The Man Who Sold the Moon by Robert A. Heinlein

Surprisingly preoccupied with business matters

The Man Who Sold the Moon is a science-fiction novella by American author Robert A. Heinlein that was published in 1950. It is also the title of a collection of short fiction published that same year, in which that novella is included. It is this latter collection to which this review pertains. In addition to its title selection, the collection entitled The Man Who Sold the Moon also contains five short stories originally published from 1939 to 1940. All six pieces are works in Heinlein’s Future History series, a large assemblage of novels, novellas, and stories that all take place in the same fictional future. The works collected in this volume represent the beginning of that series; that is to say, they are the earliest narratives in the fictional chronology.

The Man Who Sold the Moon (the novella) is an extended prequel to the much shorter story entitled “Requiem.” With the exception of that pair, the stories in this volume are only loosely related to one another. Although all united by the Future History scheme, they feature different characters and are set in different decades. Occasionally a character or his technological achievements may be mentioned in a later story. The half dozen stories in The Man Who Sold the Moon don’t seem to be presented in any logical order—neither in order of publication nor in order of Heinlein’s fictional timeline. This book includes a chart, put together by Heinlein, outlining the chronological order of the series. These being the earliest stories in the timeline, they take place roughly from the present day (the time of publication being late 1930s) to the fictional 1980s.

Heinlein’s first published story, “Life-Line,” is about an inventor who creates a device that can predict the future by “reading” timelines. It has the fanciful and thought-provoking qualities of a good Twilight Zone episode. “Let There Be Light” is about two scientists who pursue a more efficient form of lighting, and it’s about as exciting as that sounds. In “The Roads Must Roll,” America’s highways have been replaced by a cockamamie system of conveyer belts—not Heinlein’s brightest idea. “Blowups Happen” is a speculative story about nuclear power, written before nuclear reactors were a reality.

The centerpiece of this collection, The Man Who Sold the Moon, chronicles the endeavours of D. D. Harriman, a successful businessman, high-dollar huckster, and big-time negotiator who takes it upon himself to spearhead mankind’s first trip to the moon. In order to bring this dream to reality, Harriman must employ some questionable ethics, navigate legal loopholes, and exercise much financial chicanery. The plot is a chronicle of all this wheeling and dealing and not so much about the actual space travel. Harriman has elements of P. T. Barnum, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk, but more likeable and sympathetic than the latter two. “Requiem,” the sequel, catches up with Harriman later in life.

Given Heinlein’s reputation as the greatest science fiction writer of the 20th century, or at least one of the big three (along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke), I expected more from this volume. Heinlein’s Future History series is highly acclaimed, but this is still very early in that history. Space travel is just getting started, and we haven’t yet gotten anywhere near the colonization of other worlds. The result is a book full of surprisingly down-to-earth stories that have more to do with prosaic matters of business and industry than with astrophysics or space exploration. I’m surprised that the readers of Astounding Science Fiction magazine would have found fascinating these stories about government regulation and bureaucratic red tape. In just about every story here, Heinlein pushes some kind of libertarian agenda. This is most evident in the title selection, in which space travel and exploration are best left to private interests, preferably unregulated. Governments are merely obstacles in Heinlein’s vision of the future.

Despite my tepid review, there is enough here to build a reasonably satisfying foundation for a fictional universe, and I’m sure as Heinlein ventures farther from Earth, his narratives will become more deserving of the adjective “astounding.” I’m intrigued enough to follow this future timeline into the next volume of collected stories.

Stories in this collection

“Let There Be Light”

The Roads Must Roll

The Man Who Sold the Moon

Requiem

Life-Line

Blowups Happen

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee

Fascinating tetrabiography of sci-fi luminaries

John W. Campbell (1910–1971) was the longtime editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. Isaac Asimov once called him “the most powerful force in science fiction ever.” Through the pages of Astounding, Campbell elevated science fiction from a pulp-fiction amusement to a serious exercise in speculative science aimed at an intelligent adult audience. Alec Nevala-Lee’s 2018 book Astounding is a joint biography of Campbell and three prominent science fiction authors whom he discovered, developed, befriended, and tormented: Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard. Through the intertwined lives of these four figures, and their personality quirks and strange obsessions, Nevala-Lee charts the history of the science fiction genre from its niche beginnings, through World War II and the Atomic Age, to its acceptance and ubiquity in mainstream American culture.

Originally titled Astounding Stories of Super-Science, the magazine was founded in 1930, not by Campbell, but he took over as editor in 1937 and held that position until his death in 1971. The publication went through a number of minor title changes, all of them begining with “Astounding.” In 1960, however, Campbell drastically changed the title to Analog Science Fact & Fiction, a change no one seemed to like but himself.

Of this book’s four main characters, Asimov comes across the most sympathetically in Nevala-Lee’s narrative. He’s shown as a nice guy, not too egotistical, but a terribly horny lecher. If he had lived several decades later, his career would have been cancelled by the Me Too movement. Hubbard is shown as a shameless braggart and schemer who pathologically lies about his background and achievements. For much of the time period covered here, he was the most financially successful author in sci-fi, but Nevala-Lee thinks his work is hacky and mediocre at best. Heinlein, on the other hand, is presented as the G.O.A.T. of science fiction. His personality is harder to pin down. He definitely had a big ego, but given his talent, that was probably justified. He comes across as the smartest and most serious of the four and uncompromising in his unconventional views. Campbell, though praised for his literary influence, is deservedly castigated for his overt racism and sexism. All four of these guys, by the way, were swingers to some extent, so their love lives make for lively reading, although one feels sorry for their wives.

Hubbard was, of course, the founder of Scientology, and that plays into this story quite a bit as well. Campbell was a collaborator or at least a supporter in the creation of Dianetics, the psychotherapeutic precursor to the religion of Scientology. Nevala-Lee makes Hubbard out to be a flim-flam man who just used Dianetics to con people for financial gain. Campbell, on the other hand, was a true believer who saw Dianetics as a tool for increasing human potential. He was obsessed with “psionics”—heightened mental powers such as ESP, ancestral memories, or telekinesis—and he often steered the contents of Astounding/Analog in that direction. (Frank Herbert’s Dune—right up Campbell’s alley—was first published in Analog). When writing about Hubbard, Nevala-Lee treats Dianetics as a scam. When writing about Campbell, however, Nevala-Lee makes it sound like his weird psychological experiments were actually successful­ and then doesn’t bother to examine how or why that might be. If Nevala-Lee means to paint Campbell’s pursuits as pseudoscience, he doesn’t sufficiently discredit them.

That’s the only reservation I have about this book. Though I am not by any means a science fiction expert, I was fascinated from cover to cover. You never know which way this story is going to twist and turn because these four guys were so idiosyncratic—a polite word for messed up. While envisioning alternate worlds, each tried to fashion his life into his own personal utopia, somehow above the rules of the real world. They treated their work and their lives like science experiments, and in this book they often resemble mad scientists engaged in cockamamie or failed experiments. The pulp fiction era was an exciting time in publishing that generated a lot of classics and a lot of trash. Nevala-Lee brilliantly captures that time in science fiction’s history, the genre’s triumphs of creativity, and its sometimes misguided hopes and dreams for the future.