Write What You Know

Howdy, true believers. It's been a weird couple of weeks here. I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, and adored it. I hate to say it's about comic books, but it is, kinda. It's really about people who make comic books--like historical fiction about the Golden Age of comics. Read it.
Then I figured I was in the mood for some Robert Heinlein, so I started up on Stranger in a Strange Land. It's interesting to read about what The Future was like in the 1950's and 60's. Heinlein missed somewhat (somewhat), but I think he has a good grasp of what a culture is like. For those of us who aren't despicable nerds like me, the book is about Valentine Michael Smith, who would be Mars's equivalent of Tarzan. Raised by Martians, brought back to Earth 25 years later, he has, shall we say, learned some rather interesting things. I won't go into detail. Read it yourself, lazy ass.
Anyhow, Heinlein Gets politics. Not just politicians, but the whole funny jibberjab--international relations, religion, war, etc. Too many science fiction writers (the great Arthur C. Clarke among them, Orson Scott Card not among them, though his strength is international relations) take rather simplistic notions of what it's for, what it's about, and so forth. If they do get too far into it, the writing has all the feel of Being Researched. Think about a Dean Koontz book. Okay, wait, think about the Dean Koontz book, then think about the various bases wrapped around that book. I'm not saying don't do research--you gotta do research. But even with a depth of sources and so forth, all that info seems pasted on.
Let's compare and contrast here. The author of Kavalier and Klay, Michael Chabon, loves comic books. He was in last year's History Channel documentary. He lives in that world to some extent, and you get that feel from reading this book. He did research--he talks about it in the Afterword (and I was a little envious)--but that was mining for facts, probably for anecdotes, timelines, etc. He already lived in that world and he brought you into it and made you love it with him. Yeah, I was already there. The Pulitzer Prize committee probably was not. The friend that recommended it to me lives in the medical world and has only read the comics I send to her.
Heinlein deals with (admittedly flawed) futuristic politics. Interplanetary law is not set in stone and a known quantity, it's set forth in a series of agreements and an important court case that one of the main characters disagrees with. And interplanetary law is unimportant to non-humans. The president is both parts bastard and nice guy, because presidents and politicians as a whole have to be. The legal system (not the justice system--the entire legal system) is pretty radically changed, but not in some ridiculous post-modern perfected human way. Heinlein has an enthusiasm for politics, if not a great love of it. His storytelling tends to be better in this book than in a lot of other science fiction I've read, including other Heinlein.d