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Collection
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Signet
Description
Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: Two short novels Robert A. Heinlein is widely and justly regarded as the greatest practitioner of the art of science fiction who has ever lived. Here are two of his greatest short novels: Gulf In which the greatest superspy of them all is revealed as the leader of a league of supermen and women who can't quite decide what to do with the rest of us. Lost Legacy In which it is proved that we are all members of that league�??or would be, if we but had eyes to see. Plus two great stories A pair of the Master's finest: one on the nature of Being, the other on what it means to be a man.
User reviews
LibraryThing member figre
I have to preface this with two comments. First, I found this book while cataloguing my collection on LibraryThing, so it was not something I had originally found or searched for. (May even be my wife’s.) Second, I do not read much Heinlein, but remember enjoying what I had read so, when I found
There is no doubt that Heinlein is an excellent writer, and this carries into these very early stories (“Gulf” 1943, “Elsewhen” 1941, “Lost Legacy” 1941, and “Jerry was a Man” 1947). With each of them, I was quickly drawn into the characters and the stories. Oh, there is no doubt they are dated – black characters are butlers and the one strong woman was obviously a bold placement for Heinlein in the 40’s. But the first three were horribly disappointing. Longer pieces, they moved at a good pace, and developed interesting ideas – and then they just stopped. It was as if he’d reached his word count for the magazine and just wrapped everything up. The disappointment was even greater due to the promise they held. For each story, another 30 pages, or even given a novel treatment, would have been wonderful. The last story was shorter, more satisfying, but held a message (I think unintended – more a factor of when it was written) that greatly disturbed me. (Although this is a much earlier attempt to address the same issues Asimov did in “The Bicentennial Man.”)
This is a book I would only recommend to the Heinlein completest. This will not turn me off Heinlein. But it loses value because it is such a product of its time and its brevity.
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it, I put it in my “To Be Read” list.There is no doubt that Heinlein is an excellent writer, and this carries into these very early stories (“Gulf” 1943, “Elsewhen” 1941, “Lost Legacy” 1941, and “Jerry was a Man” 1947). With each of them, I was quickly drawn into the characters and the stories. Oh, there is no doubt they are dated – black characters are butlers and the one strong woman was obviously a bold placement for Heinlein in the 40’s. But the first three were horribly disappointing. Longer pieces, they moved at a good pace, and developed interesting ideas – and then they just stopped. It was as if he’d reached his word count for the magazine and just wrapped everything up. The disappointment was even greater due to the promise they held. For each story, another 30 pages, or even given a novel treatment, would have been wonderful. The last story was shorter, more satisfying, but held a message (I think unintended – more a factor of when it was written) that greatly disturbed me. (Although this is a much earlier attempt to address the same issues Asimov did in “The Bicentennial Man.”)
This is a book I would only recommend to the Heinlein completest. This will not turn me off Heinlein. But it loses value because it is such a product of its time and its brevity.
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LibraryThing member VVilliam
A collection of four stories about man's evolution. The first and third stories were definitely the best, but none were amazing. Heinlein definitely does a good job exciting the reader with the possibilities of super powers if only they focused on the task. Still has Heinlein's amazing style of
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joining great characters with thought provoking ideas. Show Less
LibraryThing member JohnFair
This isn't the classic Heinlein that you would normally see in the shops, but this omnibus contains a couple of novels and a couple of shortish stories. Given their ages (all were written in the forties), they do show this age - men are men and women are women and ne'er shall the two have the same
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roles and the roles of people of colour isn't as enlightened as they could have been, but there is a spark of excitement and a sign of how Man could improve. Show Less
LibraryThing member PMaranci
Assignment In Eternity is from the "golden" part of Heinlein's career before he went a bit mad with power and started writing books without allowing them to be edited (and, unfortunately, decided that sex and incest were irresistible themes). It was one of the first science fiction books I ever
There was a painting of a naked woman on the cover of my old paperback copy, so I made a book-jacket out of a brown paper bag for it. That's how much of a prude I was. Of course I was...let me see...probably twelve years old or so when I first read it.
