Time Travelers Strictly Cash (16 page)
And so now, with his very latest publication, Expanded Universe, Heinlein has finally blown his cover altogether. I think that makes Expanded Universe, despite a significant number of flaws, the single most important and valuable Heinlein book ever published.
Let me tell you a little about the book. It is built around a previously available but long out of print-Heinlein collection, The Worlds of Robeert A. Heinlein, but it has been expanded by abouv 160%, with approximately 125,000 words of new material, for a total of about 202,500 words. Some of the new stuff is fiction, although little of it is science fiction (about 17,500 words). But the bulk of the new material, about 84,000 words, is non-fiction. Taken together it’s as close as Heinlein is ever going to get to writing his memoirs, and it forms his ultimate personal statement to date. in ten essays, a polemic, one and a half speeches and extensive forewords and afterwords for most of thirteen stories, Heinlein lets us further inside his head than he ever has before. And hey, you know what? He doesn’t resemble Lazarus Long much at all.
For instance, although he is plainly capable of imagining and appreciating it, Heinlein is not himself able to sustain Lazarus’s magnificent ingrained indifference to the fate of any society. Unlike Lazarus, Heinlein loves the United Stales of America. He’ll tell you why, quite specifically, in this book. Logical, pragmatic reasons why. He will tell you, for instance, of his travels in the Soviet Union, and what he saw and heard there. If, after you’ve heard him out, you still don’t think that for all its warts (hell, running sores), the United States is the planet’s best hope for an enlightened future, there’s no sense in us talking further, you’ll be wanting to pack. (Hey, have you heard? The current government of the People’s Republic of China has allowed as how limited freedom of thought will be permitted this year; Provisionally.)* You know, the redneck clowns who chanted “America-love it or leave it!” while they stomped me back in the sixties didn’t have a bad slogan; The only problem was that they got to define “love of America,” and they limited its meaning to “blind worship of America.” In addition they limited the definition of America to “the man in the White House.” These mistakes Heinlein certainly does not make. (Relevant quote from Expanded Universe: “Brethren and Sistren, have you ever stopped to think that there has not been one
*At press time, they have given every sign at having changed their minds.-SR
rational decision out of the Oval Office for fifty years?”) In this book he identifies-clearly, vividly and concisely the specific brands of rot that are eating out America’s heart. He outlines each of the deadly perils that face the nation, and predicts their consequences. As credentials, he offers a series of fairly specific predictions he made in 1950 for the year 2000, updated in 1965, and adds 1980 updates supporting a claim of a 66% success rate-enormously higher than that of, say Jeanne Dixon. He pronounces himself dismayed not only by political events of the last few decades, but by the terrifying decay of education and growth of irralionalism in America. (Aside: in my own opinion, one of the best exemplars of this latter trend is Stephen King’s currdnt runaway bestseller The Stand, a brilliantly entertaining parable in praise of ignorance, superstition, reliance on dreams, and the sociological inaights of feeble-minded old Ned Lud.)
It Is worth noting in this connection that while Heinlein has many scathing things to say about the U.S. in Expanded Universe, he has prohibited publication of the book in-any other country.* We don’t wash family linen with strangers present. I don’t know of any other case in which an sf writer deliberately (and drastically) limited his royalties out of patriotism, or for that matter any moral or ethical principle. I applaud.
Friends, one of the best educated and widely-traveled men in America has looked into the future, and he is not especially optimistic.
It cannot be said that he despairs. He makes many positive, practical suggestions-for real cures rather than bandaids.
He outlines specifically how to achieve the necessary perspective-and insight to form intelligent exirapolations of world events, explains in detail how to get a decent education (by the delightful device of explaining how not to get one), baldly names the three pillars of wisdom, and reminds us that “Last to come out of Pandora’s Box was a gleaming, beautiful thing-eternal Hope.”
But the last section of the book is a matched pair of
*.._at presstime I learned that the book can be obtaincd in Canada. I follow the logic; the two countries are Siamese Twins.
mutually exclusive prophecies, together called “The Happy Days Ahead.” The first is a gloomy scenario of doom, the second an optimistic scenario. He says, “I can risk great gloom in the first because I’ll play you out with music at the end.”
But I have to admit that the happy scenariO, Over The Rainbow, strikes me as preposterously unlikely. In fact, the only thing I can imagine that would increase its probability would be the massive widespread reading of Expanded Universe.
