A few years ago I tracked down a copy of The Space Beyond and read the novella All that was Campbell’s version of the story thar Heinlein wrote as Sixth Column/The Day After Tomorrow. It’s almost unreadable, and the similarities aren’t really as clear. Heinlein’s version is head and shoulders above Campbell’s
The thing I found interesting about the story is it’s another case of “let’s hide the technology as a religion”, of the same kind that Asimov used in the stories that made up his “Foundation” series. Why should anybody be surprised that another of the Campbell bunch – L. Ron Hubbard – would go out and create a religion/philosophy based on what he saw as a new technology? And profited from it. He’d been around people talking about the same sort of thing for years.
I’ve got an obscure Heinlein question that would probably do better here than in a separate thread, so pardon me for a hijack.
In 1957 Heinlein along with C. M. Kornbluth, Robert Block and Alfred Bester gave a series of lectures on science fiction at the University of Chicago. That was a very big deal at the time, some of the first academic attention to the field. They were published in 1959 under the title The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism, with an introduction by critic Basil Davenport.
In Heinlein’s essay, he says that the idea for the waldos in “Waldo” came from an article in a 1918 Popular Mechanics about a man with myasthenia gravis (which he misspells myesthenia) who had devised lever arrangements to help him use his limited strength.
OK, that’s an old memory but seems to be a specific one. But today every issue of Popular Mechanics is available on Google Books. And there’s not one hit for myasthenia gravis under either spelling in Popular Mechanics for 1918. Or any other year. Or for any other popular magazine of any kind in that era. Only medical journals or serious books.
Have any Heinlein obsessives tried to track down the original? It’s mentioned in passing in Patterson’s biography but that relies on the essay. After some searching, but not issue by issue exhaustive page-by-page drudgery, I’ve seen a couple of articles that seem kinda sorta similar that might be the source of the memory, but it seems way too specific to be kinda sorta.
Any ideas?
JC, sorry for an annus horribilis. Hope things markedly improve.
Whitey was a name before it was an epithet- the Cleavers had a friend named Whitey.
I don’t think Heinlein used the name elsewhere, but he had a couple of Pinkys and several Stinkys.
Are you certain it was Popular Mechanics? I jumped ahead to look at the notes for Waldo (I’ll get to that book in a bit. I didn’t want to do more short stories for a bit.) and the notes only mention the 1918 article in a “popular science magazine” and doesn’t identify which one. The notes also quote from the essay you mention so the author (which is likely Patterson or someone similar) is well aware of it, but the omission of PM by title would seem strange to me.
It’s possible that Heinlein DID call out PM by name but the author of the note is being cautious because - like you - he could not confirm the story independently.
There may be a couple of things going on here:
Heinlein cited PM but did so with failed memory.
Heinlein made up a story. RAH was not above gilding a lily for a good yarn, if my reading is anything to go by
Heinlein originally cited some other magazine but it got changed in edit.
Heinlein cited PM but for some reason that issue/article is lost.
And thanks for the kind words, Xap. Things are - I believe - looking better in the headlights.
This’ll speak to you: These days I’m writing again. That was something I could barely do for quite a while. Sure, I could always do journalism (offer to pay me $X for 2000 words and you’ll get it in two days). But no, I’m actually writing things that I want to write.
Yes. I have the book and it definitely says Popular Mechanics. But I just discovered something weird.
I knew that Popular Science and Popular Mechanics put up their entire archives on Google. Those go back to 1902. What I haven’t done, as I said, was search issue-by-issue, just keyword searches. I found the Google page specifically for the magazine and tried to look 1918 up. To my confoundment, no issues are posted for 1918, 1919, or 1920. The archive skips from Dec. 1917 to Jan. 1921. I’m sure the magazine was published those years, because I’ve seen online references to articles in that period. But it would mean that a separate search will now have to be done to figure this out.
is now a better possibility. 3. is possible, mostly because it seems odd that he would misspell the disease. I have a third reprint edition and the earlier ones might say something else. 1. is always possible for any story. 2. is possible, of course, but there’s nothing more to say about it. The reference has to be checked as if valid.
