An itch that had to be scratched

After my recent reread of Heinlein's Double Star, I couldn't resist revisiting John Varley's The Golden Globe.*

Like Star, Globe is about a down on his luck actor. Kenneth "Sparky" Valentine made his nut on Luna as the kid star of a kid show. Right as Valentine is transitioning into adult roles, he is entangled in a crime and forced to run to the outer planets, where he works under a series of assumed names and in increasingly tenuous circumstances. Along comes the chance to play Lear and Sparky plots a trip back to where he is most wanted.

Both Valentine and Heinlein's Smythe are self-centered enough to almost have tangible gravity wells. Both are convinced that they are the best actors who ever trod the boards. Both have a lot of growing up to do. And one is certainly a nod to the other.

Both Varley and Heinlein have distinctive voices that are built on concise but somehow also lyric prose. Both create universes that feel lived-in. Both wrote (and write, natch) books whose worlds interlock, either through characters or events. And one certainly absorbed much about the field and the craft from the work of other.

While there are many, many similarities, the stories couldn't feel more different. Smythe's path is relatively straightforward. Valentine's twists and doubles back and redoubles again. Varley has given Valentine a believable back-story about the abuse his father heaped on him and how that abuse shaped the damaged man he became. And the world that Varley created is rich with engaging detail that almost leaps off of the page. In many ways, it feels like he's just reporting from an already existing future, rather than one that he's making up as he goes along.

My only problem with Globe is that Valentine is so fully imagined and drawn that it feels as if he stole narrative control away from Varley, which is high praise and a criticism. Valentine's love of his own words takes over when he describes how to jump a freight ship or run a short con. Varley might have been well served to remind his creation that less is frequently more.

Some other thoughts:

1) I commented earlier that acting is a craft that won't be influenced by technological developments. In Globe, Varley has proved me wrong. Valentine's gizmos that let him change his appearance from his bones outward might be the next big theatrical tool.

2) This is a selfish want but I want more books with Hildy, who is one of my favorite characters ever. Not just in Varley's work, mind. My love for Hildy crosses all borders. And, yes, she shows up in Globe.

3) I suspect there is an entire dissertation on the occurrence of magical luggage in speculative fiction.** Here it's the Pantech, an actor's trunk that is full of surprises. Examples include now the Pantech, Rufo's folding box and Pratchett's the luggage. What am I missing?

4) I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Varley's Heinleiners, the Lunarians who have given up on the city and moved outside of the domes to set up their own very loose society of make-do-and-menders. Their one shared goal is to go to the stars. In Globe, they might just get there.

5) I have a degree in theater and spent a good decade working behind the curtains. Varley is one of the few writers who nails all of the details of that life. Heinlein tried, mind you, and covered up with hand waving what he didn't have experience with. But Varley captures all of the tangible and emotional truths of the life that others gloss over.

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* My fingers insist on typing this as "The Golden Glob," which would be a great SF novel as well.

** In Southern and Gothic fiction, there's been a number of papers about the appearance of the white mule. Magical luggage seems not that far removed and entirely more practical.

Insert "Star" Pun Here

Thanks to yesterday's northeastern Snowmageddon, I was able to plow through a re-read of Heinlein's Double Star. In short: More than 50 years past initial publication, this Hugo Award Winner holds up and remains an enjoyable read.*

Most of its endurance can be explained by the book's focus on one character, the Great Lorenzo Smythe, rather than on the technology around him. Smythe is a down on his luck actor, sitting in a bar, hoping to hustle some credits out of a stranger. In walks Dak Broadbent, a spacer who eventually makes Smythe an offer he can't refuse -- an acting challenge that will keep a potential human/martian war from igniting.

Acting -- in the actual past and in Heinlein's imagined future -- is not a tech heavy profession. While the modes of experiencing performances have changed, the basic tools will always remain the same. Acting is about what an actor can do with her body, her voice and her brain that drives the character. Even James Cameron will cop to this.**

The world against which Smythe exists is simply but thoroughly painted by Heinlein, as he does so well. Mars, Venus, the Moon all have major human settlements. On Mars, the humans are working to co-exist with the Martians, who are easily recognized as the same Martians from 1961's Stranger in a Strange Land. There are futuristic breathing apparatuses and physics-defying space ships. Again, Heinlein, like so many writers of his era, failed to predict cell phones. And, again, a cell phone would have greatly changed bits of the plot.

