Part 1 (1/2)

The Worlds of Robert A Heinlein

Robert A Heinlein

INTRODUCTION: PANDORA'S BOX

ONCE OPENED, the Box could never be closed But after theTroubles came Hope

Science fiction is not prophecy It often reads as if it were prophecy; indeed the practitioners of this odd genre (pun intentional - I won't do it again) of fiction usually strive hard to make their stones sound as if they were true pictures of the future Prophecies

Prophesying is what the weatherman does, the race track tipster, the stock azes into a crystal

Each one is predicting the future - souage, sometimes simply with a claim of statistical probability, but alith a clai some piece of the future

This is not at all what a science fiction author does Science fiction is almost always laid in the future - or at least in a fictional possible-future - and is almost invariably deeply concerned with the shape of that future But the method is not prediction; it is usually extrapolation and/or speculation Indeed the author is not required to (and usually does not) regard the fictional ”future” he has chosen to write about as being the eventsto do with the probability that these storied events may happen

”Extrapolation”as it does ina curve, a path, a trend into the future, by extending its present direction and continuing the shape it has displayed in its past performance-ie, if it is a sine curve in the past, you extrapolate it as a sine curve in the future, not as an hyperbola, nor a Witch of Agnesi and ht line

”Speculation” has far more elbowroom than extrapolation; it starts with a ”What if?” - and the new factor thrown in by the what-if may be both wildly improbable and so revolutionary in effect as to throw a sine-curve trend (or a yeast-growth trend, or any trend) into soreen men land on the White House lawn and invite us to join a Galactic union? - or big green men land and enslave us and eat us? What if we solve the probleo dry? (And not just the present fiddlin' shortage tackled by fiddlin' quarter- an ice cube? Try Frank Herbert's Dune World saga, which is not - I judge - prophecy in any sense, but is powerful, convincing, and , as I do, in a state which has just two sorts of water, too little and too ht with seven inches of rain in two hours, and one was about as disastrous as the other - I find a horrid fascination in Dune World, in Charles Einstein's The Day New York Went Dry, and in stories about Biblical-size floods such as S Fowler Wright's Deluge)

Most science fiction stories use both extrapolation and speculation

Consider ”Blowups Happen,” elsewhere in this voluhtly for book publication just after World War II by inserting some words such as ”Manhattan Project and ”Hiroshi+roup of stories published under the pretentious collective title of The History of the Future (!) - which certainly sounds like prophecy

I disclai; I wrote that story for the sole purpose of le intention of entertaining the reader As prophecy the story falls flat on its silly face - any tenderfoot Scout can pick it to pieces - but I think it is still entertaining as a story, else it would not be here; I have a business reputation to protect and wish to continuemoney Nor areat literature of our heritage arose solely froreat and not-so-great, has as its proximate cause a need for money combined with an aversion to, or an inability to perforal and reasonably honest way out of this dilemma

A science fiction author may have, and often does have, other motivations in addition to pursuit of profit He may wish to create ”art for art's sake,” he ainst a course he feels to be disastrous (Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World - but please note that each is intensely entertaining, and that each e the human race toward a course which he considers desirable (Bella Backwards, Wells' Men Like Gods), he may wish to instruct, or uplift, or even to dazzle But the science fiction writer - any fiction writer - must keep entertainment consciously in mind as his pri that old cotton sack

If he succeeds in this purpose, his story is likely to re years after it has turned out to be false ”prophecy” H

G Wells is perhaps the greatest science fiction author of all tireatest science fiction stories ritten around sixty years ago

under the whip Bedfast with consu ali was the heaviest work he could raphy) that to stay alive heThe result was a flood of some of the most brilliant speculative stories about the future ever written As prophecy they are all hopelessly dated

whichnow as they were in the Gay 'Nineties and the Mauve Decade

Try to lay hands on his The Sleeper Awakes The gadgetry in it is ingenious - and all wrong The projected future in it is brilliant - and did not happen All of which does not sully the story; it is a great story of love and sacrifice and blood-chilling adventure set in aspeculation about the nature of Man and his Destiny I read it first forty-five years ago, plus perhaps a dozen ti uncertain about just how one does go about the unlikely process of writing fiction for entertainht up in the sheer excitement of Wells' story

”Solution Unsatisfactory” herein is a consciously Wellsian story No, no, I' that it is of H G Wells' quality - its quality is for you to judge, not me But it ritten by the method which Wells spelled out for the speculative story: Take one, just one, basic new assumption, then examine all its consequences - but express those consequences in ters The assumption I chose was the ”Absolute Weapon”; the speculation concerns what changes this forces on mankind But the ”history”

the story describes simply did not happen

However the problems discussed in this story are as fresh today, the issues just as poignant, for the grim reason that we have not reached even an ”unsatisfactory” solution to the problem of the Absolute Weapon; we have reached no solution

In the twenty-five years that have passed since I wrote that story the world situation has grown much worse Instead of one Absolute Weapon there are now at least five distinct types - an ”Absolute Weapon” being defined as one against which there is no effective defense and which kills indiscriminately over a very wide area The earliest of the five types, the A-bomb, is non to be possessed by at least five nations, at least twenty-five other nations have the potential to build them in the next few years

But there is a possible sixth type Earlier this year I attended a seminar at one of the nation's new think-factories One of the questions discussed hether or not a ”Doole weapon which would destroy all life of all sorts on this planet; one weapon, not an all-out nuclear holocaust involving hundreds or thousands of ICBMs No, this was to be a world-wrecker of the sort Dr E E Sas back in the days when S-F -eyed monsters on the cover and were considered lo, childish, fantastic

The conclusions reached were: Could the Doomsday Machine be built? - yes, no question about it What would it cost? - quite cheap A seventh type hardly seerimness of ”Solution Unsatisfactory” see adventures always turn out happily

”Searchlight” is alets in it are either hardware on the shelf, or hardhich will soon be on the shelf because nothing is involved but straight-forward engineering development ”Life-Line” (my first story) is its opposite, a story which is sheer speculation and either ihly improbable, as the What-If postulate will never be solved - I think I hope But the two stories are much alike in that neither depends on when it ritten nor when it is read Both are independent of any particular shape to history; they are timeless