The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence (65 page)

The next story that Heinlein wrote after his return to Los Angeles was his proof that the gap in the chart could be filled in. This was a novelet called “Logic of Empire” (
Astounding,
Mar. 1941), set around the year 2010.

Taken as an independent story, “Logic of Empire” was a bit of a mess. It combined two standard Thirties story formulas—the tale of the man of privilege who gets a taste of what real life is like, and the space opera story about slavery on some other planet—and turned them into something like a lecture in economics:

Heinlein’s protagonist, lawyer Humphrey Wingate, begins by doubting that slavery actually exists on Venus, and then learns better at first hand when he signs himself up for a term of service while on a drunken lark. But when he has escaped from servitude in the swamps of Venus and returns to Earth to try to tell about what he has experienced, nobody really wants to hear it.

It is explained to him by a friend that slavery in the colonies is an old, old story, the inevitable result of expanding free-market economics. And that ordinary Earth people just seem to find matters like this too difficult and abstract to be bothered with.

The story ends with Wingate asking, “ ‘What can we
do
about it?’ ”
⁴⁹⁷

And his friend replies: “ ‘Nothing. Things are bound to get a whole lot worse before they can get any better. Let’s have a drink.’ ”

Futile, scattered and inconclusive though “Logic of Empire” may have been as a story, it was quite a bit more effective as an element in Heinlein’s evolving future. Not only did it cut twenty years out of the gap in the middle of his chart, but for the first time, it bound Heinlein’s two sets of stories together. “Logic of Empire” was connected to “Requiem” by references to Luna City and the Space Precautionary Act. And it was linked to “ ‘If This Goes On—’ ” through several mentions of “a rabble-rousing political preacher” by the name of Nehemiah Scudder.

But it was the third story that Heinlein wrote after his visit to the East Coast that was his ultimate statement of just how far he thought the principle of his chart could be extended, and of how strange and special a story might be and still fit into the whole. This was “Universe” (
Astounding,
May 1941), Heinlein’s tale of the lost spaceship that has forgotten the existence of the stars.

“Universe”—this utterly unique situation—would take place long after the two-hundred-year time frame of Heinlein’s chart. And yet Heinlein would make provision for it within his schema. Notations on his chart would indicate that the ship in question was launched about 2120 by the society of the Covenant.

So what was there that wouldn’t fit into the chart?

Well, Heinlein had been thinking about a near-future story in which the United States has developed atomic weapons but can’t trust anyone else with them, and so, contrary to its inclination, must take over the world. As he had first conceived it, this was to have been one more story on his chart, set around 1950.

But real-world atomic research was not holding still. Even in late 1940, a year before active entry of the United States into World War II, and two years before the first sustained fission reaction at the University of Chicago, it had begun to seem likely to Heinlein—and to Campbell, too—that atomic weapons would be developed before the end of this current war.

Heinlein chose to say as much as Anson MacDonald in an extended fiction/essay written completely outside the bounds of his wall chart. He imagined World War II brought to an end in 1944 by a bombing raid that scatters radioactive dust over Berlin, followed almost immediately by a short, intense struggle for domination between the United States and Russia.

He called this grim novelet “Foreign Policy.”
⁴⁹⁸
Campbell would retitle it “Solution Unsatisfactory” and publish it, along with “Universe,” in the May 1941
Astounding.

Heinlein’s next story, “ ‘—We Also Walk Dogs’ ” (
Astounding,
July 1941), would also appear as the work of Anson MacDonald. It may be taken as Heinlein’s demonstration to himself that even though almost anything might be fitted into his charted future, he wasn’t necessarily bound to that future.

This story concerns a special company, General Services, that will perform any lawful undertaking for an appropriate fee. They have accepted the task of providing comfortable quarters on Earth for a conference of “ ‘representatives of each intelligent race in this planetary system’ ”
⁴⁹⁹
—including Martians, Jovians, Titans and Callistans.

