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glaurungI have read Pursuit of the Pankera so you don't have to. The short version: The first third is exactly the same as NOTB, then becomes a much better book for the middle half, before becoming a much worse book in the last several chapters.
This is not a review so much as a comparison, and I am spoiling both books very thoroughly.
Heinlein wrote Number of the beast twice. Once before bypass surgery to correct inadequate blood flow to his brain, once after. Before, he felt and others could clearly see that he was losing cognitive function. His spouse told him that the draft of NOTB was not his best work and should not be submitted to the publisher. Thinking that this was The End and he had nothing to look forward to but years of increasing dementia, the Heinleins went on a vacation, during which he suffered a stroke, resulting in the cranial blood flow issue getting diagnosed and surgery to fix it. After the surgery, the clouds lifted and he felt mentally sharp again, and he went back to the novel and re-did it. But... the resulting novel was received (and is still regarded by many) as the weakest of his oeuvre.
Because he was the kind of writer who did not plot or draft in detail but rather did only enough pre-writing to realize the characters in his mind, and then gave them their head and let them direct the flow of the story, the novel he wrote before and the novel he wrote after the surgery were radically different. The second version of the novel was published in 1980. The original first version sat in his files until March of this year, when it was published as "Pursuit of the Pankera." If you missed it, well, there was a pandemic going on.
I imprinted strongly on Heinlein as a tween and early teen (I am wiser now). Which means, even without doing a side-by-side comparison (life is far too short) I could tell that large chunks of the first draft (2020 version) were re-used with only negligible changes in the second draft (1980 version).
Both novels are essentially identical for the first 17 (of 49) chapters. Sometime in the early 21st century, Zebadiah Carter meets computer scientist Deety Burroughs and her widowed n-dimensional mathematician father Jake at a party thrown by Hilda Corners. All four of these people narrate the novel in alternating first person chapters. Jake and Deety have mistaken Zeb for his more mathematically inclined cousin Zebulon Carter (both are Z. Carter, PhD). Before the mix-up can be corrected, someone tries to kill all four of them with a car bomb. In the process, Deety and Zeb fall in love with implausible speed. Jake and Hilda already knew each other from before, and there is a double wedding, followed by a few weeks of hiding out in a prepper cottage in the mountains owned by Jake and Deety. Deety and Hilda both become pregnant (this is a Heinlein novel). The bombers turn out to be "Black Hats", green blooded aliens with satyr-like bodies who are trying to kill off mathematicians on Earth whose work could unlock the secret to teleportation and inter-universal travel, because they want to keep that secret to themselves. After another murder attempt at the Burroughs's cottage, the quartet flee in the nick of time, as the cottage is destroyed by a nuclear bomb seconds after they fly away. They use Jake's inter-universal travel gadget to go to a different universe, then on a whim teleport their airtight, supersonic atomic powered flying car to the vicinity of alternate universe-Mars.
And it's there that the two versions of the novel diverge. As originally published, alternate-Mars has a breathable atmosphere (as seen in dozens of golden age SF planetary romances) and is colonized by a steampunk-ish British Empire, but it's an original setting. In the first draft, it is in fact Barsoom, as depicted in the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and there is a huge chunk of straight-up fanfiction in which the quartet meet Thuvia, Dejah Thoris, and other characters from the Mars novels (who are all still alive and youthful over a century after the events recounted by ERB thanks to Barsoomian longevity).
I only read a handful of ERB's novels and was never moved to re-read any of them, so I cannot speak to how true to character the fanfic in this section is. The quartet share their teleportation tech with Barsoom, upgrade their flying car with Barsoomian tech, and then flee again when they discover that the Black Hats (which the Barsoomians know as Pankera) are in control of alternate-Earth and are trying to extradite them on trumped up charges.
Then there's another short section that is nearly identical to the original in which they encounter more universes taken from stories they have all read, formulate a theory that every story ever told must actually exist somewhere in the multiverse, and stay for a few days in the Land of Oz (where their flying car gets magical upgrades from Glinda). The identical section ends with them finding the Lensman universe of Doc Smith. As originally published, the Lensman universe visit is just a few pages. In the first draft, it's an extended stay that's almost as long as the Barsoom section.