The book contains three novellas and one short story. They're among Heinlein's best, in my opinion: classic examples of his early peak period (all of the content of AiE was written in the 1940s).
The novellas include "Gulf", which Heinlein used much later as the background for his novel Friday (which many think inspired the Jessica Alba TV show Dark Angel). It begins as a near-future spy story, and expands from there with some very interesting ideas about human potential, intelligence, and what it means to be a "superman". It includes quite a bit about the work of Samuel Renshaw, a topic which obviously interested Heinlein a lot (much as semantics did). In that regard, Heinlein was rather Campbellesque; he tended to get something of a bee in his bonnet about some new scientific "breakthrough" and include it in his works. Since there are no Renshawing or semantics centers on every street-corner, I think we can say that Heinlein's track record on these particular points was not great (although it was nowhere near as bad as John W. Campbell or Mark Twain, of course).
In any case, "Gulf" is classic Heinlein; exciting, provocative (not in the sexual sense, as this is relatively early Heinlein), and gripping. The ending isn't necessarily happy, and comes with jarring suddenness. For some reason Heinlein didn't use so much as a paragraph break to indicate a discontinuity or passage of time; this was, I think, a mistake that he would not have made later in his career. But still, it's only a minor flaw.
Another novella is "Lost Legacy", in which a doctor, a psychologist, and one of their students at a university discover a way to unlock psychic powers in the human brain, only to find that they're not the only ones with these powers. Because it's a novella, Heinlein gets to develop the characters of the protagonists more than he would in a short story; they're quite likable people. And because this is early Heinlein, the characters aren't constantly having sex and showing their utter moral superiority over anything non-Heinlein.
The development of those powers is extremely well written. You can really place yourself in the story; for all that it's fantastic, it's very believable. Of course, the story is based on the idea that the majority of the human brain has no known function, and my understanding is that that theory has since been disproved. But that doesn't affect the story, which is just a great read. And the end is quite touching.
"Elsewhen" is much closer to pure fantasy, but has a lovely gentle quality. A professor teaches a seminar in which he shows students how to use their minds to move through time and probability to anywhere or anywhen. Inevitably, complications lead to more probability-hopping and transformations.
The professor himself is a bit unusual for a Heinlein protagonist, in that he's actually rather gentle and academic; less, well, "Heinleinish" than most of Heinlein's later heroes, who tend to be virtual supermen in almost every sense of the word. It's worth noting that both "Elsewhen" and "Lost Legacy" feature strong-willed and competent heroines, which was somewhat unusual for that time.
The end of "Elsewhen" always leaves me in a warm glow.
"Jerry Was A Man" is the short story at the end. It's about a rich, not-too-bright woman who is horrified when she learns that enhanced worker apes are being killed and made into dog food when they can no longer work. She brings Jerry, the ape that first caught her attention, home with her (she owns stock in the company that created him). To win basic civil rights for the enhanced apes she employs a legal firm and and a "shyster" (Heinlein's word, not mine). The shyster is rather reminiscent of Jubal Harshaw in Stranger In A Strange Land; in this future setting shysters are essentially smart fixers, beyond the legal pale but necessary to the system. In any case, Jerry is the test case they use to try to establish anthropoid rights.
Along the way her even-more-stupid trophy husband makes difficulties, for a while. There's also some interesting and imaginative discussion of genetic manipulation in the earlier part of the story. I've never thought of Pegasus the same way since I first read it. Neither will you.
Here's the thing that I missed about the story when I was younger, and the reason that I've thought for so long that I should write something about it. The shyster needs a hook, an angle to rouse the emotions of the public in favor of rights for Jerry (the case is, of course, being televised). He sees Jerry dressed in a kilt, and momentarily considers trying to get him to play the bagpipe; obviously he's thinking of trying to make some sort of Scottish connection.
But he discards that, and - unfortunately this is a spoiler, but it can't be helped - instead puts Jerry in jeans and a shabby leather or denim jacket, I can't remember which. And then he gets Jerry to sing "Ol' Man River" in the courthouse, and that makes the case. The audience goes crazy, and "Jerry Was A Man".
