The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence (62 page)

By the time Heinlein wrote “ ‘If This Goes On—,’ ” however, he had begun to see things somewhat differently. To his new Atomic Age eye, society and the universe now appeared as ever-changing composites made up of many separate elements operating relatively independently and capable of being connected to each other in a variety of different ways. As one character in “Elsewhen” thinks: “There seemed to be no end to the permutations and combinations: either of matter or of mind.”
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This view is the key to Heinlein’s presentation of the future society of “ ‘If This Goes On—.’ ” As he conceived it, if the elements of our contemporary society were to be extended into the future, some might regress, some might advance, while some might stay the same. And the new combination that resulted from these permutations might be the kind of world presented here, with spears and West Point and the Rocket Patrol, all at once.

The essence of Heinlein’s new technique of the selective extension of factors is to be seen in the very title of his story. This method, which would come to be called
extrapolation,
from a term used in mathematics, would very soon become standard in science fiction.

Even from the first few paragraphs of Heinlein’s short novel, it is possible for us to discern that the rule of the Prophet Incarnate over future America is maintained through manipulation of the populace, oppression, and the deliberate inculcation of false belief. And from the narrator’s choice of words, we can also see that John Lyle—sympathetic though we may find him—is, or used to be, one of the deluded himself, so much the product of the society in which he has been raised that he doesn’t quite realize the true nature of the forces to which he has been given over at birth.

This new use of language within SF for subtle multiple effect was no accident. Heinlein was an early student of Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics, a new linguistic discipline concerned with the true nature, meaning and use of symbols and their change through time. Within “ ‘If This Goes On—’ ” itself, we are told that the styling of language for effective propaganda purposes has become a mathematical science.

This is explained by Lyle’s friend and fellow officer, the older, more worldly wise Zebadiah Jones:

“The emotional connotation of any word is a complex variable function depending on context, age and sex and occupation of the listener, the locale, and a dozen other things. An index is a particular solution of the variable that tells you whether or not a particular word used in a particular fashion to a particular type of listener will affect that listener favorably, unfavorably, or simply leave him cold. Statistical research in this stuff provides us with the means to choose language best suited to play on the emotions.”
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And he adds: “ ‘There is magic in words, if you know how to use it.’ ”
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It is love for one of the Prophet’s handmaidens that causes the scales to fall from John Lyle’s eyes. At last he begins to perceive something of the true cynical, repressive and exploitative nature of the theocracy. And very soon thereafter, both he and Zeb become members of the Cabal, the revolutionary underground that is seeking to overthrow the reign of the Prophet.

The true identity of the Cabal, this small elite of the undeluded, is most interesting. Though never directly named, through allusions and signs and initiatory phrases it is made clear that these are the Freemasons, the same mystical secret society that played a key role in the American and French Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century.

Ultimately, however, it isn’t mystical enlightenment that the revolutionaries count upon to win America over to their cause, but universal operating principles effectively applied. In the good cause of throwing out the theocracy and then establishing a new regime of tolerance and open-mindedness, the rebels are every bit as ready to cozen and manipulate the people at large as the Prophet and his legions whom they oppose so fervently.

The signal to begin the crucial uprising is the faking of a key annual broadcast by the Prophet, which is itself a sham. Each spring, Nehemiah Scudder, the First Prophet, is witnessed to arise out of the form of his current incarnation and confirm the rule of the incumbent. This time, however, a counterfeit broadcast is made, so that Scudder appears as usual, but only to denounce the current Prophet as Satan and bid the populace to destroy him. Through this deception, the simple belief of the people is turned against the Prophet.

What is more, when they gain control, it is the revolutionaries’ intention to brainwash people into accepting a new independence of thought:

The plan concocted by Colonel Novak and Zebediah provided for readjusting the people to freedom of thought and freedom of action. They planned nothing less than mass reorientation under hypnosis. The technique was simple, as simple as works of genius usually are. They had prepared a film which was a mixture of history, theological criticism, simple course in general science, exposition of the philosophy of the scientific viewpoint and frame of mind, and so forth. Taken consciously, it was too much to soak up in one dose, but they planned to use it on subjects in a state of light hypnosis.