Heinlein's knee-jerk heteronormativity shows up here, too. When Broadbent invites Smythe to a hotel in order to discuss the job at hand, Smythe muses, "You don't pick up a stranger in a bar and then insist that he come to a hotel room -- well, not one of the same sex, at least." Indeed.

Because Double Star is about Smythe's journey from self-absorbed prig into a fully functional Heinleinian human, all of the moments like these that signal the book's age don't feel nearly as important as what Heinlein does to his character. Double Star is Smythe's book. Even the standard Heinleinian didactic rants -- here focused on the usefulness of politics and ethics -- flow seamlessly into the narrative as Smythe ponders his ideals rather than jut out like awkwardly inserted lecture clumps.

Which isn't to say that Heinlein doesn't opine about some of his favorite topics, just that said opines*** are organically integrated. Like this one, which is part of a speech Smythe gives in a press conference:

"Let us protect our own -- but let us not be seduced by fear and hatred into foolish acts. The stars will never be won by little minds; we must be as big as space itself."

Fifty years on, we still forget this. Will we have a better grasp of the concept fifty years on?

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* Somehow, Jo Walton and I are on a similar rereading kick. And the laughable "modern" technology -- like vacuum tubes and robot diaper changers -- as well as the unsettling relationship factors Walton finds in The Door Into Summer are entirely absent in Double Star, which helps keep a modern reader from being thrown out of the story as violently.

** I am now seized by a compulsion to re-read Varley's The Golden Globe, if only to see how he approached the actor's craft.

*** It is too a word, just maybe not when used this way.

Walking the Glory Road

During the long, long break, I re-read Glory Road. And, again, by way of caveat, there is no particular reason - other than sheer whimsy - I chose this particular title off of my Heinlein shelf.

Glory Road, for the uninitiated (or those who need a refresher), concerns the journey of a hero, E.C. "Oscar" Gordon as he reclaims an item of power* for a very important woman, Star, who turns out to be the Empress of a collection of universes. The first three-quarters of the book follow the standard quest narrative - start of journey, obstacle, victory, obstacle, victory (lather, rinse, repeat), climatic battle and ultimate success.

But the last quarter of the story doesn't hew to the predictable script. Oscar has to figure out what to do with himself once he's fulfilled his destiny. My knowledge of pre-1963 fantasy is not vast. This twist, however, does appear to be a new one for the time. I know blog readers won't hesitate to set me straight on this point.

Two things struck me during this re-read:

1) I can now pinpoint this book as the source of all of my confusion about the difference between fantasy and science fiction. Ostensibly, Glory Road fall into the fantasy camp, what with all of the sword fights, horse analogues and feudal lands. Heinlein, however, keeps tossing out science-based explanations for all of the goings-on, like the Empress explaining that the pentagrams that allow them to travel between universes are really just complicated circuit diagrams.

Take Oscar's defeat of the Igli, a ferocious, unkillable beast. What the hero does is "feed the Igli to the Igli" or, put another way, start stuffing the Igli's appendages into the Igli's mouth and rolling the body into smaller and small balls until they disappear. As the Empress explains, this solution wasn't mystical but geometrical:

What happens when you place an insupportable strain on a mass, such that it can't remain where it is? While leaving it nowhere to go? This is a schoolboy problem in metaphysical geometry and the eldest proto-paradox, the one about the irresistible force and the immovable body. The mass implodes. It is squeezed out of this world into some other. This is often the way the people of a universe discover the Universes -- but usually is as disastrously as you forced it on Igli; it may take millennia before they control it. It may hover around the fringes as 'magic' for a long time, sometimes working, sometimes failing, sometimes backfiring on the magician.

Heinlein, with one frequently-recited swoop, is able to wave his hands and turn magic into avenues of math that we haven't yet discovered. It's a neat trick -- and one that makes me wander down the thorny path of what fantasy (or science fiction, for that matter) actually means.

On a more practical note w/r/t "magic:" I want one of Rufo's folding boxes.** Because, origin stories aside, the ability to store all of your stuff in another dimension would be a handy way to solve my yarn storage problem.

