What Star Trek Owes To Robert Heinlein

HughPickens.com writes: As we come up on the 50th anniversary of the original Star Trek, Manu Saudia, author of Trekonomics, has an interesting article on BoingBoing about how according to Gene Roddenberry himself, no author had more influence on The Original Star Trek than Robert Heinlein, and more specifically his juvenile novel Space Cadet. That book, published in 1948, is considered a classic. It is a bildungsroman, retelling the education of young Matt Dodson from Iowa, who joins the Space Patrol and becomes a man. (In a homage from Roddenberry, Star Trek's Captain James Tiberius Kirk is also from Iowa.) The Space Patrol is a prototype of Starfleet: it is a multiracial, multinational institution, entrusted with keeping the peace in the solar system. In Space Cadet, Heinlein portrayed a society where racism had been overcome. Not unlike Starfleet, the Space Patrol was supposed to be a force for good. According to Saudia, the hierarchical structure and naval ranks of the first Star Trek series (a reflection of Heinlein's Annapolis days) were geared to appeal to Heinlein's readers and demographics, all these starry-eyed kids who, like Roddenberry himself, had read Space Cadet and Have Spacesuit -- Will Travel. Nobody cared about your sex or the color of your skin as long as you were willing to sign up for the Space Patrol or Starship Troopers' Federal service. Where it gets a little weird is that Heinlein's Space Patrol controls nuclear warheads in orbit around Earth, and its mission is to nuke any country that has been tempted to go to war with its neighbors. This supranational body in charge of deterrence, enforcing peace and democracy on the home planet by the threat of annihilation, was an extrapolation of what could potentially be achieved if you combined the UN charter with mutually assured destruction. "The fat finger on the nuclear trigger makes it a very doubtful proposition," concludes Saudia. "The Space Patrol, autonomous and unaccountable, is the opposite of the kind democratic and open society championed by Star Trek."

Comments

Heinlein, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and TOS

[SeattleLawGuy]

Shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young.

Heinlein's The Long Watch is well worth a read. A quick story, but powerful, if you appreciate the implications of technological power and in particular of atomic fission for human society and for the human condition.

The original Day the Earth Stood Still came out just a few years later and also embraces the concept of absolute power used to prevent the ultimate war. There is a wisdom to it. "We do not claim to have achieved perfection. But we do have a system. And it works."

Trek was more hopeful than Heinlein about the institutions of mankind, about building a society stronger together than apart. But there is a strong streak of Heinlein in it, especially in TOS.

It's only weird looking at it from 2016 based eyes

[mykepredko]

Manu Saadia, the writer of the article, clearly has not read a lot of late '40s, 1950s or even early 60's science fiction.

In the books of the early nuclear age, it's not unusual to read about individuals and organizations having control over nuclear weapons or "radioactive energies" that are derived from them. Along with Heinlein (don't forget Johnny Rico carried nuclear weapons in "Starship Troopers"), Frederick Pohl, A.E. van Vogt, Andre Norton, H. Beam Piper and others all wrote stories about various organizations (governmental and otherwise) building, storing and using nuclear weapons. A lot of these authors have stories that would be considered appalling in their use of nuclear weapons when read through today's eyes - in them, they generally are seen as part of an arsenal, very efficient compared to other weapons, but not see with the same feeling of horror that we have now.

To be fair, a number of the authors of the time (notably Asimov, Clarke and Bradbury) saw nuclear weapons as being world/civilization/life enders and wrote stories with these themes at the same time.

Space Patrol Unsatisfactory

[steveha]

Heinlein wrote a very far-sighted story -- in 1941! -- called "Solution Unsatisfactory" that imagined a deadly weapon, "nuclear dust". Just drop the dust from an ordinary bomber, and anyone who breathes or touches the dust dies. All the animals and plants die too; the land becomes uninhabitable until the radiation dies away after many many years. Such an awful, ultimate weapon posed a grave threat to all of humanity; the solution was to form the "Peace Patrol" and recruit its members from all around the world. And if any country became a threat to world peace, the Patrol could bomb with radioactive dust; the Patrol was specifically created as a neutral and accountable organization with no specific loyalty (as an organization) to any single country. The climax of the story was when a new President of the United States wanted to use the dust to conquer the world, and the Patrol was ready to dust-bomb Washington D.C. (or in other words, treat the USA exactly as any other threat to world peace would be treated). The bombers were already in the air, ready to drop dust, and the crew of the bombers contained only non-Americans, specifically to avoid asking any Americans to bomb their own country. (Standard operating procedure for the Patrol; no English would be asked to bomb England, no Chinese would be asked to bomb China, etc.)

The story presented this Patrol as an unsatisfactory solution to the problems caused by the existence of "radioactive dust" weapons, but no better solution was available.

The Space Patrol being discussed here was invented by Heinlein as a direct descendant of the original Peace Patrol, but now patrolling in space. (As was typical of SF from that era, Mars and Venus were imagined to be habitable and contain alien races.)

