 During the 1930s and 1940s, Heinlein was deeply interested in Alfred Korzybski's general semantics and attended a number of seminars on the subject.His views on epistemology seem to have flowed from that interest, and his fictional characters continue to express Korzybskian views to the very end of his writing career.Many of his stories, such as "Gulf", "If This Goes On—", and "Stranger in a Strange Land", depend strongly on the premise, related to the well-known Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, that by using a correctly designed language, one can change or improve oneself mentally, or even realize untapped potential (as in the case of Joe in "Gulf" – whose last name may be Greene, Gilead or Briggs).