Rethinking Heinlein's Number of the Beast

Cafe Society
1

I found the following posts on the Usenet and WOW! I don’t think I’ve ever seen two posts that so changed my view of a book before!

For the mods, who may have a heart-attack when they read further: Since the author didn’t X-NO ARCHIVE 'em (the opt-out method to protect one’s posts from reprinting), they’re public domain (IIRC), so I believe it’ll be ok to reprint 'em here. (Google doesn’t seem to be getting in trouble for reprinting them (and every other USENET post that’s not X-NO ARCHIVEd) in toto from day one of the USENET…)

Anyway, I knew that Number was well after Heinlein’s medical problems, but always wondered if there were some lingering effects given the plot, narrative and structural problems in Number.

Then I read these:

and

(FTR: the author was rec.arts.sf.written regular “Gharlane of Eddore”, sadly now deceased. If you want some thought-provoking reading, do a Google Groups search on his name and rec.arts.sf.written and alt.fan.heinlein. If Gharlane was still around, what a Doper he would’a been!)

Anyway, I’m planning on going back and rereading Number in that light as I think he makes a number of good points.

I’m going to be especially interested to see if, in fact, the “Black Hats” do show up every time the action flags (I know they do on some occasions). If so, I’m going to conclude that Gharlane was correct and I completely missed the joke!

Thoughts? Comments?

Fenris

2

Number of the Beast was the first Heinlein book I read when it was new – everything else I’d read well after it had been written. So i looked forward to it with some anticipation, and when I read it, I was appalled! It was Awful! I still thought it was awful, despite what others were telling me about its being great. (And, for the record, I’ve read everything else by H, except the “stinkeroos”, and loved them.)

After I got “The Reader’s Companion to Heinlein” and finally learned about the anagrams I re-read it, about a year ago, and wasn’t inclined to change my opinion much. (Nitpick: despite what the repeated posts say about “every time the plot gets dull…a black hat pops up to change the action, with an anagram og Heinlein’s name”, I found that the anagram names show up only at the beginning and, especially, at the very end – I know, because I was looking for them.)
Maybe I’ll re-read it in light of what I see here, but not right away. I just re-read it last year, and it took some going to get through it. I swear, big chunks of that book read like cast-off chapters from his book Take Back Your Government, but with less palatable writing.

3

Gharlane’s posts are the only time I’ve ever seen a spirited and articulate defense of Number (as opposed to a Spider Robinson-esque: “It’s Heinlein, so it’s great!” style ‘rebuttal’) which is why I thought it would be worth discussing.

I thought that Number had some good bits (some of the “lifeboat” discussions, the wonderful OZ sequence, the party at the end) but most of it seemed iffy at best.

Then, after reading Gharlane’s posts, I’ve wondered if I’ve missed out on a joke.

The converse of that is that if the joke is so damned subtle that almost no one gets it calls into question the success of the joke.

My memory of the book agrees with Cal: that chunks of Number reads like left-over bits from Take Back…. But I think it’ll be interesting to reread and see if my perceptions stay the same.

Fenris

4

I read it and of course hated it. But I only skimmed it and never even dreamed that what is really going on is what Gharlane suggests. Had I known, I may have enjoyed it more. However, althoug the Gharlan’s take is rather thought provoking, I confess that I can’t bring myself to try Number again…

5

Huh, pretty interesting. I’ve always been ambivalent about NOTB. I always thought fantastic concept, great characters, but poorly executed. Perhaps I never “got the joke”. Definitely on my re-read list. Been having that Heinlein itch for the last few weeks anyway.
My biggest gripe with NOTB is the exhaustive technical descriptions. I don’t want to know every detail regarding Gay Deciever’s programming, etc. Given my reading trend away from hard science fiction, I really couldn’t say how common or uncommon extended technical discussions are.

6

Wow. I thought for sure that someone like Fenris already knew this about Number of the Beast. Guess I was wrong for making that assumption.

I’ll freely admit to being a big, and often indiscriminate, Heinlein fan. When I first read Number as a teen I was aware that there were really two stories going on-- the ‘in-your-face’ technical brouhaha that occupies a lot of ‘hard’ science fiction, and the action-packed stuff that will be dominating any film version of the story.

But my problem is that [sub]I enjoy the actual story and writing in Number[/sub]. Guess I read something I liked too young, and I still like it. And I don’t want to read it with a critical eye.

