Time Travelers Strictly Cash

by Spider Robinson

  And so now, with his very latest publication, Expanded Universe, Heinlein has finally blown his cover altogether. I think that makes Expanded Universe, despite a significant number of flaws, the single most important and valuable Heinlein book ever published.

  Let me tell you a little about the book. It is built around a previously available but long out of print Heinlein collection, The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein, but it has been expanded by about 160%, with approximately 125,000 words of new material, for a total of about 202,500 words. Some of the new stuff is fiction, although little of it is science fiction (about 17,500 words). But the bulk of the new material, about 84,000 words, is non-fiction. Taken together it’s as close as Heinlein is ever going to get to writing his memoirs, and it forms his ultimate personal statement to date. In ten essays, a polemic, one and a half speeches and extensive forewords and afterwords for most of thirteen stories, Heinlein lets us further inside his head than he ever has before. And hey, you know what? He doesn’t resemble Lazarus Long much at all.

  For instance, although he is plainly capable of imagining and appreciating it, Heinlein is not himself able to sustain Lazarus’s magnificent ingrained indifference to the fate of any society. Unlike Lazarus, Heinlein loves the United States of America. He’ll tell you why, quite specifically, in this book. Logical, pragmatic reasons why. He will tell you, for instance, of his travels in the Soviet Union, and what he saw and heard there. If, after you’ve heard him out, you still don’t think that for all its warts (hell, running sores), the United States is the planet’s best hope for an enlightened future, there’s no sense in us talking further; you’ll be wanting to pack. (Hey, have you heard? The current government of the People’s Republic of China [half-life unknown] has allowed as how limited freedom of thought will be permitted this year. Provisionally.)12 You know, the redneck clowns who chanted “America—love it or leave it!” while they stomped me back in the sixties didn’t have a bad slogan. The only problem was that they got to define “love of America,” and they limited its meaning to “blind worship of America.” In addition they limited the definition of America to “the man in the White House.”

  These mistakes Heinlein certainly does not make. (Relevant quote from Expanded Universe: “Brethren and Sistren, have you ever stopped to think that there has not been one rational decision out of the Oval Office for fifty years?”—[italics his—SR]) In this book he identifies clearly, vividly and concisely the specific brands of rot that are eating out America’s heart. He outlines each of the deadly perils that face the nation, and predicts their consequences. As credentials, he offers a series of fairly specific predictions he made in 1950 for the year 2000, updated in 1965, and adds 1980 updates supporting a claim of a 66% success rate—enormously higher than that of, say, Jeanne Dixon. He pronounces himself dismayed not only by political events of the last few decades, but by the terrifying decay of education and growth of irrationalism in America. (Aside: in my own opinion, one of the best exemplars of this latter trend is Stephen King’s current runaway bestseller The Stand, a brilliantly entertaining parable in praise of ignorance, superstition, reliance on dreams, and the sociological insights of feeble-minded old Ned Lud.)

  It is worth noting in this connection that while Heinlein has many scathing things to say about the U.S. in Expanded Universe, he has prohibited publication of the book in any other country.13 We don’t wash family linen with strangers present. I don’t know of any other case in which a sf writer deliberately (and drastically) limited his royalties out of patriotism, or for that matter any moral or ethical principle. I applaud.

  Friends, one of the best educated and widely-traveled men in America has looked into the future, and he is not especially optimistic.

  It cannot be said that he despairs. He makes many positive, practical suggestions—for real cures rather than bandaids. He outlines specifically how to achieve the necessary perspective and insight to form intelligent extrapolations of world events, explains in detail how to get a decent education (by the delightful device of explaining how not to get one), baldly names the three pillars of wisdom, and reminds us that “Last to come out of Pandora’s Box was a gleaming, beautiful thing—eternal Hope.”

  But the last section of the book is a matched pair of mutually exclusive prophecies, together called “The Happy Days Ahead.” The first is a gloomy scenario of doom, the second an optimistic scenario. He says, “I can risk great gloom in the first because I’ll play you out with music at the end.”

