Short Stories by Robert A. Heinlein Vol 1 Part 16

I went skipping down the slope, not going anywhere in particular, the way the runt would have done. Then I stopped and looked back, to see if Mother and Daddy and d.i.c.kie had noticed me. I was being followed all right; Dr. Evans and Mr. Perrin were close behind me. I pretended that no one was looking and went on. I was pretty close to the first rock outcroppings by now and I ducked behind the first one I came to. It wasn't high enough to hide me but it would have covered the runt. It felt like what he would do; he loved to play hide-and-go-seek - it made him the center of attention.

I thought about it. When the runt played that game, his notion of hiding was always to crawl under something, a bed, or a sofa, or an automobile, or even under the sink. I looked around. There were a lot of good places; the rocks were filled with blow holes and overhangs. I started working them over. It seemed hopeless; there must have been a hundred such places right around close.

Mr. Perrin came up to me as I was crawling out of the fourth tight spot. "The men have shined flashlights around in every one of these places," he told me. "I don't think it's much use, Shorty."

"Okay," I said, but I kept at it. I knew I could get at spots a grown man couldn't reach; I just hoped the runt hadn't picked a spot I couldn't reach.

It went on and on and I was getting cold and stiff and terribly tired. The direct sunlight is hot on the Moon, but the second you get in the shade, it's cold. Down inside those rocks it never got warm at all. The suits they gave us tourists are well enough insulated, but the extra insulation is in the gloves and the boots and the seats of the pants-and I had been spending most of my time down on my stomach, wiggling into tight places.

I was so numb I could hardly move and my whole front felt icy. Besides, it gave me one more thing to worry about - how about the runt? Was he cold, too?

If it hadn't been for thinking how those fish looked and how, maybe, the runt would be frozen stiff before I could get to him, I would have quit. I was about beat. Besides, it's rather scary down inside those holes-you don't know what you'll come to next.

Dr. Evans took me by the arm as I came out of one of them, and touched his helmet to mine, so that I got his voice directly. "Might as well give up, son. You're knocking your self out and you haven't covered an acre." I pulled away from him.

The next place was a little overhang, not a foot off the ground. I flashed a light into it. It was empty and didn't seem to go anywhere. Then I saw there was a turn in it. I got down flat and wiggled in. The turn opened out a little and dropped off. I didn't think it was worthwhile to go any deeper as the runt wouldn't have crawled very far in the dark, but I scrunched ahead a little farther and flashed the light down.

I saw a boot sticking out.

That's about all there is to it. I nearly bashed in my helmet getting out of there, but I was dragging the runt after me. He was limp as a cat and his face was funny. Mr. Perrin and Dr. Evans were all over me as I came out, pounding me on the back and shouting. "Is he dead, Mr. Perrin?" I asked, when I could get my breath. "He looks awful bad."

Mr. Perrin looked him over. "No . . . I can see a pulse in his throat. Shock and exposure, but this suit was specially built-we'll get him back fast." He picked the runt up in his arms and I took out after him.

Ten minutes later the runt was wrapped in blankets and drinking hot cocoa. I had some, too. Everybody was talking at once and Mother was crying again, but she looked normal and Dad had filled out.

He tried to write out a check for Mr. Perrin, but he brushed it off. "I don't need any reward; your boy found him.

"You can do me just one favor-"

"Yes?" Dad was all honey.

"Stay off the Moon. You don't belong here; you're not the pioneer type."

Dad took it. "I've already promised my wife that," he said without batting an eye. "You needn't worry."

I followed Mr. Perrin as he left and said to him privately, "Mr. Perrin-I just wanted to tell you that I'll be back, if you don't mind."

He shook hands with me and said, "I know you will, Shorty."

GUEST OF HONOR SPEECH.

AT THE THIRD WORLD.

SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

DENVER, 1941.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE.

Here in my hand is the ma.n.u.script of f a speech. If it works out anything like the synopses I have used, this speech will still be left when I get through.

Before I start, I want to mention an idea that might be fun. It was an innovation in political speaking introduced in California by Upton Sinclair that raised Cain with the ordinary run of political speakers: answering questions from the platform. But I want to put one reservation on it, and that is that questions should be in writing, with names signed, so we can read them into the mike so that I can have clearly in mind what the questions are.

During the course of the last day or so, I have gathered the impression that quite a number of people are interested in the background of my stories; and; in some cases, in my social and political ideas, economic ideas, etc.-some of which, but not all, shows in my stories. Some of them have evidenced an interest in my own personal background. So, if the question comes along, I will do my best to answer it, perhaps dodging the embarra.s.sing ones a little.

To get to the talk itself: THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE. I was told that there was no time limit, so I a.s.sumed that he wanted my usual three hour speech. Or, perhaps, we can just keep going until the hall is cleared.

Forry (Ackerman) told you that I have been reading science fiction for a longtime. I have. I have been reading it as long as I could get hold of it, and I probably experienced much the same process most of you did: parental disapproval, those funny looks you get from friends, for reading "that kind of junk."

We here, the science fiction fans, are the lunatic fringe! We are the crazy fools who read that kind of stuff-who read those magazines with the outlandish machines and animals on the covers. You leave one around loose in your home and a friend will pick it up. Those who are not fans ask you if you really read that stuff, and from then on they look at you with suspicion.

Why do we do it? I think I know. This is an opinion, but it is probably why we like science fiction. It is not just for the adventure of the story itself-you can find that in other types of stories. To my mind it is because science fiction has as its strongest factor the single thing that separates the human race from other animals-I refer to a quality which has been termed "time-binding." With a hyphen. It's a term that may not have come to your attention. It is a technical term invented by Alfred Korzybski, and it refers to the fact that the human animal lives not only in the present, but also in the past and the future.

