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.

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.

Same song, another verse

When the 2007 Hugo ballot was released, there was a hailstorm of commentary about the lack of women on the list. I'm not sure how much the situation has changed in the genre (not much, imho) but I think it's interesting that a very similar controversy is swirling around the "legit" literature circles right now. Clearly, this keeps happening because women can't write their collective way out of a damp paper bag. And, yes, that's sarcasm.

No one wants a pity Hugo

During the WSFS Business Meeting at Anticipation, blogger yonmei floated a proposal intended to get more women on the Hugo ballot. Yonmei's plan, which has been called the "Joanna Russ Amendment" stated that, in the event of an all-male final ballot, the next highest woman would be moved up into the slate of nominees.*

The amendment didn't pass -- a good thing because it would have created more issues than it would have solved. Yes, there would have been more women on the final ballot but for reasons that had little to do with who voted for their work. The institutionalization of the concept that women can only succeed if the rules are changed would have been a nasty, backhanded message to send.

Still, women** have a way of not turning up in numbers larger than two on the final ballot for best novel. This has little to do with the quality of their work and everything to do with the demographics of the group voting on the award. The more effective way to solve the problem isn't a change in the voting rules. The solution is to get more women involved with fandom so that they are invested in voting for the award.

That's a much harder problem -- and one that I don't know that there's an easy solution for. Women read SF/F, of course, and they write it.*** So why don't they get involved with fandom, which doesn't always mean going to a World Con, since you can participate without ever leaving your living room? And what can be done to increase the numbers of women who want to be involved?

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* The opposite would be true, too -- if the ballot was all-female, the next male in line would be anointed.

** and people of color, etc., but that is another argument.

*** The whole "is there a barrier to women getting published in the genre" is, you guessed it, another argument.