Beyond This Horizon (1942) cleverly subverts traditional gender roles in a scene in which the protagonist demonstrates his archaic gunpowder gun for his friend and discusses how useful it would be in dueling — after which the discussion turns to the shade of his nail polish. "'All You Zombies—'" (1959) is the story of a person who undergoes a sex change operation, goes back in time, has sex with herself, and gives birth to herself.

"Willis fine boy!" she insisted.

..."The Lummox" contentedly took her pair of pets aboard the imperial yacht. Surprise! It's a girl! And a royal one at that.

One last aspect I want to consider is when gender is fixed but orientation and attraction are not. In the (late period) Time Enough for Love, two technicians who have been involved in the rejuvenation of the Senior, Lazarus Long, are talking after they leave the patient. Still completely covered and masked, voices presumably not gendered (disguised, perhaps?), they speak of the work, and then the conversation turns personal. One propositions the other, politely, and produces this exchange:

"Colleague, what sex are you?"
"Does it matter?"
"I suppose not. I accept."
[...intervening exposition and dialogue...]
"You're male! I'm surprised. But pleased."
"And you're female. And I am very pleased."

See pp.36-40, 1988.

All of the above may seem like cheating.

Nobody expects a child to be strongly gendered - except maybe parents and judges at a child beauty pageant, or the kind of people who cover a male baby's room with race cars, fire trucks, and cowboys, and a female's with princesses, rainbows and fairies. Computers are generally inherently neuter, unless I missed something. People wearing masks or speaking not-face-to-face (like via computers!) aren't necessarily what one might assume by words alone, and orientation can be flexible (as Heinlein posits in his advanced society). And an alien could be anything at all, including a hermaphrodite, like giant clams, or even something stranger than we have on Earth.

But humans can possess, not merely ambiguous, but actually mutable gender. (I wonder if the recent collaboration could have been called "Mutable Star"... nah, that would lose the poetic and astronomical overtones.)

The "All You Zombies" reference in the Wikipedia article back at the top is a good one; I hadn't remembered it. But in another work, gender is even more central to the entire plot.

I Will Fear No Evil is the story of Johann Sebastian Bach Smith, whose (very!) aged brain is transplanted into the (spoiler) body of his young female secretary after her violent death. What follows is a person recovering from great trauma, from major (the most major possible, one might think) surgery, and learning how to control and function in a new body, as an adult. More, to function as a female when all the previous years of life had been as a male.

IWFNE is a tremendous science fictional illustration of sex change under very unusual circumstances, not like intersex persons who may transition deliberately or after years of preparation, but rather as a fish-out-of-water thought experiment. What could be more abrupt than to plunk a man down in the body of a woman (or vice versa)?

As an afterthought:

There is also discussion in Time Enough for Love, mentioned above, about the possibilities of gender change. Lazarus, bored and wishing for new experiences, is asked whether he would like to become female (pp.102-105), which opens up both other possibilities and leads the conversation elsewhere. Meanwhile, computers wish to become meat people, by growing human bodies to transfer their consciousness into. Lazarus passes on becoming a woman, but that chance is one that the computer person wishes for, in order to be a woman (see pp.234-5). See also The Cat Who Walks Through Walls for later developments in the computer --> human being transition.]]> http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1159118433.shtml As many Heinlein fans know, the new book is out. Amazon lists it as available October 16, but if you visit a bricks-and-mortar store right now, you'll find it on shelves... Eh Nonymous 2006-09-24T17:09+00:00
The book is not a Heinlein, at least not in the way that most of the books I've reviewed or mentioned here have been. Unlike even "For Us, the Living" (published posthumously) the new book is based on Heinlein, written with the aid of seven pages of 10-point typed outline, plus index cards with voluminous notes. But it's not writen BY Heinlein.

It's written by Spider Robinson, my favorite living author, a guy who was once dubbed "The New Robert Heinlein," via the sentence, "If I didn't think it understated his achivement, I'd nominate Spider Robinson, on the basis of this book [Mindkiller, reissued along with its subsequent-sort of - sequal Time Pressure, in the compendium Deathkiller - recommended - ed.], as the new Robert Heinlein." Gerald Jonas, for the New York Times Book Review, available here.

If you like Heinlein, particularly if you like vintage Heinlein, like the better so-called Juveniles, you will probably enjoy the new book. If you like Spider Robinson, particularly his superior work (like Stardancer and its sequels, co-written with his wife Jeanne; like Deathkiller, mentioned above), then you will find this to be one of his best books, period.

The book is Variable Star, and it's not quite like anything.

Variable Star takes place in Heinlein's ficton, in the universe that Could Have Been had certain events played out differently. Nehemiah Scudder, the Prophet, could have held the U.S. in thrall via a regime of religious terror, a despotic, theocratic fascist state. But that's just "when."

The book takes place in a Place, and a Time, and a Society, and like the best Heinlein and the best Robinson, it's believable and it's compelling.

The protagonist could have been pulled right out of Time For the Stars, or Starman Jones. He's faced with similar facts, to a point, but this isn't a retread. For one thing, where Heinlein brings some of the big ideas, and the "central antinomy" that drives his first decision, Spider brings the humanity, the emotionally vivid and compelling internal narrative. Heinlein did Big really, really well. Spider does Pain, and Empathy, and they both did Hope very well.

Some of the other Heinleins brought to mind by Variable Star:

• Door Into Summer and Time for the Stars, for an impossible romantic story - with a nice twist courtesy of Spider. For those who haven't read them, DIS uses time travel plus cold sleep to allow a mature man to marry a child - when she has grown up, and he hasn't. TFTS does a similar sort of trick using Einsteinian time dilation.
• Methuselah's Children, and Universe, and Farmer in the Sky, for additional bits of feel and plot and scenery
  

But as well as some of the best of Heinlein, the book boasts some of the best of Spider. There's musicianship, and puns, and action (but never too much, and never incredible), and art, and pain, and death, and immensely powerful people, and people with nothing left to lose.

