http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/books/review/04SCIFIT.html?ex=1074433612&ei=1&en=b260e01970a5c770

Science Fiction: A Future History, From the Past

January 4, 2004
By GERALD JONAS


Robert A. Heinlein died in 1988 at the age of 80. Along with a handful of his contemporaries -- including Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov -- he is credited with propelling science fiction beyond its pulp-magazine roots to wide popularity and even a modicum of literary respectability. With books like ''The Man Who Sold the Moon'' and ''Stranger in a Strange Land,'' he presented a vision of the future that gave equal weight to imagination and technology -- no small achievement and one that continues to inspire science fiction writers and readers.

FOR US, THE LIVING: A Comedy of Customs (Scribner, $25), based on a manuscript unearthed a few years ago, is being billed as Heinlein's first novel. Written in 1938 and 1939, before he published his first short story, it is less a novel than a political and economic tract in fictional disguise. Among its obvious forerunners is Edward Bellamy's ''Looking Backward,'' published in 1888, which presented a socialist utopia seen through the eyes of a Boston gentleman who goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000.

Heinlein's protagonist, Perry Nelson, dies in an automobile accident in 1939, only to find himself somehow transported to the year 2086. He is taken in by a young woman named Diana, who becomes his guide to the United States of the late 21st century, a country that has not only survived the Great Depression but has transformed itself into a mature utopia, where production and consumption are kept in equilibrium by a government dole, sexual freedom has done away with sexual jealousy, and one of the healthy pleasures available to all is a brand of cigarettes made with ''honest Virginia tobacco.''

Heinlein committed this utopian vision to paper in the wake of two personal disappointments. In 1934 a bout of tuberculosis led to his retirement from the Navy; four years later, running as a reform Democrat, he was narrowly defeated in a race for the California State Assembly. When ''For Us, the Living'' was rejected by several publishers, Heinlein turned to science fiction, with almost immediate success.

While he was self-deprecating about that success, Heinlein was never shy about his conviction that most social problems could be solved by an application of scientifically informed reason -- if only the irrational fools in power could be forced to step aside. Embedded in the lectures on good governance that make up the bulk of ''For Us, the Living'' is a detailed ''future history'' of the years from 1939 through 2086. Although he set the manuscript aside and later destroyed all the copies in his possession, Heinlein went on to mine this material for his most distinctive short stories and novels. For this reason alone, the belated publication of this early work is a major contribution to the history of the genre. ***

Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead, England, in 1917. Perhaps best known as the co-creator, with the director Stanley Kubrick, of the film ''2001: A Space Odyssey,'' Clarke is the author of dozens of books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels ''Childhood's End'' and ''Rendezvous With Rama.'' In 1945, he published a prescient article outlining the theory of communication satellites. For this, and for his longtime role as a science popularizer of the highest order, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1998.

In recent years he has been involved in a number of collaborations with younger writers. TIME'S EYE: A Time Odyssey: 1 (Del Rey/Ballantine, $26.95) is attributed to Clarke and Stephen Baxter, a prolific fellow Englishman whose novels include ''Evolution,'' a fictional treatment of the development of life on earth from the days of the dinosaurs into the far future.

''Time's Eye'' takes its inspiration from the opening section of ''2001,'' in which enigmatic slablike ''monoliths'' impel a band of anthropoid apes onto a new evolutionary path that will eventually give rise to the wonders and terrors of 20th-century civilization. In ''Time's Eye,'' the equivalents of the alien monoliths are shiny spheres that come to be called ''Eyes'' because they hover in the air apparently observing the scattered human survivors of an almost unimaginable catastrophe.

In a terrible moment called the Discontinuity, space-time has somehow been torn apart and reassembled, so that chunks of the earth's surface from many historical eras have been brought together to form a new patchwork planet. The survivors range from a group of 21st-century peacekeepers from the United Nations to a 13th-century Mongol horde led by Genghis Khan himself to the 4th-century B.C. army of Alexander the Great.

The first half of the book follows these oddly assorted scraps of humanity as they come to terms with the Discontinuity, and with the need to compete or cooperate for control of their destiny. The later chapters deal with the epic confrontation between Alexander and Genghis Khan, and its surprisingly peaceful aftermath.

Readers who expect the mystery of the Discontinuity to be cleared up by the end of the book will be disappointed. ''Time's Eye'' is the first volume of a series that clearly has a long way to go. But unlike ''2001,'' which raised provocative questions about the nature of human evolution, "'Time's Eye'' appears to have little on its mind but a rousing adventure. The Discontinuity has more in common with the premise of a ''Star Trek'' episode than with the philosophical speculations of vintage Clarke or first-rate Baxter. Nevertheless, the adventure is rousing, and I can't imagine anyone finishing this book and not wondering what comes next. ***

Ursula K. Le Guin, whose novel ''The Left Hand of Darkness'' (1969) is one of science fiction's finest achievements, has translated a work by the Argentine writer Angelica Gorodischer. KALPA IMPERIAL: The Greatest Empire That Never Was (Small Beer Press, paper, $16) recounts the history of an imaginary empire in a series of tales that adopt the voice of a marketplace storyteller. This storyteller does not so much court the listeners' attention as imperiously demand it: ''You can shut your eyes and cross your hands on your belly if you like, but shut your mouth and open your ears to what I'm telling you.''

While the point of each tale eludes paraphrase, the cumulative burden is the imperfectibility of human society. Emperors and empresses come and go; some triumph through cruelty, others through cunning. A few succeed in improving the lot of the people. The best rulers are those tempered by personal suffering, but even their legacies are inherently precarious. Le Guin's translation, which ranges from blunt to elegant to oracular, seems like the ideal medium for this grim if inescapable message.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/books/review/04SCIFIT.html?ex=1074433612&ei=1&en=b260e01970a5c770

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