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ninj's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.75
So it's actually two stories in one. The first involves a super-agent, with a lot of philosophical discussion on humans and abilities and where things all might go. If you let yourself slide into that ... it's not bad. The second story is about a bunch of people grouping up and then all going off on different time/dimensional adventures. It was fairly meh, and not a lot that was engaging, honestly.
markyon's review
4.0
So here’s an addendum to my reread of old Heinlein novels. It’s a remarkably slim novel of 128 pages, admittedly small print, and a mere two stories, one of which is a novella. It was found in a pile as one that I read about 40 years ago, and one that in the Virginia Editions that has been combined with other stories to make a bigger volume. (I also have a Volume 2 in paperback from about 1980 that I might tackle at some point.)
But I love the Tim White cover on my NEL paperback (picture above), so I’m going to review that edition.
The first story is the longest – 88 pages in a 128 page book. Gulf tells of Captain Joseph (Joe) Gilead, initially an agent for the Federal Bureau of Security, who finds himself on a mission to transport three microfilm spools containing details about a doomsday weapon a bomb which creates the Nova Effect. He is followed and after a long chase is eventually captured, but not after sending the films in secret through the post.
Gilead is sprung by another captor, Gregory “Kettle Belly” Baldwin, who we later discover is there by choice to contact Gilead. Gilead returns to the FBS to find that the microfilm has gone missing. He resigns by hitting his boss, Bonn, and meets up again with Baldwin who reveals to him a big reveal – that Gilead like Baldwin and others of his group are really super-human – the next evolutionary stage for humans. Gilead has been rescued because Baldwin thinks that he is one of them, something which Gilead finds preposterous.
However, this superhuman development is not one of muscle, but of brain. As Gilead undergoes testing and training, learning new techniques such as a new language called Speedtalk and using other ideas originated by Dr Samuel Renshaw (who proved that most people use about a fifth of their senses through their lives), Gilead comes around to the idea he once saw as unbelievable. He falls in love with mentor Gail and together they go on a mission to retrieve or disable the doomsday device, now hidden on the Moon.
First published in 1949, Gulf has the feel of a Cold War espionage story and the pace of a James Bond novel.
What I found interesting is that it is one of those stories that fits between the two types of Heinlein I notice. Gulf is clearly not a juvenile story - there's a shocking execution of an innocent character in this book, for example - but it also does not quite fall victim to the lengthy diatribes so noticeable towards the end of his career – although there are signs of what is to come.
At the time of publication there were many stories of supermen – Olaf Stapledon’s odd Odd John (1935), the Superman comic hero from 1938 – present, A E van Vogt’s Slan (first published 1940), and possibly even Heinlein’s Lazarus Long (Methuselah’s Children, first published 1941) for example. This is Heinlein’s riposte – a taking down of the superhero type and replacing him/them with a person built on science and reasoning, with new ways of processing things and creating things.
It also reads as if it was written directly for John W Campbell, with the idea that human brains evolve into something superior, something that was a strong opinion of Campbell’s. It is no surprise that this was first published in the November and December 1949 issues of Astounding, based on a joke by editor Campbell. Back in November 1948, Campbell published a letter from a reader that amusingly created a fictional issue with totally made-up titles for November 1949, which included one by Heinlein called “Gulf”. The idea of the November 1949 issue was to include stories written by the authors with those titles. This was Heinlein’s effort, which was originally another story that became too big for the confines of a novella and was shelved to later become the inspiration for A Stranger in a Strange Land. For this inspiration came when Heinlein asked his wife Ginny, “What makes a superman?” Her reply was “He thinks better.”
At times, this idea of evolved super-humans veers towards the arrogant and superior – why is it that Baldwin and people like him can make decisions and steer the future of the Human race with the infallible conviction that they are right?
The middle part of the story is Heinlein in harangue mode as Baldwin explains all of this to Gilead in one ginormous information-dump. Though not as extreme as later writing, and for me not as annoying as in Methuselah’s Children, it shows us the initial stages of that worrying trend, that “Heinlein wants to tell”. It also has that feeling of “Here’s where I did my research”, being where Gilead through Baldwin has everything explained to him about the future humans and the ideas of Dr Samuel Renshaw. It’s an idea that he’ll come back to again as well, using Renshaw techniques in Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) and Stranger in a Strange Land (1961).
To get the story across we also have that clumpy dialogue style that Heinlein seems to have inherited and developed from EE “Doc” Smith, although to be fair it was fairly common in the 1940s. It’s fast-paced, chatty even – but reads to contemporary readers as too rehearsed, too slick. To me it reads as if it was straight out of a gangster movie :
There’s some cool things in there as well. Heinlein is good at throwing in ideas that are not explained too often, but are there when you think about it. In Gulf there’s a Moonbase where life seems as normal as that of an airport terminal, and a card trick used to send messages that involves some magician’s knowledge and sleight of hand, that shows us how good Heinlein was at this. There’s also surprising future predictions. Although there is still a postal service (no Internet here) Heinlein has his hero forge postal identification stamps that seem very close to our own QR code stamps.