Summing up: more than just recommended. If you're a fan, or a Fan, then drop everything and get it. It's not just good science fiction, or merely another Heinlein. For my money, it's better.

I think I may blog about some of the legal issues that played out in the book - but not this weekend. Time to enjoy the weather.]]> http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1154088344.shtml Welcome to the 9th Heinlein Friday! Well, sort of. I posted the first HF-related post on May 26th, announcing a "new recurring feature" - how prescient of me. There have... Eh Nonymous 2006-07-28T12:07+00:00 the first HF-related post on May 26th, announcing a "new recurring feature" - how prescient of me. There have been 8 substantive posts since then, on topics I listed in my last post previewing this HF, but I omitted two: the Judge Jones speech report, and the Science in Superman post.

Those topics, in no particular order, were: Aliens; Justice; Courts and Judges; Lawyers ("...beyond stereotypes"); Crime; and a special post on Jerry Was A Man, a short story involving a chimpanzee who would be human - or at least a person.

This week, as I discussed in my preview post, I'll be discussing "patents, trade secrets, and invention in Heinlein's fiction."

Inventions

Why?

Why bother talking about the ray guns and rocket ships in the (sometimes awful, sometimes talky/ preachy, occasionally disturbingly dated) science fiction of a Dead White Male?

Good question, insultingly posed. Let's break it apart.

Heinlein didn't do much with Ray Guns - although he had some fantastic weapons - see the opening chapter of Starship Troopers, which would make a fantastic movie - if only they would film the book, instead of a horrible soft-porn version from which all of the best technology has been deliberately clipped ("too expensive to create!") from the film. To quote a noted philosopher, "Aaaargh!" The Suits, which operate something like muscular exoskeletons plus heads-up-display plus skydiving-slash-submersible-slash-spacesuit-slash-weapons platforms, are the coolest military tech there is - and at that, Heinlein doesn't spend long on them. The opening pages, and then a subsequent mention or two later in the book about maintenance and training, and that's all. They're assumed, once described.

Heinlein also seldom did rocket ship - he preferred ships that either floated or went, ZAP, and the whole mass-reaction flaming-rear of rockets, while having the benefit of being possible "now," were always slightly dissatisfactory to him. Although see Rocket Ship Galileo. But his best spaceships were interesting. Consider:

Rides in Heinlein

1. Gay Deceiver, a heavily (post-sale) modified "duo" ("built on a Ford shell") - a duo being a car that could fly! - with extensive, expensive upgrades by a military-trained suspicious and survival-minded computer and software geek (and then a physicist specializing in N-space, and then his daughter with REAL ability in mathematics... and then they took it to Oz, where things wake up...)



2. the colony ship in Methuselah's Children, which depends on an invention by "Slipstick" Libby Long to escape the solar system and reach stars in less than lifetimes



3. the "UFOs" in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, in which Heinlein used some impressive popular mathematics (in the plot of the story!) to prove that nearby space travel is feasible in terms of length of time - and to suggest that post-Einsteinian physics would make nearby interstellar travel equally feasible. Although the Real travel in the book is done instantaneously, or even FTL, by going not through space but "past" it - in the inadequate descriptions of English, rather than math.

Enough with the Ships and Weapons. Heinlein did a great job with ideas, when necessary backing them up with concrete and practical science and engineering - but the real excuse is to talk law. So, let's talk about the interesting stuff: IP!

As I said last time, Intellectual Property (IP) is like this:

instead of "owning" a house or a shirt or a wallet or a pile of sprockets, you "own" rights in the plans of the house, or the shape of the shirt, or the design of the wallet, or the name of your sprocket business.

Heinlein's got IP in the books, a-plenty.

Blockbuster discovery: "Let There Be Light"

Two scientist-inventors in this provocative early short story have a dynamite secret - they can turn light into heat (vibrations) - or vice versa - with an enormous, nearly 100 %, efficiency. That is, there would no longer be any need to manufacture light bulbs. Or inefficient solar cells. Or transformers. Or gas tanks. Or oil wells. Or generators. Or oil furnaces. This is, to put it mildly, the biggest potential discovery since the printing press. In fact, it probably outstrips the wheel, the atomic bomb, and the transistor quite handily. Their discovery, Heinlein coyly says, involves the enzymes used by the common firefly or "lightning bug," luciferin and luciferase, which create intense, nearly monochromatic (looks greenish to me) with almost no heat. How does a measly bug do better than humans with neon lights and LEDs? Well, maybe it no longer outstrips us quite so much. Any bioengineers know the relevant facts?

What do they do? Well, they're in trouble. Moneyed interests have no particular desire to see the utter destruction of a host of industries. Free power, as Nicola Tesla once learned, is not in the interest of each everyone, just every anyone. This can apply more broadly to all advances or potential advances - someone's ox gets gored. For Fantasy fans, I'd highly recommend Lawrence Watt-Evans' best-seller "The Misenchanted Sword," in which Valder the Innkeeper tries to place a convenient ferry across a river near his Inn, and finds that a torch "accidentally" drops off the toll bridge nearby, destroying his effort. He learns his lesson; the next torch, he notes, could have landed on his inn, and could have hurt someone.

The scientists are not so cowed - but they can't fight the powers arrayed against them. So they use the weakness of the powerful against them: they (spoiler)

(show)

choose to disclose the secret, publishing rather than allowing their idea to perish. When your goal is not money but advancement of knowledge (and incidentally worldwide fame, and changing the world), disclosure may be the right way to go with your invention.

(hide)

Other works show different approaches to IP - and different Science Fictional twists on same.

