(For some of the more important unanswered questions in Stranger see chapter 33, especially page 344 of the hardcover, the paragraph starting: “All names belong in the hat, Ben.”)
Starship Troopers is loaded with unanswered questions, too. Many people rejected that book with a cliche –“fascist,” or “militaristic.” They can’t read or won’t read; it is neither. It is a dead serious (but incomplete) inquiry into why men fight. Since men do fight, it is a question well worth asking.
My latest book, / Will Fear No Evil, is even more loaded with serious, unanswered questions-perhaps too laden; the story line sags a little. But the questions are dead serious-because, if they remain unanswered, we wind up dead. It does not affect me personally too much, at least not in this life, as I will probably be dead before the present trends converge in major catastrophe. Nevertheless, I worry about them. I think we are in a real bind…and that the answers are not to be found in simplistic “nature communes,” nor in “Zero Population Growth,” which does not embrace the entire globe.
There may be no answers fully satisfactory…and even incomplete answers will be very difficult.
I find that I have written an essay to myself rather than a letter. Forgive me-perhaps I have reached the age at which one maunders. But I hope I have convinced you that Stranger is dead serious…as questions. Serious, nontrivial questions, on which a man might spend a lifetime. (And I almost have.)
But anyone who takes that book as answers is cheating himself. It is an invitation to think-not to believe. Anyone who takes it as a license to screw as he pleases is taking a risk; Mrs. Grundy is not dead. Or any other sharp affront to the contemporary culture done publicly-there are stern warnings in it about the dangers involved. Certainly “Do as thou wilt is the whole of the Law” is correct when looked at properly-in fact, it is a law of nature, not an injunction, nor a permission. But it is necessary to remember that it applies to everyone — including lynch mobs. The Universe is what it is, and it never forgives mistakes-not even ignorant ones…
*
AFTERWORD
Before the cut version of / Will Fear No Evil was ready for publication, Robert was taken ill. For two years he was laid up with various illnesses and operations. At last, in 1972, he was well enough and very eager to begin writing again.
His next book was Time Enough for Love.
In addition to changes in the times and customs, Robert now had a reputation that allowed him to do such books as he preferred to do. It is possible that, at least in part, Stranger had had some effects upon the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies. It was in tune with the moods of the times. So his publishers did not object to the length of Time Enough for Love, and one thing I found curious-there was no objection at all to the incest scenes. Not even reviewers mentioned it.
The following two years were mostly taken up with study of advances in physical and biological sciences. How could one write science fiction without keeping up with what was being discovered in those fields? These studies were undertaken for two articles for the Britan-nica Compton Yearbook: “Dirac, Antimatter and You,” and “Are you a ‘Rare Blood.’ ”
Another serious illness occurred in 1978. Following hi” recuperation from that, Robert went to his computer •nd wrote The Number of the Beast. Aside from a very few flags on the copy-edited manuscript, he was asked to cut by 2,000 words (!) out of an estimated 200,000 worth. That was, of course, an easy task.
Expanded Universe followed, at the behest of James Baen. To our surprise, this book generated far more mail than any other book Robert had ever written. For two years, I was tied to the computer answering the fan mail which resulted from its publication.
In 1981, at seventy-four years of age, Robert decided that he would no longer do any of the special little tasks which being a well-known writer entails: no more speeches (even to librarians), no more appearances at conventions-his health would not permit the pressure. He would simply write the books he wanted to write.