Seekers of Tomorrow (26 page)

An expanding field is good for the beginning writer and editors were anxious to encourage, astounding science-fic-tion in its July, 1938, issue had an editorial titled simply "Contest." Briefly, this editorial told the readers how to submit stories, what the "prizes" were for the "winners," and announced a perpetual contest was in effect for talent. Hein-lein decided to submit something to them.

His first story,
Life Line,
after an unsuccessful try at collier's, was offered to astounding science-fiction, ac-cepted, and published in the August, 1939, number. It would be nice to say that Heinlein "wowed them" from the first, just as Stanley G. Weinbaum had exploded like a nova five years earlier with
A Martian
Odyssey,
but it didn't happen that way.
Life Line,
though well written, was on the border-line of acceptability. It concerned one Dr. Hugo Pinero, who builds a machine that can tell a man how long he will live. The machine functions on the premise that the future, present, and past exist simultaneously; that time is a dimen-sion and therefore one's duration in that dimension may be electrically measured. The climax comes with the realization that the inventor has calculated his own time of death and philosophically accepted it. This story is science fiction only by courtesy, and in style and plotting resembles stories of the World War I period in argosy and all-story weekly.

There were also a few distractions that kept read-ers from recognizing this new major talent. The month before, July, 1939, astounding science-fiction's cover had featured a writer named A. E. van Vogt with a dynamic first story, patterned on Campbell's
Who Goes There?
called
Black De-stroyer.
The issue following, September, 1939, the magazine published a decidedly adroit first story,
Ether Breather,
by another capable young man named Theodore Sturgeon.

The competition wasn't asleep either. A few months ear-lier thrilling wonder stories had announced the first-prize winner in their amateur author contest, a promising neophyte by the name of Alfred Bester whose
Broken Axiom
ap-peared in the April, 1939, issue. The month before that, amazing stories, reaching into its slush pile, came up with an acceptable effort of an ebullient New York science-fiction fan named Isaac Asimov,
Marooned off Vesta.
As far as magazine editors were concerned, things were good all over.

Misfit,
Heinlein's second published story, in the November, 1939, astounding science-fiction, has usually been given short shrift by reviewers as a minor effort imperfectly told. True enough as far as intrinsic merit is concerned, but with the critical advantage of hindsight, it can be seen to be of great importance as a precursor of Heinlein's method. The story concerns a group of maladjusted boys who are taken to an asteroid by the government for reorientation. Among them is a youth from the Ozarks who develops into a mathematical genius, capable of matching an electronic com-puter without pen or paper. The boy, Andrew Jackson Libby, saves the ship when the calculator fails and he accurately functions in its stead.
Misfit
is Heinlein's first juvenile. It fits the pattern of the juveniles of Heinlein's post World War II writing career: the teenage hero, the firm but fundamentally benevolent military man, an elementary skeleton of a pilot (misfit boy proves himself) set against a casually detailed background developed as though it could happen today. The gifted boy later be-comes an important factor in Heinlein's novel
Methuselah's Children,
helping to perfect a near-the-speed-of-light drive for a starship. Heinlein came into his own, after a very brief appren-ticeship, with the short story
Requiem
in the January, 1940, astounding science-fiction. The hero of that story is an old man with a bad heart, whose drive, ingenuity, and capital made the first manned space flight to the moon possible. He should never go himself, because the acceleration and other rigors of space travel will kill him. But he convinces two hard-up space men to take him to the moon. Evading all attempts by associates and government officials to stop him, he survives the trip and lives just long enough to touch the moon's sur-face. Here, the student of writing techniques becomes aware of the caliber of Heinlein's craftsmanship. The phrase "art that conceals art" applies pointedly to
Requiem,
as it does to a large number of Heinlein's stories. The reader is not aware that there is a "style." Everything is subordinated to the story, which is carried along almost invisibly by clear prose, natural sounding dialogue, and a careful integration of detail concerning the times, the society, and the past of the charac-ters that never disturbs the flow of the narrative. This ex-traordinary talent is at once Heinlein's triumph and sorrow. It can achieve memorable poignancy as in the case of
Requi-em,
yet no one ever refers to his prose as poetic, because the details are incorporated with such cool efficiency that few realize the author has sacrificed the aesthetics of the individ-ual passage to achieve the unified poetry of the whole.

