Variable Star By Heinlein and Robinson

Cam Turner writes "In late August, Slashdot reported that a lost Robert A. Heinlein novel was mere months away from being released. True enough, it was completed and released on October 18th, 2006 by Spider Robinson, himself a distinguished speculative fiction writer. On the back cover, John Varley is quoted as saying "Completing a book from notes by a dead author is almost always a mistake. But apparently Robert A. Heinlein isn't really dead. He was at the side of Spider Robinson as he wrote this book." I'd have to agree. This story is a valuable addition to any speculative fiction collection, even that of a purist Heinlein fan." Read the rest of Cam's review.

Variable Star
author	Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson
pages	320
publisher	Tor Books
rating	8.5/10
reviewer	Cam Turner
ISBN	076531312X
summary	An excellent additon to your speculative fiction collection.

In the afterword Spider Robinson describes how he came to be the writer who took Heinlein's eight pages of notes — penned in November 1955 — and turned them into a full length novel released half a century later and 18 years after Heinlein's death. He describes it as "literally the most difficult and intimidating challenge that could be handed to a science fiction writer." However, as a lifelong fan of Heinlein's work, Robinson said "I wanted to read a new Heinlein novel so badly that I didn't care if I had to finish it myself."

The protagonist, Joel Johnston of Ganymede, is a man of his late teens or early twenties. His life as he knows it falls apart when his fiancé turns out not to be who she says she is. As he struggles to regain control of his identity and his direction in life, he decides to join a starship as it travels 85 light years — and 20 ship years — to found the colony on a newly discovered Earth-like planet. Variable Star is the story of his journey, his regrets and the friends he makes en route.

Identifying the antagonist is a little more complicated — as it is with many of Heinlein's novels. It could possibly be his struggle with adapting to his new life in a small colony of only 500 people, his regrets over leaving the love of his life, or his tenuous escape from her family's vast influence. Regardless, the possibilities weave together to create a richly imagined story that is a believable description of how events might unfold for a character in Joel's position on a long journey between the stars.

The rest of the characters are also vivid and well constructed. At no time did they act counter-intuitively to their rich back stories. Certainly each character is revealed and built up over the course of the book, but I found their actions and motivations to be entirely believable and flawed in the way that only humans — even future humans — can be.

Heinlein fans will recognize many nods to the Future History timeline. From Leslie LeCroix being the pilot of the first moonship to the Covenant (and Coventry) that brought enforceable peace and tolerance to the human civilization after the fall of the Prophet. Robinson also incorporates many of the various sexual ideas that Heinlein had in his works like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land, however he doesn't go into as lavish and descriptive detail as Heinlein often did.

As a downside, I don't think that Variable Star is going to be as timeless as some of Heinlein's better works. Robinson managed to work into the Future History (timeline two) nods to both the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq wars. Reading through them jarred me back to reality momentarily and thus detracted from the story. Robinson is careful not to mention these events by name, but readers for years to come may find their mention distracting. It's true that we'll look back on these events in the future as part of our violent history, but invented wars would have served the same purpose in terms of story development and would have allowed the reader to stay in the imaginary world.

As mentioned, the outline was created in 1955 and, as expected, fits perfectly into the Heinlein Juvenile and Young Readers works of that time. It appeals to teenage boys and furthers Heinlein's propaganda agenda about the colonization of space. It is not what Heinlein would have described as "adult" fiction and has a single, linear storyline and a well defined main thread. Teenage readers will be able to identify with many of the struggles Joel faces through the course of the book and Heinlein fans will get a kick out of seeing how Robinson weaves in numerous references to Heinlein's earlier works. For other adult readers the story is still a fantastic, quick and entertaining read.

In the afterword Robinson makes a point of mentioning that the notes Heinlein left behind contained no climax or ending. Robinson tells the story of how both were inspired by some audio clips of Heinlein interviews in the 80's and extrapolated from his views on the true future of humanity. That said, the climax was not a typical Heinlein climax and was entirely unpredictable up until the exact moment it occurs.

To be honest as the number of remaining pages dwindled I began to wonder how exactly Robinson was going to get where I thought he was going in the pages he had left. I feared a Neil Stephenson-like abrupt ending was the fate of the story and characters I had come to love. I was very happily surprised with what I got. The ending fits the situation, motivations and expected behaviors of the characters so perfectly that, in hindsight, I can't imagine it concluding any other way.

