Dear Anders:

In the first sentence of his review, Rick Triplett describes Variable Star as “a novel that the master [Robert Heinlein] never got around to finishing.” This is, of course, how it's described by Spider Robinson, the author, and by Tor, the publisher, and how it's generally been received. But I suspect that it's not actually true.

Robinson states that the outline of Variable Star was drafted in 1955, and mentions various titles that Heinlein considered for it, starting with The Stars Are a Clock. An important plot arc in the novel as Robinson completed it involves a young man who goes off to the stars on a slower-than-light starship, keeping in touch with Earth through telepaths linked to other telepaths back on Earth, which enables him to correspond with a young girl there. Through relativistic time distortion, she grows up faster than he ages, and eventually the invention of a faster-than-light stardrive enables them to meet face to face and marry.

Now, the central plot arc of Time for the Stars, published in 1956, involves a young man who is identified as a telepath and sent off to the stars on a slower-than-light starship, which he helps to keep in touch with Earth through his telepathic link, first with his twin brother, and then with the brother's daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter. Eventually the invention of a faster-than-light stardrive enables him to meet the granddaughter face to face and marry her; because of relativistic time distortion, he is biologically only a few years older than she is.

Of course, this could be no more than coincidence; I have no proof to the contrary. But I think a different history is more likely: That in 1955, Heinlein began working on the outline for his next juvenile book, which ultimately became Time for the Stars, producing the initial draft that Robinson worked from; that as he thought the story through, he decided that the relativistic time distortion was its central theme, made one of the telepathic “special communicators” the narrator and protagonist to bring it into sharper focus, and increased the span of time to make the time distortion more dramatic. Even the title of the published work, Time for the Stars, is obviously similar to the original title The Stars Are a Clock.

To suppose otherwise is to suppose that within the span of about a year, Heinlein outlined two different novels for the same market, with closely similar plot arcs, and even with similar titles, and drew no mental connection between them. And Occam's Razor (which I learned about from Heinlein) makes it hard for me to believe this.

There may be undiscovered lost stories, or lost initial drafts or outlines of stories, buried in Heinlein's literary remains. But I don't think this book is one of them. I think it's better viewed as an alternate universe version of Time for the Stars — one where it was not published as a juvenile! And though Robinson does a competent job of capturing the Heinleinian tone, I have to say I prefer the juvenile that was actually published.

This is, as I say, all speculation. But the coincidences seem quite striking. And I don't see any suggestion that anyone involved in producing this book considered them, or checked to see if there was evidence to support or refute them. If they did, I hope someday we will hear more about it.

-- William H. Stoddard

Loved Mr. Monsen's review of The Book of Merlyn in the latest newsletter. I read both The Once and Future King and Merlyn in the 70s, during my teenage, pre-libertarian years, and I don't recall a thing about either of them. The excerpts Mr. Monsen published in his review make me want to take an overdue second look at White. Does the Merlyn of King have the same anarchistic streak as the Merlyn of Merlyn? And I wonder if White's essays are freedom-oriented? Pity the fantasy market is not as prolific with libertarian ideas as the SF market, except for Terry Pratchett.

-- Michael Serafin