Requiem
is unusual in still another respect. It is a sequel to a longer story that was not written until ten years later. The trials and tribulations of Harriman in financing and launching the first moon rocket, casually referred to in
Requiem,
are detailed in
The Man Who Sold the Moon,
the 30,000-word title story in the first hard-cover collection of Heinlein's Future History series, published by Shasta in 1950. Though relatively recent, this story, which never appeared in a maga-zine, being written especially for the book, is already hopelessly outdated from the standpoint of history.

In the issue in which
Requiem
was published, editor Camp-bell announced gleefully two forthcoming novels. The first, by Heinlein, was "
If
This Goes On..
." The second,
Final Blackout,
was by the brilliant pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard, who would disappear from the ranks of science fiction some years later to devote his time to his dual creations of Dianet-ics and Scientology. The latter story was distinctly the better of the two, powerfully written, prophetically warning, with the principal character magnificently drawn. Yet, Heinlein's story was destined to have by far the more permanent effect on the pattern of future science fiction.

"
If
This Goes On
..." fell in with Campbell's new policy of stressing the sociological implications of the changes of the future in preference to advances in technology. It was a return to the old "Utopias" with the difference that this was a "warning" story, a "Utopia in reverse" or "Misutopia." The pattern of thought shaping, television spying, and studied psychological and physical torture to keep the masses in line and maintain power, all precede the horrors of George Orwell's
1984,
published nine years later in 1949. Not that Heinlein originated the theory of the methods but something must be said for the writer who brings inadequate-ly considered areas of thought under scrutiny. Most important, "
If
This Goes On.
.." showed one possi-bility by which a state-imposed religion might effectively play a role in the future as a cover for tyranny. Science fiction in the magazine had stayed clear of theocracy, but that policy was now to end, opening a rich field of exploration which would help create at least two reputations: those of Fritz Leiber, Jr., upon the appearance of
Gather, Darkness!
(1943), and Walter M. Miller, Jr., in
A Canticle for Leibowitz
(1960).

Heinlein's credibility in many of his works comes from the technique of taking the future for granted. The characters are familiar with the world they live in and behave ac-cordingly, but through their conversation, their actions, and the story's setting, the reader is adroitly filled in on the details which frequently are more fascinating than the plot. This eliminates the need for the creaking technique of bringing a man of the past into the future or somehow getting a message back to today's world. Despite its positive factors and considering an elaborate rewriting which almost doubled its length when it appeared in book form as
Revolt of 2100
(Shasta Publishers, 1953),
"If This Goes On .
.." is a poorly organized tale with the emphasis on action. Its badly mixed-up principal characters get nowhere in their private problems, and they play an inconsequential role in America's Second Revolution. The hero isn't even in a position to report well on a potentially fascinating event. Historically, "
If
This Goes On .
.." is a very important story. As a work of fiction it is lightweight entertainment.

It was
The Roads Must Roll
that convinced readers of astounding science-fiction for June, 1940, that Heinlein had arrived as an important writer. Moving roads and walk-ways had been common fare in science fiction since Jules Verne, but Heinlein was the first to devote an entire story to a nation whose economy was geared to this form of trans-portation. The plot framework is simple and unimportant: what happens when the mechanics who operate these conveyor-belt roads strike. The picture outlined by Heinlein of the character of the civilization that would result from this type of trans-portation is ingeniously constructed and its every detail is engrossing.

Not everything Heinlein was writing at the time struck a responsive chord.
Let There Be Light,
probably rejected by astounding science-fiction, found a home in a new maga-zine, super science stories (May, 1940), edited by Freder-ik Pohl. Because Pohl couldn't pay top rates, the story appeared under the pen name Lyle Monroe, the "Lyle" being the maiden name of Heinlein's mother. The plot deals with an inventor who discovers a new source of power and is blocked from marketing it by big power interests. He defeats them by making his secret available to the entire world at no charge. It was a passable sort of story, but aroused a predominantly unfavorable reader reaction because the attempt at naturalism through the use of slang and colloquialism, and the sex implications were misinterpreted.

With the publicity attendant upon "
If
This Goes On
. . .," a sequel was not long in coming.
Coventry
appeared in as-tounding science-fiction for July, 1940, and deals with the period after the Second American Revolution, when a spe-cial area, surrounded by an impassable electronic barrier, has been set up for people who will not conform to the rest of society. They have absolute "freedom" as long as they stay within physical bounds and can leave at any time they decide they don't like it. The theme was intriguing, but Heinlein failed to make effective use of all the idea's inherent possibilities. However, the story was revelatory insofar as it shed light on Heinlein's own thinking.

