Variable Star by Heinlein/Robinson

[nancylebov]

I think I'm giving up on Spider Robinson. I was pretty close with his previous _Very Bad Deaths_--an story which includes telepathic contact with an inventively sadistic serial killer. I felt unclean for having read some of the ideas in that book. If you're wondering why I read it, it's because I find Robinson's prose engaging --possibly even addictive.

I decided I wouldn't read any new Robinson unless I knew it wasn't going to be like that, and supergee reassured me that _Variable Star_ didn't have sadistic stuff.

He was right, but I neglected to ask about all the other things I might not like.

I thought the first two thirds of the book were pretty much ok, but I hated the end so much that I can't remember what I liked about them.

The description of meditation is pretty good, but in retrospect, it's flawed by something that's wrong with the whole book. Too much good happens to the main character. If you're so fucked up that your friends have to drag you to a therapist, doing an hour each of meditation and exercise per day as prescribed isn't going to be that easy.

A question: I'm not sure that Jinny not telling Joel about her family right off was that awful a thing to do. What do you think?

Sidetrack: If you're interested in the art described in the meditation section, go to Alex Grey's website.

The puns: Some people have criticized them as un-Heinleinian. That didn't bother me, but I think Robinson poisons his pun sequences by going on about how smart the characters who do puns are.

The relationship to the real world and the future history: Oddly enough, the part about 9/11 didn't bother me. What did bother me was the implication that Scudder's regime was worldwide. One of the good bits in _"If This Goes On--"_ was the main character realizing that America was a backwater compared to Europe.



The world is destroyed by mysterious aliens. It didn't work for me emotionally, and I'm not sure why. Part of it may have been the "we're going to go after the aliens" bit, without the possibility left open (as in "Goldfish Bowl") that the aliens are simply out of our class, but I think there were other problems as well.

Imho, it was a mistake to just drop in that the aliens of _Between Planets_ were part of that universe. Two more inhabited planets, two more intelligent species destroyed, and no one even thinks about it?

The ending was utterly sporkworthy.[1] Our hero isn't destroyed with the earth because he's on a colony ship. But the colony ship needs a mysticism drive, and there are only about half a dozen people on the ship who can indescribably run it. When enough of them are taken out of action, the ship is doomed to go on hopelessly for a few decades and then run out of supplies.

There was something about whether the ship could outrun the radiation from the sun going nova, too, but that has now faded into all the other fake suspense.

But, Jinny, her dad, her sister, and a flunky or two show up in a little experimental ftl ship which happened to be in the shadow of Ganymede or something. Everyone can be saved! But Joel is so smart he figures out that those wicked rich people just want to save him and abandon everyone else on the ship. He's also so smart he figures out that the ftl drive can move the whole space ship.

And there's an action sequence (more congratulations on smartness) in which some bad guys get killed.

And instead of the yucky Jinny, Joel ends up with the much superior younger sister--their ages are now in line because of time dilation.

Joel is just too damned lucky (I didn't mention that his money problems get solved when his ship comes in--iirc, no discussion of what happens to the ship's economy when Earth is gone) to be tolerable.

The thing is, even when I agree with Robinson (meditation is good, kids should be given more respect and courtesy than they generally get), I want to swat him.

[1]So bad it's tempting to remove one's eyes with a spork. Kind of like Oedipus, but less so.

Comments

[avram]

I gave up on him after Callahan's Lady. He's too smug, too self-congratulatory, too willing to strain all logic for the sake of a bad pun or a happy ending, too convinced that taste is an indicator of character, and nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I especially appreciate your bit about Robinson presenting taste as an indicator of character.

It reached the point where when I tracked down Spider John Koerner's _Running Jumping Standing Still_, I was both curious about it and I really wanted to hate it, just because Robinson had made such a big deal about how liking it is what all good people do. It's actually very good, so I suppose I'm a good person, but I resent it.

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

Some of what you're describing seems to have come from Heinlein's notes & previously written stories.

The bit about Jinny for example. I think it's not so much WHO she was that was the problem but how well she hid it from Joel. Basically, her skill at deception caused problems for the post-Coventry raised Joel.

The bit about the Conrad at the end is also very Heinlein. He's got lots of master manipulator power brokers. Jubal Harshaw & the various incarnations of "The Boss" are some examples that come to mind.

Also - the bit about the therapy working so fast is based on Joel only having been damaged but still having grown up in that polite post-Coventry society. So it's more like PT after an accident rather than major repair of fundamental wrongness.

Post-Coventry-ness also plays a factor in the "globalization" you're discussing - remember Joel ISN'T from Terra - He's from Ganymede. He didn't say who colonized Ganymede, but if it was the US... Everything else is US based or US neighbor. The ship could be organized under US law & thereby under Post-Coventry society.

The bit about ending up with the younger cousin (not sister) is also Heinlein - RAH pulls the same trick in the story about the twin telepaths where Spider got the communication method from.

I'm still trying to figure out if the "genius" that marries Jinny is Libby pre-sex change or not, though. The Timelines match (Leslie LaCroix) and the rest of the info seems to bear it out. However, ISTR that Lazarus & Co. do mention Earth still existing. ALTHOUGH, it would explain why Secundus is the capital not Terra. This would point to the Boojums/Snarks as the probable instigators of the explosion.

Yeah, I'm a major Heinlein AND Robinson fan. It's only minorly obvious. *G*

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Joel wasn't just angry at the deception--frex, he complains about Jinny wanting him to be a gigolo. This is unreasonable, considering that what he's being asked is to give up music so that he can be trained to run a big company. He was angry both about the deception and about role he was being asked to adopt.

Jubal Harshaw is not a master manipulator. He's pretty small guage compared to the larger society.

I admit that I missed that Joel grew up in a post-Coventry society. If so, does it seem likely he'd be so resistant to the idea of therapy?

I'm not sure what you mean by globalization. I was bringing up the specific point about the range of Scudder's regime. It really wasn't world-wide.

It wasn't that Joel ended up with the younger cousin--it was that Joel had luck beyond all human plausibility. Offhand, I can't think of any Heinlein characters with that sort of luck. One of the things I like about Heinlein is his characters mostly operate on a human scale. Even Lazarus Long is rich and has a loving family (and, imho, a bad problem with depression--it's possible to read the end of _Time Enough for Love_ as horror), but he isn't the ruler of all he surveys.

A minor thing I would like to have seen--the Conrads seemed to have forcefield tech not available to the general public. It didn't show up later in the story that I noticed.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think of Robinson much as I think of Cadbury's Creme Eggs, something I used to enjoy a lot when I was younger that now seem too sweet and sickly to swallow.

Sooner or later my desire to read more set in Heinlein's future history will overcome my lack of desire to read Robinson and I'll give in and read Variable Star, but so far, helped by reviews like this, my willpower is holding out.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

You might as well fight it off, I think. There are plenty of good books in the world which are better worth your time.

On the other hand, I admit to curiousity about what you'd find to dislike about it. It was amazing to read that review by John C. Wright--he hated the book, and even so, I hated his review more than I hated Variable Star.

It isn't really a Future History book, imho. It's a book with references to a lot of other Heinlein books, but it doesn't look like a history that hangs together. It doesn't have the excuse of being overtly World as Myth, either.