Roddenberry and Heinlein

Wednesday, June 8th, 2016

Manu Saadia argues (in Trekonomics) that Roddenberry’s Star Trek was “above all, a critique of Robert Heinlein“:

According to Roddenberry himself, no author has had more influence on The Original Series than Robert Heinlein, and more specifically his juvenile novel Space Cadet. The book, published in 1948, is considered a classic. It is a bildungsroman, retelling the education of young Matt Dodson from Iowa, who joins the Space Patrol and becomes a man. There is a reason why Star Trek’s Captain Kirk is from Iowa. The Space Patrol is a prototype of Starfleet: it is a multiracial, multinational institution, entrusted with keeping the peace in the solar system.

Where it gets a little weird is that Heinlein’s Space Patrol controls nuclear warheads in orbit around Earth, and its mission is to nuke any country that has been tempted to go to war with its neighbors. This supranational body in charge of deterrence, enforcing peace and democracy on the home planet by the threat of annihilation, was an extrapolation of what could potentially be achieved if you combined the UN charter with mutually assured destruction. And all this in a book aimed at kids.

Such was the optimism Heinlein could muster at the time, and compared to his later works, Space Cadet is relatively happy and idealistic, if a bit sociopathic. It makes a lot of sense that it had inspired Roddenberry. In Space Cadet, Heinlein portrayed a society where racism had been overcome. Not unlike Starfleet, the Space Patrol was supposed to be a force for good. The fat finger on the nuclear trigger makes it a very doubtful proposition, however. The Space Patrol, autonomous and unaccountable, is the opposite of the kind democratic and open society championed by Star Trek.

The hierarchical structure and naval ranks of the first Star Trek series were geared to appeal to Heinlein’s readers and demographic, all these starry-eyed kids who, like Roddenberry himself, had read Space Cadet and Have Spacesuit — Will Travel. Star Trek used all the tropes of Heinlein but sanitized them. For instance, racial and gender equality were prominent features of Heinlein’s stories. Nobody cared about your sex or the color of your skin as long as you were willing to sign up for the Space Patrol or the Federal service. Starship Troopers‘ hero, Juan “Johnny” Rico, was Filipino. In that regard, Heinlein had undoubtedly paved the way for The Original Series’ integrated crew. From Space Cadet onward, he made it a new norm in science fiction that people of color and women (as in Starship Troopers) could also be protagonists.

Comments

  1. I get the impression from this excerpt that the author hasn’t actually read those Heinlein juveniles, or maybe they just didn’t pay much attention.

    The conflict between the Patrol’s incredible power (via the nuclear monopoly) and its humanitarian aims is one of the central subjects of the books; they’re an attempt to explain how such an organization might be made to not immediately start abusing it’s power.

    At the time, Heinlein thought that something like the Patrol, some super-national organization with a monopoly on nuclear weaponry, would be necessary to prevent the annihilation of the human race. He later moved on from that opinion.

  2. Purple Slog says:

    Written in 1948 — and it included the mobile phone idea! I loved this book. The Patrol was an outgrowth of the super-national organization that took over Nukes from Heinlein’s short story “Solution Unsatisfactory,” which was written early during WW2. It was about the development and use of atomic weapons (dirty bombs, not fission or fusion bombs) and the governing aftermath. I think “The Patrol” was in a few other short stories or at least was mentioned in passing.

  3. I loved that offhand mention of Matt talking to his dad via handheld mobile-phone, Purple Slog. A lot of Heinlein’s best moments were like that (à la “the door irised open”).

    The patrol was a subject of quite a few stories, many of which were about the social and organizational methods by which their impartiality were supposedly maintained, as well as one about one time when it almost failed.

    Clicking through Isegoria’s links, it looks like Manu Saadia is a not-very-bright utopian socialist, so I guess lack of penetrating analysis is to be expected.

  4. Space Nookie says:

    Fun fact: fans have determined that a photon torpedo would detonate with a force equal to 50 megatons of TNT. The original enterprise carried 400 such weapons. The phaser banks were able to destroy “half a continent in a concentrated bombardment”.

  5. Dan Kurt says:

    Was an avid science fiction reader during high school in the 1950s but never liked Heinlein much even though I read much of his works preferring A.E. van Vogt and others. Was in college and the service when Star Trek was on TV so I missed it also. Now in my 70s I have the time to re-read some of my saved novels and have discovered that my taste in literature has vastly expanded and that I should let the past alone and just be a memory as I re-read a few A.E. van Vogt works and was terribly disappointed.

  6. A.E. van Vogt had some interesting ideas, but his prose certainly left something to be desired.

    Have you given Gene Wolfe or Poul Anderson a try?

  7. Dan Kurt says:

    Never heard of Gene Wolfe. Just checked at Amazon and saw he appears to write fantasy, so that explains my lack of reading him.

    As to Poul Anderson, for some reason I have a confusion between Poul Anderson and Frederik Pohl. I also checked Amazon on Poul Anderson titles and none were familiar so I can’t comment on him.

    But since I mentioned Frederik Pohl let me say that his Heechee series was first rate and a similar accomplishment comparable to James Hogan’s series of the Gentile Giants — two clever, well constructed Science Fiction epics that remain in one’s mind for years.

    I heard from a relative of A.E. van Vogt that he was dyslexic all his life and suffered for about a decade with dementia before his death. The relative called him Uncle Alfred and never read any of his short stories or novels, even though he sent many of them to his brother’s family over decades. Talk about casting pearls before swine!

  8. Bruce says:

    This retard had a column to write, but Star Trek was, above all, dumbed-down James Blish, the way Hopalong Cassidy was dumbed-down Louis L’Amour. Old Louis took the TV money and cursed the show. James Blish took the money and never, publicly, cursed the show.

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