


Lyle falls in love with Sister Judith, one of the Virgins ‘ministering’ to the Prophet, and as a result Lyle becomes part of the resistance in order to engineer her escape from the prophet’s palace. It questions Christian fundamentalism (although not all religions) through the eyes of John Lyle, initially a legate and guardsman in the Temple of the Lord in New Jerusalem, one of the elite guard of the Prophet Incarnate – never named here, but presumably Scudder. It is bleak, grim and chilling, I suspect reflecting, in part, the global events of 1939-40. In fifteen chapters and 133 pages, this novella tells of the ‘Crazy Years’, a time when a theocracy has taken hold of the USA and the country is in the despotic control of the infamous Nehemiah Scudder, who was mentioned in Logic of Empire in The Green Hills of Earth. “If This Goes On-” begins this collection with a bang, and is a great start on the whole. This means that Heinlein was writing it at about the same time most of these other stories were published, and it is clearly mentioned in the Future History chart. In terms of context, this would make sense, as the novel, like many others of its time, was a ‘fix-up’ from what was published in the magazines – in this case, the three-part serial in Astounding from July-September 1941.

To make the book even bigger, some later US editions included the novel Methusulah’s Children (1958) as well, which I may get to read next. As such, they are early Heinlein writing, albeit with some revision, and in some cases, it shows.ĭespite this book having fewer stories, it is the biggest of the collection. The original 1953 hardback also included, for the first time, a copy of Heinlein’s Future History chart and a Foreword by fellow author Henry Kuttner, “The Innocent Eye”.Īlthough Revolt is the third in this series, most of the stories, in their original publication state, date back to those included in The Man Who Sold the Moon.

