Robert Heinlein: Assignment in Eternity
Mar. 31st, 2019 12:39 pmI spent some time a while back reading Robert Heinlein’s published collections of short stories - but I overlooked one, Assignment in Eternity, which was unfortunate because these four stories are among the most memorable of Heinlein’s stories in my opinion - as long as one doesn’t look at them too closely. Unfortunately, what makes them memorable is also what makes them not particularly good stories.
“Gulf” is primarily a spy thriller structured much the same way as a Bond film cold open - it’s only real purpose is to set up the proposition that forms the central part of the story, and the story then ends in a suicide mission in which both protagonists are killed. As a story, it’s rather weak on structure. As an argument, it’s just more of Heinlein’s notions of the manifestation of a superman, but this time, the superman will benevolently rule the others. What it really shows is how easy it is fo that kind of mind candy to corrupt. The punch that holds the nastiness in place is the heroic deaths of the protagonists - and that moment stayed with me for a long time.
“Elsewhen” does much the same thing with its stories of people who have learned how to walk through time. It’s so tempting, to use the power to end up when you are most suited to be. In “Elsewhen,” a man who has learned the secret of changing timelines teaches five of his students how to do the same. One lives a life at a thousand times the speed of their own time line and ends up as a saint in a land where heaven exists much as she expected it. Two end up in a world where there is war, and it’s going badly for humanity - they take military and engineering science there to save their new home. Two find themselves happily in an agrarian, quiet world with just enough technology to be comfortable. When their teacher is charged with murder after their disappearance, he closes the circles by taking some of the agrarian world’s tech to the world at war, and then settling in to spend his last years on the agrarian world, occasionally visiting his former students in the now significantly improved war world. There’s now no way for anyone on the central earth to find him. It’s the ultimate portal fantasy, that can happen for anyone who stumbles upon the trick of freeing himself from living in time. But when it’s finished, all you have left is five people enjoying that perfect fantasy, and all of the conflict is unimportant
Lost Legacy is a novella that again, tells a story that, for all its interesting ideas and wish fulfillment ideas, is not actually much of a story at all. The concept is that once everyone have superpowers. Then a bunch of elitists tried to limit whose powers would be allowed to develop, and the non-elitists, rather that fight, surrendered the field, leaving little secret notes so someday an emerging society could restore the open use of powers. One day, some energetic American discover their powers, connect with other who have been gathering, and starts the war the older nonelitists walked away from. We are given to understand that they will prevail because they are Americans, and are using Scouting to hide their training program. (But only boys, not girls in scouting, because girls don’t matter.)
The final story, “Jerry Was a Man” may have ben so cringeworthy because in it, Heinlein winds himself up to Say Something about black-white relations in America, and he always went way off line when he tried that. It’s the decadent future and wealthy people are big on genetically engineered pets. The useless boy-toy husband of a very wealthy woman wants a pegasus, so she tries to buy him one. He throws a tantrum when he discovers that a pegasus would be incapable of flight unless it were built like a condor - but while he’s negotiating for something that might please him, Mrs. Moneybags notices a sad humanoid worker named Jerry in a cage and discovers that the company euthanises all older engineered workers.
She’s appalled, and because she does own a large section of the company, tries and fails to have the policy changed. The manager and the boy-toy try to manipulate her, first by giving her the right to a permanent leasehold over Jerry, then later by trying to take Jerry back when she decides to go to court for his personhood. This results in a delightful scene where boy-toy discovers that being handsome does not trump betraying your wife and is kicked out. Mrs. Moneybags gets the best legal assistance she can afford, and Jerry sues to have himself and his people declared human enough that they can be held in guardianship but not killed. The sickening part in an otherwise rather funny court scene is when Jerry’s humanity is cinched by his dressing up in faded dungarees and singing Swanee River. Now, admittedly, artists who are powerful and unquestionably the best humanity has to offer, such as, say, the great Paul Robeson, have sung that song so that they uplifted it, rather than being pulled down by its lyrics and images, but the whole image of a genetically enhanced primate gaining a portion (maybe 3/5 ths) of humanity by mimicking a black man disturbs me greatly. Yes, the story’s intent is good. But this is a tonedeaf use of images on Heinlein’s part and it turns much of the good stuff to ashes when you read it.
