For anyone interested, Jurgen is in the public domain and available from Gutenberg.
I’m now rereading Friday (inspired by the discussion here) and a couple of thoughts so far (I’m up to the part where she’s with Ian, Georges and Janet and all the crackpots claiming credit for that coup/attack) :
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There’s another clue that Friday’s world is Jerry’s (from Job) world beyond the “beanstalk” thing. In Jerry’s America, Christians (presumably including Catholics) are a semi-persecuted minority. Same with Friday’s world although we’re only shown Catholics being persecuted. (“Uncle Jim” in one of the pre-rape chapters–there are hushed whispers that he might be <gasp> a papist…or beyond that, <double-gasp> a priest).
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The rape scene is just ghastly-bad. She doesn’t sound like a woman, she sounds like a man writing not what he thinks of as a woman (which Heinlein usually does) but a man writing a tract on what a woman should be like and how she should deal with a rape. This goes into the Farnham’s Freehold category of “His heart was in the right place, but epic fail”.
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That said, I’d forgotten how damned whiney Friday is. My god, she never stops snivelling. She’s possibly the most passive main character/good-guy* (and certainly the most passive female character) Heinlein ever wrote. Ignoring a physical confrontation, Peewee or Ricky (both pre-teens) have more spunk and would shred Friday in a battle of wills.
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There’s something…off…about the dialogue. I can’t put my finger on what, but it was off the same way in Number of the Beast and it stopped being off in Job and Sunset.
More to follow.
That hanging asterisk is gonna kill me.
The Asterisk of Damocles!
*Mrs Farnham doesn’t count as a “good guy”–she’s mildly evil from the start and gets worse as things go.
(Don’t post stuff pre-coffee!)
But I think an argument could be made that Friday’s defining characteristic is her insecurity and whining. Her experience in the creche and out on her own, and her response to the discrimination she fears (but doesn’t often experience) feeds on itself until she has to let it out.
Oh, the memories! Anyone who likes Heinlein’s smart, spunky, growing-up-fast young women would enjoy Joe Haldeman’s Marsbound, which I just finished. The heroine is part of the first permanent human settlement on Mars, about 50-some years from now. Good stuff.
Wow. You’ve read a book you hate four times?
It may be a defining characteristic, but it’s also annoying as hell to read. 
For what it’s worth, Georges finds it annoying too.
And Kettle Belly Baldwin, too.
There needed to be some real character development to overcome that and make the Friday character arc worthwhile. And just saying at the end that she feels human now doesn’t do it.
Exactly.
Also, I found it to be a letdown that he used Kettle-Belly and dispensed with all the stuff from “Gulf” in about 3 sentences. Why bother to use Baldwin if you’re not going to update us in detail. And for that matter, what happened to all those super-fancy learning techniques (the magical language where a paragraph could be expressed as a single syllable, etc) that he taught the hero of “Gulf”?
Another flaw: Friday was in the NZ family for what–8 years or so?–and her super-power is that she can put together disparate groups of data and come up with the right conclusion…and somehow she never quite noticed that the entire family was a group of raging Ku Klux Klan style bigots? It’s not that they have a minor thing against Tongans, they’re frothing at the mouth white supremacists. And she missed it. AND Friday missed that Anita was conning her? But her super-power is ferreting out stuff exactly like this. Oops.
But… that was the point? She wasn’t human, then became human. It’s like Pinocchio.
Actually it was that she was ALWAYS human but having a baby and/or family let her learn that she had been human ALL ALONG!
More like the movie version of The Wizard of Oz where she had the power to go home all along.
True.
I’d say Friday was willfully blind as regards her NZ family. Her craving for a place to belong let Anita take her to the cleaners while not risking too much with someone Anita thought was beneath them.
And I think you’re overselling the racism of the NZ family. They are far from frothing klansmen. Their racism is more of the class-based kind that wouldn’t possibly riot or rally against Tongans…it’s the sort that believes that some people just ‘wouldn’t fit in’ at their club and such. It’s racism, that’s clear, but there’s never a hint of violence beneath it, it’s more the British class system applied along racial lines. Though I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a certain level of working class discrimination as well.
