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Heinlein shared a deep affection for technology and science and great faith in its potential with his readers, but he was also well aware of its corruptibility. His stories are locked in a sort of tentative dance with machines - at once admiring and fearful - that reflects the American anxieties of his time. Technology was the blinding truth of the turn of the century, the engine of progress and improvement and greater happiness, but even the great factories and mass production are not enough to pull America out of the Depression. War-time technical achievements brought the American people - and Heinlein - back to the dance floor, as they celebrated their victory with a tremor in their hearts about the dawn of the atomic age.
The Romance of Progress It is no secret that Americans love technological progress. Since the late 19th century, expositions and world's fairs have served as unofficial temples to the worship of all things mechanical, man-made and invented. Heinlein looked at these advances in science and technology with a romantic eye. He had not only a passion for science, receiving his degree in physics and mathematics from UCLA five years after graduating from the Naval Academy, but also a passion for machines. In one of his early stories, Requiem (1940), Heinlein describes Delos D. Harriman, a dying business tycoon who has spent his life trying to reach the moon. Harriman's take on the importance of reaching the moon is nothing short of a swoon. He remembers his faith, even as a boy, that the human will would prevail and that men could conquer all things with the right technologies. As a comparison, Harriman remembers his wife as a stale, cold character, while he remembers every sensual curve and sharp angle of the ship he has built. Franklin sees Harriman's obsession similar to Heinlein's personal fascination with technology, which he shares with his readers as well. "For these technologically oriented boys and men, stimulated by the visions of science fiction, technology tends to be the focus of romance, love and even sex," Franklin claims. After World War II, when the military-industrial complex came together in a monumental and successful effort, Americans had renewed faith (and fears) in technology. The pace of development seemed accelerated, the force of the science more destructive, and Americans got caught up in the space race the way they would in a close baseball game -- with much higher stakes. Heinlein's post-war fiction started as short stories written to seduce more Americans with the magic of space, and his efforts were very successful. The Dangers of Science Even a technophile like Heinlein could not deny the destructive power -- physical and psychological -- of some of the technologies being developed before the second world war. Heinlein makes a type of plea for industrial caution with a story in the Sept. 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, "Blowups Happen." Based around a well-run atomic power plant, where engineers and other employees must be trained and psychologically screened before hiring, Heinlein's story knocks at the pedestal he normally places technology on. Despite all efforts, there is an accident at the power plant that can potentially destroy the world. Still hesitant to give up on their profits, the Board of Directors resists putting the power plant into orbit where it cannot harm citizens. Eventually, they give in, and human life is preserved, but the point has been made. Even in the best circumstances, Americans carry the anxiety that the technology can and will fail.
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| All book cover images courtesy of Michael Main's Illustrated List of Heinlein Fiction |
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The danger of technology that Heinlein most extensively explores is the abuse of technological power by an elite, especially a military elite. "The Long Watch" (American Legion Magazine, Dec. 1949) is a story about Colonel Towers, in chrge of a nuclear launch site on the moon, who decides to take power from political hands and place it instead in the hands of a military elite. And if it weren't enought that Americans could attach that fear to the events of World War II, Colonel Towers decides to drop two nuclear bombs on two non-key cities, in an eerie parallel to the American atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not only is technology dangerous, Heinlein's stories argue, but that danger is very close to home.