Benevolent Misanthropy

Though I’m a big fan of Robert A. Heinlein, I never read his juveniles until I was in my early twenties. I began him with Starship Troopers (okay, written with the intention of being one of the juveniles) at around twelve years old, devoured much of his adult material through the age of seventeen or so (imagine the shock of reading Stranger in a Strange Land at fifteen!), then moved on to other authors for a bit. My mature teenaged ego decided I was above “juveniles”. Also, there was no chance of sex in them.

So when I did read them, by crackey, they were good! Granted, no sex, but great fun nevertheless.

So here’s an Andre Norton juvenile and, by gum, it’s right up there with old Uncle Bob’s best.

Ross Murdock is a youthful delinquent in “the first quarter of the twenty-first century”, facing a hefty sentence for his latest transgression. The judge, an old enemy, is forced to give him a choice: the sentence, or “volunteering” to serve his country on a special project. Murdock, seeing the judge’s displeasure at having to offer the option, immediately volunteers, and is whisked off in a helicopter, then a rocket plane, to an undisclosed, snowy location.

Turns out that the Russkies have become the enemy again (more on that in a bit), that they’ve discovered time travel, and have been bringing advanced technology from the past to the present, though no one knows from when or whom. Murdock has signed on, unknowingly, with the American effort to trace the Russians back through time to discover their secrets. In a matter of months (or just the space between chapters), he’s on his maiden time voyage, acting as a member of a trading people under guidance of another agent, around 2000 BC on the island that would become Britain.

The project is to send people to different pre-historical and historical periods, have them pose as traders and keep their ears open for any hint of the foreign presence of other time travellers. They keep well away from important historical peoples and places, and believe that the enemy does, too, so as not to upset the course of history.

Unfortunately when Ross and his mentor arrive at the trading post maintained by another American under cover, they get unwelcome confirmation of the Russians’ presence — the post has been destroyed. Bombed, in fact, during the night.

I’m not going to spoil the rest, because it’s all good fun.

Norton’s plotting is top-notch. This is a romance (in the old sense, i.e., an adventure), and it manages not to feel hackneyed or expected in any way, excepting those to be expected from a book written for the juvenile market in 1958. There’s a little bit of luck, both good and bad, but nothing outrageous as you might find in old Gothic romances, including Frankenstein. And several times, Murdock finds himself up a creek without a paddle (without even a raft, in one instance), and has to improvise an entirely new course of action. The wonder of it is that it all feels unplanned, unlike most modern thrillers. There’s no easy set up for him to take, he’s got to work and take chances, and sometimes those chances turn out badly. (There are a couple of instances of him “forgetting” pertinent information that was obviously important, but this was written for young boys, and he has the excuse of not fully commanding his faculties each time it happens.)

So, if you like adventure, derring-do, and a guide on how to survive being left on a glacier to die from exposure, by all means either buy this or download it. It’s a pip.

***

I mentioned that the Russkies are the black hats here, Andre Norton was either stunningly prescient, or Baen Books has engaged in a bit of (ahem) Soviet revisionism. From Chapter 4:

“Once Greater Russia emerged from the wreckage of the old Soviet Union and started gobbling up its neighbors, joint space ventures were out of the question. But they didn’t start a new space race, either. Not that we’ve sent men to the moon ourselves—” the major’s voice tightened “—in more years than I care to count. So why weren’t they interested in taking the high ground?”

That’s two remarkably accurate predictions about our present from 1958, and a third that might come true depending on which direction Putin is taking Russia this week.

Though there is no indication of an update in Baen’s web edition, it strikes me as far more likely that updates were made (with, one hopes, Miss Norton’s approval). Jim Baen is an avid partisan for returning to space, and other reissues under his aegis have sported revisions and updates, albeit usually with an acknowledgement of the changes (see, e.g., Charles Sheffield’s My Brother’s Keeper; and The Mind Pool, a rather thorough update and expansion of The Nimrod Hunt).

While I understand the reasoning behind such decisions, I disagree with it. There are some readers, apparently, who are unwilling to read an “old” book, and who will drop one as irrelevant if they find references in it that are out of date.

To me, however, there’s something indescribably charming about sliderules in space, and all the rest of the anachronisms which crop up in old science fiction. Heinlein’s little masterpiece The Man Who Sold The Moon would gain nothing by altering it to acknowedge that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, and got there by government effort, making Delos D. Harriman merely the head of the first successful private effort. The novels of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, or Edgar Rice Burroughs are all fine reads without any need of update. In fact, in some cases such updates would harm them immensely. (Note: Nevertheless, I await Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp’s update of War of the Worlds with great anticipation.)

There are even some paperback editions of Dashiell Hammett’s novels that “update” the dates characters give to make them “current”, current in that case being the late 1960s or early 1970s, I believe.

None of the changes here really do much harm, and the atmosphere of Cold War tension comes through undiluted, but were they truly necessary? I think not, but somebody at Baen apparently disagreed with me.

That, or, as noted, Andre Norton was a woman with a remarkable sense of fivesight (which, as anyone knows, is just a little bit better than foresight).