Now, I could be wrong, but the implication that I take from that is that the shyster was tying in to African-American culture, as Heinlein saw it at the time. I'm sure that Heinlein was far less racist than most of his contemporaries, but racism was a basic part of the culture back then. A character in "Elsewhen" says that she's "free, white, and twenty-one", if I remember correctly.
And of course there is Heinlein's early novel Sixth Column, with its painful anti-Asian elements (yes, I know that John W. Campbell forced them on Heinlein, but Heinlein DID write them). "He was a yellow man, but he was white inside" still makes me cringe, which may be why it has apparently been removed from later editions of Sixth Column.
The use of the word "shyster" in the Jerry story itself is also an interesting example of the casual racism that was, I believe, quite common throughout much of the United States in the 1940s.
Anyway, I can't shake the thought that Heinlein was basically saying that African-Americans presumably responded because as a chimpanzee Jerry either looked more like them than any other racial group (in his, i.e. Heinlein's opinion), or was somehow closer to them. Perhaps that would be because Jerry's ancestors were presumably also from Africa. But given that the book was first published in 1947...well, I have to wonder. Was the whole hook of the story the idea that Africans look like monkeys, and vice-versa?
I'm honestly not sure! But if not, what could it have been?
Despite that, Assignment In Eternity is one of the most compulsively readable collections of stories by a single author in the field of science fiction. Heinlein was in many ways a modern Rudyard Kipling (just as Kurt Vonnegut was the modern analog of Mark Twain), with all of his gift for storytelling; he captures the reader's imagination from the first page and takes you with him on fantastic journeys. You'll want to make that trip again and again.
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read. It's also still one of my very favorite books. As Heinlein books go, it's relatively obscure; undeservedly so, I think.There was a painting of a naked woman on the cover of my old paperback copy, so I made a book-jacket out of a brown paper bag for it. That's how much of a prude I was. Of course I was...let me see...probably twelve years old or so when I first read it.
The book contains three novellas and one short story. They're among Heinlein's best, in my opinion: classic examples of his early peak period (all of the content of AiE was written in the 1940s).
The novellas include "Gulf", which Heinlein used much later as the background for his novel Friday (which many think inspired the Jessica Alba TV show Dark Angel). It begins as a near-future spy story, and expands from there with some very interesting ideas about human potential, intelligence, and what it means to be a "superman". It includes quite a bit about the work of Samuel Renshaw, a topic which obviously interested Heinlein a lot (much as semantics did). In that regard, Heinlein was rather Campbellesque; he tended to get something of a bee in his bonnet about some new scientific "breakthrough" and include it in his works. Since there are no Renshawing or semantics centers on every street-corner, I think we can say that Heinlein's track record on these particular points was not great (although it was nowhere near as bad as John W. Campbell or Mark Twain, of course).
In any case, "Gulf" is classic Heinlein; exciting, provocative (not in the sexual sense, as this is relatively early Heinlein), and gripping. The ending isn't necessarily happy, and comes with jarring suddenness. For some reason Heinlein didn't use so much as a paragraph break to indicate a discontinuity or passage of time; this was, I think, a mistake that he would not have made later in his career. But still, it's only a minor flaw.
Another novella is "Lost Legacy", in which a doctor, a psychologist, and one of their students at a university discover a way to unlock psychic powers in the human brain, only to find that they're not the only ones with these powers. Because it's a novella, Heinlein gets to develop the characters of the protagonists more than he would in a short story; they're quite likable people. And because this is early Heinlein, the characters aren't constantly having sex and showing their utter moral superiority over anything non-Heinlein.
The development of those powers is extremely well written. You can really place yourself in the story; for all that it's fantastic, it's very believable. Of course, the story is based on the idea that the majority of the human brain has no known function, and my understanding is that that theory has since been disproved. But that doesn't affect the story, which is just a great read. And the end is quite touching.
"Elsewhen" is much closer to pure fantasy, but has a lovely gentle quality. A professor teaches a seminar in which he shows students how to use their minds to move through time and probability to anywhere or anywhen. Inevitably, complications lead to more probability-hopping and transformations.