Time Travel and Invention: The Door Into Summer

I wish I had time to spend a few weeks on this book - there's just so much! The protagonist, Daniel Boone Davis - "Dan" - is tired of life. At least, he's tired of life in the 1970s, set in the future in this book, after The Big One - which was a nuclear One. Life goes on, but certain areas are uninhabited, and the capital is no longer in Washington, D.C.

Dan is an engineer, and in the futuristic 1970s, he has invented a robot - a household robot, which can help do away with some of the drudgery of modern life, particularly in areas like housecleaning - where most of the poorly compensated, utterly necessary work still takes place for most families. This is a highly typical view of robots and technology - but it's not too far wrong. Some of my favorite Toys, today, are labor-saving devices. That, or they help me do things I can't do without them, like walking down the street talking to a friend, or sending a picture I took on my cellphone.

Dan, as I said, is tired of There-Then. He wants to go to Tomorrow. He's signed up for Cold Sleep (SF fans should consult Orson Scott Card's series about Hot Sleep, the Worthing Saga), and will wake up in 30 years - with all the things that make him sad over and gone.

Dan, the inventor, doesn't go quite as intended. He doesn't walk that plank; he's pushed. Meanwhile, it appears, his inventions have been stolen, and patents issued in his name, which he does not own.

In the futuristic world of the 2000s, things have changed. Heinlein lists advances in clothing technology (and Don't! count those as minor; ask any military clothing historian about the difference between a zipper on a battlefield vs. "those damnable buttons!" when you're under fire or in heavy snow), advances in dentistry, in movie entertainment technology (if "talkies" replaces "movies" - at least in theory - when sound became available, then can you picture what watching a "grabbie" will be like? I don't want to - I get carsick even in Universal Studio's Back To the Future ride). And, of course, in robotics and miniaturization.

Then Dan (spoiler, not hidden) finds something out: he can go back and fix the problem. He has a chance to try unauthorized time travel, and like many a protagonist, he does it, instead of worrying about paradoxes and the end of the universe. Maybe he's right to do that; maybe if you can do it, there's nothing unnatural about doing it.

So Dan goes back in time, and invents the inventions that he had just seen a few weeks previously, in the future ("later in time"). Here's where my head hurts: where did his ideas come from?

Pre-1970: Dan has ideas, and builds robots.
1970: Dan goes to the future, and sees robots, including ones based on his own ideas.
The future: Dan travels to the past, intending to build those robots.
1970: Dan builds the robots using then-existing materials, and drafts claims and descriptions in order to patent them. Then Dan goes "Back to the future" via cold sleep, and wakes up with All's Well That Ends Well.

So the question is: are his patents valid or invalid? The ideas came from him, essentially. The USPTO has no interest in where ideas come from, unless it's one of

1. from someone else,


2. from abroad, or


3. from nature, with no addition by you.

So maybe it doesn't matter; there was no prior thinker who had the idea (earlier in Time): Dan is both first to invent and the originator of the idea.

Incidentally, there's also some discussion of trademarks, since Dan has very particular ideas on what the name of the company should be and what the logo should look like. He wants it to look like what it will look like - and what would have happened if he'd decided he didn't like a Genie or the name Aladdin, and gone with a swoosh and the name Enron? Well, he didn't, so maybe it doesn't matter.

Incidentally, time travel is full of fun thought experiments for the Law. Consider: Can you rob yourself? What if you refuse to consent? What about seduction, marriage under false pretenses, rape? Crimes of violence? Property crimes? Can you sue yourself? If so, should you win?

Back to IP!

Friday: Shipstones and the Decision Not to Patent

In Heinlein's masterpiece Friday (not that everyone can stand it, let alone love it as I do), there are Things called Shipstones. Although this sounds like the word is based on a Thing, it is based on an Inventor - Mr. Shipstone. This pioneering sort educated himself in mathematics and physics, and then (paraphrased quotation) went into his basement and spent long years discovery applied facts about the natural world, which allowed him to invent the Shipstone.

Shipstones are as revolutionary a New Thing as the folks in Let There Be Light, above, stumbled on. With a miniature shipstone in your cigarette lighter, you don't need fuel. With a big one, you don't need gas for your car. With a number of enormous ones, spaceships Go - although I think these are also/alternatively atomic, at least in part - and they travel at supralight speeds, which can't be explained purely in terms of atomic power.

There's some fascinating historiography, and indeed muckraking history, as Friday reads about the invention. The result, she learns, is that everything in the entire world is owned, in whole, in part, or even overlappingly, by different arms of the Shipstone companies. They own Coke. They own Mastercard. They own the power companies, they own the banks - and they own each other, in an interlocking and stupendously sinister way. Not because it's not predictable - a good product displaces bad, and generates power and influence and above all money - but because it's kept relatively quiet. The Nations are no longer powers; non-state entities, including multinational corporations, can decide that a country should come to heel, and hire its own army - or its own terrorists. If you think I'm drawing a parallel, stop it. "Black Friday," which involves sudden, violent change, is not like 9/11.

It's much, much worse than 9/11. See this boingboing post from September, 2001, which mysteriously misses many of the most frightening similarities. Cities are blotted out. Methods of travel are sabotaged. Assassinations, on a global and coordinated scale never seen in history, occur. I don't ever want to live through one of those.

In any case, Friday reads two competing histories of the Shipstone invention.

In one, the Inventor is selfless, noble, motivated only by the quest for knowledge.

In the other, his wife Muriel is scheming, sophisticated, and informs him that he shouldn't be a fool.

Whichever may be the "real" facts (if either), the result is the same. The Shipstones are not patented. Neither, however, are they disclosed. They are simply - sold. This is the Trade Secret method of protecting an invention.

It takes brains to make a Shipstone, and power. If you don't know what you are doing, you simply break it - or blow yourself up. It's almost self-protecting, and there's no need for the Shipstone Companies to disclose in order to get the competitive advantage of monopoly. They just sell, at their chosen price, and the world buys, and buys, and buys.

