Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

No more over-fed, under-worked, rapacious female tyrants. I won’t say

“mothers-in-law”; your motherin-law may be a pretty good Joe. If not, you may have a

chance to cut her up for steak.

There is actually nothing to prevent American women from being able, adult,

useful citizens, and many of them are. But our society is so rigged that a

worthless female can make a racket of it-but not after a brisk one-two with uranium!

The parasites will starve when that day comes, from the cheerful idiots of the Helen

Hokinson cartoons to the female dinosaurs who use sacrosanct sex as a club to

bullyrag, blackmail, and dominate every man they can reach.

The parasite males will die out, too. Yes, pal, if you can manage to zig

while the atomic rockets zag you will find society much changed and in many respects

improved.

There are a lot of other minor advantages you should get firmly in mind now,

lest you fall prey to a fatal nostalgia after this great, fantastic, incredible,

somewhat glorious and very fragile technological culture crashes about your ears.

Subway smell, for example. The guy who coughs on the back of your neck in the

theater. Men who bawl out waitresses. The woman who crowds in ahead of you at the

counter. The person who asks how much you paid for it. The preacher with the

unctuous voice and the cash register heart. The millionairess who wills her money to

found a home for orphan guppies. The lunkhead who dials a wrong number (your number)

in the middle of the night and then is sore at you for not being the party he

wanted. The sportsman who turns his radio up loud so that he can boo the Dodgers

while out in his garden. The Dodgers. People who don’t curb their dogs. People who

spit on sidewalks. People who censor plays and suppress books. Breach-of-promise

suits. People who stare at wounded veterans.

A blinding flash, a pillar of radioactive dust, and all this will be gone.

I don’t mean to suggest that it will all be fun. Keeping alive after our

cities have been smashed and our government disintegrated will be a grim business at

best, as the survivors in central Europe could tell you. In spite of the endless

list that could be made of the

things we are better off without I d~ not think it will be very much fun to scrabble

around in the woods for a bite to eat. For that reason I am thinking of liquidating,

in advance, the next character who says to me, “Well, what difference does it make

if we are atombombed-you gotta die sometime!”

I shall shoot him dead, blow through the barrel, and say, “You asked for it,

chum.”

Page 75

Conceding that we will all die some day, is that a reason why I should let

this grinning ape drag me along toward disaster just because he will take no thought

of tomorrow?

Since there are so many of him the chances of us, as a nation, being able to

avert disaster are not good. Perhaps some of us could form an association to live

through World War III. Call it the League for the Preservation of the Human Race, or

the Doom’s Day Men, or something like that. Restrict the membership to survivor

types, sound in tooth and wind, trained in useful trades or science, reasonably high

I.Q.’s and proved fertility. Then set up two or three colonies remote from cities

and other military targets.

It might work.

Maybe I will start it myself if I can find an angel to put up the dough for

the original promotion. That should get me in as anex-officio member, I hope. I have

looked over my own qualifications and I don’t seem to measure up to the standards.

My ancestors got into America by a similar dodge. They got here early, when

the immigration restrictions were pretty lax. Maybe I can repeat.

I am sure I shall not resign myself to death simply because Joe Chucklehead

points out that atomization is quick and easy. Even if that were good I would not

like it. Furthermore, it is not true. Death comes fast at the center of the blast;