The professor himself is a bit unusual for a Heinlein protagonist, in that he's actually rather gentle and academic; less, well, "Heinleinish" than most of Heinlein's later heroes, who tend to be virtual supermen in almost every sense of the word. It's worth noting that both "Elsewhen" and "Lost Legacy" feature strong-willed and competent heroines, which was somewhat unusual for that time.
The end of "Elsewhen" always leaves me in a warm glow.
"Jerry Was A Man" is the short story at the end. It's about a rich, not-too-bright woman who is horrified when she learns that enhanced worker apes are being killed and made into dog food when they can no longer work. She brings Jerry, the ape that first caught her attention, home with her (she owns stock in the company that created him). To win basic civil rights for the enhanced apes she employs a legal firm and and a "shyster" (Heinlein's word, not mine). The shyster is rather reminiscent of Jubal Harshaw in Stranger In A Strange Land; in this future setting shysters are essentially smart fixers, beyond the legal pale but necessary to the system. In any case, Jerry is the test case they use to try to establish anthropoid rights.
Along the way her even-more-stupid trophy husband makes difficulties, for a while. There's also some interesting and imaginative discussion of genetic manipulation in the earlier part of the story. I've never thought of Pegasus the same way since I first read it. Neither will you.
Here's the thing that I missed about the story when I was younger, and the reason that I've thought for so long that I should write something about it. The shyster needs a hook, an angle to rouse the emotions of the public in favor of rights for Jerry (the case is, of course, being televised). He sees Jerry dressed in a kilt, and momentarily considers trying to get him to play the bagpipe; obviously he's thinking of trying to make some sort of Scottish connection.
But he discards that, and - unfortunately this is a spoiler, but it can't be helped - instead puts Jerry in jeans and a shabby leather or denim jacket, I can't remember which. And then he gets Jerry to sing "Ol' Man River" in the courthouse, and that makes the case. The audience goes crazy, and "Jerry Was A Man".
Now, I could be wrong, but the implication that I take from that is that the shyster was tying in to African-American culture, as Heinlein saw it at the time. I'm sure that Heinlein was far less racist than most of his contemporaries, but racism was a basic part of the culture back then. A character in "Elsewhen" says that she's "free, white, and twenty-one", if I remember correctly.
And of course there is Heinlein's early novel Sixth Column, with its painful anti-Asian elements (yes, I know that John W. Campbell forced them on Heinlein, but Heinlein DID write them). "He was a yellow man, but he was white inside" still makes me cringe, which may be why it has apparently been removed from later editions of Sixth Column.
The use of the word "shyster" in the Jerry story itself is also an interesting example of the casual racism that was, I believe, quite common throughout much of the United States in the 1940s.
Anyway, I can't shake the thought that Heinlein was basically saying that African-Americans presumably responded because as a chimpanzee Jerry either looked more like them than any other racial group (in his, i.e. Heinlein's opinion), or was somehow closer to them. Perhaps that would be because Jerry's ancestors were presumably also from Africa. But given that the book was first published in 1947...well, I have to wonder. Was the whole hook of the story the idea that Africans look like monkeys, and vice-versa?
I'm honestly not sure! But if not, what could it have been?
Despite that, Assignment In Eternity is one of the most compulsively readable collections of stories by a single author in the field of science fiction. Heinlein was in many ways a modern Rudyard Kipling (just as Kurt Vonnegut was the modern analog of Mark Twain), with all of his gift for storytelling; he captures the reader's imagination from the first page and takes you with him on fantastic journeys. You'll want to make that trip again and again.
Show Less
LibraryThing member KirkLowery
A collection of three short stories. Typical 1950s era concepts. I was particularly annoyed with his 1940s-50s colloquial dialogue. Clearly, Heinlein was still finding his narrative "voice".
LibraryThing member Kristelh
This is a collection of 4 novellas/short stories written by Robert A. Heinlein that are loosely related in that examines what makes one a human. The first one is Gulf (1949). It is starts out like a spy novel and is about a group of superior beings, supermen, as a new step in humanoid evolution.