7

Of course, if you judge it by the surface story, it’s abyssmal. The thing is, it’s impossible to write a self-consistent story with the premise of Number of the Beast. And while I don’t require that a story be consistent with the real world, I do require that it be self-consistent.

But it had never occured to me to look for that other layer… Tell ya what, Fenris. I trust your taste in literature. After you re-read it, come back and let us know if it’s worthwhile, or if this is just another of Gharlane’s plots to destroy Civilization ;).

8

<blinks>
How could anyone not notice the anagrams?

I read NOTB as a book with three main levels of interpretation:

  1. The surface story, (which, despite a scattering of good bits, was not entertaining), was a way of bringing all of Heinlein’s old friends together for one last bash. It struck me as a bit self-indulgent, but since all those old friends were my friends, too, I didn’t mind too much.

  2. The philosophical exposition, which includes the bits Cal described as left-overs from Take Back as well as some smaller bits of Heinlein’s personal philosophy.

  3. The self-critique Gharlane posted about. I don’t doubt that I’ve missed parts of it, but it’s easy enough to spot in the places where the other two layers are at their worst. Unfortunately, if you read specifically for this layer, the book is nearly as boring as any style manual. Maybe Fenris could take notes as he rereads it, and come up with an annotated version with an index. :slight_smile:

9

Barbarian: I first read Number when it came out…I was…um…12? 13? and only read it on a surface level. In addition, like Gharlane said, at that age I was…um…interested…in Heinlein’s description of Deetee’s gazongas and scribbling down notes on all the authors mentioned. I never noticed the anagrams until, like Cal I got A Reader’s Companion (GREAT book, btw).

In subsequent rereads, I’ve gotten more out of it, especially as I’ve read more of the source material, but I’ve still never gotten the stuff Gharlane described.

I only “talked” to Gharlane a couple of times on the Usenet, but I lurked a lot and read a ton of his posts. I didn’t always agree with him, but I could always understand how he came to his conclusions.

Because of this discussion (and Gharlane’s posts) I’ve bumped NotB ahead on my “To read” list (even in front of a new Jonathan Carroll!). As soon as I’m done with Nightworld (It’s October…I wanted to read something Halloweeny), I’ll start on NoTB and post a review in light of Gharlane’s comments.

I’ve always put Number around #3 or 4 from the bottom of Heinlein’s novels. I’ll be interested to see if it raises in my estimation afterwards.

But either way, I ain’t gonna do annotations! :wink:

Fenris

PS: Thanks Chronos!!

10

Of Heinlein, I’ve only read Stranger In A Strange Land and Number of the Beast (when new). I found both interesting, but not nearly enough to want to make me read more of his work. I did not see that NOTB was a textbook, but I was aware that there were a lot of self indulgent in jokes that I was not privy to. That didn’t reduce the enjoyment of the plot for me. I have since been told that the Starship Troopers stuff was far more typical of Heinlein, in which case I’ll take Niven any day.

Phillip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle.

11

Sparticus, if you’re basing your opinion of Starship Troopers off the film, then you have no idea what the book’s about as the film only shares the title and a few characters names with the book. (Also, according to Spider Robinson, Heinlein thought highly of Dick, even though the two didn’t publicly agree on a lot of things.)

The Number of the Beast is not the only book where Heinlein discusses writing techniques “in the open” as it were. He does some of this in The Rolling Stones (which even has some foreshadowing of the “If you concieve of it, then it exists somewhere in the universe.” concept) and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. In Grumbles From The Grave Heinlein mentions that he’s planning on doing a book about how to be an author. AFAIK, that book never saw the light of day.

12

Ok.

Based on the first chapter alone, Gharlane’s right and wrong.

Right, in that it’s clear that Heinlein is doing a “How to write” textbook.

Heinlein knows how to write an opening chapter. Even I Will Fear No Evil had a better opening chapter than this one and that was written during the worst of his medical problems. This one’s atrocious and, based on my knowledge of Heinlein’s other books, it’s GOTTA be intentional. Heinlein knows better.

The story opens with a great opening line: “He’s a Mad Scientist and I’m his Beautiful Daughter.” and then pokes some fun at it.

Deetee and Zeb dance and Zeb makes a snarky comment about Deetee’s gazongas…(“Are they cantilevered?”). And then things grind to a halt with a couple of discussions about the nuances of words ( “Mad” and “Scientist”, to name a few) and the characters lecture on the importance of word choice (Do you mean “mad” as in “angry” or “mad” as in “insane”?)

