If you are thinking about sampling a unique and thought-provoking style of fiction, classic science fiction has much to offer the intelligent reader. One of the greatest authors of science fiction's Golden Age was Robert Heinlein, a native Missourian.
Robert Anson Heinlein was born on 7 July 1907 in Butler, MO. to Rex Ivar and Bam Lyle Heinlein. After growing up in Kansas City, MO, he joined the Navy. He was discharged in 1934 with pulmonary tuberculosis. He dabbled in a number of professions before taking up writing, including real estate. Robert Heinlein died May 8th, 1988, after a long, resounding career as an author. His books would inspire millions across the generations.
Heinlein's novels, while being quite varied in scope, always tend to include some core elements.
Parapsychology manages to find its way into quite a few of Heinlein's work. Hypnosis is often used to facilitate instruction in "Space Cadet" and a few others, for instance. Or the characters will be some variety of telepath.
"Time for the Stars" has a fleet of them sent out in relativistic ships to explore planets for human colonization, apparently running with Einstein's twin paradox. "Beyond This Horizon" does this as well. It is uncertain if the occasional character having a conversation with inanimate objects or the thoroughly deceased counts.
Longevity is another major recurring theme, ranging from the simple to the long-range to the ludicrous. In "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," the low gravity causes less wear on the body, prolonging life, while "Beyond This Horizon" featured a massive eugenics program. The entire Lazarus Long series ends with a combination of good genes. Cloning and odd medical procedures keeps the titular Lazarus rolling well into the millennia. One novel even explores prolonged life through brain transplants.
Economics and politics can play heavily into Heinlein novels, and they rarely repeat. The man apparently had great faith in the United Nations and the general concept of a world government, because it crops up quite a bit. It certainly helps when it comes to dealing with other, similarly unified civilizations.
Futuristic economic setups range pretty widely. "The Door Into Summer" and "Beyond This Horizon" have an odd mixed system that basically involves the government making and distributing money every year based on some very peculiar and not-clearly-elaborated mechanisms. The moon, as a prison camp that pulled an Australia and declared itself independent from the Earth's world government, develops a remarkably effective sort of anarchy, coupled with rampant free-market capitalism.
Heinlein's characters have been known to take up positions for or against some hot-button issues in relatively modern politics. For instance, there is a good chance that gun ownership will be seen as a good thing, although a notable exception can be found in "Tunnel in the Sky." The death penalty is shown to have its time and place.
Spaceflight and interplanetary travel seem possible in every single one of his books, and there is typically an effort to be very realistic about it. Faster-than-light travel is a novelty in the few places that it shows up. All ships are rocket-powered, though the sort of fuel can vary. Most rockets run on chemical or nuclear propellants but some of the more advanced ones can burn anything, usually water. There is no artificial gravity, and acceleration, measured in terms of Earth gravity, must be kept within certain limits to keep from killing the passengers and crew. And Heinlein's "Tunnel In The Sky" was punching wormholes across the vast reaches of space long before "Stargate."
Even with all the survey of space, proper aliens are not particularly commonplace. "Methuselah's Children" had a handful of different species. "Between Planets" and the juvenile fiction novel "Space Cadet" had reptilian and amphibian life, respectively, on Venus. "Double Star" had Martians of improbable form. "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" and introduced the young reader to a massive, interstellar government representing an unknown number of different races.
"Starship Troopers" had a couple different races with which to contend. Most characters are humans and most aliens are at the "exotic pet" level. Time travel is another Heinlein favorite. Sometimes it is a case of the subject being frozen, either cryogenically or actual space/time stasis.
"Time For The Stars" dilates time and space so that a year to people exploring the galaxy adds up to several decades to everybody else. It's rare, but not unheard of, for a character to go backwards in time. And in the later books in the Lazarus Long series, they invent inter-dimensional travel and times and spaces become free for the roaming.
Finally, there is Heinlein's tendency to build odd family structures. On more than one occasion, we meet couples that seem to be around the same age only to find that one or the other of them was actually born decades or even centuries before. They might also be related.
One time-dilated protagonist ended up marrying his twin brother's great-great-grand-niece or some such. "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" institutionalizes polyandry, on the grounds that there are considerably more males than females in the population. In "Beyond This Horizon," men and women are traditionally paired off by the eugenics experts.
Taken together, Robert Heinlein's works provide something for almost any lover of science fiction.
It is recommend that the curious pay a visit to the Thomas Jefferson Library on the UM-St. Louis campus and ask the helpful library staff to direct them to the respectably large collection of Heinlein's works.
Be the first to comment on this article!