Heinlein annoyed me in Stranger in a Strange Land and in these books because he seems to only see women as partial equals to men with a roll of marriage and childbearing, but if you look at the dates of these works, you realize that he was ahead of his time. In these books women have equal abilities and opportunities but of course the women still want marriage and children. The story about Jerry has overtones of civil rights and the way whites treated blacks. It also is ahead in looking at Biotech.
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The second book is Lost Legacy (1939), which is the book that is the foundation for the author's Stranger in a Strange Land. Everybody has paranormal abilities that can be found through training. The third book is Elsewhen (1939) which is a book about the human mind not being bound in the here and now. This one addresses time travel, or parallel universe. The last book is Jerry was a Man (1947) which looks at genetically engineered intelligent creatures. Heinlein annoyed me in Stranger in a Strange Land and in these books because he seems to only see women as partial equals to men with a roll of marriage and childbearing, but if you look at the dates of these works, you realize that he was ahead of his time. In these books women have equal abilities and opportunities but of course the women still want marriage and children. The story about Jerry has overtones of civil rights and the way whites treated blacks. It also is ahead in looking at Biotech.
Show Less
LibraryThing member pgiunta
Arguably some of Heinlein's best short fiction, Assignment in Eternity offers four fantastic tales including:
"Gulf" - A secret agent named Gilead is rescued from captivity by a clandestine organization of highly trained supermen and women. Although they seem nefarious at first, Gilead soon realizes
"Elsewhen" - A university professor engages five students in an experiment to travel to across space and time merely by the power of hypnotism, opening portals to strange and distant worlds, one of which is engulfed in war with an alien race while the other is a serene paradise of godlike beings.
"Lost Legacy" - A physician, a psychologist, and a parapsychologist manage to tap into their latent abilities of clairvoyance, telepathy, levitation, and telekinesis. Soon after, they find themselves drawn to Mount Shasta in Northern California where they encounter a group of mystics who have long ago mastered such abilities and are waiting for the right opportunity to reveal themselves to the world in the hopes of setting humanity on a path to enlightenment. First, they must overcome evil forces as ancient and powerful as they, forces who wish to keep humanity ignorant and servile.
"Jerry was a Man" - A wealthy couple visits a genetic engineering firm where animals of almost any configuration can be manufactured. During a tour, the wife encounters a polite, elderly ape named Jerry who can speak, but is on death row as he has outlived his usefulness. She is appalled and demands to adopt Jerry, against the company's policy. The situation escalates to a court hearing for the purpose of determining whether Jerry is entitled to the same rights as humans.
"Gulf" - A secret agent named Gilead is rescued from captivity by a clandestine organization of highly trained supermen and women. Although they seem nefarious at first, Gilead soon realizes
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that they are, in fact, noble and agrees to join them. After being trained in their ways, he undertakes a mission to stop a weapon of mass destruction."Elsewhen" - A university professor engages five students in an experiment to travel to across space and time merely by the power of hypnotism, opening portals to strange and distant worlds, one of which is engulfed in war with an alien race while the other is a serene paradise of godlike beings.
"Lost Legacy" - A physician, a psychologist, and a parapsychologist manage to tap into their latent abilities of clairvoyance, telepathy, levitation, and telekinesis. Soon after, they find themselves drawn to Mount Shasta in Northern California where they encounter a group of mystics who have long ago mastered such abilities and are waiting for the right opportunity to reveal themselves to the world in the hopes of setting humanity on a path to enlightenment. First, they must overcome evil forces as ancient and powerful as they, forces who wish to keep humanity ignorant and servile.
"Jerry was a Man" - A wealthy couple visits a genetic engineering firm where animals of almost any configuration can be manufactured. During a tour, the wife encounters a polite, elderly ape named Jerry who can speak, but is on death row as he has outlived his usefulness. She is appalled and demands to adopt Jerry, against the company's policy. The situation escalates to a court hearing for the purpose of determining whether Jerry is entitled to the same rights as humans.
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LibraryThing member fuzzi
This is an early Heinlein that should appeal to lovers of the genre, or lovers of Heinlein. I really liked the first story which turned out to be a forerunner to one of my favorite Heinlein books, Friday, but the rest in the collection were just okay.
