The Worlds Of Robert A Heinlein

by Robert A. Heinlein

young women than ever before.

  ("Don't whistle, son! That's your grandmother � ")

  This garden is half sunbathing patio, complete with shrubs and flowers,

  lawn and couches, and half swimming pool. The day, though sunny, is quite

  cold � but not in the garden, nor is the pool chill. The garden appears to

  be outdoors, but is not; it is covered by a bubble of transparent plastic,

  blown and cured on the spot. You are inside the bubble; the sun is outside;

  you cannot see the plastic.

  She invites you to lunch; you protest. "Nonsense!" she answers, "I like to

  cook." Into the house she goes. You think of following, but it is

  deliciously warm in the March sunshine and you are feeling relaxed to be

  away from the city. You locate a switch on the side of the couch, set it

  for gentle massage, and let the couch knead your troubles away. The couch

  notes your heart rate and breathing; as they slow, so does it. As you fall

  asleep it stops.

  Meanwhile your hostess has been "slaving away over a hot stove." To be

  precise, she has allowed a menu selector to pick out an 800-calory,

  4-ration-point luncheon. It is a random-choice gadget, somewhat like a slot

  machine, which has in it the running inventory of her larder and which will

  keep hunting until it turns up a balanced meal. Some housewives claim that

  it takes the art out of cookery, but our hostess is one of many who have

  accepted it thankfully as an endless source of new menus. Its choice is

  limited today as it has been three months since she has done grocery

  shopping. She rejects several menus; the selector continues patiently to

  turn up combinations until she finally accepts one based around fish

  disguised as lamb chops.

  Your hostess takes the selected items from shelves or the freezer. All are

  prepared; some are pre-cooked. Those still to be cooked she puts into her �

  well, her "processing equipment," though she calls it a "stove." Part of it

  traces its ancestry to diathermy equipment; another feature is derived from

  metal enameling processes. She sets up cycles, punches buttons, and must

  wait two or three minutes for the meal to cook. She spends the time

  checking her ration accounts.

  Despite her complicated kitchen, she doesn't eat as well as her great

  grandmother did � too many people and too few acres.

  Never mind; the tray she carries out to the patio is well laden and

  beautiful. You are both willing to nap again when it is empty. You wake to

  find that she has burned the dishes and is recovering from her "exertions"

  in her refresher. Feeling hot and sweaty from your nap you decide to use it

  when she comes out. There is a wide choice offered by the 'fresher, but you

  limit yourself to a warm shower growing gradually cooler, followed by warm

  air drying, a short massage, spraying with scent, and dusting with powder.

  Such a simple routine is an insult to a talented machine.

  Your host arrives home as you come out; he has taken a holiday from his

  engineering job and has had the two boys down at the beach. He kisses his

  wife, shouts, "Hi, Duchess!" at you, and turns to the video, setting it to

  hunt and sample the newscasts it has stored that day. His wife sends the

  boys in to 'fresh themselves, then says, "Have a nice day, dear?"

  He answers, "The traffic was terrible. Had to make the last hundred miles

  on automatic. Anything on the phone for me?"

  "Weren't you on relay?"

  "Didn't set it. Didn't want to be bothered." He steps to the house phone,

  plays back his calls, finds nothing he cares to bother with � but the

  machine goes ahead and prints one message; he pulls it out and tears it

  off.

  "What is it?" his wife asks.

  "Telestat from Luna City � from Aunt Jane."

  "What does she say?"

  "Nothing much. According to her, the Moon is a great place and she wants us

  to come visit her."

  "Not likely!" his wife answers. "Imagine being shut up in an

  air-conditioned cave."

  "When you are Aunt Jane's age, my honey lamb, and as frail as she is, with

  a bad heart thrown in, you'll go to the Moon and like it. Low gravity is

  not to be sneezed at � Auntie will probably live to be a hundred and

  twenty, heart trouble and all."

  "Would you go to the Moon?" she asks.

  "If I needed to and could afford it." He turns to you. "Right?"

  You consider your answer. Life still looks good to you � and stairways are

  beginning to be difficult. Low gravity is attractive, even though it means

  living out your days at the Geriatrics Foundation on the Moon. "It might be

  fun to visit," you answer. "One wouldn't have to stay."

  Hospitals for old people on the Moon? Lets not be silly �

  Or is it silly? Might it not be a logical and necessary outcome of our

  world today?

  Space travel we will have, not fifty years from now, but much sooner. It's

  breathing down our necks. As for geriatrics on the Moon, for most of us no

  price is too high and no amount of trouble is too great to extend the years

  of our lives. It is possible that low gravity (one sixth, on the Moon) may

  not lengthen lives; nevertheless it may � we don't know yet � and it will

  most certainly add greatly to comfort on reaching that inevitable age when

  the burden of dragging around one's body is almost too much, or when we

  would otherwise resort to an oxygen tent to lessen the work of a worn-out

  heart.

  By the rules of prophecy, such a prediction is probable, rather than

  impossible.

  But the items and gadgets suggested above are examples of timid prophecy.

  What are the rules of prophecy, if any?

