The Green Hills of Earth by Robert A. Heinlein

The mundane aspects of space exploration

American science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein wrote a series of roughly two dozen short stories and novels known as his Future History. These works were all originally published in fiction magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction or The Saturday Evening Post before being gathered into book-length collections. The first collected volume of Heinlein’s Future History fiction, published in 1950, was The Man Who Sold the Moon. The second collection, published in 1951, is The Green Hills of Earth. This latter volume contains ten short stories that were originally published in periodicals from 1941 to 1949. The book’s final selection, “Logic of Empire,” clocking in at 41 pages, is the longest entry in the volume. The rest of the pieces included are truly short stories in the 10- to 20-page range.

Many consider Heinlein to be the greatest science fiction author of the 20th century. Given such high praise, I found The Man Who Sold the Moon rather disappointing. Most of the stories were more about business and logistical matters than science and exploration. What was missing was any daring speculative thinking, deep thoughts, or any sense of wonder. In his desire to make his future realistic, Heinlein focuses on very mundane aspects of space travel and extraterrestrial colonization. For the most part, The Green Hills of Earth continues this prosaic approach. “Gentlemen, Be Seated,” for example, is about pressurized tunnels below the surface of the moon, and what happens when one springs a minor leak. “Delilah and the Space-Rigger” is set at the construction site of a space station, but the story is essentially about a human resources matter.

The first six stories in this volume are mostly about mankind’s base on the moon, the better part of which is built underground. There’s some mining going on. It’s not terribly exciting stuff. With story number seven, however, the book takes a turn for the better. In “—We Also Walk Dogs,” which takes place around the 1990s of Heinlein’s Future History timeline, mankind has established colonies on many planets and moons of the solar system, and some of those new worlds have Indigenous inhabitants—Martians, Venusians, etc. This story is essentially about a glorified interplanetary concierge service, but it provides an intriguing introductory look into Heinlein’s vision of solar system colonization.

The book’s title selection is about an interplanetary hobo-troubadour poet, kind of a Woody Guthrie or Leadbelly of outer space, who writes a famous folk song, “The Green Hills of Earth.” The aforementioned “Logic of Empire,” is the other notable piece in this volume. Two well-to-do Earthlings argue over whether the system of indentured servitude that prevails on Venus qualifies as slavery or not. Then the pair of friends get drunk and accidentally sign themselves to long-term contracts of hard labor on Venus, a jungle planet with amphibious natives. It’s really more of a prison story than a sci-fi story, but sci-fi has often been used to comment on social issues, and here Heinlein uses his dystopian Venus to critique colonialism and the exploitation of developing nations. I found the blunt pessimism of the ending admirably unexpected.

So far I haven’t been overly impressed by Heinlein’s Future History. Personally, I prefer the Terro-Human Future History of H. Beam Piper, which may not be as scientifically realistic as Heinlein’s universe, but it’s a lot more fun to read. Given his high renown, I’m guessing Heinlein has better work in his oeuvre. I suspect that his stand-alone novels, like Stranger in a Strange Land or Starship Troopers, are a whole different kettle of fish, so I’ll probably head in that direction next.

Stories in this collection

Delilah and the Space-Rigger

Space Jockey

The Long Watch

Gentlemen, Be Seated

The Black Pits of Luna

It’s Great to Be Back

“—We Also Walk Dogs”

Ordeal in Space

The Green Hills of Earth

Logic of Empire

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

The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Part 1: 1832–1839

Off to a slow start

Unlike other A-list names in the history of American literature, Edgar Allan Poe is not known for his novels. He only published one: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), and it wasn’t a hit. Other than his poem “The Raven,” we know Poe primarily for his short stories. Counts vary, based on what’s considered a short story, but I’m going to go with Wikipedia and the Delphi Classics and say he published 65 stories, plus one unfinished at the time of his death. These stories, or “tales” as they are often called in Poe’s case, have been selected and shuffled like a deck of cards into thousands of published volumes. I’m going to review these 65 and a half stories in chronological order, in three chunks of about 20 stories each.

Poe’s first published story, “Metzengerstein,” happens to be a horror story, and a pretty good one, but very few of the tales published in these first seven or eight years of his career could be considered classic Poe horror stories. Another early entry, the nautical ghost story “MS. Found in a Bottle,” is also a step in the right direction. “Ligeia,” from 1838, seems like a turning point in Poe’s career. This is the first story to really epitomize the mix of gothic romance and terrifying horror that we usually think of when we think of Poe. “William Wilson,” a horror story about a man tormented by his doppelganger, is another strong entry from this period. The only selection from this chunk of stories that can truly be considered a Poe masterpiece, however, is “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Poe is also remembered for mystery stories and, to a lesser extent, science fiction. None of the former category are here, but sci-fi is represented by the postapocalyptic “The Conversation Between Eiros and Charmion,” and “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall,” which shows us Poe operating in Jules Verne mode, with only partial success.

