There were a few key themes running through Heinlein’s body of work. One we have already remarked upon, individual freedom, which had to be protected from any source of power, including both government and private corporations. This was essentially a libertarian perspective, but unlike many of today’s libertarians he was equally averse to the corporate type of power as a threat. But he had a complex view of the world which has resisted some attempts to pigeonhole him. He started out as a socialist, and while he didn’t remain one, he never became a knee-jerk reactionary either. In fact, he clearly despised them just as much. One way of looking at his body of work is that he explored the ramifications of different social policies through his stories, but in most cases the needs of a good story came first in the early years. In his later works he often surrendered to the temptation to pontificate, which reduced the enjoyment of them somewhat for anyone who was not already in agreement with his opinions

The second major theme you see throughout all of his works is the idea of the competent individual. He admired anyone who could do a job well, and clearly did not care whether they were man or woman, nor black or white. Alexei Panshin writes, in Heinlein in Dimension:

“There is one unique and vivid human Heinlein character, but he is a composite of Joe-Jim Gregory, Harriman, Waldo, Lazarus Long, Mr. Kiku, and many others, rather than any one individual.  I call the composite the Heinlein Individual.  . . .  It is a single personality that appears in three different stages and is repeated in every Heinlein book in one form or another.

“The earliest stage is that of the competent but naïve youngster. . . .  The second stage is the competent man in full glory, the man who knows how things work. . . .  The last stage is the wise old man who not only knows how things work, but why they work, too.”

Harriman we have already encountered in The Man Who Sold The Moon, and the others appear later. The Heinlein Individual, as he is often referred to, appears in many of Heinlein’s stories.

A third major theme has to do with morality and religion. Heinlein grew up in what he considered the heart of the Bible Belt, in Missouri, and saw first-hand how the evangelical Christians operated, and despised what he saw. As someone who believed in individual freedom, he could never surrender to someone else’s idea of how he should live his life. He saw them as a danger to his ideal libertarian society, and this shows up very early in his work. He personified the good, upright, church-going folk as “Mrs. Grundy”, and while you might want to draw the drapes to keep her from knowing what you were doing, you should never let her dictate how you would live your life. Revolt in 2100 begins the exploration of this in detail.

There is a chart of the future history at Baen Books, and in it we see that the 1960s were what Heinlein called The Crazy Years. (Remember, he conceived this in the 1940s and 1950s.) But in 2012 the major thing occurred when Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher, managed to get elected as President. This would be the last election held under the U.S. Constitution as he established a religious dictatorship that lasted a couple of generations. IS this plausible? Heinlein wrote about this:

“As for … the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this, our culture; it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times in the past.

“It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian.“

His background in the Bible Belt is what informs a lot of his thinking. He goes on to describe how this might happen:

“Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negroism, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening — particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington.”

As the science fiction author David Brin points out, Heinlein accurately predicted much of what we are going through in the United States right now. There is an emerging dictatorship in the United States, promoted by right-wing religious groups. The “material heaven here on earth” is represented by the Prosperity Gospel, prominent in the Trump movement, and so on. Where the Prophet used a restored Ku Klux Klan as his muscle, we have The Proud Boys, and so on. It really does track very closely. Read David Brin’s article for more on this.

But nothing lasts forever. Empires rise and fall, governments change, and in this case a resistance movement arises. The revolt is depicted in the novella If This Goes On— (1940), and it is set in the year 2100, giving the title to the book. The main character is John Lyle, who is a young army officer assigned to the group protecting The Prophet in his capital of New Jerusalem. In the beginning he is thoroughly indoctrinated, but then begins to question his beliefs when he falls for one of The Prophet’s virgins, Sister Judith. He has an older companion in the military who is not only unshocked when John confides in him about his doubts, but offers to help him. It turns out this companion, Zeb Jones, is a member of the underground group called The Cabal that is working to overthrow the theocracy. In the end they are successful, and in the course of this John Lyle does a lot of growing up. In this we see another common characteristic of Heinlein stories: a young, naive boy meets up with an older and wiser man who helps him to grow.

In 2016 If This Goes On— won the Retro-Hugo Award for best novella of 1940. And in a personal note, I have T-shirt that says “Scudder for President 2012”. This baffles most people, but I enjoy the in-joke.

What is interesting in this book is that Heinlein doesn’t stop with a successful revolution. He then goes on in a second novella to describe the government that arose following the revolution, and this story is called Coventry (1940). The new government that arises after the revolution is called The Covenant, and it is an attempt to make sure that what happened with Scudder in 2012 could never happen again. It is a strongly libertarian government based on an agreement to be non-violent. In this society, scientists can cured criminal or violent tendencies, but any citizen convicted of such must agree to the treatment. The alternative to treatment is that they can be exiled to a place called Coventry. Coventry is outside of the Covenant society, and the Covenant society has nothing to do with them.

Our protagonist, David McKinnon, is convicted of assault, and chooses to go to Coventry instead of getting treatment. He imagines it is a peaceful anarchy, but is disabused of this notion when he is robbed of all of this possessions upon entry and thrown in jail. A fellow inmate, Fader Magee, helps him escape, and we learn he is an agent of the Covenant government. They learn that two of the factions in Coventry have joined forces, and found a way to break through the barrier that surrounds Coventry. They plan to attack and overthrow the Covenant government. David and Fader separately work to escape and get back to warn the Covenant government, which they do successfully. And by doing this, David has demonstrated that he is no longer a danger to the Covenant society and no longer subject to treatment.

This story won a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, which is awarded by the Libertarian Futurist Society. And the Covenant society certainly has libertarian features. But this is not the Randian version of libertarianism, as exemplified by the fact that David is restored to the society because he demonstrated his concern for others. Heinlein always promoted individual freedom, but also the idea that people have a responsibility towards others.

Finally, Revolt in 2100 contains the short story Misfit, w2hich we have looked at previously.

The Past Through Tomorrow (1967) is a one volume collection of most of the Future history stories. I say most because just which stories belonged in this group could change from time to time. It also has the last version of the Chart of the Future History, and a few stories we have not yet mentioned (Methusaleh’s Children, and The Menace From Earth). And many of his other works contain back references to these events that imply that they might be set in the same alternate universe. Heinlein gets the last word on this:

“I have never been sure whether or not publishing that chart was a good idea or a bad mistake. Possibly it helped to sell some stories later—but certainly it caused me and still causes me to receive a lot nuisance mail from nitpickers. I have never felt bound by that chart; it was to serve me, not the other way around. If I found myself with a good story notion which fitted fairly well into the chart but not perfectly, I shed no tears—I went ahead and let the inconsistencies stand.

I want each story to be internally consistent . . . but I won’t let myself be painted into a corner through trying to fit that chart perfectly. I may start another “Future History” story tomorrow . . . and find that to make it a good yarn I must violate some item on that chart. I’ll give the nitpickers something to pick, for I will not hurt a good yarn for the sake of “logic”—logic is not involved, as that chart is fiction, not Holy Writ.”