Penguin Imprint Focus: Roc/Ace Charles Stross Touches Base, by Charles Stross

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The Unquiet Ghost of Robert A. Heinlein

Hi!

This year, 2007, is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Anson Heinlein. You don't have to be an admirer or worshiper to recognize that Heinlein (July 7, 1907 -- May 8, 1988) had an enormous influence on the development of science fiction as a genre: despite his manifest flaws he was hugely inventive, and developed many of the literary tools (and no small number of the genre cliches) that we call on today when we work in the field he pioneered.

I never met Mr. Heinlein, but I've felt his ghost breathing down my neck periodically, ever since I began writing science fiction. And I must admit, I resent it. Why, oh why, do so many otherwise sane writers feel the need to try their hand at writing a Robert A. Heinlein novel? Why can't Spider Robinson, John Scalzi, and John Varley just be their own unique selves, rather than lending their word processors to the restless ghost of --

Oh. You mean it's *my* turn?

My next novel, "Saturn's Children", is (picture me eating a hat) a Heinlein tribute novel. (I wouldn't call it a pastiche -- I can't imitate his diction or voice closely enough for that -- but if you pick it apart at the seams you'll see his patterns in the pieces.) And to add to the indignity, his unquiet shade told me, "son, everyone else is writing fifties juveniles -- *your* job is to write a late-period piece!"

I'm 43. I began to wonder: what if Heinlein had been born 43 years later, in 1950? What would the 57-year-old Heinlein be writing today if he'd lived into the age of the internet and anime, and the genre of nanotechnology and the singularity? When he was 57, the real Robert A. Heinlein was probably working on "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", arguably the best and most memorable novel of his later years. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" runs along the gleaming rails of one of his standard story structures, "the man who learned better". (Heinlein maintained, among other things, that there were only four core narrative structures in fiction.) So I had just decided to abstract this standard plot from his toolbox when a voice whispered in my ear: "she's got red hair, and a nipple that goes 'spung'!"

"Eh?" I shook my head. "But boss, real nipples don't go 'spung'!"

"So? Make her a robot or something."

"But robots don't have nipples ..."

It was no good: he wasn't listening. Heinlein's ghost can be very hard to argue with. So I had a choice: check myself into a nice padded cell for the next six months, or try to exorcise the ghost by giving him what he wanted -- a redheaded sex robot with a faulty overpressure valve in one breast. And existential issues, including but not limited to guy in Black Hats trying to kill her. ("But Freya's a robot! You can't kill a --" "Stop arguing and get writing, kid.")

Don't say I didn't warn you!

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