Such a "perfect" trade secret is unlikely in the real world; most things are either capable of being copied, or can be reverse-engineered, since the biggest obstacle is always knowing for sure that something can be done. See, for example, the atomic bomb, and then the hydrogen bomb. The lag between seeing one demonstrated, and having one of your own, was on the order a decade, and need not have been so slow.

In any case, they chose not to take advantage of the Deal we offer inventors: disclose, and you have exclusive control over your invention until the term expires. During that period, you can do nothing; you can go into business yourself; or you can license. The Shipstones did not need to make that choice.

Finally, there's a few miscellaneous inventions I'd like to discuss.

Misc. Inventions

Dr. Pinero, in Heinlein's first published story "Lifeline," invents a blockbuster. It's impossible, alas, but it's an absolutely fascinating idea. What if a scientist could measure how old you were? (So far, so not exciting. Where you going with this, Eh?) What if, moreover, the scientist could do this by "bouncing" "sonar-like" "waves" back along the time dimension, following the skin-colored four-dimensional "worm" (picture a circle moving through space: a tube. Now picture a human moving forward through time: a human-shaped worm) back to where it began, at its inception.

What if, now, Dr. Pinero had invented a way to tell not only your duration-to-date, but your time of death?

What if the worm is connected both ways, in a concrete and irreversible way?

What if you are destined to die at a particular instant, and someone could know, and could tell you, right now, for money?

Would you pay? Or would you pay to *not* be told?

Consider, just to start, the consequences explored in the story: suddenly, every life insurance company is on the losing side of a bad bet, against people who can determine with 100 % accuracy when they will die. The healthy will not pay premiums. The about-to-die certainly will.

In reality, the insurers would leap up on this technology, find a way to charge for it, and would stop having to rely on guesswork.

In the story, Pinero refuses to deal with the slavering mob, and calls them fools. A more Galileo-like character I think Heinlein never wrote. The result is nearly the same - but more like Socrates' end, now that I think of it.

Heinlein, besides all the concepts described above, invented or particularly described a number of inventions.

For example,

He described the waterbed in such precise detail that it became unpatentable. An entrepreneur tried. His patent was invalid, having been fully detailed in a published work, Heinlein's. A later entrepreneur, working without the benefit of a patent, sent a waterbed to Heinlein in recognition and gratitude.

Heinlein's descriptions of spacesuits were so good, that when it came time for NASA to build one, they went back and read the SF - carefully. Water bottle? Check. Radio? Check. Tools on the outside? Check. How do you view readouts, how do you breathe, eliminate heat and wastes, how do you move with pounds of pressure resisting any bending of your arms and legs?

Heinlein also "particularly described":

• how to do childbirth if you have a convenient gravity manipulator (Time Enough for Love, Ace 1988, pp.203-04)



• how to use the word "grok" (see Stranger in a Strange Land. There's no copyright or trademark protection, alas, and patenting a word is worse than useless, it's unpossible)



• the waldo, an item utterly necessary for modern surgery and nuclear engineering, used by his character Waldo in the story, well, "Waldo." Waldoes are used to manipulate something you can't touch (too small, too "hot," too large) - you put your hands in gloves, which provide feedback to a different set of gloves, which are small/large/powerful/delicate/hardened enough to do the job



• what TANSTAAFL means. See generally The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, as well as his later work The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, which some think is a Late Stinker, but which I like. The phrase is also significant there, late in the book. By the way, don't accept the alternate spellings. It's "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." Anyone who uses an alternate formulation would probably also say, "in their own words"

About 87 years ago our ancestors created a new country,
founded on freedoms
and dedicated to the, y'know, idea that all persons are more or less equal, give or take, know what I'm sayin'?

(Original; Wikipedia. Also see the brilliant Powerpoint Presentation thereof, which is startlingly bad.)

There is no need to shoot such people. It is wasteful, and makes a startling noise. (/RAH) Although if they're being funny, again see the Powerpoint slides, then it's really quite funny.

And that's all I have for this week's Heinlein Friday!

As always, I welcome input, feedback, and requests for future topics or stories to cover.]]> http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1153913353.shtml As I've got my act (more) together this week than last week, when I needed to make the HF post mostly not about Heinlein, and come out on a not-Friday (HF:... Eh Nonymous 2006-07-26T11:07+00:00 Judge Jones speech report) - does that make it a non-H non-F post? - let's kick things off with a Wednesday preview of this week's HF.

So far, to recap, we've discussed

• Courts and judges



• Crime



• Lawyers



• Justice



• Aliens



• And there was a special post one week on Jerry Was a Man, which implicated humanity - implicated Being Human.

This week, I turn to another interest of mine: Intellectual Property. HF: Inventions will discuss patents, trade secrets, and invention in Heinlein's fiction.

Not all the inventions Heinlein discusses (or "discloses," or "particularly describes") are covered by IP. Intellectual Property, for anyone without a background is "an umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to certain types of information, ideas, or other intangibles in their expressed form." (Wikipedia, which covers the topic nicely).

In other words,

with IP, instead of "owning" a house or a shirt or a wallet or a pile of sprockets, you "own" rights in the plans of the house, or the shape of the shirt, or the design of the wallet, or the name of your sprocket business.

These rights are different in some respects from Property Rights, which most people instinctively understand. If you own your home outright, only one person can be The Owner - sell it, and you no longer own. You can exclude others from entering (in general, with exceptions for emergencies, the police with a warrant or exigent need, etc.), you can let others in, you can allow others to trespass on your rights. And you can divest, as I said, by selling (or giving) your property away.

In intellectual property, you can do many of those things - but the law has to change, as always, when the underlying nature of the property alters. A song, for example, is not a fixed Thing until you record in some form (on a music sheet, or on tape, or in the head of a parrot) - at which point, there's a song AND a thing. The song can't be reproduced - it's a song. It can be imitated. It can be captured, replayed, edited, mocked. But the Thing can be copied, and copied, and copied - that's the nature of Things.

