...
Starship Troopers (serialised in Astounding as was most of Heinlein's fiction until the early sixties) was probably Heinlein's last 'straight' sf serial for Campbell
before he began his 'serious' books such as Farnham's Freehold and Stranger in a Strange Land -- taking the simplified characters of genre fiction and producing
some of the most ludicrously unlikely people ever to appear in print. In Starship Troopers we find a slightly rebellious cadet gradually learning that wars are
inevitable, that the army is always right, that his duty is to obey the rules and protect the human race against the alien menace. It is pure debased Ford out of Kipling
and it set the pattern for Heinlein's more ambitious paternalistic, xenophobic (but equally sentimental) stories which became for me steadily more hilarious until I
realised with some surprise that people were taking them as seriously as they had taken, say, Atlas Shrugged a generation before -- in hundreds of thousands! That
middle-America could regard such stuff as 'radical' was easy enough to understand. I kept finding that supporters of the Angry Brigade were enthusiastic about
Heinlein, that people with whom I thought I shared libertarian principles were getting off on every paternalistic, bourgeois writer who had ever given me the creeps! I
still can't fully understand it. Certainly I can't doubt the sincerity of their idealism. But how does it equate with their celebration of writers like Tolkein and Heinlein?
The clue could be in the very vagueness of the prose, which allows for liberal interpretation; it could be that the ciphers they use instead of characters are capable of
suggesting a wholly different meaning to certain readers. To me, their naive and emblematic reading of society is fundamentally misanthropic and therefore
anti-libertarian. We are faced, once again, with quasi-religion, presented to us as radicalism. At best it is the philosophy of the Western applied to the complex
social problems of the twentieth century -- it is Reaganism, it is John Wayne in Big John Maclean and The Green Berets, it is George Wallace and Joe McCarthy --
at its most refined it is William F. Buckley Jr., who, already a long way more sophisticated than Heinlein, is still pretty simple-minded.
Rugged individualism also goes hand in hand with a strong faith in paternalism -- albeit a tolerant and somewhat distant paternalism -- and many otherwise
sharp-witted libertarians seem to see nothing in the morality of a John Wayne Western to conflict with their views. Heinlein's paternalism is at heart the same as
Wayne's. In the final analysis it is a kind of easy-going militarism favoured by the veteran professional soldier -- the chain of command is complex -- many adult
responsibilities can be left to that chain as long as broad, but firmly enforced, rules from 'high up' are adhered to. Heinlein is Eisenhower Man and his views seem to
me to be more pernicious than ordinary infantile back-to-the-land Christian communism, with its mysticism and its hatred of technology. To be an anarchist, surely,
is to reject authority but to accept self-discipline and community responsibility. To be a rugged individualist a la Heinlein and others is to be forever a child who must
obey, charm and cajole to be tolerated by some benign, omniscient father: Rooster Coburn shuffling his feet in front of a judge he respects for his office (but not
necessarily himself) in True Grit.
An anarchist is not a wild child, but a mature, realistic adult imposing laws upon the self and modifying them according to an experience of life, an interpretation of
the world. A 'rebel', certainly, he or she does not assume 'rebellious charm' in order to placate authority (which is what the rebel heroes of all these genre stories
do). There always comes the depressing point where Robin Hood doffs a respectful cap to King Richard, having clobbered the rival king. This sort of implicit
paternalism is seen in high relief in the currently popular Star Wars series which also presents a somewhat disturbing anti-rationalism in its quasi-religious 'Force'
which unites the Jedi Knights (are we back to Wellsian 'samurai' again?) and upon whose power they can draw, like some holy brotherhood, some band of Knights
Templar. Star Wars is a pure example of the genre (in that it is a compendium of other people's ideas) in its implicit structure -- quasi-children, fighting for a
paternalistic authority, win through in the end and stand bashfully before the princess while medals are placed around their necks.
Star Wars carries the paternalistic messages of almost all generic adventure fiction (may the Force never arrive on your doorstep at three o'clock in the morning)
and has all the right characters. it raises 'instinct' above reason (a fundamental to Nazi doctrine) and promotes a kind of sentimental romanticism attractive to the
young and idealistic while protective of existing institutions. It is the essence of a genre that it continues to promote certain implicit ideas even if the author is
unconscious of them. In this case the audience also seems frequently unconscious of them.
It was Alfred Bester who first attracted me to science fiction. I'd read some fantasy and Edgar Rice Burroughs before that, but I thought that if The Stars My
Destination (also called Tiger! Tiger!) was sf, then this was the fiction for me. It took me some years to realise that Bester was one of the few exceptions. At the
ending of The Stars My Destination the self-educated, working class, 'scum of the spaceways', Gully Foyle, comes into possession of the substance known as
PyrE, capable of detonating at a thought and probably destroying the solar system at very least. The plot has revolved around the attempts of various powerful
people to get hold of the stuff. Foyle has it. Moral arguments or forceful persuasions are brought against him to make him give PyrE up to a 'responsible' agency. In
the end he scatters the stuff to 'the mob' of the solar system. Here you are, he says, it's yours. Its your destiny. Do with it how you see fit.
This is one of the very, very few 'libertarian' sf novels I have ever read. If I hadn't read it, I very much doubt I should have read any more sf. It's a wonderful
adventure story. It has a hero developing from a completely stupefied, illiterate hand on a spaceship to a brilliant and mature individual taking his revenge first on
those who have harmed him and then gradually developing what you might call a 'political conscience.' I know of no other sf book which so thoroughly combines
romance with an idealism almost wholly acceptable to me. It is probably significant that it enjoys a relatively small success compared to, say, Stranger in a Strange
Land.
...
To my mind one of the best examples of imaginative fiction to ear in England since the war is Maurice Richardson's The Exploits of Engelbrecht, written in the
forties and recently republished by John Conquest (available from him at Compendium Books). These 'Chronicles of the Surrealist Sportman's Club' are superbly
laconic pieces, concentrating more original invention into fewer words than almost any writer I can think of. They outshine, for me, almost anything else remotely
like them, including the stories of Borges and other much admired imaginative writers. Richardson goes swiftly from one idea to the next, using a beautifully
disciplined prose. He has the advantage of being a great ironist and I find that more palatable. Such a style can become one of the most convincing weapons in the
literary arsenal and it often astonishes me how cleverly Kipling influenced generations of writers by disguising his authoritarian notions in that superb
matter-of-fact, faintly ironic prose. Many writers, not necessarily of Kipling's views, have used it since. We find a debased version of it in the right-wing thrillers
and sf novels of our own day. It is probably this 'tone' (employed to suggest the writer's basic decency and commonsense) which enables many people to accept
ideas which, couched differently, would revolt them. Yet what Heinlein or Tolkein lack is any trace of real self-mockery. They are nature's urbane Tories. They'll put
an arm round your shoulder and tell you their ideas are quite radical too, really; that they used to be fire-eaters in their youth; that there are different ways of
achieving social change; that you must be realistic and pragmatic. Next time you pick up a Heinlein book think of the author as looking a bit like General Eisenhower
or, if that image isn't immediate enough, some chap in early middleage, good-looking in a slightly soft way, with silver at the temples, a blue tie, a sober three-pieced
suit, telling you with a quiet smile that Margaret Thatcher cares for individualism and opportunity above all things, as passionately in her way as you do in yours.
And then you might have some idea of what you're actually about to read.