I did read the Lensman novels several times and can say that the characterizations are true to the source material (the one false note is revealed to be a deliberate provocation in classic bad cop/good cop techniques). But it's also evident that Heinlein was writing Mary Sue-style fanfic - the quartet are all naturally mindblocked against the probing of Lensmen, even Worsel, Hilda is invited to Arisia by Mentor, and they get the red carpet treatment from a Galactic Patrol desperate to learn the dimensional teleportation tech that Jake has discovered.
On leaving Lensman-verse, there is another short, largely identical section where the quartet go hunting for a nice world to make their new home on - I noticed some changed bits this time, but the beats are all the same and the worldbuilding chapter where we learn about their selected new home planet is identical.
And then we enter the final section of the novel. As originally published, they decide to go for one last round of random exploring before their babies are born, during which they meet Lazarus Long and we get a bunch of self-indulgent self-fanfic.
In the first draft, we start getting large gaps of time between chapters. The babies are born, and then the quartet decide it's high time they got around to dealing with those pesky Black Hats. They determine that the aliens are living among humans on 16 alternate Earths, and after several months of killing the aliens retail, they realize they need to go about it wholesale, with the help of Barsoom, the Galactic Patrol, and a bit of assistance in the final chapter from Lazarus Long. Their kids grow up, they get Howard Family-style regenerations, and finally the last very long chapter provides the lead-up to a cross universe campaign of extermination.
What got worse in the second draft: Giving four characters their head for a second run through the story resulted in endless chapters full of wrangling and bickering, with lots of tedious "who gets to take turns being captain now" passages.
What got better: Paying attention to the question of the flying car's power supply and the quest for a universe where they could refuel, plus the entire ending section.
In addition to putting large time gaps between chapters, in the first draft Heinlein also switched in the concluding section to doing a lot more retrospective telling rather than showing. Plus, there's a plot hole the size of Jupiter: his characters show no interest whatsoever in trying to learn the origins of the Black Hat aliens (whose green blood proves they did not evolve on Earth), or their motivations and goals in infiltrating the various alternate-Earths on which they can be found. You'd think that two ex-military guys, being assisted by the Galactic Patrol and the Warlord of Mars, would give some thought to such basic military questions in forming their plans. Furthermore, I saw no hint that Heinlein was interested in these questions either. Which leads me to the racist, fascist tropes that infest the final section of the novel like cockroaches.
We have the tiresome racist trope of "aliens are deeply inferior/not actually intelligent" and simultaneously "aliens are a dire threat to humanity." We have the endless repetitions of the word "infested" to describe the alien presence on the various alternate-Earths, and the explicit genocidal goal of extermination. In the 50's, Heinlein wrote a much better anti-communist novel about alien invaders who were communally brained slugs. This novel re-uses some of the same tropes, but by reskinning the aliens as demonic green blooded satyrs, he switches the metaphorical target from Commies to Scary Brown People/Yellow Peril/Urban Blacks.
And if that isn't enough, we also have the "if necessary we must destroy the village in order to save it" passage in which Zeb says that if they can't uproot the aliens from any of the Earths, those Earths will, sadly, tragically, have to be blown up along with billions of innocent humans living on them. Racist, facist, eugenics fanboy Campbell would have loved this novel. I cannot.
There is a jarring passage early on in the book where terraforming Mars and Venus is referred to as creating "Lebensraum". Having read Farah Mendlesohn's book on Heinlein, I know that he was constantly trying to write satires and constantly failing, instead producing works that everyone read as straight fiction, because he was totally rubbish at writing satire. So maybe the four genocidal maniacs narrating the novel are supposed to come across as unsympathetic antiheroes and we are supposed to be horrified by their bloodthirsty plans. But that's not the effect he achieved.
To sum up, Pursuit of the Pankera fails to work as anything other than a poorly developed frightened white man's "aliens as stand ins for scary brown people/yellow peril/urban blacks" trope. You are better off not reading it unless you want to see the Mary Sue-ish fanfiction in the middle section.
