Dimension X: The Roads Must Roll (Robert A. Heinlein, adapted by Ernest Kinoy))

[james_davis_nicoll]

(no link for this at Archive.org that I saw)

Automobiles and trains have been replaced by the Roads, vast moving structures [1] on which the entire economy of the US depends. The Roads themselves depend on their engineers and rather like the attempted coup d'état in "The Long Watch", some of those engineers feel that their efforts should be rewarded with political power. Hijinks ensue.

There's the same tension between the regular workers on the Roads and the elite college-trained engineers seen in "The Green Hills of Earth." Hmmm. And the guys trying to take over are not the blue-collar joes but the better off engineers.

Interestingly, the program to create a cadre of extremely loyal engineers post-dated the big strike of 1975, when the workers went on strike for decent working conditions. I guess the idea was to make sure that never happened again (the coup is the work of someone too old to have gone through that program, I think).


1: Powered by solar power in the original, I think, or at least they had solar screens on the roof.

Comments

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

Yes, the coup leader in Roads is an older engineer... IIRC he felt threatened by the newfangled lot.

[seawasp]

Yes, they were solar powered. The "Douglas-Martin Sunpower Screens" converted solar energy to electrical energy at some extremely high (95%?) rate, making solar the main power source for the world. (I don't recall him mentioning an equally awesome storage technology for said power, though)

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

Storage gets forgotten often.

The last couple of years I've started thinking about the joys of material science. For instance, on the Daily Show a couple of nights ago, President Jimmy Carter talked about their work to eradicate the guinea worm, which has been quite successful...but which hinges on a material that they are provided by DuPont and that the recipients can't produce. (The latrine work is rather more successful because they can build latrines, once they're shown how...though I do wonder what the unintended consequences will be.)

Anyway: fantabulously efficient energy production in SF seems to be a shorthand, either purposely or because of ignorance of other factors, for a whole host of improvements all along the line, including storage, transmission, and conversion. Those in turn will have knock-on effects in clothing, home construction (I live in a house with aluminum wiring; materials science had a definite effect there!), communication, entertainment, child care, and so on.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Now I wonder how many examples of "college-educated kids versus the experienced but not formally educated veterans" there are in Heinlein?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Ernest Kinoy is still alive.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

I recall those solar panels were slightly radioactive.

[seawasp]

I don't recall that point in any of the books. Could be I've forgotten, but I'd think I would remember that trivia.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Was he, in your opinion, good at adapting SF stories to radio?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

On the whole, yes.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Not in The Roads Must Roll, but Heinlein did get the awesome storage technology later in Friday, where the 'Shipstone' super-battery is a background feature. In the meantime, I've forgotten the title of the story in which the Douglas-Martin Sunpower Screen is invented.

[(Anonymous)]

"Let There Be Light" is the title. This story was unaccountably left out of The Past Through Tomorrow, so it's harder to get ahold of than most Heinlein.

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

They did radiate LIGHT, but not, I think, anything more exciting.

But underfoot, and stretching beyond sight on each hand, the sun power screens glowed with a faint opalescent radiance, their slight percentage of inefficiency as transformers of radiant sun power to available electrical power being evidenced as a mild phosphorescence. The effect was not illumination, but rather like the ghostly sheen of a snow covered plain seen by starlight.

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's all that unaccountable. "Let There Be Light" is not very good.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks. It's in my collection somewhere, but that's quite a lot of digging. It's not actually bad or anything, just not particularly noteworthy Heinlein.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

It's probably based on real-life events though. My high school English teacher told of his experience in ship yards, trying to get workers accustomed to welding over bolting pieces together. Their years of experience trumped this new technology!, he was told.

(He said he wasn't polite with his reply, something to do with the rocks having years in the shipyard too, and they hadn't learned anything either. It didn't help, although welding did become the standard practice.)