The Worlds Of Robert A. Heinlein Part 1

The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein.

Robert A. Heinlein.

INTRODUCTION: PANDORA'S BOX.

ONCE OPENED, the Box could never be closed. But after the myriad swarming Troubles came Hope.

Science fiction is not prophecy. It often reads as if it were prophecy; indeed the pract.i.tioners of this odd genre (pun intentional - I won't do it again) of fiction usually strive hard to make their stones sound as if they were true pictures of the future. Prophecies.

Prophesying is what the weatherman does, the race track tipster, the stock market adviser, the fortune-teller who reads palms or gazes into a crystal.

Each one is predicting the future - sometimes exactly, sometimes in vague, veiled, or ambiguous language, sometimes simply with a claim of statistical probability, but always with a claim seriously made of disclosing some piece of the future.

This is not at all what a science fiction author does. Science fiction is almost always laid in the future - or at least in a fictional possible-future - and is almost invariably deeply concerned with the shape of that future. But the method is not prediction; it is usually extrapolation and/or speculation. Indeed the author is not required to (and usually does not) regard the fictional "future" he has chosen to write about as being the events most likely to come to pa.s.s; his purpose may have nothing to do with the probability that these storied events may happen.

"Extrapolation" means much the same in fiction writing as it does in mathematics: exploring a trend. It means continuing a curve, a path, a trend into the future, by extending its present direction and continuing the shape it has displayed in its past performance-i.e., if it is a sine curve in the past, you extrapolate it as a sine curve in the future, not as an hyperbola, nor a Witch of Agnesi and most certainly not as a tangent straight line.

"Speculation" has far more elbowroom than extrapolation; it starts with a "What if?" - and the new factor thrown in by the what-if may be both wildly improbable and so revolutionary in effect as to throw a sine-curve trend (or a yeast-growth trend, or any trend) into something unrecognizably different. What if little green men land on the White House lawn and invite us to join a Galactic union? - or big green men land and enslave us and eat us? What if we solve the problem of immortality? What if New York City really does go dry? (And not just the present fiddlin' shortage tackled by fiddlin' quarter-measures - can you imagine a man being lynched for wasting an ice cube? Try Frank Herbert's Dune World saga, which is not - I judge - prophecy in any sense, but is powerful, convincing, and most ingenious speculation. Living, as I do, in a state which has just two sorts of water, too little and too much - we just finished seven years of drought with seven inches of rain in two hours, and one was about as disastrous as the other - I find a horrid fascination in Dune World, in Charles Einstein's The Day New York Went Dry, and in stories about Biblical-size floods such as S. Fowler Wright's Deluge.)

Most science fiction stories use both extrapolation and speculation.

Consider "Blowups Happen," elsewhere in this volume. It was written in 1939, updated very slightly for book publication just after World War II by inserting some words such as "Manhattan Project and "Hiros.h.i.+ma," but not rewritten, and is one of a group of stories published under the pretentious collective t.i.tle of The History of the Future (!) - which certainly sounds like prophecy.

I disclaim any intention of prophesying; I wrote that story for the sole purpose of making money to pay off a mortgage and with the single intention of entertaining the reader. As prophecy the story falls flat on its silly face - any tenderfoot Scout can pick it to pieces - but I think it is still entertaining as a story, else it would not be here; I have a business reputation to protect and wish to continue making money. Nor am I ashamed of this motivation. Very little of the great literature of our heritage arose solely from a wish to "create art"; most writing, both great and not-so-great, has as its proximate cause a need for money combined with an aversion to, or an inability to perform, hard writing offers a legal and reasonably honest way out of this dilemma.

A science fiction author may have, and often does have, other motivations in addition to pursuit of profit. He may wish to create "art for art's sake," he may want to warn the world against a course he feels to be disastrous (Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World - but please note that each is intensely entertaining, and that each made stacks of money), he may wish to urge the human race toward a course which he considers desirable (Bellamy's Looking Backwards, Wells' Men Like G.o.ds), he may wish to instruct, or uplift, or even to dazzle. But the science fiction writer - any fiction writer - must keep entertainment consciously in mind as his prime purpose . . . or he may find himself back dragging that old cotton sack.