Once again we have the motif of the misfit, a recurrent major or minor plot device in a substantial portion of Hein-lein's work. Not only is Heinlein obsessed with misfits, but in a surprising number of cases these characters are inherently noble and have a major contribution to make to society. Fre-quently they are far superior to normal man.

In
The Misfit,
the youth taken for reorientation is a mathematical genius; the malcontents of "
If
This
Goes On . . ."
are the revolutionaries who will restore freedom to America; rebellious Venusian workers in
Logic Of Empire
form a community in every way more desirable than those of the rest of the planet; outcast "Muties" in
Universe,
despite their grotesqueness, possess the clarity of mind to lead man to the promised land;
Methuselah's Children's
per-secuted "Families" are a race of inherently longlived hu-mans;
Waldo's
protagonist must live apart from the human race, subsisting on brilliant invention; Thorby, a slave boy in
Citizen of the Galaxy,
turns out to be the heir of a great family business empire; and in many of Heinlein's juveniles we find emigrant families from earth, who can't make it on the home planet, ending up as courageous and fulfilled pio-neers.

A very definite link to Heinlein's thinking is provided by Fader, a prime "misfit" in
Coventry
who really is a disguised military officer on a mission. Forced to retire from active duty with the armed services, Heinlein tried a variety of occupations, none of them permanent until he became a writer. A man with his sensitivity must have felt like a right hand being forced into a left-hand glove. Unable to use his military training effectively, it was easy for him to develop an empathy for others he met who were floundering or miscast. A large percentage of Heinlein's misfits are eventually integrated into society, often through the aid of the military or through the adoption of military-like philosophies. Somehow, Heinlein has overlooked the fact that successful authors are not misfits in modern society. They may be different but they
are
accepted, frequently in a sickeningly lavish fashion. He is still not aware that he no longer needs to justify himself vicariously.

Heinlein's
Blowups Happen,
a novelette built around the tension of operating an atomic energy plant, seems more grimly prophetic in hindsight than it actually appeared to be when it was first published in astounding science-fiction for September, 1940, considering that Campbell had been editorially pounding away at the proximity of atomic energy since 1938. Nevertheless, the story was effective when pub-lished, despite its conclusion that no atomic energy plant could safely be operated on the earth's surface and it would be found necessary to put such plants into orbit as earth satellites. This belief is said to have been held by Campbell during the period the story was published and it is quite possible it may have been a compromise to satisfy him. More positively,
Blowups Happen
was a model for
Nerves
by Lester del Rey. Heinlein also tried his hand at a bit of good-natured buffoonery for unknown.
The Devil Makes the
Law,
in the September, 1940, issue, is about an America where spells and incantations are part of everyday business, but despite its straight-faced approach it didn't quite come off. Heinlein was so prolific now that it was essential that he adopt a pen name in order to be able to run more than one story an issue in astounding science-fiction. Campbell, of Scotch descent, had a deep pride in his blood line. Two of his own pen names were Don A. Stuart and Arthur McCann. When Philadelphia science-fiction fan Milton A. Rothman sold his first story to him, Campbell christened him Lee Gregor. Isaac Asimov had successfully fought off a pseudony-mous change of ancestry, but Heinlein compromised as Campbell took his middle name "Anson" and made him a member of the clan as Anson MacDonald. The first story under that name, a novel called
Sixth Column,
ran for three installments beginning in the January, 1941, astounding science-fiction. The plot outline was originally the basis of an unpublished novelette of Campbell's and dealt with an America of the near future, conquered by the Orientals, which forms a religion as a front for a revolutionary movement. The foundation of the United States' hopes is the invention of a device which can be set to kill Orientals discriminatingly while leaving other races un-touched. The appearance of a scientifically produced thou-sand-foot-high black giant, dressed in the robes of the priest-hood, is reminiscent of Campbell's
Cloak of Aesir.
Again, as in a large number of Heinlein stories, it is the military man who saves the day. Whatever Heinlein's other early impres-sions, his years as an officer in the Navy must have been most pleasant and psychologically rewarding, for he looks back at them with reverence and nostalgia.