In terms of Hartley Baldwin, I saw those three sentences as RAH throwing out a ‘Can you believe what I wrote forty years ago? Wow.’ He does throw a bone out there. The world that Baldwin’s will forbids Friday to emigrate to, Olympia, is the likely home of the subculture in ‘Gulf’. It’s where Baldwin’s lawyer tells Friday ‘those self-styled supermen’ settled. It’s clear that, whatever Baldwin thought of them at the time of ‘Gulf’, the bloom is off the rose by the time of Friday and Baldwin is back trying to do what he can without them. Especially necessary as they left to do their own thing.
But her super-power is that she isn’t willfully blind. And in the 8 years she was with the family, she never once noticed anyone ever saying “Those darkies are subhuman” or hell, told her (as did whatshername) “Oh, when I say “darkies”, I don’t mean you dear, you’re Cherokee…that’s almost as good as being white.” (close paraphrase). I can’t buy that she was THAT blind–the kind of virulent poisonous talk that we got from the family members doesn’t just suddenly happen–you can’t know someone for 8 years and then be shocked to see that they’re frothing bigots. Especially when your magic power is exactly to notice things like that.
I got considerably worse than that from the scene where Friday tells whatshername that she’s an artificial person. What’shername isn’t just putting her nose in the air and sniffing that the Tongan husband (as well as black people, aboriginies, etc) “…aren’t our sort of people, dear.”, she point-blank calls them sub-human (the “Cherokees are nearly as good as whites…almost.” line). At best it’s a “White Man’s Burden” type racism, but frankly, it seems worse than that.
I dunno–I would have liked to see just a bit more. I don’t want/need it to recap “Gulf” entirely, but it would have been neat to see Baldwin train Friday in one of the techniques from “Gulf” (wasn’t one of them “not needing to sleep”? That would have been useful when she was becoming an expert in everything.) and I’d have liked maybe one or two more sentences about the Baldwin/Superpeople split–did they give up on Earth? Did they decide that they were better than humans? A bit more info–again, a few sentences, not a chapter–would have been nice. When the lawyer comments about the “self-styled supermen” having gone to Olympus, she could have added how her dad got the real story from Baldwin and told her–the supermen thought X and Baldwin thought Y and blah-blah-blah.
Two other points:
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Heinlein’s grasp of idiom is usually his strong point. He fails in Friday. “I don’t see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex.”. Um…“heavy trip”? That’s incredibly dated terminology at the time he was writing it–minimum 10 years out of date. It’s not, however, as bad as Fritz Leiber inflicts on humanity in The Wanderer (“Interracial weed brothers…” and such) so he’s sort-of forgiven. Also, after this book, I think he stopped using “slitch” and “spung!”. Humanity thanks him for that.
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As an exercise, I Googled some of the stuff Friday was asked to look up on her terminal. Ben Franklin’s parable of the whistle gets it exactly backwards and has an incredibly ignorant (surprising for Franklin) view of “value” (which also contradicts what I know of Heinlein’s). The parable of the whistle is about how Franklin bought a whistle as a child for 4 times it’s market price, but which gave him great joy–until he was told that he overpaid for it. The actual moral of the story is NOT “Don’t overpay”, despite what Franklin intended, it’s a perfect illustration that value is not intrinsic to an item. If it brought joy to Franklin, then it was “worth” what he paid. (Also, I Youtubed that comedian that Friday/Heinlein loves so much: “The world’s greatest authority” is tedious in his earlier clips and just…shrill and political and grossly unfunny in his later stuff. You’d be better off watching something by Ernie Kovaks (say, “The Nairobi Trio”) for a contemporary of that Expert guy who actually IS funny. Or Mel Brooks/Carl Reiner’s 2000 Year Old Man stuff )
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It’s interesting that Heinlein’s “terminals” are essentially the Internet* and Friday’s first day with them leads her to exactly the sort-of link-following that happens on the internet–at one point she starts with searching for Louis XI and ends up spending the afternoon listening to old Broadway musicals she’s downloaded. Nice bit of extrapolation on how addictively time-wasting (and educational) following random links can be.
*As far as I can tell, Leinster was the first to hit on the concept of the internet in “A Logic Named Joe” circa 1955. He predicts streaming news, porn-filters, illegal web-activities, privacy issues, etc.
The Star Beast Volume XVII of The Virginia Edition
Written during RAH’s juvenile era, The Star Beast was serialized (I have it) and later released in book form in 1954. Immediately preceding it was Starman Jones and following was Tunnel in the Sky.
