The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence (63 page)

Moreover, as a striking confirmation that factors indeed may change and new relationships result, immediately after Heinlein wrote “Blowups Happen,” the balance of power between him and John Campbell began to alter radically.

By that time, early in 1940, Campbell had come to recognize what a uniquely capable and innovative writer he had found in Heinlein. He was now eager to get his hands on any new piece of work that Heinlein turned out.

However, it was at precisely this moment that Heinlein succeeded in paying off the mortgage that had caused him to take up writing in the first place, and threw a mortgage-burning party to celebrate. He no longer felt obligated to write SF. He was now master of his own options.

If Heinlein did choose to continue to write for a little longer, perhaps to the end of the year, well, that was only because he saw some convenience in it. He could certainly use a newer car, and a few other things. He had it in mind to take a trip to New York, among other reasons because he wanted to finally meet John Campbell face to face. And he did have a bunch of stories already worked out and needing to be written.

But there was this vital difference. Up until now, Heinlein had felt it necessary to please Campbell, to play along with the editor and accede to all his requests and suggestions. But no longer. Now, if he were to continue to write SF, it would be on his own terms or not at all.

The immediate test of this would be “Magic, Inc.,” Heinlein’s first post-mortgage story. Just as he had done before with very little success, Heinlein took large chunks of personally meaningful material and put them into another strange speculative story. In this fantasy short novel, he would once more express his horrified fascination with American business and political corruption, his strong conviction that the ordinary reality of present social consensus is not the only possible reality, and his accumulated knowledge of a forbidden area of study—in this case, magic and witchcraft.

However, this time, with something between a glint and a twinkle in his eye, Heinlein would combine these factors with the very elements that Campbell had been asking for in his science fiction stories for
Astounding:
plausible argument, universal operating principles, and more fiction about the future. There would be no chance that this story would come across as vague or flabby. Every trick of plausible presentation that Heinlein had worked up for his science fiction stories, he would employ in this not-altogether-serious fantasy.

For example, in all his recent science fiction stories, Heinlein had snatched the reader into the ongoingness of a different future reality by starting with some urgent, intriguing line of dialog. “ ‘Who makes the roads roll?’ ”
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a leader of dissatisfied technicians demands. Or “ ‘Put down that wrench!’ ”
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a psychiatrist says to an atomic engineer.

In very much the same way, but even more provocatively, “Magic, Inc.” would begin with the impertinent question: “ ‘Whose spells are you using, buddy?’ ”
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It is a cheap thug who asks. And coolly, the narrator, a building-materials dealer named Archie Fraser, answers back: “ ‘Various of the local licensed practitioners of thaumaturgy.’ ”
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This may not be very helpful to the thug, who is here to put pressure on Fraser to change the source of supply of one of the more important elements in his business, but it certainly tells us a great deal about the world we are entering.

In fact, once again we are in an altered society thirty years in the future—just like “The Roads Must Roll” and “Blowups Happen.” But in this logical if not necessarily possible 1970, it is magic that is the key fact of change.

It is assumed that around 1950, magic was placed on a regular and socially accepted basis with mastery of “the arcane laws.”
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And after a further twenty years, it has become a major facet of daily American life, regulated by law and contract and custom. As Archie Fraser’s good friend, cloak-and-suiter Joe Jedson says, speaking at a small city Chamber of Commerce luncheon:

“We all use it. I use it for textiles. Hank Manning here uses nothing else for cleaning and pressing, and probably uses it for some of his dye jobs, too. Wally Haight’s Maple Shop uses it to assemble and finish fine furniture. Stan Robertson will tell you that Le Bon Marché’s slick window displays are thrown together with spells, as well as two thirds of the merchandise of his store, especially in the kids’ toy department.”
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Archie Fraser helps us to accept this magical future society. He’s a hardheaded Scot, a practical weigh-and-measure man, so conventional in his cast of mind that when he explains to us that racketeers are moving in to gain an illegal monopoly in magic so that they can raise prices, it’s only natural for him to compare it with the price-rigging that was once attempted locally in the Portland cement trade. At the same time, however, he is a native of this odd future, perfectly ready to take its every strangeness in stride.

Indeed, such is the spin that Heinlein puts on things that ultimately we can no longer be quite sure what is really strange and what isn’t. When Archie and his more magically gifted friends figure out that it is a demon who is behind the racketeering in magic and track him down in “the Half-World,”
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all we can do is laugh as a lesser demon rushes up to lend them a crucial hand—and then reveals himself to be an FBI agent working out of the antimonopoly division on undercover assignment. It seems only fitting.

“Magic, Inc.” was a deadpan spoof, all in good fun, but it was also a bold experiment. Heinlein had become increasingly slick at slipping necessary information into his science fiction stories in such a way that it seemed only natural. In this story, however, he outdid himself. Nothing at all was given directly. All the background information that Heinlein had to impart, he wove into the fabric of his story. It was demonstrated, or it was given in the attitudes of his characters, or it was thrown away in dialog, or it was dropped in an incidental narrative comment serving some other apparent purpose.

And the result of this technique was that the reader who wanted to know where he was and what was going on here was obliged to become an active and trusting participant in “Magic, Inc.” Without benefit of any obvious direct exposition, he had to gather scattered hints and references and implications and fit the overall pattern together for himself.

In years to come, showing-without-telling and asking the reader to fill in the blank spots of a pattern would become standard methods for presenting strange future societies. And Robert Heinlein would always be the supreme master of this kind of indirect presentation. But it was in “Magic, Inc.” that he first brought the trick off.