Ultimately I give this book an 8.5/10. Robinson has done an excellent job of writing a strong story with strong characters as well as paying homage to the Grand Master and the vast legacy of richly imagined universes he left behind. Make no mistake, Variable Star isn't of the same caliber as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or Stranger in a Strange Land, but it certainly holds up against many of the novels that have been nominated for the Hugo or Nebula awards the last few years. It might not win next year, but I'd be surprised if it didn't at least make both of the final ballots.

Lastly, potential buyers of this book should note that profits from the sales will help fund the $500,000 Heinlein Prize for innovation in commercial manned spaceflight, a goal Robert A. Heinlein considered crucial to humanity's long-term survival.

Aside: I haven't yet had an opportunity to read anything else by Spider Robinson, but I am now a fan of his work and intend to work my way back through his collection too. Does the Slashdot community have any suggestions on where to start?

Cam Turner is the author of Beginning Google Maps Applications, an internet software developer, a father and a long time Heinlein fan.

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You can purchase Variable Star from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

bought it

This is a good buy, already ordered it

Yeah RAH

I wrote up a few of my impressions of the book in this journal entry. [slashdot.org]
 
I've thought about the book quite a bit more since. I did not make the same connection to 9/11 that the reviewer made. There were similarities, but the description could have fit another set of events that would be in our future. Heinlein did this himself and so I took it the same way - as referring to events that have not happened yet.
 
I think part of the appeal RAH's juveniles hold is the naivete they present. By mixing in some of the 'worldliness' of the later novels, a bit of that is lost. Sometimes it felt like watching an old Andy Griffith re-run and having Aunt Bea drop the occasional f-bomb. I don't think someone new to Heinlein would notice it, but having re-read those older works many times, it was a bit jarring.
 
I had pre-ordered my copy and read it right away. Of course, you can't really go back. It's not Heinlein, it couldn't be. But it is pretty close and I guess it speaks volumes about how many of us feel, that we would be willing to grasp at those straws. And as excited as I was to have had two 'new' Heinleins come out, I hope they are done and will just let his body of work stand as it is. The great thing is the works we have can still be just as powerful. Hopefully somewhere right now, some young kid is getting chills, just like I did, as he reads about Johnny Rico's combat drops. Or maybe some other kid is closing their copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and feeling that same sense of loss, and hope that Mike is still alive in their somewhere.
 
I used to wonder why Hollywood wasn't cranking out movies based on Heinlein now that special effects are so good. But after what they did to troopers, I hope they stay away from all the rest. I think his biggest impact will be with all of those like Spider Robinson and myself, who found the master at our public library.

Re:Yeah RAH

I also disagree with some of what the slashdot review said.

1. They quote Varley, saying "...Robert A. Heinlein isn't really dead. He was at the side of Spider Robinson as he wrote this book." No way. Robinson's style is extremely different from Heinlein's. Nobody who's familiar with Heinlein's style could read this book and not realize it wasn't by Heinlein. Robinson divides the book 50/50 between slapstick humor and serious stuff, and IMO didn't do a very good job of integrating them to make a stylistically consistent whole.
2. What the review said about teenagers as the target audience is a little off-base. Some parents might be OK with having their 13-year-old read this book, but others definitely won't. There's lots of no-apologies promiscuous sex (including gay sex), and lots of positive descriptions of drug use (meaning drugs that aren't in the socially approved pharmacopia in the U.S.). I personally wouldn't mind having my daughters read it when they reach their teen years, or even now, but I would definitely want to talk to them about it. In any case, this material is jarringly different from anything included in Heinlein's 50's juveniles.
3. The reviewer talks about how it fits into the Future History. Actually, the Future History is separate from, and often inconsistent with, the world presented in the juvenile novels, and this book mixes them together. E.g., we have Nehemiah Scudder references, which are clearly dealing with the Future History universe, but also the telepathic twins communicating faster than c, which are a feature of one of the juveniles, and don't exist in the Future History. I also felt that Robinson was far less skilled at making the science plausible than Heinlein would have been. (Heinlein was an engineer, and worked on space suits for the military during WWII.)

Spider stories

Spider Robinson has some nice stories of his own. I particularly like the earlier Callahan's Place short stories. I dislike the later novels, as he often had the characters make bad assumptions, ignoring other possiblities. In addition, he tended to blame the bad guys for things the good guys did.

But some of his short stories are fantastic, even the ones that had no science fiction in them. One of my favorites was the Time Traveller who used a prison cell as his time machine to the future.

Spider Robinson's work

Is mostly comedy in a recently past setting mixed with a lot (I mean as in a whole several acres lot) of bad puns... and songs with bad puns and puns within puns. Its good sci-fi don't get me wrong but you should know what you're getting into before you start reading Robinson ;-p

Anyways, start with any of the Callahan series and work your way forward or back (there's a lot of time travel so it doesn't really matter which way you go, you'll feel as if you'd been there before regardless).