IP sometimes lets you prevent people from copying Things, and also sometimes from copying the Idea expressed in the Thing.

Heinlein didn't usually spend a lot of time discussing all this, the policy and nature of IP. But he certainly used it.

In "The Door Into Summer," the entire plot hinges on patents. And not in a normal way - TDIS is a time-travel story, with at least one paradox or bootstrapping problem. In other science fiction, authors (who often understand far too little biology) may ask, what if you go back and become your own grandpa? (Cf. the song - also note that things are different if a woman goes back and becomes her own grandmother.)

In Heinlein's book, Dan patents a design - but he does it after he's already seen it invented. This convoluted result is one of the things I'll discuss for Friday. The story also contains IP fraud, trademark issues, brand naming, and various new inventions, including Stik-Tite (think velcro on steroids), and "grabbies" (think movies, then extrapolate - they "null the theater on some shots" so "buckle your seatbelt").

Other stories I'll discuss include "Let There Be Light," "Lifeline," and "Friday." But you'll have to come back on Friday for the rest.

And since I've got your attention, and did this before, let me take one more opportunity to flog my del.icio.us page. It's HIGHLY linky, it's got my commentary, and it's much more categorizable (and categorized) than any blog. It's only bloggy in two ways: Newest added entries are at the top, and I post new (and old) links frequently with a note or a description if needed.
]]> http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1152875267.shtml Sensationalistic? Purposely filled with violence, gore, and sex?... Eh Nonymous 2006-07-14T11:07+00:00
Well, hopefully. Otherwise, this is going to be a fairly tedious post. Actually, upon review, there's no sex. That's not a comment on Heinlein. Heinlein was a very sexy writer, at times. At other times (like when the Boy Scouts were publishing the material), not so much. And there's plenty to tut-tut about, if you're into that kind of thing. I'm not particularly into tutting. We'll leave Sex and Law in Heinlein for another time.

Following my ambitious boast in yesterday's preview, HF Pending (And no more Jots), I'm going to discuss

Science Fiction Crimes

in Heinlein's stuff. Stuff being broadly construed, and referring here to his books, short stories, and writings generally.

Follow me then, deep into the tangential plot details, past the thicket of uncertain meaning, your only guide the mind of a lawyer (no, don't turn back!) - to our goal: Real Crime! Ripped from the Headlines of - not the real world, that's for certain.

First, let's do some definitional work.

I'm not going to discuss civil litigation in Heinlein. I've mentioned some of the more dramatic instances, including last week's post on the short story Jerry Was a Man, in which a genetically modified chimpanzee brought suit in his own name ("Jerry," if you're wondering) and asked the court to declare that he deserved a basic amount of dignity - which implied, for example, denying the corporation that created him the right to euthanize him, and by extension those like him. If you're curious how the suit is resolved... and you haven't noticed the title of my post or the title of the story yet... I reveal it, behind spoilers, in the post.

There's also the various proxy fights, quasi-civil cases (see the case of Lummox, discussed in these two previous HF posts), and similar good stuff. In that second post, for example ("Lawyers Beyond Stereotypes," I mention I Will Fear No Evil's Jake Solomon and the case he brings on behalf of Johann Sebastian Bach Smith, whose brain has been transplanted into the body of his (deceased) young female secretary, Eugine Branca. A rollicking case. But not the subject of today's post.

We're also not discussing torts, like civil trespassing, nuisance, civil battery (including punching someone in the nose), or invasion of privacy; we're also not discussing cases involving property, real or otherwise. Property cases can involve inheritance (plenty of Will battles, as I noted in earlier HF posts; see Citizen of the Galaxy, not to mention I Will Fear No Evil, supra). I'm definitely going to devote an upcoming HF to patent law and trade secrets; there's a wealth of good material there for IP (intellectual property) geeks.

What is a crime?

We're going to have to get a bit stuffy and formal here, I'm afraid.

Crimes are forbidden acts, committed by actors. Extended legal discussion follows:

(show)

Does the definition sound strange? Well, it's an inadequate definition off the top of my head. But it's already got three ingredients explicitly included, and one implied.

Forbidden: to be punished for an act, it must be outlawed before you commit it. That's why there was so much soul-searching before the crime of genocide was first applied after World War II. There had certainly been acts similar in quality, if not quite in scale (anyone caring to discuss the nature and scale of the Mongol horde's campaigns can do it elsewhere, thank you), but there had never been a tribunal (other than a simple victor's court, wherein the losers die) that had punished the crime. Eventually, humanity came to the conclusion that everyone knows what it would mean, to wipe out an entire vast group of people on the basis of one of their immutable (or protected) characteristics, such as race, sexual orientation, gender, or religion, and everyone knows that it's wrong.

Acts: If you didn't *do* it, then there's no crime. I don't mean factual innocence; I mean, no act (or no failure to act, when a legal duty existed to act) means no crime. Except for a few things like parking violations, where a passive status will do, most crimes require that you do something. In crim law jargon, that's called the "actus reus," the Guilty Act. Cf. mens rea, the "Guilty Mind," or required state of mind to have committed a crime.

Actors; only humans can commit crimes. If you don't see why this is so, imagine a world where we punished dogs (not for being dangerous, as by locking them up or putting them down, but for crimes) as if they were people - and then didn't grant them other freedoms. You can't, contrary to popular opinion, put an animal on the witness stand. The Constitution refers to two categories (aside from slaves or "Indians not taxed") of individual: "citizens" and "persons." A dog, or a goldfish, is not a "person." Some elephants are very nice people, I am given to understand, but they are not "persons" for the purpose of the criminal law.

There was also one implied ingredient in the definition. Did you spot it?

Crimes are forbidden acts, committed by actors.

