Not much new under the sun

[bibliogramma]

Variable Star, R. A. Heinlein & Spider Robinson

Well, this was touted as a brand new story from Heinlein’s notes, brought to life by one of Heinlein’s greatest fans and a solid SF author in his own right, Spider Robinson.

What it actually was, I think, was a Spider Robinson pastiche of an idea that Heinlein had for one story but which he subsequently used as the basis for three or four of his other juveniles instead. I don’t dispute that they found an outline for a novel that Heinlein never wrote – in the exact same form as the outline, anyway – but the story has so many familiar plots, subplots and themes that I rather suspect that the main reason the Heinlein never turned this particular outline into a novel is because he decided (rightfully, I think) that he had too much going on in the outline for one novel and broke it up into several other books.

Seriously. If you’ve read Time for the Stars, you know about 75 percent of the plot. (It is worth noting, I think, that Time for the Stars was published in 1956, the year after Heinlein wrote and shelved this outline. The POV character is different, but the plot’s very similar. For the POV character, we have one of Heinlein’s dirt-poor farmboys headed to space to make his fortune.

One of the major themes of the outline, which is all about the corruption of wealth with an interstellar commerce backdrop, was probably part of the seed for Citizen of the Galaxy (which appeared in 1957).

The remaining part of the plot is a Heinlein staple – very young girl, preferably a genius, falls in love with older boy/young man , and spends the novel finding a way to make him realise he loves her/making him love her/waiting to grow up enough so that expressing his love for her isn’t statutory rape. In this case, it’s the time dilation effect that allows the young girl genius to magically become the same age as the initially much older protagonist by the end of the book. However, it’s worth noting that another book published in 1957 - The Door into Summer - also deals with finance and corruption, and features a young girl who manages to catch up to the older man she loves, this time thanks to his spending a few decades in cold sleep. The fact that in this outline, it was a rich little girl and a poor but worthy young man got re-used in Have space Suit Will Travel (published in 1958).

Incidentally, the outline was missing an ending, so Spider Robinson supplied one that is quite his own. But my gut says that the ending Heinlein intended to go with the “lost” outline ended up as the basis of the Dora interlude in Time Enough for Love - young girl, passionately in love with much older man, ends up homesteading on a colony world with him.

I wasn’t sorry I’d read it, because I do like Spider Robinson’s stuff, and I have a fondness for Heinlein’s juveniles, but it certainly wasn’t a brand spanking new Heinlein story, nor did it live up to the hype.