Some of it is also due to the wonderfully collaborative nature of all written fiction. We readers inevitably remember not all the words but rather the stories and scenes and characters our minds have built from the words in front of us. (This is, I firmly believe, one of the great joys of books and stories, more than enough reason for them to be irreplaceable by any other medium.) In my experience, though, it is particularly strong among Heinlein fans, because he was so very good at delivering just enough to engage our inner story completers but not so much that those parts of us ever became bored or lost the narrative thread.
Future History
Heinlein’s skill at pulling us through the narrative is, as I’ve noted, strong and sure. A fun aspect of all the stories in the two books in this volume is that they also are part of a greater narrative thread, Heinlein’s “future history.” Though Heinlein, as his introduction here tells us, did not set out to make all of these tales part of a greater whole, he ultimately placed them all in a continuum that tracked humanity over roughly two centuries. The chart he created as an aid “to keep me from stumbling as I added new stories” defined a fictional history that went from roughly the present time of the author until well past 2100. Heinlein was not trying to be a prophet, as he said in his introduction, but he could not resist the siren call of tying together so much of his fiction. All of us who have written series fiction or sequels definitely know the appeal, as do the readers of those works and those who love certain TV and movie series—which is to say, most of us.
Readers responded well to the future history. Seeing how each new piece of fiction fit into the greater flow of events became part of the fun—and still is. It matters less how accurate Heinlein’s predictions were (not very) than that he built a fictional world with a long past and a long future, a world that followed humanity’s progress from where we were when he was writing these stories all the way to the stars.
Many other writers, of course, have done the same, creating long timelines for selections of their works, but Heinlein did it well and sufficiently memorably that his future history is still the one most SF fans I know associate with the term. (Google the term, and the Wikipedia entry that appears first cites as key background John W. Campbell’s use of the term for what Heinlein had created.)
Of His Time
For all that Heinlein spread the stories in this book over a couple of centuries, he was, like all writers, very much a creature of his time. Try as we might to visit and create (or recreate) other times, we inevitably bring to the task the baggage of our own times, our attitudes, societal norms, ways of thinking, and on and on. Some of us are better than others at embracing other times, particularly historical times on which much data is available, but we are also always dealing at some level with the issues that concern us—and those issues arise out of the human condition as shaped by our time.
Put differently, none of us can stop who we are from affecting our fiction, and each of us is unavoidably a creature of our time.
This fact is of more than academic import. When we read older fiction—most of these stories are over seventy years old—we should be aware that the norms of the times affected them. For example, Heinlein’s portrayals of women and African Americans in these stories often range from jarring to downright offensive—as did the portrayals of those groups in much, if not most, of the popular media of the time. That does not excuse them, nor do I mean to do so; they are wrong. It simply provides context for them.
Speaking of Context
Different editions of the book The Man Who Sold the Moon have wrapped the stories in different contexts. Some have included the Campbell introduction, others the Heinlein preface. Heinlein biographer William H. Patterson, Jr. has written a related introduction.
Thanks to the work of the good folks at Baen Books, the publisher of this volume, this edition includes all three introductions, a first. It also includes the Heinlein future history timeline.
That timeline tells the order in which the stories should appear, and so they appear here in that very order—which they did not in the previous edition.
The result is arguably the definitive edition of The Man Who Sold the Moon. No, I won’t throw out my original Shasta edition or the earlier Baen edition, but this one stands as the most complete and accurate one yet available.
All of these assembled supporting pieces beg two questions: Why this afterword? And, why did I get to write it?
The answer to the first is simple: Baen Publisher Toni Weisskopf. Toni decided to reissue all the Heinlein books to which Baen has rights in a set of editions with covers by SF and fantasy illustrator Bob Eggleton. As a treat to both readers and the writers involved, she commissioned afterwords to each edition.
The answer to the second question is also simple: I begged Toni to let me write the afterword to this volume. I was in the audience at a Baen panel at the 2008 Denver World Science Fiction convention, Denvention 3, listening to Toni talk about upcoming books and preparing to say a few words about my own. In the course of the presentation, she mentioned this Heinlein series and some of the books she would eventually be reissuing, including The Man Who Sold the Moon. The moment the event ended, I rushed up to Toni and said that she absolutely had to let me write this afterword, that this book had meant a great deal to me, that having my name, however small, on the cover with Heinlein was a treat, a moment of fanboy joy, that I had never anticipated would be possible. I begged, yes, and I also demanded, groveled, and otherwise persisted until she told me it would be mine.
When the previous edition would not go out of print, I wrote a blog entry imploring readers to buy up all the remaining copies. I threatened to do so myself if need be.
Finally, even though copies remain of the previous edition, Toni decided to bundle The Man Who Sold the Moon with Orphans of the Sky to create a nice, thick volume for readers.
My wish had come true.
It was time for me to write my afterword.
So, of course, I promptly began procrastinating (yes, that was the only time I was prompt about this book). I reread the two books, then reread them again. I sketched outlines and threw them away. I gave myself time, and then more time, and yet more, to think about the right approach. I gave myself so much time, in fact, that not only was this piece late, I finally could not avoid any longer the most important question I had never asked myself:
Why was The Man Who Sold the Moon so important to me?
My Heinlein
I knew the answer immediately. I’ve already mentioned it: This book helped save my life.
I truly never have told this to anyone before, however, and as I realized the answer I also immediately knew that I was unsure if I was willing to publicly relate how the book helped save me and what it meant to me.
I was, in other words, being a coward. As far from D.D. Harriman as I could get, I was not pursuing what I believed, not knocking down all the obstacles in front of me—as I had when I’d persuaded Toni to give me this assignment. No, I was hiding from telling a story of my own, a true story, but a story nonetheless.