Which brings me to what I said at the beginning of this essay: if you want to thank Robert A. Heinlein, do what you can to see to it that the country be loves, the culture he loves, the magnificent ideal he loves, is not destroyed. If you have the wit to see that this old man has a genuine handle on the way the world wags, kindly stop complaining that his literary virtues are not classical and go back to doing what you used to do when sf was a ghetto-literature scorned by all the world: force copies of Heinlein on all your friends. Unlike most teachers, Heinlein has been successfully competing with television for forty years now. Anyone that he cannot convert to rationalism is purely unreachable, and you know, there are a hell of a lot of people on the fence these days.
I do not worship Robert Heinlein. I do not agree with everything he says. There are a number of his opinions concerning which I have serious reservations, and perhaps two with-which I flat-out disagree (none of which I have the slightest intention of washing with strangers present). But all of these tend to keep me awake nights, because the only arguments I can assemble to refute him are based on “my thirty years of experience,” of a very limited number of Americans and Canadians-and I’m painfully aware of just how poorly that stacks up against his seventy-three years of intensive study of the entire population and the entire history of the planet.
And I repeat: if there is anything that can divert the land of my birth from its current stampede into the Stone Age, it is the widespread dissemination Of the thoughts and perceptions that Robert Heinlein has been selling as entertainment since 1939. You can thank him, not by buying his book, but by loaning out the copy you buy to as many people as will sit still for it, until it falls apart from overreading. (Be sure and loan Expanded Universe only to fellow citizens.) Time is short: it is no accident that his latest novel devotes a good deal of attention to the subject of lifeboat rules. Not that Expanded Universe contains a quick but thorough course in how to survive the aftermath of a nuclear attack. (When Heinlein said in his Guest of Honor speech at MidAmeriCon that “there will be nuclear war on Earth in your lifetime,” some people booed, and some were unconvinced. But it chanced that there was a thunderstorm over the hotel next morning-and I woke up three feet in the air, covered with sweat.) Emergencies require emergency measures, so drastic that it will be hard to persuade people of their utter necessity.
If you want to thank Robert Heinlein, open your eyes and look around you-and begin loudly demanding that your neighbors do likewise.
Or-at the very least-please stop loudly insisting that the elephant is merely a kind of inferior snake, or tree, or large barrel of leather, or oversized harpoon, or flexible trombone, or…
(When I read the above as my Guest of Honor speech at the New England Science Fiction Association’s annual regional convention, Bosidone, I took Heinlein’s advice about playing them out with music literally, and closed with a song. I append it here as well. It is the second filksong* I’ve ever written, and it is set to the tune of Old Man River, as arranged by Marty Paich on Ray Charles’s Ingredients In a Recipe For Soul. [If you are not familiar with that arrangement, the scansion will appear to limp at the end.] Guitar chords are provided for would-be filksingers, but copyright is reserved for recording or publishing royalties, etc.}
Ol’ Man Heinlein (lyrics by Spider Robinson)
D G7 D G7
Ol’ man Heinlein That ol’man Heinlein
D A7 Bm E7
He must know somethin’ His heart keeps pumpin’
A Asus A A+ D
He just keep writin’ And lately writin’ ‘em long
D 67 D 07.
He don’t write for critics Cause that stuff’s rotten
D A7 Bm. E7
And them that wrlt~s it Is soon ‘forgotten
A ,Asus AM-I)
But ci’ man Heinlein keeps speculatin’ along
F#m C#7 .F#m C#7 F#m C#7 ‘F#m C#7
You and me Sit and think Heads all empty except for drink
F#m C#7 F#m C#? F#m F#ni Em A7
Tote that pen Jog that brain Get a little check in the mail from Baen
D. 67’ D 07
I get bleary And fed like shuitin’
.D A7 Em E7
I’m tired of writin’ But scared of workin’
A Asus A A+ D
But of’ man Heinlein. He keeps on~ollin’ along
Aiim Eb7 Aiim Eb7 Abm Eb7 Alan Eb7
You and me Read his stuff - Never can seem to get enough
Aiim ‘Ebl Aiim Eb7 - Abet ~7 Abm F#m B7
Turn that page Dig them chops Hope the old gentleman neve~ stops.
B A7 EA7
So raise your glasses It’s only fittin’
BE C#rnF#7
The best sf that was ever written
B. E+ B6 Mn B CŘm’ F#7 B7 E Is Old. Man Heinlein May he live as long as Lazanis Long!
HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE…?