Most importantly, enjoy the reading... that's why he writes apparently, to entertain which is admirable in this day... oh yeah and all the novels I've read by Robbie are set in the late nineties so expect some feelings of de ja vu... and yet it's still science fiction eh?

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

...and work up from there, building your pun tolerance as you go. Fun guy to read, think I've got them all on the shelf, don't think I've read any of Spider's books just once.

Launching into Fictons

If you want a great intro to Spider Robinson, try starting with Time Travelers Strictly Cash [spiderrobinson.com], the hilarious (and poignant) first book in the "Callahan's" series. It's short, fantastic, and has some non-Callahan's short stories.

If you want a great intro to Robert A. Heinlein, try starting with practically any of his dozens of first-rate books published from 1939-73 [wikipedia.org], during which he defined "science fiction", leading a group of prolific writers. There's some good stuff later, but not nearly as reliably inspired or executed.

Re:Launching into Fictons

Time Travelers Strictly Cash, the hilarious (and poignant) first book in the "Callahan's" series. "

"Time Travelers Strictly Cash" is actually the second Callahan's book from what I recall (and from what Robinson says in the link you gave). It has been a while since I have read them (back then there were only two), so I don't know if the reading order even matters.

I just don't get it

I have read a ton of SF over a huge range. Everything from the genre's most literary (Olaf Stapledon and Phillip K Dick) to the really fun but maybe not so deep (Alastair Reynolds and Ben Bova) and from way back in the 19th century (Wells, god I love The Time Machine) to stuff published within the last couple of years. I can't even begin to estimate how many hundreds of novels and thousands of short stories I've read since I was 11 or so and discovered Arthur C Clarke (the author who got me started down my geeky path).

But, for the life of me I cannot understand the appeal of Heinlein. I've tried s few of his novels (Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and The Number of the Beast [that's the right title I think, anyway it was so bad I actually tore it in half before i used the pages to get the kindling going in my fireplace]) as well as a number of short stories in various collections. Where he's not ridiculous he's offensive, and I'm usually very difficult to offend. And his politics strike me as something that would come out of a bright but not terribly nice 14 year old.

So can anybody clue me in? What am I missing?

Does anybody else agree with me or am I the lone voice of geek dissent out here?

Speculative Fiction?

Come on. It's sci-fi.

Re:Speculative Fiction?

That's what I thought. I wonder who the first prick was that suggested using "speculative fiction". To me, it sounds like some ego thing, snobbery and such. Maybe that's the topic of a Google search some other day.

Heinlein is from Mars, Robinson is from Venus

He'll never truly be discorporated, as long as we continue to grok him.

My personal favorite Spider novel

...since you asked, is Time Pressure, which is a companion to the almost-as-good Mindkiller. (I say "companion" instead of "sequel" because some time travel is involved, so the books are actually both sequels of each other. Doesn't much matter in which order you read them, but if you're particularly spoiler-averse, you should probably go with Mindkiller first.)

And the Callahan's Bar stories are terrific too, but they take a nosedive after the third book.

RAH as written by SR

"Computer, we have to get out of here!" yelled Joel, "Quick, what's the haversine of 0.6?"

"Well," replied the computer, "I'd haversine right on the dotted line, just look at those luscious legs!"

"Why, thank you, Computer!" simpered Friday, "I knew wearing high heels on a spaceship was a great idea!"

And that's Heinlein and Spider, right there :(

--Rob

Best stuff by Robinson...

is the Stardance trilogy: Spider collaborated with his wife Jeanne to write about taking the art of dancing into space (free-fall), with all the associated challenges.

The first title is here:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/r/spider-robinso n/stardance.htm [fantasticfiction.co.uk]

Spider's Callahan books

I think these are the only books of his I've read and I have to say they were tons of fun. He could've easily written these comedies and based them in the old west. I think the Star Trek Captain's Table series plays off these books of his. Anyway, I discovered Callahan's while in college and it was a great distraction from all the homework and required reading.

Only a few years too late for me.

I devoured the complete works of Heinlein (with one or two exceptions) my first semester in college. (It mght have been my second; it was a long time ago.) Thank goodness for interlibrary loan. It seemed like the greatest thing in the world to me, like Asimov's robot stories had a few years earlier, but the prospect of more Heinlein seems about as exciting as more Ayn Rand at this point.