Just now, this story would not be part of Heinlein’s charted future—presumably because of all the various local intelligent alien races, who make no appearance in any of his other pre-war stories. But after the war, Heinlein would apparently once again say, “Why not?” and “ ‘—We Also Walk Dogs’ ” would assume a place in the official canon, marked in around the year 2000.

It was only at this point, early in 1941, with all this burst of experimentation behind Heinlein, that the first formal notice of his interconnected future was made by John Campbell. After announcing “Logic of Empire” in the “In Times to Come” column of the February
Astounding,
the editor went on to say:

I’d like to mention something that may or may not have been noticed by the regular readers of
Astounding:
all of Heinlein’s science-fiction is laid against a common background of a proposed future history of the world and of the United States. Heinlein’s worked the thing out in detail that grows with each story; he has an outline and graphed history of the future with characters, dates of major discoveries, et cetera, plotted in. I’m trying to get him to let me have a photostat of that history chart; if I lay hands on it, I’m going to publish it.
⁵⁰⁰

In this announcement by Campbell, there was, of course, a not altogether untypical element of well-calculated insincerity, or salesmanship. He knew full well that not all of Heinlein’s science fiction was laid against a common background, including the installment of
Sixth Column
by Anson MacDonald in this very issue. And prior to the actual publication of “Logic of Empire,” which would be the first link between Heinlein’s two major sets of stories, no reader of
Astounding
could reasonably have been expected to see them all as one.

Having been given this tip, or heavy nudge, however, readers could now hardly overlook the cross-connections that did exist in “Logic of Empire.” And that was what the editor was really after. He wanted Heinlein’s future history to be taken note of.

Back in the June 1940
Astounding
—an issue featuring on its cover a Rogers’ painting of the inner workings of Heinlein’s rolling roads—Campbell had suggested in passing in his editorial, “Mapping out a civilization of the future is an essential background to a convincing story of the future.”
⁵⁰¹
And now he had his example: a model presentation of just how a multiplex, ever-changing Atomic Age future was to be imagined.

But Campbell was not content merely to have his readers and writers perceive the existence of Heinlein’s history of the future. He wanted them to study the blueprints and see how it fit together. So he didn’t rest until the Future History chart appeared spread across two pages of the May
Astounding.

The May 1941 issue of
Astounding
was the most significant since July 1939, and can be seen as one of the two or three most stellar issues of Campbell’s Golden Age. It contained “Universe” and “Solution Unsatisfactory,” and Asimov’s second robot story, “Liar!” as well as the concluding installment of L. Sprague de Camp’s only pre-war
Astounding
serial, “The Stolen Dormouse.” But the centerpiece of the issue was Heinlein’s Future History chart.

This was recognized in Campbell’s editorial which was entitled “History to Come.” Here, Campbell formally redefined science fiction in terms of Heinlein’s accomplishment. He declared, “Fundamentally, science-fiction novels are ‘period pieces,’ historical novels laid against a background of a history that hasn’t happened yet.”
⁵⁰²

Science fiction hadn’t been seen in these terms previously. But the publication of Heinlein’s Future History chart would force a general alteration of perception of what science fiction was about and how it was made.

Through the years, other writers of SF had turned out story series aplenty. But these had always been the adventures of a particular character or group of characters, invariably operating within the bounds of some well-defined formula. No one had ever thought of reversing figure and ground and writing a story series that had no consistent central character, but rather was concerned with the twists and turns and reversals of social and psychological change to come.

However, not only was this what Heinlein had done, but his chart was incontrovertible proof that he had done it. The chart took a handful of parts and made a visible whole of them. It was the most detailed, multifaceted and interconnected picture of the future that anyone had ever produced, so persuasive in appearance that it might almost be a couple of pages ripped out of some history book of tomorrow.

