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A review by tome15
Revolt in 2100 by Robert A. Heinlein
4.0
Heinlein, Robert A. Revolt in 2100. 1953. Baen, 1981.
Revolt in 2100 began as separately published magazine pieces—a novella, “If This Goes On--,” and shorter pieces, “Coventry” and “Misfit”— written at the outset of the second world war. In the early 1950s, the stories were expanded and joined with a short outline of Heinlein’s future history. In 1939-40, Heinlein seems to have been worried that religious fundamentalism with a charismatic tyrant could lead the United States into its own form of homespun fascism. In putting the book together, he shifts some of the focus to a distrust of a high-tech nanny state and of most of the alternatives to it. In the original version of “If This Goes On--,” he sent his hero back into civilian life after the despot was overthrown. The expanded novella has a more open-ended conclusion. “Coventry” in context seems like a sequel to it, in which the second American Revolution has produced its own kind of mind control, although it may be better than alternatives produced in the gulag. “The Misfit” is more optimistic—mathematical genius and engineering skill may get us to \the stars where other options can be tried. The book is not Heinlein at his best, but it remains readable, if you can overlook the novella’s similarity to Margaret Atwood’s much better take on religious tyranny in The Handmaid’s Tale.
Revolt in 2100 began as separately published magazine pieces—a novella, “If This Goes On--,” and shorter pieces, “Coventry” and “Misfit”— written at the outset of the second world war. In the early 1950s, the stories were expanded and joined with a short outline of Heinlein’s future history. In 1939-40, Heinlein seems to have been worried that religious fundamentalism with a charismatic tyrant could lead the United States into its own form of homespun fascism. In putting the book together, he shifts some of the focus to a distrust of a high-tech nanny state and of most of the alternatives to it. In the original version of “If This Goes On--,” he sent his hero back into civilian life after the despot was overthrown. The expanded novella has a more open-ended conclusion. “Coventry” in context seems like a sequel to it, in which the second American Revolution has produced its own kind of mind control, although it may be better than alternatives produced in the gulag. “The Misfit” is more optimistic—mathematical genius and engineering skill may get us to \the stars where other options can be tried. The book is not Heinlein at his best, but it remains readable, if you can overlook the novella’s similarity to Margaret Atwood’s much better take on religious tyranny in The Handmaid’s Tale.