I bring up the books surrounding it for the purpose of contrast. Both SJ and TitS are classic juvenile novels. A young man finds himself on an adventure and grows as a result of it. Bang, novel.
But The Star Beast isn’t like that at all. Despite having the trappings of the rest of Heinlein’s juveniles - there’s a boy, a Heinlein matron mother, an alien, some danger, and so forth - the boy doesn’t learn anything. Hell, he’s terrible at pretty much everything he does. There’s not a situation in the book where he doesn’t allow himself to be pushed around or simply makes bad decisions on his own. Even the sequence where he’s reviewing his ancestors (who share his name) and their acts of courage, he takes nothing from it except to form a pointless and ineffective plan.
Look, it’s orthodoxy in Heinlein criticism to make the point that John Thomas Stuart XI is sort of an anti-Heinlein hero. Fine. But that makes me think more about what the hell the book is about.
The book has other characters. Stuart’s girlfriend, the divorced-from-her-parents Betty Sorenson - is a person who acts. Not always with great skill outside of her comfort zone (look at the difference in how she can manipulate the Chief of Police in their small town and the older Henry Kiku) but she’s certainly in their trying to control her own (and Stuart’s) destiny.
Lummox - The alien of the title - is also a interesting character, but s/he’s not really developed all that much. She starts as an alien with a childish point of view and even later when it’s revealed that s/he’s some sort of ET royalty she still behaves petulantly. She’s demanding and abusive of her followers and very insistent in a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude. Heck, she even has the other ETs crawling around her on their bellies.
However, the four government types are where this book really delivers something worth reading. In each of them there’s a strong contrast and compare that shows different aspects toward governing and adult behavior.
Secretary McClure is the Secretary of Space. He’s an appointed official who is a politician and might aspire to a seat on the World Council and possibly even Secretary General. But he’s revealed to be a politician first and foremost an empty suit more concerned with headlines and his own advancement than with doing the job properly. In the end, he bails out of an agreement to live off world as an ambassador to the newly contacted race of ETs. While it’s not stated outright, as a former political reporter, I sense political rehabilitation and comeback for Mr. McClure. Or at least his political team decided that he had a better chance of advancement staying put and playing the game at home. The one thing - in the middle section of the book - that McClure truly is concerned about is how Kiku can harm him or even get him removed from his cabinet-level position.
Sergei Greenberg is an assistant - a highly placed one - for the Undersecretary of Space, Henry Kiku. Greenberg, when we first meet him, is in charge of System Trade Intelligence and is dispatched to investigate the first incident with Lummox at the beginning of the book. Greenberg is portrayed as a competent man who is still angling for advancement and has a reasonable chance of eventually being the senior career official at the Department of Space. However, in the story, he’s constantly double-checking himself by trying to figure whether he was doing the right thing by asking what would Kiku do. That can be seen two ways. First, that he’s trying to be a good underling and thinking about how to apply his boss’ policies to the situation he finds himself in. Second, that he holds Kiku in such high regard that he tries to pattern his actions on Kiku.
Wes Robbins is the sketchiest character that has a major role in the book. He’s a PR and media man for the Department of Space and plays an important role. He’s not really a climber and instead limits his role to making sure the right story gets out there in the way that will benefit the goals of the Dept of Space, and Kiku, if the two things are to be considered different in any way.
But…
The goods are truly delivered by the portrayal of Henry Kiku, the Undersecretary of Space. Note how all three of the previous characters actions and attitudes revolve around Kiku, even when - in the case of McClure - they are largely unaware of it. Kiku is the pivot on which the story revolves and it does so based on his wisdom and experience. Instead of seeing a brash young man driving the action as in so many of Heinlein’s other juveniles, we get an elderly and largely unflappable (he admits to discomfort with Dr. Ftaeml - an ET with tendrils that resemble snakes on his head - due to the Kiku’s fear of snakes) man navigating in an adult way a crisis that could have ruined Earth.