This particular collection of Heinlein stories is very much one that I wish the rewrite fairy could get her hands on and turn them into the solid stories that lurk inside them.
“Gulf” is primarily a spy thriller structured much the same way as a Bond film cold open - it’s only real purpose is to set up the proposition that forms the central part of the story, and the story then ends in a suicide mission in which both protagonists are killed. As a story, it’s rather weak on structure. As an argument, it’s just more of Heinlein’s notions of the manifestation of a superman, but this time, the superman will benevolently rule the others. What it really shows is how easy it is fo that kind of mind candy to corrupt. The punch that holds the nastiness in place is the heroic deaths of the protagonists - and that moment stayed with me for a long time.
“Elsewhen” does much the same thing with its stories of people who have learned how to walk through time. It’s so tempting, to use the power to end up when you are most suited to be. In “Elsewhen,” a man who has learned the secret of changing timelines teaches five of his students how to do the same. One lives a life at a thousand times the speed of their own time line and ends up as a saint in a land where heaven exists much as she expected it. Two end up in a world where there is war, and it’s going badly for humanity - they take military and engineering science there to save their new home. Two find themselves happily in an agrarian, quiet world with just enough technology to be comfortable. When their teacher is charged with murder after their disappearance, he closes the circles by taking some of the agrarian world’s tech to the world at war, and then settling in to spend his last years on the agrarian world, occasionally visiting his former students in the now significantly improved war world. There’s now no way for anyone on the central earth to find him. It’s the ultimate portal fantasy, that can happen for anyone who stumbles upon the trick of freeing himself from living in time. But when it’s finished, all you have left is five people enjoying that perfect fantasy, and all of the conflict is unimportant
Lost Legacy is a novella that again, tells a story that, for all its interesting ideas and wish fulfillment ideas, is not actually much of a story at all. The concept is that once everyone have superpowers. Then a bunch of elitists tried to limit whose powers would be allowed to develop, and the non-elitists, rather that fight, surrendered the field, leaving little secret notes so someday an emerging society could restore the open use of powers. One day, some energetic American discover their powers, connect with other who have been gathering, and starts the war the older nonelitists walked away from. We are given to understand that they will prevail because they are Americans, and are using Scouting to hide their training program. (But only boys, not girls in scouting, because girls don’t matter.)
The final story, “Jerry Was a Man” may have ben so cringeworthy because in it, Heinlein winds himself up to Say Something about black-white relations in America, and he always went way off line when he tried that. It’s the decadent future and wealthy people are big on genetically engineered pets. The useless boy-toy husband of a very wealthy woman wants a pegasus, so she tries to buy him one. He throws a tantrum when he discovers that a pegasus would be incapable of flight unless it were built like a condor - but while he’s negotiating for something that might please him, Mrs. Moneybags notices a sad humanoid worker named Jerry in a cage and discovers that the company euthanises all older engineered workers.
She’s appalled, and because she does own a large section of the company, tries and fails to have the policy changed. The manager and the boy-toy try to manipulate her, first by giving her the right to a permanent leasehold over Jerry, then later by trying to take Jerry back when she decides to go to court for his personhood. This results in a delightful scene where boy-toy discovers that being handsome does not trump betraying your wife and is kicked out. Mrs. Moneybags gets the best legal assistance she can afford, and Jerry sues to have himself and his people declared human enough that they can be held in guardianship but not killed. The sickening part in an otherwise rather funny court scene is when Jerry’s humanity is cinched by his dressing up in faded dungarees and singing Swanee River. Now, admittedly, artists who are powerful and unquestionably the best humanity has to offer, such as, say, the great Paul Robeson, have sung that song so that they uplifted it, rather than being pulled down by its lyrics and images, but the whole image of a genetically enhanced primate gaining a portion (maybe 3/5 ths) of humanity by mimicking a black man disturbs me greatly. Yes, the story’s intent is good. But this is a tonedeaf use of images on Heinlein’s part and it turns much of the good stuff to ashes when you read it.
This particular collection of Heinlein stories is very much one that I wish the rewrite fairy could get her hands on and turn them into the solid stories that lurk inside them.