The human animal differs from all other animals only in this one respect. The definition includes both reading and writing. That is the primary technique whereby we are able to make records, to gather data and to look into the future. Other things we do that we think of as making us humans rather than animals-some animals have done at sometime. They form governments. They invent machines. Some animals even use money. I have not seen them doing it, but I have heard reports that I believe to be credible. But time-bind they do not do, to anything like the extent that the human race does.

Time-binding consists of making use of the mult.i.tudinous records of the past that we have. On the basis of those records, the data we have collected directly and the data that we get from others by means of time-binding techniques, including reading and writing, we are able to plan our future conduct. It means that we have lived mentally in the past and in the future, as well as in the present. That is certainly true of science fiction fans.

I like the term Future Fiction that Charlie Hornig gave it. It seems to me a little broader than Science Fiction because most of these stories are concerned with the future-what will happen.

In taking the future into account, trying to predict what it will be, and trying to make your plans accordingly, you are time-binding. The child-like person lives from day to day. The adult tries to plan for a year or two at least. Statesmen try to plan for perhaps twenty years or more. There are a few inst.i.tutions which plan for longer than the lives of men, as for example, the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution and the Catholic Church, that think not in terms of lifetimes, but in centuries. They make their plans that far ahead, and to some extent, make them work out.

Science fiction fans differ from most of the rest of the race by thinking in terms of racial magnitudes-not even centuries, but thousands of years. Stapledon thinks in terms of. . . how many years? How far does his time scale go? I don't know: the figures mean nothing to me,

That is what science fiction consists of-trying to figure out from the past and from the present what the future may be. In that we are behaving like human beings.

Now, all human beings time-bind to some extent when they try to discover the future. But most human beings-those who laugh at us for reading science fiction- time-bind, make their plans, make their predictions, only within the limits of their personal affairs. In that respect, they may try to predict for a year or two, make plans, even try to predict for their entire lifetimes, but they rarely try to predict in terms of the culture in which they live. In fact, most people, as compared with science fiction fans, have no conception whatsoever of the fact that the culture they live in does change, that it can change. Even though they may believe it with the top of their minds, they don't believe it way back in the thalamus, in their emotions.

Our grandfathers thought the horse could never be replaced by the auto. Four years after the Wright brothers first flew, they were still trying to get the War Department to come out to look at the airplane. And when one Major General did take a look at an airplane flying, he remarked that it was a very interesting scientific toy, but, of course, it had no possible military application! That was just a short time ago, a very short time.

You will hear that sort of thing around you all the time. I made use, a while ago, of a quotation I would like to use again, from 0. B. Shaw. Referring to Brittanicus in Caesar and Cleopatra, he said, "he is an outlander and a barbarian and he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature." That is what you are up against when you try to get most people to read science fiction. That is why they think you are crazy, because they believe that the customs of their tribe are the laws of nature, immutable and unchanging. They do not believe in changes.

Phrases like "There'll always be an England" are pleasant and inspiring at the present time, but we know better. There won't always be an England, nor a Germany, nor a United States, a Baptist Church, nor monogamy, nor the Democratic Party, nor the modesty taboo, nor the superiority of the white race, nor airplanes. Nor automobiles. They will go. They will be gone-we'll see them go. Any custom, inst.i.tution, belief, or social structure that we see around us today will change, will pa.s.s, and most of those we will see change and pa.s.s.

In science fiction, we try to envision what those changes might be. Our guesses are usually wrong; they are almost certain to be wrong. Some men, with a greater grasp on data than others, can do remarkably well. H. G. Wells, who probably knows more (on the order of ten times as much, or perhaps higher) than most science fiction writers, has been remarkably successful in some of his predictions. Most of us aren't that lucky;

I do not expect my so-called History of the Future to come to pa.s.s. I think some of the trends in it may show up, but I do not think that my factual predictions as such are going to come to pa.s.s, even in their broad outlines.

You speak of this sort of thing to an ordinary man- tell him that things are going to change-he will admit it, but he does not believe it at all. He believes it just with the top of his mind. He believes in "progress." He thinks things will get a little bit bigger, and louder, and brighter, a few more neon signs. But he does not believe that any actual change in the basic nature of the culture in which he lives, or its technology, will take place.

Airplanes he thinks are all right, but those crazy rocket ship things! Why, a rocket ship couldn't possibly fly. It hasn't got anything to PUSH on. That is the way he feels about it.

There will never be any rocket ships. That is all right for Buck Rogers in the funny papers. He does not believe that there could be rocket ships, nor does he believe that there will be things that will make rockets look like primitive gadgets that even the wildest of the science fiction writers have not been able to guess or think about. Rocket ships are about as far as I am willing to go because I have not got data enough to think about, to make a reasonable guess about the other forms of transportation or gadgets we may have.

But that same man did not believe in airplanes in 1910!

I have spoken primarily of mechanical changes because they are much easier to show, to point to, than the more subtle sociological changes, cultural changes, changes in our customs. Some of these can be pointed out. I would like to point out one of them right now. The word "syphilis" could not be used in public even as short a time as fifteen years ago.

Yet, as I used it here, I did not see any shock around the room-n.o.body minded it-even the Ladies' Home Journal runs articles on it. We are getting a little more civilized in that respect than we were twenty years ago. Our grandfathers considered that word indecent. They believed that things that were decent and indecent were subject to absolute rules, that they were laws of nature. The majority of people around us now believe that their criteria of decency and indecency are absolute, that they won't change, that there are some things that are right, and some things that are wrong. They do not know enough about past history to be able to make any predictions about the future.

I could think of some rude words to use in that connection, words that are still rude now. I think it quite possible that twenty years from now on this same platform I could use those words and not produce any shock around the room.