I continue my look back at some of the short stories produced by one of the greatest-ever science fiction writers, Robert Heinlein (1907-88). Today I look at his 1959 collection titled The Menace from Earth, including all its stories below except for the title story which I discussed last week...
THE YEAR OF THE JACKPOT (1952)
I remember reading this story many, many years ago in the break room of the old downtown Gainesville post office...a theoretical statistician has come across a truth that trends of low-probability cycle over years. But now all the different areas of low probability are converging at the same time into the present and who knows what will happen. The ending illustrates why this story is NOT a part of Robert Heinlein's interrelated "universe" of stories...
BY HIS BOOTSTRAPS (1941)
The ultimate time travel paradox story, with effect repeatedly serving as cause. A college student, wearily working on his thesis one night, encounters himself from the future...and the confusing fun begins. Another story I first read what seems like eons ago...
COLUMBUS WAS A DOPE (1947)
The setting is a bar and the patrons are arguing whether it is advisable whether to go on a manned mission to Mars as planned. The opinions are divided, and the bartender is adamantly against it, using the "if God had meant for men to fly he'd have given us wings" argument. It's the punch-line ending of this brief tale that gives it a special perspective...
SKY LIFT (1953)
A spaceship pilot, thinking he was finally going to get some leave time, suddenly finds himself on an urgent resupply and rescue mission to plague-ridden Pluto, piloting the fastest of the available torch ships and having to endure the entire trip...along with his copilot...under 3.5 g's of gravitational force. A painful story to read as Heinlein vividly describes the effects such a sustained gravitational load would have on the human body and psyche...
GOLDFISH BOWL (1957)
Scientists on a ship in the Pacific investigate two mysterious columns of water coming out of the ocean and ending far up in the sky. What happens to two of them when they get too close sets the stage for the rest of the story: it's a sobering suggestion that humanity isn't necessarily the "highest" form of life in the universe...or even on our home planet, for that matter...
PROJECT NIGHTMARE (1953)
Although, Heinlein, himself an engineer, liked to stress hard science in his stories, he nevertheless played along with the notions that time travel and, in this tale, ESP, were possible. The search is on in the country for Americans with telepathic and telekinetic abilities during the height of the Cold War against the Soviets...it has to do with our atomic bombs and theirs. A crisis puts everyone to the test...
WATER IS FOR WASHING (1947)
Not really a science fiction story, this one is set in the present as a businessman finds himself on a survival quest as the once-bone dry desert valley in southern California he is driving through suddenly finds itself inundated by Pacific Ocean waters following an earthquake. The notion of prioritizing people's values to society plays into it all as, along the way as he tries to escape, he picks up...in the tsunami's path...two children and a thieving vagrant. The implicit question Heinlein asks in this story is what would you and I do in similar circumstances?
Next week I'll start looking at some stories Heinlein included in his collection Expanded Universe...
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