Again, it's not the innocence thing, but it is related to the words "committed by." If you didn't do the crime, you don't have to do the time - but the law has lots of kinds of "doing," some of which are purposeful (I intend to murder Barney the Purple Dinosaur; I draw down on him; I blow him away; I have committed intentional murder), some of which are reckless (I, not knowing Barney is in the room, or anyone at all for that matter, but with reckless disregard for the possibility, start loosing rounds with my pocket cannon. Barney bites the dust. I have committed manslaughter, via the creation of an unjustifiable risk of causing an unlawful death, with a subsequent foreseeably caused death), some of which are merely criminally negligent.

Crim Negl is like when I leave a gun unlocked - let's say in plain view from outside the front door of my house, knowing it's a high crime area, and a kid down the block is killed. I had a legal duty to keep it locked up, if a reasonable person would have done that. By grossly violating the standard of care, I was a proximate cause of a death. I don't get charged with murder, nor probably with man 1 or man 2. But it's possible I could face a charge like "endangering the welfare of a child," or something.

(hide)

How might a sci fi crime play out? Well, ideally it's not just another boring murder mystery where the deceased is an alien, and the locked room is a locked room, and the detective has two heads. If there's no reason to make it a science fiction story, tell it straight. See e.g. Watt-Evans' Sixth Rule of Fantasy.

A crime could be

- an act not forbidden under law as we know it ("No time-traveling back to shoot your grandfather; it's a form of suicide")
- an act "committed" by science-fictional means ("And then he lifts up the gun with his telekinesis, and teeks the bullet right into the other guy!")
- committed by a "person" who is science-fictional (alien, computer, disembodied...)
- committed in a science-fictional setting, where the rules (indeed, the laws of nature or the amount of gravity) could be totally different.

Isaac Asimov played a lot with murder mysteries; Larry Niven the same. But Heinlein usually wasn't as focused on the murder, as on the rest of the plot he was telling. "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls," for example, one of my most favorite Heinlein books (despite its detractors), begins with a murder, and ends with (spoiler!) the death of a cat, not to mention the protagonist and his spouse. Apparently. Everyone (except that first corpse) is resurrected in the next book, and on the fun rolls. The murder is not punished at all, or indeed discussed for hundreds of pages. Yet, it is a key plot element; it sets all other events in motion.

Let me restate (some of) the possibilities.

• Crimes with impossible acts


• Crimes in impossible places


• Crimes committed by impossible people.

I particularly like the first one. It's not generally speaking possible to commit a crime by taking your own possessions. The elements of the crime of theft (or larceny) are that the actor must have deliberately taken without permission the property of another, intending to permanently deprive the person thereof. But could it be a crime to take your own possessions, without permission? See "By His Bootstraps," and "The Door Into Summer."

Impossible places: This includes outer space, which exists but which is not currently inhabited beyond high Earth orbit, and Venus, which is not nearly as Heinlein depicted it back in the 1960s and earlier. The Wiki article on Venus notes that the 1962 space probe Venera I was the first to reveal that the surface of Venus was a balmy 425 degrees Celsius, or hot enough to ruin a pizza - or your day. Pizza-baking occurs at 425 degrees F - or about 235 Celsius.

Impossible people: Is it a crime to steal, if you're a computer? Don't ask Mike, aka Mycroft, the H.O.L.M.E.S. IV computer that runs much of the infrastructure in the Moon, in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. He plays a few gentle jokes, like the following exchange between Manny (Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis, the narrator) and Mike:

"Mike, why did you tell Authority's paymaster to pay a class-seventeen employee ten million billion Authority Scrip dollars?"

"But I didn't."

"Damn it, I've seen voucher. Don't tell me cheque printer stuttered; you did it on purpose."

"It was ten to the sixteenth power plus one hundred eighty-five point one five Lunar Authority dollars," he answered virtuously. "Not what you said."

"Uh . . . okay, it was ten million billion plus what he should have been paid. Why?"

"Not funny?"

"What? Oh, every funny!"... etc. Text gakked from this sample chapter, probably a copyright violation but it's not my problem, my use is academic and not commercial, and would fall under fair use.

Has a crime been committed? If a human did it to enrich himself, there certainly would have been. Uttering a false check, maybe embezzlement, fraud, grand larceny on a scale never attempted before by a human being. Something.

Same kind of question, different crime: What if the "actor" is an alien for whom humans are subhuman or even lunch? For both sorts of alien, consider my post on Aliens, Combatants, and the Other. If there's something that's godlike, then what is man to It, that It should be mindful of us? And if it's a predator and we are Soup to it, then how are we going to punish it under our laws for doing so? The most we can do, is kill them - if we can. The Moderator, of course, might have the power to adjudge a species to be a threat, and take appropriate action. But again, if it's just us, vs. superaliens? "Mice voting to bell the cat," is what Wormtongue - oops, wrong Ficton. I mean "Wormface" - said. More accurate when it's humans trying to outlaw eating us, as opposed to the Three Galaxies who decide to pass the ultimate sentence on Wormface - and his entire race. They rotate his planet. See Have Spacesuit, Will Travel for the story behind that simple, chilling sentence.

Heinlein didn't spend as much time on bank robberies as Harry Harrison, of Stainless Steel Rat fame, has. He has fewer superdetectives than Asimov. There's nothing like Gil "The Arm" Hamilton's amazing third arm, or his or Beowolf Schaeffer's impossible crimes, solved by rigorous logic and luck and bravery in Niven's Tales of Known Space. But for all of that, there's some great crimes in Heinlein.

Murder - with a laser, or an exploding dart gun, or an H-bomb, or by "erasure."
Theft - is it a crime to steal a person, if the person is a computer, and the computer will be destroyed if you don't "steal" it?
Tax evasion - well, it's fun, anyway. See the trial in The Rolling Stones, mentioned in HF: Courts and discussed more substantively in Lawyers.
Assault - we discussed the "punch in the face" example, linked at the beginning of this post.

