Rachel used "grok" again

[LetMyPeopleVote]

I always smile when Rachel uses the term “grok” on her show. I loved Stranger in a Strange Land

Rachel has used the term “grok” on several occasions and I smile each time Rachel does this

[mopinko]

1. me too

eta- i wonder about ppl who dont understand the word.

[hlthe2b]

22. I know the context. I just find using the word a bit silly-but that's me. As someone downstream

said, I could never have used the term "groovy," either. Not all slang or literary terms work for all people.

[wcmagumba]

2. Yup, we are all water brothers and sisters....nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

[niyad]

5. Read it in "Stranger", used by Martian-reared Earth citizen Valentine Michael

Smith.
Aquafraternalky. .

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. I've read that one too, a couple of time. My favorite author

He created Bernardo.

I've read almost everything he ever wrote. Forty or so fiction books.

[rsdsharp]

8. "Send whoores; tousands and tousands of whoores."

My favorite all time Heinlein quote.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. I don't know that one. . . nt

[TygrBright]

14. You should, it's a great line from Moon is a Harsh Mistress...

They are having a meeting about what Earth can provide in exchange for the Moon colony's grain, etc., and there is 'a Scandinavian shout: "Ja, cobber! Tell 'em send us hoors! Tousands and tousands of hoors! I marry 'em, I betcha!"'

helpfully,
Bright

[Bernardo de La Paz]

15. Ah, the meeting meant to mirror some aspects of the French Revolution

Last edited Tue Jun 27, 2023, 12:07 AM - Edit history (1)

No, I'm confused. Been a long time since my last reading of it.

[rsdsharp]

30. It's from the Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. As the Loonies were formulating a list of demands for Earth

a miner pops up with what he wants Earth to send.

[Ocelot II]

4. Me, too. I use that word occasionally, though the young'uns usually don't get it.

[rsdsharp]

7. I'm a Heinlein freak. I own at least one copy of everything he ever published,

and the first novel he didn’t. I’ve read Stranger multiple times, in both the originally published version, and the later book, which was as he originally wrote it before the extensive editing in 1960.

That said, I have never been able to actually say “grok.”

[niyad]

9. I used it as part of a message on my answering machine back in the dark ages.

[rsdsharp]

10. I just. . . can't.

I couldn’t say “groovie” back in the day, either.

[niyad]

12. There are many words that I do not use, far more recent than "groovy".

[summer_in_TX]

20. After about 15 years away from reading for

pleasure, I got a new library card and immediately headed for the sci fi. I've been reading all the new-to-me Heinlein books I can find. The one co-written with Spider Robinson and his first one that wasn't published.

Stranger in a Strange Land was a favorite and I too read it multiple time.

But grad school and starting a nonprofit and radio work plus voter registration work absorbed my time , plus I confess that I read less novels now that I have DU and other online sources to read.

It's been a real treat to get back to Heinlein. Coming back to it gives me a new perspective. But he's still the Master.

[rsdsharp]

29. Heinlein's name is on Variable Star, but he didn't co-write it with Robinson.

Robinson wrote it himself, based on an outline Heinlein had prepared years before. It was published in 2006; Heinlein died on Mother’s Day 1988.

For Us the Living is pretty preachy, isn’t it? It really reflects Heinlein’s politics (socialist) in the late 1930s.

[summer_in_TX]

32. Yes, Robinson credited Heinlein with the co-write.

I thought it was very true to Heinlein's style, plus the outline and notes inspired it. So I lean to saying they co-wrote it, 15 years after the death of RAH.

For Us the Living was definitely preachy. Learned a lot about his thinking and biography from Spider Robinson's front and end notes in Variable Star. I enjoyed it after getting Robinson's take.

[rsdsharp]

33. You might enjoy William Patterson's two volume authorized biography; it's quite interesting.

[summer_in_TX]

35. Thanks for the recommendation!

I just started The Pursuit of the Pankera. Quite a tome. That's likely to take me a little while.

[rsdsharp]

36. I read it a couple of years ago. It's the original version of Number of the Beast,

which he tabled when both Ginny and his agent told him not to publish it. It’s got pages and pages and pages of his characters interacting with characters from some of his childhood favorite books. After his carotid bypass procedure he reworked it.

I’m glad it was finally published it, but if it had been done in 1978, so soon after the unedited I Will Fear No Evil, I think it would have severely hurt his reputation.

