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5.0étoiles sur 5
SF Classics That Made Heinlein Great, Déc 1 2009
These are a bunch of vintage Heinleins - the stuff that made him great.
Revolt in 2100 contains three stories, the main one being "If This Goes On". For half a century, America has been ruled by a religious dictatorship, founded by Nehemiah Scudder, a TV evangelist elected President in 2012. "The next election was never held". The Church seems to be an amalgamation of the wilder Protestant sects, very down on Catholics, Mormons, Freemasons and (surprise, surprise) Jews, who are renamed "Pariahs". It follows a naive young officer who gets on the wrong side of the regime, has to join the revolutionary "Cabal" (actually a Masonic Lodge) to survive, and takes part in the eventual revolution. Essentially a straight (but good) adventure story.
The next two stories, "Coventry" and "Misfit", give short glimpses of the subsequent regime, where liberty has been restored, with a "Covenant" guaranteeing human rights, but are mainly from the viewpoint of those who still don't fit in, respectively a literary critic who refuses psychotherapy after punching someone on the nose, and a juvenile delinquent (nature of delinquency unspecified) who turns out to be a mathematical genius. Mainly these lay some groundwork for "Methuselah's Children", where the Brave New Utopia faces its first serious test.
It flunks big time.
This story centres on the Howard Families, who have, for the last two centuries, used selective breeding to lengthen their lives, and now live two or three times as long as other people. Until the fall of the dictatorship, they have kept themselves discreetly clandestine, but under the Covenant feel safe enough to come out of the closet. This proves a disastrous mistake. They promptly attract the attention of demagogue Bork Vanning, a sort of "Nehemiah Scudder with the religion left out" who sees a path to power in whipping up the jealousy of the short-lived majority against the Howards, who are cast as the new Pariahs.
When the chips are down, the wonderful Covenant proves a distinctly shoddy product. Far from strengthening the old checks and balances, which themselves evidently failed to stop Scudder, it has actually weakened them even further. All civil rights can be suspended by a simple vote of the Council, reminiscent of the Enabling Act by which the Reichstag gave Hitler dictatorial powers. When the Administrator (ie President) is sceptical and presses the witch-hunt with insufficient vigour, he is likewise removed by a simple majority vote (no impeachment needed) and forced to flee for his life. The Howards are rounded up - women, kids and all - to a "Guantanamo"-type camp, in a manner which makes Joe McCarthy and George Dubya look like Mary Poppins, so that the "secret of immortality" can be extracted by torture.
The rest of the book focuses on the Families escape. They hijack an interstellar spaceship and seek a new abode. After encounters with two alien races - both fascinatingly drawn - they return to earth where they are no longer in immediate danger, but which is, from the sound of things, not much better than the one they left.
As always, there are minor flaws. In particular, I am a mite confused as to the political setup. In "Coventry", the Covenant is apparently a new Constitution for the United States, adopted after the Second Revolution; but in MC, the US now forms part of a Western Federation, presumably the same "Federation" mentioned toward the end of ITGO, which America (previously cut of from the rest of the world by "Iron Curtain" type barriers) has evidently joined.
Yet there is no mention of any Constitution or legal system other than the Covenant. Did America, having drawn up its brave new Covenant, immediately nullify it by joining a supranational body with power to overrule it? Or did the Federation adopt the Constitution of a new member, admittedly an important one, but whose democratic record had been spotty, to say the least, for the past half century or so? This would be rather like the Third Reich continuing to the 1990s, and upon its overthrow the rest of Europe at once adopting for itself Germany's new and untested Constitution, or as if the EU had admitted Gorbachev's or Putin's Russia on a similar basis. Not very likely, yet Administrator Ford apparently resides in the US, and his office is at "Novak Tower", named after an important figure in America's Second Revolution. The distinction between America and the Western World in general is thoroughly muddled.
Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, Heinlein couldn't resist including an overpossessive mother, like the one in "The Star Beast", as an Aunt Sally. She is savagely mocked, yet her only crime is to have been dropped into a ghastly situation, for which nothing in life has prepared her, and failing to react like an omnicompetent "Heinlein Individual". How many of us would? If she's a tad overprotective of her only child, is this really surprising after what they've gone through?
Still, these remain immortal classics of sf. In particular, MC introduces us to Lazarus Long, who will feature so much in Heinlein's later work. A great character. Read and enjoy.
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4.0étoiles sur 5
4 stories for the price of one..., Avril 25 2003
These were some of Heinlein's earlier works, and as such, don't have the length and depth of some of his later, Hugo-Award winning works. Here's a short synopsis and review of each of the four stories. The first and the last are longer, multi-chaptered "short books", while the two in the middle can more appropriately be termed short-stories.Revolt in 2100 - America is now a theocratic dictatorship ruled by the "Prophet" who is really a corrupt leader dependent upon brutal suppression of dissidents to maintain power. John Lyle, the main character, is a graduate of West Point and a young officer who, through the love of a priestess, joins the Revolution and overthrows this dictatorship. The story is somewhat shallow for those who are familiar with Heinlein's later works, but it is still entertaining. One thing Heinlein never did well was write romance. The interactions between his male and female characters are awkward - had he developed the talent for it, he could really flesh out the motives of many of his characters. Coventry - Dave McKinnon, banished to "Coventry" for striking a man and refusing psycological adjustment, finds out just how brutal and uncivilized man can be when he enters the wall-less prison. A nice short story, but with an unresolved (and somewhat predictable) ending Misfit - Here we are introduced to A.J. Libby, who will play a part in the next story. He is a young man working in a space construction crew, but discovers that he has a remarkable talent for mathematics. Extremely short, its more like a preview for the last story included in the collection. Methuselah's Children - The Howard Families - 100,000 members strong, are having their civil liberties trod upon because their unnatural lifespans lead other humans to believe they possess the "fountain of youth" Lazarus Long, a rogueish character, leads the Families to steal an interstellar spaceship and pilots it to two alien planets before finally returning to earth. This was by far the best of the four, very entertaining, but in some parts, Heinlein delves a little too far into esoteric subjects that are of interest only to physicists and theoretical mathematicians - there are passages I skipped because they proved too difficult to understand for someone just looking for a fun fiction experience. Altogether, this is a worthwhile purchase.
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4.0étoiles sur 5
A Good Book with Modern Implications, Déc 30 2002
Revolt in 2100: Methusela's Children contains four separate Heinlein stories. The stories are grouped in chronological order and are all set in the same science fiction 'universe,' although they do not all directly related to one another. Like much of Robert Heinlein's work, Revolt in 2100 comments on modern political and social issues, while simultaneously entertaining all who read it.The first story, Revolt in 2100, is startlingly relavent to today's times. In the story, America has been taken over by Religious Fundamentalists (the 'American Ayatollas' as one reviewer describes them). Heinlein shrewdly picks apart religious fundamentalism in this story, while not attacking the concept of religion itself. I was extremely disappointed by the second story in the collection. I have read almost every single Heinlein science fiction noveland this second story was by far the worst. The plot has a beginning and a middle, then seems to sputter with no resolution. It left me wondering, "What the heck?!" The third story of Revolt in 2100 presents a dystopian - or utopian, depending how you look at it - America in which every American is required by law to be nice to everyone else. The punishment for any 'anti-social' act is banishment to a place with greater personal liberties, but also less personal security. Like the first one, this story is relavent to our times in that it deals with the contemporary struggle between civil liberties and personal security security The fourth novella is about a group of Americans who have acheived amazingly long life, but are persecuted by their short-lived peers and forced off the planet Earth. Although not the same caliber as Revolt in 2100, this story is nevertheless a fun and engaging Heinlein story. Revolt in 2100: Methusela's Children shows that one rotten apple doesn't always spoil the barrel. I wholeheartedly reccomend it regardless of whether you're a longtime Heinlein fan or a first time reader.
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