intend hippies to take up "Stranger in a Strange Land" and make it part of their "counter-culture" but still they did, and that is a relevant piece of information. Andreas Kaganov 00:50, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That section could stand to be removed for now. It's rather full of OR at the moment. Jtrainor (talk) 02:32, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Working on plot summary[edit]

As I get time, I'm going to try to cut back the plot summary by a third. We don't really need to know the editor who wrote the plot summary's views on the lack of info regarding Towers' battle record. There's lots of other stuff about how posterity views Dahlquist which is speculative (even given "Space Cadet") and needs to go.--Wehwalt (talk) 03:23, 28 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The science[edit]

How accurate is the science in this ? The stuff about radioactivity ? -- Beardo (talk) 10:00, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]