Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

such as “Manhattan Project” and “Hiroshima,” but not rewritten, and is one of a

group of stories published under the pretentious collective title of The History of

the Future (!) (an editor’s title, not mine!)-which certainly sounds like prophecy.

I disclaim any intention of prophesying; Iwrote that story for the sole

purpose of making money to pay off a mortgage and with the single intention of

entertaining the reader. As prophecy the story falls flat on its silly face-any

tenderfoot Scout can pick it to pieces- but I think it is still entertaining as a

story, else it would not be here; I have a business reputation to protect and wish

to continue making money. Nor am I ashamed of this motivation. Very little of the

great literature of our heritage arose solely from a wish to “create art”; most

writing, both great and not-sogreat, has as its proximate cause a need for money

combined with an aversion to, or an inability to perform, hard “honest labor.”

Fiction writing offers a legal and reasonably honest way out of this dilemma.

A science fiction author may have, and often does have, other motivations in

addition to pursuit of profit. He may wish to create “art for art’s sake,” he may

want to warn the world against a course he feels to be disastrous (Orwell’s 1984,

Huxley’s Brave New World- but please note that each is intensely entertaining, and

that each made stacks of money), he may wish to urge the human race toward a course

which he considers desirable (Bellamy’s Looking Backwards, Wells’ Men Like Gods), he

may wish to instruct, or uplift, or even to dazzle. But the science fiction

writer-any fiction writer-must keep entertainment consciously in mind as his prime

purpose . . . or he may find himself back dragging that old cotton sack.

If he succeeds in this purpose, his story is likely to remain gripping

entertainment long years after it has turned out to be false “prophecy.” H. G. Wells

is perhaps the greatest science fiction author of all time- and his greatest science

fiction stories were written around sixty years ago (i.e., about 1895). . . under

the whip. Bedfast with consumption, unable to hold a job, flat broke, paying

alimony-he had to make money somehow, and writing was the heaviest work he could

manage. He was clearly aware (see his autobiography)

that to stay alive he must be entertaining. The result was a flood of some of the

most brilliant speculative stories about the future ever written. As prophecy they

are all hopelessly dated . . . which matters not at all; they are as spellbinding

now as they were in the Gay ‘Nineties and the Mauve Decade.

Try to lay hands on his The Sleeper Awakes. The gadgetry in it is

ingenious-and all wrong. The projected future in it is brilliant-and did not happen.

All of which does not sully the story; it is a great story of love and sacrifice and

blood-chilling adventure set in a matrix of mind-stretching speculation about the

nature of Man and his Destiny. I read it first in 1923, and at least a dozen times

since . . . and still reread it whenever I get to feeling uncertain about just how

one does go about the unlikely process of writing fiction for entertainment of

strangers-and again finding myself caught up in the sheer excitement of Wells’

story.

Page 131

“Solution Unsatisfactory” herein is a consciously Weilsian story. No, no,

I’m not claiming that it is of H. G. Wells’ quality-its quality is for you to judge,

not me. But it was written by the method which Wells spelled out for the speculative

story: Take one, just one, basic new assumption, then examine all its

consequences-but express those consequences in terms of human beings. The assumption

I chose was the “Absolute Weapon”; the speculation concerns what changes this forces

on mankind. But the “history” the story describes simply did not happen.

However the problems discussed in this story are as fresh today, the issues

just as poignant, for the grim reason that we have not reached even an

“unsatisfactory” solution to the problem of the Absolute Weapon; we have reached no