This is not a review so much as a comparison, and I am spoiling both books very thoroughly.
Heinlein wrote Number of the beast twice. Once before bypass surgery to correct inadequate blood flow to his brain, once after. Before, he felt and others could clearly see that he was losing cognitive function. His spouse told him that the draft of NOTB was not his best work and should not be submitted to the publisher. Thinking that this was The End and he had nothing to look forward to but years of increasing dementia, the Heinleins went on a vacation, during which he suffered a stroke, resulting in the cranial blood flow issue getting diagnosed and surgery to fix it. After the surgery, the clouds lifted and he felt mentally sharp again, and he went back to the novel and re-did it. But... the resulting novel was received (and is still regarded by many) as the weakest of his oeuvre.
Because he was the kind of writer who did not plot or draft in detail but rather did only enough pre-writing to realize the characters in his mind, and then gave them their head and let them direct the flow of the story, the novel he wrote before and the novel he wrote after the surgery were radically different. The second version of the novel was published in 1980. The original first version sat in his files until March of this year, when it was published as "Pursuit of the Pankera." If you missed it, well, there was a pandemic going on.
I imprinted strongly on Heinlein as a tween and early teen (I am wiser now). Which means, even without doing a side-by-side comparison (life is far too short) I could tell that large chunks of the first draft (2020 version) were re-used with only negligible changes in the second draft (1980 version).
Both novels are essentially identical for the first 17 (of 49) chapters. Sometime in the early 21st century, Zebadiah Carter meets computer scientist Deety Burroughs and her widowed n-dimensional mathematician father Jake at a party thrown by Hilda Corners. All four of these people narrate the novel in alternating first person chapters. Jake and Deety have mistaken Zeb for his more mathematically inclined cousin Zebulon Carter (both are Z. Carter, PhD). Before the mix-up can be corrected, someone tries to kill all four of them with a car bomb. In the process, Deety and Zeb fall in love with implausible speed. Jake and Hilda already knew each other from before, and there is a double wedding, followed by a few weeks of hiding out in a prepper cottage in the mountains owned by Jake and Deety. Deety and Hilda both become pregnant (this is a Heinlein novel). The bombers turn out to be "Black Hats", green blooded aliens with satyr-like bodies who are trying to kill off mathematicians on Earth whose work could unlock the secret to teleportation and inter-universal travel, because they want to keep that secret to themselves. After another murder attempt at the Burroughs's cottage, the quartet flee in the nick of time, as the cottage is destroyed by a nuclear bomb seconds after they fly away. They use Jake's inter-universal travel gadget to go to a different universe, then on a whim teleport their airtight, supersonic atomic powered flying car to the vicinity of alternate universe-Mars.
And it's there that the two versions of the novel diverge. As originally published, alternate-Mars has a breathable atmosphere (as seen in dozens of golden age SF planetary romances) and is colonized by a steampunk-ish British Empire, but it's an original setting. In the first draft, it is in fact Barsoom, as depicted in the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and there is a huge chunk of straight-up fanfiction in which the quartet meet Thuvia, Dejah Thoris, and other characters from the Mars novels (who are all still alive and youthful over a century after the events recounted by ERB thanks to Barsoomian longevity).
I only read a handful of ERB's novels and was never moved to re-read any of them, so I cannot speak to how true to character the fanfic in this section is. The quartet share their teleportation tech with Barsoom, upgrade their flying car with Barsoomian tech, and then flee again when they discover that the Black Hats (which the Barsoomians know as Pankera) are in control of alternate-Earth and are trying to extradite them on trumped up charges.
Then there's another short section that is nearly identical to the original in which they encounter more universes taken from stories they have all read, formulate a theory that every story ever told must actually exist somewhere in the multiverse, and stay for a few days in the Land of Oz (where their flying car gets magical upgrades from Glinda). The identical section ends with them finding the Lensman universe of Doc Smith. As originally published, the Lensman universe visit is just a few pages. In the first draft, it's an extended stay that's almost as long as the Barsoom section.