  But I have to admit that the happy scenario, Over The Rainbow, strikes me as preposterously unlikely.

  In fact, the only thing I can imagine that would increase its probability would be the massive widespread reading of Expanded Universe.

  Which brings me to what I said at the beginning of this essay: if you want to thank Robert A. Heinlein, do what you can to see to it that the country he loves, the culture he loves, the magnificent ideal he loves, are not destroyed. If you have the wit to see that this old man has a genuine handle on the way the world wags, kindly stop complaining that his literary virtues are not classical and go back to doing what you used to do when sf was a ghetto-literature scorned by all the world: force copies of Heinlein on all your friends. Unlike most teachers, Heinlein has been successfully competing with television for forty years now. Anyone that he cannot convert to rationalism is purely unreachable, and you know, there are a hell of a lot of people on the fence these days.

  I do not worship Robert Heinlein. I do not agree with everything he says. There are a number of his opinions concerning which I have serious reservations, and perhaps two with which I flat-out disagree (none of which I have the slightest intention of washing with strangers present). But all of these tend to keep me awake nights, because the only arguments I can assemble to refute him are based on “my thirty years of experience,” of a very limited number of Americans and Canadians—and I’m painfully aware of just how poorly that stacks up against his seventy-three years of intensive study of the entire population and the entire history of the planet.

  And I repeat: if there is anything that can divert the land of my birth from its current stampede into the Stone Age, it is the widespread dissemination of the thoughts and perceptions that Robert Heinlein has been selling as entertainment since 1939. You can thank him, not by buying his book, but by loaning out the copy you buy to as many people as will sit still for it, until it falls apart from overreading. (Be sure and loan Expanded Universe only to fellow citizens.) Time is short: it is no accident that his latest novel devotes a good deal of attention to the subject of lifeboat rules. Note that Expanded Universe contains a quick but thorough course in how to survive the aftermath of a nuclear attack. (When Heinlein said in his Guest of Honor speech at MidAmeriCon that “there will be nuclear war on Earth in your lifetime,” some people booed, and some were unconvinced. But it chanced that there was a thunderstorm over the hotel next morning—and I woke up three feet in the air, covered with sweat.) Emergencies require emergency measures, so drastic that it will be hard to persuade people of their utter necessity.

  If you want to thank Robert Heinlein, open your eyes and look around you—and begin loudly demanding that your neighbors do likewise.

  Or—at the very least—please stop loudly insisting that the elephant is merely a kind of inferior snake, or tree, or large barrel of leather, or oversized harpoon, or flexible trombone, or…

  (When I read the above as my Guest of Honor speech at the New England Science Fiction Association’s annual regional convention, Bosklone, I took Heinlein’s advice about playing them out with music literally, and closed with a song. I append it here as well. It is the second filksong14 I’ve ever written, and it is set to the tune of Old Man River, as arranged by Marty Paich on Ray Charles’s Ingredients In a Recipe For Soul. [If you’re not familiar with that arrangement, the scansion will appear to limp at the end.] Guitar chords are provided for would-be filksingers, but copyright is reserved for recording or pu
blishing royalties, etc.)

  Ol’ Man Heinlein

  (lyrics by Spider Robinson)

  DOl’ man G7Heinlein DThat ol’ man G7Heinlein

  He Dmust know A7somethin’ His Bmheart keeps E7pumpin’

  He Ajust keep Asuswritin’ And Alately A+writin’ ’em Dlong

  He Ddon’t write for G7critics Cause Dthat rotten

  And Dthem that G7writes if Is Bmsoon E7forgotten

  But Aol’ man AsusHeinlein keeps A A+speculatin’ Dalong

  F#mYou and C#7me F#mSit and C#7think F#mHeads all C#7empty F#mexcept for C#7drink

  F#mTote that C#7pen F#mJog that C#7brain F#mGet a little F#mcheck in Emthe mail A7from Baen

  DI get G7bleary And Dfeel like G7shirkin’

  I’m Dtired of A7writin’ But Bmscared of E7workin’