So, based on the first three pages, I’m willing to tentatively say that Gharlane was right about Heinlein’s intent to write a “How not to write a book” book, but dammit, I’m still not having fun.

We’ll see how it goes.

Fenris

13

My feelings exactly, except that I could never stand…what was her name? Libby, I think. But this is a hell of a thing you’ve brought to our attention, Fenris. If this is a practical joke (by you or that other guy) to get Heinlein fans to re-read NotB…well, it worked on me. I’ll be bumping it up to the top of my list.

14

I don’t think it’s a pratical joke on Gharlane’s part, it wouldn’t have been his style. But that said, so far my observations don’t match his.

After the opening chapters, once the team gets to Safe Harbor nothing happens for about 80 pages. Nothing. Deety talks about her ‘teats’ and how her nipples go “spung”. Others confirm this observation. Various people talk about bathing. It’s concluded it’s a good thing. Also breakfasts are good. About four pages of technobabble (VERY atypical for Heinlein) about the Nth dimensional math that makes the dimension hopper dingus work. Caltrops are used as an analogy.

There ARE some good bits in here, but it coulda been cut down to 30 pages easy.

FINALLY the Black Hat shows up disguised as a ranger, Safe Harbor is nuked, and they scram to Barsoom. And then spend about 75 pages talking A) about lifeboat rules (interesting, up to a point, but Jake’s narrative is flawed. It doesn’t “sound” right, and given Heinlein’s ablility to do naturalitic dialogue…) and B) Various programs that Deety’s writing for Gay. How they work and what they do. This would be fine, if this was a puzzle story ("Ok. I know Gay is programmed with A, B and C. Given that, how’ll they get out of this mess?) but it’s NOT and besides…I’ve read the book before. Within 100 pages, Glinda will make Gay self-aware, so all the time spent talking about the programming will be for naught.

Right now, I’m muddling through the interminable British-Colonize-Mars section and if I didn’t know that Oz was coming up soon (best damned scene in the book), I’d be getting annoyed.

And if memory serves, I don’t think they’re chased off British-Barsoom by Bugs and given that the action flagged like 50 pages ago, I think I’ve disproven at least that aspect of Gharlane’s theory.

As to whether it’s a “How to write a book”-book, I’m still not sure, but frankly, I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s a failure if it is. If it’s this damned subtle…well…

Fenris

*All page counts are guesses. Hmmm…and given that I’m up to page 290, I think I’m guessing low.

15

It’s been a while since I read it, but what irritated me most about that section was the interminable whining at each other when they decided to take turns at being in charge.

And my nominaton for the character-I-most-want-to-kick-in-the-backside - Hilda. What an arrogant, manipulative bitch!

16

That’s not quite what happened: there weren’t so many discussions about who should be in charge as much as how one should treat the person in charge. Given how MANY of these discussions there are, the difference seems important to make.

Zeb started in charge, and everyone gave him lip, so he quit and Hilda got elected. She did a decent job through the interminable British-Barsoom sequence and Jake gave her TONS of lip. Then Jake was made boss and they had a “white mutiny” (aka: obey all his orders literally but in the worst possible light) and made his life hell since he was being such a dickhead. Then Deety was made leader so that they could all have a turn, and Jake was STILL a jackass (but less so). That lasted a bit beyond Oz, iirc and finally Hilda was made permanant captain.

I didn’t dislike Hilda nearly as much as Jake (who we’re supposed to dislike and who becomes a dick only when required by the plot) or Deety who talks in a Shirley Temple / baby doll voice. Bleah.

Anyway, I’ve gone through the thoroughly delightful (and FAR too short Oz sequence). Even though Heinlein got a few of the micro-detalis (the kind only a fanboy < coughs > would notice) he perfectly captured the flavor of Oz.

Then he takes us to a half-dozen other universes, bouncing back to Oz to correct mistakes they made earlier.

Gay is self-aware in Oz (which is fine), but not once they leave (which is also fine), 'till suddenly she is (which isn’t. WHY does she become self-aware: it happens on Earth-Dull). Major plot-hole in the book.

There’s MORE endless discussions about how to program search patterns, a very self-indulgent chapter where they meet Lewis Carroll (which is cool. Self-indulgence can be fun. In this case, it is) and then go to several more fictional universes (Lensman, King Arthur, Lilliput) (hmmm…maybe not in that order…Wonderland may have been last) 'till they eventually settle on Earth-Dull (“Bheuluah-Land”).