An interesting point to note in how Kiku is established as the adult in the room is how Heinlein refers to him in the text. The other characters are generally referred to by the narrator - not the other characters now, but RAH - by their last name. “Greenberg said…”, “Robbins did…” and so forth. Kiku is - almost universally - referred to in the text as “Mr. Kiku”. Heinlein is displaying who the most important - and to be most respected - person in the book is by setting off references to Kiku with an honorific. I cannot believe this was anything but intentional on the part of RAH. Kiku - more than the learned Dr. Ftaeml, more than the space prince/ss Lummox, more than Secretary McClure and enormously moreso that John Thomas Stuart XI - is the focal point of the story. And Kiku is portrayed of being worthy of the position. Kiku runs his department while dealing with appointees and underlings and random events from across light years, all without raising his voice and often without needing to give his staff explicit orders. In truth, there’s most of a lesson in management in how Heinlein portrays Kiku and many people could learn how to approach problems by paying attention to how Kiku is presented here.
Kiku even shows the only real bit of character development in the book. As mentioned earlier, Kiku has an irrational fear of snakes (at one point he hints at an incident during his childhood in Africa) and his trouble dealing with the sort-of snakeheaded Dr. Ftaeml. But by the end of the book he’s worked with Ftaeml enough to have this exchange take place:
Heck, Patterson and James, in their forward to the book, fall into the “Greenberg” vs “Mr. Kiku” pattern. Honestly, I find their forward to this book - with its ongoing description of troubles with editor Dalgliesh and its celebration of the dick joke in the soi-disant protagonist’s name - disappointing. There’s a lot more deconstruction of the book that could have been done. Instead the forward focuses on the more obvious.
For a juvenile, this book presents governance the best of all of them. There will later be echos of it in Secretary Joe Douglas in Stranger in a Strange Land, but I don’t think there’s another instance of RAH showing such a competent person in government from The Star Beast on.
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 17: The Star Beast
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 24: Friday
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
Up next: Hemingway, Eichmann…
And smwrimes it’s quie simper. “Gulf” was written as a poece pg yhr ‘prophesied’ future issue of Astounding, abd as a result had to matchh the letter commenting on it, The character given Kettle-Belly Baldwin was displeasing to Heinlein’s friend and former boss at the Philadelphia Naval MaterialsLab, J. Hartley Bowen, who stated that Friday was his favorite novel.
I’ll agree that Star Beast is worth far more deep examination and thoughtful criticism than it’s ever been given. Yes, I tend to get distracted by the JT joke and its history, but I am far more fascinated by many of the implied social issues.
Betty divorcing her parents and keeping it enough of a secret that JT did not know; he is shocked and embarrassed by the revelation.
The implied change in sexual roles, presumably due to reliable birth control, that leads to JT seriously having to be concerned about *his *reputation being alone with Betty in the woods. Betty’s comment that “boys had to start worrying when girls stopped” bespeaks volumes.
JT’s hostile relationship with his mother.
I think the key is two-part: the novel is carried by the government as protagonist, and JC’s breakdown of the four characters is a good first sketch. (Don’t forget the local officials who tried to “deal” with Lummox as part of that equation.) The second part is the social portait carried by the lightweight and secondary characters of JT, Betty and a few others.
And the third part is that Heinlein got all these astounding concepts across under Dalgleish, from the smirking dick joke to major social-sexual-parental role changes.
Hmm. Close, AB, but I think some things are missing.
On the subject of Dalgliesh, James and Patterson state that Dalgliesh loved the book as first presented. She may not have picked up on the dick joke (then again, she may have. Given her notion of publishing sometimes pushing-the-limits books such as Two and the Town the sort of one dimensional treatment she normally gets in Heinlein analysis may be overwritten) but she seems to have caught and worried about the mention of child divorce and asked permission of Heinlein’s agent to make a change to downplay it but other items such as JT’s concern about his reputation and let’s not forget the casual way that Betty states that she’ll ask JT to marry someday.
TSB did get some pushback from librarians, and some bad reviews from them. One is pointed out in the forward. But it appeared not to harm sales and RAH and Dalgliesh appear to have by then worked out a modus viviendi.
Something spilled on your keyboard? I’m guessing that was meant to be
And the other thing I find interesting about The Star Beast is that, out of all of the many juvenile novels where the young male protagonist is oblivious to the young lady who’s scheming to marry him, it’s the only one where the marriage is actually stated in the book, instead of just being implied to be an eventual certainty. Is this perhaps related somehow to John Stuart Thomas’s passivity?