Those who came before

Heinlen of course. He was an inspiration and reading his book, Stranger in a Strange Land, was a game changer for me. It was one of my first inklings that maybe it was our culture, not me, that had the problem. But he was not the first. I am impressed by Émilie du Châtelet who practiced what we would now call polyamory in the first half of the 18th Century. She was a scientist, physicist and mathematician. Her work proved that energy equals mass times speed, squared. This contributed to the science behind Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. She had lovers with her husband's consent including Voltaire who lived in their summer house where she and they collaborated; intimately and scientifically in what was called the age of enlightenment.