It's not like I'm trashing everything I read back then; I'm re-reading Godel, Escher, Bach and enjoying it just as much as I did the first time around. But something about Heinlein hasn't aged well for me.

very enjoyable read

i've read some RAH ... but am by no means a RAH expert. wife picked this up for me as a b-day gift ... and i was floored. enjoyed the work quite a lot ... i felt many times that RAH himself would have approved very strongly of the work. imo, SR paid RAH his highest compliment by attempting such a project ... and succeeded in writing a book i will treasure for years to come.

my beagle loved the book too ... at least its binding back cover. *sob* have to spring for another copy now... worth it tho.

It's a turkey

"Variable Star" is a disappointment.

It reminded me of "Paris in the Twentieth Century", which Jules Verne wrote a century ago. Verne showed the manuscript to his friends and literary agent, all of whom agreed that it was too lousy to publish. So Verne put it in a box. A century later, one of his descendants found the manuscript and published it. It still sucks.

Spider Robinson is an OK writer, and Heinlein did great work, but Robinson trying to be Heinlein just doesn't work. Somebody more in tune with Heinlein's worldview, like David Weber, might have done a much better job. Weber, like Heinlein, does drama. Robinson does comedy. It just doesn't fit.

Worse, the book runs out before the plot does. This is mostly an anachronism; SF books today are longer than they were in Heinlein's early days. And today, you can do series. Heinlein's ideas for Variable Star could have been built up into a three-volume series with huge scope. Weber might have done that. It wouldn't have read like Heinlein, though; Heinlein keeps the focus on the main character through most of his books, which today is regarded as too limiting for a big story. The result is wierd; aliens blow up the earth, but that's a subplot to the main love story. Yes, George Lucas made that work, but he had special effects and a symphony orchestra to support it. And besides, at the point Variable Star ends, the human race is losing. Yet the ending is upbeat.

It's not Heinlein. Face it. If you want to read Spider Robinson, get one of his Callahan books. If you want to read good Heinlein, read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". But Variable Star? Skip it.

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

The article author hasn't read Spider's other books? Hasn't heard Spider sing "A Boy Named Spider" (his own Weird Al retelling of Shel Silverstein's "A Boy Named Sue")?

Wow, you got some good reading ahead of you, fella.

Spider has something else in common with RAH -- and I'm glad I got to tell him so, on a CompuServe chat one day:

Why Spider Robinson Has My Eternal Gratitude http://brasscannon.com/rah.html [brasscannon.com]

By co-incidence...

I've only been to Disneyland Anaheim once. I went round with Spider Robinson and John Varley, inter alia.

ian

Having never read a Heinlein book before...

It was ok, but the two things I hated most about it were the slow middle, once he gets on the ship, and the Deus Ex Machina used in the end to resolve the book in about 5 pages (and I'm not sure how the reviewer missed it).

I'm sorry, but it really didn't come across as a "good" read. The first 8 chapters on the website were the best part of the book.

"Speculative Fiction"

I always groan when I hear the term "Speculative Fiction". Writers use it to distance themselves from the pulp fiction reputation of Science Fiction. It's a way of saying, "I'm not a hack — I write real literature." That's fair enough when you're a mainstream writer who's dabbling in genre fiction. (Margret Atwood and Oryx and Crake come to mind.) But more often it's used by people like Harlan Ellison, who really are hacks, and seek to deny it with a lot of pretentious prose and hyperbole.

Now don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong with being a hack. It just identifies a writer with a different set of priorities than the "literary" writer. Some of my favorite writers are widely considered hacks, and even refer to themselves as hacks. Robert Sheckley often refers to himself as a "renaissance hack", because of all the different kinds of genre fix he does.

I'm not going to try to apply the "hack" label to Heinlein. But I do know the man hated pretense, and he certainly would have sneered at anybody who described his work with pretentious labels like "speculative fiction".

Citizen of the Galaxy

Variable Star is structurally and inversion of Citizen of the Galaxy. In both you have an outsider coming to encounter a family of dynastic wealth. In Citizen that outsider travels from the farthest reaches to Earth; in Star from Earth to the farthest reaches. In both there is serious corruption associated with the wealth. In both there is an anthropological interest in the differences of character which go along with differences of occupation.

The other inversion is that where Heinlein wrote some of the best beginnings in the business (e.g. Glory Road or even Number of the Beast) his endings rarely had the same degree of suspensful surprise. Robinson in Star has written an Heinleinesque beginning - really he tries - but it's yet not the equal of the master; on the other hand the ending is one of the best in fiction - as good as any mystery written, and tighter than any RAH pulled off (unless I'm forgetting one - I've only read some of his works thrice).

Big Difference in Personalities

Heinlein was the ultimate Libertarian military jock.

Robinson's a frickin' hippie.

