Robert A. Heinlein's Expanded Universe

While we're on the subject of the Cold War, let's talk about Robert A. Heinlein's Expanded Universe!

Expanded Universe is a collection of essays and short stories by one of the greatest (and my personal favourite) classic sci-fi/speculative fiction authors to ever grace America. The brunt of them were written either during or within a decade after World War II, and almost unanimously deal with the subject of nuclear war. Though this subject matter makes the stories dated, that's what got me to read it in the first place - I find first-hand reactions to events rather interesting. That's probably the only appeal to this book, since we know so much more now than we did then (and since the U.S. didn't suffer a nuclear attack by the 1980's, which Heinlein was very certain it would, and which accounts for the majority of the stories).

There are also some unrelated tales, like the third one in the book. It's interesting because it's not very good. Heinlein prefaced each story, and the explanation for this one is, briefly, "this is what happens when you don't tell a publisher/client 'no', and churn out some crap just to fill space." Both the warning and the story are an excellent cautionary tale, especially for an artist like myself.

The only really wierd thing about the book, which seems to contradict even the information of the day, is that Heinlein had no concept of fallout zones. He was convinced that, if you lived a mere fifty to one hundred miles outside of a bombed city, all you'd have to worry about in the event of a nuclear holocaust is catching food and being able to build your own shelter and tools. Maybe I'm misinformed, but I thought there was an understanding of the severity of fallout zones by the end of the fifties, at least. Not wierd, but the kind of arrogance only an artist can do, is his preface to a decent story he tried to sell uncensored in the fifties that's a noir about a strip-club murder and features some rather graphic sexual imagery and dialogue. What, you were expecting that this should be perfectly PG?

Anyways, the stories are mostly solid, I've always loved the tone and flavour of Heinlein's work, and it's an interesting historical document. Not your everyday fiction. I'm satisfied.