  But Aol’ man AsusHeinlein He Akeeps on A+rollin’ Dalong

  AbmYou and Eb7me AbmRead his Eb7stuff AbmNever can Eb7seem to Abmget Eb7enough

  AbmTurn that Eb7page AbmDig them Eb7chops AbmHope the Eb7old Abmgentleman F#mnever B7stops

  So Eraise your A7glasses It’s Eonly A7fittin’

  The Ebest Bsf that was C#mever F#7written

  Is EOld E+Man E6Heinlein Am May he Elive C#mas long as F#7 B7Lazarus ELong

  9 An incomplete list, off the top of my head.

  10 I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve heard “libertarian” used as a pejorative a few times lately.

  11 —As distinct from the opinions of his protagonists.

  12 At press time, they have given every sign of having changed their minds.—SR

  13 At presstime I learn that the book can be obtained in Canada. I follow the logic; the two countries are Siamese Twins.

  14 A filksong is not a typo, but a generic term for any song or song-parody sung by or for sf fans.

  HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE…?

  There is clearly a kind of delirious logic to the way things happen at Callahan’s Place, a kind of artistic symmetry—if by “artistic” you mean, like, Salvador Dali or Maurits Escher.

  It just happened, for instance, that in 1979 the Fourth of July fell on a rainy Wednesday night—and Wednesday night is customarily Tall Tales Night at Callahan’s. So naturally it was that night that the Traveling Salesman arrived.

  And even with that much hint, the punchline surprised me.

  Oh, would you like to hear about it?

  The house custom on Wednesday nights is that the teller of the tallest tale gets his or her bar-bill refunded, and I haven’t missed a Wednesday in years. I have won a few times; I have lost quite a few times: there are some fearful liars at Callahan’s bar. (Sometime customers include a paperback editor, a literary agent, and a former realtor.) Lately, however, the stakes had increased. A lady named Josie Bauer had begun coming regular to Callahan’s the month previous, and she was pleasant and bright and buxom and remarkably easy to talk to. And she was something I’d never encountered before: a humor groupie. It was her charming and unvarying custom to go home with whoever won the Tall Tales contest on Wednesday nights and the Punday Night competition on Tuesdays. This caused the competition, as Doc Webster observed, to stiffen considerably.

  But I had hopes that night, and I was sorry to see Gentleman John Kilian approach the chalk line with a gin and gin in his hand. John is a short dapper Englishman with a quick mind and a wicked talent for summatory puns. He’s not on this side of the lake much, and a lot of folks dropped what they were doing to listen.

  “I commanded a submarine in Her Majesty’s Navy during the last World War,” he began, tugging at his goatee, “and I propose to tell you of a secret mission I was ordered to undertake. The famous spy Harry Lime, the celebrated Third Man, had developed a sudden and severe case of astigmatism—and many of his espionage activities forbade dependence on spectacles. At that time only one visionary in all the world was working on the development of a practical contact lens: a specialist at Walter Reed Hospital. I was ordered to convey Lime there in utmost secrecy and despatch, then wait round and fetch him home again.”

  “Is this gonna be a Limey story?” Long-Drink McGonnigle asked, and Callahan took a seltzer bottle to him.

  John ignored it magnificently. “He was an excellent actor, of course, but before long I began to suspect that there was nothing atall wrong with his vision. I searched his quarters, and found correspondence indicating that he had a girlfriend who lived some twenty miles from the hospital. So I called him into my cabin. ‘I can’t prove a thing against you,’ I said, ‘but I’m ordering you—’” For effect, he paused and elegantly sipped gin.

  I hated to do it. I’m a liar: I loved doing it. In any case I had seen the punchline coming long since, and so I delivered it before he could. “‘—to go directly from the sub, Lime, to the Reed oculist.’”

  “Oh damn,” he cried, and everyone broke up, Josie loudest of all. John glared at his gin, finished it in one gulp and pegged his glass into the fireplace.

  “Sorry, John.”

  “Bullshit,” he said, making an extra syllable out of the t. He grinned satanically and his eyes flashed. “Let’s hear yours now, Jake.”