If he succeeds in this purpose, his story is likely to remain gripping entertainment long years after it has turned out to be false "prophecy." H.

G. Wells is perhaps the greatest science fiction author of all time - and his greatest science fiction stories were written around sixty years ago .

. . under the whip. Bedfast with consumption, unable to hold a job, flat broke, paying alimony - he had to make money somehow, and writing was the heaviest work he could manage. He was clearly aware (see his autobiography) that to stay alive he must be entertaining. The result was a flood of some of the most brilliant speculative stories about the future ever written. As prophecy they are all hopelessly dated . . .

which matters not at all; they are as spellbinding now as they were in the Gay 'Nineties and the Mauve Decade.

Try to lay hands on his The Sleeper Awakes. The gadgetry in it is ingenious - and all wrong. The projected future in it is brilliant - and did not happen. All of which does not sully the story; it is a great story of love and sacrifice and blood-chilling adventure set in a matrix of mind-stretching speculation about the nature of Man and his Destiny. I read it first forty-five years ago, plus perhaps a dozen times since . . . and still reread it whenever I get to feeling uncertain about just how one does go about the unlikely process of writing fiction for entertainment of strangers - and again finding myself caught up in the sheer excitement of Wells' story.

"Solution Unsatisfactory" herein is a consciously Wellsian story. No, no, I'm not claiming that it is of H. G. Wells' quality - its quality is for you to judge, not me. But it was written by the method which Wells spelled out for the speculative story: Take one, just one, basic new a.s.sumption, then examine all its consequences - but express those consequences in terms of human beings. The a.s.sumption I chose was the "Absolute Weapon"; the speculation concerns what changes this forces on mankind. But the "history"

the story describes simply did not happen.

However the problems discussed in this story are as fresh today, the issues just as poignant, for the grim reason that we have not reached even an "unsatisfactory" solution to the problem of the Absolute Weapon; we have reached no solution.

In the twenty-five years that have pa.s.sed since I wrote that story the world situation has grown much worse. Instead of one Absolute Weapon there are now at least five distinct types - an "Absolute Weapon" being defined as one against which there is no effective defense and which kills indiscriminately over a very wide area. The earliest of the five types, the A-bomb, is now known to be possessed by at least five nations, at least twenty-five other nations have the potential to build them in the next few years.

But there is a possible sixth type. Earlier this year I attended a seminar at one of the nation's new think-factories. One of the questions discussed was whether or not a "Doomsday Bomb" could be built - a single weapon which would destroy all life of all sorts on this planet; one weapon, not an all-out nuclear holocaust involving hundreds or thousands of ICBMs. No, this was to be a world-wrecker of the sort Dr. E. E. Smith used to use in his interstellar sagas back in the days when S-F magazines had bug-eyed monsters on the cover and were considered lowbrow, childish, fantastic.

The conclusions reached were: Could the Doomsday Machine be built? - yes, no question about it. What would it cost? - quite cheap. A seventh type hardly seems necessary.

And that makes the grimness of "Solution Unsatisfactory" seem more like an Oz book in which the most harrowing adventures always turn out happily.

"Searchlight" is almost pure extrapolation, almost no speculation. The gadgets in it are either hardware on the shelf, or hardware which will soon be on the shelf because nothing is involved but straight-forward engineering development. "Life-Line" (my first story) is its opposite, a story which is sheer speculation and either impossible or very highly improbable, as the What-If postulate will never be solved - I think. I hope. But the two stories are much alike in that neither depends on when it was written nor when it is read. Both are independent of any particular shape to history; they are timeless.

"Free Men" is another timeless story. As told, it looks like another "after the blowup" story - but it is not. Although the place is nominally the United States and the time (as shown by the gadgetry) is set in the not-distant future, simply by changing names of persons and places and by inserting other weapons and other gadgets this story could be any country and any time in the past or future - or could even be on another planet and concern a non-human race. But the story does apply here-and-now, so I told it that way.

"Pandora's Box" was the original t.i.tle of an article researched and written in 1949 for publication in 1950, the end of the half-century. Inscrutable are the ways of editors: it appeared with the t.i.tle 'Where To?" and purported to be a non-fiction prophecy concerning the year 2000 A.D. as seen from 1950. (I agree that a science fiction writer should avoid marihuana, prophecy, and time payments - but I was tempted by a soft rustle.)

