Rereading Heinlein: Part IV

[bibliogramma]

What with the Hugo nomination period for 1943 Retro Hugo being open, I’ve decided to kill two birds with one stone by reading the collections of Heinlein’s shorter fiction that contain anything published in 1942.

I begin my Heinlein Hugo reading with the odd little volume that packages his 1942 sf novella, Waldo, with his slightly earlier contemporary fantasy, Magic, Inc. The edition I have contains an introduction by the self-proclaimed Heinlein expert William H. Patterson, Jr., who tells us that Heinlein did not see why these two novellas were published in one volume: “...he considered these stories so mismatched, he told his agent, that, “[i]t seems to me that they go together about as well as mustard and watermelon.” It was a headache to come up with a title for the book. He ran through several lackluster possibilities and gave up: the book was published in 1950 with just the titles of the two stories joined together.”

Patterson argues that they are in fact thematically linked: “...for what “Magic, Inc.” and “Waldo” have in common is that they are both explorations of cognitive boundaries, of the mental cages we erect for ourselves, whose limits we pace out and self-reinforce.” I think he’s reaching a bit here, not because this isn’t true, but because it is true of most things Heinlein wrote, and indeed most of the best that any writer of speculative fiction has written.

Anyway, on to Waldo. It is, of course, the story that gave remotely operated robotic instruments their nickname, “waldoes,” because it is the story of an isolated and eccentric genius, Waldo F. Jones, with severe myasthenia gravis who invents and relies on such instruments to do the things he cannot. The set-up of the novella: 15 years after the transition to the use of radiant power, and the elimination of all physical means of power transmission, something is going wrong with the system. Unexplained failures, breakdowns in equipment that should not break down, findings that go against all the science that resulted in radiant power being adopted in the first place. No one can explain the problem, let alone solve it. The last option is to seek the help, if it can be obtained, of Waldo, the crippled, misanthropic genius who lives in a self-contained orbital satellite and generally refuses to interact with anyone unless it serves his interests and is on his terms.

The last time I read Waldo, which was many years ago, I did not see myself as disabled. I was overweight, and limited in certain ways, and frustrated that no matter what medical advice I followed, I could not lose weight, but just kept getting heavier. I had some respiratory issues, but the environmental illness that would eventually force me into seclusion had not yet become obvious. I could understand Waldo, the character, intellectually, but I could not feel as he might feel. Now, imprisoned by gravity and my extreme susceptibility to environmental toxins, I identify with Waldo. I long for a Freehold where I could move freely. I want to dance again. So that’s a big part of my response to the novella.

I’m also, as always, delighted by Heinlein’s premise in this story, that there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies, and that some of those might in fact involve a basis for some kinds of manipulation of reality, something that looks like magic. This time around, in reading Waldo’s unravelling of the science of the science of the Other World, I was struck by an image of the mind, resident in the Other World, reaching into the continuum of physical reality to make the body function, like an organic simulation of the mechanical waldoes created by the protagonist.

Magic, Inc. is a contemporary fantasy, a forerunner to the modern and burgeoning genre of urban fantasy. It takes place in a world where magic works according to recognised laws and principles, and is fully a part of everyday life. Our protagonists flag down a flying carpet, not a taxi. Restaurants offer “vanishing meals” - you experience all the sensation of eating, but the food magically dematerialises once it reaches the stomach. Most industries run on a combination of technology and magic.

The protagonist, Archie Fraser, runs a building supplies and construction business. He employs licenced, professional magicians on a contract basis, just as he does any other tradespersn or specialist needed to do any given job. But his freedom to hire whom he wishes is being threatened, first by an organisation that purports to be a professional standards body, that wants to regulate contracts and fees, then by a gangster who threatens serious damage to his business unless he only hires magicians they recommend, and pay protection bribes on top of that.

Being a rugged individualist, Fraser refuses, and soon there are consequences. The situation escalates, with curses, hexes, and depredations by gnomes and salamanders on his business properties, and the emergence of a heavily funded lobby that seeks to enact regulation that will put all practising magicians under control of an organisation called Magic, Inc, and compel every business using magic to negotiate only with them. Fortunately, Fraser has a friend, who is a bit of a witch himself, and who knows some very powerful allies who are willing to help Fraser fight this massive attempt to take over the practice of magic.