  “Aw, I haven’t got any worth telling.”

  “None of that,” he said sharply.

  “And besides, you’re so good at puns, John. You always smell ’em coming.”

  “Come out and fight like a man.”

  “Well…” I got up from the bar, took my Tullamore Dew to the chalk line before the fireplace. “I haven’t got a tall tale, exactly.” I wet my whistle. “What I’ve got is a true story that happened to me, that I’ve never been able to get anybody to believe.”

  “Better,” said Gentleman John, mollified.

  “No, really. I swear, this is true. Most of you know, I’ve been making a living with a guitar around the Island for some time now, and I’ve played a lot of strange places. I played the Village Pizza Restaurant Lounge, I played the Deer Park High School Senior Assembly, my old partner Dave and me played a joint once where the topless dancer had one arm, you had to show a razor and puke blood to get in. But the weirdest of all was a solo gig. I got a call from this big chain department store, Lincoln & Waltz; their PR lady heard me somewhere and wanted to know if I would come and sing in the Junior Miss Department. I thought she was drunk. Essentially they wanted something sufficiently odd to awaken the shoppers and attract a crowd, for which they would then have the local Girl Scouts model the new spring line. She figured I was hungry enough, and she figured right.

  “Now, I’m not a superstitious man, but this is a pretty weird gig, even for me. So as I’m driving to the store I’m wondering if I’ve made a terrible mistake, and I kind of—there was a witness present—I look upward-like and I say out loud, ‘Oh, Lord, give me a sign. Will my paycheck get cosigned, or is that going off on a tangent?’” Sustained groans. “All right, I’m embellishing. What I really said was, ‘Should I go through with this? Lord, give me a sign.’ At that moment I stop for a stop sign, and overhead a bird electrocutes itself on the high-tension lines and drops dead on the front hood of my car—”

  Whoops of laughter.

  “I swear to God, feet sticking up, I have a witness.”

  Doc Webster popped a vest button, and Josie was smiling dreamily.

  “So I sit there at the stop sign awhile…shivering…tilt my head back and real soft I say, ‘You didn’t have to shout…’”

  Roars. “Marvelous,” Gentleman John cried. “You went home straightaway, of course?”

  “Hell no, like a chump I showed up at the Junior Miss Department. To tell you the truth, I was curious. Nothing I played or sang or said attracted the attention of a single customer, and when they gave the Girl Scouts the go-ahead anyway, one of them stepped into my guitar case and broke a hinge, and I set fire to a $50 dress with my cigar, and I didn’t get paid. Worst single disaster of my career.”

  John was shaking his head. “Don’t believe a word of it, old boy.”

  “Of course not. Neither
did I; that’s why I was stupid enough to go through with it after a warning like that. I didn’t believe. In retrospect it’s obvious, but I just thought the damn bird was a sparrow or magpie or some such…” I trailed off carefully.

  “What was it then?” John bit. “Raven, I suppose?”

  “I’m surprised at you, John,” I said triumphantly. “Obviously it was an Omen Pigeon.”

  People grade a pun by their reaction to it. The very best, of course, as Bernard Shaw said, is when one’s audience holds its collective nose and flees screaming from one’s vicinity. Immediate laughter or groan is a lesser approbation. And in between these two is the pause, followed only after five or ten stunned seconds by cheers and jeers. It was this intermediate rating that I was accorded, and I savored the pause, and Josie’s broad grin, and lifted my Irish whiskey to my lips to savor that too.

  And sprayed a fine mist of Irish into the air.

  Because before the pause could turn to applause, in that second or two of silence, we all heard—with a dreadful clarity—the unmistakable sound of hoofbeats on the roof.

  Pretty near everyone had just drawn in a breath to cheer or groan; there was a vast huff as they all let it back out again. Cigar smoke swirled in tormented search for safe harbor, and the only sound now was the hoofbeats on the roof.

  Mike Callahan is unflappable. He plucked his malodorous cigar from his mouth with immense aplomb, looked up at the ceiling and shouted, “You’re early, Fatso,” and went back to polishing the bar-top.