In this first act of Poe’s career, he wrote just as many humor stories as horror stories. In most cases, the humor has not survived the past nine decades very well. A couple of these comedic efforts remain moderately funny, however, like “Devil in the Belfry” and “A Predicament.” In “How to Write a Blackwood Article,” Poe satirizes the typical fare from the English literary periodical Blackwood’s Magazine. Many of the literary pretensions Poe pokes fun at in this piece, however, are sins he is frequently guilty of committing himself. In these early writings, his biggest fault as a writer is his uncontrollable desire to show of his erudition by loading his prose with gratuitous references to classical poetry, mythology, opera, or other high-brow literature. He also loves to throw in untranslated phrases in French, Latin, Greek, and maybe even German. There’s no need for any of this, and it’s just Poe showing off how well-read he is. In this regard, he’s more pretentious than Melville or Hawthorne. Thankfully, Poe seems to gradually cure himself of this annoying habit towards the end of the 1830s.

I had read “greatest hits” collections of Poe’s horror stories in the past and liked them well enough, but I have to admit that this first foray into his complete works was a disappointment. As previously mentioned, there’s just too much laughless humor and too much effort to impress with high-falutin allusions. His writing did improve over the course of these years, however, and I am confident that the second round of his stories that I dive into will be superior to the first.

Stories in this collection

Metzengerstein

The Duc de l’Omelette

A Tale of Jerusalem

Loss of Breath

Bon-Bon

MS. Found in a Bottle

The Assignation

Berenice

Morella

Lionizing

The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall

King Pest

Shadow

Four Beasts in One

Mystification

Silence

Ligeia

How to Write a Blackwood Article

A Predicament

The Devil in the Belfry

The Man That Was Used Up

The Fall of the House of Usher

William Wilson

The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion

The Night Visitor and Other Stories by B. Traven

Ten well-drawn tales of Mexico

The information we have on author B. Traven’s life is sketchy. The name is a pseudonym, and he deliberately kept his real identity a secret. Journalists and literary scholars have connected him to prior aliases, but I don’t think his actual birth name has ever been ascertained with certainly. He was born in Germany and emigrated to Mexico in 1924. Traven wrote all of his literary works in the German language, and most of his fiction is set in Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America.

The Night Visitor and Other Stories, a collection of Traven’s short fiction, was published in 1966 by the American publisher Hill and Wang. Some of the volume’s ten stories had been previously published in a German-language collection entitled Der Busch, published in 1928. One story, “The Cattle Drive” is an excerpt from Traven’s debut novel The Cotton-Pickers (1926). As is typical of Traven’s work, all of the stories in this volume take place in Mexico.

Two of the stories included here are longer and more substantial than the other eight. In “The Night Visitor,” an American farmer in Mexico loses himself in his neighbor’s extensive library and becomes obsessed with pre-Columbian Mexican history. “Macario” has the feeling of an old Mexican folktale that Traven has adapted for modern readers through some O. Henry-esque storytelling. The title character, a poor, overworked woodchopper, has one great desire in life: to eat a roasted turkey all by himself. This humorous story takes some wonderfully unexpected turns. In both these selections, Traven inserts some supernatural elements that create a Twilight Zone effect. He doesn’t overdo it, however, to the point where these tales venture into the horror or fantasy genres. Of the book’s shorter entries, the aforementioned “The Cattle Drive” and the comical “When the Priest Is Not at Home” are both very vividly rendered and engaging stories.

The American writer whom Traven most calls to mind, stylistically and philosophically, is Jack London. London spent a few years in Alaska and the Yukon Territory during the Klondike Gold Rush and was able to parlay that experience into half a career’s worth of novels and stories. He brought the Klondike alive for armchair readers who would never venture there. Traven does the same for Mexico. Both writers depict their chosen settings in a naturalistically realist style but draw romantic touches from regional folklore and legends. London was a socialist; Traven an anarchist. Both often feature proletarian themes and critiques of capitalism in their fiction. Later in his career, London did travel to Mexico and wrote one excellent story set there, entitled “The Mexican.” Traven, however, is the best writer of fiction about Mexico who’s not actually Mexican. Katherine Anne Porter might be his only real competition in English-language literature.

Traven’s writing on Mexico is more than just typical tourist fare. He really makes an effort to understand and interpret the culture, mindset, and spirit of the Mexican people, including the nation’s Indigenous inhabitants. As a Mexicophile myself, I appreciate that Traven gives Mexico the same attention and consideration that countless other authors have given to Paris or London. Traven’s work sometimes resembles the writings of the great Mexican author Juan Rulfo, whose landmark collection of short stories, The Burning Plain, was published in 1953. In general, the stories here in The Night Visitor are more lighthearted than Rulfo’s, but they share a similar grittily authentic, sometimes eerie atmosphere and a respect for the Mexican peasant, the Indian, and the working man. For an American reader, it is surprising that it takes a German author to reveal Mexico to the non-Latino. These enchanting stories make one wonder why more authors from the U.S. haven’t ventured south of the border for literary inspiration.

Stories in this collection

The Night Visitor

Effective Medicine

Assembly Line

The Cattle Drive

When the Priest Is Not at Home

Midnight Call

A New God Was Born

Friendship

Conversion of Some Indians

Macario