On Re-reading all of Robert Heinlein via The Virginia Edition

Cafe Society
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Goldfish Bowl from Creating a Genre

Not one of my favorites, really. But the last story in Creating a Genre has a unique spin to it. As is pointed out in the notes, Heinlein was attempting to break through to the idea of indifferent aliens. Aliens that just didn’t give a damn about humanity. Though, I might argue that it’s not a new idea, even if he thought so. There could be a strong argument made that Lovecraft’s Elder Gods never gave a damn about humanity, either. We were so far below them that we weren’t even worth noticing.

Still, the notes after the story about the frosty arguing between Heinlein and Campbell over the story are good. And I think Campbell has a point in his original rejection when he says that, well, nothing happens in the story. An event occurs, some people study it, they get taken and eventually die.

Honestly, this seems less a story with plot, characters and so forth than more of a mood piece where Heinlein is trying to build a space in the reader’s head to consider the means by which we treat goldfish. I could, honestly, see it being a piece for PETA instead, God help me.

Next up: The Puppet Masters.

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The theory I’d heard for compiling the two was that the “other world” that Waldo learns to tap is the world from Magic, Inc. I don’t know where I heard that, but I remember it from when I first read the book in the mid '70s.
Also note that Poul Anderson wrote an unofficial sequel Operation Chaos. He just barely filed the serial numbers off. The sequel to that (Operation Luna is in the same class as “Highlander 2”, IMO)

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“Highlander 2” was better.

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That’s some serious fan wankery, there, Fenris. Magic, Inc always stands out in Heinlein because of its wholesale embrace of magic instead of the rocket ships and ray guns motif. Still, no need to try to make more of it than it is, do you think?

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I hadn’t considered “Operation Chaos” as follow-on to “Magic, Inc” but that does make sense (though magic as technology stories were fairly common in that era). “Operation Chaos” is one of my favorite books; I found “Operation Luna” to be a grave disappointment (but was amused to see that in the “Operation” universe, Turtledove’s “Case of the Toxic Spell Dump” is non-fiction - cute).

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“The new Johnny Bravo!”

I’m interested to see whether “The Long Watch” is considered a Future History story - it’s a favorite of mine, but it doesn’t seem to fit, especially since LW is tied directly to “Space Cadet.”

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I had never read any solipsistic tales before that one, when I was in junior high. Wow! Blew me away.

As it happens, my 13-year-old son and I just started reading Heinlein’s The Rolling Stones (1952) tonight.

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Good! I’ve given my 12-year-old daughter some of the juveniles for the last few years.

And solipsism is a slippery concept. When done poorly it’s just foolishness.

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I think Heinlein would have cheerfully admitted that a writer is a species of con-man and a spiritual brother to the grifters, shysters, and hucksters that occasionally populate his books. Take a look at the writing of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” serial in “The Rolling Stones”. Heinlein thought writing entertaining stories for money was the whole point of being a writer, and the trick to being an honorable writer was to provide a fair value for your readers. That is, you’re selling them a story, so your job is to sell them a good story.

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The Puppet Masters Vol. 26 of The Virginia Edition

I was looking forward to this one, in particular, because I’d never gotten around to reading the original text edition that was published in the 1990s.

I find that, apart from some editing, the shorter work is a tighter, less talky piece. The additions don’t add much except some color and background. Though there is some paragraphs expanding on the role the parasites play in adapting human culture, such as the bloodsport/orgy mention late in the book that shows ‘the parasites now understand sex’.

Anyway, other than that there’s a LOT of extra mentions, particularly in the opening chapters, of the Soviets. It seems almost quaint, now, to have the USSR be this big, spooky thing. With 20/20 hindsight we now know that the soviets, despite being armed with nuclear weapons, were faced with an internal contradiction that was working to bring their own system down. But during the height of the cold war I can’t imagine it looked anything like it looked, even in my childhood of the 1970s and 80s, where they were there, but not truly terrifying.

Anyway, in The Puppet Masters we find ourselves with a story SO good it becomes several movies, books, plays, what-have-you…even a lousy episode of the original Star Trek. But the concept of being controlled, especially during a time where the concept of brain-washing and mind control, was worth mentioning and developing stories around.

