Seekers of Tomorrow (28 page)

The in-group of the science-fiction world was proud of Heinlein's achievements in the name of their literature, but they found it difficult to hide their disappointment that his success also meant an end to his pioneering taboo-breaking and mind-stimulating concepts, such as had marked "
If
This Goes On .
. .,"
Universe, Methuselah's Children, By His Boot-straps,
and
Waldo.
A resigned acceptance of Heinlein's new career began to become apparent in the ranks when his second juvenile,
Space Cadet
(1948), appeared. True, it was little more than a fictionalized approach to the training pro-gram of future spacemen, but there was such a wealth of fascinating science as well as a peek at a Venusian alien culture woven into the background that it seemed a bit more than "just a juvenile." Each year another Heinlein teen-age book appeared, and each year the fabric became richer and the writing more adult. Only the characters and the situations remained on an elementary level.
The Red
Planet
(1949) dealt with the problems of colonists on Mars;
Farmer in the Sky
(1951) involved an overpopulated, underfed earth cultivating the barren soil of Ganymede;
Between Planets
(1951) offered the space adventures of a "boy without a country" when a rebellion by Venusians breaks out against the Federation;
The Rolling Stones
(1952) told of a lunar family that wanted to move further "out," toward the asteroids;
Starman Jones
(1953) took the action out of the solar system;
The Star Beast
(1954) was an

"alien pet" story;
Tunnel in the Sky
(1955) followed the training of a space "Robinson Crusoe"-to-order;
Time for the Stars
(1956) made a boy a key member of a project to discover new worlds to colonize; but buttress-ing those simple plots was an ingenious admixture of the elements of the everyday work, business, transportation, en-tertainment, and politics of the near and distant future so smoothly blended into the mix that reviewers cheered and serializations which started appropriately in boy's life (1950),
Farmer in the
Sky
as
Satellite Scout
moved into bluebook (September and October, 1951),
Between Planets
as
Planets
in Combat
and then into the "adult" science-fiction magazines when the magazine of fantasy and science fiction ran
The Star Beast
as
The Star Lummox
(May to July, 1954). The 1957 juvenile,
Citizen of the Galaxy,
appeared in as-tounding science-fiction as a four-part serial beginning in its September, 1957, number. When this tale of a sickly boy sold on the slave block of a planet in the far galaxy to a crippled beggar, who finally returns to earth to find himself heir to a mammoth interstellar commercial enterprise, won first place among the readers for each of its four install-ments, even Heinlein's book publishers, Scribner's, began to entertain doubts that he was still writing juveniles.
Have
Space Suit—Will Travel,
his 1958 "teen-ager," ending with the burden placed on two children to convince a superior race that humanity must not be destroyed and should be permitted to follow its destiny, marked the last of the books published specifically for the juvenile market. When
Starship Troopers
was submitted, although it had an adolescent hero Scribner's refused to publish it, and a relationship termi-nated. How did Heinlein succeed in retaining his influence and leadership in science fiction during the 12 years between 1947 and 1959, when, despite the excellent qualities con-tained in his parade of juveniles, he actually was writing in a strait jacket?

He had, of course, contributed an occasional original yarn to the science-fiction magazines. Outstanding among them was
Jerry Is a Man
(thrilling wonder stories, October, 1947), in which an intelligent talking ape must be proved "human" in court to save his life;
Gulf,
a two-part novel beginning in astounding science-fiction in November, 1949, dealing with a post-World War III world where an underground society, The New Men, seeks to restore progress to the world;
The Puppet Masters
(galaxy science fiction, September to November, 1951), an extremely well-written thriller on the old theme of "possession," in this case a race of slugs from out of space, each of whom takes complete physical and mental control of a human being;
Double Star
(astounding science-fiction, February to April, 1956), tell-ing how an unemployed actor is required first to impersonate and then to become one of the most powerful men in the solar system (this won Heinlein a Hugo); and
The Door Into Summer,
(the magazine of fantasy and science fiction, October to December, 1956), in which money will buy you suspended animation in a deepfreeze and a new start in the future. This last novel, while it suffers from the Heinlein failing of a letdown at the end, has parts in which the prose style is of such engaging charm that "craftsmanship" becomes a totally inadequate term.

