# Robert A. Heinlein Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) was an American science-fiction writer, one of the genre's "Big Three" with [[Isaac Asimov]] and [[Arthur C. Clarke]], and the author most responsible for SF's strain of armed, self-reliant individualism. More than any other figure in the canon, Heinlein supplied the *politics* that the tech right finds congenial — a libertarian-leaning, anti-statist, competence-worshipping ethos delivered through charismatic engineer-heroes. ## The political signature Three novels carry the worldview. *Starship Troopers* (1959) ties full citizenship to military service and is read on the right as a defense of martial virtue (and on the left as proto-fascist — the ambiguity is the point). *The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress* (1966) dramatizes a lunar libertarian revolution and popularized the acronym **TANSTAAFL** — "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" — that became a libertarian-economics catchphrase. *Stranger in a Strange Land* (1961) pulled in the opposite, countercultural direction, which is part of why Heinlein's legacy is contested across the political spectrum. Heinlein's recurring archetype — the "Competent Man" who can turn his hand to anything and owes deference to no institution — is the literary ancestor of the founder-as-polymath self-image that runs through the [[Tech Oligarchy]]. His suspicion of government and faith in private competence map cleanly onto the libertarian substrate of the [[Tech Right]]. ## Influence on the tech elite Heinlein is more an ambient influence than a named one: he is rarely cited as crisply as [[Isaac Asimov]] is by [[Elon Musk]], but his individualist, space-faring, anti-bureaucratic sensibility is the water much of Silicon Valley's libertarianism swims in. He appears in [[Science Fiction and the Tech Elite]] as the supplier of the genre's right-libertarian pole. ## See also - [[Isaac Asimov]] · [[Arthur C. Clarke]] — the other two of the "Big Three" - [[Science Fiction and the Tech Elite]] — the hub - [[Tech Right]] — the libertarian lineage he feeds