When John Campbell was allowed to see this whacky, innovative story, he loved it, of course. An out-and-out fantasy that was written with the techniques of leading-edge modern science fiction was just the thing for him. He hurried “Magic, Inc.” into the September 1940
Unknown,
pausing only to change the title to “The Devil Makes the Law” to avoid any clash with Pratt’s and de Camp’s second Harold Shea story, “The Mathematics of Magic,” published in the August issue.

On the check for this story, Heinlein traveled east. And when he got to New York, he tested Campbell again, a little harder this time. He handed the editor a short story he had written on the way, the frankly solipsistic “They,” in which the familiar modern world is revealed to be no more than an elaborate stage setting designed to keep the protagonist distracted from remembering his true identity and power. Campbell bought that one, too—although he would be a good bit slower about putting it in print, sticking it at last without special notice into the April 1941
Unknown.

In this first meeting between the great editor and his most able new writer, there was obvious respect, geniality, and good-fellowship. Beneath the surface, however, this encounter between Heinlein and Campbell was an all-out war, a struggle between two titans for dominance and control. And it was Heinlein who emerged the winner, as he had fully intended to do when he set off for the east.

Oh, Campbell did come away with a certain number of concessions: Heinlein agreed to write more of his new line of futuristic science fiction for
Astounding,
something he hadn’t done for almost six months. What is more, to provide a home for his stranger notions, Heinlein would create a Don A. Stuart-type alter ego, Anson MacDonald—a pseudonym cobbled together out of Heinlein’s middle name and his wife’s maiden name. And Heinlein was even willing to initiate this new name by turning an old plot of Campbell’s into a quick serial novel to fill a hole in the magazine.

In actuality, however, it was Heinlein who established all of his points: He wouldn’t write to command or to deadline. He would write what he wanted, when he wanted, and the way he wanted. For exactly as long as he wanted.

Immediately, yes, he would agree to write Campbell’s serial for him; he could use the money just now for a new car. But in the long term, it was necessary for Campbell to understand that if the time should come when the editor rejected another of his stories, that was the end of it. Heinlein wouldn’t send him anything further. And that—sweetly, charmingly phrased, of course—was The Word.

Campbell being Campbell, he would never completely give up trying to prompt and adjust and direct Heinlein, but the edge was no longer his. His need for Heinlein was greater than Heinlein’s need for him—and Heinlein had let him know it.

It was in this new phase in their relationship that Campbell would tell his young fellow editor, Fred Pohl:

The trouble with Bob Heinlein is that he doesn’t need to write. When I want a story from him, the first thing I have to do is think up something he would like to have, like a swimming pool. The second thing is to sell him on the idea of having it. The third thing is to convince him he should write a story to get the money to pay for it, instead of building it himself.
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The real situation, of course, was rather more complex than that. Heinlein may have done a good job of convincing Campbell that he was a gentleman of independent means and thought who really didn’t have to write at all, but only did it because he happened to find it amusing and convenient to play around with SF for a time. But it wasn’t strictly true.

For that matter, Heinlein may have convinced himself that he had backed into science fiction writing completely by accident, and had only continued it for sound pragmatic reasons. He was willing to tell his friends that he “was just a chap who needed money and happened to discover that pulp writing offered an easy way to grab some without stealing and without honest work.”
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But that wasn’t strictly true, either.

In fact, Heinlein did need to write.

In one year, from a standing start, Heinlein had turned out a truly prodigious amount of work—three short novels, four novelets, and seven short stories. And he had thought of at least a dozen stories more that he might write. He was just bubbling over with SF ideas.

The stories Heinlein had written contained all sorts of formal knowledge and conscious cerebration, but they were also the most intensely personal body of work any SF writer had ever produced. As we’ve seen, they were full of long-cherished Heinlein dreams, and private references, and a great deal of autobiography, both disguised and overt.

These were highly immediate stories. Previous science fiction stories of the future had either been brief visits or else were one-dimensional accounts. Heinlein, however, had put incredible effort into working out techniques that would allow the imagined future to feel plausible and lived-in.

Finally, these were urgent stories. Again and again, they concerned dedicated men—overseers of society—who are plagued by nightmares and unspoken doubts and are on the very verge of cracking up under the awesome weight of their responsibilities. In “Blowups Happen,” for instance, he had written of his atomic engineers:

They were selected not alone for their intelligence and technical training, but quite as much for their characters and sense of social responsibility. Sensitive men were needed—men who could fully appreciate the importance of the charge entrusted to them; no other sort would do. But the burden of responsibility was too great to be borne indefinitely by a sensitive man. It was, of necessity, a psychologically unstable condition. Insanity was an occupational disease.
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And in “The Roads Must Roll,” he had written of his main character, the Chief Engineer of the Diego-Reno Roadtown: “He had carried too long the superhuman burden of kingship—which no sane mind can carry light-heartedly—and was at this moment perilously close to the frame of mind which sends captains down with their ships.”
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But, of course, as we have also seen, in one early Heinlein story after another, society’s major institutions—business, politics, religion—are indicted as short-sighted, greedy, corrupt, dishonest, dangerous, and possibly outright evil. Common folk—the sort of little people who go “ ‘ridey-ridey home to their dinners’ ”
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via the rolling roads—are seen as easily duped, mesmerized by the moment, lost in the trivial and superficial aspects of life, oblivious to higher concerns. And when people of real knowledge do attempt to share their experience with society, ordinary citizens are apt to pay no attention, while the corrupt are likely to try to silence or kill them.

It was a complex tangle of thought and feeling that Heinlein was being driven to try to sort out in these urgent, immediate, intense personal stories. He yearned to be an effective man of higher dedication, but he felt thwarted. He longed for a society deserving of his service, but saw instead a society of unworthiness and corruption. He wondered whether it was possible to be a Wellsian Samurai or something like it without being struck down for his pride or breaking under the strain. And he couldn’t make it all come out even.