Sixth Column (1941)

In a future America invaded by the masses hordes of 'slant-eyed', 'flat-faced', 'yellow', 'Mongoloid' Pan Asia only six men remain of the United States Army. Together they repel the invaders. The fact that they have just invented a brand new field of physics that enables them to slice the tops off mountains at the touch of a button, cure all known diseases and selectively set their 1920s style super-sciencey raygun weapons to select between those with 'Asian blood' and 'Caucasians' (people of African decent are totally absent from the book) is a bit of a help. Early datedly racist crap which I doubt (hope) is not in print any more.

In this novel America has been conquered by the Pan-Asians. The story deals with the rebellion. I've seen this book attacked as racist. I probably should reread this--and it is a very slender book that could probably be read in one sitting, but for what it's worth, if it was racist, I was oblivious to it. The invaders could have been from Mars--what I took from it wasn't some warning about some kind of "yellow peril" but more a book about fighting for your freedom. I'd note that one of the Americans--one of the good guys--is himself of Asian ancestry. An odd choice, if Heinlein truly was a racist. A word too easily flung about that I think should be narrowly used to mean someone who believes groups of people are inherently inferior or corrupt--something Heinlein obviously does not believe. Ironically the book--notably published in 1941--was based on a proposal by John W. Campbell and Heinlein noted he "had to reslant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line." And one should remember, there's a difference between portraying racism--which is shown on both sides in this book, and being racist. Not one of Heinlein's stronger works, no, he himself found it problematic, but neither does it wholly deserve the drumming it gets. And I have to admit, I was rather tickled by the subplot involving an invented religion. Shades of L Ron Hubbard! ( )

I really don't know why I keep reading Heinlein's novels. I think the only one I ever really enjoyed was The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Stranger in a Strange Land was, uhm, weird, albeit not really bad. Double Star was essentially The Prince and the Pauper IN SPAAAAAACE! (Only, er, without the Prince's side of things.) Starship Troopers was silly, albeit not as silly as the movie. Rocket Ship Galileo was incredibly dated and very obviously written for preteens, and I couldn't get through it out of boredom.

And yet, here I am, having just finished yet another Robert Heinlein novel, The Day After Tomorrow, AKA Sixth Column, an incredibly racist little novel taking place in an America that has just been taken over by Asian stereotypes and in which Blacks, Hispanics and Amerindians apparently do not exist. Using a particularly bullshitty kind of technobabble that can do everything from kill people of only a selected race to transmuting elements to creating forcefields, a half-dozen white men manage to beat back the ravaging yellow hordes of the PanAsian Empire. Oh, and it features a token Asian-American who performs a pointless heroic sacrifice five pages before the end. Keen.

If it isn't clear yet, I really loathed this book. As I said, I've never been a big fan of Heinlein, but I still didn't expect this kind of poorly-plotted and transparently bigoted crap from him. I really wouldn't recommend this novel unless you have a love for the man that knows no bounds of time, space or good taste. ( )

This one is awfully dated, and never was one of Heinlein's best. ( )

The US has been invaded and defeated by the ‘PanAsians’. It’s not made specific who the PanAsians actually are, but I assumed them to be a bloc of countries including the likes of Japan, China and Korea. They are of mongoloid extraction – that at least is made clear. The military has been utterly wiped out, except for a research group under a mountain in The Rockies somewhere, and they have just all but eliminated themselves via an inadvertently uncontrolled use of the Ledbetter Effect (Dr Ledbetter himself didn’t survive) – a mysterious new force that isn’t fully understood. This is where we pick up the story.

Complete review at: The Great Gnome Press Science Fiction Odyssey, and a close-up examination of the book itself.
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