Robert Heinlein

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Do you remember Scholastic Books? Jake, one of my student employees, informs me that they still exist. They sell cheap paperback books to public-school students. (In my day, it was maybe twenty-five cents. Jake tells me that, in his day – maybe ten years ago – it was more like $1.99. Still very cheap.)

 

 

Around the sixth grade or so – when I was ten years old – I acquired a Scholastic Books copy of Robert Heinlein’s “The Green Hills of Earth.”

 

 

It was my first science-fiction book, and it blew my ever-lovin’ ten-year-old mind.

 

 

It is a book of short stories, set mostly in the 21^st century. Earth has colonized the Moon and Mars and Venus. It’s full of –

 

 

Well, but was I remembering the stories correctly? I didn’t have my old copy to refer to, so I went on eBay and bought a cheap copy.

 

 

It turns out that I remember it very well.

 

 

It is extremely sexist. (A woman’s competence is summed up this way in one of the stories: “She can count to ten.”)

 

 

It manages to be xenobiologically racist. It describes the Venusian (alien) natives as silly amphibians who will do anything for tobacco, which they call “thigarek.” (“Cigarette.” Get it?)

 

 

Men are the heroes in these stories. They are burly, and they brawl. They have names like Sam Houston Jones and Humphrey Wingate and Johnny Dahlquist.

 

 

But there are glimmers of hope in these stories. The first story in the collection, “Delilah and the Space-Rigger,” is about how a woman can do as well as a man in space. Another, the title story, “The Green Hills of Earth,” is a subtle story of how the image of a rough Whitmanesque space poet was romanticized for the sake of the media. 

 

 

But the best story is the last one: “Logic of Empire.”

 

It’s the story of a Earthman who gets shanghaied and shipped to the Venus colony against his will, after claiming that the Earth government can’t possibly do such evil imperialistic things. 

 

 

Most chillingly of all, it predicts that American culture will be taken over by a Christian religious dictator, the “Prophet,” Nehemiah Scudder.

 

 

When I read this in the 1960s, the story seemed outrageously unlikely on all counts.

 

 

How does it sound to you now, kids?

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Movie review: "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"

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Partner and I saw “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” a few days ago.

 

 

Well, it's official: the human race is doomed. You may all just sit quietly and talk amongst yourselves until the apes take over.

 

 

I saw the original movies back in the 1970s. I remember all the stupid plot devices, and a few really good images and performances. I especially remember Kim Hunter as the tragic Zira, an intelligent alcoholic chimpanzee, mad with grief, dropping her baby off the side of a ship.

 

 

That baby – Caesar – is the star of the show in this new movie.

 

 

It's not quite the same story as the older version, but it's pretty close. It's full of little jokes and winks at us old folks who remember the older movies. The title, when it appears, is in the same font as the original 1968 movie. (People like me notice things like that.) “Bright Eyes” was the nickname Kim Hunter gave to Charlton Heston in the very first movie. (Charlton even makes a sort of cameo appearance in this movie!) We watch the blastoff of a spaceship called the Icarus. And we meet an ape named “Cornelia” (like “Cornelius,” which was the character played by Roddy MacDowall), and – best of all – an orangutan named “Maurice.” (In the 1968 movie, Doctor Zaius, the wise old orangutan, was played by Maurice Evans.)

 

 

So: lots of odds and ends to keep us older fans busy.

 

 

What's this movie like?

 

 

Sad, actually. Moving. It's about modern science, and corporate culture, and our overblown opinion of where we fit into the animal kingdom. It's about the contrast between human culture (over and over again represented by the Golden Gate Bridge) and nature (represented by the Muir Woods north of San Francisco).

 

 

It's all about feeling, and justice, and something we call “humanity,” which perhaps isn't necessarily the property of human beings after all.

 

 

And the fact that the CGI - and the really brilliant Andy Sirkis - show you recognizably human expressions on the faces of the apes enhances this enormously.  

 

 

Partner and I agreed after the movie: we were both rooting for the apes to win.

 

 

Because people are just awful.

 

 

But don't fret! The replacements are on the way!

 

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