 . . . More than a hundred million persons had to be examined to see if they could stand up under quick re-orientation, then re-examined after treatment to see if they had been sufficiently readjusted. Until a man passed the second examination we could not afford to enfranchise him as a free citizen of a democratic state. We had to teach them to think for themselves, reject dogma, be suspicious of authority, tolerate difference of opinion, and make their own decisions—types of mental processes almost unknown in the United States for many generations.
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This is certainly Atomic Age pushbutton thinking at its least attractive. And when Heinlein came to revise and expand this story for book publication in the Korean War year of 1953, he would reject this psychological reconditioning of America as a completely unacceptable solution. When it is proposed—not by Zeb Jones or Colonel Novak—Heinlein would have an elderly man described as looking like “an angry Mark Twain”
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rise and declare:

“Free men aren’t ‘conditioned!’ Free men are free because they are ornery and cussed and prefer to arrive at their own prejudices in their own way—not have them spoonfed by a self-appointed mind tinkerer! We haven’t fought, our brethren haven’t bled and died, just to change bosses, no matter how sweet their motives.”
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And almost immediately the old man drops dead, just to reinforce the point.

In 1939 and 1940, however, this mental readjustment of the population to the scientific frame of mind could still seem a work of genius, a canny application of leading-edge know-how in a noble cause.

We should clearly understand that beyond its areas of conspicuous brilliance and innovation, “ ‘If This Goes On—’ ” was still in many ways an awkward and sketchy early effort. But very shortly, in other, increasingly confident stories, Heinlein would begin to apply some of the lessons of the breakthrough he had made.

The story that Heinlein produced immediately was “Requiem,” a wish-fulfillment written in the light of his new insight that social progress and technological progress might operate independent of each other.

Heinlein’s oldest and fondest dream had been to travel to the Moon. But space travel had always seemed a remote possibility, as in his story “Misfit.” It was something that was going to have to wait until a better day when society had advanced enough to value and support it and permit it to happen.

But if technological accomplishment wasn’t dependent on social progress, then it might be possible for men to actually reach the Moon within Heinlein’s own lifetime. One determined man, working in spite of the non-comprehension of society and the resistance of those closest to him, might be enough to make it all possible. And if that man was so old and frail by the time he made space travel happen that society still wouldn’t permit him to have his most cherished dream, why maybe he might step outside the rules of society—the “Space Precautionary Act”
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—and find a way to go to the Moon anyway.

“Requiem” would take place in a late Twentieth Century America that is still relatively familiar. It would begin with old D.D. Harriman looking over a former Moon rocket at a county fair in Bates County, Missouri—that is, in Butler, the very town that Heinlein was born in. And it would end with Harriman dying a blissful death on the Moon:

“At long last, there was peace in his heart. His hurts had ceased to pain him. He
was
where he had longed to be—he had followed his need. . . . He was on the Moon!”
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In Heinlein’s next futuristic story, “The Roads Must Roll” (
Astounding,
June 1940), he would go a step beyond the mere fulfillment of a long-cherished dream. He would employ his new techniques of extrapolation and the recombination of factors to envision a whole new social pattern—but this time projected just thirty years into the future.

One of these factors, shrewdly extrapolated by Heinlein, was the inevitable eventual shortage of petroleum, and the effect that this might have on the existence of the private automobile.

Another factor was the notion of moving roadways. This idea had been used as striking incidental detail by H.G. Wells in two related dystopian stories, the short novel “A Story of the Days to Come” (1897) and the novel
When the Sleeper Wakes
(1899). And when the first of these stories was reprinted in
Amazing
in April 1928, Frank R. Paul had made one of these multiple-beltway systems the subject of a memorable bedsheet-sized full-page illustration. Heinlein would imagine rolling roads like these as the successor to the obsolescent automobile.