There is clearly a kind of delirious logic to the way things happen at Callahan’s Place, a kind of artistic symmetry-if by “artistic” you mean, like, Salvador Dali or Maurits Escber.
It just happened, for instance, that in 1979 the Fourth of July fell on a rainy Wednesday night-and Wednesday night is customarily Tall Tales Night at Callahan’s. So naturally it was that night that the Traveling Salesman arrived.
And even with that much hint, the punchilne surprised me.
Oh, would you like to hear about it?
The house custom of Wednesday nights is that the teller of the tallest tale gets his or her bar-bill refunded, and I haven’t missed a Wednesday in years. I have won a few tiifles; I have lost quite a few times: there are some fearful liars at Callahan’s bar. (Sometime customers include a paperback editor, a literary agent and a former realtor.) Lately, however, the stakes bad increased. A lady named Josie Bauer had begun coming regular to Callahan’s the month previous, and she was pleasant and bright and buxom and remarkably easy to talk to. And she was something I’d never encountered befOre: a humor groupie. It was her charming and unvarying custom to go home with whoever won the Tall Tales contest on Wednesday nights and the Punday Night competition on Tuesdays. This caused the competition, as Doc Webster observed, to stiffen considerably.
But I had hopes that night, and I was sorry to see Gentleman John Kilian approach the chalk line with a gin and gin in his hand. John is a short dapper Englishman with a quick mmd and a wicked talent for summatory puns. He’s not on this side of the lake much, and a lot of folks dropped what they were doing to listen.
“I commanded a submarine in Her Majesty’s Navy during the last World War, “he began, tugging at his goatee, “and I propose to tell you of a secret mission I was ordered to undertake. The famous spy Harry Lime, the celebrated Third Man, had developed a sudden and severe case of astigmatism-and many of his espionage activities forbade dependence on spectacles, At that time only one visionary in all the world was working on the development of a practical contact lens: a specialist at Walter Reed Hospital. I was ordered to convey Ume there in utmost secrecy and despatch, then wait round and fetch him home again.”
“Is this gonna be a Limey story?” Long-Drink McGonnigle asked, and Callahan took a seltzer bottle to him.
John ignored it magnificently. “He was an excellent actor, of course, but before long I began to suspect that there was nothing atall wrong with his vision. I searched his quarters, and found correspondence indicating that he had a girlfriend who lived some twenty miles from the hospital. So I called him into my cabin. ‘I can’t prove a thing against you,’ I said, ‘but I’m ordering you-‘ “For effect, he paused and elegantly sipped gin.
I hated to do it. I’m a liar: I loved doing it. In any case I had seen the punchline coming long since, and so I delivered it before he could.”
”’-to go directly from the sub, Lime, to the Reed oculist.’”
“Oh, damn,” he cried, and everyone broke up, Josie, loudest of all. John glared at his gin, finished it in one gulp and pegged his glass into the fireplace.
“Sorry, John.”
“Bullshit,” he said, making an extra syllable out of the t. He grinned satanically and his eyes flashed. “Let’s hear yours now, Jake.”
“Aw, 1 haven’t got any worth telling.”
“None of that,” he said sharply.
“And besides, you’re so good at puns, John; You always smell ‘em coming.”
“COme out and fight like a man.”
“Well…“I got up from the bar, took my Tullamore Dew to the chalk line before the fireplace. “I haven’t got a tall tale, exactly.” I wet my whistle. “What I’ve got is a true story that happened to me, that I’ve never been able to get anybody to believe..”
“Better,” said Gentleman John, mollified.
“No, really. I swear, this is true. Most of you know l’ve been making a living with a guitar around the Island for some time now, and I’ve’played a lot of strange places. I played the Village Pizza Restaurant Lounge, I played the Deer Park High School Senior Assembly, my old partner Dave and me played a joint once where the topless dancer had one arm, you had to show a razor and puke blood to get in. But the weirdest of all was a solo gig. I got a call from this big chain department store, Lincoln & Waltz; their PR lady heard me somewhere and wanted to know if I would come and sing in the Junior Miss Department. I thought she was drunk. Essentially they wanted something sufficiently odd to awaken the shoppers and attract a crowd, for which they would then have the local Girl Scouts model the new spring line. She figured I was hungry enough, and she figured right.