Overall, Gulf is a superior piece of early Heinlein writing. Miles above his contemporaries and despite its age on the while it mainly holds up, with some minor caveats as mentioned above. I understand that it is one of Heinlein’s most reprinted stories. It shows many of his strengths and some of his weaknesses, but is one of his better short stories.
The second story in the book is Elsewhen. First published in 1941 under the pen-name of Caleb Saunders in Astounding Magazine, it is a story that introduces an idea that is quite common in sf today - that of multiple universes. It concerns Professor Arthur Frost, who is arrested in connection with the disappearance of five of his Philosophy students. When put into the police wagon the Professor himself disappears. We discover in the story that Frost has discovered a way through self-hypnosis for people to be physically transported through time to a different place. These students have agreed to try the experiment and as a result have travelled to different places of their choice at different points in time.
The story looks at what happens to each of the five students when they travel. Interestingly, the first character to return, the religious Martha Ross, was not in the original magazine version. Perhaps too controversial for the magazine at the time, she returns as an angel. Personally, I could’ve read and even preferred this without her character, but it is an interesting addition by Heinlein.
At the beginning the story feels similar to Heinlein’s first published story, Lifeline (published 1939) and it is fair to say that here Heinlein is still finding his feet as a writer. Neverwhen does not have the confidence and swagger of the writer who wrote Gulf eight years later. On the plus side, it is more direct and less prone to the wanderings Heinlein is allowed in his later writing.
In fact, although Elsewhen is the shorter story of the two in this book, it is one that I think Heinlein could have made into a bigger novel. Many of the student’s experiences are reduced to a couple of sentences, when the author could easily have expanded on them.
It would perhaps be wrong of me to not point out that when Heinlein does return to such an idea, as he does with The Number of the Beast and To Sail the Sunset, not to mention The Pursuit of the Pankera, the end results (for me, anyway) are spectacularly unsuccessful. (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls I enjoyed slightly, but only slightly, more.)
With this in mind, and with the point that Elsewhen leaves the reader wanting more, to me it is a relative success.
Though short, this first volume of Assignment in Eternity was a generally positive read and a read worth finishing. Whilst I still don’t understand why the book is so short, as a sampler book of early Heinlein it has some of his better efforts.
I might just pick up Volume 2….
But I love the Tim White cover on my NEL paperback (picture above), so I’m going to review that edition.
The first story is the longest – 88 pages in a 128 page book. Gulf tells of Captain Joseph (Joe) Gilead, initially an agent for the Federal Bureau of Security, who finds himself on a mission to transport three microfilm spools containing details about a doomsday weapon a bomb which creates the Nova Effect. He is followed and after a long chase is eventually captured, but not after sending the films in secret through the post.
Gilead is sprung by another captor, Gregory “Kettle Belly” Baldwin, who we later discover is there by choice to contact Gilead. Gilead returns to the FBS to find that the microfilm has gone missing. He resigns by hitting his boss, Bonn, and meets up again with Baldwin who reveals to him a big reveal – that Gilead like Baldwin and others of his group are really super-human – the next evolutionary stage for humans. Gilead has been rescued because Baldwin thinks that he is one of them, something which Gilead finds preposterous.
However, this superhuman development is not one of muscle, but of brain. As Gilead undergoes testing and training, learning new techniques such as a new language called Speedtalk and using other ideas originated by Dr Samuel Renshaw (who proved that most people use about a fifth of their senses through their lives), Gilead comes around to the idea he once saw as unbelievable. He falls in love with mentor Gail and together they go on a mission to retrieve or disable the doomsday device, now hidden on the Moon.
First published in 1949, Gulf has the feel of a Cold War espionage story and the pace of a James Bond novel.
What I found interesting is that it is one of those stories that fits between the two types of Heinlein I notice. Gulf is clearly not a juvenile story - there's a shocking execution of an innocent character in this book, for example - but it also does not quite fall victim to the lengthy diatribes so noticeable towards the end of his career – although there are signs of what is to come.
At the time of publication there were many stories of supermen – Olaf Stapledon’s odd Odd John (1935), the Superman comic hero from 1938 – present, A E van Vogt’s Slan (first published 1940), and possibly even Heinlein’s Lazarus Long (Methuselah’s Children, first published 1941) for example. This is Heinlein’s riposte – a taking down of the superhero type and replacing him/them with a person built on science and reasoning, with new ways of processing things and creating things.