The third vital factor in the conception of this new future situation was the “Douglas-Martin Solar Reception Screens”
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that we saw in the process of being invented in “ ‘Let There Be Light,’ ” Heinlein’s risqué third story. They would serve as the power source for the rolling roads.

Putting these factors together, Heinlein envisioned a radically altered American society in the year 1970, living strung out along the length of the rolling roads. This wasn’t exactly societal progress. But it was a whole new age, with a very different orientation. It has its own slang, its own new jobs, customs and expectations, and its own new problems.

But only thirty years away!

During the Techno Age, society had been seen as innately unified, fixed and stable. It had seemed that only the impact of powerful external forces could produce social change. Hence, on the one hand, the Techno Age preoccupation with invasions and catastrophes, and on the other, its fears of social stagnation and decadence.

Heinlein’s new stories suggested something very different: that social change is a constant, the natural result of the interaction of the various elements of society and the universe. Change—Heinlein was suggesting—does occur, must occur, and most certainly will occur, and maybe a whole lot sooner than you might think. It doesn’t have to be imposed from outside by invading aliens, or even by a Martin Padway. Change is an inevitability.

Heinlein would say this explicitly one year later in “The Discovery of the Future,” his guest-of-honor speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, held in Denver in July 1941. Heinlein would declare:

There won’t always be an England—nor a Germany, nor a United States, nor a Baptist Church, nor monogamy, nor the Democratic Party, nor the modesty tabu, nor the superiority of the white race, nor aeroplanes—they will go—nor automobiles—they’ll be gone, we’ll see them go. Any custom, technique, institution, belief, or social structure that we see around us today will change, will pass, and most of them we will see change and pass.
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With his next story after “The Roads Must Roll,” Heinlein would begin to play games with his new-found ability to envision future change and difference. “Coventry” (
Astounding,
July 1940) takes place some years after the revolution of “ ‘If This Goes On—.’ ” A new libertarian society has been established that aims to ensure the maximum possible freedom of action for every person: “Citizens were forbidden by the Covenant to damage another. Any act not leading to damage, physical or economic, to some particular person, they declared to be lawful.”
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Social misfits who refuse to abide by this Covenant and who will not accept psychological readjustment—like Heinlein’s protagonist, who has gone so far as to punch someone in the nose—are sent to a restricted area known as Coventry that is surrounded by an impenetrable barrier. And inside Coventry, there are no less than three further societies: one of these is made up of still-faithful followers of the Prophet; one is a fascistic dictatorship; and one is a nominally democratic petty bossdom not unlike Heinlein’s boyhood Kansas City.

In this story, in the most direct way possible, Heinlein showed that the future need not be monolithic at all, but might assume a variety of different guises.

There would be further demonstrations of this in Heinlein’s next story, “Blowups Happen” (
Astounding,
Sept. 1940). This was an exactingly researched and imagined account of dedicated engineers striving to cope with conditions of intolerable psychological stress in an atomic power plant. And just like “The Roads Must Roll,” it would be indicated to be taking place about thirty years in the future.

But is this an alternative future in which solar power was never invented? Not at all. By casual cross-references in “Blowups Happen,” Heinlein would tie this story to “The Roads Must Roll” and to “ ‘Let There Be Light—’ ” and to “Requiem,” and make the point that even the near future might have a multiplicity of newness to display to us.

To keep straight this multiplex future of sun-power screens, rolling roads and space rockets that he was evolving, Heinlein even worked up a chart of the next fifty years and hung it on his wall. He would later say, “This was an idea I had gotten from Mr. Sinclair Lewis, who is alleged to maintain charts, files, notes and even very detailed maps of his fictional state of Winnemac and its leading city, Zenith.”
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