[summer_in_TX]

37. I wondered.

I read an unedited copy of Stranger in a Strange Land a number of years ago and gained new appreciation of editors.

I didn't realize that I Will Fear No Evil hadn't been edited. I liked it myself. It's been decades since I read it though.

[rsdsharp]

38. Heinlein cut 60,000 words out of Stranger as originally written,

literally blacking them out with a marker; a word here, two there, a phrase in another paragraph. Personally, I like it better without the edits. Number of the Beast, not so much.

He developed peritonitis shortly after finishing I Will Fear No Evil. He nearly died, and couldn’t work for two years. He had been adamant that no one edit it but him, so Ginny and his agent agreed to send it to the publisher as is.

[summer_in_TX]

39. Fascinating.

As for the way he edited Stranger, did he cut those 60,000 words out of his raw manuscript? Was that how the first published version was edited?

I'd gotten the impression that the uncut version that I read (after reading and rereading the first published version close to twenty times) was the what he'd intended to be published but the publishing company insisted on editing it their way.

[rsdsharp]

40. The original manuscript, which you've read, was 220,000 words.

Putnam was willing to publish it, but wanted the sex and religion cut out (they had hoped that he would present them with a juvenile novel). Heinlein pointed out that there was no point to the novel without it. Putnam agreed, but thought it was too long — the average novel was 80,000 words; they wanted it down to 120,000, if I recall correctly.

Heinlein laboriously went through the manuscript, page-by-page, cutting excess words (lubrication as he called them). In volume 2 of Patterson’s biography there is a picture of Heinlein blacking out words in a manuscript. He finally felt he could cut no more without hurting the story, and Putnam agreed to publish at 160,000 words.

[summer_in_TX]

41. I may have to give the uncut version another read.

In light of how much I loved what was originally published I may have been a little hypercritical of that one.

[11 Bravo]

43. I also have a complete collection of Heinlein.

My grandfather turned me on to him back in the early 60's.

[rsdsharp]

44. I have to admit, I've never read Take Back Your Government

(originally titled How to be a Politician). I own it, but I’ve never read it.

[Permanut]

13. My first sci-fi book..

The Door Into Summer.

Read it like twelve times.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

26. It has its problems, but that's a great story and high on my list of Heinleins

... especially because of the robots.

[ShazzieB]

16. I loved that, too!

I used to have a button, years ago, that said, "I grok Spock." Intersecting fandoms FTW!

[lark]

28. Sounds like an excellent button.

I'd wear one like that!

[Hortensis]

17. "Tut, tut. Unreasoned anguish is nonetheless real."

Comes to mind fairly often in this era. From one of the youth books.

[marble falls]

18. All the hip kids stopped using it in the 60's.

[canetoad]

19. Coincidentally

I was looking for one of Heinlen's quotes today. It goes something like, " Don't point a gun unless you mean to shoot, don't shoot unless you mean to kill."

No idea from which book it came.

[rsdsharp]

34. It sounds like it might be from Time Enough For Love.

Many such aphorisms are found in the book, and were later collected and published in a small illuminated book titled The Notebooks of Lazarus Long.

[summer_in_TX]

42. I would guess it's from "I Will Fear No Evil."

If I recall correctly, the society of the time was violent. And the only people who could vote were those who could and would go armed.

[wackadoo wabbit]

21. I didn't notice her saying it. Could someone please tell me the context?

Thanks in advance!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

25. Rachel used grok in the hand off to Lawerence talking about the TFG tape

[sir pball]

23. The term originated with Heinlein, but the hacker community popularized it.

From the excellent Jargon File:

grok: /grok/, /grohk/, vt.
[common; from the novel Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally ‘to drink’ and metaphorically ‘to be one with’] The emphatic form is grok in fullness.

1. To understand. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. When you claim to ‘grok’ some knowledge or technique, you are asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity. For example, to say that you “know” LISP is simply to assert that you can code in it if necessary — but to say you “grok” LISP is to claim that you have deeply entered the world-view and spirit of the language, with the implication that it has transformed your view of programming. Contrast zen, which is similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief flash. See also glark.

2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. “Almost all C compilers grok the void type these days.”

I suspect Rachel knows this, and uses it in sense 1.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

24. For this thread

Link to tweet

[lark]

27. Stranger in a Strange Land is one of my all time faves and I read it as a youngster.

It is among the best of the best, IMO.

[MineralMan]

31. She Dates Herself.