Revolt in 2100
Robert A. Heinlein
207 pages
published in 1953

Can you believe I had never read Revolt in 2100 until now? It had always been one of those books I wanted to read, but whenever I would start it, something would interfere. Either I wasn't in the mood for it or a more interesting book turned up. Oh well. I've now finally read it and it turned out an okay read, not Heinlein's best work, but certainly not his worst either.

Revolt in 2100 is a collection of three stories, loosely connected and all part of his (in)famous) Future History: "If This Goes On --", "Coventry" and "Misfit".

"If This Goes On --" is the largest story in the book and presents the United States under a Christian dictatorship, established by the First Prophet, Nehemiah Scudder, some time in the unspecified past. John Lyle is one of the current Prophet's Angels, an elite soldier, who believes wholeheartedly in the whole system. He falls in love with Sister Judith, one of the Virgins personally attending to the needs of the Prophet, including his sexual needs (alluded to, but never shown.) She is as naive as he is about the reality of the system and faints when her lot is drawn and she has the honour of serving the prophet in bed. John asks his friend Zebadiah Jones, much more worldy and cynical than him and who had explained the whole thing to him, to get him into contact with Judith and to help them escape away from New Jerusalem.

To do so, John and Zeb have to join the Cabal, the underground resistance against the prophet's rule. They do so, manage to rescue Judith and John starts working for the Cabal as a courier. when his cover is blown, he is brought to the Cabal's secret headquarters near the Mexico border, where he becomea an aide to general Huxley, the Cabal's military leader, which puts him in the right place to observe the revolution against the Prophet first hand. the story ends with the final victory of the Cabal over the forces of the Prophet in the battle for New Jerusalem.

John Lyle might be the quintessential Heinlein hero: young, hard-headed and rational, but naive and somewhat of a babe in the woods, but still with a strongly developed moral sense of an inherently decent nature. His friend Zeb is there to teach him the ways of the world and to open his eyes to what is really going on. Which makes it somewhat easier to clue us readers in as well. John Lyle is partially a stand-in for us, which is something you see a lot in Heinlein's stories. In behaviour and mindset, he is firmly a man of mid-20th century America.

Two other techniques of interest here. The story starts and ends in media res, from long after the theocracy had been established to the moment the Second American Revolution had succeeded and the Prophet had been killed. A modern author would've been inclined to show both the beginning of the theocracy as the aftermath of the revolution. A modern author would also have put much more details in this on what the theocracy looked like; here we get only broad strokes.

It all works however. The story is fast paced, so much so that you do not need much detail to be convinced of the setting and what details are given are either done in reasonably realistic dialogues or by subtle inclueing --a good example being the Ford aircar Lyle steals at one point, described in such a way you never suspect it is anything but a normal car until he matter of factly takes off in it...

"Coventry" takes place sometime after the events in "If This Goes On --", with the US Constitution restored and the Covenant added, which basically the golden rule enacted in law: you can do anything, as long as you don't harm any other citizen. If you do, you have the choice of psychological readjustment or banishment to Coventry, a piece of wild area in the United States where the Covenants and laws of it are null and void, separated from the rest of the country by a forcefield called the Barrier.

David MacKinnon is one of those who chose Coventry, having broken the nose of somebody who called him an "upholstered parasite". He has his head full of mushy, idealistic ideas of living as one of a tribe of liberty loving loners in Coventry, a rugged, clean manly life with nobody bothering him. Reality is different, Coventry being of course inhabited by all sorts of malcontents who couldn't handle the Covenant, who quickly shake him down. MacKinnon still reflexively depends on the behavioural codes of the Covenant and is thus ill prepared for life in Coventry. When he assaults a customs officer of New America, one of the three states into which Coventry is divided, he lands into jail and gets the straight dope on the place by Fader Magee, a shady character who quickly helps him escape. Once out of jail, MacKinnon learns of a plot to break otu of Coventry and conquer the rest of the US, at first doesn't think its any of his business but finally attempts to escape himself to warn the outside world...

David MacKinnon is equally as naive as John Lyle at the start of the story, but fits another of Heinlein's archetypes, that of the man who thinks he knows how the world works, but doesn't and has to be set straight, the Heinlein way. "Coventry" is basically the story of how he grows up and learns to accept the world for how it is rather than how he wants it to be. It surely isn't a coincidence MacKinnon is an English Literature professor, rather than something more practical and studly as an engineer; professors of English Literature not being highly rated by Heinlein, who had a reverence for practical rather than academic knowledge.

It is interesting to see how relentlessy the story drives the point home that MacKinnon is a fool and needs to mature and accept the world as is, rather than stay a dreamer. Every other character in the story is only there to teach or goad MacKinnon on his way to maturity. The way is described by the omniscient narrator reinforces this greatly. In the end of course, MacKinnon turns out to be a decent human being after all; would he be a Heinlein hero otherwise?

The last story in the volume is "Misfit", a fitting name, as it doesn't really fit with the other two stories. It is of some importance as a story because it features an important future Heinlein character, Andrew "Slipstick" Libby, here only called by his last name. As a story this isn't that remarkable. Libby is a nw cadet in the Cosmic Construction Corps and on his first tour, which consists into converting a minor asteroid into a space station and then blasting it into a proper orbit between Earth and Mars.

I remember reading an article recently, which of course I now cannot remember title nor author of, which complained that science fiction lately was either so milksoppingly timid that it was barely sf or so outre that anybody who came upon it cold would not be able to understand it. As these three stories show, Heinlein was a master in coupling an outre setting with characters you would be able to meet on the street and made both believable.