LibraryThing member jmourgos
Quite the Assignment!
Early Heinlein, for me, is a bit interesting regardless of its sly wit and occasional weak female characters. These were written in the 40s and were decent and entertaining but not up to the level of story Heinlein wrote in the Sixties and beyond, "Stranger in a Strange Land,"
This book is an anthology, all having something to do with the improvement of the human condition, and a bit of fantasy mixed into the science.
"Gulf" starts out as a spy novel, but then evolves into a race against time where a race of secret supermen are attempting to prevent a Nova bomb from going off that could wipe the planet off the solar system! Interesting James Bond-type character, most likely before Ian Fleming wrote his famous novels. The weak part was when a new language is being taught the hero, but it takes a couple of unnecessary pages to do it!
"Elsewhen" is more a fantasy, where a professor teaches his students how to mentally return back to other dimensions – they disappear from his living room and live lives outside our reality. Meantime, the professor gets investigated by the police since the students who are now in other dimensions are considered missing persons! The ending was a bit of a let-down after all this build-up.
"Lost Legacy" was the most interesting and also a fantasy of sorts. The story explores the limitations of the human mind and how we all have latent abilities. Interesting trip to Mt. Shasta, a discovery that Ambrose Bierce still lives, and a clash with a suppressive group that wants to stop all advancing knowledge!
"Jerry Was A Man" was the silliest of the quartet. It's about a company that can create new animals through genetics. This is all fine but the story takes a left turn and talks about intelligent monkey rights! If Heinlein stuck to the dangers of genetic manipulation it would have been a fine story.
This particular collectors' edition has several typos and is a great example of a sloppy editing job. It's a Signet Paperback, copyright 1953, second edition.
Great way to spend time on the bus!
Early Heinlein, for me, is a bit interesting regardless of its sly wit and occasional weak female characters. These were written in the 40s and were decent and entertaining but not up to the level of story Heinlein wrote in the Sixties and beyond, "Stranger in a Strange Land,"
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etc. This book is an anthology, all having something to do with the improvement of the human condition, and a bit of fantasy mixed into the science.
"Gulf" starts out as a spy novel, but then evolves into a race against time where a race of secret supermen are attempting to prevent a Nova bomb from going off that could wipe the planet off the solar system! Interesting James Bond-type character, most likely before Ian Fleming wrote his famous novels. The weak part was when a new language is being taught the hero, but it takes a couple of unnecessary pages to do it!
"Elsewhen" is more a fantasy, where a professor teaches his students how to mentally return back to other dimensions – they disappear from his living room and live lives outside our reality. Meantime, the professor gets investigated by the police since the students who are now in other dimensions are considered missing persons! The ending was a bit of a let-down after all this build-up.
"Lost Legacy" was the most interesting and also a fantasy of sorts. The story explores the limitations of the human mind and how we all have latent abilities. Interesting trip to Mt. Shasta, a discovery that Ambrose Bierce still lives, and a clash with a suppressive group that wants to stop all advancing knowledge!
"Jerry Was A Man" was the silliest of the quartet. It's about a company that can create new animals through genetics. This is all fine but the story takes a left turn and talks about intelligent monkey rights! If Heinlein stuck to the dangers of genetic manipulation it would have been a fine story.
This particular collectors' edition has several typos and is a great example of a sloppy editing job. It's a Signet Paperback, copyright 1953, second edition.
Great way to spend time on the bus!
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LibraryThing member wunder
Skippable early Heinlein (1940's). Three weak novellas and a decent short story. Two of the novellas have bad pacing problems, both starting off with vigorous story then stalling out with interminable exposition. "Lost Legacy" is the better of the two. The multiple worlds novella just never got any
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traction with me, I couldn't care about any of the characters. The short story "Jerry Was A Man" is the only reason to pick this up, and raised my review a whole star. Show Less
Subjects
Original publication date
1953 (collection)
1941 (Elsewhen)
1949 (Gulf)
1941 (Lost Legacy)
1947 (Jerry Was a Man)