Assignment in Eternity, Part 1

Assignment in Eternity #1

by Robert A. Heinlein

A story of interplanetary espionage.

Contents
Gulf (1949) - novella
Elsewhen (1941) - novelette

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction

127 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1977

About the author

Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accuracy in his fiction, and was thus a pioneer of the subgenre of hard science fiction. His published works, both fiction and non-fiction, express admiration for competence and emphasize the value of critical thinking. His plots often posed provocative situations which challenged conventional social mores. His work continues to have an influence on the science-fiction genre, and on modern culture more generally.
Heinlein became one of the first American science-fiction writers to break into mainstream magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. He was one of the best-selling science-fiction novelists for many decades, and he, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke are often considered the "Big Three" of English-language science fiction authors. Notable Heinlein works include Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers (which helped mold the space marine and mecha archetypes) and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. His work sometimes had controversial aspects, such as plural marriage in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, militarism in Starship Troopers and technologically competent women characters who were formidable, yet often stereotypically feminine—such as Friday.
Heinlein used his science fiction as a way to explore provocative social and political ideas and to speculate how progress in science and engineering might shape the future of politics, race, religion, and sex. Within the framework of his science-fiction stories, Heinlein repeatedly addressed certain social themes: the importance of individual liberty and self-reliance, the nature of sexual relationships, the obligation individuals owe to their societies, the influence of organized religion on culture and government, and the tendency of society to repress nonconformist thought. He also speculated on the influence of space travel on human cultural practices.
Heinlein was named the first Science Fiction Writers Grand Master in 1974. Four of his novels won Hugo Awards. In addition, fifty years after publication, seven of his works were awarded "Retro Hugos"—awards given retrospectively for works that were published before the Hugo Awards came into existence. In his fiction, Heinlein coined terms that have become part of the English language, including grok, waldo and speculative fiction, as well as popularizing existing terms like "TANSTAAFL", "pay it forward", and "space marine". He also anticipated mechanical computer-aided design with "Drafting Dan" and described a modern version of a waterbed in his novel Beyond This Horizon.
Also wrote under Pen names: Anson McDonald, Lyle Monroe, Caleb Saunders, John Riverside and Simon York.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

So here’s an addendum to my reread of old Heinlein novels. It’s a remarkably slim novel of 128 pages, admittedly small print, and a mere two stories, one of which is a novella. It was found in a pile as one that I read about 40 years ago, and one that in the Virginia Editions that has been combined with other stories to make a bigger volume. (I also have a Volume 2 in paperback from about 1980 that I might tackle at some point.)

But I love the Tim White cover on my NEL paperback (picture above), so I’m going to review that edition.

The first story is the longest – 88 pages in a 128 page book. Gulf tells of Captain Joseph (Joe) Gilead, initially an agent for the Federal Bureau of Security, who finds himself on a mission to transport three microfilm spools containing details about a doomsday weapon a bomb which creates the Nova Effect. He is followed and after a long chase is eventually captured, but not after sending the films in secret through the post.

Gilead is sprung by another captor, Gregory “Kettle Belly” Baldwin, who we later discover is there by choice to contact Gilead. Gilead returns to the FBS to find that the microfilm has gone missing. He resigns by hitting his boss, Bonn, and meets up again with Baldwin who reveals to him a big reveal – that Gilead like Baldwin and others of his group are really super-human – the next evolutionary stage for humans. Gilead has been rescued because Baldwin thinks that he is one of them, something which Gilead finds preposterous.

However, this superhuman development is not one of muscle, but of brain. As Gilead undergoes testing and training, learning new techniques such as a new language called Speedtalk and using other ideas originated by Dr Samuel Renshaw (who proved that most people use about a fifth of their senses through their lives), Gilead comes around to the idea he once saw as unbelievable. He falls in love with mentor Gail and together they go on a mission to retrieve or disable the doomsday device, now hidden on the Moon.

First published in 1949, Gulf has the feel of a Cold War espionage story and the pace of a James Bond novel.

What I found interesting is that it is one of those stories that fits between the two types of Heinlein I notice. Gulf is clearly not a juvenile story  - there's a shocking execution of an innocent character in this book, for example - but it also does not quite fall victim to the lengthy diatribes so noticeable towards the end of his career – although there are signs of what is to come.

At the time of publication there were many stories of supermen – Olaf Stapledon’s odd Odd John (1935), the Superman comic hero from 1938 – present, A E van Vogt’s Slan (first published 1940), and possibly even Heinlein’s Lazarus Long (Methuselah’s Children, first published 1941) for example. This is Heinlein’s riposte – a taking down of the superhero type and replacing him/them with a person built on science and reasoning, with new ways of processing things and creating things.

It also reads as if it was written directly for John W Campbell, with the idea that human brains evolve into something superior, something that was a strong opinion of Campbell’s. It is no surprise that this was first published in the November and December 1949 issues of Astounding, based on a joke by editor Campbell. Back in November 1948, Campbell published a letter from a reader that amusingly created a fictional issue with totally made-up titles for November 1949, which included one by Heinlein called “Gulf”. The idea of the November 1949 issue was to include stories written by the authors with those titles. This was Heinlein’s effort, which was originally another story that became too big for the confines of a novella and was shelved to later become the inspiration for A Stranger in a Strange Land. For this inspiration came when Heinlein asked his wife Ginny, “What makes a superman?” Her reply was “He thinks better.”

At times, this idea of evolved super-humans veers towards the arrogant and superior – why is it that Baldwin and people like him can make decisions and steer the future of the Human race with the infallible conviction that they are right?

