Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

entire known body of science in 1900. Before we are through with these problems, we

may find out how the universe is shaped and why. Not to mention enormous unknown

vistas best represented by ?????

Some physicists are now using two time scales, the T-scale, and the

tau-scaie. Three billion years on one scale can equal an incredibly split second on

the other scale-and yet both apply to you and your kitchen stove. Of such anarchy is

our present state in physics.

For such reasons we must insist that the Age of Science has not yet opened.

(Still 1950) The greatest crisis facing us is not Russia, not the Atom bomb,

not corruption in government, not encroaching hunger, not the morals of young. It is

a crisis in the organization and accessibility of human knowledge. We own an

enormous “encyclopedia”-which isn’t even arranged alphabetically. Our “file cards”

are spilled on the floor, nor were they ever in order. The answers we want may be

buried somewhere in the heap, but it might take a lifetime to locate two already

known facts, place them side by side and derive a third fact, the one we urgently

need.

Call it the Crisis of the Librarian.

We need a new “specialist” who is not a specialist, but a synthesist. We

need a new science to be the perfect secretary to all other sciences.

But we are not likely to get either one in a hurry and we have a powerful

lot of grief before us in the meantime.

Fortunetellers can always be sure of repeat customers by predicting what the

customer wants to hear. . . it matters not whether the prediction comes true.

Contrariwise, the weatherman is often blamed for bad weather.

Brace yourself.

In 1900 the cloud on the horizon was no bigger than a man’s hand-but what

lay ahead was the Panic of 1907, World War I, the panic following it, the Depres

sion, Fascism, World War II, the Atom Bomb, and Red Russia.

Today the clouds obscure the sky, and the wind that overturns the world is

sighing in the distance.

The period immediately ahead will be the roughest, cruelest one in the long,

hard history of mankind. It will probably include the worst World War of them all.

It might even end with a war with Mars, God save the Mark! Even if we are spared

that fantastic possibility, it is certain that there will be no security anywhere,

save that which you dig out of your own inner spirit.

But what of that picture we drew of domestic luxury and tranquility for Mrs.

Middleclass, style 2000 A.D.?

She lived through it. She survived.

Our prospects need not dismay you, not if you or your kin were at Bloody

Nose Ridge, at Gettysburg- or trudged across the Plains. You and I are here because

we carry the genes of uncountable ancestors who fought-and won-against death in all

its forms. We’re tough. We’ll survive. Most of us.

We’ve lasted through the preliminary bouts; the main event is coming up.

But it’s not for sissies.

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The last thing to come fluttering out of Pandora’s Box was Hope-without

which men die.

The gathering wind will not destroy everything, nor will the Age of Science

change everything. Long after the first star ship leaves for parts unknown, there

will still be outhouses in upstate New York, there will still be steers in Texas,

and-no doubt-the English will still stop for tea.

Afterthoughts, fifteen years later-(1965)

I see no reason to change any of the negative predictions which follow the

numbered affirmative ones. They are all conceivably possible; they are all wildly

unlikely by year 2000. Some of them are debatable if the terms are defined to suit

the affirmative side-definitions of “life” and “manlike,” for example. Let it stand

that I am not talking about an amino acid in one case, or a machine that plays chess

in the other.

Today the forerunners of synthesists are already at work in many places.

Their titles may be anything; their degrees may be in anything-or they may have no

degrees. Today they are called “operations researchers,” or sometimes “systems

development engineers,” or other interim tags. But they are all interdisciplinary