And that’s what we have, here. A (now) classic tale of free men against the controlling other. A better man, perhaps a more erudite man, than I might even stretch it and make it a tale of man vs societal expectations. Perhaps.

But, honestly while The Puppet Masters presents the alien invasion and mind control aspects well, it passes on the opportunity to show the man vs society thing well…or at all. The closest it gets is when the lead character, Sam/Elihu, bulls his way into the research team at the end and takes over. But it’s not presented that way. Still, while Heinlein would hit those sort of themes later in his career this book isn’t the spot he chose. Hell, perhaps it never occurred to him.

Something we see here, perhaps not for the first time but very well defined, is the character of “Mary”. The female lead fills the now-popular Heinlein role of beautiful, striking, smart and also deadly. But she’s also dreamy and down-to-earth. Once she’s married she becomes devoted. Almost in a pixie dream girl perfect sort of way. It always struck me as … well … that Heinlein put these sort of women up on a pedestal in a way. Mary SAYS she can be bitchy and mean but the reader is never shown that side of her except a bit in the very beginning. Otherwise, and certainly after she’s defined by her marriage, she falls into the background when she could have been a much more active character.

Still, this is one of Heinlein’s most cinematic and, frankly, exciting adventure novels. When the dispatches came in from the Robert Fulton, (from memory so don’t hold me to it) “SAUCER SITED LANDING 20 MILES WEST OF PASS CHRISTIAN. LANDING FORCE BEACHING TO CAPTURE.” That got my 13-year-old self’s blood moving and it does the same thing here.

This, in particular, is a book that deserves a better movie made of it.

Next up: Space Cadet

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I prefer the restored text, myself. They cut out the implied sex scene at the beginning and the later Alien Parasites Discover Sex stuff later on, which all adds something. The book reads like James Bond Meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and it’s interesting to realize that the book preceds both James Bond and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (in any form – it precedes Fleming’s and Finney’s novels). The idea was Old Hat before Heinlein took it up, and Heinlein spologizes in one of his letters about this for using such a hackneyed idea. But, to tell the truth, I’m not sure I’ve read a treatment earlier than Heinlein’s. He certainly did write the definitive version.
But Finney’s book got filmed – it had been in the “slick” Saturday Evening Post, and was set in the present, so it got all the glory.

Heinlein’s version was ripped off as The Brain Eaters (which featured a young Leonard Nimoy! Under a ton of makeup!) and he beat them in court, IIRC. It then got turned into a flick by Disney(!) which had some good points (including wonderful pre-CGI parasites, and the casting of conspiracy-loving actor Richard Belzer as an agent), but ultimately wasn’t very good. They shoulda been faithful (The screenwriters published a piece on the internet about how hard it was to be faithfaul as they managed to be. It reminds me of the piece Heinlein wrote about filming Destination Moon). I agree that a more faithful version would be better, and I’d love to see it.

This was one of the first Heinlein novels I read (I discovered him through “Waldo” in the anthology A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, which the SF Book Club virtually gave away as a premium, then went to my library and found "Three by Heinlein, with Waldo, Magic, Inc., and Puppet masters bound together.) What drew me in, oddly enough, was his description of how hard it was to implement anti-parasite measures while working within the US Government bureaucracy. That rand particularly true, and I wasn’t surprised to learn much later of Heinlein’s experiences in politics (plenty of such shenangians in Magic, inc., too)

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Do the Soviets get taken over, or nearly so, as well? What do we learn about how that goes? Is the Soviet Union, as an authoritarian state, any better at fighting off the aliens than the U.S.? I remember, at the end, Earth is sending warships to Titan to destroy the aliens. Is it specified that there’s a new world government, or just that the Cold War allies are willing to work together to face a common threat, a la Watchmen?

Also watch for Andrew Robinson, the Cardassian tailor/spy on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in a small role as a Secret Service agent.

It’s been years since I read The Puppet Masters, but I really enjoyed it, both for the supersecret spy stuff and the creepy nature of the alien takeover. The father/son relationship between the chief and the spy is also well-done. The movie has its moments but just doesn’t measure up.

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As I recall, the Soviets get taken over with great ease, though the heroes have difficulty determining exactly when the takeover occurred, since the Soviets continue to act in the same fashion before and after the takeover (but it has been years since I’ve read the book).

