What Robert Heinlein Got Wrong

Today the blogosphere will resound with praises of Robert A. Heinlein on the 100th anniversary of his birth (7/7/07 – did he plan it that way?). Though I adore Mr. Heinlein’s writings this side of idolatry, my additions to the general acclaim could only be otiose. For those who want to read a great deal more about the Master, let me recommend Heinlein’s Children by Joseph T. Major, a study of his “juvenile” novels. “Juvenile” belongs in quotes; the books fall into that category only because their heroes and heroines are young and stay out of each other’s beds. The pejorative connotations of the label – simplistic, naive, superficial – don’t fit at all. In his introduction to Mr. Major’s book, Alexei Panshin, himself a formidable Heinlein critic, writes thus about his own teenage reading:

Heinlein addressed serious subjects that the other SF books I read did not – economics, revolution, overpopulation – and introduced me to concepts I hadn’t previously encountered, even in the adult books I’d begun to read. I first ran into the word “ecology” in Farmer in the Sky and had to look it up. It would be years before I saw it anywhere else. . . .

There was a moral dimension in his work, too, that I valued and tried to apply – a sense that in the future as much as now life would present us with hard choices and what we chose to do would matter.

These brisk, finely crafted tales would be enough to secure any writer’s reputation, and a number of them – Citizen of the Galaxy, The Rolling Stones, Farmer in the Sky, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel – are among my favorites. Citizen regularly appears on lists of the greatest SF of all time. The rest of the Heinlein oeuvre falls into two camps, between which preferences tend to be sharply and radically divided. On one side are the novels and stories prior to Stranger in a Strange Land. They fall into the same tradition as the juveniles: scientific extrapolation, strong plots, economical storytelling and heroes who exemplify competence, courage and curiosity.

Set against these are Stranger and its successors. (The dividing line isn’t razor sharp. Work on Stranger was interrupted by the writing of Starship Troopers, the epitome of his first phase, and a few novels – Podkayne of Mars, Farnham’s Freehold, Glory Road – straddle the periods.) When I read this departure from the Heinlein I knew, I disliked it so much that I stopped ten pages from the end, saying to myself that I never wanted to have to admit to having finished the thing. It looked to me like my favorite author had taken up with the hippies: free love, smacking the bourgeoisie and “if it feels good, do it”.

That’s still the perception of many fans of Heinlein’s “second phase” and the reason why leftists and libertarians don’t unanimously excoriate him, but I now think that I was, and they are, guilty of misreading. The radical change was not in Heinlein’s opinions but in the context in which he placed his characters. Looking closely, one sees that they remain competent, courageous and curious. Now, however, they dwell in societies where those qualities are neither widespread nor admired. They are unconventional, because convention has rotted away, not merely because they want to “do their own thing”.

But I wasn’t going to run on and on about Heinlein’s literary merits. Instead, as adumbrated in this post’s heading, I want to call attention to a place where he was, sad to say, wrong, wrong and wrong.

The conquest of space was a subject about which the early Heinlein, at least, was an incorrigible optimist. In Space Cadet (1948), the first lunar landing is placed in 1955! The commemorative plaque at the Interplanetary Patrol’s academy bears this inscription:

USAF Rocket Ship Kilroy Was Here
FIRST TRUE SPACESHIP
1955 A.D.
From Terra to Luna and return – Lieut. Colonel Robert deFries Sims, Commanding; Captain Saul S. Abrams; Master Sergeant Malcolm MacGregor. None survived the return landing. Rest in Peace.

The fate of the Kilroy Was Here may seem like a dark touch, but it is integral to the optimistic perspective. Heinlein foresaw that men would die in space – but didn’t believe that the casualties would impede the journey. In “The Green Hills of Earth” (1947), he summed up what he imagined would be the character of the first generation of space travelers:

The crew signed releases for everything in those days; a Lloyd’s associate would have laughed in your face at the notion of insuring a spaceman. The Space Precautionary Act had never been heard of, and the Company was responsible only for wages, if and when. Half the ships that went further than Luna City never came back. Spacemen did not care; by preference they signed for shares, and any one of them would have bet you that he could jump from the 200th floor of the Harriman Tower and ground safely, if you offered him three to two and allowed him rubber heels for the landing.

Not quite prophecy. Oh, if you offered that wager to some of our astronauts, they’d probably take it, but then NASA would insist that they drop with parachutes into piles of feathers – and would call it all off as soon as a jumper sprained his foot.

This change in society, from “The impossible takes a little longer” to “Safety first”, started, or became visible, in the early 1960’s. That was also when Robert Heinlein’s heroes turned into outsiders. Perhaps it was not a coincidence.

Further reading: SF Signal has a big collection of Robert A. Heinlein links.

Comments

[Joseph T Major]

Thank you.