I’m rereading The World Beyond the Hill (1989) by Alexei and Cory Panshin. It’s a brilliant, Hugo award-winning work (1990), that chronicles the Golden Age of Astounding Science-Fiction by focusing on John W. Campbell, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and A. E. Van Vogt. If that sounds similar to Alec Nevala-Lee’s recent Hugo award-nominated book Astounding you’d be right. But each book tells a very different story covering the same history. Nevala-Lee felt L. Ron Hubbard was the big fourth rather than Van Vogt. The Panshins work to explain science fiction’s literary evolution in a historical context leaving you feeling their book is primary about science fiction. Whereas Nevala-Lee works to describe the psychology of the men who wrote this science fiction, leaving you feeling its a biography of these men. You need to read both books to get the big picture.

I’ve been a Heinlein fan since I was 12, but mostly for the work he wrote in the 1950s. Rereading The World Beyond the Hill inspires me to study Heinlein’s stories from the 1940s. The Panshins often point out there were contextual differences between the magazine publications and book publications, sometimes reflecting changes in Heinlein’s personal philosophy. The Panshins make a great case that Heinlein was doing truly groundbreaking SF writing in the 1940s that reshaped the genre. And they explain how John W. Campbell worked with Heinlein, Asimov, and Van Vogt to push science fiction in new directions.

I worry that the current attacks on Campbell’s many faults forget to consider his virtues. I believe anyone who vilifies Campbell because of the Nevala-Lee’s book should also give Campbell a fair shake by reading The World Beyond the Hill. I’m less concerned with the biographies of these men than how science fiction developed. After I finish rereading The World Beyond the Hill I plan to read The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein by Farah Mendlesohn.

The Panshins made a great case for how exciting science fiction was during the early years of Campbell’s editorship, especially regarding Heinlein. Their descriptions of Heinlein’s early stories reveal far more than I got when I read them. I’ve decided they deserve a close rereading.

The Panshins quote from Heinlein’s July 1941 Guest of Honor speech at the third Worldcon in Denver:

There won’t always be an England—nor a Germany, nor a United States, nor a Baptist Church, nor monogamy, nor the Democratic Party, nor the modesty tabu, nor the superiority of the white race, nor aeroplanes—they will go—nor automobiles—they’ll be gone, we’ll see them go. Any custom, technique, institution, belief, or social structure that we see around us today will change, will pass, and most of them we will see change and pass.

Heinlein worked to illustrate that in his early stories, especially the ones he called Future History stories. Later on Heinlein would admit his particular extrapolations were wrong, but I believe the essence of science fiction is the attempt to imagine such change.

As I read these books about Heinlein I want to study his development by rereading the stories as they were published. I looked around for a convenient list of them in chronological order but didn’t find any that I liked. So I made one.

Just looking at this list shows how productive Heinlein was in the 1940s, especially 1941.

James Wallace Harris, 11/5/19