Red Planet: Earth

By William Alan Ritch

By William Alan Ritch

When Heinlein died, I had read all his books that were published up until that point. For a brief while I thought there might be one last novel in the pipeline, but, alas, that was not so. In Expanded Universe he published most of his uncollected stories so I held little hope for finding any new Heinlein stories popping up. Then I read Grumbles from the Grave (reviewed last issue) and discovered that a few of his novels had been published, not as Heinlein wrote them, but severely edited and rewritten.

All writers face the problems of dealing with an editor who thinks he knows more about writing than the author. As an editor I sometimes feel that way — there is a great desire to tinker with a writer's work. Heinlein took this editorial interference in stride. He felt that he was a ‘professional’ writer and was willing to tailor his books and stories to an editor's prejudices. Even with this very accommodating attitude, he still ran afoul many editors' stringent rules about what was and was not acceptable fiction. His toughest war seemed to be with Alice Dalgliesh, his editor at Scribner's for all his ‘juvies’. Scribner's, in the person of Miss Dalgliesh constantly hassled Heinlein about the content of his juvenile novels. Heinlein's novels were just too “adult” for them.

It wasn't really about sex; nor violence. As Heinlein himself describes, his juvies are ‘wholesome stories for boys’. Nevertheless, Miss Grundy, er, Miss Dalgliesh kept reading Freudian sexual implications in the most tame passages and objecting to any hint that barnyard animals might come in two varieties: the rooster and the hen. This made it very difficult for Heinlein to write his patented Farmer in the Sky kind of books.

Dalgliesh's real agenda can be seen in her required changes to Red Planet, one of Heinlein's most popular juvies. Dalgliesh had two major problems with Red Planet. The first was that the character “Willis”, is thought to be male throughout the book; and at the end it is discovered that Willis is female and expecting.

This is a phenomenon common to anyone who has ever owned a kitten. Since kittens have their sexual organs quite hidden, it is possible to think that you have a male cat and then it'll wind up getting pregnant and soon you have a litter of new kittens. That was the level of “sex” that was in Red Planet. Nevertheless, it had to be excised to meet Dalgliesh's standards and the “recommendations” of some juvenile library authority. I might note that both Heinlein and his agent were taking her word on this. No specific rules were ever produced for them to read.

The next point concerns the handling of weapons. As originally published Red Planet contains a few mentions of the heroes owning guns and using them to dispatch local Martian fauna (or “varmints” as our ancestors might have it). The novel that Heinlein actually wrote was much more like reading an L. Neil Smith book. The characters use their guns, they respect them and they know that they have a God-given right to keep and bear arms. All this 2nd Amendment libertarianism was deleted by the editor because it was not an acceptable thing for teenage boys to read.

Heinlein disagreed with her:

“You and I have strongly different evaluations as to the best way in which to handle the problem of deadly force in a society. We do not seem to disagree in any important fashion as to the legitimate ways in which deadly weapons may be used; but we disagree strongly as to socially useful regulations concerning deadly weapons. I will first cite two points which sharply illustrate the disagreement. I have one of my characters say that the right to bear arms is the basis of all human freedom. I strongly believe that, but you required me to blue-pencil it. The second point concerns licensing guns. I had such licensing in the story, but I had one character strongly object to it as a piece of buttinsky bureaucracy, subversive of liberty — and I had no one defending it. You required me to remove the protest, then build up the licensing itself a complicated ritual involving codes, oaths, etc — a complete reversal of evaluation. I made a great effort to remove my viewpoint from the book and incorporate yours, convincingly — but in so doing I have been writing from reasons of economic necessity something that I do not believe. I do not like having to do that.

I am opposed to all attempts to license or restrict the arming of individuals, such as the Sullivan Act of the State of New York. I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of democratic institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose. You will find that the American Rifle Association has the same policy and has had (it) for many years.”

Letter dated April 19, 1949 to Alice Dalgliesh, from Grumbles from the Grave.

The following scenes illustrate Heinlein's point. The first occurs very early in the novel that reflects the Martian attitude toward gun ownership. It also shows the way gun licensing works and how the characters react to it.

The second passage comes from Jim's days in the “academy”. It is a notice that the headmaster posts which illustrates how evil and dictatorial he is compared to the previous administration.