What actually sustained Heinlein's reputation was the rise of book publishing firms run by the science-fiction readers themselves, specializing only in science fiction and fantasy. This surge of free enterprise was made possible by the vacuum created when the major trade book publishers all but ignored science fiction. Even a Heinlein couldn't get his serious work into hardcovers first, though he had no trouble with juveniles. All this has something to do with library budgets and bookstore distribution, and the publishers' argu-ments are convincing, but the fact remains that the regular publishers felt that they were unable to make a profit in the science-fiction market, and demand for the books had to be satisfied by

"specialty houses."

Fantasy Press, a firm run out of Reading, Pennsylvania, put
Beyond This Horizon
into cloth in 1948 and followed with four shorter Heinlein works
(Gulf, Elsewhen, Lost Leg-acy,
and
Jerry Is a Man
as
Jerry
Was a Man)
as
Assign-ment in Eternity
in 1953. Gnome Press issued
Sixth Column
in 1949, and most effective was Shasta Publishers, which began reprinting the Future History stories in a series of collec-tions:
The Man Who Sold the Moon
(1950),
The Green Hills of Earth
(1951), and
Revolt in 2100

(1953).

All of these were widely reviewed as hard-cover books and were reprinted as paperbacks, in many editions right through to the present, spreading Heinlein's work to literally millions of readers. The complete range of Heinlein, from his earliest to his current work, was constantly kept in print. Beginning with
Starship Troopers,
Heinlein assumed the role of science fiction's maverick. The theories in that book and those in the books immediately to follow repelled many readers and inspired stormy controversy, but apparently did not keep them from reading Heinlein. The book that followed,
Stranger in a Strange Land
(1961), was the major work of this phase, written, read, and reviewed as a serious book. The first half had been written years earlier and remained unfinished. Heinlein then picked it up, completed it (in a somewhat different style), and waited for response. Hopes of a critical success were dashed when the reviewer in the new york times excoriated the novel. The reaction and support of the in-group readers was the opposite. A philosophical work, in which a human being, born and raised on Mars, returns to earth to offer his pun-gent, outrageous, and shockingly original views on the sacred cows of our society, the early part of the novel was accepted pretty much as a story, but the latter portions, laden with sex and bizarre concepts of a different form of religion, left the readers shaking their heads, but still willing to vote it the best novel of the year.

It was now evident that though Heinlein would still come through periodically with a juvenile, such as
Podkayne of Mars
(1963), an engaging space adventure with a 16-year-old (earth reckoning) Martian girl as a protagonist, Heinlein otherwise was going to write what he wanted to in the manner in which he wanted to. Cases in point were
Glory Road
(1963), a departure from science fiction into fantasy and a spoof on a number of heroes and schools of escape fiction, and
Farnham's Freehold
(1964), a post-atomic-disaster story, with a difference, stressing the individual's obligation to society. A master hand, Heinlein was proving that he knew enough about the rules to break them and still get away with it. He had established a separate status for himself, above and beyond the aspirations of most new writers.

However, decades earlier, because of his popularity in the science-fiction field and his later surehanded success with a wider audience, Heinlein had become the most imitated figure in science fiction. Authors by the dozen copied his matter-of-fact style, with major emphasis on the turn of the phrase. They seemed unaware of the flavor and substance contained in the background of the stories, or they were unable or unwilling to duplicate it. Heinlein was casual, but his work did not lack a sense of wonder. He was merely more sophisticated about the manner in which he introduced it. The readers were not cheated of the one thing that science fiction had to sell. What effectiveness would
The Roads Must Roll
have had without the carefully constructed picture of a society dependent on conveyors?