The middle part of the story is Heinlein in harangue mode as Baldwin explains all of this to Gilead in one ginormous information-dump. Though not as extreme as later writing, and for me not as annoying as in Methuselah’s Children, it shows us the initial stages of that worrying trend, that “Heinlein wants to tell”. It also has that feeling of “Here’s where I did my research”, being where Gilead through Baldwin has everything explained to him about the future humans and the ideas of Dr Samuel Renshaw. It’s an idea that he’ll come back to again as well, using Renshaw techniques in Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) and Stranger in a Strange Land (1961).

To get the story across we also have that clumpy dialogue style that Heinlein seems to have inherited and developed from EE “Doc” Smith, although to be fair it was fairly common in the 1940s. It’s fast-paced, chatty even – but reads to contemporary readers as too rehearsed, too slick. To me it reads as if it was straight out of a gangster movie :

“Now, Joe – I like you and I’m truly sorry you’re in a jam. You led wrong a couple of times and I was obliged to trump, as the stakes were high. See here, I feel that I owe you something; what do you say to this: we’ll fix you up with a brand-new personality, vacuum tight – even new fingerprints if you want them. Pick any spot on the globe you like and any occupation; we’ll supply all the money you need to start over – or money enough to retire and play with the cuties the rest of your life.

What do you say?”

There’s some cool things in there as well. Heinlein is good at throwing in ideas that are not explained too often, but are there when you think about it. In Gulf there’s a Moonbase where life seems as normal as that of an airport terminal, and a card trick used to send messages that involves some magician’s knowledge and sleight of hand, that shows us how good Heinlein was at this. There’s also surprising future predictions. Although there is still a postal service (no Internet here) Heinlein has his hero forge postal identification stamps that seem very close to our own QR code stamps.

Overall, Gulf is a superior piece of early Heinlein writing. Miles above his contemporaries and despite its age on the while it mainly holds up, with some minor caveats as mentioned above.  I understand that it is one of Heinlein’s most reprinted stories. It shows many of his strengths and some of his weaknesses, but is one of his better short stories.


The second story in the book is Elsewhen. First published in 1941 under the pen-name of Caleb Saunders in Astounding Magazine, it is a story that introduces an idea that is quite common in sf today - that of multiple universes. It concerns Professor Arthur Frost, who is arrested in connection with the disappearance of five of his Philosophy students. When put into the police wagon the Professor himself disappears. We discover in the story that Frost has discovered a way through self-hypnosis for people to be physically transported through time to a different place. These students have agreed to try the experiment and as a result have travelled to different places of their choice at different points in time.

The story looks at what happens to each of the five students when they travel. Interestingly, the first character to return, the religious Martha Ross, was not in the original magazine version. Perhaps too controversial for the magazine at the time, she returns as an angel. Personally, I could’ve read and even preferred this without her character, but it is an interesting addition by Heinlein.

At the beginning the story feels similar to Heinlein’s first published story, Lifeline (published 1939) and it is fair to say that here Heinlein is still finding his feet as a writer. Neverwhen does not have the confidence and swagger of the writer who wrote Gulf eight years later. On the plus side, it is more direct and less prone to the wanderings Heinlein is allowed in his later writing.

In fact, although Elsewhen is the shorter story of the two in this book, it is one that I think Heinlein could have made into a bigger novel. Many of the student’s experiences are reduced to a couple of sentences, when the author could easily have expanded on them.

It would perhaps be wrong of me to not point out that when Heinlein does return to such an idea, as he does with The Number of the Beast and To Sail the Sunset, not to mention The Pursuit of the Pankera, the end results (for me, anyway) are spectacularly unsuccessful. (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls I enjoyed slightly, but only slightly, more.)

With this in mind, and with the point that Elsewhen leaves the reader wanting more, to me it is a relative success.

Though short, this first volume of Assignment in Eternity was a generally positive read and a read worth finishing. Whilst I still don’t understand why the book is so short, as a sampler book of early Heinlein it has some of his better efforts.

I might just pick up Volume 2….

[Len · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story One: Gulf. In the 1970s there used to be a children's science fiction series on British television called The Tomorrow People. The Tomorrow People were a new generation of the young with abilities in telekinesis, telepathy and teleportation. Quite often they described themselves as a new breed of humans, homo superior. Now I'm sure the stories were exciting for the right age group, but what I remember is thinking that if I had been faced with these homo superior little squirts I would have been joining up to resist them. Can there be such a thing as a benevolent master race? At some point one of the all-powerful masters will start thinking of ordinary homo sapiens as being a race of Morlocks or perhaps even house pets.

Heinlein hits the same rock in Gulf. In the course of his James Bond type adventure delivering a consignment of secret films from the Moon to the Earth, Captain Gilead comes across Gregory 'Kettle Belly' Baldwin, second hand helicopter salesman and local leader of homo novis – the New Men [and women]. These are people with vastly expanded mentalities who recognise themselves as superior to the run of the mill folk but insist they are there to provide guidance rather than control. Gilead, whether he likes it or not, is one of them. Perhaps it was the author's intention to have Gilead conduct an internal philosophical debate on the necessity of a master race and its ability to suppress its mastery. If it was it doesn't happen and the story ends with a little S-F adventure plot on the Moon full of action, sacrifice and derring-do.

Story Two: Elsewhen. Good old fashioned pulp science fiction. Parallel time dimensions and an eccentric professor who discovers how to travel between them. It's all down to hypnosis, music and flashing lights. His students go jaunting off to have perilous adventures, for the most part, though one ends up living a life of considerable luxury. Wisely that's the one the professor ends up joining to avoid prosecution in his own time for the suspected disappearance of several of his class. I'm not sure what moral lesson was being taught but as an adventure it was OK.

[Rob Markley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Heinlein is a great writer but it seems very much he lost interest in this story once begun, tailed off and published anyway. Should have remained an unpublished manuscript for his estate to mull over.