Letter (William Stoddard)

Editors, Prometheus Gentlefolk:

I found Brad Linaweaver’s comments about Brightsuit MacBear as a Heinlein juvenile quite interesting. Share Mr. Linaweaver’s enthusiasm for the Heinlein juvenile; I regard the novels from Red Planet through Starship as the single body of American science fiction that has the best claim to being classic literature.

However, I think Mr. Linaweaver has missed several plausible ventures in that peculiar literary state that deserve mention. Earliest of these was Alexei Panshin’s Rite of Passage, which set one of the central traditions of the post-Heinlein Heinlein juvenile; the hero’s (or in this case heroine’s) entry into adult sexuality at the novel's end. Panshin also made some subversive points, with his heroine, Mia Havero, studying ethics and ultimately concluding that the whole ethical basis of her society was wrong and that in her adult life she’d work to change it. Greg Benford followed the Heinlein model as well in his much more recent Jupiter Project and with Heinleinian indirection made it clear to the reader that two of her friends, Ishi and Jenny, had been lovers before Ishi's death, while leaving the hero himself unaware of this. An example less likely to occur to readers than either of these is the Samuel Delaney's short story “We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line,” a portrait of an odd utopian society founded on unviversal access of the entire world to power and communications lines and of the serice organization—operated largely by adolescents—that maintains that access. All three combine rite-of-passage themes, sophisticated narrative techniques, and challenging and disturbing ideas in the very way Heinlein did.

I regret that I can’t quite agree with Mr. Linaweaver that L. Neil Smith does the same. I read The Probability Broach with considerable enjoyment and have reread it a time or two; I read The Venus Belt with much less enjoyment and promptly recycled it; I have not bought any Smith since then, and the novels I have borrowed from friends—including Brightsuit MacBearI have not been able to finish. Perhaps the libertarian ideas are too obvious to me to thrill me—but Heinlein and Delaney still do so. Perhaps the real trouble is that there are such clear heroes and villains, such straightforward unproblematic definitions of right and wrong. Such excited me when I was in my teens and reading Atlas Shrugged but a few more years spent reading economic theory, Friedrich Nietzsche, and an odd sampling of what our culture calls ‘serious literature’ have persuaded me that everything, even ethical positions, has a cost, and one that may be hard for us to pay. I am convinced that Heinlein knew this as well. I’m not convinced that Smith does.

His novels seem to me ‘juvenile’ in the bad sense of simplifying or ignoring ethical dilemmas. In consequence, I feel I have learned less from him—though I largely agree with him—than I have from Robert Heinlein, or Robert Kipling, or even the Bible (to link Heinlein with two of his profoundest influences), though I often disagree with all three. Heinlein belongs in this company, and Smith does not—nor in Heinlein’s.

Very truly yours,

William H. Stoddard