"Sense of wonder" was defined by Rollo May in his book
Man's Search for Himself:
"Wonder is the opposite of cyni-cism and boredom; it indicates that a person has a heightened aliveness, is interested, expectant, responsive. It is essentially an 'opening' attitude ... an awareness that there is more to life than one has yet fathomed, an experience of new vistas of life to be explored as well as new profundities to be plumbed."

The newcomers and the imitators trying to emulate Hein-lein misinterpreted style for substance, sliding their papier-mache characters down well-grooved situations past improvised props, with an overall effect as unreal as a puppet show. "The art that concealed art" looked easier than it was. There were a great many imitators and they crowded the pages of the magazines until one by one the magazines disappeared. Heinlein's legacy to his own field has therefore been a tragic one. Through no fault of his own, he played the role of a literary Pied Piper in the decline of science fiction that continued uninterrupted through the entire decade of the 1950's. One of his stories, published in 1941, in body and title was apropos. It was called
Lost Legions;
it told of a search for secreted powers, and it should have been dedicated to his imitators.

Men have become famous because they introduced a single new word to the language. A. E. van Vogt is a good example. His term "slan" as an appellation for a human being possessing genetically superior attributes has virtually supplanted "mu-tation" and "superman" in communication among science-fic-tion readers. Like Karel Capek's
R.U.R.
which gave us the word "robot," van Vogt's term came from the title of a work of moving intensity. Its acceptance became an affirmation of its creator's narrative power.

"Slan! That's a nonsense word now—a meaningless sylla-ble," announced editor John W. Campbell, Jr., in astounding science-fiction. "Next month it will mean a story so powerful it's going to put a new word in the language! 'Superman' is a makeshift term—'slan' will be the designation you'll remem-ber."
Slan
first appeared in astounding science-fiction, Sep-tember, 1940, as a four-part novel. It justified every word of the preliminary press agentry. A highly original approach to the concept of the superman in science fiction, it was instant-ly apparent that it must be counted among the classics in its category. Science fiction had enjoyed superman stories before:
Gladiator
by Philip Wylie;
Seed of Life
by John Taine;
The Hampdenshire Wonder
by J. D. Beresford; and probably the best known,
Odd John
by Olaf Stapledon.

Van Vogt's story is a natural outgrowth of the last two. It deals with the development of a true mutation which will propagate its characteristics, but proceeds one step further than either novel. In
The
Hampdenshire Wonder,
the super-man is killed while still a boy by the villagers who are instinctively hostile to him. A colony of supermen in
Odd John,
about to be attacked by the fleets of the major nations, destroys itself rather than come into tragic conflict with the human race. Van Vogt seems to have been the first science-fiction author with the courage to explore the sociological implications of the superhuman race living in and among humans.

Slan
is the story of a nine-year-old boy, Jommy Cross, who is a member of a superhuman race. His people possess both mental and physical superiority, being capable of reading minds through the aid of antenna-like tendrils in their hair; two hearts invest them with extraordinary stamina. His par-ents killed, Jommy Cross fights to survive in a society where organized hunts are conducted against slans by the humans and where tendrilless slans—born without the ability to read minds—are even more dangerous enemies.

The moving and dramatic detail with which van Vogt relates the perpetual persecution of the slans by the "nor-mal" people and the superb characterization of Granny, the drunken old woman who aligns herself with Jommy Cross, lift this novel a big step above ordinary action adventure. The story is convincingly told from the viewpoint of the superman or "slan," which helps to give an air of believability unmatch-ed by its predecessors.

Beyond this, the pace of the novel is sustained and height-ened by van Vogt's inventiveness in contriving a continuing series of taut situations. Even the scientific concepts contain much validity, particularly the great emphasis and detail on the use of atomic energy—in a story written five years before the explosion of the first atomic bomb.

Slan
was van Vogt's most famous and perhaps his finest story, but it was by no means his first success in science fiction.