2) When I was in Junior High, I have a clear memory of a male civics teacher explaining that a woman could never be president because she would never be able to control her mood at certain points during her menstrual cycle and would wind up nuking Russia because she's a hormonal mess.***

Which is why this passage stuck out:

By endocrine control of some sort [more magic, it appears -am], Star was left free of Eve's rhythm but in all ways young--not pills nor hormone injections; this was permanent. She was simply a healthy woman who never had "bad days." This was not for her convenience but to insure that her judgement as the Great Judge would never be whipsawed by her glands. "This is sensible," she said seriously. "I can remember there used to be days when I would bite the head off my dearest friend for no reason, then burst into tears. One can't be judicial in that sort of storm."

Which makes me wonder how both Heinlein and that civics teacher would feel about women on the Supreme Court. Does Sotomayor hand down especially vindictive decisions every 28 days? Can women have positions of power only after they've passed menopause (which brings up other issues about what a women is worth)? Or is the whole monthly cycle thing just a convenient excuse to continue to discount the higher reasoning skills of half of the species?

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* Does anyone else see a similarity between the Empress' Egg and Zerika's Orb?

** Does anyone else see a similarity between the Rufo's luggage and Pratchett's the Luggage?

*** Really.

RAH heirs?

Since Heinlein's death -- actually, well before he died but the situation became more acute post-mortem -- the genre has been trying to find the writer who will replace the Grand Master. Various names have been bandied about. Spider Robinson has long been a contender and was tapped to finish, Variable Star, a partial manuscript Heinlein left behind. Charlie Stross's Saturn's Children was an homage/pastiche/tribute of Heinlein's Friday. John Scalzi's Old Man's War books get dropped in the Heinlein hopper as well, if only because they capture RAH's clear prose and smart heroes.

Admittedly, it's a silly task, this trying to find someone who will give readers the same experience as one of the field's icons. Writing in another person's style is akin to wearing another person's underpants. It's unsettling and uncomfortable on a number of levels.*

But if I had to anoint one current writer as the one who captures that feeling I get when I read Heinlein, I would drip the oil on John Varley's forehead.

I have read Steel Beach more times than I can count, frankly, and love it more each time. Ditto The Golden Globe. My abiding affection for these books comes not from their Heinlein-ness but from their Varley-ness, whose work has a singular voice that hits all of the best notes of Heinlein's work while investing it with a greater sense of human failings and modern panache.

This carries into Varley's last three titles -- the Red Thunder, Red Lightening, Rolling Thunder series -- that are clear hat-tips to Heinlein's juveniles without ever attempting to imitate them. Varley knows that a wide number of his readers will get all of the Heinlein references** but doesn't let them stand in the way of spinning his adventure stories that rely both on the moxie of his young heroes and on the reader's knowledge of the last 30 years.

So while I wait for Varley to publish his next book, whose work do you think captures the Heinlein voice and ethos while still maintaining their own voice and ethos? And do you think it is fair to label any given writer "the next Heinlein?"

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* Some of those titles succeed because the writers in question never tried to bend their voice into a strange shape. And some of those titles, imo, fail because the writers tried too hard to make it work.

** Two of my favorites are from Rolling Thunder:

1) "Somebody once said that teenagers should be raised in a barrel and fed through the bunghole, then decanted when they're twenty. I should know; I admit it, I was a prime candidate for encooperage...until recently."

2) SPOILERISH: "I'm going to miss my home, the Red Planet. But now I'm between planets. Now it's time for the stars."

More RAH rereading

Since Citizen of the Galaxy held up so well, I reread The Star Beast over the weekend. IMO, the years have been less kind to this tale.

[Warning: spoilers ahead.]

John Thomas -- the most recent iteration in a series of John Thomases -- was left Lummox, the titular star beast, by his father. Who was left the beast by his father. And so on, back at least a century to the John Thomas who smuggled the young lummox off of his (or her, depending) planet of origin. The Lummox has grown from housecat size to dumptruck size over the years and has begun innocently causing property damage in John Thomas' hometown. The population does all but carry fiery torches over to the kid's house after Lummox's most recent escape. So begins the plot.

While The Star Beast is ostensibly a coming of age story, it is more about the use of diplomacy. Mr Kiku* and his cohort Sergei Greenberg spend most of the book negotiating with the rest of Lummox's race in order to keep the Earth from being blown up by them. The passages about the Beast and John Thomas are interesting -- but it feels like Heinlein really goes off on one of his giddy didactic tears when he gets into the gritty details of status, power and gesture.