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Just to answer some questions…

Yes, the Soviets do get taken over. The west (in the guise of our heroes) assume that when the bubonic plague breaks out all across the communist world. While the soviets are presented as bad guys in this one (and, indeed, at one point Sam speculates that ‘how would you tell’ if the slugs took over the USSR) they are afforded some actual respect in the text. They are perceived, by Sam, who self-reports to have been on missions behind the iron curtain on several occasions, as bad, and as opponents, but he has respect for the way they handle spying and public health.

When the plague breaks out it is reported by a person in the former USSR (via radio) that the communist government has collapsed and that they seek any aid at all from the west.

Cal, I was in Iowa (grad school at Iowa City) when The Puppet Masters was filmed there. I was very excited about it, obviously, and went to Des Moines to play tourist when some of the helicopter stunt scenes were filmed. Ultimately, I didn’t think the movie was very good. The biggest surprise (and suspense) was how Julie Warner’s bra stayed on in her scene where she had to fight without a shirt on. My wife said that they put her in one that was about three sizes too tight so that there’d be no movement or possibility of a slip at all.

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You want horror, my friends?

I did a google image search for a shot of Julie Warner in the Bra of Doom. And Grover Norquist popped up.

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The Puppet Masters was the closest Hollywood has come to getting a Heinlein novel ‘right’. Donald Sutherland did a very credible job of playing the Old Man, and I thought he captured the flavor of one of Heinlein’s most common archetypes very well. Unlike Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, the movie tried to treat the source material with respect.

Sadly the movie failed because it had a very low budget, and also because the acting (other than Sutherland) and the rest of the production just wasn’t up to the task. So close, and yet not good enough.

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Here’s an article written by someone involved in making the movie (hosted at NitoPress, by the way) site: Robert A. Heinlein - Archives - Terry Rossio Essay

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It didn’t fail because of a low budget. I’d say it failed because it wasn’t thought through well (you can’t have the female lead as a non-spy scientist, then have her act as a femme fatale trying to use sex. It isn’t be,lievable. Why not simply have her a spy to start out with, as in the book? Don’t cost nothin’), untuil I read the piece by the screenwriters, at which point I put it down to producer meddling and Too Many Cooks syndrome.

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A sorta rant I’ve made on this board before, but since we’re there…

This was the missing classic in all my decades reading Heinlein up until a few years ago. My very first real novel of any sort was Red Planet that my dad bought for me off a dime-store rack shortly before I entered third grade. I read all his juveniles by the time I had finished my early teens and most of his well-regarded output by my early twenties at the latest. And pretty much that was it - I had read and re-read them so much as a young man I didn’t really revisit RAH much in later years except I think for The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag ( a favorite ).

So with a maybe 15-20 year remove I gotta say the female characters came pretty close to ruining the The Puppet Masters for me when I finally read it. It was like someone took all the worst impulses of RAH when it came to writing women and turned them up to 11. I’ve never been one to pay much attention to the charges of misogyny laid at Heinlein’s feet. It’s obvious he loved women and relative to his generation he paid them a great deal of respect in print. They may have fit into tropes but he produced a plethora of spunky, capable heroines that one could respect even if you could see some of Heinlein’s blinders at work.

But man, The Puppet Masters has got to be the worst. And I’m not entirely sure if it is more me being that different from the young me or if it is the book. I strongly suspect it is mostly the book.

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Amen! I was so excited when I heard a movie was made. And then it was out of the theaters in less than a week. WTF? When I finally saw it, I cried.

As already mentioned, the Soviets fall fast and it’s hard to tell, because they’re already primed for subservience by being totalitarian.

I agree with this. Donald Sutherland captured The Old Man pretty well. There were elements that weren’t bad. The scriptwriters at least had respect for the source material. I had previously read that article linked by Andy L, and that is very enlightening to the problem. The producers didn’t like the material or the story idea or pretty much anything about it. There were too many hands in the pie, too many rewrites. Then there’s the depressing line

Dammit, this is one of the places where Heinlein was leading the curve, trying to include dynamic female characters that are more than just the girlfriend, but the studio execs can’t let that happen. :mad: Maybe he didn’t fully succeed - maybe his female was a bit too lovey-dovey once dating the hero, but he at least tried.

Thanks for that link. I lost it somewhere, and have wanted to refer to it before.