Our present editor decided to use this article, but suggested that it should be updated. Authors who wish to stay in the business listen most carefully to editors' suggestions, even when they think an editor has been out in the sun without a hat; I agreed.

And reread "Where To" and discovered that our editor was undeniably correct; it needed updating. At least.

But at last I decided not to try to conceal my bloopers. Below is reproduced, unchanged, my predictions of fifteen years back. But here and there through the article I have inserted signs for footnotes - like this: (z) - and these will be found at the end of the 1950 article . . . calling attention to bloopers and then forthrightly excusing myself by rationalizing how anyone, even Nostradamus, would have made the same mistake . . . hedging my bets, in other cases, or chucking in brand-new predictions and carefully laying them farther in the future than I am likely to live . . . and, in some cases, crowing loudly about successful predictions.

So -

WHERE TO?.

(And Why We Didn't Get There)

Most science fiction consists of big-muscled stories about adventures in s.p.a.ce, atomic wars, invasions by extra-terrestrials, and such. All very well - but now we will take time out for a look at ordinary home life half a century hence.

Except for tea leaves and other magical means, the only way to guess at the future is by examining the present in the light of the past. Let's go back half a century and visit your grandmother before we attempt to visit your grandchildren.

1900: Mr. McKinley is President and the airplane has not yet been invented.

Let's knock on the door of that house with the gingerbread, the stained gla.s.s, and the cupola.

The lady of the house answers. You recognize her - your own grandmother, Mrs. Middlecla.s.s. She is almost as plump as you remember her, for she "put on some good, healthy flesh" after she married.

She welcomes you and offers coffee cake, fresh from her modern kitchen (running water from a hand pump; the best coal range Pittsburgh ever produced). Everything about her house is modern - hand-painted china, souvenirs from the Columbian Exposition, beaded portieres, s.h.i.+ning baseburner stoves, gas lights, a telephone on the wall.

There is no bathroom, but she and Mr. Middlecla.s.s are thinking of putting one in. Mr. Middlecla.s.s's mother calls this nonsense, but your grandmother keeps up with the times. She is an advocate of clothing reform, wears only one petticoat, bathes twice a week, and her corsets are guaranteed rust proof. She has been known to defend female suffrage - but not in the presence of Mr. Middlecla.s.s.

Nevertheless, you find difficulty in talking with her. Let's jump back to the present and try again.

The automatic elevator takes us to the ninth floor, and we pick out a door by its number, that being the only way to distinguish it.

"Don't bother to ring," you say? What? It's your door and you know exactly what lies beyond it -

Very well, let's move a half century into the future and try another middle cla.s.s home.

It's a suburban home not two hundred miles from the city. You pick out your destination from the air while the cab is landing you - a cl.u.s.ter of hemispheres which makes you think of the houses Dorothy found in Oz

You set the cab to return to its hangar and go into the entrance hall. You neither knock, nor ring. The screen has warned them before you touched down on the landing flat and the autobutler's transparency is s.h.i.+ning with: PLEASE RECORD A MESSAGE.

Before you can address the microphone a voice calls out, "Oh, it's you!

Come in, come in." There is a short wait, as your hostess is not at the door. The autobutler flashed your face to the patio - where she was reading and sunning herself - and has relayed her voice back to you.

She pauses at the door, looks at you through one-way gla.s.s, and frowns slightly, she knows your old-fas.h.i.+oned disapproval of casual nakedness. Her kindness causes her to disobey the family psychiatrist; she grabs a robe and covers herself before signaling the door to open.

The psychiatrist was right; you have thus been cla.s.sed with strangers, tradespeople, and others who are not family intimates. But you must swallow your annoyance; you cannot object to her wearing clothes when you have sniffed at her for not doing so.

There is no reason why she should wear clothes at home. The house is clean - not somewhat clean, but clean - and comfortable. The floor is warm to bare feet; there are no unpleasant drafts, no cold walls. All dust is precipitated from the air entering this house. All textures, of floors, of couch, of chair, are comfortable to bare skin. Sterilizing ultra-violet light floods each room whenever it is unoccupied, and, several times a day, a "whirlwind" blows house-created dust from all surfaces and whisks it out.