Somewhere along the line in the 1950s the science fiction community informally designated Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke as the “Big Three” writers of the genre. Anything they wrote, particularly anything of novel length, from then on became an event, simply because it was written by one of the Big Three.

Each of them had earned that designation by writing works that were not only popular but were thought provoking and expanded the genre in new ways. Their works remained popular through many generations of science fiction readers, and they retained that designation for the rest of their lives. Well, at least until Heinlein died in 1988, but I never heard anyone refer to Asimov and Clarke as the Big Two.

Each of them had their particular strengths but I always felt that Heinlein was the best story-teller of the three. 

One of Heinlein’s earliest stories was a novella entitled If This Goes On—. It was published in the February and March 1940 issues of Astounding Science Fiction. Here are the opening paragraphs.

If This Goes On—
By Robert A. Heinlein

It was cold on the rampart. I slapped my numbed hands together, then stopped hastily for fear of disturbing the Prophet. My post that night was just outside his personal apartments—a post that I had won by taking more than usual care to be neat and smart at guard mount…but I had no wish to call attention to myself now.

I was young then and not too bright—a legate fresh out of West Point, and a guardsman in the Angels of the Lord, the personal guard of the Prophet Incarnate. At birth my mother had consecrated me to the Church and at eighteen my Uncle Absolom, a senior lay censor, had prayed an appointment to the Military Academy for me from the Council of Elders.

West Point had suited me. Oh, I had joined in the usual griping among classmates, the almost ritualistic complaining common to all military life, but truthfully I enjoyed the monastic routine—up at five, two hours of prayers and meditation, then classes and lectures in the endless subjects of a military education, strategy and tactics, theology, mob psychology, basic miracles. In the afternoons we practiced with vortex guns and blasters, drilled with tanks, and hardened our bodies with exercise.

I did not stand very high on graduation and had not really expected to be assigned to the Angels of the Lord, even though I had put in for it. But I had always gotten top marks in piety and stood well enough in most of the practical subjects; I was chosen. It made me almost sinfully proud—the holiest regiment of the Prophet’s hosts, even the privates of which were commissioned officers and whose Colonel-in-Chief was the Prophet’s Sword Triumphant, marshal of all the hosts. The day I was invested in the shining buckler and spear worn only by the Angels I vowed to petition to study for the priesthood as soon as promotion to captain made me eligible.

But this night, months later, though my buckler was still shining bright, there was a spot of tarnish in my heart. Somehow, life at New Jerusalem was not as I had imagined it while at West Point. The Palace and Temple were shot through with intrigue and politics; priests and deacons, ministers of state, and Palace functionaries all seemed engaged in a scramble for power and favor at the hand of the Prophet. Even the officers of my own corps seemed corrupted by it. Our proud motto “Non Sibi, Sed Dei” now had a wry flavor in my mouth.

Not that I was without sin myself. While I had not joined in the struggle for worldly preference, I had done something which I knew in my heart to be worse: I had looked with longing on a consecrated female.

 

If This Goes On— was written in 1939 and it tells of a United States that was taken over by a religious dictatorship. The First Prophet was Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher turned President (elected in 2012), then dictator (no elections were held in 2016 or later).

Note that “Non Sibi, Sed Dei” (“Not for self, but for God”) is a corruption of the Navy’s “Non sibi sed patriae” (“Not for self, but for country”), which is inscribed over the chapel doors at the United States Naval Academy.

What’s interesting is that while each of the Big Three incorporated religion into some of their stories from time to time, both Asimov and Clarke were avowed atheists but Heinlein never publicly spoke of his religious beliefs as far as I know, and yet it’s Heinlein who was most critical of religion in his work.

If This Goes On— was part of Heinlein’s Future History series, which was a series of inter-related stories that Heinlein wrote during his first decade of activity. He even created a chart to help keep things clear.

When the story appeared in book form in Revolt in 2100, along with a couple other stories in the Future History series, Heinlein rewrote it extensively to tone down some of the melodrama and coincidences of his early story-telling; the original story was nearly doubled in size. Heinlein also added a postscript in which he wrote in part:

As for the second notion, 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.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is Communism or Holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue.

Heinlein saw this possibility in 1939.

You can read Heinlein’s original novella online. Here is Part 1. Here is Part 2.

Or the book with his extensively rewritten version:

 

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