Human Variants

in the Ekcolir Reality

I just discovered that Michael Anthony Foster died last year. I remember M. A. Foster for his imagined human variant, the Ler. I read Foster's three novels about the Ler and two of his other novels (The Morphodite and Waves) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

Given my interests in biology, I greatly enjoyed Foster's fictional concept of a new human species (the Ler) that had been created by genetic engineering. Foster's story took place several hundred years in our future. Since the Ler could not get along with regular humans, they had to go off into outer space and find their own place to live.

I've long wished that Foster might have written a sequel to his 1970s Ler books, but I have to content myself with imagining that in another Reality, the analogue of Foster might have written more stories -or different stories- about the Ler.

selling Heinlein

A few years before I discovered Foster, I had read The Past Through Tomorrow, a collection of stories by Robert A. Heinlein. The last story in The Past Through Tomorrow was "Methuselah's Children", another story about a human variant that was forced to abandon Earth.

Sadly for Heinlein, he wrote "Methuselah's Children" before the molecular basis of heredity was known. Unable to imagine genetic engineering, Heinlein imagined that it could be possible to selectively breed humans for a long lifespan. Of course, humans have been selectively breeding animals for thousands of years. Imagine a sheep that could live for 200 years and produce wool for many decades. That's right, there is no such thing and you are just as likely to breed humans who live to be 200 years old, but that did not stop Heinlein from writing "Methuselah's Children" nor did it stop John Campbell from buying and publishing the story.

bio-electricity in 1939

Isaac Asimov praised Heinlein for bringing the mind-set of an engineer to his science fiction stories. However, an engineer will seldom have anything useful to say about biology. This was quickly made evident in Heinlein's story "Life-Line" in which he imagined being able to measure a person's lifespan in much the same way that an engineer might measure the length of a trans-Atlantic cable.

Heinlien's Foundation. I got in my time machine and went back to 1941 and read "Methuselah's Children" as originally published in Astounding. The story begins with Heinlein playing a trick on his readers who are told that Mary Risling appears to be about 30 years old. Then, on the next page, readers are told that Mary is actually 183 years old. What's going on here? Lucky for readers, they were immediately provided with a snippet of backstory in which Heinlein explained the origins of a secret human breeding project carried out by the Howard Foundation.

Ralph the psychometrician

Starting in 1874, the Howard Foundation selectively (and secretly) bred humans for long lives. Finally, in 2125, it was decided that the time had come to reveal the existence of the resulting 200-year-old humans to the people of the world. If you do the math, Heinlein is telling us that in just a few generations of selective breeding, it was possible to more than double the human lifespan.

Asimov was among the first to use the term "robotics". In "Methuselah's Children", Heinlein used the term "genes group", missing a prime opportunity to instead say "genetic group". In 1942, Asimov began writing his stories about the Encyclopedia Foundation and Hari Seldon, the first great psychohistorian. As shown in the passage to the left on this page, Heinlein's psychometrician, Ralph Schiltz, admits to having failed to predict the course of events in the future. 

future science of symbiotics

Heinlein's story has the "Speaker Trustee" Zaccur Barstow; in time, Asimov would create "First Speaker" Preem Palver of the Second Foundation.

For his story of the future, Heinlein invented the "law of psychological trends" and told his readers that in the future "symbiotics" began to allow psychometricians to better predict social trends. Heinlein was engaged in a bold act of handwavium, but he seemed to suggest that it was only by understanding intestinal bacteria that accurate predictions of human behavior would become possible.

I wonder if Heinlein's imaginary science of symbiotics was a tip of his hat to Olaf Stapledon's 1937 science fiction story Star Maker, which featured some telepathic symbiotic aliens called the "symbiotics". 

more images

In Stapledon's story about the alien symbiotics, there as a symbiotic relationship between a fish-like species and a crab-like species. For the Exode Saga, I imagine that humans are host to nanoscopic endosymbionts. 

In Heinlein's case, we can only wonder how "colloidal theory" contributed to progress for the struggling psychometricians of the Howard Foundation. In the real world, "colloidal theory" in biology developed in the late 1800s before scientists understood the molecular and organelle components of our cells. Miss Risling assures dubious readers that due to "symbiosis and gland theory" she will long retain her youthful appearance and active mind. The state of medical science has reached the point where she anticipates having a mere three months of senility at the end of her long life.

interior art by H. Rogers

This is all good news for Mary's new friend, Woodrow Smith who enthusiastically refers to her as 'girl' and assures her that she does not look old, although she has had dozens of children. Smith hatches a plan to use an interstellar spacecraft (the second one ever built) for the purpose evacuating the Howard Families from Earth. Tune in next month to find out if that plan will be implemented.

Heinlein spent many pages using his psychometricians's mumbo jumbo to explain why it would be impossible for people of the future to understand and accept that members of the Howard Families lived a long time because of their unique genes. And in the absence of genetic engineering in Heinlein's imaginary future, there is no discussion of identifying the longevity genes and providing them to anyone who wants them. If not genes, then what? A sciensy mystery!

Interstellar spaceship: New Frontiers.

Sadly for the Howard Families, none of the planets in Earth's star system would be a hospitable home. Heinlein imagined that there was a native species on Venus, but that planet was uncomfortably hot for humans. So, it was off into the galaxy in search of a new Earth-like planet. Since Heinlein could not imagine how to detect planets across interstellar distances, the New Frontiers would simply have to go visit another star and hope for a good planet. So that the trip does not take 100,000 years, Heinlein provides an "inertia-less spaceship drive".

Part 2. August 1941. After a 10 year trip, they find an Earth-like planet populated by a humanoid alien species (Zhachera) that has telepathic contact with one of the Earthlings. 

Friday

In Part 1, Heinlein introduced telepathic ability among a minority subset of the Howard Families and made use of it to send a warning to the family members when their secret (amazing longevity) was discovered.

My advice: skip part 2 of "Methuselah's Children" and read the summary provided at the start of part 3.

Part 3. September 1941. The members of the Howard Families are kicked off of the first habitable exoplanet that they found, but that is something of a blessing because in the process they learn that faster-than-light travel is possible. On the second planet that they visit, the telepathic residents help the Earthlings perfect a form of spaceship drive that allows them to return home to Earth in 3 weeks. Back on Earth, the secret of longevity has been found. Heinlein tells us that a big part of living hundreds of years is just believing that you will live a long life. He throws in some additional hand waving about: "the radioactive qualities of vitamins".

in the Ekcolir Reality

I suppose I should confess that when I finished reading The Past Through Tomorrow as a teenager (possibly in 1976), I did not read any more Heinlein until 1983 when I read Friday. Last year I read "Have Spaceship - Will Travel" and now having read "Methuselah's Children" again, I feel like I'm full up with Heinlein and it should be at least 2065 before I again feel the desire to try reading any more of his stories. In my case, I started reading Isaac Asimov before Heinlein and by 1977 I had discovered Jack Vance and dozens of other writers such as Michael Anthony Foster. I had no use for Heinlein.

in the Ekcolir Reality

I enjoy fantasizing about books that might have been written in another Reality by writers such as Vance, Asimov and Foster. Heinlein wrote about a fictional future in which President Nehemiah Scudder became the dictator of the United States in 2016. Instead, we got Trump.

Related Reading: "The Ultra-Elixir of Youth" by A. Hyatt Verrill - the fictional science of radiogens -and- discussion of Heinlein at BlackGate.

Next: The Last Evolution by John Campbell