Writing what you want is fantastically pleasing. I’ll tell you something I’ve never mentioned on the board. I had a stroke in 2005. Not a serious one, but enough to affect my whole right side. You didn’t notice it on the Dope because I bought a left handed mouse and typed one-handed and posted short notes until I could do enough physical therapy to bring my right hand back. Writing Dope posts get me going through weeks when I couldn’t do anything else. But something shorted in my brain. I could not write fiction. I didn’t know how. And that ability took years to reappear, although I think I’m a level better today than before. So you can come back. And you may come back the best on stuff that means the most to you. The future may hold off its rewards for a while, but they’re out there and can be seized and brought close. Remember that when things get you down.
Thanks, Xap. I thought that I had it rough, but going through that must have been terrible for you. Through my troubles I was able to keep up with my comic strip but everything else dried right up. It’s so good to be back making stuff again.
Anyway, I’m glad you got through your troubles. I certainly wasn’t aware of them. If you need any support let me know.
There’s a The Moon is A Harsh Mistress spec script floating around the Internet; I think it could make a great big-budget sf movie. For myself, I’d like to see Starship Troopers done again much more true to the book, incl. powered armor, and Time for the Stars, too.
The Door Into Summer Volume V of The Virginia Edition
This is, quite simply, an iconographic Heinlein book for me. According to the introduction, it was written in 13 days at the couple’s home in Colorado. It was - according to the notes - one of those events where the book comes near-perfect on the first try.
And I attest that this is a perfect little book. Science fiction by dint of being written by RAH, the science part is hardly apparent. This is far more a study of a man attempting to regain control of his life after a major setback. In the end, there’s more engineering (the lead character is engineer who designs household appliances) than actual science. Even where the science fictional aspect come into it - towards the end there’s a time machine and at the beginning there’s suspended animation through cold sleep - they’re largely hand-waved away as being incidental to the story.
And they are. This - more than most of RAH’s books - relies on his “the door dilated” school of world building. Both in the world of 1970 and 2001 (which now seem quaint, God knows) there are elements where the characters take for granted parts of the world that seem strange. A product, Beardgo, is mentioned at one point when a man wants to remove his whiskers. Never mentioned again.
But again, what this really is about is a man re-making himself as his own man after losing that part of himself. The journey of DB Davis feels real and true, even towards the end when his romantic life takes a left turn by using coldsleep to marry an 11-year-old (she ends up 21 when he wakes up) it still shows him establishing himself doing the things he wants to do in the way he wants to do it.
A great book, and one way outside of Heinlein’s normal writing space. He even chose to excise the subplot about martians - which would have put the book on a much more normal SF setting - because it wasn’t needed for the story he was telling.
Next up, we’ll hit about 1980 or so to move us towards the latter end of RAH’s writing with Friday.
Books Completed:
Vol 1: I Will Fear No Evil
Vol 3: Starship Troopers
Vol 5: The Door Into Summer
Vol 9: How to Be a Politician
Vol 10: Rocket Ship Galileo
Vol 11: Space Cadet
Vol 14: Between Planets
Vol 18: Tunnel in the Sky
Vol 20: Citizen of the Galaxy
Vol 22: The Future History of Robert Heinlein Vol. I
Vol 23: The Future History of Robert Heinlein Vol. II
Vol 26: Job: A Comedy of Justice
Vol 30: Sixth Column
Vol 32: Creating a Genre (short stories)
Vol 35: Glory Road
Vol 36: The Puppet Masters
Vol 44: Screen Writing of Robert A. Heinlein Vol. I
*Door *has always been one of my favorites. The “ick” factor about marrying a younger woman whom he knew when she was 11 doesn’t bother me in the least, because it was never portrayed as Davis being a perv or lusting after the young’un. It was more a case of soul mates doing what was necessary to be for each other, be it time travel or cold sleep.
I have to admit a lot of the charm is because of Pete.
I think my favorite part of Door is how he manages to get his perfect revenge on the woman who wronged him… By making no effort whatsoever to attempt to get revenge. Time wounds all heels.
The one part I thought was a little awkward was the bit of religion shoehorned into the last paragraph. There’s no indication of D. B. Davis’ religious views at all for the whole book, and then all of a sudden he’s saying there’s no paradox because God was too good an engineer to allow it.
