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The Menace From Earth

by Robert A. Heinlein, 1959

Published: 2022.02.10

Home > Book Reviews > Robert A. Heinlein > The Menace From Earth

 

Photo by Wil C. Fry.

★★★ (3.25 of 5)

 

This is an anthology of eight Heinlein stories of varying length (one is only eight pages, another is seventy), each originally published elsewhere from 1941 to 1957. I provide mini-reviews of each story below. They are, in the order presented in this book:

Commentary Per Story

★★★★ The Year Of The Jackpot, 1952 (Wikipedia Entry)

Statistician Potiphar Breen has been keeping track of cycles (economic booms and busts, fashion trends, crop successes and failures, and so much more) for long enough to know that a bunch of cycles are all aligning at once. The story opens with Breen helping a young woman avoid arrest (she has inexplicably taken off all her clothes at a bus stop), as he believes her act is a part of the cycles he’s tracking. Eventually the woman — Meade Barstow — believes him and the two manage to leave town just before things get bad. They hole up in an isolated cabin where they ride out a nuclear exchange, devastating floods, and an invasion by Russians, only to notice at the end that the Sun is about to explode into a nova.

In Breen’s research I was reminded of a website I saw about 10 years ago, which found spurious connections between urelated data, things like the cycle of droughts in China correlating uncannily with, say, the unemployment rate in South Dakota, or (and this is a real one!) the number of people killed by venomous spiders each year correlating with the number of letters in the winning word of the national spelling bee. It’s also notable that Heinlein casually includes things in this story that might have been startling to a 1950s audience, like the appearance of two cross-dressers at the bus stop in the opening scene — and later, on pages 21 and 22, Breen notes that “male-and-female dress customs were arbitrary”, and idly wonders whether the ongoing trend is related to the other cycles he’s tracking (rather than casting judgment). The story was tightly wound and the inclusion of minor details helped it feel tangible.

★★★★★ By His Bootstraps, 1941 (Wikipedia Entry)

One of Heinlein’s earliest works, this one is also one of his best. Graduate student Bob Wilson is working on his thesis when another man steps out of a Time Gate in Wilson’s room. Startled, Wilson demands to know the meaning of the intrusion, thinking he recognizes the character. The new arrival says his name is Joe and that he has come from the future. He begs Wilson to return with him through the Gate. When a third man appears and tells Wilson to not go through the Gate, a fight ensues, and Wilson ends up getting punched and falls through the Gate. There, in the distant future, a man named Diktor won’t explain much but tells Wilson that if he’ll only go back through the Gate and convince the first man he sees to come with him to the future, they’ll live like kings. Wilson goes back through and sees himself sitting at his desk working on his thesis. It’s the same scene we’ve already seen, but now from the perspective of “Joe”. Eventually Wilson becomes the third man, and then (spoiler alert) several years later is Diktor, far in the future. It is a series of perfectly closed yet interlocking time loops. Well worth reading and quite advanced for its time.

★★★ Columbus Was A Dope, 1947 (Wikipedia Entry)

In this very short stoy, two bar customers and a bartender argue about the worth of building a starship. One brings in the analogy of Columbus, insisting the exploratory voyages had the longterm effect of benefitting society, while another argues that Columbus should have stayed home. At the very end, it is revealed that the argument is taking place in a bar on the Moon.

★★ The Menace From Earth, 1957 (Wikipedia Entry)

This story is enjoyable in its depiction of every day life in the Moon (“in” because humans must live underground in carefully controlled environments) and some of the future technologies necessary for humans to succeed there, as well as the primary entertainment for lunar residents and tourists alike: flying. Due to the 1/6 gravity, strapping on a set of wings allows humans to fly inside the massive underground air tank caverns. It’s also notable for having a female first-person narrator (Heinlein writes from the perspective of 15-year-old Holly) and more named female characters than male.

However, the plot line is startlingly regressive: Holly is jealous when a gorgeous Earthling tourist (Ariel) takes up the time and attention of Holly’s “business partner” Jeff, but all is made well again when Holly rescues Ariel and finds out that Jeff only has eyes for Holly.

(It seems the lunar colony in this story is the same one described later in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and a memorial is mentioned herein that was set up in The Black Pits Of Luna. The main character Holly shows up again in The Number Of The Beast.)

★★★ Sky Lift, 1953 (Wikipedia Entry)

When a pandemic breaks out in the human colony on Pluto, two human pilots take a torchship at high acceleration — more than is safe, but there is barely enough time to bring the necessary medical supplies to save hundreds of inhabitants of Pluto. One of the pilots dies and the other later becomes an invalid due to the strain of the emergency flight.

★★★ Goldfish Bowl, 1942 (Wikipedia Entry)

Investigating some unexplainable phenomena (pillars of water rising from the Pacific, electric fireballs that cause humans to disappear), two scientists are captured by some higher life form and eventually conclude they are being kept as pets. They conclude that their captors are not aliens from other planets, but some higher life form native to Earth that they simply never noticed before (much like ants or bacteria aren’t advanced enough to notice or study humans).

★★ Project Nightmare, 1953 (Wikipedia Entry)

During the phase when he believed strongly in clairvoyance and telepathy, Heinlein penned this story of a group of “operators” — people with telekenetic ability — who are called upon to locate and suppress a series of plutonium bombs that have been planted in several U.S. cities by Soviets. They succeed, except in one case where a disbelieving officer distracts the operator, and at the end, the U.S. President asks the operators to locate and explode any nuclear warhears inside the Soviet Union.

This one gets bonus points for including a multi-racial cast and treating men and women about equally, but the pseudoscience and anti-communist themes make it unenjoyable for me.

★★★★ Water Is For Washing, 1947 (Wikipedia Entry)

Set in Imperial Valley, California, this short story concerns an earthquake that allows sea water in from the Gulf of California (the valley is 200+ feet below sea level) and a traveling businessman drives frantically ahead of a wall of water, picking up two children and a vagrant on his way, where they hope to survive atop a nearby set of hills.

I was impressed by the science squeezed into this short story without distracting from it. The action scenes are tight and the emotions expressed felt very real. Bonus points for anti-racism sentiments.

 

Conclusion

This collection reinforced my opinion from earlier works that Heinlein is at his best in short-story format. Sure, some of his novels are finely tuned storytelling machines, but that list is full of duds too. When keeping it short, he focuses purely on plot progression, necessary detail, and the Big Idea of each story. Usually. (My rating at top is the average of per-story ratings.)

 





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