It’s an engaging story, well-plotted, with some truly memorable characters, including a South African anthropologist who is also a traditional “witch smeller” - a black character portrayed with an uncomfortable mix of respect and racist stereotyping. Heinlein actually manages to show some awareness of the impacts of colonialism on Africa in his handling of the character, and to treat African magical traditions with as much respect as the European ones he draws on - and this is one magical Negro who does not sacrifice himself for anyone.

All in all, it’s a fun romp that shows why Heinlein was a force to be reckoned with in science fiction, right from the very early days of his writing career.

Heinlein only published three short stories in 1942: “Goldfish Bowl,” under his own name, and two others, “Pied Piper” and “My Object All Sublime” under his Lyle Monroe pen name. The Lyle Monroe stories have apparently only been anthologised once, in Off the Main Sequence, and it was never made into an ebook. That makes it difficult to try to read those. “Goldfish Bowl” is in The Menace from Earth, which I have in an omnibus edition with The Green Hills of Earth, so I’m reading both collections.

The Green Hills of Earth, ironically enough, contains a great many stories about working and living in space, or on the Moon. Read in order, these stories - all of them part of the Luna City cycle, which may or may not be part of Heinlein’s Future History - tell, or at least suggest, the ‘history’ of humanity’s movement into space. There’s “Delilah and the Space Rigger” which tells two stories - one about the construction of the space station that makes travel from Earth to the Moon feasible, and one about the psychological shift from space as frontier and space as living environment. “The Space Jockey” continues both themes, the establishment of regular transport to the Moon and the establishment of family life on the Moon. “The Long Watch,” one of Heinlein’s most moving stories, references politics on Earth, but is about the courage of the average man called on to do extraordinary things, and the role of the Moon in making those green hills of Earth safe from war. “Gentlemen Be Seated” is set during the construction of Luna City, and, like three of the following stories, “The Black Pits of Luna,” “It’s Great to Be Back,” and “Ordeal in Space,” highlights what it take, psychologically, to live in space, away from the relative comfort and safety of Earth.

“We Also Walk Dogs” takes place entirely on Earth, but deals peripherally with the preliminary steps toward the establishment of a solar system government that integrates multiple cultures, human and otherwise. It’s in “The Green Hills of Earth” that Heinlein, in another classic and emotional tale, bridges the contradictions between the drive outward, into the far corners of space, and the memory of Earth that the spacemen carry with them - a memory as idealised as all the other things that the blind poet remembers but can not see. “Logic of Empire” ends the collection on a sombre note, an oppositional piece to the optimistic story of human progress to the stats. It is the dark underbelly of the romance of exploration - the tragedy of exploitation - and brings the reader, shockingly, down to earth with the fear that the errors of earth’s past will all be replayed in space’s future.


The stories collected in The Menace from Earth are less thematically linked, and can be divided loosely into two groups. Some of the stories are part of the Luna City cycle, including the story that gives the collection its name. In these stories, one sees the same focus on the spirit of exploration as in the other stories set in this particular timeline and frequently set in, or referencing, Luna City, most of which are collected in The Green Hills of Earth. Some of the stories - “ Columbus Was a Dope,” “The Menace from Earth,” - show Luna City as a well established habitat, with its own full culture, serving as a cradle for further exploration, while “Skylift” focuses on the downsides and the dangers of a space-faring society.

In addition to the Luna City cycle stories, the collection contains several stand-alone stories, including some of Heinlein’s best known short fiction - “The Year of the Jackpot,” “By His Bootstraps,” and “Goldfish Bowl.” These stories, and the two lesser known tales “Water is for Washing” and “Project Nightmare,” interestingly enough, do share a common theme of menace - from the sun, from the waters, from the skies, from the future, from other humans.

Rereading these short stories reminds me of Heinlein’s great versatility, and of how very good a writer he was, and how modern his work still feels today, despite his being in many ways a man of his time. So many sf short stories of the period lack in characterisation, or use language in ways that feel forced, overwrought, or insufficiently nuanced upon rereading. Heinlein ages well in many ways, even when the inevitable casual sexism and racism of the times is too much a part of the story to be set aside - though even then, it is important to note that Heinlein seems to have thought more about the social status and roles of women and people of colour than many other writers of his time, and he does his best to make them fully realised characters, and not just stereotypes, when he includes them in his writing.