  [Image]

  Look at the graph shown here. The solid curve is what has been going on

  this past century. It represents many things � use of power, speed of

  transport, numbers of scientific and technical workers, advances in

  communication, average miles traveled per person per year, advances in

  mathematics, the rising curve of knowledge. Call it the curve of human

  achievement

  What is the correct way to project this curve into the future? Despite

  everything, there is a stubborn "common sense" tendency to project it along

  dotted line number one � like the patent office official of a hundred years

  back who quit his job "because everything had already been invented." Even

  those who don't expect a slowing up at once, tend to expect us to reach a

  point of diminishing returns ( dotted line number two ).

  Very daring minds are willing to predict that we will continue our present

  rate of progress (dotted line number three-a tangent).

  But the proper way to project the curve is dotted line number four � for

  there is no reason, mathematical, scientific, or historical, to expect that

  curve to flatten out, or to reach a point of diminishing returns, or simply

  to go on as a tangent. The correct projection, by all facts known today, is

  for the curve to go on up indefinitely with increasing steepness.

  The timid little predictions earlier in this article actually belong to

  curve one, or, at most, to curve two. You can count on the changes in the

  next
fifty years at least eight times as great as the changes of the past

  fifty years.

  The Age of Science has not yet opened.

  AXIOM: A "nine-days' wonder" is taken as a matter of course on the tenth

  day.

  AXIOM: A "common sense" prediction is sure to err on the side of timidity.

  AXIOM: The more extravagant a prediction sounds the more likely it is to

  come true.

  So let's have a few free-swinging predictions about the future.

  Some will be wrong � but cautious predictions are sure to be wrong.

  1. Interplanetary travel is waiting at your front door � C.O.D. It's yours

  when you pay for it. (a)

  2. Contraception and control of disease is revising relations between sexes

  to an extent that will change our entire social and economic structure. (b)

  5. The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way

  to repel an attack from outer space. (c)

  4. It is utterly impossible that the United States will start a "preventive

  war." We will fight when attacked, either directly or in a territory we

  have guaranteed to defend. (d)

  5. In fifteen years the housing shortage will be solved by a "breakthrough"

  into new technology which will make every house now standing as obsolete as

  privies. (e)

  6. We'll all be getting a little hungry by and by.

  7. The cult of the phony in art will disappear. So-called "modern art" will

  be discussed only by psychiatrists.

  8. Freud will be classed as a pre-scientific, intuitive pioneer and

  psychoanalysis will be replaced by a growing, changing "operational

  psychology" based on measurement and prediction.

  9. Cancer, the common cold, and tooth decay will all be conquered; the

  revolutionary new problem in medical research will be to accomplish

  "regeneration," i.e., to enable a man to grow a new leg, rather than fit

  him with an artificial limb. (f )

  10. By the end of this century mankind will have explored this solar

  system, and the first ship intended to reach the nearest star will be

  abuilding. ( g )

  11. Your personal telephone will be small enough to carry in your handbag.

  Your house telephone will record messages, answer simple queries, and

  transmit vision.

  12. Intelligent life will be found on Mars. ( h )

  13. A thousand miles an hour at a cent a mile will be commonplace; short

  hauls will be made in evacuated subways at extreme speeds. (i)

  14. A major objective of applied physics will be to control gravity. ( j )

  15. We will not achieve a "world state" in the predictable future.

  Nevertheless, Communism will vanish from this planet. (k)

  16. Increasing mobility will disenfranchise a majority of the population.

  About 1990 a constitutional amendment will do away with state lines while

  retaining the semblance.

  17. All aircraft will be controlled by a giant radar net run on a

  continent-wide basis by a multiple electronic "brain."

  18. Fish and yeast will become our principal sources of proteins. Beef will

  be a luxury; lamb and mutton will disappear. ( 1 )

  19. Mankind will not destroy itself, nor will "civilization" be destroyed.

  (m)

  Here are things we won t get soon, if ever:

  Travel through time.

  Travel faster than the speed of light

  "Radio" transmission of matter.

  Manlike robots with manlike reactions.

  Laboratory creation of life.

  Real understanding of what "thought" is and how it is related to matter.

  Scientific proof of personal survival after death.

  Nor a permanent end to war. (I don't like that prediction any better than

  you do.)

  Prediction of gadgets is a parlor trick anyone can learn; but only a fool

  would attempt to predict details of future history (except as fiction, so

  labeled); there are too many unknowns and no techniques for integrating

  them even if they were known.

  Even to make predictions about overall trends in technology is now most

  difficult. In fields where before World War II there was one man working in

  public, there are now ten, or a hundred, working in secret. There may be

  six men in the country who have a clear picture of what is going on in

  science today. There may not be even one.

  This is in itself a trend. Many leading scientists consider it a factor as

  disabling as the nonsense of Lysenkoism is to Russian technology.

  Nevertheless there are clear-cut trends which are certain to make this

  coming era enormously more productive and interesting than the frantic one

  we have just passed through. Among them are:

  Cybernetics: The study of communication and control of mechanisms and

  organisms. This includes the wonderful field of mechanical and electronic

  "brains" � but is not limited to it. (These "brains" are a factor in

  themselves that will speed up technical progress the way a war does.)