Here’s the thing: the way Heinlein set up the book, there’s no reason they couldn’t have gone to any fictional universe at any point in the universe’s history that they wanted. Why not go to Niven’s Known Space-verse after the Puppeteer migration: I can’t think of any better universe to have and raise a child (their prime goal). No better medical care exists, and other than the galactic core explosion (which is no big deal, we’ll just move by the time the radition gets here, and the possible fleet of Pak that may or may not be approaching (and we can kick the collective assess of the Pak) there’s no major issues to worry about. I understand that probably for copyright reasons Heinlein couldn’t use it, so why did he mentioned that the characters had read Niven’s Known Space? It just makes the main characters sound like morons.

Anyway, they get bored on Earth-Dull (why did he even introduce Earth-Dull? They only stay there long enough to get bored: about 12 days and 6(?) pages) and leave: no Bugs are needed to propel them to leave. As a matter of fact, we haven’t seen a bug since British-Barsoom, and those were proto-Bugs: barely sentient. So I have to conclude that Gharlane was just wrong about that aspect.

Anyway, they end up in a parallel version of Heinlein’s Future History: This is NOT the same Lazarus Long we’ve read about in earlier books, despite what Heinlein says. The “real” Lazarus wasn’t a thief by trade. He’d steal or cheat or lie to protect himself and his family, but he didn’t do it just for the fun of it…he’d be “too stinkin’ proud”.

This Lazarus has no morals, scruples, or ethics (the “real” one does). He promptly tries three(?) different times to cheat or steal Gay. Why? No one’s life is in immediate danger and whatever Lazarus-real was, he wasn’t stupid. The ship is a time machine and Lazarus needed it for a journey to the past. It wouldn’t have hurt to wait and negotiate.

And how did Dora/Lazarus, etc know to expect our heroes? Never explained. Another major plot-hole.

Like I said, I’m willing to believe that this book was intended to be a “How not to write a book” book, but I think it fails (or succeeds too well).

Fenris

PS: I forgot to mention: A rare occurance in Heinlein: he makes a huge massive mistake. During the Safe Harbor sequence there are long passages as characters decide what (if anything) to wear for breakfast. Finally it’s agreed that everyone’ll go topless and Deety starts cooking breakfast. Including bacon. Topless. I cooked bacon while nude. Once. I’ll NEVER make that mistake again and Deety’s enormous, much disccused “spung”-nippled “teats” are a far bigger target for random splatters of grease. Thus I conclude that she can’t be the genius she’s self-described as. (Yeah, I know, that includes me too, but I never claimed to be a genius)

17

Y’know, I didn’t notice that at all when I read it. I can’t possibly fathom why I didn’t. I mean, it’s not as though there were anything else about that scene which was distracting. Certainly not.

And personally, I think that the programming bits were the second-best part of the book. Or third best, if you count the best part as two parts.

One other thing I didn’t understand about that book… They were first visiting, like it or not, the literary places most impressed upon their psyches. OK, I can buy that, to some degree. But what literary place is impressed most strongly upon all of the main characters? Let’s see, two of them are even named after their fictional counterparts. And yet, they never actually see the “real” Barsoom, it being replaced by some mangled hodgepodge of an inhabited Mars. If this was also somehow part of Heinlein’s textbook message, then I for one don’t get what he was trying to say.

18

Yes, that’s it…Hilda. Not “Libby”, like I said. Gawd, I hated her. I always felt it would have been a much better book if they’d left her behind.

19

Weird. I don’t see where the hatred for Hilda’s coming from. Zeb has no personality, Jake’s a prissy boorish lout, Deety tawks wike a widdle giwl (“Would 'oos wike to see my teats?”), but Hilda, of the four of 'em’s more-or-less NON-manipulative, straightforward, clear-thinking (she out manuvers the fake Lazarus Long quite nicely) honest (the bit where she quits and asks to be set down on one of the safe worlds they found, rather than pouting like the others did) one of the whole sorry lot.

What did she do that made you all dislike her so much?? To me, Jake is FAR worse.

Fenris

20

I dunno. I thought her “I’m going to take my toys and go now” attitude when she asked to be put down on the safe world was manipulative. She had known Jake and Deety forever and Zeb for years and she knew exactly how they were going to react.