It's hard to say who the main character really is. John Thomas is the one who is leaving home - but he never seems to be the agent of his choices. He reacts against his overbearing mother**, is manipulated by his girlfriend*** and is ultimately rescued by the Lummox. Mr Kiku, who is the agent of all of his own actions, feels more like the protagonist but hasn't changed in any substantial ways by the time the story ends.

Some of Heinlein's pet themes show up here, of course. Like how every culture has language that describes xenophobia. How brains are frequently more effective than brawn. How parents do not own their children or, as Mr. Kiku points out, that "sons are lost from the beginning."****

On that last one - I've often wondered what was in Heinlein's past that made this such a common idea in his books. Does it turn up just because of his audience for the juveniles or is there something else going on? I also wonder what his parent characters would have looked like had he had children. But that is an unanswerable question, sadly.

The Star Beast, like most Heinlein, is an enjoyable read and, unlike the recent US edition of Citizen of the Galaxy, my 1984 Del Rey edition has been proofread, which makes the reading that much easier. The plot clips along nicely, even if the author is a little too enamored with trying to teach us everything he knows about making a deal. What's harder to figure out is what (and who) the story is about.

* Mr Kiku's job: "Anything and everything outside of the Earth's ionosphere was Mr. Kiku's responsibility and worry. Anything which concerned the relationships between Earth and any part of the explored universe was also his responsibility. Even affairs which were superficially strictly Earthside were also his concern, if they affected or were in any way affected by anything which was extra-terrestrial, interplanetary, or interstellar in nature -- a very wide range indeed."

** A telling exchange:

"...take off your shoe, dear. I want to measure your foot."

Baffled, [John Thomas] started to remove his shoe. Suddenly he stopped. "Mum, I wish you wouldn't knit socks for me."

"What, dear? But mother enjoys doing it for you."

"Yes, but ... look, I don't like handknit socks. They make creases on the soles of my feet...I've showed you often enough!"

"Don't be silly! How could soft wool do your feet any harm? And think what you'd have to pay for real wool, real handwork, if you bought it. Most boys would be grateful."

"But I don't like it, I tell you!"

She sighed. "Sometimes, dear, I don't know what to do with you, I really don't."

*** At the end of the book she is described as having the "morals of a snapping turtle and the crust of a bakery pie." I still can't figure out what that last bit means. She's light and flakey?

**** Which makes one ask: What about daughters? It's a spot where it's clear how much society has changed since Heinlein's day -- and how much it hasn't.

Because it was there

Over the weekend, I re-read Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy.

I use the word "re-read" loosely, however; I am certain that I read it as a teenager but have no memory of the plot, characters or themes. This may be the first post in a series about the RAH books I read during those years - which would be all of the ones published before 1983ish - but can't remember all that well. Because the biggest thing that I'd forgotten about Heinlein is how fiendishly enjoyable his books are, even if you have some qualms about some of the issues they bring up.

Citizen of the Galaxy is one of RAH's classic juveniles: boy meets older mentor who is something of a genius, mentor dies, boy becomes man of honor after Thrilling Adventures. While the plot is predictable, the texture of the adventures make it worth the read.

Others have mentioned how seamless Heinlein's worlds are but I'm always gobsmacked by them, even now. You know that the writer was only showing the iceberg's tip of what he knew about any of his imagined outposts -- like Jubbulpore or the Free Traders' Sisu -- but what he chose to show was exactly what you needed to know. All of the needful stuff is condensed into the man's clear prose, which is never enamored with its own cleverness. In other hands, such concision could be a dull read but this reportorial approach works in Heinlein's hands.

I'd also forgotten how academically-based a lot of his cultures are. Citizen has the subtext of an anthropology primer while it tells a fast-paced coming-of-age story that captures the scope and imagination of space opera. The ending - which falls just as Thorby, the boy in question, launches himself in a new direction - seems to imply that Heinlein was going to revisit Thorby's continued quest in another work. Does anyone know if that was intended? Or begun? And have you re-read any Heinlein lately?

(A note, however, on editions. Unless you are a big fan of reading a book that doesn't appear to have been proofread, avoid the U.S. Pocket Books publication. I suppose I should be happy that the book is still in print but wish that Pocket had forked out the extra cash for a decent proofreader.)