It also reads as if it was written directly for John W Campbell, with the idea that human brains evolve into something superior, something that was a strong opinion of Campbell’s. It is no surprise that this was first published in the November and December 1949 issues of Astounding, based on a joke by editor Campbell. Back in November 1948, Campbell published a letter from a reader that amusingly created a fictional issue with totally made-up titles for November 1949, which included one by Heinlein called “Gulf”. The idea of the November 1949 issue was to include stories written by the authors with those titles. This was Heinlein’s effort, which was originally another story that became too big for the confines of a novella and was shelved to later become the inspiration for A Stranger in a Strange Land. For this inspiration came when Heinlein asked his wife Ginny, “What makes a superman?” Her reply was “He thinks better.”
At times, this idea of evolved super-humans veers towards the arrogant and superior – why is it that Baldwin and people like him can make decisions and steer the future of the Human race with the infallible conviction that they are right?
The middle part of the story is Heinlein in harangue mode as Baldwin explains all of this to Gilead in one ginormous information-dump. Though not as extreme as later writing, and for me not as annoying as in Methuselah’s Children, it shows us the initial stages of that worrying trend, that “Heinlein wants to tell”. It also has that feeling of “Here’s where I did my research”, being where Gilead through Baldwin has everything explained to him about the future humans and the ideas of Dr Samuel Renshaw. It’s an idea that he’ll come back to again as well, using Renshaw techniques in Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) and Stranger in a Strange Land (1961).
To get the story across we also have that clumpy dialogue style that Heinlein seems to have inherited and developed from EE “Doc” Smith, although to be fair it was fairly common in the 1940s. It’s fast-paced, chatty even – but reads to contemporary readers as too rehearsed, too slick. To me it reads as if it was straight out of a gangster movie :
“Now, Joe – I like you and I’m truly sorry you’re in a jam. You led wrong a couple of times and I was obliged to trump, as the stakes were high. See here, I feel that I owe you something; what do you say to this: we’ll fix you up with a brand-new personality, vacuum tight – even new fingerprints if you want them. Pick any spot on the globe you like and any occupation; we’ll supply all the money you need to start over – or money enough to retire and play with the cuties the rest of your life.
What do you say?”
There’s some cool things in there as well. Heinlein is good at throwing in ideas that are not explained too often, but are there when you think about it. In Gulf there’s a Moonbase where life seems as normal as that of an airport terminal, and a card trick used to send messages that involves some magician’s knowledge and sleight of hand, that shows us how good Heinlein was at this. There’s also surprising future predictions. Although there is still a postal service (no Internet here) Heinlein has his hero forge postal identification stamps that seem very close to our own QR code stamps.
Overall, Gulf is a superior piece of early Heinlein writing. Miles above his contemporaries and despite its age on the while it mainly holds up, with some minor caveats as mentioned above. I understand that it is one of Heinlein’s most reprinted stories. It shows many of his strengths and some of his weaknesses, but is one of his better short stories.
The second story in the book is Elsewhen. First published in 1941 under the pen-name of Caleb Saunders in Astounding Magazine, it is a story that introduces an idea that is quite common in sf today - that of multiple universes. It concerns Professor Arthur Frost, who is arrested in connection with the disappearance of five of his Philosophy students. When put into the police wagon the Professor himself disappears. We discover in the story that Frost has discovered a way through self-hypnosis for people to be physically transported through time to a different place. These students have agreed to try the experiment and as a result have travelled to different places of their choice at different points in time.
The story looks at what happens to each of the five students when they travel. Interestingly, the first character to return, the religious Martha Ross, was not in the original magazine version. Perhaps too controversial for the magazine at the time, she returns as an angel. Personally, I could’ve read and even preferred this without her character, but it is an interesting addition by Heinlein.
At the beginning the story feels similar to Heinlein’s first published story, Lifeline (published 1939) and it is fair to say that here Heinlein is still finding his feet as a writer. Neverwhen does not have the confidence and swagger of the writer who wrote Gulf eight years later. On the plus side, it is more direct and less prone to the wanderings Heinlein is allowed in his later writing.
In fact, although Elsewhen is the shorter story of the two in this book, it is one that I think Heinlein could have made into a bigger novel. Many of the student’s experiences are reduced to a couple of sentences, when the author could easily have expanded on them.
It would perhaps be wrong of me to not point out that when Heinlein does return to such an idea, as he does with The Number of the Beast and To Sail the Sunset, not to mention The Pursuit of the Pankera, the end results (for me, anyway) are spectacularly unsuccessful. (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls I enjoyed slightly, but only slightly, more.)
With this in mind, and with the point that Elsewhen leaves the reader wanting more, to me it is a relative success.
Though short, this first volume of Assignment in Eternity was a generally positive read and a read worth finishing. Whilst I still don’t understand why the book is so short, as a sampler book of early Heinlein it has some of his better efforts.
I might just pick up Volume 2….
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