I did read the Lensman novels several times and can say that the characterizations are true to the source material (the one false note is revealed to be a deliberate provocation in classic bad cop/good cop techniques). But it's also evident that Heinlein was writing Mary Sue-style fanfic - the quartet are all naturally mindblocked against the probing of Lensmen, even Worsel, Hilda is invited to Arisia by Mentor, and they get the red carpet treatment from a Galactic Patrol desperate to learn the dimensional teleportation tech that Jake has discovered.
On leaving Lensman-verse, there is another short, largely identical section where the quartet go hunting for a nice world to make their new home on - I noticed some changed bits this time, but the beats are all the same and the worldbuilding chapter where we learn about their selected new home planet is identical.
And then we enter the final section of the novel. As originally published, they decide to go for one last round of random exploring before their babies are born, during which they meet Lazarus Long and we get a bunch of self-indulgent self-fanfic.
In the first draft, we start getting large gaps of time between chapters. The babies are born, and then the quartet decide it's high time they got around to dealing with those pesky Black Hats. They determine that the aliens are living among humans on 16 alternate Earths, and after several months of killing the aliens retail, they realize they need to go about it wholesale, with the help of Barsoom, the Galactic Patrol, and a bit of assistance in the final chapter from Lazarus Long. Their kids grow up, they get Howard Family-style regenerations, and finally the last very long chapter provides the lead-up to a cross universe campaign of extermination.
What got worse in the second draft: Giving four characters their head for a second run through the story resulted in endless chapters full of wrangling and bickering, with lots of tedious "who gets to take turns being captain now" passages.
What got better: Paying attention to the question of the flying car's power supply and the quest for a universe where they could refuel, plus the entire ending section.
In addition to putting large time gaps between chapters, in the first draft Heinlein also switched in the concluding section to doing a lot more retrospective telling rather than showing. Plus, there's a plot hole the size of Jupiter: his characters show no interest whatsoever in trying to learn the origins of the Black Hat aliens (whose green blood proves they did not evolve on Earth), or their motivations and goals in infiltrating the various alternate-Earths on which they can be found. You'd think that two ex-military guys, being assisted by the Galactic Patrol and the Warlord of Mars, would give some thought to such basic military questions in forming their plans. Furthermore, I saw no hint that Heinlein was interested in these questions either. Which leads me to the racist, fascist tropes that infest the final section of the novel like cockroaches.
We have the tiresome racist trope of "aliens are deeply inferior/not actually intelligent" and simultaneously "aliens are a dire threat to humanity." We have the endless repetitions of the word "infested" to describe the alien presence on the various alternate-Earths, and the explicit genocidal goal of extermination. In the 50's, Heinlein wrote a much better anti-communist novel about alien invaders who were communally brained slugs. This novel re-uses some of the same tropes, but by reskinning the aliens as demonic green blooded satyrs, he switches the metaphorical target from Commies to Scary Brown People/Yellow Peril/Urban Blacks.
And if that isn't enough, we also have the "if necessary we must destroy the village in order to save it" passage in which Zeb says that if they can't uproot the aliens from any of the Earths, those Earths will, sadly, tragically, have to be blown up along with billions of innocent humans living on them. Racist, facist, eugenics fanboy Campbell would have loved this novel. I cannot.
There is a jarring passage early on in the book where terraforming Mars and Venus is referred to as creating "Lebensraum". Having read Farah Mendlesohn's book on Heinlein, I know that he was constantly trying to write satires and constantly failing, instead producing works that everyone read as straight fiction, because he was totally rubbish at writing satire. So maybe the four genocidal maniacs narrating the novel are supposed to come across as unsympathetic antiheroes and we are supposed to be horrified by their bloodthirsty plans. But that's not the effect he achieved.
To sum up, Pursuit of the Pankera fails to work as anything other than a poorly developed frightened white man's "aliens as stand ins for scary brown people/yellow peril/urban blacks" trope. You are better off not reading it unless you want to see the Mary Sue-ish fanfiction in the middle section.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-12 02:03 am (UTC)