Even a casual reading of these passages points out the profound difference between what Heinlein believed and the anti-gun propaganda he was compelled to dish-out in the watered-down version of the novel. In the first passage there is no great alarm that the baby might get the gun. There are no lectures from dad, no mea culpas, and no bullshit about the privileges of being a licensed owner. Instead, there is the quick reaction to a possible danger and then the matter is dropped. The little sister uses the incident as a hook to get Dad to get her a pistol and the curmudgeonly neighbour, Doc MacRea, bitches about Mars' slippery slope to bureaucracy.

In the second passage we have two different paintings of life at school before the advent of the evil headmaster. In the emasculated version the picture of the school is much like a military academy. Any weapons are checked in and out of the armory, there is a student armorer and

some form of democratically elected student government. In Heinlein's original version we get a picture of a school where more freedom reigns. Most of the students go about armed. There is no concept of letting someone else “take care” of your gun for you. There is no student government to pass additional rules that the headmaster has created.

There is a world-view here that Dalgliesh, Scribner's and maybe all the New York publishers were pushing: “democracy is good. Guns are bad. Freedom is subservient to the will of society”. I think Heinlein was wrong to give in to this evil. He could have probably found another market for the book, but there is no guarantee of that. Heinlein and his agent were convinced that Scribner's was typical of the other publishers in the field and that they were not imposing any rules that the others wouldn't impose also. They were probably correct. Heinlein's name was not yet big enough to get the book published the way he wrote it. And Heinlein has not yet made his Howard Roark stand, as Brad Lineweaver discussed in the last issue.

Even with the changes, Heinlein's work was subversive of the mainstream of the officially sanctioned society. His heroes think for themselves, they respect authority but only when it deserves it, only when Authority is offering advice based on knowledge. They despise authority when it is generating laws based on ignorance and evil. Heinlein's juvies are all coming of age stories. They are about boys and girls, almost men and women, who are facing the real world for the first time. They discover that government, parents, laws and committees mean nothing in the REAL world. The only thing the heroes and heroines can rely upon is themselves; their aim, their courage, their morality and their loyalty to those who have earned it. When I was a kid, I read all the Heinlein juvies I could find. It is what made me the libertarian I am today.

This is an aside. In the July 1990 issue of FOFAX. L. Sprague de Camp states that Heinlein was a “bright-pink” liberal Democrat and implies that he was until his trip to the Soviet Union in 1960. Heinlein and his wife were there when the American U2 plane was downed and suddenly the Heinleins were treated very badly by the Soviets. Heinlein a liberal until 1960? This accusation is a LIE. Heinlein was once a Democrat, but he was not a liberal long before 1960. In 1950, in The Puppet Masters, he makes several disparaging comparisons between being taken over by the puppet masters and living in the Soviet Union. All but the most oblique ones were cut by his publisher. No liberal would make such a virulent anti-Communist statement. As we have seen in Red Planet, Heinlein is anti-gun control. All liberals want guns restricted. In the movie Destination Moon the government is shown as too stupid to go to the moon. Only private enterprise has the brains and the guts to do it. It is impossible for a liberal to get those words out of his fingers and into the keys of a typewriter. The man who wrote “The Man Who Sold the Moon” a liberal? Heinlein was no liberal; nor was he conservative. Mr. de Camp is perpetuating a cruel canard because he cannot face what Heinlein really was: a libertarian in the making.

Heinlein's kind of writing is poison to the “educational” system our masters were building for us in the 50's — the one that is complete in place today. It was the job of publishers and libraries to weed out these sorts of ideas. Heinlein sneaked through because he was writing science fiction and everybody at that time knew that SF was completely unimportant. Even so, he had to battle the censors.

And they were censors. I grant you all the libertarian points. Censorship can only come from the government. Private publishers have a right to print what they please. This is editing, not censorship. Granted. Still, the emotion that an editor like Alice Dalgliesh has is the emotion of censorship. Her job is to curtail rather than suggest. I grant the moral right of a publisher to do this, even though I condemn the act as immoral and despicable. Heinlein himself said:

“I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy.” Censorship. When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are entitled to know” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack; not fission bombs, not anything — you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”

“If This Goes On” (1940)