Yes, I’ve always enjoyed this one. There’s only one plot hole that I noticed.
In the future, Dan wakes up with the sense that he had just missed Ricky, and searches through the last week’s newspapers very carefully for anything he might have seen subconsciously earlier. He finds her name in the list of recently awaken people, which leads him to all his later actions. But while he was looking through the papers, shouldn’t he have seen his own name (from his 2nd time through the cycle)? The rest of the book takes for its theory of time travel that history can not be changed, so the name should have been there.
I think part of the attraction in this novel is that there is no invasion by Martians, no big world-ending catastrophe to deal with - just very personal problems and dilemmas. Makes the story timeless.
That’s one of the things - IMHO - that Heinlein understood that Campbell - and a lot of his proteges - never properly understood. The best of the SF writers - Heinlein, Clarke and a few others - understood that the science was the background and maguffin but that the protagonists had to be people. Even when they were aliens, they had to be people.
I’ve done a search using Google Ngram Viewer for “Myasthenia Gravis”, just “myasthenia”, and “myesthenia” (There ARE hits for the “misspelling”. Evidently either other people didn’t spell it right, either, or it was viewed as an alternate form) for the years 1900-1940, and all I can pull up are medical journals – not any popular ones. I have a suspicion that the article in question – if it eexists – didn’t actually mention myasthenia. It might have simply talked about muscular atrophy, or something.
I’ve tried to determine whether there was a popular name for the condition at the time, but I haven’t found one (then or now). I may have just overlooked one, but that gives me little to search on. The variant spelling using “e” seems to be much rarer and just an unusual misspelling. It may not even be Heinlein’s spelling. It could have been “corrected” for the print edition, and since I have a third edition, it may not even be in the first edition. (Though I’m pretty sure Patterson spells that way, too.) I just mentioned it because it would come up in any search.
An issue-by-issue search seems required, and that means finding the specific issues for 1918 the old hard way. Which is a bit much for something that just caught my eye in passing. That’s why I hoped that you obsessives knew of other obsessives.
Robert Heinlein pretty much defined science fiction as I was growing up. Yes, I read Asimov and Clarke and all the other greats, but somehow Heinlein defined the genre to me. And this little gem was my favorite of them all. That I grew up to become a robotics designer is a rare bit of fun happenstance.
I read to the soon-to-be Mrs. Gagundathar every night and we finished this story a few months ago. She asked me once if there were any other stories about Ricky and Pete. I was a wee bit annoyed that she didn’t consider Dan to be the most important character, but I know when not to argue.
Thanks for coming back Jonathan. It certainly sounds as if you have had a transformative journey and one that has reawakened your capabilities as a writer of fiction (notably distinct from being a fictional writer.)
I remember reading “The Door into Summer” when I was about 10 years old in the mid 70s. I was really confused because I thought the opening story was set in the present day, but then it mentioned nuclear wars and so on. I was young enough that I didn’t understand that dates set in what would be the books future when the book was written could be in the past when I was reading it. So it was already alt-history.
The interesting thing is how often science fiction authors of the 50/60s predicted radical social and technological changes in the upcoming decades. Yet it seems, here, in the far future of 2013 (2013!) that things haven’t changed so much. I guess living through the 30s and 40s will do that to you. War, peace, boom, depression, war, peace, boom. The changes in and shakeups from 1928 to 1958 are pretty mind-boggling. And so moon colonies in 1980 didn’t seem like such a stretch.
The first half of the 20th century was a remarkable period of transformation and innovation. Huge changes in lifestyle for the bulk populace (at least of industrialized nations). The invention and widespread dissemmination of the automobile, of the television set. Airplanes (heavier than air craft) went from “impossible” to commercially viable and major elements of war. Medicine and surgery made huge strides. The transformation of industrial factories and changes making things safer, more reasonable hours (40 hour work week as standard), and better wages. It would be remarkable for anyone growing up and living in the first three decades of the 20th century to not see the future as an ongoing tide of changes at breakneck speed. Even the Great Depression couldn’t put a damper on that.