So, the Space Patrol "is the opposite of the kind democratic and open society championed by Star Trek"? Considering that it was explicitly a military organization devoted to peacekeeping and given a monopoly on the most awful destructive power available, it's hardly a surprise that it was neither democratic nor a society.

Gene Roddenberry loved a Utopian vision of the future. In Star Trek: The Next Generation the characters claimed that the Federation no longer needs or uses money, which seems unlikely in the extreme to me. Heinlein had a more libertarian and much more individualistic bent than Roddenberry, and his Utopias were different from Star Trek.

However, a major theme of the novel was to respect the culture of others. There was an entertaining subplot where one cadet wanted to eat pie with his hands, and was ordered to eat with a fork, and it was intended as a small lesson toward learning the big lesson that manners vary according to where you are, and respecting the local culture wherever you are. There are obvious parallels with "the Prime Directive" but I can't imagine Heinlein ever going so stupid as some of the Next Generation Prime Directive episodes. ("Oh no, this planet is about to be destroyed and all the intelligent native people will die. But we can't save them without violating The Prime Directive!" "Guess we'll just have to let them die, then." Okay, they didn't, but they felt the Prime Directive was more important than saving the native people. Lucky for them there were so few natives that they were able to fit them all into the Holodeck and convince them they were still on their own planet!)

The other major theme, which this novel shares with Starship Troopers, is that it is a highly moral act to put the needs of others above your own needs. It's easy for people to look out for themselves; it's not much of a stretch to look out for your own children. It's higher morals to put the good of your country above your own good, and even higher morals to put the good of humanity above the good of any single country. The Space Patrol was entrusted with the most powerful weapons and expected to use them only to preserve the peace, and to preserve it no matter who was threatening it.

Re:Space Patrol Unsatisfactory

[MrKaos]

Heinlein wrote a very far-sighted story -- in 1941! -- called "Solution Unsatisfactory" that imagined a deadly weapon, "nuclear dust". Just drop the dust from an ordinary bomber, and anyone who breathes or touches the dust dies. All the animals and plants die too; the land becomes uninhabitable until the radiation dies away after many many years.

It's not very far away from fictional. You might be interested in [pdf warning, 2 pages] Project Pluto which was a supersonic nuclear powered ramjet cruise missle. Essentially the reactor that powered the missile was also the warhead.

Part of it's offensive plan was to simply fly, supersonically, at low altitudes where its shockwave would destroy anything underneath it and the radiation from its engine exhaust would also cause death to anything that survived its multi mach wake. It could effectively fly for weeks doing damage until it ran out of enough engine power to maintain altitude and it would then hit it's target with the now highly radioactive contents of its engines and explode.

Fortunately plans were shelved for this truely diabolical weapon as it would "deafen, flatten, and irradiate" allies enroute to the target.

Re:Space Patrol Unsatisfactory

[steveha]

The moment you invent a replicator, money becomes worthless

Not so. A replicator would certainly render coins and paper money worthless, and would as you note mean that people could make many things rather than buying them.

The future of money may well be Bitcoin and such, but money there will be.

Suppose you want to build a house on a plot of land right on a beach with a view. Other people would like to build there too... who gets it? That's easy: someone buys it, with money.

Suppose you want to go to a concert, in person, rather than watching it in your personal holodeck or whatever. There are a limited number of seats. Who gets those seats? That's easy: tickets cost money.

Suppose you want a human being to come and watch your pets while you travel, and you don't want to impose on your friends all the time. Why would a person take their valuable time to do you a favor? That's easy: you agree to pay the person.

There will always be things and services that cost money, even in a post-scarcity civilization. The replicators may mean that common items are so inexpensive that everyone can have them, but they can't make everything. (We don't even have to imagine Star Trek-style replicators... molecular nanotechnology may make it easy to create things out of carbon: carbon fibre and diamond and such. Imagine a world where brass was more expensive than diamond. I wonder what the feedstocks are for replicators, but it's certainly easy to get carbon.)

P.S. Elf Sternberg wrote a bunch of NSFW science fiction, and I think some of his world-building ideas were spot on. In particular, he imagined that young people would wear replicated or mass-produced clothes and shoes, but as people got older they would accumulate more and more unique things. For example, you might get a present, a nifty hand-made leather jacket, and start wearing that rather than a replicated jacket. This was especially likely as he imagined the whole economy running mostly as a gift economy. In a society that has defeated aging, all the adults look about 20 years old; you may spot the older people more by their unusual hand-crafted items than by their appearance. I think he may have underestimated how diverse the young people might look though, as even today clothes are inexpensive enough that even teens can dress themselves up in ways to stand out.

Re:It's only weird looking at it from 2016 based e

[DNS-and-BIND]

In the 1930s, chemical warfare was looked on the same way. It was just assumed that the next war would be chemical. Remember all the gas masks that were issued during the London Blitz? It looks bizarre to modern eyes as chemical weapons were not used during WWII but everyone certainly expected it. The only ones who actually used chemical weapons were the Italians invading Ethiopia, a conflict mostly forgotten today. To the extent the 30s are remembered, it is for the Spanish Civil War and little else.