During the mid-20th century, pulp science fiction
was more a literature of ideas than of character.
Even the popular heroes such as Edward E. SMITH’s
Kimball Kinnison and Edgar Rice BURROUGHS’s
John Carter were caricatures with only the sketchiest
elements of a human personality. Such characters
were remembered because of what they did rather
than who they were. Robert A. HEINLEIN, who
would later create some very memorable characters,
wrote an otherwise minor novella that quietly defied
convention. It would be the character of Waldo
Farthingwaite-Jones that readers would remember
long after they had forgotten the details of his story.
Jones was born with a rare ailment that left all
the muscles in his body so permanently weakened
that he was barely able to survive and needed constant attendance. This made him understandably
bitter; but he was also something of an engineering
genius, and as an adult, he caused to have constructed for himself an orbiting habitat where he
could be much more self-sufficient in the absence
of gravity. There he became something of a recluse,
directing his financial affairs from orbit, dealing
with his physical environment by means of various
sizes of mechanical arms, each of which he could
direct remotely by means of a pair of gloves electronically linked to them. This type of equipment
has come to be known as a waldo in tribute to
Heinlein’s original concept.
Waldo’s adventures are not nearly as colorful.
The world has been transformed by means of
broadcast power, but something has started to go
wrong. There are unexplained equipment failures,
as well as a growing problem with the physical
health of the population. Even more perplexing is
the fact that the only man who can fix the ailing
machines claims he is doing so by magical means.
Heinlein’s revelation that the broadcast energy is
being partially drawn from another reality where a
mental force equivalent to magic exists is something less than satisfying, but the images of the
overweight, irascible, but nonetheless admirable
Waldo in his orbiting satellite are among the
sharpest from the early days of science fiction.