Got any more favorites? Note them in the comments, please, and I'll update the post.

And that's it for this week!

Check back next week for another installment of Heinlein Friday. I believe I'll be taking up patent law, in connection with The Door Into Summer among other stories.]]> http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1152840486.shtml (Heinlein) Friday is just three hours away, so keep your eyes (or RSS feeds) peeled. In other news, I've had it with Jots. It was a noble experiment. I'm fed up.... Eh Nonymous 2006-07-14T01:07+00:00
My new non-blawg links collection is available here: My del.icio.us. I have 80 links posted so far, none duplicative, and they're neatly categorized (and cross-categorized). They are not, alas, saved cached versions, so the expiring pages (like my most recent addition, Jeremy's brilliant WSJ op-ed piece) will someday no longer be found at the addresses posted.

As most of you know already, delicious (I'm tired of putting in the dots, please assume them) is a wildly popular site that takes advantage of collaborative tagging. See the Main page (clever use of the .us suffix, no?) for more.

I have other useful pages elsewhere, besides this blog, and the previous iteration of this blog: There's also my Wikipedia profile (minimal, to say the least; Wikipedia isn't about the User, it's about the Project), and as I've noted previously I also am a big fan of Bloglines, so I have a Bloglines subscription (free) which aggregates my favorite feeds. Check it out by clicking here.

The upcoming Heinlein post will finally get to one of my favorite topics: Science Fiction Crimes! After all, if a story doesn't have a science-fictional element crucial to the story, it shouldn't be set far in the future, or under the blazing twin suns of Fomulhaut VII, or anywhere other than in a standard contemporary setting. So if a story is appropriately set in a what-if ficton, and there's a crime, it's much more interesting if it's not a normal crime happening to normal people who happen to live in a futuristic or high-tech setting.

The best part of the intersection between Law and Heinlein: coming up next, in the sixth Heinlein Friday.]]> http://unusedandunusable.powerblogs.com/posts/1152316423.shtml See this morning's post for the intro to this week's Heinlein Friday, or the previous posts in the series, linked at the end of this post.... Eh Nonymous 2006-07-08T04:07+00:00
"Jerry Was a Man"

"Jerry Was a Man" was copyrighted in 1947, according to the Wikipedia stub entry on the story. The somewhat longer stub about Assignment In Eternity, the collection in which it appeared in 1953, notes that three of the four stories in the book "contain speculation on what makes one a human" but that only "two of those depict potential for evolution into a superior form of human" - a subject which is decidedly not the topic of JWaM.

The Wiki stub on the story accurately sketches the most basic plot summary, but in noting that the early work had features that would echo in later stories bizarrely draws a parallel to The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress rather than to a number of more apposite stories. Let's deal with those first.

JWaM: Foreshadowing of later RAH works

As the stub says, the shyster (thus called; it's his job description, and on his card) who is recommended (or located) by Mrs. van Vogel's regular attorney, is "splendidly drawn." By this, I assume was meant that he is colorful, irascible, competent, and unethical in the conventional sense. In these features, he exactly mirrors his counterpart in Citizen of the Galaxy, described at some length in the prior Heinlein Friday post, Lawyers Beyond Stereotypes. The shyster, "The Real McCoy," care of the "notorious Three Planets Club," is not a stereotype - but he may be an archetype. That is, he is an "idealized model of a person, object, or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned, or emulated." McCoy is, in a sense, The Shyster.

As an aside, van Vogel's main attorney, Sidney Weinberg, is an interesting character himself. He is a respectable fellow; he is not a shyster, which as I said is apparently a distinct profession (or branch of the legal profession), with its own recognized specialties and rules. He "retains a staff shyster," I assume in order to best carry out the work he does on behalf of his client, but thinks it best not to reveal to her that he does so. When she needs one, however, he locates a "special shyster" who is willing to do the necessary, for an exorbitant fee. His interior dialogue on this subject is revealing, and implies a legal profession divided by type of work, just as the work appears to reflect the (pre-Federal Rules, i.e. pre-1938) traditional division between law and equity ("We are met today in the mellow light of equity, rather than in the cold and narrow confines of the law." Assignment in Eternity, Baen 1991, p.270). (Legal discussion follows...)

(show)

For some history about the (former) division between law and equity in American law, see the Wikipedia article on Equity at "United States." For a better treatment, see the article on the Federal Rules, at the discussion of the scope of the Rules.

There is nothing new about Americans discussing the old equity rules, despite their supposed abolishment in federal court - and in fact, there are still courts of Chancery in this country. Delaware has one. Nashville, Tenn. has one. Pennsylvania has plenty of equitable rules, including a defense of laches (failure to expeditiously and conscientiously file or prosecute a claim when all the facts needed are known); and a defense to the allegation that a statute of limitations has run, viz., the Discovery rule that tolling applies when, due to no fault of the plaintiff, and despite their best efforts and diligence, they could not have learned of the facts underlying their claim within the statute of limitations. Note of course that the discovery rule tolls, not excuses, the statutory period. When you learn the facts, the clock starts ticking again.

Whether a jurisdiction decides to unify and fuse the two is really up to them. And, the Supreme Court has at times forgotten its history lessons, and decided that if at common law a set of rules was based in equity rather than law, then when Congress decided to codify and enact portions of the common law, then equitable defenses and equitable rules should apply. Thus, ERISA claims brought under section 502(a)(3) are apparently subject to strict rules about the kinds of remedy that can be obtained - despite contrary rules in equity, the explicit statement of Congress that breaches should be remedied, and the absence of any common law or statutory basis for imposing such requirements. And, thanks to the recent decision in Sereboff, that statement may no longer be accurate; the Roberts court appears to have limited Great-West v. Knudson to its unique facts, and potentially discarded an entire sheaf of equitable defenses. More, as they say, will become clear over time.

