Robert A. Heinlein & Spider Robinson, Variable Star (Tor, 2006)
On November 14, 1955, Robert Anson Heinlein sat down at his desk and wrote an outline for a novel he first called The Stars Are A Clock. His outline filled at least 8 extremely dense pages. He also filled fourteen 3x5 index cards with extensive handwritten notes pertaining to the book. And then, for reasons only he could tell us, he closed the file and put it in a drawer, and never got around to writing that particular book. -- Spider Robinson, Afterword, Variable Star
Robert Anson Heinlein died in 1988, to the everlasting sorrow of the science fiction community. Among the millions of readers permanently influenced by his brilliance, imagination and vision was a young Spider Robinson -- who went on to become a first-rate science fiction writer himself. And in 2003, Spider Robinson received the long-lost notes for The Stars Are A Clock, and an invitation to produce that book, in posthumous collaboration with the late Robert Heinlein.
This is a dream come true for a writer, and potentially one for readers as well. It's also an assignment fraught with possibilities for horrendous error and disappointment. Robinson makes it very clear in his Afterword that he lived in terror for the two years it took to write the now-renamed Variable Star, a state surely not improved when he discovered that the eighth page of the original outline -- the one with the ending! -- had vanished over the intervening half-century.
But he has done a more than creditable job. This is a good book. It has action, adventure, humor and romance, futuristic throw-aways, Heinlein in-jokes, plentiful interior references to the rest of the canon, and interesting plots and characters. I am trying to avoid damning this with faint praise, because it really, really is a fine book. It just tried too hard to reproduce a unique voice, and it doesn't quite succeed.
The outline dates from the heyday of Heinlein's 'juvenile' novels, genuinely 'ripping tales' marketed for young adults. In keeping with those classic novels, the hero is poor-but-brilliant musician Joel Johnston, madly in love with the lovely Jinny on the day he graduates college. He's a Ganymede boy, in love with an Earth girl, but they both know nothing will stop them from setting the world(s) on fire together. They're wrong. Jinny turns out to have been hiding a huge and peculiar secret. She is the granddaughter of the richest, most powerful man in the Solar System, Conrad of Conrad: richer than Croesus, ruthless as a Caesar, implacable and unstoppable. He's actually in favor of the marriage, but he intends to re-mold Joel into a Conrad executive, not to mention stand him at stud for the next generation of Conrads. Joel is revolted and bolts for freedom, ultimately going on a memorable bender and signing on to the crew of a generational starship to escape. Good-bye Earth, career, and Jinny -- Joel is lighting out for the Territories, and even at 97% of light speed, it's going to take him 20 years to get there. There can be no return.
Nor is there. There's no cheating in this plot. The rest of the story takes place on the starship Sheffield, as Joel matures, changes, meets first personal challenges and then the ultimate challenge to the survival of the human race. The ending happens a little too fast, especially given that it is an enormous, Apocalyptic ending. In addition, coming as it does at the end of series of smaller disasters that endanger the expedition (in a fine, classic adventure sequence), it has almost more of a feel of anti-climax than uber-climax. A tiny voice at the back of my mind was muttering, 'All that and now the world ends?'
The voice is a little uneven, especially at the beginning, but before too long one can actually hear a Heinlein-esque cadence emerging more and more clearly. The voice, though, is not the voice of the classic juveniles, despite the beleaguered youthful hero. Robinson writes more in the multi-layered, character and philosophy driven style that characterized Heinlein's later work; I was particularly reminded of Job, partly because Joel (like Alexander Hergensheimer) is a bit of an ass. The philosophies expressed in the plot don't always ring, true, either. They sometimes have a rote, dutiful tone, as if they are in there as benchmarks for some of Heinlein's more notorious attitudes. In particular, the change in the characters from universal pacifism to fiery-eyed Homo Sap violence is unconvincing, and lacks Heinlein's own clear-eyed ruthlessness.
Perhaps the expectations of Heinlein's fans could simply not be perfectly met even by the stellar talents of Robinson. We were hoping for a miracle, after all. Nonetheless, I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. reading this book. It's that good. One of Robinson's stated goals was to write the "...best damned Spider Robinson book..." he possibly could. And he has succeeded; in fact, he has exceeded that goal. At times, the genuine voice of Robert Anson Heinlein comes through, in perfect harmony with Spider Robinson, deathless and dauntless and glorious to hear.