  Semantics: A field which seems concerned only with definitions of words. It

  is not; it is a frontal attack on epistemology � that is to say, how we

  know what we know, a subject formerly belonging to long-haired

  philosophers.

  New tools of mathematics and log, such as calculus of statement, Boolean

  logic, morphological analysis, generalized symbology, newly invented

  mathematics of every sort � there is not space even to name these enormous

  fields, but they offer us hope in every other field � medicine, social

  relations, biology, economics, anything.

  Biochemistry: Research into the nature of protoplasm, into enzyme

  chemistry, viruses, etc., give hope not only that we may conquer disease,

  but that we may someday understand the mechanisms of life itself. Through

  this, and with the aid of cybernetic machines and radioactive isotopes, we

  may eventually acquire a rigor of chemistry. Chemistry is not a discipline

  today; it is a jungle. We know that chemical behavior depends on the number

  of orbital electrons in an atom and that physical and chemical properties

  follow the pattern called the Periodic Table. We don't know much else, save

  by cut-and-try, despite the great size and importance of the chemical

  industry. When chemistry becomes a discipline, mathematical chemists will

  design new materials, predict their properties, and tell engineers how to

  make them � without ever entering a laboratory. We've got a long way to go

  on that one!

  Nucleonics: We have yet to find out what makes the atom tick. Atomic power?

  � yes, we'll have it, in convenient packages � when we understand the

  nucleus. The field of radioisotopes alone is larger than was the entire

  known body of science in 1900. Before we are through with these problems,

  we may find out how the universe is shaped and why. Not to mention enormous

  unknown vistas best represented by ? ? ? ? ?

  Some physicists are now using two time scales, the T-scale, and the

  tau-scale. Three billion years on one scale can equal an incredibly split

  second on the other scale � and yet both apply to you and your kitchen

  stove. Of such anarchy is our present state in physics.

  For such reasons we must insist that the Age of Science has not yet opened.

  The greatest cri
sis facing us is not Russia, not the Atom bomb, not

  corruption in government, not encroaching hunger, nor the morals of young.

  It is a crisis in the organization and accessibility of human knowledge. We

  own an enormous "encyclopedia" � which isn't even arranged alphabetically.

  Our "file cards" are spilled on the floor, nor were they ever in order. The

  answers we want may be buried somewhere in the heap, but it might take a

  lifetime to locate two already known facts, place them side by side and

  derive a third fact, the one we urgently need.

  Call it the Crisis of the Librarian.

  We need a new "specialist who is not a specialist, but a synthesist. (n) We

  need a new science to be the perfect secretary to all other sciences.

  But we are not likely to get either one in a hurry and we have a powerful

  lot of grief before us in the meantime.

  Fortune-tellers can always be sure of repeat customers by predicting what

  the customer wants to hear . . . it matters not whether the prediction

  comes true. Contrariwise, the weatherman is often blamed for bad weather.

  Brace yourself.

  In 1900 the cloud on the horizon was no bigger than a man's hand � but what

  lay ahead was the Panic of 1907, World War I, the panic following it, the

  Depression, Fascism, World War II, the Atom Bomb, and Red Russia.

  Today the clouds obscure the sky, and the wind that overturns the world is

  sighing in the distance.

  The period immediately ahead will be the roughest, cruelest one in the

  long, hard history of mankind. It will probably include the worst World War

  of them all. It might even end with a war with Mars, God save the mark!

  Even if we are spared that fantastic possibility, it is certain that there

  will be no security anywhere, save what you dig out of your own inner

  spirit.

  But what of that picture we drew of domestic luxury and tranquillity for

  Mrs. Middleclass, style 2000 A.D.?

  She lived through it. She survived.

  Our prospects need not dismay you, not if you or your kin were at Bloody

  Nose Ridge, at Gettysburg � or trudged across the Plains. You and I are

  here because we carry the genes of uncountable ancestors who fought � and

  won � against death in all its forms. We're tough. We'll survive. Most of

  us.

  We've lasted through the preliminary bouts; the main event is coming up.

  But it's not for sissies.

  The Last thing to come fluttering out of Pandora's box was Hope � without

  which men die.

  The gathering wind will not destroy everything, nor will the Age of Science

  change everything. Long after the first star ship leaves for parts unknown,

  there will still be outhouses in upstate New York, there will still be

  steers in Texas, and � no doubt � the English will still stop for tea.

  Afterthoughts, fifteen years later �

  (a) And now we are paying for it and the cost is high. But, for reasons

  understandable only to bureaucrats, we have almost halted development of a

  nuclear-powered spacecraft when success was in sight. Never mind; if we

  don't, another country will. By the end of this century space travel will

  be cheap.

  (b) This trend is so much more evident now than it was fifteen years ago

  that I am tempted to call it a fulfilled prophecy. Vast changes in sex

  relations are evident all around us � with the oldsters calling it "moral

  decay" and the youngsters ignoring them and taking it for granted. Surface

  signs: books such as "Sex and the Single Girl" are smash hits; the

  formerly-taboo four-letter words are now seen both in novels and popular