That was unacceptable. I owed this book, I owed Heinlein, more and better than that.
So this is what happened.
I was eleven. My most recent father had died around my tenth birthday. My mother, the single parent of three kids, one of them quite young, was understandably a mess, having to cope with loss and children and making money and all that a widowed parent of three faces. She was a nurse, an R.N. One of the LPNs who worked with her had seven children and a husband in Viet Nam. They became better friends, and to make ends meet and provide childcare, they decided to merge our families under one roof. My mother made more money, so she worked. The other woman stayed home. Two women and ten kids lived together as one family. Each family’s kids referred to the other’s as cousins, a fiction that made no one question the arrangement.
On the surface, the setup was a reasonable compromise in rough times.
The problem is,
the other woman almost immediately began to beat me and, soon thereafter, my siblings. Initially, I tried telling my mother, but it was my word against the woman’s, and the woman was so very good at beating that she left no visible marks. My mother believed her, and the woman’s retribution was swift and harsh, so I quickly stopped trying to tell anyone.
The woman beat me almost every day. She beat me with all sorts of objects, from spatulas to pans to wire clothes hangers to books, usually flat ones that wouldn’t easily leave bruises. Day in and day out, the beatings continued. Soon, she was beating my sister and even my very little brother as well, though not as often.
In parallel, in a misguided attempt to provide some male influence in my life, my mother had enrolled me in a paramilitary youth organization that ostensibly focused on marching in parades, physical fitness, and teaching discipline to young men. This particular chapter of that group, however, also routinely beat those members who misbehaved (me), or who were fat (me), or who were uncoordinated (me), or who couldn’t keep their mouths shut (me). Telling my mother again served only to lead to adult denials and more beatings. (I’ve written more about this group on my blog, and I’ve dealt with it in fiction in various forms, notably in parts of my novel, Children No More, and in the short story, “Basic Training.”)
I was also working as much as possible, mowing lawns and doing other lawn work, to make money to help pay for school clothes. We lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, so the work was hot, and it was long. Minimum wage was $1.60 an hour, but of course a kid mowing lawns didn’t get that. It typically took me three to five hours to earn $2.50.
With any money I could manage to hold back from my earnings, I would buy comic books and books. They and a little AM radio were my escapes from a life of beatings and work. School was easy but boring, and it ended all too soon each day. After school and before Mom was home was beating time, though I never knew exactly when the beating would come.
After more than a year of this, I was actively considering killing myself. I knew I should be stronger; the heroes in my comic books were. They had special powers, though, and I did not. As much as I loved the fantasy worlds of the comics, I knew they were fantasies. I would never have special powers. I was a kid, just a kid, and what I would have was another beating on another day, and then another, and another.
One day, I acquired the collection The Man Who Sold the Moon. I greatly enjoyed all the stories, but I absolutely loved “The Man Who Sold the Moon” and what I thought was its sequel, “Requiem.” In it, D.D. Harriman, a man with no special powers, only a strong brain and a stronger will to succeed, struggled against all odds to accomplish the impossible, to take humanity to the Moon. When he finally succeeded, for the good of his dream and all those involved in it, he had to step aside, sacrifice the trip he had so desperately wanted to make, and watch as others departed for the Moon. He finally made the trip in "Requiem," but he died within minutes of a conspirator placing his old body on the lunar soil.
D.D. Harriman gave his all for what he believed in. He sacrificed his dream of going to space for the good of the others involved and for the dream itself.
That was what the eleven-year-old me took from those stories.
I had a strong brain. I had people to protect: My sister and my brother. I had a dream: A life without beatings for all of us.
What excuse did I have for being less than D.D. Harriman?
None.
Would D.D. Harriman have killed himself when the going got tough?
No. He didn’t, as the story clearly told.
How, I asked myself one night, could I do less? Did I want to be the guy who quit, who gave up, who abandoned his dream and those who depended on him? Or did I want to be the guy willing to give his all in service to his dream, in the protection of those who counted on him?
The answer was clear.
The woman beating me was big, but after comparing her to teenage boys I knew, I was sure that one day I would be bigger. I would be big enough to do whatever it took to stop her.
Those who out-ranked me in the youth group were numerous, but after I made corporal, all further advancements would come from written tests, and I was good at those. I was great at those. I just had to control myself long enough to make corporal.
All I had to do was endure more beatings, learn to keep my mouth shut, and wait to grow bigger.
That was a lot less, it seemed to me, than D.D. Harriman had to do.
The next day, I interrupted the woman as she was about to beat my sister. I told her to beat me instead. I manipulated her, and so she tore into me. Soon, she rarely beat my siblings. I took more beatings, but I didn’t care. Every day, every beating, brought me closer to the day when I would be bigger. I was protecting my siblings. I was being the hero I should be.
Time passed.
I worked hard at keeping my mouth shut in the youth group. I made PFC, and then corporal. From there, I rose at unprecedented speed to become the highest-ranking member of the group. I went from the bottom to the top.
When my body hurt, when I thought I couldn’t bear the beatings, I reminded myself that I was being the man I was supposed to be.
Yeah, none of this should have happened. No one should have beaten me. I should not have had to cope with any of it—but I did. No kid should have to cope with abuse, but millions do. Each of us has to find a way to survive—though, of course, some don’t, some don’t make it.
What I learned from “The Man Who Sold the Moon” was that I could be my own hero, that I could take care of those who depended on me, that no matter how hard it was, no matter what it took, like D.D. Harriman I could find a way. I would find a way.
I did find a way.
That’s my Heinlein, that’s my “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” and they helped save my life.
THE END
Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky Page 43