I just don't see how that works...

dissapointed Heinlein fan

I loved Heinlein's juveniles growing up and share the wistful desire of many others to see just one more new one. Unfortunately this book captures neither the optimistic spirit nor the intelligence of the best of Heinlein's stories. The first few chapters, which Robinson wrote as samples in order to get the gig, were by far the most Heinlein-esque, but then he spiraled off into a lesser universe. I was eager to love this novel, but in the end I didn't even like it.

For me the things that were most appealing about Heinlein were his enthusiasm and knowledge about science and his insight into people and societies. He had something original to say about both. Robinson doesn't. Robinson's protagonist, Joel Johnston, spends much of the story drunk and trying to destroy himself. Joel starts off with a strong sense of self and what he wants in life, but this seems to fade as the story progresses. The starship is powered not by science and engineering, but by newage mumbo jumbo. The ending is illogical within the context of the story (given faster than light travel, relativistic time dilation provides plenty of time to warn the colonies and have one of them build a rescue ship).

I'm not particularly concerned with the logical inconsistencies, since it would be hard to enjoy very many science fiction stories without ignoring those. But in the end the Heinlein spirit is absent and the story does not inspire or inform.

other than callahans....

try stardance, starseed and starmind.

i've been reading his stuff for years (and years) and get all nostaligic over the callahans series. a good place for a spin off is callahnas lady and lady slings the booze. this is mike callahans wife - lady sally - who runs the best whorehouse in brooklyn. those have to be checked out.

be warned, spider's style is not heinlein's.

lh

When you read

The collective works of Spider Robinson be sure to read all of the authors he mentions and listen to all the musicians also. I considered myself a huge fan of literature and music until I read his books. Luckily I did read that first story, God is an Iron, and got hooked. Without that, Neal Stephenson and John D Mac- Donald and Travis McGee would just be names.

Spider Robinson? Oh well.

I might've been interested in this work if it had been written by anyone except Spider Robinson -- Robinson has never been much more than "readable", if you ask me, and his attitude toward Heinlein has never been anything other than a mindless, gushing cheerleader.

Bruce Sterling could've pulled this off, probably... But not Robinson.

In any case, if you'd like to read the greatest Heinlein novel not written by Heinlein, you should look up the Alexi Panshin book "Rite of Passage". One of the few examples of someone writing a Heinlein Juvenile that's at all successful (and certainly many others have tried). The plot involves a culture that lives on large scale space ships, but has a custom where it's teenagers must under going a survival exercise on a planet's surface as the "Rite of Passage" of the title.

As for you folks who just don't get Heinlein, well, Heinlein can be problematic for a number of reasons -- his later work is much different than his earlier, his political opinions are controversial (in part, because they're so unusual it's hard for people to even understand what they are), and in general his style may seem a bit dated -- but there's no question that he was a totally brilliant, ground-breaking, science fiction writer, second only to H.G. Wells.

The last time this subject came up I wrote up some recommendations for people new to Heinlein... those are on the web here: HEINLEIN [obsidianrook.com].

Of the later Heinlein books, I actually think the last ("To Sail Beyond the Sunset") is the strongest... he's starting to get down to the real issues, not just writing up libertine fantasies: TO_SAIL_BEYOND [obsidianrook.com].

Heinlein convention in the works

It hasn't gotten wide coverage yet, but Heinlein fans might like to know that there's going to be a Heinlein convention to commemorate his birth centennial (07/07/07) next year in Kansas City (his birthplace, or nearby). Spider Robinson will be there plus a bunch of guests from the space community. See http://www.heinleincentennial.com/ [heinleincentennial.com].

Re:Open Source Masterpieces.

How many monkey-years does it take to turn 8 pages of notes into a full-length novel?

Re:Open Source Masterpieces.

"Now just think if those notes had been released onto the internet. According to slashdot we would have had a masterpiece much sooner."

No, we'd have five or six as the literary code forked and forked again, not to mention the competing book licenses they'd be released under.

Re:Open Source Masterpieces.

But if it had, we'd have many masterpieces by now. And people would have argued over which one was the true continuation of the story, if any. These arguments would become full scale flame wars and would eventually spill over into real wars causing the deaths of millions of people. No, it's better that only one person finish the story so that we have one canonical truth that we can all agree on.

Re:Hydrogen atom impaled by V2 rocket t-shirt

More like a Helium atom, isn't it? I always remember it having two crossed orbits.

Those cafe press designs look pretty terrible, actually -- I would guess they added more orbits (orbitals? no point in being fussy about scientific details here) to avoid some sort of infringement in the original design.