Double Star

I just read Robert A. Heinlein’s Double Star. I had read it in Junior High or High school, sometime in the mid-1970s, and I don’t think I’ve read it since.

I read Double Star in my copy of American Science Fiction, Five Classic Novels, 1956-1958, edited by Gary K. Wolfe, ISBN 978-1-19853-139-0.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It’s well paced, there’s a lot of weird “we’re in the future” things like commonplace interplanetary travel, and a nuclear trash can/disposall. But there’s also odd anachronisms like an all-cash economy, little or no electronics, hardly ever having to show an ID, or have identity verified, and casual male chauvinism, as if the future will just be 1948, but with rockets. It kept my interest.

Double Star is at its heart a political thriller, set in a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system. Key plot points are directly related to parliamentary systems, including a snap election, although the main plot driver is the intersection of constitutional monarchy and Martian culture. I think it’s fair to compare the government outlined in Double Star with that of Starship Troopers. Heinlein concerned himself with politics in both, albeit (I think) for different reasons.

The Terran Federation only allowed veterans to vote and hold office, although the Federation allowed anybody to serve in some capacity, so it provided all kinds of service.

On the other hand, the Empire in Double Star encourages all citizens to vote. The narrator of Double Star, The Great Lorenzo, claimed that he, himself had never voted, despite the Empire extending the franchise to “the floating population”, which included people like him, “in ‘98”. The Empire allows Venerians, Martians and Outer Jovians, non-human species, to vote. The Venerians (at least) must have human representatives at the Grand Assembly, the Empire’s legislative branch. The Empire also has unusual Grand Assembly “districts”. One character is the assemblyman for voyageurs (astronauts), another is assemblyman for “districtless university women”, Governments do not set up constituencies like this unless they want virtually everyone to vote. In fact, governments of representative democracies typically gerrymander certain populations into electoral irrelevance.

This is a whole lot different than the Terran Federation.

The Martians

Double Star includes Martians, sentient, intelligent beings that are very different than humans. This book’s Martians their society and biology are described in some detail, because the plot depends on them.

Fidelity of Memory

I certainly recalled the general plot, and some of the characters’ names. Some parts were very familiar.

  • The Great Lorenzo (in character as John Joseph Bonforte) gets after Bonforte’s speech writer. for using too many high brow words in a speech.
  • Lorenzo following spaceman Dak Broadbent through a high radiation zone to board a single-stage-to-orbit nuclear rocket.
  • Lorenzo and Broadbent slicing up the corpses of a Martian and a dead human in a hotel room bathtub. This is where the nuclear trash can comes in - Lorenzo and Broadbent dispose of the pieces of corpse using it.

I absolutely did not recall Lorenzo getting busted as an imposter by the Emporer, or getting called out by the speech writer as an imposter at a press conference.

A very mixed bag, which made the re-read interesting.