And now that it could be seen clearly as a whole, how wonderfully persuasive and real Heinlein’s Future History was, with its picture of a coming world of change and difference! The future envisioned by Olaf Stapledon in
Last and First Men
might be vaster and grander, yet somehow the immediate two hundred years outlined in the Future History managed to encompass a wider range of human social activity, more mental variety, greater liveliness, and more sheer differentness than all of Stapledon’s two billion years put together. Next to Heinlein’s Atomic Age future of change upon change, Stapledon’s old-fashioned Techno Age view of the future seemed static and single-noted.

By aiming to break free of determinism and find a future of free will for himself, Heinlein had found the means for all modern science fiction to break out of the extreme constriction in time and space that had been so typical of the
Astounding
of 1939 and 1940. Taken in sum, Heinlein’s stories—not just the Future History, but also “Magic, Inc.” and his futuristic Anson MacDonald stories—proclaimed that the future was waiting to be invented, and that practically anything might be plausibly imagined as happening there.

Heinlein blazed the way for all Atomic Age futures to come, not in detail, but in approach and method. Because of Heinlein’s pre-war experiments, SF writers of the Atomic Age would be able to see the future both as historically connected to the present and as a wide-open playground of the imagination. On the strength of Heinlein’s example, they would feel licensed not only to make up their own alternate future histories, but also to set forth any free-floating future possibility they could imagine.

Prior to the announcement and publication of the Future History chart, Heinlein had been a well-respected new writer, acknowledged as a steady, reliable storyteller. But he had been the special favorite of only a very few readers.

However, this changed with the revelation that all of Heinlein’s separate stories in
Astounding
were in fact so many fragments in a far larger and more complex pattern. He was now seen to stand by himself as the most ambitious and inventive writer of modern science fiction. It was this new, more sizable Robert Heinlein who was asked to be Guest of Honor at the Third World Science Fiction Convention in Denver in July 1941.

In that same month,
Methuselah’s Children,
the longest Future History story yet, began three-part serialization in
Astounding.
This story was the culmination of all the work Heinlein had done to knit together a connected but ever-changing future. It was also the fulfillment of a promise.

One of the more intriguing mysteries of Heinlein’s chart as it saw publication was five “Stories-to-be-told,”
⁵⁰³
listed in parentheses. These not only filled out some of the thinner portions of the chart, but intimated Heinlein’s power to see more and to tell more of his future:

(“Word Edgewise”) was penciled in around 1960, between “ ‘Let There Be Light’ ” and “The Roads Must Roll.”

Shortly after “Requiem”—c. 1995—there was (“Fire Down Below!”)

Shaving another ten years off the great gap in the center of the chart, there was (“The Sound of His Wings”) around 2015, and (“Eclipse”) around 2020.

Finally, as the very last entry on the chart, around 2125, twenty years after “Misfit,” there was (“While the Evil Days Come Not”).

It was this last story that saw publication as
Methuselah’s Children.
This was not only Heinlein’s proof that it was possible for him to redeem his promises, but it showed that he could further extend his vision of future change and difference.

In its very conception, this novel was a striking demonstration of Heinlein’s new philosophy of factors in combination and permutation. To make
Methuselah’s Children,
Heinlein took two originally separate story ideas from his file and ran them together, and then turned the result into a further phase in his Future History.

One of the ideas that went into the pot was for a story called “Shadow of Death,”
⁵⁰⁴
about a group of people selectively bred for long life, and their persecution by ordinary short-lived men. It was to have been set entirely on Earth.

The other idea—less seriously titled “Peril in the Spaceways . . . or . . . Who Shot the Baby???”
⁵⁰⁵
—was for a space epic in the grand tradition. It may be thought of as the kind of answer the young planet-busting John Campbell might have made to the ultimate unsolvable problem of Stapledon’s
Last and First Men.

In this projected story, our Sun is failing. A group of human adventurers sets off for the stars in search of a solution. After encounters with two alien races—“the Rapport People”
⁵⁰⁶
and “the Dog People”
⁵⁰⁷
—men find their answer in towing the Earth through interstellar space and placing it in orbit around a friendlier star.