(hide)

[the rest of this post technically was posted on Saturday; let's call it a delayed Heinlein Friday, ignore the back-dating, and leave it at that.]

More Foreshadowing and Echoes of Heinlein's Other Work

I'll briefly note three frequent features of Heinlein's work, and then move on to the meat of the post.

As in Citizen of the Galaxy and The Man Who Sold the Moon (wikipedia), a proxy battle is itself a proxy for a battle of wills, a central conflict in the story. In this case however, as in I Will Fear No Evil (see HF: Lawyers for discussion of proxy fights in RAH's books, and links for IWFNE), it is not a proxy fight over control over a company which decides the outcome, but rather a court case to settle rights and obligations under law.

Geriatrics, like genetic engineering, are far advanced in the story. The protagonist's regular lawyer is "respectable," as I noted above; he is also 125 years old and more, see pp.259-260. Compare Methuselah's Children, and all the other Lazarus Long stories, including Time Enough for Live, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

As in so many other stories, there is a depiction of an intelligent, affectionate pet - in this case, Napoleon the miniature elephant. Compare all the pets mentioned in HF: Aliens.

Like many other Heinlein plots, there's a court scene. See, well, HF: Courts. Heinlein puts an alien on the stand, a Martian who is expert at genetic modification and engineering. The Martian, no particular fan of humanity, moves the action forward by providing the relevant law - which in a real court case would usually be briefed by the parties, rather than dramatically revealed by a testifying witness. One exception might be when a witness is testifying as an expert, and his or her understanding of the relevant law, as applicable to the facts, is relevant to his or her testimony. In this case, however, although the Martian is an expert, his main function is to embarass his employer, which is the opposing party.

The Martian, like the more-than-human aliens in Have Spacesuit - Will Travel (see HF: Aliens, and the bit about the Moderator), indicates disdain for the backward humans. (See p.273, "The court discussed the idea of contempt briefly.") In the process, he draws an equivalence between Jerry, a genetically modified chimpanzee, and the apelike humans.

The Moral of the Story
Why'd Heinlein bother writing this story? What was his point?

He was exploring a very particular what-if, involving some of the deepest philosophical questions Science Fiction can wrestle with. What does it mean to be human? What counts? Where does personhood begin, and where must being a chattel [ed: apparently it's not "chattle" - who knew?] therefore end? Heinlein answers the question, in part, with Art. He also suggests that the ability and inclination to cheat (see p.264) is part and parcel of being human. But his true answer, I think, is Emotion - the ability to experience, and communicate, the sort of feeling which humans interpret as unique to them. Whether this perception is accurate is beyond the scope of this post.... But I suspect that if we could prove that dolphins don't just hurt, but can sorrow, or that chimpanzees don't merely mourn, but can yearn, then we would have to consider altering laws governing (certain) animals.

I note that even in the story, the above-mentioned respectable lawyer cites to a landmark court case, see p.260, which provides supposedly apposite precedent. Its binding effect, of course, requires that a modified chimpanzee be equivalent to an expensive cat: a possession or chattel which cannot be wantonly destroyed if there is still value in the animal, as to some human. If a chimp is like a man, not like a cat, then the rule is distinguishable, and Jerry can at least have the right to be not destroyed - not because he is valuable (he is valued by Mrs. van Vogel, but cannot work because of his failed eyesight - I guess they didn't have Lasik(tm) in this future....) but because he has certain minimal rights.

As his trial attorney argues (note that Jerry no-last-name brought the case "in his own name," italics in original, p.268) that he would be entitled to certain perquisites of "humanity," as the Martian is, p.274-75. "Not for him to vote, nor to hold property, nor to be relieved of special police regulations appropriate to his group" - although how precisely one can have a "human" born and living in a country without having all the usual rights pertaining to personhood and citizenship I'm not sure - it could be legal, but it smells to me.

In fact, the entire sheaf of themes of personhood, "counting" as a man, and race in Jerry bother me a little. At one point, the (unsympathetic)
manager comments that "One Nisei farmer working three neo-chimpanzees can grow as many vegetables as a dozen old-style farm hands." P.254. There are too many things in that one sentence for me to unpack. What is Blakesly referring to? Should we picture Hispanic migrant farm workers? Jim Crow-era blacks? Slaves? No matter what the case, the racial luggage or should I say "freight" - of the statement, in the mouth of a minor villain, continues to puzzle me.

Heinlein's resolution is (spoiler)

(show)

to have Jerry sing on the stand, a mournful and once again racially and culturally significant song, Swannee River (also see Suwannee River; also see Old Folks At Home (song)). Like Jerry's own modified English, the lyrics of OFaH have been accused of being racist and offensive - although for what it's worth, W.E.B. DuBois (please, it's pronounced DooBOYs or [du'bojz], rhymes with DaNoise, not DooBWAH) is quoted in the Wikipedia article as having considered it an "authentic song of the Negro race." Draw your own conclusions.

My interpretation of the scene, which concludes with the story's title, is not that Jerry is an effective parrot or mockingbird. Rather, he can sing, as a person does: "He was flat, he was terrible. He looked ridiculous, patting out the time with one splay foot. But it was singing." P.263. For terrible singing to have such an effect suggests to me that the audience perceives the singer to have emotions and to understand somewhat the nature of what he sings, and for that audience to empathize with the singer.

(hide)

If you believe that an animal does not merely feel, but that you understand and feel their feelings as a result, it is nearly impossible not to want to treat them as rough equals - even if animals have always been capable of substantially more than human chauvinists prefer to remember.

Despite the impressive and intricate abilities of animals, I have taken on some of Heinlein's extreme skepticism of the claim that humans are not in some important sense unique. Not, I think, because of his religious beliefs (as in divinity), but because of his unshakeable belief that there is something special about what humans do, in terms of thinking, creating, and feeling. If this belief proves false, then the mantle of humanity (and the protections that go with it) will in my view have to be enlarged.]]>